The Alienist (10 page)

“The great difficulty,” he mumbled, as he returned to his secretary and began straightening papers, “of convincing people that the mental health of children must be better attended to is that more and more of them believe that their child’s every little trouble betrays a momentous condition. Ah, well…” He closed the secretary and locked it, then turned. “Now, Moore. Down we go. Roosevelt’s men should already be here. I asked Cyrus to bring them in directly through the ground-floor door.”

“You’re going to interview them
here
?” I asked, as we went through the examination room and escaped the families out front by way of a back door to the Institute’s courtyard.

“In fact, I am not going to interview them at all,” Kreizler answered, as the cold air hit us. “I will allow the Zweig children to do that. I will only study the results. And remember, Moore—not a word about what we’re doing, until I’m sure these men are acceptable.”

It had begun to snow lightly, and several of Kreizler’s young patients—dressed in the Institute’s simple gray and blue uniform, whose purpose was to help prevent differing economic backgrounds from creating friction between the children—had come out into the courtyard to play among the flakes. When they saw Kreizler they ran over to cheerfully but very respectfully greet him. Laszlo smiled back at them, and asked a few questions about their teachers and their schoolwork. A couple of the bolder students gave some frank answers about this or that teacher’s appearance and bodily aromas, at which Laszlo admonished them, though not harshly. As we turned away and entered the ground-floor doorway, I heard joyful shouts start to echo off the courtyard walls once more, and thought of how recently many of these children had been on the streets and just a few short steps from Giorgio Santorelli’s fate. More and more, my mind was seeing all things in relation to the case.

A dark, dank hallway led us to the operating theater, a very long room that was kept dry and warm by a gas space heater that hissed in one corner. The walls were smooth and whitewashed, and white cabinets with glass doors ran along each wall, holding a collection of gruesome, glistening instruments. On white shelves above these were a collection of chilling models: realistically painted plaster casts of human and simian heads, with their skulls partly removed to reveal brain positioning and their faces still expressive of their death throes. Sharing the shelf space with these was a large collection of actual brains from a wide variety of creatures, housed in specimen jars full of formaldehyde. The remainder of the wall space was occupied by charts of human and animal nervous systems. In the center of the room were two steel operating tables, with channels for draining bodily fluids running down the center of their beds to the foot, where they emptied into steel receptacles on the floor. There were forms of roughly human dimensions on each of these tables, covered with sterile sheets. A pronounced aroma of animal decay and earth emanated from them.

Standing by the tables were two men, both wearing three-piece wool suits, the taller man’s a subdued but fashionably checked pattern, the shorter’s simple black. Their faces were almost totally obscured by the harsh glare of the electric operating lamps that were positioned above the tables and between us.

“Gentlemen,” Laszlo said, moving directly toward them. “I am Dr. Kreizler. I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

“Not at all, Doctor,” said the taller man, shaking Kreizler’s hand. As he leaned into the bright light around the table I could see that his Semitic features were quite handsome—strong nose, steady brown eyes, and a good head of curling hair. The shorter man, by contrast, had small eyes, a fleshy face that was beaded with sweat, and thinning hair. They both looked to be in their early thirties. “I’m Sergeant Marcus Isaacson,” the taller man went on, “and this is my brother, Lucius.”

The shorter man looked annoyed as he extended a hand. “
Detective Sergeant
Lucius Isaacson, Doctor,” he said. Then, leaning back and speaking out of the side of his mouth, he murmured, “Don’t do that again. You said you wouldn’t.”

Marcus Isaacson rolled his eyes, then tried to smile at us as he, too, spoke out of the side of his mouth. “What? What did I do?”

“Don’t introduce me as your brother,” Lucius Isaacson whispered urgently.

“Gentlemen,” Kreizler said, a little perplexed by this spat. “Allow me to introduce a friend of mine, John Schuyler Moore.” I shook hands with them both as Kreizler continued: “Commissioner Roosevelt speaks quite highly of your talents, and thinks you may be able to give me some assistance with a bit of research I’m doing. You have two areas of speciality that particularly interest me—”

“Yes,” Marcus said, “criminal science and forensic medicine.”

