Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street Read Online Free

like I said, Big Bill’s the most important.’
    â€˜And I take it something’s happened to him – or someone close to him,’ Blackstone guessed.
    â€˜To him,’ Meade confirmed.
    â€˜Robbed?’ Blackstone speculated. ‘Murdered?’
    â€˜Possibly both,’ Meade said. ‘But all we actually know at the moment is that he’s been kidnapped .’

TWO
    T he first stage of the streetcar journey from Manhattan to Coney Island took them along the canyons which ran between brown and crumbling tenement blocks, but soon they had left the City of Brooklyn behind them, and were out in open country, where the only buildings they now saw were white clapperboard farmhouses.
    â€˜Strictly speaking, this case is outside our jurisdiction,’ Alex Meade said, as the streetcar rattled noisily along. ‘If we were playing it by the book, the whole thing would be handled by the local boys on Coney Island.’
    â€˜So why isn’t it being handled by them?’
    â€˜My guess is that the powers-that-be in Albany – the Governor and the Attorney General – think that the kidnapping of a man like Holt is far too important a matter to be left in the hands of hayseeds.’
    â€˜So if it’s that important, why has the case been given to a detective sergeant and a Limey who’s just passing through?’ Blackstone pondered.
    â€˜Because we’re good?’ Meade asked.
    â€˜Or could it be that if things go wrong, there’ll be a lot of shit flying about, and none of the higher-ups want any of that shit sticking to them?’ Blackstone countered.
    â€˜Maybe,’ Meade conceded. ‘But with two guys like us on the case, nothing is going to go wrong, is it?’
    Blackstone shook his head in wonderment. There really was no limit to Alex Meade’s optimism, he thought. Place the man in front of a thousand angry tribesmen who were waving spears at him, and he would be still be planning what he was going to do the next day.
    Nothing is going to go wrong!
    There were a hundred things which could go wrong with any investigation – and in a kidnapping, you could multiply that by ten.
    The streetcar rattled on, taking them ever closer to the place where nothing could go wrong.
    â€˜So what can you tell me about this Big Bill Holt?’ Blackstone said.
    â€˜Very little,’ Meade told him, almost shamefacedly.
    Blackstone raised a surprised eyebrow. If this case had been on his own patch, back in London, then he would have known very little, too, because, as a boy brought up in an orphanage and a man mainly used to dealing with common criminals, Holt would have moved in circles far above him.
    But Alex Meade was different. His father was a very successful lawyer, he himself was Harvard-educated – and, before he had chosen to disgrace himself by becoming a policeman, he had been very much a part of fashionable and prosperous New York society. Besides, Alex was an incorrigible gossip who collected information in much the same way as other men collected stamps or grievances, and it was almost inconceivable that he didn’t have a full tale to tell.
    â€˜Big Bill dropped out of the limelight when I was little more than a kid,’ Meade said, as if he felt the need to defend his ignorance. ‘Nobody says much about him any more – because there’s not much to say.’
    â€˜But he is still in business, is he?’
    â€˜Oh hell, yes, he’s never off the financial pages. When William Holt catches a cold, the whole of Wall Street shivers.’
    The streetcar crossed a bridge over a muddy creek, and suddenly they were in another world, as distinct from the countryside they had recently travelled through as that countryside itself had been from grim industrial Brooklyn. Immediately ahead were lines of single-storied brick buildings, but beyond them – beyond them – lay some of the most fantastic structures