by Caleb Carr
I nodded at the big man, who tipped his bowler and gave me a warm look in return. “So,” I said uncertainly, “am—I gonna work for you, too, is that the deal?”
“Oh, yes, you’ll work,” the Doctor answered. “But you’ll study, as well. You will read, you’ll learn mathematics, you’ll investigate history. Among many other things.”
“I will?” I said, swallowing hard; after all, I’d never spent a day in school in my life.
“You will,” the Doctor answered, taking a silver cigarette case out, removing a stick, and lighting it. He looked up to see me staring hungrily at the cigarettes. “Ah. But I’m afraid that stops. No smoking for you, young man. And this,” he went on, stepping over and examining the little pile of things I was carrying, “will no longer be necessary.” He pulled my piece of lead pipe out of some clothes and threw it away onto a patch of thin, ratty-looking grass.
It was looking like I was going to be left with nothing but studies, and that fact was not causing me to be any less edgy. “Well—what about the work?” I finally said. “What’ll I do?”
“You mentioned,” the Doctor said, climbing back into the barouche, “that when your activities with Crazy Butch involved waylaying delivery trucks, you were generally assigned to drive them. Was there any particular reason for this?”
I shrugged. “I like horses. And I took to the driving pretty good.”
“Then say hello to Frederick and Gwendolyn,” the Doctor replied, indicating with his cigarette the gelding and mare what stood in front of the barouche. “And take the reins.”
My spirits picked up considerably at that. I went over, patted the handsome black gelding’s long snout, ran a hand along the brown mare’s neck, and grinned. “Seriously?” I asked.
“You seem to find the idea of work more comforting than that of study,” the Doctor replied. “So let us see how you manage. Cyrus, you may as well come down and help me with this appointment schedule. I’m a bit lost. It seems, from my notes, that I was scheduled to be at the Essex Street court house two hours ago.” As the big black man got down from the driver’s seat, the Doctor glanced up at me once more. “Well? You have a job to do, don’t you?”
I gave him another grin and a quick nod, then jumped up into the driver’s seat and cracked the reins against the horses’ haunches.
And I never, as they say, looked back.
Yes, they were fine days, those, when we’d never heard the name John Beecham and Mary Palmer was still alive. Fine days whose return, I realized, we now had good cause to doubt. Those people what had always fought the Doctor and his theory of context (and were driven, it seemed to me, by fear of the way his investigations into violent and illegal behavior led him to poke around in the area of how Americans raised their kids) had generally countered his arguments by saying that the United States had been built on the idea that every man is free to choose—and is responsible for—his individual ideas and actions, no matter what the circumstances of his early life may’ve been. The Doctor didn’t really disagree with them on a legal level; he was just looking for deeper scientific answers. And so, for many years, there’d been a kind of stalemate in the battle between the controversial alienist and them what he unnerved so badly. When little Paulie McPherson had hung himself, though, it’d given the Doctor’s enemies a chance to break that stalemate—and they’d grabbed at it.
But the judge who’d presided over the first hearing on the matter had been a fair-minded man, and he didn’t just flat-out shut the Doctor down. Instead, he ordered the sixty-day investigation period I’ve already mentioned, making the kids at the Institute wards of the court for that time and putting the place in the temporary charge of one Reverend Charles Bancroft, a retired orphanage superintendent. The Doctor himself was forbidden to set foot inside the Institute during that time: for a man of his antsy temperament, sixty days—with no sure knowledge of what would come after—could be a genuine eternity. And the question of how hard he’d take leaving the Institute didn’t involve just him, either. The kids themselves would play a crucial part, for if even one of them snapped while he was gone—and some of those kids were wound pretty tight—the Doctor would, I knew, take all the blame onto himself. He’d always taught his charges to draw strength from the fact that at least one person believed in them and to be ready to use that strength in future times of trouble. But would they be able to do it when the stakes were so high and the outcome was so uncertain …?
