The Alienist

  Each of Beecham’s 1896 murders had occurred on the banks of a river, from which we had already deduced that the sight of a large body of water had become a vital emotional component of his murderous rituals. It was therefore important to focus our attention on those elements of the water system that were positioned close to the waterfronts. This didn’t leave us with many choices. In fact, it left us, we felt, with only one: the High Bridge Aqueduct and Tower, whose ten-foot pipes had brought clear upstate New York water across the East River and into Manhattan since the 1840s. True, if Beecham had selected High Bridge it would mean his first murder north of Houston Street; yet the simple fact that he had confined his slaughter to Lower Manhattan did not necessarily mean that he was completely unacquainted with the northern end of the island. And it was always possible that Beecham in fact intended to visit some less imposing site on his map—a water main juncture or the like—and was just hoping that we would jump at the more obvious and dramatic High Bridge interpretation.

  “But what about the boy’s story?” Theodore asked, deeply frustrated that he could not be more involved in the speculative process. “The ‘castle that overlooks the city,’ and whatnot? Doesn’t that confirm your hypothesis?”

  Sara pointed out that, while it might indeed confirm the hypothesis (for the High Bridge Tower, built to equalize water pressure in Manhattan’s inland reservoirs, did indeed resemble a tall castle turret), such confirmation did not necessarily mean that Beecham intended to take his victim there. We were dealing with an excessively perverse and devious mentality, Sara explained to Theodore, one who was well aware of our activities and who would get great pleasure from doing all he could to lead us down a false trail. Nonetheless, it was doubtful that Beecham was aware of our understanding of his need to be near water—indeed, he might not be aware of it himself, and High Bridge Tower therefore stood as the most promising location.

  Roosevelt absorbed this information with keen interest, nodding and rubbing his jowl and finally clapping his hands together rather thunderously. “Well done, Sara!” he said. “I don’t know what your family would say if they could hear such talk, but by thunder, I’m proud of you!” So full of genuine affection and admiration were Theodore’s words that Sara forgave their slightly patronizing air and turned away with a satisfied smile.

  Roosevelt became more intimately involved in the discussion when the time came to plan the actual disposition of police forces for Sunday night. He wanted to handpick the men who would watch the High Bridge Tower, he said, recognizing that it was a job requiring enormous tact—any sign of police activity, we all knew, and Beecham was likely to bolt. In addition to the High Bridge surveillance, Roosevelt intended to have all bridges and ferry stations closely scrutinized, and extra roundsmen would patrol the waterfronts on both the east and west sides at regular intervals. Finally, detective units would be assigned to all the same disorderly houses that we’d watched on the night of the Lohmann boy’s death, even though we had good reason to believe Beecham would be abducting his victim from another locale.

  All that remained was to decide what part Sara, the Isaacsons, and I would play in the drama. The obvious choice was for us to join the surveillance group at the High Bridge Tower, at which point it became necessary for me to announce that I wouldn’t be able to do so until a late hour, as it was my intention to attend the opera with Kreizler. This brought instant expressions of incredulity to my teammates’ faces; but since I’d agreed not to reveal the exact terms of the bargain I’d struck with Laszlo, I could offer no plausible explanation for my behavior. Fortunately, before Sara and the Isaacsons could get a full head of baffled steam going, I got help from an unexpected source: Theodore, who, it turned out, was also planning to attend the benefit performance. Roosevelt explained that it was very unlikely that Mayor Strong would sanction calling out a large part of the police force to put in a night’s work on the boy-whore murders. But if Roosevelt were seen at a highly publicized society event, which would also be attended by the mayor and one or two of the other members of the Board of Commissioners, it would help to ensure that the night’s activities did not become a focus of attention. Theodore supported the idea of my going to the opera as well, saying it could only heighten such a misdirection of official scrutiny; besides, he said, repeating Kreizler’s logic, Beecham had never struck before midnight, and there was no reason to think he’d start now. Roosevelt and I could easily join the hunt once the opera was over.

