The Alienist (37 page)

“But damn it, Byrnes,” I said, “we
can
solve it, if you’ll just get out of the way. Why, just last night I myself—”

Kreizler stopped me by grabbing my wrist tightly. Byrnes slowly came over to my chair, leaned down, and let me have a big dose of cigar smoke. “Last night you what, Moore?”

It was impossible not to remember at such a moment that you were dealing with a man who’d personally beaten dozens of suspected and
de facto
criminals senseless, a style of interrogation that had become known throughout New York and the rest of the country by the name Byrnes himself had given it: “the third degree.” All the same, I attempted defiance. “Don’t try that strong-arm stuff with me, Byrnes. You’ve got no authority anymore. You haven’t even got your thugs to back you up.”

I glimpsed teeth behind the mustache. “You’d like me to call Connor in?” I said nothing, and Byrnes chuckled. “You always had a big mouth, Moore. Reporters. But let’s play it your way. Tell Mr. Morgan here how you’ll solve the case. Your principles of detection. Explain them.”

I turned to Morgan. “Well, it won’t make sense to men like Inspector Byrnes, sir, and it may not to you, but—we’ve adopted what you might call a reverse investigative procedure.”

Byrnes laughed out loud. “What you might call ass-backwards!”

Realizing my mistake, I went for another approach: “That is, we start with the prominent features of the killings themselves, as well as the personality traits of the victims, and from those we determine what kind of a man
might
be at work. Then, using evidence that would otherwise have seemed meaningless, we begin to close in.”

I knew I was on shaky ground, and was relieved to hear Kreizler chime in at this point:

“There is some precedent, Mr. Morgan. Similar efforts, though far more rudimentary, were made during the Ripper murders in London eight years ago. And the French police are currently seeking a Ripper of their own—they’ve used some techniques that are not unlike ours.”

“The London Ripper,” Byrnes called out, “was not apprehended without my hearing about it, was he, Doctor?”

Kreizler frowned. “No.”

“And the French police, using their anthropo-hodge-podge—have they made any progress in their case?”

Laszlo’s scowl deepened. “Very little.”

Byrnes finally did us the decency of looking up from his book. “Quite a pair of examples, gentlemen.”

There was a moment of silence, during which I felt our cause to be weakening. Putting new determination into my words, I said, “The fact remains—”

“The fact remains,” Byrnes interrupted, coming back over to us but speaking to Morgan, “that this is an intellectual exercise which offers no hope of solving the case. All these people are doing is giving every person they interview the idea that a solution is possible. As I say, that’s not just useless, it’s dangerous. The only thing the immigrants ought to be told is that they
and
their children had better obey the laws of this city. If they don’t, nobody else can be held responsible for what happens. Maybe they’ll find that point hard to swallow. But this idiot Strong and his cowboy police commissioner will be out before long. And then we’ll be able to bring back the old
force-feeding
techniques. Quickly.”

Morgan nodded slowly, then glanced from Byrnes to Kreizler. “You’ve made your point, Inspector. I wonder if now you’ll excuse us?”

In contrast to Comstock and the churchmen, Byrnes seemed almost amused by Morgan’s curt dismissal: as he left the library he began to whistle lowly. When the paneled door had closed again, Morgan stood up and looked out a window. It almost seemed as though he was making sure Byrnes left his house.

“Can I offer you gentlemen anything to drink?” Morgan said at length. After Kreizler and I both declined, our host took one of the cigars from the case on his desk and lit it, then began slowly to pace the thickly carpeted floor. “I agreed to see the delegation that has just left us,” he announced, “out of deference to Bishop Potter, and because I have no desire to see the recent outbreaks of civil unrest go on.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Morgan,” I said, a bit amazed by his tone. “But have you, or any of the gentlemen who were here, even
discussed
this matter with Mayor Strong?”

Morgan passed a hand before him quickly. “Inspector Byrnes’s point about Colonel Strong is well-taken. I have no interest in dealing with a man whose power is limited by elections. Besides, Strong doesn’t have the mind to deal with a matter of this nature.” Morgan’s heavy, deliberate pacing went on, and Kreizler and I remained silent. The library slowly filled up with thick cigar smoke, and when Morgan finally stood still and spoke again, I could barely see him through the brownish haze.

“As I see it, gentlemen, there really are only two advisable courses—yours, and that advocated by Byrnes. We must have order. Particularly now.”

“Why now?” Kreizler asked.

