The Alienist (31 page)

Throughout our meal Kreizler encouraged Sara to at last fully explain what sort of a woman she thought might have played the kind of sinister role in our killer’s life that she’d postulated a week earlier. Jumping right in, Sara said she believed that only a mother could have had the kind of profound impact that was evident in this case. An abusive governess or female relative might be harrowing for a child, but if that child had recourse to his natural mother for protection and consolation the effect would have been dramatically reduced. It was apparent to Sara that the man we were after had never known such recourse, a circumstance that could be explained in a number of ways; but Sara’s preferred theory was that the woman had not wished to bear children in the first place. She’d only done so, Sara speculated, because she’d either become pregnant or had been offered no other socially acceptable role to play by the particular world in which she lived. The end result of all this was that the woman had deeply resented the children she did bear, and for this reason Sara thought there was an excellent chance that the killer was either an only child or had very few siblings: childbearing was not an experience that the mother would have wanted to repeat many times. Any physical deformity in one of the children she did have would, of course, have heightened the mother’s already negative feelings toward that child, but Sara did not believe that deformity alone was enough to explain such a relationship. Kreizler agreed with her on this point, saying that while Jesse Pomeroy attributed all his difficulties with his mother to his appearance, there were certainly additional and deeper factors involved as well.

One conclusion was becoming increasingly clear from all this: it was unlikely that we were dealing with people who enjoyed the advantages of wealth. In the first place, wealthy parents are seldom obliged to cope with their children if they find them troublesome or undesirable. Then, too, a young woman of means in the 1860s (the period during which, we suspected, our killer had been born) could have devoted her life to pursuits other than motherhood, though such a choice would admittedly have prompted more criticism and comment at that time than it would have some thirty years later. Of course, an accidental pregnancy could happen to anyone, rich or poor; but the extreme sexual and scatological fixations displayed by our killer had suggested to Sara close scrutiny and frequent humiliation, and these in turn spoke of a life lived at very close quarters—the kind of life that poverty breeds. Sara was delighted to hear that Dr. Meyer had voiced the same thoughts during his conversation with Kreizler earlier that day; and she was even more delighted when Kreizler offered a very decent salute to her efforts as we drank some final glasses of port.

This moment of relaxed satisfaction passed quickly, however. Kreizler produced his small notebook and reminded us that there were just five short days till the Feast of the Ascension, the next significant date on the Christian calendar. It was now time, he said, for our investigation to dispense with an attitude of pure research and analysis and move toward a posture of engagement. We had gained a good general idea of what our killer looked like, as well as how, where, and when he would strike. We were ready at last to try to anticipate and prevent that next move. I felt a sudden flood of anxiety in the pit of my very full stomach at that statement, and Sara looked to be experiencing much the same sort of reaction. But we both knew that this development was inevitable; was, indeed, what we’d been actively working toward since the beginning. And so we stiffened our resolve as we left the restaurant and gave no voice to any sort of apprehension.

Once outside I felt a very meaningful tug on my arm from Sara. I turned to find her looking away from me, but in a way that clearly indicated that she wanted to talk. When Kreizler offered to share a hansom with her as far as Gramercy Park she declined, and as soon as he was gone she ushered me into Madison Square Park and under a gas lamp.

“Well?” I said, noticing that her aspect had become somewhat agitated. “This had better be important, Sara. It’s been a hell of an evening, and I’m—”

“It
is
important,” Sara answered quickly, producing a folded sheet of paper from her bag. “That is, I
think
it is.” Her brows came together and she seemed to be weighing something carefully before showing me the paper. “John, how much do you actually know about Dr. Kreizler’s past? His family, I mean.”

I was surprised by the topic. “His family? As much as anyone, I suppose. I visited them quite a bit when I was a boy.”

“Were they—were they, well, happy?”

I shrugged. “Always seemed to be. With good reason, too. His parents were about the most socially sought-after couple in town. You wouldn’t know it to see them now, of course. Laszlo’s father had a stroke a couple of years ago, and they stay pretty shut up. They have a house on Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue.”