Kreizler went on: “First of all, I’d like to know—”

“If you’re wondering about our names,” Marcus interrupted, “our mother and father were very concerned, when they arrived in America, that their children not be subjected to anti-Jewish feeling in school.”

“We were relatively lucky,” Lucius added. “Our sister’s name is Cordelia.”

“You see,” Marcus continued, “they were learning English by studying Shakespeare. When I was born they’d just started, with
Julius Caesar.
A year later, they were still on it, and my brother came. But by the time our sister arrived, two years after that, they were making progress, and had gotten to
King Lear
—”

“I’ve no doubt, gentlemen,” Kreizler finished for him, ever more concerned and treating them fully to the arched eyebrows and the predatory gaze. “Interesting though that may be, what I had intended to ask was how you arrived at your areas of specialization, and what led you to the police force.”

Lucius sighed, looking up. “Nobody wants to hear how we got our names, Marcus,” he mumbled. “I’ve told you that.”

Marcus’s face went a little red with anger and then he addressed Kreizler with deliberate seriousness, sensing the meeting wasn’t going well. “Well, you see, Doctor, it was our parents again, though I do understand that it may not be a particularly interesting explanation. My mother wanted me to be a lawyer, and my brother—the
detective sergeant
here—he was supposed to be a doctor. It didn’t work out. We’d started reading Wilkie Collins when we were boys, and had pretty well decided by the time we went to college that we wanted to be detectives.”

“Law and medical training were useful, at first,” Lucius continued, “but then we moved on and did some work for the Pinkertons. It wasn’t until Commissioner Roosevelt took over the department that we actually got a chance to join the police. I suppose you’ve heard that his hiring practices are a bit…unorthodox.”

I knew what he was referring to, and later explained it to Laszlo. Besides investigating nearly every officer and detective in the Police Department, and thus prompting many to resign, Roosevelt had made a point of hiring unlikely new recruits, in an effort to break the hold that the clique headed by Thomas Byrnes and such precinct heads as “Clubber” Williams and “Big Bill” Devery had on the force. Theodore was especially fond of bringing in Jews, whom he considered exceptionally honest and brave, referring to them as “Maccabean warriors for justice.” The Isaacson brothers were apparently representative of this effort, though “warriors” was not the first word that came to mind on meeting them.

“I take it,” Lucius ventured hopefully, wanting to get off the subject of their backgrounds, “that you want some help with this exhumation?” He indicated the two tables.

Kreizler studied him. “How did you know it’s an exhumation?”

“The smell, Doctor. It’s very distinct. And the positions of the bodies indicate a formal burial, not a random interment.”

Kreizler liked that, and brightened a bit. “Yes, Detective Sergeant, you have presumed correctly.” He moved over and whipped the sheets off the tables, at which point the stench was complemented by the rather disturbing sight of two small skeletons, one draped in a decaying black suit and the other in an equally decrepit white dress. Some bones were still connected, but many had come free of one another, and there were bits of hair and nails, along with spatterings of dirt, all over them. I tightened up and tried not to look away: this sort of thing was going to be my fate for a while, and I figured that I’d better get used to it. But the grisly grimaces of the two skulls spoke eloquently of the unnatural way in which the two children had died, and it was hard to continue examining them.

The Isaacson brothers’ faces displayed nothing but fascination as they approached the tables and listened to Laszlo: “Brother and sister, Benjamin and Sofia Zweig. Murdered. Their bodies found—”

“In a water tower,” Marcus said. “Three years ago. The case is still officially open.”

This, too, pleased Kreizler. “Over here,” he continued, indicating a small white table in the corner that was piled with clippings and documents, “you’ll find all the information concerning the case that I’ve been able to assemble. I should like the two of you to review it, and study the bodies. There is some urgency about the matter, so I can only offer you the afternoon and evening. I will be at Delmonico’s at eleven-thirty tonight. Meet me there, and in exchange for your information I shall be happy to offer you an excellent dinner.”