“You are probably not in a position to know, Doctor,” Morgan answered carefully, “that we are at a crossroads, both in New York and in the country as a whole. This city is changing. Dramatically. Oh, I don’t simply mean the population, with the influx of immigrants. I mean the city itself. Twenty years ago, New York was still primarily a port—the harbor was our chief source of business. Today, with other ports challenging our preeminence, shipping and receiving have been eclipsed by both manufacture and banking. Manufacture, as you know, requires workers, and other, less fortunate, nations in the world have provided them. The leaders of organized labor claim that such workers are treated unfairly here. But fairly or no, they continue to come, because it is better than what they have left behind. I mark from your speech that you are of foreign extraction yourself, Doctor. Have you spent much time in Europe?”

“Enough,” Kreizler answered, “to take your point.”

“We are not obligated to provide everyone who comes to this country with a good life,” Morgan went on. “We are obligated to provide them with a chance to attain that life, through discipline and hard work. That chance is more than they have anywhere else. That is why they keep coming.”

“Assuredly,” Laszlo answered, impatience beginning to show in his voice.

“We shall not be able to offer such a chance, in future, should our national economic development—which is currently in a state of deep crisis—be retarded by foolish political ideas born in the ghettos of Europe.” Morgan put his cigar down in a tray, went to a sideboard, and poured out three glasses of what turned out to be excellent whiskey. Without asking a second time if Laszlo and I wanted any, he handed two of the glasses to us. “Any events which can be prostituted to serve the purposes of those ideas must be suppressed. That is why Mr. Comstock was here. He believes that ideas such as yours, Doctor, can be so prostituted. Were you to succeed in your investigation, Mr. Comstock believes that your ideas might gain greater credence. Thus you see—” Morgan took up his cigar again, and drew in an enormous volume of smoke. “You have made yourselves a wide variety of powerful enemies.”

Kreizler stood up slowly. “Need we count you among those enemies, as well, Mr. Morgan?”

The pause that followed seemed interminable, for on Morgan’s answer hung any hope of our success. Should he decide that Potter, Corrigan, Comstock, and Byrnes were right, and that our investigation represented a range of threats to the status quo in our city that simply could not be tolerated, we might just as well fold our tents and head for home. Morgan could arrange the purchase or sale of anyone and anything in New York, and the interference we’d already experienced would be nothing compared to what we’d meet if he decided to oppose us. Conversely, should he signal to the rest of the city’s rich and powerful that our effort was to be, if not actively encouraged, at least tolerated, we could hope to proceed without any more severe interference than that which our opponents had already attempted.

Morgan finally let out a deep breath. “You need not, sir,” he said, stamping out his cigar. “As I say, I do not understand all of what you gentlemen have explained to me, about either psychology or criminal detection. But I make it my business to know men. And neither of you strikes me as having the worst interests of society at heart.” Kreizler and I each nodded once calmly, belying the enormous relief that was coursing through our veins. “You will still face many obstacles,” Morgan went on, in an easier tone than he’d used before. “The churchmen who were here can, I believe, be persuaded to stand aside—but Byrnes will continue to harass you, in an effort to preserve the methods and organization he has spent so many years establishing. And he will have Comstock’s support.”

“We have prevailed against them so far,” Kreizler answered. “I believe we can continue to do so.”

“Of course, I can offer you no public support,” Morgan added, indicating the library door and walking with us to it. “That would be entirely too—complicated.” Meaning that, for all his superior intellectual acumen and personal erudition, Morgan was at heart a true Wall Street hypocrite, one who spoke publicly about God and the family but privately kept his yacht stocked with mistresses and enjoyed the esteem of men who lived by similar rules. He would certainly lose some of that esteem, if he were thought to be in league with Kreizler. “However,” he went on, as he walked us to his front door, “since a quick conclusion to the affair is in everyone’s best interest, if you should find yourselves in need of resources…”

“Thank you, but no,” Kreizler said, as we went out. “It would be best not to have even a cash connection between us, Mr. Morgan. You must consider your position.”

Morgan bridled at the acidity of the comment, and, murmuring a fast “Good evening,” closed the door without shaking hands.

“That was a little gratuitous, don’t you think, Laszlo?” I said as we went down the stairs. “The man was only trying to help.”

“Don’t be so gullible, Moore,” Kreizler snapped. “Men like that are only capable of doing what they perceive to be in their best interests. Morgan’s betting that we’re more likely to find the killer than Byrnes and company are to keep the immigrant population’s anger indefinitely suppressed. And he’s right. I tell you, John, it would be almost worthwhile to fail, simply to observe the consequences to such men.”

