The Alienist

by Caleb Carr

  “Mr. Moore, sir—about the man you’re looking for. I heard Dr. Kreizler say the other day that none of the dead boys had been—well, you know, sir, ‘assaulted.’ Is that right?”

  “Yes, that’s been true so far, Stevie. Why?”

  “It’s just that it makes me wonder, sir. Does that mean he ain’t a fag?”

  I sat up at the frankness of the query—sometimes you had to work very hard to remember that Stevie was only twelve. “No, that doesn’t mean that he’s not a—a fag, Stevie. But the fact that his victims do the work they do doesn’t mean that he is one, either.”

  “You figure maybe he just hates fags?”

  “That may have something to do with it.”

  We fought our way through the traffic on Houston Street, Stevie struggling with his emerging line of reasoning and seemingly oblivious to the whores, drug fiends, peddlers, and beggars that swarmed around us. “What I’m thinking, Mr. Moore, is that maybe he is a fag, and maybe he hates fags, too. Kinda like that guard who gimme such a hard time out on Randalls Island.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t get you,” I said.

  “Well, you know, in court, when I was up for cracking that guy’s skull, they tried to make me out for crazy, saying the guy had a wife and kids and all, so how could he be a fag? And in the Refuge House, if he caught two boys going at each other like that, brother, would he lay into ’em. But all the same, I wasn’t the first kid he tried it with. No, sir. So I figure maybe that’s why he had such a mean disposition—he never really knew, deep down, just what he was. Know what I mean, Mr. Moore?”

  Remarkably enough, I did know what he meant. We’d had many long discussions at our headquarters concerning the sexual proclivities of our killer, and we would have many more before our work was done; yet Stevie had come close to crystallizing all our conclusions in that one statement.

  There really wasn’t one of us whose brain wasn’t working overtime to come up with ideas and theories that would propel our investigation forward; but, as might be expected, no one was working harder than Kreizler. In fact, his exertions grew so continuous, and at times so excessive, that I began to worry about his physical and nervous health. After one twenty-four-hour period when he stayed at his desk with a stack of almanacs and a large sheet of paper bearing the four dates of the recent murders (January 1st, February 2nd, March 3rd, and April 3rd), trying to unlock the mystery of when our man chose to kill, Laszlo’s face became so pale and haggard that I ordered Cyrus to remove him to his home for some rest. I remembered Sara’s statement that Kreizler seemed to have some sort of personal stake in the work we were doing; and though I wanted to ask her for elaboration, I feared that such a conversation would only revive my tendency to speculate about their personal relationship, which was neither any of my business nor conducive to productive work on the case.

  But a discussion became inevitable one morning, when Kreizler—fresh from a long night at his Institute, where there’d been trouble concerning a new student and her parents—set off without a break to do a mental competency assessment of a man who’d dismembered his wife on a homemade altar. Laszlo had lately been gathering evidence to support the theory that our murders were being conducted as bizarre rituals, during which the killer—much like a Mohammedan whirling dervish—used extreme yet fairly formalized physical action to bring about psychic relief. Kreizler based this idea on several facts: the boys were all strangled before they were mutilated, thus giving the killer complete control over the scene as he played it out; furthermore, the mutilations followed an extremely consistent pattern, centering on the removal of the eyes; and finally, every killing had occurred near water, and on a structure whose function arose from that same water. Other murderers were known to have viewed their grim deeds as personal rites, and Kreizler believed that if he could talk to enough of them he’d begin to understand how to read any messages that might be contained in the mutilations themselves. Such work, however, was especially hard on the nerves, even for an experienced alienist like Kreizler; add to this his general state of overworked exhaustion, and you produced a formula for trouble.

  On the morning in question, Sara and I—just coming into Number 808 Broadway as Kreizler went out—happened to be watching as Laszlo tried to enter his calash and very nearly fainted. He shook the spell off with ammonia salts and a laugh, but Cyrus told us that this time it had been two days since he’d had anything like real sleep.

  “He’ll kill himself if he doesn’t slow down,” Sara said, as the calash rolled off and we got into the elevator. “He’s trying to make up for the lack of clues and facts with effort. As if he can force an answer to this thing.”

  “He’s always been that way,” I replied, shaking my head. “Even when we were boys, he was always at something, and always so deadly serious. It was somewhat amusing, in those days.”

  “Well, he’s not a child now, and he ought to learn to take care of himself.” That was Sara’s tough side talking; it was a different tone that came through when she asked, with what seemed affected casualness and without looking at me, “Have there never been any women in his life, John?”

  “There was his sister,” I answered, knowing that it wasn’t what she was driving at. “They used to be very close, but she’s married now. To an Englishman, a baronet or some such.”

  With what I thought was effort, Sara remained dispassionate. “But no women—romantically, I mean?”

  “Oh. Yes, well, there was Frances Blake. He met her at Harvard and for a couple of years it looked as though they might get married. I never saw it, myself—for my money she was something of a shrew. He seemed to find her charming, though.”

  Sara’s most mischievous smile, that tiny curl of her upper lip, appeared. “Perhaps she reminded him of someone.”