“Yes,” Sara said quickly, surprising me again. “I know.”

“Well,” I went on, “back then they were always throwing big parties and introducing luminaries from all over Europe into New York society. It was quite a scene—we all loved going there. But why do you ask, Sara? What’s this all about?”

She paused, sighed, and then held the piece of paper out to me. “I’ve been trying all week to understand why he was sticking so stubbornly to the idea that a violent father and a passive mother raised our killer. I developed a theory, and went through the records of the Fifteenth Precinct to test it. This is what I found.”

The document was a report filed by one Roundsman O’Bannion, who, on a September night in 1862—when Laszlo was a boy of only six—had investigated a domestic disturbance at the Kreizler home. The yellowing report contained just a few details: it spoke of Laszlo’s father, apparently drunk, spending the night in the precinct house under a charge of assault (the charge was later dropped), and then of a local surgeon being brought to the Kreizler home to treat a young boy whose left arm had been badly shattered.

Conclusions weren’t hard to draw; given my lifelong acquaintance with Laszlo, however, as well as the image I’d always had of his family, my mind resisted them. “But,” I said, refolding the document absentmindedly, “but we were told that he fell…”

Sara let out a deep breath. “Apparently not.”

During a long pause I looked around at the park, somewhat stunned. Familiar conceptions die hard, and their passage can be damned disorienting; for a few moments the trees and buildings of Madison Square looked strangely different. Then an image of Laszlo as a boy suddenly flashed through my head, followed by another of his big, outwardly gregarious father and his vivacious mother. As I saw these faces and forms I simultaneously remembered the comment that Jesse Pomeroy had made during our visit to Sing Sing about chopping off people’s arms; and from there my mind leapt to a seemingly meaningless remark that Laszlo himself had made on the train ride home:

“‘The fallacy, damn it all,’” I whispered.

“What did you say, John?” Sara asked quietly.

I shook my head hard, trying to clear it. “Something Kreizler mentioned tonight. About how much time he’s wasted in the last few days. He spoke of ‘the fallacy,’ but I didn’t get the reference. Now, though…”

Sara gasped a little as she, too, realized the answer. “The psychologist’s fallacy,” she said. “In James’s
Principles.
”

I nodded. “The business about a psychologist getting his own point of view mixed up with his subject’s. That’s what’s had him in its grip.” A few more silent moments passed, and then I looked down at the report, feeling a sudden sense of practical urgency that made me put off the nearly impossible task of absorbing the full implications of the document. “Sara,” I said. “Have you discussed this with anyone else?” She shook her head slowly. “And do they know at headquarters that you took the report?” Another shake of the head. “But you’ve realized what it suggests?” She nodded this time and I reciprocated; then, slowly and deliberately, I tore the report into pieces, and set them on a patch of grass.

Pulling a box of matches from my pocket and striking one, I started to light the bits of paper, saying firmly, “No one is to know anything about this. Your own curiosity’s been satisfied, and if his behavior becomes erratic again, we’ll know why. But beyond that, no good can ever come of its getting out. Do you agree?”

Sara crouched by me and nodded once more. “I’d already decided the same thing.”

We watched the burning pieces of paper turn into flakes of smoking ash, both of us silently hoping that this would be the last we’d ever need to speak of the matter, that Laszlo’s behavior would never again warrant investigation into his past. But as it turned out, the unhappy tale so sketchily referred to in the now-incinerated report did surface again at a later point in our investigation, to cause a very real—indeed an almost fatal—crisis.

CHAPTER 25

T
he idea of placing New York’s chief boy-pandering venues under careful scrutiny on those days when we thought our killer might strike originated with Lucius Isaacson. There was no denying that it would be a delicate piece of work. Every one of those bars and brothels could expect to lose a significant number of patrons if it became known that they were being watched. Cooperation from the proprietors was therefore highly unlikely: we’d have to position ourselves so as to elude both their notice and our killer’s. Lucius readily admitted that he didn’t have enough experience with such operations to chart a prudent course, so we summoned the one member of our band who we thought could provide expert advice: Stevie Taggert. Stevie had spent a good part of his criminal career robbing houses and flats, and the ways of surreptitious surveillance were known to him. I think the young man suspected he was in some kind of trouble when he walked into our headquarters that Saturday afternoon and found the rest of us seated in a semicircle and staring at him eagerly. And since Kreizler had often told Stevie that he should try to forget his criminal ways, it was doubly difficult to convince the suspicious boy to talk about such things. Once satisfied that we really did need his help, however, Stevie pursued the conversation with what seemed real enjoyment.