I was entirely too exhausted to listen to one of Laszlo’s tirades, and scanned Madison Avenue quickly. “We can catch a cab at the Waldorf,” I decided, seeing none close by.

There was very little activity on the avenue during our descent of Murray Hill, and Laszlo eventually stopped decrying the evils of the group we’d just left. As we walked on, both silence and weariness deepened, and our entire encounter in the Black Library began to take on a rather unreal quality.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired,” I yawned as we reached Thirty-fourth Street. “Do you know, Kreizler, that for just a second when we first met Morgan I thought
he
might actually be the killer?”

Laszlo laughed loud. “As did I! Deformity in the face, Moore—and that nose, that nose! One of the only possible locations for such deformity that we never discussed!”

“Imagine if it had been him. Things are dangerous enough as it is.” We found a hansom outside the ornately elegant Waldorf Hotel, whose sister structure, the Astoria, was just being built at the time. “And they’ll only get more so—Morgan’s right about that. Byrnes is a bad enemy to have, and Comstock strikes me as being flat out of his mind.”

“They can threaten all they like,” Kreizler answered happily as we climbed into a cab. “We know who they are, now, and defense should be an easier matter. Besides, their attacks will grow increasingly difficult. For in the days to come our opponents shall find us mysteriously”—Laszlo splayed his fingers out into the air before him—
“gone.”

CHAPTER 31

S
ara was at the door of my grandmother’s house at nine-thirty the next morning, and though I’d gotten better than ten hours of sleep I still felt disoriented and thoroughly worn-out. A copy of the
Times
Sara had tucked under her arm informed me that it was May 26th, and the bright glare of the sun that assaulted me as I went out to Sara’s cab stated unarguably that spring was continuing its march toward summer; but I might as well have been on the planet Mars (which, I learned from a semiconscious reading of the front page of the paper, was the object of study for a newly formed group of eminent Boston astronomers, who believed that what they called the “red star of war” was “inhabited by human beings”). Sara got a few good laughs out of my slightly ridiculous condition during the first leg of our cab ride to Kreizler’s; but when I started to relate details of Laszlo’s and my unexpected trip to Pierpont Morgan’s, she became all seriousness.

We found Kreizler sitting in his calash on Seventeenth Street, with Stevie in the driver’s seat. I transferred my small bag from the cab to the carriage and then climbed aboard with Sara. Just as we pulled away I looked up to catch sight of Mary Palmer standing on the small balcony outside Kreizler’s parlor. She was watching us anxiously, and what looked from a distance like tearstains were glistening on her cheeks. Turning to Laszlo, I saw that he was also looking back at her; and when he turned forward again, a smile came into his face. It seemed an odd reaction to the girl’s distress, to say the least. I thought perhaps Sara had something to do with it all, but when I glanced at her I found that she was deliberately staring across the street and into Stuyvesant Park. Irritated by all these new hints of personal complexities among my friends, and incapable at that moment of making any sense of them, I did nothing more than lean back and let the spring sun bake my face as we clattered east.

Our ride to the Grand Central Depot had not been designed with relaxation in mind, however. On Eighteenth Street and Irving Place Stevie drew to a halt outside a tavern, and Kreizler, taking my bag as well as his own, told Sara and me to accompany him inside. We obeyed, myself with a few grumbles. Moments after we’d entered the dark, smoky place I looked outside to see two other men and a woman, their faces obscured by hats, getting into the calash and driving off with Stevie. Once they’d gotten out of sight Kreizler rushed back out onto the street and flagged down a cab, then waved Sara and me into it. This annoying little exercise, Laszlo explained as we headed uptown again, was designed to frustrate the agents he believed Inspector Byrnes had assigned to shadow us. It was a very clever provision, no doubt, but it only made me impatient to get on our train, where, I hoped, I’d be allowed to go back to sleep.

One more mystery stood between me and sweet repose, however. Sara accompanied us into Grand Central when we arrived, and then to the platform where the Washington train stood in steaming readiness. Kreizler kept peppering her with last-minute instructions about communications and whatnot, as well as with tips on how to handle Stevie while we were gone and what to do with Cyrus once he emerged from the hospital. Then the loud whistle on the train’s engine screamed and a conductor’s smaller pipe began to wail, signaling us to get on board. I turned away from my companions, expecting some slightly embarrassing farewell scene to take place; all Kreizler and Sara did, however, was shake hands collegially, after which Laszlo dashed past me onto the train. I stood there for a moment with my jaw hanging open, prompting a chuckle from Sara.

