The Alienist (8 page)

“I doubt there was any quarrel involved,” Laszlo replied. “In fact, the boy may never have seen his murderer before last night.”

“You’re suggesting that whoever it is kills children he doesn’t even
know
?”

“Possibly. It is not
knowing
them that is important to him—it is what they
represent.
”

“And that is?” I asked.

“
That
—is what we must determine.”

Roosevelt continued to test carefully: “Do you have any evidence to support such a theory?”

“None, of the kind that you mean. I have only a lifetime of studying similar characters. And the intuition it has given me.”

“But…” As Roosevelt stood to take his turn pacing the floor, Kreizler grew more relaxed, the hard part of his work done. Theodore pounded one fist into an open hand insistently. “Listen, Kreizler, it’s true that I grew up, as we all did, in a privileged household. But I have made it my business since taking this job to acquaint myself with the underworld of this city, and I have seen many things. No one needs to tell me that depravity and inhumanity have taken on dimensions in New York unheard of anywhere in the world. But what unnameable nightmare, even
here,
could drive a man to this?”

“Do not,” Kreizler answered slowly, trying very hard to be clear, “look for causes in this city. Nor in recent circumstances, nor in recent events. The creature you seek was created long ago. Perhaps in his infancy—certainly in childhood. And not necessarily here.”

Theodore was momentarily unable to answer, his face an open display of conflicting feelings. The conversation disturbed him deeply, in the same way that similar discussions had disturbed him ever since the first time he met Kreizler. Yet he had known the talk would come to this; known it, even counted on it, I began to see, since the moment he asked me to bring Laszlo to his office. For there was satisfaction in his aspect, too, the realization that what seemed a forbidding, unchartable ocean to every detective in his department was, to the experienced Kreizler, full of currents and courses. Laszlo’s theories clearly offered a way of solving what Theodore had been assured was an unsolvable mystery, and thus extending justice to one (or, as it now seemed, more than one) whose death would never have been explored by anyone else in the Police Department. None of which explained why
I
was there.

“John,” Theodore said abruptly, without looking at me. “Kelly and Ellison have been here.”

“I know. Sara and I ran into them in the staircase.”

“What?” Theodore fixed the pince-nez to his nose. “Was there any trouble? Kelly is a devil, particularly when there’s a woman about.”

“It wasn’t what I’d call pleasant,” I answered. “But Sara stood her ground like a trooper.”

Theodore breathed relief. “Thank God. Though, confidentially, I still sometimes wonder if that was a wise choice.” He was referring to his decision to hire Sara, who, along with another departmental secretary, was one of the first two women ever to work for the New York City police force. Roosevelt had taken a lot of jibes and criticism for those hirings, both in and out of the press; but he had as little patience with the way women were treated in American society as any man I’ve ever known, and he was determined to give the two a chance.

“Kelly,” Theodore went on, “has threatened to create great trouble among the immigrant communities if I try to connect Ellison or him to this case. He says he can whip up all sorts of agitation around the notion that the Police Department allows poor foreign children to be slaughtered with impunity.”

Kreizler nodded. “It wouldn’t be difficult. Since it’s basically true.” Roosevelt looked sharply at Kreizler for a moment, but then softened, knowing he was right. “Tell me, Moore,” Laszlo asked, “what’s your opinion of Ellison? Is there any chance he
is
involved?”

“Biff?” I sat back, stretched my legs out, and weighed it. “He is, without question, one of the worst men in this city. Most of the gangsters who run things now have some kind of human spark in them somewhere, however hidden. Even Monk Eastman has his cats and birds. But Biff—for all I can tell, nothing touches him. Cruelty is really his only sport, the only thing that seems to give him any pleasure. And if I hadn’t seen that body, if this were just a hypothetical question about a dead boy who worked out of Paresis Hall, I wouldn’t hesitate to say he’s a suspect. Motive? He would have had a few, the most likely being to keep the other boys in line, make sure they pay their full cut to him. But there’s just one problem with it—style. Biff is a stiletto man, if you know what I mean. He kills quietly, neatly, and a lot of the people he’s supposed to have killed have never been found. He’s all flash in his clothes, but not in his work. So, much as I’d like to, I can’t say as I see him involved in this. It’s just not his—style.”

I glanced up to find Laszlo giving me a very puzzled look. “John, that is the most intelligent thing I’ve ever heard you say,” he finally announced. “And to think that you wondered why you’d been brought along.” He turned to Theodore. “Roosevelt, I shall require Moore as my assistant. His knowledge of this city’s criminal activities, and of the locales in which those activities take place, will make him invaluable.”

