The Alienist (11 page)

The odd thing, however, was that instead of becoming more compliant, Giorgio only grew more willful every time he got a whipping. After months of such punishment, his behavior progressed to an extreme: he began to stay away from the family’s flat for nights at a time, and gave up school altogether. Then one day the parents spotted him on a street west of Washington Square, wearing ladies’ cosmetics and hawking himself like any street cruiser. Santorelli confronted the boy, and said that if he ever returned home he’d kill him. Giorgio screamed angry insults in return, and the father was getting ready to attack him right then and there when another man—probably Giorgio’s panderer—stepped in and advised the Santorellis to disappear. That was the last they ever saw of their son, until they viewed his mangled body at the morgue.

The tale roused many questions in my mind, and I could see that Sara felt the same. We would never get to ask them. Just as we were wrapping Santorelli back up in the worn, dirty blankets in which we’d found him, a booming came at the door; and I, thinking it was the men from the stoop, opened it. In an instant, two large, mustachioed thugs in suits and bowlers had forced their way into the flat. The mere sight of them sent Mrs. Santorelli into hysterics.

“Who the hell’re you people?” one of the thugs demanded.

Sara made a brave show of saying that she was a nurse; but the explanation that I was her assistant, which had worked so admirably on a desperate woman who didn’t speak English, went nowhere with these two.

“Assistant, eh?” the thug said, as they both moved on me. Sara and I carefully edged our way to the door of the flat. “That’s a hell of a rig out there, for an assistant!”

“Well, I do value your opinion,” I said with a smile; then I grabbed Sara and we flew down the stairs. Never have I been so grateful that the girl was of an athletic disposition, for even in her skirt she was faster than our pursuers. Such did not help, however, when we reached the hall of the front building and saw the men on the stoop blocking our exit. They began moving our way, slapping their sticks in the palms of their hands ominously.

“John,” Sara said, “are they really trying to trap us?” Her voice was, I remember thinking, damned steady—which, given the circumstances, I found extremely irritating.

“Of
course
they’re trying to trap us, woman!” I said, breathing hard. “You and your detective games, we’re going to get beaten to death! Cyrus!” I cupped my hands and bellowed at the front door as the men began to move our way. “Cyrus!” I let my hands fall, despondent. “Where in hell
is
the man?”

Sara only clutched her bag tightly without a word; and when the two thugs in the bowlers appeared at the rear end of the hall, apparently sealing our fates, she reached into it. “Don’t worry, John,” she said confidently. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” And with that she withdrew a .45-caliber Army Model Colt revolver, with a four-and-a-half-inch barrel and pearl grips. Sara was what you might call a firearms enthusiast; but I was not reassured.

“Oh, my God,” I said, ever more alarmed. “Sara, you can’t just blast away in a dark hallway, you don’t know what you’ll hit—”

“Can you suggest a better idea?” she said, looking around, realizing that I was right and feeling alarm for the first time.

“Well, I—”

But it was too late: the men from the stoop were upon us in a screaming rush. I grabbed Sara and covered her with my body, hoping she wouldn’t shoot me in the gut during the ensuing attack.

You can imagine my shock when that attack failed to materialize. We were momentarily buffeted by the men with sticks, but that was only as they passed. Still screaming, they fell on the two thugs behind us with rare ferocity. Given the odds, it wasn’t much of a contest: we heard a few seconds of shouting, grunting, and wrestling, and then the hall was filled with heavy breathing and a few moans. Sara and I got out onto the stoop and then raced to the calash, where Cyrus stood waiting.

“Cyrus!” I said. “Are you aware that we could’ve been killed in there?”

“It didn’t seem very likely, Mr. Moore,” he answered calmly. “Not given what those men were saying before they went it.”

“And what was that, pray tell?” I asked, still not satisfied with his attitude.