“Poor John,” she said, giving me a warm hug. “Still trying to sort things out. Don’t worry—it’ll all be clear, someday. And you mustn’t fret too much about your priest theory being wrong. You’ll have another idea soon.”

With that she shoved me into the train, just as it began to grunt and wheeze out of the station.

Kreizler had engaged a first-class compartment, and after we’d settled into it I immediately stretched out on one seat with my face toward the small window, determined to strangle any curiosity I had about the behavior of my friends with sleep. For his part, Laszlo pulled out a copy of Wilkie Collins’s
The Moonstone
that Lucius Isaacson had lent him and began very contentedly reading. Further annoyed, I rolled over, pulled my cap down over my face, and began deliberately snoring even before I’d fallen asleep.

I was unconscious for over two hours, and woke to see rich, green New Jersey pastures shooting by the window. Stretching fully, I noted that my evil mood of the morning had at last departed: I was hungry, but otherwise quite pleased with life. A small note from Kreizler on the seat opposite me stated that he had gone to the dining car to secure a table for lunch, and I quickly neatened my appearance and made for that destination, ready to break bread with a vengeance.

The rest of our trip was first-rate. The farmlands of the Northeast are never more picturesque than in late May, and they formed a splendid backdrop for one of the better meals I’ve ever had on a train. Kreizler’s spirits were still quite high, and for once he proved willing to discuss subjects other than the case. We talked of the upcoming national political conventions (the Republicans were set to gather in St. Louis in June, and the Democrats would follow suit in Chicago later in the summer), and then about a piece in the
Times
that stated that there had been a riot in Harvard Square following a victory posted by our alma mater’s baseball team over Princeton. During dessert Kreizler nearly choked to death when he came across a report that Henry Abbey and Maurice Grau, managers of the Metropolitan Opera, had announced the failure of their company and debts of some $400,000. Laszlo’s composure was partially restored by the additional news that a group of “private backers” (undoubtedly headed by our host of the previous evening) were organizing to put the company back on a solid footing. The first step in this process was to be a high-priced benefit performance of
Don Giovanni
on June 21st. Kreizler and I determined that this was an event we must attend, no matter what state our investigation might be in at the time.

We arrived in Washington’s handsome Union Station late in the afternoon, and by dinnertime we were ensconced in a pair of very comfortable rooms at that imposing Victorian edifice on Pennsylvania Avenue and Fourteenth Street known as the Willard Hotel. All around us and quite visible from our fourth-story windows were the houses of our nation’s government. In a very few minutes I could have strolled over to the White House and asked Grover Cleveland how it would feel to relinquish that residence twice in one lifetime. I had not seen the capital since the simultaneous terminations of my career as a political reporter and my engagement to Julia Pratt; and it was only as I stood in my room at the Willard and stared at the beautiful panorama of Washington on a spring evening that I fully recognized how very far away from that former life I had grown. It was a melancholic sort of realization, and not to my liking; to counteract it, I quickly sought out a telephone and put in a call to Hobart Weaver, the old carousing partner of mine who was now a fairly high-level functionary at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I found him still at his desk, and we made plans to meet that evening in the hotel dining room.

Kreizler joined us. Hobart was a portly, addle-brained, bespectacled fellow, who loved nothing more than free food and drink. By providing both commodities in abundance I was able to ensure that he would be not only discreet but uninquisitive about what Laszlo and I were up to. He informed us that the Bureau did, in fact, keep records of murders that were either known or presumed to have been committed by Indians. We told him that we were interested only in unsolved cases, though when he asked what parts of the country we were concerned with Kreizler could only reply, “Frontier regions during the last fifteen years.” Covering such a broad spectrum would, Hobart assured us, involve a lot of sifting through records, a task that he and I would have to undertake surreptitiously: Hobart’s boss, Interior Secretary Michael Hoke Smith, shared President Cleveland’s dislike of reporters, especially prying reporters. But as Hobart packed steadily more fowl and wine into his short round body, he became ever more convinced that we could do the job (although he remained completely oblivious of our purpose); and just to fully crystallize his resolve, I took him after dinner to a saloon that I knew of in the southeast section of the city where the entertainment was of what might be called the immodest variety.