The sudden thunder of a gunshot bellowed out of an alleyway just after I’d turned onto Forsyth Street, causing Frederick to rear in fright and me to stop daydreaming and jerk my head around to locate the source of the trouble. It’d come from back by an old rear tenement building, the closest thing to Hell that any living person ever called home. I jumped off the calash to calm Frederick down by stroking his powerful neck and feeding him a couple of cubes of sugar what I always kept in my pocket when I was driving. Keeping my eyes locked on the alleyway, I soon saw the agent of the mayhem: a crazed-looking man, small and wiry, with a big, drooping mustache and a slouch hat. He came wandering out of the alley carrying an old side-by-side shotgun, brazen as can be, with no apparent thought to who might be watching. A scream followed him out, but his only answer was to declare, without turning around, “Now I’ll take care of your fuckin’ little boyfriend!” He then disappeared at the same quick pace around the corner of Eldridge Street. There wasn’t a cop to be seen, of course; there rarely was in that part of town, and if one had been around, the sound of the gunshot would in all likelihood have sent him scurrying in the opposite direction.
I got back onto the driver’s seat of the calash and made for the Institute at a quick pace. Reaching Numbers 185-187 East Broadway—the two red brick buildings with black trim what the Doctor’d bought and converted into one space many years back—I found that there was a young patrolman stationed at the foot of the steps to the main entrance. Jumping to the ground, I gave Frederick a few more pats on the neck and another lump of sugar, then approached the cop, who was too green to know me by sight.
“I don’t suppose you’d be interested to know that there’s a mug wandering up Eldridge Street with a shotgun,” I said.
“You don’t say,” the cop answered, looking me over. “And what business might that be of yours?”
“None of mine,” I said with a shrug. “Just thought it might be some of yours.”
“My business is right here,” the cop announced, straightening his light summer cap and puffing himself up so that his blue tunic looked near to busting. “Court business.”
“Unh-hunh,” I said. “Well, maybe you could tell Dr. Kreizler that his driver’s here. Seeing as getting him off the premises seems to be the main point of the court’s business.”
The cop turned toward the steps, giving me a glare. “You know,” he said, as he went up to the door, “an attitude like that could get you in some tight spots, sonny.”
I let him get inside before shaking my head and spitting into the gutter. “Go chase yourself,” I mumbled.“Sonny.” (Maybe I ought to note here that one of the things all my years with Dr. Kreizler never did affect—besides my taste for smokes—was my attitude toward cops.)
In a few minutes the patrolman reappeared, followed by Dr. Kreizler, a small group of his students, and a pious-looking old bag of bones what I took to be the Reverend Bancroft. The kids, some of the Doctor’s younger charges, were pretty typical of the range of types he generally had at the place: one was a little girl who came from a rich family uptown and who’d refused throughout her life to speak a word to anybody but her nanny—until she met Dr. Kreizler, that is; another was a boy whose folks owned a grocery business in Greenwich Village, a kid who’d taken more than his fair share of beatings for no greater reason than that his conception’d been an accident and neither of his parents could stand having him around; then there was another girl, who’d been found by a friend of the Doctor’s working in an adult disorderly house, even though she wa
sn’t but ten years old (just how the man happened to find her in said disorderly house, the Doctor never inquired too closely about); another was a boy who hailed from a big manor house in Rhode Island and who’d passed most of his eight years breaking everything he could lay his hands on in a string of unending tantrums.
They were all dressed in the Institute’s gray-and-blue uniforms, which the Doctor had designed himself and required the kids to wear so that the richer ones couldn’t lord it over the poorer. The first little girl, the one what had never spoken to her family, had a firm grip on one of the Doctor’s legs, making it tough for him to move as he walked alongside the reverend and gave him some last bits of instruction and advice. The other girl was holding both her hands behind her back and looking around like she wasn’t quite sure what the hell was going on. The two boys, meantime, were laughing and taking playful jabs at each other from opposite sides of the Doctor, using him as a shield. All in all, a pretty typical scene for the place; but if you looked close, there were clues that something unusual was up.
