The Alienist (35 page)

After trotting quickly downstairs, we passed back through the hall that contained the large canoe, then asked a guard for directions. He indicated another exhibition room, the door of which was locked. Kreizler rapped on it a few times, but there was no response. We could hear banging and voices within, and then a series of wild, rather chilling whoops and cries such as one might indeed have heard on the western frontier.

“Good God,” I said, “they’re not going to put live Indians on display, are they?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Moore.” Kreizler pounded on the door again, and finally it opened.

Facing us was a curly-haired young man of about twenty-five with a small mustache, a cherub’s face, and dancing blue eyes. He wore a vest and tie, and a very professional pipe was sticking out of his mouth; but on his head was an enormous and rather frightening war bonnet, composed of what I assumed were eagle’s feathers.

“Yes?” the young man said, with a very engaging grin. “Can I help you?”

“Dr. Wissler?” Kreizler said.

“Clark Wissler, that’s right.” The man suddenly realized he was wearing the war bonnet. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” he said, removing it. “We’re installing an exhibit, and I’m particularly concerned about this piece. You’re—”

“My name is Laszlo Kreizler, and this is—”

“
Doctor
Kreizler?” Wissler said hopefully, opening the door further.

“That’s right. And this—”

“This is a real pleasure, is what this is!” Wissler held out his hand and shook Kreizler’s energetically. “An honor! I believe I’ve read everything you’ve written, Doctor—although you really ought to write more. Psychology needs more work like yours!”

As we entered the large room, which was in near-total disarray, Wissler went on in this vein, pausing only briefly to shake my hand. It seemed that he, too, had originally trained in psychology before moving on to anthropology; and even in his current work, he focused on the psychological aspects of different cultures’ value systems, as expressed through their mythologies, artwork, social structures, and the like. This was a fortunate circumstance, for after we drew away from a group of workmen and into a deserted corner of the large room to tell Wissler in confidence of our work, he expressed even stronger concern than had Boas about the potential effects of tying such abominable acts as our killer’s to any Indian culture. When Kreizler gave him the same assurances he’d given Boas, however, Wissler’s unbridled admiration for Laszlo allowed trust to flourish. The fellow reacted to our thorough description of the mutilations involved in the murders with quick and penetrating analysis, of a kind I’ve rarely heard from one so young.

“Yes, I can see why you’ve come to us,” he said. Still carrying the war bonnet, he looked around for a place to lay it, but saw only construction rubble. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but—” He slipped the bonnet back on his head. “I really must keep this clean until the display is ready. So—the mutilations you’re describing, or at least some of them, do bear a resemblance to acts that have been committed on the bodies of dead enemies by various tribes on the Great Plains—most notably the Dakota, or Sioux. There are important differences, however.”

“And we shall get to those,” Kreizler said. “But what of the similarities—why are such things done? And are they done only to dead bodies?”

“Generally,” Wissler answered. “Despite what you may have read, the Sioux don’t show a marked propensity for torture. There are some mutilation rituals, certainly, that involve the living—a man who can prove that his wife has been unfaithful, for example, can cut her nose off to mark her as an adulteress—but such behavior is very strictly regulated. No, most of the terrible things you’ll come across happen to enemies of the tribe who are already dead.”

“And why to them?”

Wissler relit his pipe, being careful to keep the match away from the eagle’s feathers. “The Sioux have a very complex set of myths concerning death and the spirit world. We’re still collecting data and examples and trying to comprehend the entire fabric of their beliefs. But basically, each man’s
nagi,
or spirit, is gravely affected not only by the way in which the man dies, but by what happens to his body immediately after death. You see, the
nagi,
before embarking on its long journey to the spirit land, lingers near the body, for a time—preparing for the trip, as it were. The
nagi
is allowed to take whatever useful implements the man possessed in life, in order to help him on the journey, and to enrich his afterlife. But the
nagi
also assumes whatever form the body was in at the time of death. Now, if a warrior killed an enemy he admired, he wouldn’t necessarily mutilate his body, because, according to another part of the myth, that dead enemy must serve the warrior in the spirit land—and who wants a mutilated servant? But if the warrior truly hated his enemy, and didn’t want him to enjoy all the pleasures of the spirit land, then he might do some of the things you’re talking about. Castration, for instance—because male spirits can copulate with female spirits in the Sioux vision of the afterlife without the female spirits becoming pregnant. Cutting off the dead man’s genitals, obviously, means he won’t be able to take advantage of that very appealing aspect of the spirit land. There are also games and contests of strength—a
nagi
without a hand, or without a vital organ, can’t expect to do well in them. We’ve seen many examples of mutilations like that on battlefields.”