Kreizler and I breakfasted together early the next morning. It was our hope that, making hard stages, the Isaacsons would be in Deadwood, South Dakota, by Thursday evening. They had been instructed to check the Western Union Telegraph office in that town for communications from us as soon as they arrived, and Kreizler sent the first such cable just after Wednesday morning’s breakfast. In it he told the brothers that, for reasons that would be explained later, priesthood had been eliminated as a likely profession for our quarry. New possibilities would be forwarded as soon as we had formulated them. Then it was off to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for Laszlo, while I took a cheerful stroll up to F Street and over to the Patent Office building, which housed most of the staff and records of the Interior Department.

The enormous Greek Revival Patent Office had been completed in 1867 and was of a general layout that was fast becoming the rule for official buildings in the capital: rectangular, hollow, and as monotonous on the inside as it was without. All of the two blocks between Seventh and Ninth streets were taken up by the thing, and it was no small job, once I’d gotten inside, to find Hobart’s office. This vastness ultimately proved a blessing, however, for my presence provoked no comment: there were hundreds of federal employees wandering the hallways of the building’s four wings, most of them ignorant of one another’s identities and functions. Hobart, none the worse for the previous evening’s activities, had already located a small desk for my use in a corner of one basement records room and had also laid hands on the first batch of files that I would have to investigate: reports from various frontier forts and administrative centers going back to 1881 and relating to violent incidents between settlers and the various Sioux tribes.

During the next two days I saw very little of Washington, outside of my little corner of that dusty records room. As will happen during extended periods of windowless research, reality soon began to lose its hold on my mind and the horrifying descriptions I pored over, of massacres, murders, and reprisals, took on a vividness that they would not have had if I’d been reading them, say, in one of the city’s parks. Inevitably, I became distracted by tales that I knew held no promise for us—accounts of murders that had long since been solved, or whose salient characteristics were nothing like those of our case—but which were so morbidly fascinating on their own merits that I had to see how they turned out. There were some admittedly terrible yet nonetheless predictable accounts involving men, women, and children who had carved out a hard, lonely life in the wilderness only to be murdered in cold blood by the native inhabitants of the land. These killings were generally in retaliation for broken treaties and other legal arrangements, the negotiation and violation of which had been none of the settlers’ doing. Such tales were, however, thankfully few. Most of the accounts were of acts of vengeance on the part of the Sioux which, while severe, seemed at least understandable when measured against the abominable treachery of the white soldiers, Indian agents (the Bureau of Indian Affairs was the most corrupt agency in a notoriously corrupt department), and traders in firearms and whiskey against whom they were committed. Reading the stories brought back to me vividly the concern with which Franz Boas and Clark Wissler had approached our investigation: the average white citizen of the United States, deeply distrustful of the Indian tribes, was also utterly ignorant of such records as I was exploring, and thus of the true state of white-Indian affairs. Most would have required no more than the suggestion of a link between any Indian group and the sort of behavior that our killer had exhibited to have their uninformed opinions confirmed.

Late Wednesday, after the conclusion of my first long day in the Interior basement, Kreizler and I met to compare notes in his room at the Willard. The superintendent of St. Elizabeth’s had proved as troublesome in person as he had been over the telephone wire, and Kreizler had been forced to resort to Roosevelt—who, in turn, had asked a friend of his in the attorney general’s office to place a call to the man—in order to gain access to the hospital records. The process had taken up most of Kreizler’s day, and while he’d had time to amass a list of names of soldiers who’d served with the Army of the West and subsequently been sent to St. Elizabeth’s because of questionable mental stability, his overall mood when we met was one of severe disappointment: for while the man who’d been the subject of the original letter we’d received from St. Elizabeth’s had indeed been a soldier, he’d apparently also been born and raised in the East, and never served anywhere west of Chicago.

“No roving bands of marauding Indians in Chicago anymore, I suppose?” I asked as Laszlo stared at a sheet detailing particulars of the man’s background and service.

“No,” Kreizler answered quietly. “It’s a true pity. There are many other details that would recommend the fellow.”

“Best not to dwell on them,” I said. “We’ve got plenty of other candidates. So far Hobart and I have picked out four cases of mutilative murders in the Dakotas and Wyoming—all committed when both Sioux groups and army units were close by.”

Kreizler put aside his piece of paper with great effort and looked up. “Did any involve children?”

“Two of the four,” I answered. “In the first, two girls were killed with their parents, and in the second an orphaned girl and boy died with their grandfather, who was their guardian. The problem is that in both cases only the adult males were mutilated.”