  Faced with this attitude on the part of their highest departmental superior, the Isaacsons reluctantly acquiesced. Sara, on the other hand, eyed me suspiciously, and pulled me aside when the others began to discuss further details of the police deployment.

  “Is he up to something, John?” she asked, in a tone that indicated she’d brook no nonsense at this stage of the game.

  “Who, Kreizler?” I said, hoping it sounded better than it felt. “No, I don’t think so. We made the plan some time ago.” Then a ruse: “If you really do think it’s a bad idea, Sara, I can easily tell him that—”

  “No,” she answered quickly, but without looking convinced. “What Theodore says makes sense. And we’ll all be at the tower anyway, I can’t think why you’d be needed as well.” I bridled a bit at that, but discretion demanded I not show it. “Still,” Sara went on, “after three weeks without a word it seems odd that he’d choose tomorrow night to reappear.” Her eyes roamed around the room as her mind ran through possibilities. “Just let us know if it looks like he’s got a scheme.”

  “Of course.” She scrutinized me skeptically again, and my eyes went wide. “Sara, why wouldn’t I tell you?”

  She couldn’t answer that; I couldn’t answer that. Only one person knew the full set of reasons for my secrecy—and he wasn’t prepared to reveal them.

  Important as it was that we all be well rested for Sunday’s undertakings, I felt it even more imperative that we return to the streets one more time Saturday night, in order to make at least a minimal effort to locate the young street cruiser that Joseph had mentioned to me. The odds of finding such a boy without either a name or a description were, admittedly, fairly long; and they only got longer as the night wore on. In addition to combing those Lower East Side, Greenwich Village, and Tenderloin blocks that were known to harbor such characters, we revisited all of the disorderly houses that proferred boy-whores. But in every one, we met with the same dumbfounded and usually dismissive response. We were looking for a boy, we’d say; a boy who worked the streets; a boy who might be planning to quit the game soon (even though we knew that if Beecham was following his pattern he would’ve told the boy to keep his departure quiet); and a boy who’d been a friend of Joseph, from the Golden Rule—yes, the same boy who’d been murdered. Whatever small chance we might’ve had of finding any leads was generally destroyed by this last statement: Everyone we interviewed figured that we were looking for Joseph’s killer, and no one wanted to be implicated or involved in any way. By midnight we had to accept it—if we were going to find the boy, we were going to find him with Beecham, hopefully before he’d been killed.

  That thought was sobering enough to send us all on our respective ways home. It was now quite apparent that there was something very different about this latest prospect of facing Beecham, and it wasn’t simply the fact that we knew his name and a great deal about his history: it was the inescapable feeling that the confrontation that was almost upon us—and which had largely been arranged, even if unconsciously, by Beecham himself—might be far more dangerous for us than we’d ever suspected. True, we’d assumed since the beginning that a strong desire to be stopped was evident in Beecham’s behavior; but we now understood that that desire had a cataclysmic, even apocalyptic, side to it, and that his being “stopped” could very well entail great violence to those who performed the service. Yes, we would be armed, and together with our official auxiliaries we would outnumber him by tens and perhaps hundreds to one; yet in many ways this man had faced greater o
dds throughout his nightmarish life, and—simply by surviving—had beaten them. Then, too, the line on any race is not determined by the statistical record alone; it takes into account the intangibles of breeding and training as well. If one entered such factors into our current undertaking, the outlook changed dramatically, even given our side’s superior numbers and armaments—in fact, I was not at all sure that, thus calculated, the odds were not decidedly in Beecham’s favor.