We had originally thought to place one member of our team outside each of the houses most likely to be visited: Paresis Hall, the Golden Rule, Shang Draper’s in the Tenderloin, the Slide on Bleecker Street, and Frank Stephenson’s Black and Tan, also on Bleecker, a dive that offered white women and children to black and Oriental men. But this plan, Stevie assured us as he chewed noisily on a thick piece of licorice, was badly flawed. First of all, we knew that the killer was traveling via rooftops: we would be more assured of success, and less likely to raise suspicions, if we attempted to intercept him on one of those high arenas. Furthermore, even discounting the quite physical opposition that we might run into from the house managers in the course of our efforts, there was the fact that the man we were hoping to catch was large and powerful: he could easily turn the tables and get the drop on
us,
given his familiarity with rooftop navigation. Stevie recommended placing two operatives at each site, which meant that we would not only have to enlist three more participants (Cyrus, Roosevelt, and Stevie himself eventually filled out the list) but also eliminate one location. According to Stevie, this last problem was easily solved; he found it extremely unlikely that our killer would venture into the Tenderloin, a noisy, crowded, brightly lit area that offered too many chances of being seen or apprehended. Nonchalantly taking a cigarette from a box on my desk and lighting it, Stevie said that we could therefore dispense with Shang Draper’s; and as he blew little rings of smoke, he went on to recommend that we gain access to the various rooftops involved by entering adjacent buildings under false pretenses. This would help to ensure that things seemed thoroughly natural to the killer when and if he showed up. Kreizler nodded in agreement, then plucked Stevie’s cigarette out of his mouth and crushed it on the floor. Disappointed, the boy went back to his licorice.

When to begin and end our surveillance was the next issue addressed. Would the murderer visit the chosen disorderly house on the eve of Ascension Day, and actually kill his victim during the small hours of the feast itself, or would he wait until the next night? His pattern suggested the latter, probably because, Kreizler explained, the anger which he felt (for whatever range of reasons) mounted throughout the daytime hours on the holidays selected, perhaps as he observed people going to and coming from holiday church services. Whatever the specific trigger, nightfall brought an unstoppable explosion. None of us could argue this reasoning; and so it was decided that we would position ourselves on Thursday night.

With the plan complete I grabbed my jacket and headed for the door. Marcus inquired as to my destination and I told him I was going down to the Golden Rule to see the boy Joseph and provide him with details of the killer’s appearance and method.

“Is that wise?” Lucius asked in a worried tone, as he stacked some papers on his desk. “We’re only five days away from putting this plan in motion, John. We don’t want to do anything that would complicate matters by changing the normal routines of those places.”

Sara looked puzzled. “Surely there’s nothing wrong with giving the boys every chance to avoid danger.”

“Of course,” Lucius answered quickly, “I’m not suggesting we put anybody in any more danger than we can avoid. It’s just that—well, we’ve got to set this trap carefully.”

“As always, the detective sergeant has a point,” Kreizler said, taking my arm and walking to the door with me. “Be careful how much you tell your young friend, Moore.”

“All I’m asking,” Lucius went on, “is that we not reveal the probable date of the next attack. We’re not even sure that that’s when it’s going to happen—but if it does, and if the boys have been alerted, the killer will almost certainly sense something. You can tell him anything else you feel is necessary.”

“A reasonable arrangement,” Kreizler decided, with a wave toward Lucius. Then, as I entered the elevator, Laszlo lowered his voice: “And remember, John, there’s a very good chance that, while you may be helping the boy by warning him, you may also put him at great risk if you’re seen in his company. Avoid it if you can.”