“And what about the eyes?” I asked. “The same thinking, in that area?”

“The eyes are somewhat different. You see, the
nagi
’s journey to the spirit world involves a very perilous test: he must cross a great mythical river on a very narrow log. If the
nagi
is afraid of this test, or fails it, he must return to our world and wander forever as a lost and forlorn ghost. Of course, a spirit who can’t see stands no chance of making the great trip, and his fate is preordained. The Sioux don’t take this lightly. There are few things they fear more than being lost in this world in the afterlife.”

Kreizler was recording all this in his little notebook, and began to nod as he got this last concept down. “And the differences between the Sioux mutilations and what we’ve described?”

“Well…” Wissler smoked and puzzled. “There are some larger issues, as well as some details, that set the examples you’re giving me apart from Sioux customs. Most importantly, there’s the injury to the buttocks, and the claim to cannibalism. The Sioux, like most Indian tribes, are horrified by cannibalism—it’s one of the things they disdain most about whites.”

“Whites?” I said. “But we’re not—well, let’s be fair, we’re not cannibals.”

“Not usually,” Wissler answered. “But there have been a few notable exceptions that the Indians know about. Remember the Donner party of settlers, in 1847? They got trapped for months without food in a snowbound mountain pass—and some of them ate each other. Made for good stories among the western tribes.”

“But”—I felt the need to protest further—“well, hang it, you can’t base your judgment of an entire culture on what a few people do.”

“Of course you can, Moore,” Kreizler said. “Remember the principle we’ve established for our killer: because of his past experience, his early encounters with a relatively small number of people, he has grown to view the entire world in a distinctive fashion. We may call it a mistaken fashion, but, given his past, he cannot do otherwise. It’s the same principle here.”

“The western tribes haven’t had contact with a very flattering cross section of white society, Mr. Moore,” Wissler agreed. “And then there are miscommunications that back up those original impressions. When the Sioux leader Sitting Bull was dining with some white men several years back, for example, he was served pork—which he, never having seen such meat, but having heard the story of the Donner party, immediately assumed was white human flesh. That’s the unfortunate way in which cultures get to know each other, generally.”

“What of the other differences?” Kreizler asked.

“Well, there’s the stuffing of the genitals into the mouth—that’s gratuitous, in a way that wouldn’t make sense to the Sioux. You’ve emasculated the man’s spirit already. Stuffing the genitals into his mouth isn’t going to serve any practical purpose. But most of all, there’s the fact that these victims are children. Kids.”

“Now, wait a minute,” I said. “Indian tribes have massacred children, we know that.”

“True,” Wissler agreed. “But they wouldn’t commit this kind of ritual mutilation against them. At least, no self-respecting Sioux would. These mutilations are carried out against enemies that they want to make sure never find the spirit land, or can’t enjoy it when they get there. To do this to a child—well, it would be admitting that you considered the child a threat. An equal. It’d be cowardly, and the Sioux are very touchy about cowardice.”

“Let me ask you this, Dr. Wissler,” Kreizler said, having glanced over his notes. “Would the behavior we’ve described to you be consistent with someone who had witnessed Indian mutilations but was too ignorant of their cultural meaning to interpret them as anything more than savagery? And who, in imitating them, might think that
more
savagery will make his actions look
more
like an Indian’s?”

Wissler weighed the idea and nodded, knocking burnt tobacco from his pipe. “Yes. Yes, that’d be about how I’d see it, Dr. Kreizler.”

And then Laszlo got that look in his eyes, the one that said we had to get out, get into a cab, and get back to our headquarters. He pled pressing business to Wissler, who very much wanted to talk further, and promised to return for another visit soon. Then he bolted for the door, leaving me to apologize more fully for the abrupt departure—which, not surprisingly, Wissler didn’t seem to mind at all. Scientists’ minds may jump around like amorous toads, but they do seem to accept such behavior in one another.

By the time I caught up to Kreizler on the street, he’d already flagged down a hansom and gotten into it. Thinking there was a good chance he’d leave me behind if I didn’t hurry, I dashed to the curb and leapt in, closing the doors on our legs.