Chief among these was the Doctor himself. His black linen suit was rumpled and wrinkled in spots, making it pretty clear that he’d been up working all night. Even if the clothes hadn’t given him away, his face would’ve: it was drawn and exhausted, and the look of contentment what could be found in his features only at the Institute was nowhere to be seen. As he spoke to Reverend Bancroft, he leaned forward with a kind of uncertainty that was unusual for him, and the reverend seemed to sense it: he put his hand on the Doctor’s back and told him to just relax and try to make the best use of the weeks to come, that he was sure everything would work out for the best. At that point the Doctor stopped talking and just shook his head in resignation, rubbing his black eyes and suddenly becoming conscious of the kids what were all around and over him.
He smiled and tried to perk up as he first pried the one little girl off his leg and then got the two boys to calm down, speaking to them like he did to all us kids, with affection but directly, as if there was no wall of age between them. When he looked up and caught sight of me at the curb, I could see that he was trying to hold himself together long enough to make it to the calash—but the second little girl proceeded to make that job a lot tougher. Out from behind her back she brought a bunch of roses, wrapped in the plain paper of a local flower shop but still showing the full glory of the new summer in their white and pink petals. The Doctor smiled and kneeled down to take them from her, though when she threw her arms around his neck, that former fallen angel what the Doctor’d given a second lease on childhood, his smile disappeared and it was all he could do to keep his composure. He stood up quickly, told the boys one more time to behave themselves, then shook hands with Reverend Bancroft and near ran down the steps. I had the carriage door open, and he shot in.
“Get me home, Stevie,” was all he managed to say, and like spit I was back up top, whip in hand. The kids continued to wave as I turned the calash around and headed back the way I’d come; but Dr. Kreizler made no reply, just sank further into the maroon leather seat of the carriage.
He remained silent during the trip uptown, even when I mentioned my near run-in with the shotgun-toting maniac. I glanced back just a few times, the first to see if he was even awake. He was; but though the morning was only growing more beautiful, with the breeze continuing to blow the smells of fresh, full greenery and leaves around the street so that they near overcame the stench of garbage piles and horse manure and urine, he didn’t seem to take note of it. He had his right hand balled into a fist that he tapped against his mouth as he stared intensely at nothing, and with his left hand he clutched at the bunch of roses so tight that one of the thorns stabbed him. I heard him hiss a little in pain, but I didn’t say anything—I didn’t know what I could say. The man was a spent bullet, that much was clear, and the best thing for me to do was get him home in a hurry. With that in mind, I gave Frederick a little ripple of the reins and told him to pick up his pace, and soon we were moving back around Stuyvesant Park.
Once inside the house at Seventeenth Street, the Doctor, his face by now ashen with exhaustion, turned to Cyrus and me. “I’ve got to try to get some rest,” he mumbled, starting up the stairs. He stopped and flinched a bit at the sound of a bucket overturning in the kitchen hallway with what was, even for Mrs. Leshko, an amazing crash. The racket was followed by a long stream of what I figured were Russian curses.
The Doctor sighed. “Assuming it’s possible to communicate with that woman, would you please ask her to keep the house quiet for a few hours? If she’s incapable, give her the afternoon off.”
“Yes, sir, Doctor,” Cyrus said. “If you need anything—”
The Doctor only held up a hand and nodded in acknowledgment, then disappeared up the stairs. Cyrus and I looked at each other.
“Well?” Cyrus whispered to me.
“It isn’t good,” I answered. “But I’ve got an idea—” Another crash and more curses came from the kitchen. “You handle Mrs. Leshko,” I said. “I’m going to telephone to Mr. Moore.”
Cyrus nodded, and then I bolted down through the kitchen hallway and past the muttering, mopping mass of blue linen and stout flesh that was Mrs. Leshko. I kept on going through the white ceramic tiling and hanging pots and pans of the kitchen itself and finally got into the pantry, where there was a telephone on the wall. Closing the pantry door, I grabbed the ‘phone’s small receiver, yanked the stem of the mouthpiece down to my height, and got hold of an operator, telling her to connect me to The New York Times. In a few seconds, I had Mr. Moore on the other end.