After walking to the Golden Rule I arranged to meet Joseph in a small billiard parlor around the corner. When he arrived I noticed that his face was quite rosy after being scrubbed free of the usual paint, a fact that touched me. I remembered that our first interaction had involved a similar cleaning of Joseph’s face; and I was struck by the thought that he hadn’t wanted me to see him all made up this time, either. Indeed, his entire manner did not seem that of a boy-whore, when he was dealing with me, but rather that of a young man who desperately needed an older male friend; or was
I
now suffering from Professor James’s famous fallacy, and allowing the way in which Joseph reminded me of my brother to influence my reading of the boy’s behavior?

Joseph ordered himself a short beer in a manner that suggested he’d done so many times before (and which ruled out my presuming to lecture him about the perils of alcohol). As we started to knock some ivory balls around a table casually, I told Joseph I had some new information about the man who’d killed Ali ibn-Ghazi, and I asked him to pay very close attention, so that he’d be able to pass the news on to his friends. Then I launched into a physical description:

The man was tall, I said, about six-foot-two, and very strong. He was capable of lifting a boy like Joseph, or someone even larger, without difficulty. Yet despite his size and strength, there was something wrong with him, something that he was very sensitive about. It was probably some part of his face; maybe his eyes. They might be injured, scarred, deformed in some way. Whatever the problem, he didn’t like it when people mentioned it or looked at it. Joseph said that he’d never noticed such a man, but that a lot of the Golden Rule’s customers hid their faces when they came in. I told him to watch for it in future, and went on to the subject of what the man might wear. Nothing fancy, I said, because he didn’t want to attract attention to himself. Also, he probably didn’t have much money, which meant that he couldn’t afford expensive clothes. It was likely, as Marcus had told Joseph during our last visit, that he would be carrying a large bag; inside that bag were tools he used to climb up and down walls, in order to reach the rooms of the boys he was after without being detected.

Then came the hard part: I told Joseph that the man was especially careful about not being seen because he’d been in all the houses like the Golden Rule before and might be very easy for some (maybe most) of the boys to identify. He might even be someone they knew and trusted, someone who’d helped them out, who’d tried to show them how to make new lives for themselves. A settlement or charity worker, perhaps—maybe even a priest. The main thing was that he didn’t look or sound like someone who could do the things he’d been doing.

Joseph kept track of all these details by ticking them off on his fingers, and when I’d finished he nodded and said, “Okay, okay, I’ve got it. But do you mind if I ask you something, Mr. Moore?”

“Fire away,” I answered.

“Well, then—how is it you know all these things about the guy, anyway?”

“Sometimes,” I said with a small laugh, “I’m a little confused about that, myself. Why?”

Joseph smiled, but also began to kick his legs nervously. “It’s only because—well, a lot of my friends, they didn’t believe me when I told them what you said last time. They didn’t see how anybody could know. Thought maybe I was making it up. And then, a lot of people are going around saying it isn’t even a person that’s doing it. Some kind of—ghost, or something. That’s what some people say.”

“Yes. I’ve heard. But you’ll be doing yourself a favor if you ignore that kind of talk. There’s a man behind it, all right. I can guarantee that, Joseph.” I rubbed my hands together. “Now, then—how about a game?”

Over the years I’ve heard people say that the game of billiards (three-cushion, pocket, or what have you) is nothing more or less than a fast way for a young man to go to the devil. But the way I saw it, a career as a professional gambler—that nightmare of so many mothers and fathers in this city—would’ve been nothing but a step up for this boy; and so for the next hour or so I taught him most of the tricks of the table that I knew: it was a pleasant time, jarred only by the occasional recollection of where Joseph would be heading when we parted company. There was nothing, however, for me to do about that: such boys were their own men.