  CHAPTER 43

  * * *

  It is never easier to understand the mind of a bomb-wielding anarchist than when standing amid a crush of those ladies and gentlemen who have the money and the temerity to style themselves “New York Society.” Suited, gowned, bejeweled, and perfumed, the fabled Four Hundred top families in the city, along with their various relations and hangers-on, can shove, snipe, gossip, and gorge with an abandon that the amused onlooker might find fascinating but the unfortunate interloper will deem nothing short of deplorable. I was one such interloper on Sunday evening, the twenty-first of June. Kreizler had asked me (strangely, it seemed even then) to meet him not at Seventeenth Street but in his box at the Metropolitan before the benefit performance, making it necessary for me to take a cab to the “yellow brewery” and then fight my way up the house’s narrow staircases alone. Absolutely nothing brings out the killer instinct in the upper crust of New York Society like a charity function; and as I squeezed and pushed through the vestibule, trying to coax movement out of grandes dames whose clothing and physical proportions were suited only to stationary pursuits, I occasionally ran into people I’d known during my childhood, friends of my parents who now turned away quickly when they caught my eye, or simply bowed in a minimal way that declared unmistakably, “Please, spare me the embarrassment of actually having to speak with you.” All of which was fine as far as I was concerned, except that they generally wouldn’t then step aside and allow me to get by. By the time I reached the building’s second tier my nerves, along with my clothes, had been thrown into disarray, while my ears were ringing with the din of several thousand perfectly idiotic conversations. Remedy was at hand, however: I sliced my way through to one of the pocket bars under a staircase, downed a quick glass of champagne, grabbed hold of two more, and then made directly and determinedly for Kreizler’s box.

  I found Laszlo already in it, studying the evening’s program as he sat in one of the rear seats. “My God!” I said, falling into a chair next to him without spilling a drop of my champagne. “I haven’t seen anything like this since Ward McAllister died! You don’t suppose he’s risen from the grave, do you?” (For the benefit of my younger readers, Ward McAllister had been Mrs. Astor’s social éminence grise, the man who actually devised the Four Hundred system, basing it on the number of people who could fit comfortably into that great lady’s ballroom.)

  “Let’s hope not,” Laszlo answered, turning to me with a welcoming—and welcome—smile. “Though one can never be truly certain about such creatures as McAllister. Well, Moore!” He put his program aside and rubbed his hands together, continuing to look much happier and healthier than he had during our last several encounters. He eyed my champagne. “You appear to be well prepared for an evening among the wolves.”

  “Yes, they’re all out tonight, aren’t they?” I said, scanning the Diamond Horseshoe. I started to move to a forward seat, but Kreizler held me back.

  “If you wouldn’t mind, Moore, I’d prefer that we sat in the back, tonight.” To my questioning look he answered, “I’m in no mood to be scrutinized this evening.”

  I shrugged and resettled myself next to him, then continued to investigate the audience, turning soon to box 35. “Ah, I see Morgan’s brought his wife. Some poor actress will be out a diamond bracelet or two tonight, I suspect.” I looked down at the sea of bobbing heads below us. “Where in hell are they going to put all the people who are still outside—the orchestra seats are already full.”

  “It’ll be a miracle if we can even hear the performance,” Kreizler said, with a laugh that puzzled me—it wasn’t the sort of thing he would usually have found amusing. “The Astor box is so overloaded it looks as though it’ll collapse, and the Rutherford boys were already too drunk to stand at seven-thirty!”

  I’d taken out my folding glasses and was scrutinizing the other side of the horseshoe. “Quite a gaggle of girls in the Clews’ box,” I said. “They don’t look precisely like they came to hear Maurel. High-stakes husband-hunting, would be my guess.”

  “The guardians of the social order,” Kreizler said, holding his right hand out toward the house with a sigh. “On parade, and don’t they make a sight!”

  After giving Kreizler a baffled glance I said, “You’re in a rather bizarre mood—not drunk yourself, are you?”

  “As sober as a judge,” Laszlo answered. “Not that any of the judges here are sober. And let me hasten to add, Moore, in reply to that very concerned look on your face, that I have not taken leave of my senses, either. Ah, there’s Roosevelt.” Kreizler held up his arm to wave, then winced a bit.

  “Still giving you trouble?” I asked.

  “Only occasionally,” he answered. “It really wasn’t much of a shot. I shall have to take that up with the man—” Kreizler seemed to catch himself as he glanced at me, and then he brightened deliberately. “Someday. Now, tell me, John—where are the other members of the team at this moment?”

  I could feel that the “very concerned” look was still on my face, but at this last question I finally shrugged and let it go. “They’ve gone up to High Bridge with the detectives,” I said. “To get in position early.”