“Assistant?” I echoed. But they were back to ignoring me. Theodore’s teeth and narrowing eyes showed that he was quite absorbed in, and pleased with, Kreizler’s remark.

“Then you wish to take part in the investigation,” he said. “I sensed you would.”

“Take part in the
investigation
?” I said, dumbfounded. “Roosevelt, have you lost your Dutch mind? An alienist? A
psychologist
? You’ve already made an enemy of every senior officer on the force, and half the Board of Commissioners, to boot. They’re taking odds in half the gambling hells in town that you’ll be fired by Independence Day! If word gets out that you’ve brought someone like Kreizler in—why, you’d be better off hiring an African witch doctor!”

Laszlo chuckled. “Which is approximately what most of our respectable citizens consider me. Moore’s right, Roosevelt. The project would have to be undertaken in absolute secrecy.”

Roosevelt nodded. “I’m aware of the realities of the situation, gentlemen, believe me. Secrecy it would be.”

“And there is,” Kreizler continued, making another careful attempt at diplomacy, “the matter of
terms
…”

“If you mean salary,” Roosevelt said, “since you will be acting in an advisory capacity, naturally—”

“I’m afraid that salary is not what I had in mind. Neither is an advisory capacity. Good lord, Roosevelt, the detectives on your force were not even able to divine the clue regarding the removal of the eyes—three murders in three months and the most vital aspect is attributed to rats! Who can say what other blunders they’ve committed. As for connecting this to the cases of three years ago, assuming such a connection exists, I suspect we’d all die old men in our beds before they’d achieve it, whether they were ‘advised’ or not. No, it won’t do to work with them. What I have in mind is an—
auxiliary
effort.”

Roosevelt, ever the pragmatist, was willing to listen. “Go on,” he said.

“Give me two or three good young detectives with a sound appreciation of modern methods—men who have no stake in the old order of business in the department, who were never loyal to Byrnes.” (Thomas Byrnes was the much-revered creator and former head of the Division of Detectives, a shadowy man who had amassed a large fortune during his tenure—and who had retired, not coincidentally, when Roosevelt was appointed to the board.) “We will set up an office outside of headquarters, though not too far away. Assign someone you trust as a liaison—again, someone new, someone young. Give us all the intelligence you can without revealing the operation.” Laszlo sat back, aware of the thoroughly unprecedented nature of his proposal. “Give us all of this, and I believe we might even have a chance.”

Roosevelt braced himself against his desk and rocked quietly on his chair, watching Kreizler. “It would mean my job,” he said, without what might have been called appropriate concern, “if it were discovered. I wonder if you truly realize, Doctor, how very much your work frightens and angers the very people who run this city—both its politics and its business. Moore’s comment about the African witch doctor is really no joke.”

“I assure you, I did not take it as one. But if you are sincere in your wish to stop what is happening”—Kreizler’s plea was deeply in earnest—“then you
must
agree.”

I was still somewhat amazed by what I was hearing and thought that this would certainly be the moment when Roosevelt would stop flirting with the idea and quash it. Instead he slammed another fist into an open hand. “By thunder, Doctor, I know of a pair of detectives that would suit your purpose down to the ground! But tell me—where would you begin?”

“For the answer to that,” Kreizler replied, pointing over to me, “I must thank Moore. It was something he sent me long ago that sparked the idea.”

“Something
I
sent you?” For a moment egotism made me put aside my trepidation at this dangerous proposal.

Laszlo approached the window and raised the shade altogether so that he could look outside. “You will remember, John, that some years ago you found yourself in London, during the Ripper killings.”

“Certainly I remember,” I answered with a grunt. It had not been one of my more successful holidays: three months in London in 1888, when a bloodthirsty ghoul had taken to accosting random prostitutes in the East End and disemboweling them.

“I asked you for information, and for local press reports. You very decently obliged and included in one pouch statements made by the younger Forbes Winslow.”

I raked my memory of the time. Forbes Winslow, whose similarly named father had been an eminent British alienist and an early influence on Kreizler, had set himself up as an asylum superintendent during the 1880s by trading on his father’s achievements. The younger Winslow was a conceited fool, for my money, but when the Jack the Ripper killings began he was sufficiently well known to be able to inject himself into the investigation; indeed, he’d claimed that his participation had caused the murders (still unsolved at the time of this writing) to come to an end.