Before he could answer the bodies of the two thugs came flying out the door of the tenement, hitting the snowy pavement hard. Their bowlers followed. The men were unconscious, and in a general condition that made Mr. Santorelli look a picture of health. Our friends with the sticks followed triumphantly, even though a few of them had taken some hard knocks, too. The one who’d spoken to me earlier looked over at us, producing huge frosty clouds as he breathed hard.

“I may hate coons,” he said with a grin. “But, damnation, I do hate cops more!”

“That,”
Cyrus murmured, “was what they were saying.”

I looked at the thugs on the ground. “Cops?” I said to the man by the stoop.

“
Ex
-cops,” he answered, walking toward me. “Used to be roundsmen in this neighborhood. They’ve got a hell of a nerve, coming back to a building like this.” I nodded, looking at the unconscious bodies on the sidewalk before me, and then signaled thanks to the man. “Your honor,” he said, indicating his mouth, “that was thirsty work.” I pulled out some coins and threw them to him. He tried but failed to catch the money, at which his mates fell grabbing to the ground. They were soon at each other’s throats. Sara and I got into the calash, and in a few minutes Cyrus had us on Broadway, heading uptown.

Sara was full of good cheer, now that we were safe, and she fairly leapt around the carriage, recalling each dangerous moment of our expedition rapturously. I smiled and nodded, glad that she’d been able to have a moment of positive action; but my mind was on something else. I was going over what Mrs. Santorelli had said, and trying to examine it as Kreizler would have. There was something in the tale of young Giorgio that reminded me of Laszlo’s account of the children in the water tower; something very important, though I couldn’t quite put my finger—and then I had it. The behavior. Kreizler had described two troublesome children, embarrassments to their family—and I had just been told about another such youth. All three, in Kreizler’s hypothesis, had met their ends at the hands of the same man. Was this apparent similarity of character a factor in their deaths, or simply a coincidence? It might have been the latter. But somehow I didn’t think Kreizler would find it so…

Lost in these thoughts, I didn’t quite hear Sara asking me a rather stunning question; but when she repeated it, the outlandishness of the notion became clear even to my distracted mind. We’d been through a great deal, however, that day, and I could not find it in me to disappoint her.

CHAPTER 9

I
got to Kreizler’s house, at 283 East Seventeenth Street, a few minutes early, white-tied and caped and not at all sure of the conspiracy I’d entered into with Sara—a conspiracy that for better or worse would now play out. The snow had deepened to several inches, forming a quiet, pleasant layer over the bare shrubs and iron fences of Stuyvesant Park, across the street from Laszlo’s house. Opening the small gate to his similarly small front yard, I walked to the door and gently rapped the brass knocker. The French windows of the parlor, one story up, were slightly ajar, and I could hear Cyrus at the piano, giving forth with “Pari siamo” from
Rigoletto
—Kreizler was warming his ears up for the evening.

The door opened, bringing me face-to-face with the skittish, uniformed figure of Mary Palmer, Laszlo’s maid and housekeeper. Mary rounded out the list of former patients who had entered Kreizler’s service, and she was yet another who made the visitor who knew her full story a bit uneasy. Beautifully built, with a bewitching face and sky-blue eyes, Mary had been considered idiotic by her family since birth. She could not speak coherently, putting words and syllables together in unintelligible jumbles, and so was never taught to read or write. Her mother and father, the latter a respected schoolmaster in Brooklyn, had trained her to perform menial household functions, and seemed to care for her adequately; but one day in 1884, when she was seventeen, Mary chained her father to his brass bed while the rest of the family was out, and then set fire to the house. The father died a horrible death; and since there was no apparent reason for the attack, Mary was involuntarily committed to the Lunatic Asylum on Blackwells Island.

