In sight of the domed Police Building, which looked a little like that London church Spilkes was always trying to get him to visit, Harris reflected that it only made sense for the NYPD to have its headquarters in Little Italy. Who needed more policing than the paisans? Even so: poor Gianni, being treated like some murderous gangster when he was just an enterprising pervert. How would he face him tonight at Malocchio?
A police matron ushered Harris into Patrick Boylan’s second-floor office and told him he’d have to wait a few minutes for the commissioner’s spokesman. Left alone, Harris picked up a ceremonial baton and gently shook what appeared to be some ancient noisemaker. This last item was still in his hand, making a surprising little racket, when Boylan entered.
Everything about him was steel gray: the old suit; the wires of his spectacles; the hair above his gaunt face. “Mr. Harris,” he said, not offering a handshake. The brogue, Harris noted, was substantial.
“Mr. Boylan.”
“It’s Captain Boylan, actually.”
Harris smiled, and nodded toward the thing in his hand. “It’s a little early for New Year’s, I guess.”
“That object you’re holding is nearly three hundred years old. It’s what the Dutch Rattle Watch once employed while on foot patrol to warn the good people of New Amsterdam about any sign of trouble. A first defense against the community’s undesirables and malefactors.”
“Clever race, the Dutch,” said Harris, who replaced the rattle onto Boylan’s desktop. He thought of adding “Nearly as clever as the Irish,” but decided against it after another look at Boylan’s expression.
“We arrested your friend Mr. Roma while you were out of the country.”
“Yes,” said Harris. “A prince of a guy. I’m sure all that will prove to be a misunderstanding.”
“A princess, perhaps. Maybe one of the ‘horticultural lads’ who seem to enjoy your magazine.”
If Harris had been uncomfortable before, he was plain angry now. What rock was this guy living under? How many years had it been since he’d picked up Bandbox?
“We’re actually concerned,” continued Boylan, “with what preceded Mr. Roma’s arrest. A reliable informant tells us that you had been offering illegal monthly gratuities to a uniformed officer of this department in order to keep concealed certain facts of Mr. Waldo Lindstrom’s past, thereby allowing him to continue working for your publication. I would like the name of that officer.”
Harris tried, quickly, to figure out Boylan’s angle: Did he want to shake down the cop for a portion of the take? Maybe scapegoat him to reduce the newspaper heat on higher-ups? Or maybe—the worst possibility—this guy was on the level? Maybe Boylan was some high-strung Savonarola trying to clean up his church right here in Little Italy? Whichever, Harris decided it was better not to offer him the free pair of Show Boat tickets he’d discovered in his pants pocket on the way downtown.
“I may have made contributions,” he said, finally.
“To whom?” asked Boylan.
“An officer who comes into Mr. Roma’s restaurant from time to time, soliciting for the police widows’ fund.”
“Let me suggest that this officer comes into the restaurant once a month.”
“That sounds about right.”
“Let me suggest that it’s exactly right. What is this officer’s name?”
“I don’t know,” said Harris. “He’s a tall friendly Irishman.” He knew he would regret this last remark, but allowed it to escape his lips nonetheless.
Boylan glared. “You’re telling me you never asked this officer his name. Well, I’m telling you that the Widows and Orphans Fund does not go about soliciting donations in restaurants.”
“This one did,” said Harris, who once a month, out of sight in Gianni’s kitchen, would hand over the payoff envelope.
“So,” said Boylan, “if I were to find this officer, he would tell me that these payments had to do with charity and not with Mr. Lindstrom?”
Harris, speaking what was only the truth, replied, “I would hope so.”
“And you have no idea where Mr. Lindstrom is?”
“None,” said Harris, eyeing an antique, knobby nightstick that was mounted on the wall. He wondered if it, too, was Dutch, or maybe Indian. “This informant of yours,” he at last made bold enough to say, all but mentioning Jimmy by name, “have you asked him how he knows what he says he knows? Have you given any thought to what ax he might be grinding?”
“We leave axes to Major Campbell and the federal boys,” said Boylan. Harris took this to be a reference to the overzealous bust-up of Helen Morgan’s nightclub, around New Year’s, by some Prohibition officers. “But I will tell you something about grinding, Mr. Harris. I shall grind into sawdust anyone who helps diminish the reputation of this department.”
By that standard, Harris couldn’t understand why Boylan’s real quarrel wasn’t with Jimmy Gordon, who was flinging around all these aspersions. Nor could he understand why the cash he paid to Officer Michael O’Flynn, always extracted from a “Special Projects” box kept beneath Hazel’s desk, was any more tainted than the public money with which the police department regularly paid its stool pigeons.
“I suggest that you explore your memory, Mr. Harris. That you give it a good ransacking before Mr. Roma comes to trial next month. You know, we don’t break down doors with axes, but we might take a sudden interest in looking around your offices. It would be a shame if any liquor, or large sums of money, or questionable ‘fashion’ photographs were found on the premises. You, by the way, have a history with photography, don’t you?”
Boylan reached into a drawer for two poses of “Yvette” and “Claudine.” He laid the postcards on the desktop, facing Harris, who had never been arrested in connection with his previous venture but could, even now, the sweat breaking out on his neck, recall some of the “warnings” he’d received. Boylan might not be current about some things—would it help or hurt to comp him a subscription to the renovated Bandbox?—but his thoroughness seemed otherwise to rival Spilkes’s. Oh, why, Harris asked himself, had he not told Norman about the payoffs to O’Flynn? The m.e. wouldn’t have liked the idea, but last month’s envelope would at least have gotten there.
The police matron—who was no Yvette—came in to summon Boylan to an appointment.
“Good day, Mr. Harris,” said the captain. “Don’t travel too far.”
Harris exited into the severely overcast day. He wandered through Little Italy for several blocks, stopping in front of a bakery window that displayed a picture of Mussolini. Envying the Duce’s absolute power, he sighed. A pretty girl in a white apron came out to offer him two biscotti fresh from the oven. So delicious were they, compared to what got served at Malocchio, that Harris had to wonder, munching and walking away, whether Gianni didn’t belong in jail after all.