Marcus Isaacson’s enthusiasm broke for a moment of curiosity. “Dinner isn’t necessary, Doctor, if this is official business. Though we appreciate the offer.”

Laszlo nodded with a slight smile, amused at Marcus’s attempt to draw him out. “We’ll see you at eleven-thirty, then.”

At that the Isaacsons started in on the materials before them, barely conscious of Kreizler’s and my farewells. We went upstairs, and as I fetched my coat from the consultation room, Laszlo continued to look intrigued.

“There’s no doubting they’re idiosyncratic,” he said as he walked me to the front door. “But I’ve a feeling they know their work. We shall see. Oh, by the way, Moore—do you have a clean set of clothes for tonight?”

“Tonight?” I asked, pulling my cap and gloves on.

“The opera,” he replied. “Roosevelt’s candidate for liaison between our investigation and his office is due to meet us at my house at seven.”

“Who is he?”

“No idea,” Laszlo said with a shrug. “But whoever it is, the liaison’s role will be crucial. I thought we’d take him to the opera, and see how he reacts. It’s as good a test of character as any, and God knows when we’ll get another chance to go. We’ll use my box at the Metropolitan. Maurel is singing Rigoletto. It should suit our purpose.”

“It certainly should,” I said happily. “And speaking of purposes, who’s singing the hunchback’s daughter?”

Kreizler turned away with an expression of mild disgust. “My God, Moore, I should like to get the particulars of your infancy someday. This irrepressible sexual mania—”

“I only asked who’s singing the hunchback’s daughter!”

“All right, all right! Yes, Frances Saville, ‘She of the Legs,’ as you put it!”

“In that case,” I said, bouncing down the steps and toward the carriage, “I definitely have clothes.” As far as I was concerned, you could take Nellie Melba, Lillian Nordica, and all the rest of the half-attractive, four-star voices at the Metropolitan and, as Stevie Taggert would have put it, go chase yourself. Give me a really beautiful girl with a decent voice and I was a docile audience member. “I’ll be at your place at seven.”

“Splendid,” Kreizler answered with a frown. “I can scarcely wait. Cyrus! Take Mr. Moore to Washington Square!”

I spent the quick trip back up and across town pondering what an unusual—but nonetheless enjoyable—way to open a murder investigation the opera and dinner at Delmonico’s would be. Unfortunately, such entertainments did not turn out to be said opening; for when I arrived home, I found a very agitated Sara Howard on my doorstep.

CHAPTER 8

S
ara paid no attention to my greeting. “This is Dr. Kreizler’s carriage, isn’t it?” she asked. “And his man. Can we take them?”

“Take them where?” I answered, looking up to see my grandmother peering anxiously out the window of her parlor. “Sara, what’s going on?”

“Sergeant Connor and another man, Casey, went down to talk to the Santorelli boy’s parents this morning. They returned and said they’d found nothing—but there was blood on the cuff of Connor’s shirt. Something’s happened, I know it, and I want to find out what.” She wasn’t looking at me, perhaps because she knew what my reaction was likely to be.

“A little off the beaten trail for a secretary, isn’t it?” I asked. Sara didn’t answer, but a look of bitter disappointment filled her face, a frustration so severe that all I could do was open the calash door. “What about it, Cyrus?” I said. “Any objection to taking Miss Howard and myself on a little errand?”

Cyrus shrugged. “No, sir. Not so long as I’m back at the Institute by the end of interviewing hours.”

“And so you shall be. Climb aboard, Sara, and meet Mr. Cyrus Montrose.”

In an instant Sara’s aspect went from ferocious to exuberant—not an uncommon transformation for her. “There are moments, John,” she said, jumping up onto the calash, “when I think I may have been wrong about you all these years.” She shook Cyrus’s hand eagerly and then sat down, throwing a blanket over my legs and hers when I got in. Directing Cyrus to an address on Mott Street, she clapped her hands once excitedly as the calash began moving.