“Stevie?” he said. “We’ve had some developments. Interesting ones.”
“Yeah? Any word on the baby?”
“Only confirmation that she is, in fact, missing—none of the help at the consulate have seen her in days. I didn’t want to question anybody higher up, though, not with what the señora’s been through. But tell me—what’s the word on your end?”
“Well, he’s in pretty bad shape right now,” I answered “But he’s gone up to rest. And I think—”
Mr. Moore paused, waiting for me to go on, and I could hear the clack of typewriters in the background “You think—?”
“I don’t know—this case. If you were to put it to him just the right way, he might… I mean, the whole connection to the Spanish business—and the señora, if we could get him to meet her… and that picture of the little girl…”
“What are you saying, Stevie?”
“Only that… he’s in a mood, all right. And if this case leads in the direction it might—”
“Ahhhh,” Mr. Moore noised in a happier tone. “I see. … Well. Your education’s starting to pay off, kid.”
“It is?”
“If I get you right, you’re saying that this case may enc up revealing some pretty unattractive things about the same kind of society types that’re trying to shut the Doctor down. And the fact that it involves an innocent baby is just so much gravy. Right?”
“Well, yeah. Something like that.”
Mr. Moore whistled. “I’ll tell you what, Stevie—I’ve known Laszlo since we were younger than you are. I don’t care how fed up and exhausted he is, if that doesn’t get him going, we can start planning his funeral now—because he’s already dead.”
“Yeah. But we gotta slip the idea to him right.”
“Don’t you worry about that. I’ve already figured it out. Tell the Doctor the rest of us are coming by for cocktails.” I heard a voice call to Mr. Moore in the background. “Yeah?” he answered, away from the mouthpiece. “What? Bensonhurst? No, no, no, Harry, I cover New York! I don’t care what Boss Platt says, Bensonhurst is not New York! But it wasn’t my story to start with! Oh, all right, all right!” His voice grew more distinct in my ear. “Got to go, Stevie—some fool doctor tried to shoot his family in Bensonhurst last night. Apparently the authorities don’t like the way we reported the story. Listen, don’t forget—we’ll be by for cocktails.”
“But you haven’t told me about the other developments—”
“Later,” he answered.
The line clicked dead, leaving me with no choice but to wait until that evening to find out what in the world Mr. Moore could’ve been talking about.
CHAPTER 7
Dr. Kreizler managed to sleep until midafternoon, after which he called Cyrus into his study. I popped my head in, too, to let the Doctor know that Mr. Moore,Miss Howard, and the Isaacsons intended on coming by for cocktails, a prospect what seemed to give him some consolation. Then he and Cyrus started to sort through all the mail the Doctor hadn’t attended to in recent days. While they were closeted away with this work, I tried to get a few hours of study in, though my effort wasn’t exactly wholehearted. Excusing myself with the thought that most kids weren’t required to do schoolwork in the summertime, I headed down to the carriage house to have a secret smoke and give Frederick some more oats and another brushdown. Then it was Gwendolyn’s turn, which she waited for with her usual patience. She was a good horse, as strong as Frederick but without his spunk, and spending time with her helped to ease some of my anxiousness.
Our guests showed up at near 6:30. The sun was still bright behind the two square, squat towers of St. George’s Church on the west side of Stuyvesant Park, what with it being the longest day of the year, and all reports said that the weather would hold through most of the week. Mr. Moore and the others trotted up the stairs to the parlor, where the Doctor was reading a letter and listening to Cyrus play and sing a sad, lonely operatic number that most likely had something to do with people falling in love and then dying (such being the general concern of operas, from what little I’ve ever been able to make out about that particular musical form). I watched the scene that followed, as was my habit, from a shadowy corner at the top of the next flight of stairs.