“Number 808 Broadway, driver!” Laszlo shouted, and then he began to wave his fist. “Do you see, Moore? Do you see? He’s been out there, our man, he’s witnessed it! He defines such behavior as horrible and dirty—‘dirty as a Red Indian’—yet he also considers himself full of filth. He combats those feelings with anger and violence—but when he kills, he only sinks further down, down to a level he despises even more, down to the lowest, most animal behavior he can imagine—modeled on that of Indians, but, in his mind, even more Indian
than
an Indian.”

“He’s been on the frontier, then,” was what it all meant to me.

“He
must
have been,” Laszlo answered. “Either as a child or as a soldier—hopefully we can clear that up through our Washington inquiries. I tell you, John, we may have blundered last night, but today we’re closer!”

CHAPTER 29

C
loser we may have been, but we were not, sadly, as close as Laszlo hoped. Sara and Lucius, we learned on returning to our headquarters, had been unable to get anywhere with the War Department, despite Theodore’s contacts. All information relating to soldiers hospitalized or dismissed from service for reasons of mental distress was confidential and could not be discussed by telephone. A trip to Washington now loomed as doubly important; indeed, all clues seemed, for the moment, to be leading us away from New York, for if our killer had, in fact, either grown up on the western frontier or served in one of the military units that patrolled that region, then someone would have to head out there to see whether or not an evidential trail of any kind existed.

We spent the remainder of the morning researching possible points, both in time and on the map, at which we might begin to look for such a trail. Eventually we came up with two overall areas: Either the killer had, as a child, witnessed the brutal campaigns against the Sioux that had led up to and followed General Custer’s death at the Little Big Horn in 1876, or he had participated as a soldier in the brutal repression of dissatisfied Sioux tribesmen that had culminated in the battle of Wounded Knee Creek in 1890. Either way, Kreizler was anxious to have someone make the trip out west immediately: for, as he told us, he now suspected that the murder of the Zweig children had not been the killer’s first taste of blood. And if the man had in fact committed murder in the West—either prior to or during his military service—there would have to be some record of the case somewhere. True, such a crime would almost certainly have remained unsolved in the years since its commission; quite probably, it would have been written off as the work of marauding Indians. But there would still be documents relating to it, either in Washington or in some western administrative office. And even if no such killing had taken place, we would nonetheless need to have operatives out there ready to follow whatever leads were uncovered in the capital. Only by visiting the actual localities involved could we discover exactly what had happened to our man, and thus be able to predict his future moves accurately.

Kreizler planned to make the trip to Washington himself; and when I told him that I still knew a good number of journalists and government workers in that city—including one especially good contact at the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs—he deemed it advisable for me to come along. That left Sara and the Isaacsons, all of whom were eager to make the western trip. Someone, however, had to remain in New York to coordinate our various efforts. After much discussion, it was decided that Sara was the logical choice for this job, since she was still making—and was expected to make—occasional appearances at Police Headquarters on Mulberry Street. Though bitterly disappointed about missing the western journey, Sara had a firm grasp of the overall picture and accepted her assignment with as much grace as possible.

Roosevelt, meanwhile, was the obvious person to put the Isaacsons in touch with guides in the western states, and when we telephoned him about the project he became wildly enthusiastic, threatening to accompany the two detectives himself. We pointed out, however, that the press followed him wherever he went, and especially when he went out west. Tales of his hunting trips and photographs of him wearing his fringed buckskin suit were guaranteed to sell copies of whatever papers and magazines they appeared in, and questions concerning whom he was traveling with and why would naturally be asked. We couldn’t afford that kind of publicity. Besides, with the power struggle on Mulberry Street about to enter a new and perhaps decisive phase, the Police Department’s main exponent of reform could hardly up and disappear into the wilderness.

The Isaacsons would go on their own, then; and we reasoned that if they left immediately, they could be in place by the time Laszlo and I dug up any useful information to wire them from Washington. It was with some shock, therefore, that Marcus arrived at Number 808 Broadway after developing his eyeball photographs (which turned out to be a resounding failure, Monsieur Jules Verne notwithstanding) and learned that he would be leaving the next morning for Deadwood, South Dakota. From there he and his brother would proceed south to the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation and Agency, where they would begin to investigate any and all mutilative murders from the last ten to fifteen years that had not been solved. Meanwhile, I would use my contact at the Bureau of Indian Affairs to pursue the same line of research in Washington. Kreizler, for his part, would press the War Department and St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for information concerning western soldiers dismissed for reasons of mental instability, while doing further research on the individual that St. Elizabeth’s had written to us about.