There aren’t many women who would have ventured into one of the worst parts of the Lower East Side with such relish. But Sara’s adventurous spirit had never been much tempered by prudence. Furthermore, she had experience with the area: right after Sara’s graduation from college, her family had gotten the idea that her education might be fully balanced by some firsthand experience of life in places other than Rhinebeck (where the Howards’ country estate was located) and Gramercy Park. So she put on a starched white blouse, a dreary black skirt, and a rather ridiculous boater and spent the summer assisting a visiting nurse in the Tenth Ward. During those months she saw a great deal—most, indeed, of what the Lower East Side could throw at a person. None of it, however, was any worse than what we were bound for that day.

The Santorellis lived in a rear tenement a few blocks below Canal Street. Rear tenements had been outlawed in 1894, but there had been a grandfather clause in the bill, so that those that already existed were allowed to remain standing with minimal improvement. Suffice it to say that if a tenement building that fronted the street was dark, disease-ridden, and threatening, the smaller buildings that often stood behind them—in place of a yard that might have brought at least a bit more air and light to the block—were exponentially more so. By the look of the particular front tenement we pulled up before that day, we were in for a typical experience: huge barrels of ash and waste stood by the urine-soaked stoop of the structure, on which was gathered a group of filthy, rag-clad men, each indistinguishable from the next. They were drinking and laughing among themselves, but they stopped abruptly at the sight of the calash and Cyrus. Sara and I stepped out and onto the curb.

“Don’t wander too far, Cyrus,” I said, trying not to betray my jitters.

“No, sir,” he answered, gripping the pommel of his horse-whip tightly. With his other hand he reached into the pocket of his greatcoat. “Perhaps you should take these, Mr. Moore.” He produced a set of brass knuckles.

“Hmm,” I noised, studying the weapon. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.” Then I dropped the sham. “Besides, I wouldn’t know how to use them.”

“Hurry, John,” Sara said, and then we mounted the stoop.

“Here!” One of the loitering men grabbed my arm. “D’you know there’s a coon driving your rig?”

“Is there?” I answered, guiding Sara through the almost visible stench that hovered around the men.

“Black as the ace of spades!” another of the men asserted, seemingly astonished.

“Remarkable,” I replied, as Sara got inside. Before I could follow, the first man grabbed me again.

“You’re not another cop, are you?” he asked menacingly.

“Absolutely not,” I answered. “I despise cops.”

The man nodded once but said nothing, from which I divined that I was allowed to pass.

To get to the rear building it was necessary to navigate the pitch-black hallway of the front structure: always an unsettling experience. With Sara in the lead we felt our way along the filthy walls, trying but failing to adjust to the lack of light. I started when Sara stumbled on something; and I started even more violently when that something began to wail.

“Good lord, John,” Sara said after a moment. “It’s a baby.”

I still couldn’t see a thing, but as I got closer the smell gave it away—a baby, all right, and the poor creature must have been covered in its own excrement.

“We’ve got to get it help,” Sara said, and I thought of the men on the stoop. When I looked back toward the front door, however, I saw them silhouetted against the snowfall outside, swinging sticks as they watched us, and occasionally laughing in a very unpleasant way. There would be no help from that quarter, so I began to try doors inside the hall. Finally finding one that would open, I pulled Sara toward and through it.

Inside were an old man and woman, ragpickers, who would only accept the baby after I offered them a half-dollar. They told us that the infant belonged to a couple across the hall who were out, as they were every day and night, jabbing morphine and drinking in a dive around the corner. The old man assured us that they would get the baby something to eat and clean it up, at which Sara gave them another dollar. Neither of us was under any illusions as to how much good a cleaning and feeding would do the child in the long run (I suppose you could argue that we were simply easing our own consciences), but it was one of those all-too-common moments in New York when one is faced with a damnable set of options.