It was nearly dark by the time I got back to our headquarters, which was still alive with activity. Sara was on the telephone with Roosevelt, attempting to explain that there was no one else we could trust to fill the eighth surveillance spot on Thursday night and that he would therefore have to come along. Normally, Theodore would have required no urging; but recently his troubles at Mulberry Street had multiplied. Two of the men who sat on the Board of Commissioners with him, along with the chief of police, had decided to side with Boss Platt and the antireform forces. Roosevelt was being scrutinized more closely than ever by his enemies, in the hope that he would commit some indiscretion that would justify his dismissal. He did agree to be part of the surveillance effort, ultimately; but he had real misgivings.

Kreizler and the Isaacsons, meanwhile, were engaged in another spirited discussion of our killer’s timing. Lucius had postulated that the one inconsistency in the man’s schedule—the killing of Giorgio Santorelli on March 3rd—could be accounted for by the deceptively mundane phrase “I decided to wait” in the note to Mrs. Santorelli. It was distinctly possible, the younger Isaacson elaborated, that the sighting and selection of a victim were as crucial in their own way to the murderer’s psychic satisfaction as the act of killing itself. Kreizler quite approved of this theory, and added that so long as the man experienced no interference with his intended goal—to murder the boy—he might even derive sadistic pleasure from the delay. This meant that the Santorelli killing could be made to fit the overall timing pattern, because the critical mental event had occurred on Ash Wednesday.

Laszlo and the Isaacsons parted company, however, over the question of whether the man struck on some holidays but not others because he was only angered by certain religious stories and events. Kreizler didn’t like this idea, because it got back to the notion of a religious maniac, a man obsessively, dementedly absorbed in the arcana of the Christian faith. Laszlo was still willing to consider the possibility that the man was (or at some point in his life had been) a priest; but he could not see any reason why, say, the tale of the Three Wise Men should not offer sufficient cause to kill, whereas the purification of the Virgin Mary apparently did. Marcus and Lucius protested that there had to be
some
reason why only certain holidays were selected, and Kreizler did agree; but he said that we simply hadn’t found the contextual key to that particular part of the puzzle yet.

There being no guarantee that our Ascension Day surveillance plan would produce any results, we all pursued alternate lines of inquiry during the days leading up to it. Marcus and I kept diligently after our priest theory, while Kreizler, Lucius, and Sara engaged in a new and promising activity: canvassing asylums throughout our own and various other parts of the country, by cable and in person, to see if any of them had treated a patient who matched our emerging portrait within the last fifteen years. Despite his firm conviction that our killer was sane, Kreizler hoped that the man’s idiosyncrasies had caused his commitment at some earlier point in his life. Perhaps when his secret taste for blood had first emerged he had committed some indiscretion that the average person (not to mention the average asylum superintendent) would have assumed was a symptom of some form of insanity. Whatever the exact circumstances, asylums kept fairly extensive records as a rule, and checking them seemed a prudent investment of time and energy.

On Ascension Eve we apportioned our responsibilities for the next night: Marcus and Sara, the latter carrying both her firearms, would take up watch on the roof of the Golden Rule; Kreizler and Roosevelt would man Paresis Hall, where Theodore’s authority would be sufficient to keep Biff Ellison in line if there was trouble; Lucius and Cyrus would cover the Black and Tan, Cyrus’s color offering a convenient explanation for their presence should such prove necessary; and Stevie and I would be just down Bleecker Street, atop the Slide. Positioned outside each of these houses would be several street arabs of Stevie’s acquaintance, who, without being told any details of the operation, could be dispatched to bring assistance from the other locations in the event something did happen at any one of them. Roosevelt thought that this task might be better served by policemen, but Kreizler vehemently opposed such an idea. Privately, Laszlo told me he suspected that any contact between officers of the law and the killer would result in the latter’s quick death, Theodore’s prohibitive orders notwithstanding. We had now experienced enough mysterious interference to know that there were forces far more powerful than Roosevelt at work, and those forces unquestionably had as their goal the complete suppression of the case. It was obvious that such a result could best be achieved through a quick dispatch of the apprehended suspect, which would circumvent the need for a trial with all its attendant publicity. Kreizler was determined to prevent this outcome, not only because it would be grievously criminal, but because it would eliminate any possibility of the killer’s being examined to learn his motives as well.