  “She reminded me of a shrew. Look, Sara, what do you mean when you say Kreizler seems as though he’s got some personal stake in this thing? Personal how?”

  “I’m not quite sure, John,” she answered, as we walked into our headquarters and found the Isaacsons engaged in a vehement squabble over some evidential details. “But I can say this—” Sara lowered her voice, indicating that she didn’t wish to pursue the conversation in front of any of the others. “It’s more than just his reputation, and more than just scientific curiosity. It’s something old and deep. He’s a very deep man, your friend Dr. Kreizler.”

  With that Sara drifted off to the kitchen to make herself some tea, and I was dragged into the Isaacsons’ argument.

  Thus did we pass most of April, with the weather warming up, small pieces of information slowly but steadily falling into place, and questions about each other opening wider without being openly addressed. There would be time to explore such matters later, I kept telling myself—for now the work was what mattered, the job at hand, on which depended who knew how many lives. Focus was the key—focus and preparation, readiness to meet whatever could be hatched from the mind of the man we sought. I took this attitude confidently, feeling, after viewing two of his victims, that I’d seen the worst he had to offer.

  But an incident that occurred at the end of the month presented my teammates and me with a new kind of horror, one born not of blood but of words—one that, in its own way, was as terrible as anything we’d yet encountered.

  CHAPTER 20

  * * *

  On a particularly pleasant Thursday evening, I was sitting at my desk reading a story in the Times about one Henry B. Bastian of Rock Island, Illinois, who several days earlier had killed three boys who worked on his farm, cut up their bodies, and fed the pieces to his hogs. (The citizens of the town had been unable to think of a cause for the dastardly crime; and when local law enforcement officers had closed in to arrest Bastian, he killed himself, thus eliminating any chance that the world would ever discover or study his motives.) Sara was putting in an increasingly rare appearance at Mulberry Street, and Marcus Isaacson was there, too. He frequently visited headquarters at off-hours, in order to rumm
age undisturbed through the anthropometry files: Marcus still held out hope that our killer might have a prior criminal record. Lucius and Kreizler, meanwhile, were wrapping up a long afternoon at the Ward’s Island Lunatic Asylum, where they had been studying the phenomena of secondary personalities and brain hemisphere dysfunction, in order to determine if either pathology might characterize our killer.

  Kreizler considered such possibilities remote, to say the very least, essentially because patients afflicted with dual consciousnesses (arising from either psychic or physical trauma) did not generally exhibit the capacity for extensive planning that our killer had shown. But Laszlo was determined to chase down even the most improbable theories. Then, too, he genuinely liked such outings with Lucius, which allowed him to trade bits of his unique medical knowledge for invaluable lessons in criminal science. Thus when Kreizler telephoned at about six o’clock to say that he and the detective sergeant had finished their research, I was not entirely surprised to hear more vigor in Laszlo’s voice than had been the case in recent days; and I replied with equal energy when he suggested that we meet for a drink at Brübacher’s Wine Garden on Union Square, where we could compare notes on the day’s activities.

  I spent another half an hour on the evening papers, then wrote a note for Sara and Marcus, telling them to come along to Brübacher’s and join us. After pinning the note to the front door, I snatched a walking stick out of the Marchese Carcano’s elegant ceramic stand and headed out into the warm evening, as merrily, I’ll wager, as any man who’s spent the day immersed in blood, mutilation, and murder has ever done.

  The mood on Broadway was a festive one, the stores being open late for Thursday evening shopping. It was not yet dusk, but McCreery’s was apparently still on its winter lighting schedule: the windows were bright beacons, offering what seemed certain customer satisfaction to the passing throngs. Evening services had concluded at Grace Church, but there were still a few worshipers gathered outside, their light dress a testament to spring’s long-awaited but irreversible arrival. With a rap of my stick against the pavement I turned north, ready to spend at least a few minutes back among the world of the living, and on my way to one of the best places to do so.

  “Papa” Brübacher, a truly gemütlich restaurateur who was always glad to see a regular customer, had assembled one of the best wine and beer cellars in New York, and the terrace of his establishment, across the street from the east side of Union Square, was an ideal place from which to watch people stroll in the park as the sun descended beyond the western terminus of Fourteenth Street. Such, however, were not the principal reasons why sporting gentlemen like myself frequented the place. When streetcars had first made their appearance on Broadway, some unknown conductor had gotten it into his head that if the snakelike bends that the tracks made around Union Square weren’t taken at full speed the car would lose its cable. The other conductors on the line had bought into this never-proven theory, and before long the stretch of Broadway along the park had been dubbed “Dead Man’s Curve,” because of the frequency with which unsuspecting pedestrians and carriage riders lost life or limb to the hurtling streetcars. Brübacher’s terrace provided a commanding view of all this action; and throughout warm afternoons and evenings it was customary, when one of the engines of injury was heard or seen approaching, for bets to be laid among the wine garden’s customers as to the likelihood of an accident occurring. These bets could, on occasion, be sizable, and the guilt that the winners felt when a collision did take place never managed to drive the game out of existence. Indeed, the frequency of accidents, and thus the volume of gaming, had risen to such proportions that Brübacher’s had earned the sobriquet “Monument House,” and was now a required stop for any visitor to New York who aspired to the title of gamesman.