There she was discovered by Kreizler, who occasionally did consulting work on the island where he had found his first employment. Laszlo was struck by the fact that Mary lacked most, if not all, of the symptoms of dementia praecox, the only condition that, in his opinion, constituted true insanity. (The term is currently being supplanted, Laszlo says quite rightly, by Dr. Eugene Bleuler’s label “schizophrenia”; as I understand it, the word denotes a pathological inability to either recognize or interact with the reality around one.) Kreizler began to try to communicate with the girl, and soon discovered that in fact she suffered from classic motor aphasia, complicated by agraphia: she could understand words and think in clear sentences, but those parts of her mind that controlled speech and writing were badly damaged. Like most such unfortunates, Mary was bitterly aware of her difficulty, but lacked the ability to explain it (or anything else) to others. Kreizler was able to communicate by asking questions that Mary could answer with the simplest of statements—often just “yes” or “no”—and he taught her as much of rudimentary writing as her condition would permit. Weeks of work brought him to a new and shocking understanding of her history: apparently, her own father had been sexually violating her for years before the killing, but she, of course, had been unable to relate this fact to anyone.

Kreizler had demanded a legal review of the case, and Mary was eventually freed. Afterwards, she managed to convey to Laszlo the idea that she would make an ideal house servant. Knowing that the girl’s chances of an independent life were otherwise slim, Kreizler had taken her on, and now she not only maintained but jealously guarded his home. The effect of her presence, combined with those of Cyrus Montrose and Stevie Taggert, was to temper my mood whenever I visited that elegant house on Seventeenth Street. Despite the place’s collection of contemporary and classic art and splendid French furniture, as well as the grand piano out of which Cyrus perpetually coaxed fine music, I had never been able when there to fully elude the awareness that I was surrounded by thieves and killers, each of whom had a very good explanation for his or her acts but none of whom gave the impression of being willing to put up with questionable behavior from anyone else ever again.

“Hello, Mary,” I said, handling her my cape. She gave me a small dip on one knee in reply, looking at the floor. “I’m early. Is Dr. Kreizler dressed?”

“No, sir,” she said with deliberate effort. Her face filled with the simultaneous relief and frustration that were characteristic when her words came out correctly: relief at having succeeded, frustration at not being able to say more. She opened an arm sheathed in billowy blue linen toward the stairs, and then moved to hang my cape on a nearby rack.

“Well, then, I guess I’ll have a drink and enjoy Cyrus’s exceptional singing,” I said.

I took the stairs two at a time, feeling a bit confined in my evening clothes, then entered the parlor. Cyrus nodded to me and kept singing, while I anxiously fetched a silver cigarette box off the marble mantel over the very warm fireplace. Removing one of the tasty blends of Virginia and Russian black tobacco, I drew a match from a smaller silver case on the mantel and lit it.

Kreizler came trotting down the stairs from above, in a set of white tie and tails that were impeccably cut. “No sign of Roosevelt’s man?” he said, just as Mary appeared with a silver tray. On it were four ounces of sevruga caviar, some thin slices of toast, a bottle of ice-cold vodka, and several small, frosted glasses: a thoroughly admirable habit Kreizler had picked up during a trip to St. Petersburg.

“None,” I answered, stubbing out my cigarette and eagerly attacking the tray.

“Well, I’ll want punctuality from everyone involved,” he pronounced, checking the time. “And if he doesn’t…”

At that the door knocker downstairs clicked several times, and the sounds of entrance filtered up the stairs. Kreizler nodded. “That, at least, is a good sign. Cyrus—something a little less grim, I think. ‘Di provenza il mar.’”

Cyrus followed the instruction, launching softly into the gentle Verdi tune. I swallowed my caviar in an anxious gulp, and then Mary entered again. Her aspect was somewhat uncertain, even mildly agitated, and she tried but failed to announce our guest. As she hustled away to the back of the house with another small bend of her knee, a figure strode out of the dark stairway and into the parlor: Sara.

“Good evening, Dr. Kreizler,” she said, the folds of her emerald-green and peacock-blue evening dress making small whispering sounds as she came into the room.