By the time we’d finished hammering all this out it was late afternoon, and the weight of a sleepless night was beginning to bear down on all of us quite heavily. In addition, there were domestic arrangements to make, and of course all our packing needed to be done. We decided to cut our day somewhat short. Goodbyes were said all around, but exhaustion obscured the true importance of the moment—indeed, I don’t think either of the Isaacsons really comprehended the fact that they were going to get up the following morning and take a train halfway across the continent. Not that Kreizler and I were in much better shape: as Sara left, she announced that she intended to pick us both up the next day in a cab and take us to the station, the near-dead look on each of our faces having caused her to doubt that we could be relied on to rise at all, much less catch a train.

Just as Kreizler and I were walking out the door of Number 808, Stevie appeared, his own strength reconstituted by several hours’ sleep. Reminding us that Cyrus had been alone in a hospital room all day, Stevie said that he’d brought the calash and was prepared to drive us to St. Vincent’s Hospital to pay our wounded comrade a visit. Weary though we were, neither Laszlo nor I could refuse; and, remembering the appalling quality of food in the average New York hospital, we decided to call Charlie Delmonico and have him order his staff to prepare a really first-rate meal that we could transport to St. Vincent’s.

We found Cyrus heavily bandaged and nearly asleep at about six-thirty. He was delighted with the meal, and complained about nothing, even the fact that the nurses in the hospital objected to caring for a black man. Kreizler lit into a couple of hospital administrators about that, but otherwise we passed a very pleasant hour in Cyrus’s room, the window of which offered an excellent view of Seventh Avenue, Jackson Square, and the sunset beyond.

It was nearly dark when we stepped back out onto Tenth Street. I told Stevie that we’d mind the calash for a few minutes so that he could go up and say hello to Cyrus, at which the boy eagerly ran into the hospital. Kreizler and I were about to deposit our creaking bones in the soft leather upholstery of the carriage when an ambulance clattered up at considerable speed and came to a halt next to us. Had I been less exhausted I might have noticed that the ambulance driver’s face was not altogether strange to me; as it was, I focused the little attention I could muster on the vehicle’s doors, which burst open and spewed forth a second man. I recognized this individual—who looked like anything but a hospital attendant—with an immediate, throbbing pulse of dread.

“What in hell?” I mumbled, as the man stared at me and grinned.

“Connor!” Laszlo said in shock.

The former detective sergeant’s toothy gash widened, and then he took a few threatening steps forward. “So you remember me, then? All the better.” From under his somewhat ragged jacket he produced a revolver. “Get in the ambulance. Both of you.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Laszlo answered sharply, despite the gun.

I tried to take a different tack, having a far better idea than did Kreizler of whom we were dealing with: “Connor, put the gun away. This is crazy, you can’t just—”

“Crazy, is it?” the man replied angrily. “Hardly. I’m just doing my new job. I lost my old one, you might remember. Anyway, I’ve been told to fetch you two—though I’d just as soon leave you dead on the sidewalk. So
move.
”

Odd how fear can cure exhaustion. I was suddenly aware of a new burst of energy, all of it directed at my feet. But flight was out of the question—Connor was quite serious, I knew, about his willingness to shoot us. So I pulled Kreizler, who struggled and objected all the way, to the rear of the ambulance. As we got in I looked up just long enough to see that the driver of the vehicle was one of the men who’d tried to waylay Sara and me at the Santorellis’ flat. Loose ends were beginning to come together.

Connor locked the ambulance door from the outside, then climbed up top with the other man. We careened off at the same hell-bent speed that’d marked their arrival, although it was impossible to tell through the small caged windows in the vehicle’s rear door exactly where we were heading.

“Feels like uptown,” I said, as we were jostled around the dark compartment.

“Kidnapped?”
Kreizler said, maintaining that irritatingly detached tone that he assumed at times of danger. “Is this someone’s very bizarre idea of humor?”