Finally, we reached the back door. The alleyway between the front and rear buildings was overflowing with more barrels and buckets full of garbage and sewage, and the smell was indescribable. Sara placed a handkerchief over her nose and mouth and told me to do the same. Then we ran across to the ground-floor hallway of the rear building. There were four apartments with what seemed like a thousand people living in them on the first floor. I tried to identify all the languages being spoken, but lost count at about eight. A smelly collection of Germans with growlers of beer were camped on the staircase, and they parted grudgingly as we went up. It was evident, even in the half-light, that the stairs were coated with almost an inch of something extremely sticky that I didn’t want to investigate. It didn’t seem to bother the Germans.

The Santorelli flat was on the second floor in the back: the darkest spot in the whole building. When we knocked, a small, horribly thin woman with sunken eyes answered the door, speaking the Sicilian dialect. I knew only enough Italian for the opera, but Sara was better off—again because of her nursing days—and communicated quite easily. Mrs. Santorelli was not at all alarmed to see Sara (in fact she seemed to have been expecting her); but she expressed much concern over my presence, fearfully demanding to know if I was either a policeman or a journalist. Sara had to think fast, and said I was her assistant. Mrs. Santorelli looked puzzled at that, but finally let us in.

“Sara,” I said as we entered, “do you know this woman?”

“No,” she answered, “but she seems to know me. Strange.”

The flat was composed of two rooms without any real windows, just small slits that had recently been cut in the walls to comply with new tenement regulations concerning ventilation. The Santorellis had rented one of the rooms to another family of Sicilians, which meant that six of them—the parents and Giorgio’s four brothers and sisters—lived in a space about nine feet by sixteen. There was nothing hanging on the bare, soot-encrusted walls, and two big buckets in the corners took care of sanitation. The family also had a kerosene stove, of the inexpensive type that so often used to put an end to such buildings.

Lying on an old, stained mattress in one corner and wrapped in what blankets they had was the cause of Mrs. Santorelli’s great agitation: her husband. His face was cut, bruised, and swollen, and his forehead was drenched in sweat. There was a bloody rag lying next to him, and, incongruously, a bound wad of money, which must have amounted to several hundred dollars. Mrs. Santorelli took up the wad, shoved it at Sara, and then urged her at the husband, tears starting to stream down her face.

We soon discovered that Mrs. Santorelli believed Sara to be a nurse. She had dispatched her four children to find one only an hour earlier. Again thinking quickly, Sara sat and began to examine Santorelli, quickly discovering that one of his arms was fractured. In addition, most of his torso was covered in bruises.

“John,” Sara said firmly, “send Cyrus for bandages, disinfectant, and some morphine. Tell him we’ll want a good clean piece of wood to use as a splint, as well.”

In what seemed one movement I was out the door, through the Germans and the alleyway, and down the stoop to the curb. I shouted the order to Cyrus, who sped off in the calash, and as I went back through the men on the stoop one of them held a hand to my chest.

“Just a minute,” he said. “What’s all that for?”

“Mr. Santorelli,” I answered. “He’s badly hurt.”

The man spat hard at the street. “Damned cops. I hate those damned guineas, but I’ll tell you, I hate cops more!”

This recurring theme seemed once again to be the signal for me to proceed. Back upstairs, Sara had gotten hold of some hot water and was washing Santorelli’s wounds. The wife was still chattering, waving her hands and occasionally bursting into tears.

“There were six men, John,” Sara said to me, after listening for a few minutes.

“Six?” I echoed. “I thought you said two.”

Sara indicated the bed with a jerk of her head. “Come over here and help me—she’ll be suspicious, otherwise.” Sitting down, I found that it was difficult to say which smelled worse, the mattress or Santorelli. But none of it seemed to bother Sara. “Connor and Casey were definitely here,” she said. “Along with two other men and two priests.”