Kreizler was somewhat taken aback. “Miss Howard,” he said, his eyes clearly delighted but his voice perplexed. “This is a pleasant surprise. Have you brought our liaison?” There was a long pause. Kreizler looked from Sara to me and then back at Sara. His expression did not change as he began to nod. “Ah.
You
are our liaison—correct?”

For a moment Sara looked unsure of herself. “I don’t want you to think that I simply badgered the commissioner into this. We discussed it thoroughly.”

“I was there, too,” I said quickly, though a bit unsteadily. “And when you hear the story of our afternoon, Kreizler, you’ll have no doubt that Sara’s the right person for the job.”

“It does make practical sense, Doctor,” Sara added. “No one will notice my activities when I’m at Mulberry Street, and my absences will be even less of a cause for curiosity. There aren’t many other people at headquarters who could say the same. I have a decent background in criminology, and I have access to places and people you and John might not—as we saw today.”

“It seems I missed a great deal today,” Kreizler said, in an ambiguous tone.

“Finally,” Sara continued, hesitant in the face of Laszlo’s coolness, “in the event of trouble…” She quickly pulled a small Colt Number One Derringer from a large muff she wore on her left hand and pointed it at the fireplace. “You’ll find that I’m a better shot than John.”

I took a quick step away from the gun, prompting Kreizler to chuckle once abruptly; Sara apparently thought he was laughing at her, and bridled a bit.

“I assure you, I’m quite serious, Doctor. My father was an expert marksman. My mother, however, was an invalid, and I had no siblings. I therefore became my father’s hunting and trapshooting partner.” All of which was perfectly true. Stephen Hamilton Howard had lived the life of a true country squire on his estate near Rhinebeck, and had trained his only child to ride, shoot, gamble, and drink with any Hudson Valley gentleman—which meant that Sara could do all those things well, and in volume. She indicated the small, delicately engraved pistol in her hand. “Most people consider the derringer a weak weapon; but this one holds a forty-one-caliber bullet, and could knock your man at the piano through the window behind him.”

Kreizler turned toward Cyrus, as if expecting the man to register some sort of alarm—but there was no break in his gentle rendition of “Di provenza il mar.” Laszlo took note of that.

“Not that I prefer this kind of gun,” Sara finished, putting it back in the muff. “But…” She took a deep breath, swelling the pale, bare flesh above the low neckline of her dress. “We
are
going to the opera.” She touched the lovely emerald necklace she was wearing and smiled for the first time. Vintage Sara, I thought, and then I swallowed an entire glass of vodka.

There was another long pause, during which Kreizler’s and Sara’s eyes stayed locked. Then Laszlo looked away, becoming his usual frenetic self. “Indeed we are,” he said, picking up a bit of caviar and a glass and handing them to Sara. “And if we don’t hurry, we shall miss the ‘Questa o quella.’ Cyrus, will you see if Stevie has the barouche ready?” At that, Cyrus was up and making for the stairs, but Kreizler caught him. “And, Cyrus—this is Miss Howard.”

“Yes, sir, Doctor,” Cyrus answered. “We’ve met.”

“Ah,” Kreizler said. “Then it will come as no surprise to learn that she will be working with us?”

“No, sir.” Cyrus gave Sara a slight bow. “Miss Howard,” he said. She nodded and smiled back, and then Cyrus continued his progress to the stairs.

“So Cyrus was involved, as well,” Kreizler said, as Sara drank her vodka quickly yet gracefully. “I confess my interest is piqued. On our way uptown you two must tell me all about this mysterious expedition to—where
did
you go?”

“The Santorellis’,” I answered, taking a last mouthful of caviar. “And we have come away loaded with useful information.”

“The Santo—” Kreizler was genuinely impressed, and suddenly much more serious. “But…where? How? You must tell me everything,
everything
—the keys will be in the details!”