“It’s no joke,” I said, trying the door but finding it quite solid. “Most cops are only about three steps away from being criminals, anyway. I’d say Connor’s taken those steps.”

Laszlo was utterly astounded. “One doesn’t really know what to say in such a situation. Do you have any particularly gruesome confessions you’d like to make, Moore? I’m not a cleric, of course, but—”

“Kreizler, did you hear what I just said? This is not a joke!” Just then, we whipped around a corner and were thrown with a crash to one side of the ambulance.

“Hmmm,” Kreizler noised, pulling himself up and checking for damage. “I begin to see your point.”

In another fifteen minutes our wild ride finally came to an end. Whatever neighborhood we were in was very quiet, the stillness broken only by the grunts and curses of our drivers. Connor finally opened the door again, and we spilled out onto what I recognized to be Madison Avenue, in the Murray Hill district. A nearby lamppost bore a marker that read “36th Street,” and in front of us stood a very large but tasteful brownstone with two columns on each side of its front door and large bay windows bulging out toward the street.

Kreizler and I looked at each other, instant recognition in our faces. “Well, well,” Kreizler said, intrigued and perhaps even a little awed.

I, on the other hand, was nearly flattened. “What in hell?” I whispered. “Why would—”

“Move,” Connor said, indicating the front door but staying by the ambulance.

Kreizler glanced at me again, shrugged, and began to climb the front steps. “I suggest we enter, Moore. He’s not a man accustomed to waiting.”

A very English butler admitted us to Number 219 Madison Avenue, the interior of which reflected the same rare combination—extreme wealth and very fine taste—that marked the outside of the brownstone. Marble flooring met our feet, and a simple yet spacious white stairway wound away into the house’s upper floors. Our destination, however, lay directly ahead. We passed splendid European paintings, sculpture, and ceramics—all elegantly and simply displayed, with none of that piling-on effect that families like the Vanderbilts were so appallingly entranced by—and kept moving toward the back of the house. There the butler opened a paneled door that led into a cavernous room that was dimly lit. Laszlo and I stepped inside.

The high walls of the room were paneled with Santo Domingo mahogany that was nearly black; indeed, the room was known, to the staff of the house as well as in New York legend, as “the Black Library.” Luxurious carpets covered the floor, and a large fireplace was set into one wall. More European canvases, framed in rich, ornate gold, hung from the walls, and tall bookshelves were crammed with splendid leather-bound rarities gathered during dozens of trips across the Atlantic. Some of the most important meetings in the history of New York—indeed, of the United States—had taken place in this room; and while that fact might have caused Kreizler and me to wonder all the more what we were doing there, the collection of faces that stared at us on our entrance soon made matters clearer.

Sitting on a settee on one side of the fireplace was Bishop Henry Potter, and in a matching piece of furniture on the fireplace’s other flank was Archbishop Michael Corrigan. Behind each man stood a priest: Potter’s man tall and thin, with spectacles, and Corrigan’s short, rotund, and sporting large white sideburns. Before the fireplace stood a man I recognized as Anthony Comstock, the notorious censor of the U.S. Post Office. Comstock had spent twenty years using his congressionally mandated (and constitutionally quite questionable) powers to persecute zealously anyone who dealt in contraceptive devices, pregnancy abortions, ribald literature and photographs, and anything else that met his rather expansive definition of “obscene.” Comstock’s was a hard, mean face, not surprisingly; yet it wasn’t as disconcerting as that of the man who stood next to him. Ex-Inspector Thomas Byrnes had a pair of high, bushy eyebrows that arched over penetrating, all-encompassing eyes; yet at the same time, his enormous, drooping mustache made an accurate reading of his mood and thoughts disturbingly difficult. As we came further into the chamber Byrnes turned to us, and the eyebrows arched enigmatically; then he tilted his head toward an enormous walnut desk that sat in the center of the room. My eyes followed his indication.

Sitting at the desk, going over a few papers and scribbling an occasional note, was a man whose power was greater than that of any financier the world has ever known; a man whose otherwise handsome features were counterbalanced by a nose that had been cracked, swollen, and deformed by
acne rosacea.
You had to be very careful, however, not to stare at that nose openly—you were likely to pay for your morbid fascination in more ways than you could imagine.

“Ah,” said Mr. John Pierpont Morgan, looking up from his papers and then standing. “Come in, gentlemen, and let’s get this business settled.”