“Priests?” I said, taking up a hot compress. “What in hell—”

“One Catholic, apparently, and one not. She can’t be more specific about the second. The priests had the money. They told the Santorellis to use some of it to pay for a decent burial for Giorgio. The rest was a—consideration, apparently for silence. They told her not to allow anyone to exhume Giorgio’s body, even the police, and not to talk to anyone about the matter—especially any journalists.”

“Priests?”
I said again, wiping at one of Santorelli’s welts with no great enthusiasm. “What did they look like?”

Sara put the question, then translated the answer. “One short, with large white sideburns—that was the Catholic—and one thin with spectacles.”

“Why in the world would two priests have any interest in this?” I wondered. “And why would they want to keep the police out of it? You say Connor and Casey were here for that conversation?”

“Apparently.”

“So whatever’s going on, they’re involved. Well, Theodore will be happy to hear that. Two more vacancies in the Division of Detectives, I’ll wager. But who were the other two men?”

Again, Sara put the question to Mrs. Santorelli, who rattled off an answer that Sara didn’t seem to comprehend. She asked again, but got the same reply.

“I may not understand this dialect as well as I thought,” Sara said. “She says the other two
weren’t
policemen, but then she says that they
were
policemen. I don’t—”

Sara stopped and we all turned when a loud knock came at the door. Mrs. Santorelli shied away from it, and I was in no hurry to thrust myself into the breach; but Sara said, “Oh, go on, John, don’t be foolish. It’s probably Cyrus.”

I stepped to the door and opened it. Outside in the hall was one of the men from the stoop. He held up a package.

“Your medicines,” he said with a grin. “We don’t allow no coons in this building.”

“Ah,” I said, accepting the package. “I see. Thank you.”

Giving the goods to Sara, I sat back down on the bed. Santorelli was by this time semiconscious and Sara administered some of the morphine: she intended to set his arm, a trick she’d learned during her days with the visiting nurses. The break was not bad, she said, but it nonetheless made a somewhat nauseating cracking sound as she got it back into place. Between his grogginess and the drug, however, Santorelli didn’t seem to feel a thing, though his wife let out a nice little howl and some kind of a prayer. I began wiping disinfectant on the other wounds while Sara continued her conversation with Mrs. Santorelli.

“It seems,” Sara said at length, “that Santorelli got very indignant. Threw the money in the priests’ faces, and said he demanded that the police find the murderer of his son. At that point the priests left, and…”

“Yes,” I said.
“And.”
I was well aware of how Irish cops generally dealt with a lack of cooperation from the non-English-speaking population. A good example of the technique was lying next to me.

Sara shook her head. “It’s all so strange,” she sighed, starting to apply gauze to some of the worst cuts and bruises. “Santorelli nearly got himself killed—yet he hasn’t seen Giorgio for four years. The boy’s been living on the streets.”

Mrs. Santorelli’s trust had been inspired by Sara’s care for her husband, and once she began to tell us the story of her son Giorgio, it would have been difficult to stop her. Sara and I kept laboring over Santorelli’s wounds as though they were the primary center of our attention, but our thoughts were very much fixed on the peculiar story we heard.

Giorgio was a shy boy in his early years, but smart and determined enough to attend the public school on Hester Street and get good marks. Starting at about age seven, however, there was a problem with some other boys at school. The older ones were apparently able to persuade Giorgio to perform sexual acts, ones that Mrs. Santorelli didn’t much want to define. Sara pressed her on the issue, however, sensing that such information would be important, and we found that it involved sodomy of both the anal and oral varieties. The behavior was discovered and reported to the parents by a teacher. The Latin concept of masculinity being as broad and forgiving as it is, Giorgio’s father nearly lost his mind, and took to beating the boy at regular intervals. Mrs. Santorelli demonstrated for us how her husband would bind Giorgio by his wrists to the front door, then whip him across the backside with a wide belt, which she also showed us. It was a cruel implement, and in Santorelli’s hands it apparently inflicted such damage that Giorgio sometimes avoided school altogether, simply because he couldn’t sit down.