Sara and Laszlo walked in front of me down the staircase, chatting as if this development had been expected all along. I breathed deeply in relief, for I hadn’t known how Kreizler would react to Sara’s proposal, and then put another cigarette to my mouth. Before I could light it, however, I was momentarily unnerved again, this time by the unexpected sight of Mary Palmer’s face, which appeared through a crack in the dining room door as I passed. Her wide, pretty eyes were locked on Sara apprehensively, and she seemed to be trembling.

“Things,” I whispered to the girl reassuringly, “are likely to be a little unusual around here, Mary. For the foreseeable future.” She didn’t seem to hear me, but made a small sound and then ran away from the door.

Outside the snow was still falling. The larger of Kreizler’s two carriages, a burgundy barouche with black trim, was waiting. Stevie Taggert had hitched up Frederick and another, matching gelding. Sara, pulling the hood of her cowl up, moved through the front yard and accepted Cyrus’s help getting into the vehicle. Kreizler held me back at the front door.

“An extraordinary woman, Moore,” he whispered matter-of-factly.

I nodded. “Just don’t cross her,” I murmured back. “Her nerves are strung like piano wire.”

“Yes, that’s apparent,” he said. “The father she speaks of—he’s dead.”

“Hunting accident. Eight years ago. They were very close—in fact, she spent some time in a sanatorium afterwards.” I didn’t know whether I should divulge all, but given our situation it seemed advisable. “Some people said it was suicide, but she denies it. Hotly. So that’s a subject you might want to stay away from.”

Kreizler nodded and pulled on his gloves, watching Sara all the while. “Women of such temperament,” he said as we moved to the carriage, “do not seem fated for happiness in our society. But her capabilities are obvious.”

We got inside the barouche, and Sara began to eagerly relate the details of our interview with Mrs. Santorelli. As we made our way through the snow-quieted streets south of Gramercy Park toward Broadway, Kreizler listened without comment, his fidgeting hands the only evidence of his excitement; but by the time we reached Herald Square, where the sounds of human bustling became much louder around the elevated train station, he was full of detailed questions that tested our memories to the utmost. Laszlo’s curiosity was roused by the strange tale of the two ex-cops and the two priests who had accompanied Roosevelt’s detectives, but he had far more interest (as I had suspected he would) in young Giorgio’s sexual behavior and in the boy’s character more generally. “One of the first ways in which we can know our quarry is to know his victims,” Kreizler said, and as we pulled up under the large electric globes that lit the porte-cochere awning of the Metropolitan Opera House he asked Sara and me what sense of the boy we had formed. Each of us needed to think about that one for a bit, and we grew quiet and pensive as Stevie drove off with the barouche and Cyrus accompanied us through the doors of the porte-cochere entrance.

To the old guard of New York society, the Metropolitan Opera was “that yellow brewery uptown.” This terse dismissal was prompted, on the most obvious level, by the boxiness of the building’s Early Renaissance architecture and the color of the bricks used in its construction; but the attitude behind the comment was sparked by the Metropolitan’s upstart history. Occupying the block bounded by Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and Thirty-ninth and Fortieth streets, the Metropolitan, which opened in 1883, had been paid for by seventy-five of New York’s most famous (and infamous) nouveaux riches: men with names like Morgan, Gould, Whitney, and Vanderbilt, none of whom were deemed by the old Knickerbocker clans to be socially acceptable enough to warrant selling them boxes at the venerable Academy of Music on Fourteenth Street. In reply to this unstated yet very apparent assessment of their worth, the founders of the Metropolitan had ordered not one or two tiers of boxes for their new house, but three; and the social wars that were waged in them before, during, and after performances were as vicious as anything that occurred downtown. In spite of all this backbiting, however, the impresarios who managed the Metropolitan, Henry Abbey and Maurice Grau, had brought together some of the best operatic talents in the world; and an evening at the “yellow brewery” was, by 1896, fast becoming a musical experience that no other house or company in the world could surpass.