“Don’t tell me Winslow’s pointed the way for you,” I said in astonishment.

“Only inadvertently. In one of his absurd treatises on the Ripper he discussed a particular suspect in the case, saying that if he had created an ‘imaginary man’—that was his phrase, ‘imaginary man’—to fit the known traits of the murderer, he could not have devised a better one. Well, of course the suspect he favored was proved innocent. But the expression lodged itself in my head.” Kreizler turned back to us. “We know nothing of the person we seek, and are unlikely ever to find witnesses who know any more than we do. Circumstantial evidence will be sparse, at best—he has been at work for years, after all, and has had more than enough time to perfect his technique. What we must do—the only thing that
can
be done—is to paint an imaginary picture of the sort of person that
might
commit such acts. If we had such a picture, the significance of what little evidence we collected would be dramatically magnified. We might reduce the haystack in which our needle hides to something more like a—a pile of straw, if you will.”

“I will
not,
thank you,” I said. My nervousness was only growing. This was precisely the kind of conversation that would fire Roosevelt’s mind, and Kreizler knew it. Action, plans, a campaign—it almost wasn’t fair to ask Theodore to make a sensible decision when faced with that kind of emotional enticement. I stood up and stretched my arms into what I hoped was a preemptive stance. “Listen, you two,” I began, but Laszlo simply touched my arm, gave me one of those looks of his—so authoritative it was downright vexing—and said:

“Do sit down for a moment, Moore.” I could do nothing but follow the instruction, in spite of my discomfort. “There is one more thing you both should know. I have said that under the terms I am outlining we might have a chance of success—we would certainly have nothing more. Our quarry’s years of practice have not been in vain. The bodies of the two children in the water tower were discovered, remember, only by the most fortunate of accidents. We know nothing about him—we do not even know that it
is
a ‘him.’ Cases of women murdering their own and other children—drastically extreme variants of puerperal mania, or what is now called postpartum psychosis—are not uncommon. We have one central cause for optimism.”

Theodore looked up brightly. “The Santorelli boy?” He was learning fast.

Kreizler nodded. “More precisely, the Santorelli boy’s body. Its location, and those of these other two. The killer could have gone on hiding his victims forever—God only knows how many he’s killed in the last three years. Yet now he’s given us an open statement of his activities—not unlike the letters, Moore, that the Ripper wrote to various London officials during his killings. Some buried, atrophied, but not yet dead part of our murderer is growing weary of the bloodshed. And in these three bodies we may read, as clearly as if it were words, his warped cry that we find him. And find him quickly—for the timetable by which he kills is a strict one, I suspect. That timetable, too, we must learn to decipher.”

“Then you believe you
can
do it quickly, Doctor?” Theodore asked. “An investigation like the one you’re describing could not be carried on indefinitely, after all. We must have
results
!”

Kreizler shrugged, seemingly unaffected by Roosevelt’s urgent tone. “I have given you my honest opinion. We would have a fighting chance, nothing more—or less.” Kreizler put a hand on Theodore’s desk. “Well, Roosevelt?”

If it seems odd that I offered no further protest, I can only say this: Kreizler’s explanation that his present course of action had been inspired by a document I had sent him years ago, coming as it did on the heels of our shared reminiscences about Harvard and Theodore’s mounting enthusiasm for this plan, had suddenly made it plain to me that what was happening in that office was only partly a result of Giorgio Santorelli’s death. Its full range of causes seemed to stretch much farther back, to our childhoods and subsequent lives, both individual and shared. Rarely have I felt so strongly the truth of Kreizler’s belief that the answers one gives to life’s crucial questions are never truly spontaneous; they are the embodiment of years of contextual experience, of the building of patterns in each of our lives that eventually grow to dominate our behavior. Was Theodore—whose credo of active response to all challenges had guided him through physical sickness in youth and political and personal trials in adulthood—truly free to refuse Kreizler’s offer? And if he accepted it, was I then free to say no to these two friends, with whom I had lived through many escapades and who were now telling me that my extracurricular activities and knowledge—so often dismissed as useless by almost everyone I knew—would prove vital in catching a brutal killer? Professor James would have said that, yes, any human being is free, at any time, to pursue or decline anything; and perhaps, objectively, that is true. But as Kreizler loved to say (and Professor James ultimately had a hard time refuting), you cannot objectify the subjective, you cannot generalize the specific. What
man,
or
a
man, might have chosen was arguable; Theodore and I were the men who were there.