  “High Bridge?” Kreizler repeated eagerly. “Then they’re expecting it to be High Bridge Tower?”

  I nodded. “That was our interpretation.”

  Kreizler’s eyes, quick and electric to that point, became positively brilliant with excitement. “Yes,” he murmured. “Yes, of course. It was the only other intelligent choice.”

  “Other?” I said.

  Shaking his head quickly he replied, “Nothing of importance. You didn’t tell them about our arrangement?”

  “I told them where I was going,” I answered, a bit defensively. “But I didn’t tell them exactly why.”

  “Excellent.” Kreizler sat back, looking deeply pleased. “Then there’s no way Roosevelt can know…”

  “Know what?” I asked, starting to get that old familiar feeling that I’d walked into the wrong theater during the middle of a performance.

  “Hmm?” Kreizler noised, as if barely conscious of my presence. “Oh. I’ll explain it later.” He pointed suddenly to the orchestra pit. “Splendid—here’s Seidl.”

  Out to the podium strode the nobly profiled, long-haired Anton Seidl, once Richard Wagner’s private secretary and now the finest orchestra leader in New York. His Roman nose graced by a pair of pincenez that somehow managed to stay on their perch throughout the vigorous exertions that characterized his conducting style, Seidl commanded instant respect in the pit; and when he turned his stern glare on the audience many of the chattering society types also grew hushed and fearful for several minutes. But then the houselights went down and Seidl slashed into the powerful overture of Don Giovanni, at which the noise in the boxes began to grow again. Soon they were at a more annoying level than ever; Kreizler, however, continued to sit with a look of utter serenity on his face.

  Indeed, for two and a half acts Laszlo endured that boorish audience’s ignorance of the musical miracle that was taking place onstage with confounding equanimity. Maurel’s singing and acting were as brilliant as ever, and his supporting cast—particularly Edouard de Reszke as Leporello—were superb; their only thanks, however, was the very occasional round of applause and ever more distracting talk and bustle in the house. Frances Saville’s Zerlina was a thorough delight, though her singing talents did not stop the besotted Rutherford boys from cheering in a way that indicated she was indistinguishable in their minds from the average Bowery concert hall danc
er. During the intermissions the crowd behaved largely as it had before the performance—like a great herd of glittering jungle beasts—and by the time Vittorio Arimondi, playing the dead Commendatore, began to pound on Don Giovanni’s door I was utterly sick of the general atmosphere and utterly bewildered as to why Kreizler had asked me to come.

  I soon had the beginnings of an answer. Just as Arimondi swept onstage and held a statuesque finger out toward Maurel, with Seidl whipping the orchestra into a crescendo such as I have rarely heard, even at the Metropolitan, Laszlo calmly stood up, took a deep, satisfied breath, and touched my shoulder.

  “All right, Moore,” he whispered. “Let’s go, shall we?”

  “Go?” I said, getting up and stepping with him to the darkest recesses of the box. “Go where? I’m supposed to meet Roosevelt after the performance.”

  Kreizler didn’t answer, but calmly opened the door to the saloon, out of which stepped Cyrus Montrose and Stevie Taggert. They were dressed in clothes that closely resembled Kreizler’s and mine. I was surprised and very happy to see them both, especially Stevie. The boy looked quite recovered from the beating he’d taken at Connor’s hands, though he was obviously uncomfortable in such attire, and not very happy to be at the opera.

  “Don’t worry, Stevie,” I said, taking a swipe at his shoulder. “It’s never been known to actually kill anyone.”

  Stevie stuck a finger into his collar and tried to loosen the thing with a few tugs. “What I wouldn’t give for a cigarette,” he mumbled under his breath. “Don’t have one, do you, Mr. Moore?”

  “Now, now, Stevie,” Kreizler said sternly, gathering up his cloak. “We’ve discussed that.” He turned to Cyrus. “You’re clear on what to do?”

  “Yes, sir,” Cyrus answered evenly. “At the end of the performance Mr. Roosevelt will want to know where you’ve gone. I’ll tell him I don’t know. Then we’re to bring the rig to the place you spoke of.”