  As I crossed Fourteenth Street to the small curbed island east of Union Square that was home to Henry K. Brown’s splendid equestrian statue of General Washington, I began to hear the usual shouts—“Twenty bucks the old lady doesn’t make it!”; “The guy’s only got one leg, he doesn’t have a prayer!”—emanating from Papa Brübacher’s. The call of the game sped my steps, and when I arrived I jumped the ivy-laden iron railing that ringed the terrace and nestled in with a couple of old pals of mine. After ordering a liter of smooth, dark Würzburger that had a head as thick as whipped cream, I rose just long enough to embrace old Brübacher, then finally began to lay bets with a fury.

  By the time Kreizler and Lucius Isaacson showed up, at just past seven, my friends and I had witnessed two near-misses on nannies with perambulators and one brush of a streetcar against a very expensive landau. An intense debate as to whether this latter contact constituted a collision ensued, one that I was just as glad to get away from by retreating to a relatively remote corner of the terrace with Lucius and Kreizler, who ordered a bottle of Didesheimer. The debate that I found them engaged in, however, steeped as it was in references to brain parts and functions, proved no more entertaining. The distant sound of an approaching streetcar at last signaled a new round of betting, and I had just wagered the full contents of my billfold on the agility of a fruit peddler when I looked up to find myself face-to-face with Marcus and Sara.

  I was going to suggest that they get in on the action, as the fruit peddler’s pushcart was particularly heavy-laden and the encounter looked to be an exciting even-money affair; but when I paused long enough to study their respective faces and attitudes—Marcus’s wild-eyed and agitated, Sara’s pallid and stunned—I realized that something extraordinary had occurred, and put my money away.

  “What in hell’s happened to you two?” I said, setting my beer stein on a table. “Sara, are you all right?”

  She nodded rather weakly, and Marcus began to scan the terrace fervently, while fidgeting with his hands uncontrollably. “A telephone,” he said. “John, where’s a telephone?”

  “Just inside the door, there. Tell Brübacher you’re a friend of mine, he’ll let you—”

  But Marcus was already shooting away from me into the restaurant, while Kreizler and Lucius, who had broken off their conversation, stood and watched in confusion.

  “Detective Sergeant,” Kreizler said, as Marcus passed. “Has there been some—”

  “Excuse me, Doctor,” Marcus said. “I’ve got to—Sara has something you ought to see.” Marcus took two steps inside the open terrace doorway and grabbed the telephone, putting the little conical receiver to his ear and clicking the armrest rapidly. Brübacher looked on in surprise, but at a nod from me he let Marcus continue. “Operator? Hello, operator?” Marcus began to stamp his right foot hard. “Operator! I need to get a line through to Toronto. Yes, that’s right, Canada.”

  “Canada?” Lucius echoed, his own eyes going wide. “Oh, God—Alexander Macleod! Then that means—” Lucius glanced at Sara, looking as if he suddenly understood what she’d been through, and then joined his brother at the ’phone. I guided Sara over to Kreizler’s table, and then she very slowly drew an envelope out of her bag.

  “This arrived at the Santorellis’ flat yesterday,” she said, in a dry, pained voice. “Mrs. Santorelli brought it to Police Headquarters this morning. She couldn’t read it and was asking for help. No one would give her any, but she refused to go home. Eventually I found her sitting out by the front steps. I translated it. At least, I translated most of it.” She shoved the note into Laszlo’s hand and her head dropped lower. “She didn’t want to keep it, and since there’s nothing anyone at headquarters can do with it, Theodore asked me to bring it along and see what you make of it, Doctor.”

  Lucius came back over to join us, and he and I watched anxiously as Kreizler opened the envelope. When Laszlo had glanced over its contents he drew in breath quickly though quietly, and nodded his head. “So,” he noised, in a voice that seemed to say he’d been expecting something like this. Then we all sat down, and without any introduction Kreizler read the following in a very quiet voice (I have preserved the author’s original spelling in
this transcription):

  My dear Mrs. Santorelli,

  I don’t know as it is you what is the source of the vile LIES I read in the newspapers, or if the police are behind it and the reporters are part of their scheme, but as I figger it might be you I take this occashun to straten you out:

  In some parts of this world such as where dirty immigrants like yourself come from it is often found that human flesh is eaten regular, as other food is so scarce and people would starve without it. I have personally read this and know it to be true. Of course it is usuly children what is eaten as they are tenderest and best tasting, especially the ass of a small child.

  Then these people that eat it come here to America and shit their little children shit all around, which is dirty, dirtier than a Red Injun.

  On February 18 I seen your boy parading himself, with ashes and paint on his face. I decided to wait, and saw him several times before one night I took him away from THAT PLACE. Saucy boy, I already knew I must eat him. So we went straight to the bridge and I trussed him and did him quick. I collected his eyes and took his ass and it fed me for a week, roasted with onions and carrots.