by Caleb Carr
The Doctor rose and shook each person’s hand warmly, while Mr. Moore smacked a palm against the Doctor’s back.
“Laszlo—you look like hell,” he announced, immediately making for a silver box of cigarettes that contained a nice blend of Virginia and Russian black tobaccoes.
“It’s good of you to notice, Moore,” the Doctor answered with a sigh, indicating the easy chair across from his to Miss Howard. “Sara, please.”
“As ever, John is the soul of tact,” Miss Howard said as she sat down. “All things considered, Doctor, I think you look remarkably well.”
“Hmm, yes,” the Doctor noised doubtfully. “All things considered …” Miss Howard smiled again as she realized how backhanded her compliment had been, but the Doctor smiled back, letting her off the hook and telling her he appreciated the thought. “And the detective sergeants are here as well,” he went on. “This is indeed a welcome surprise. I’ve had a letter from Roosevelt today—I’ve just been reading it.”
“Really?” Lucius said, moving closer to the Doctor’s chair with his brother. “What’s he say?”
“I bet he’s not terrorizing the sailors the way he did our beat cops,” Marcus added.
“I hate to interrupt,” Mr. Moore said from across the room, “but we did come for cocktails. Are we free to fix them ourselves, Kreizler?” He indicated a nearby glass-and-mahogany cart what was loaded down with bottles. “I trust that battle-axe downstairs isn’t going to do it. What is she, anyway, some kind of refugee or something?”
“Mrs. Leshko?” As he spoke, the Doctor nodded toward the liquor cart, and Mr. Moore ran for it like a dying man in the desert. “No, I fear she actually is our current housekeeper. And, to my everlasting regret, our cook. I have Cyrus trying to find her another position—I’d rather not let her go before she has something else.”
“You don’t mean to say you actually eat her food?” Mr. Moore said, setting out six glasses and filling each of them with gin, a little vermouth, and a dash of bitters: martinis, he called them, though I’ve heard bartenders label the drink a martinez, too. “Laszlo, you know what Russian cuisine is like,” he went on, handing the drinks around. “I mean, they only eat it over there because they have to.”
“I’m painfully aware of that, Moore, believe me.”
“What about the letter, Doctor?” Miss Howard asked as she sipped her drink. “What does our esteemed assistant secretary have to say?”
“Nothing good, I’m afraid,” the Doctor answered. “When I last heard from Roosevelt, he told me that he and Cabot Lodge had been spending rather a lot of time at Henry Adams’s house. Henry himself is in Europe at the moment, but that absurd brother of his seems to be holding court in his dining room while he’s away.”
“Brooks?” Miss Howard said. “You find that troubling, Doctor?”
“Surely you don’t think anyone actually listens to him,” Marcus added.
“I’m not entirely certain,” the Doctor replied. “I wrote to Roosevelt to tell him that I consider Brooks Adams to be delusional, perhaps pathologically. In this letter he says that he’s inclined to agree with me but that he still finds merit in many of the man’s ideas.”
Lucius’s eyes went round. “That’s a frightening thought. All that talk about ‘martial spirit’ and ‘warlike blood’—”
“Contemptible nonsense, that’s what it is,” the Doctor pronounced. “When men like Brooks Adams call for a war to reinvigorate our countrymen, they only reveal their own degeneracy. Why, if that fellow ever found himself near a battlefield—”
“Laszlo,” Mr. Moore said, “relax. Brooks is the fashion of the moment, that’s all. Nobody takes him seriously.”
“No, but men like Roosevelt and Lodge are taking his ideas seriously.” The Doctor stood and walked over to stand next to a large potted palm by one of the open French windows, shaking his head all the while. “They’re down there in Washington now, scheming like schoolboys to get us into a war with Spain—and I tell you all, such a war will change this country. Profoundly. And not for the better.”
Mr. Moore smiled as he drank. “You sound like Professor James. He’s been saying the same things. You haven’t been in touch with him, have you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the Doctor said, slightly embarrassed at the mention of his old teacher, who in fact he hadn’t spoken to for many years.
“Well,” Lucius said, trying to be evenhanded, “the Spaniards do have some reason to be resentful—we’ve called them everything from swine to butchers for their treatment of the Cuban rebels.”
Miss Howard displayed a puzzled smile. “How is it that a person can be a swine and a butcher?”
“I don’t know, but they’ve managed it,” Mr. Moore answered. “They’ve acted like sadistic savages, trying to suppress the rebellion—concentration camps, mass executions—”
“Yes, but the rebels have been vicious in return, John,” Marcus countered. “Captured soldiers massacred—civilians, too, if they won’t support ‘the cause.’”
“Marcus is right, Moore,” the Doctor threw in impatiently. “This rebellion is not about freedom or democracy. It’s about power. One side has it, the other side wants it. That’s all.”
“True,” Mr. Moore conceded with a shrug.
“And we appear to want some sort of an American empire,” Lucius added.
“Yes. God help us.” The Doctor wandered back over to his chair, then picked up the letter from Mr. Roosevelt and scanned it one more time. Folding it up as he sat back down, he put the thing aside with another noise of disgust. “But—enough of that.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “All right, then, suppose you all tell me what brings you here.”
“What brings us?” Mr. Moore made a show of innocence and shock that would’ve done any Bowery variety star proud. “Why, what should bring us? Concern. Moral support. All of that.”
“Only that?” the Doctor asked suspiciously.
“No. Not only that.” Mr. Moore turned to the piano for a moment. “Cyrus, do you think we could have something a little less funereal? I’m sure we’re all sorry that old Otello mistakenly strangled his lovely wife, but given the display Nature’s putting on outside I think we might forgo such sentiments. You wouldn’t happen to know anything less—well—stuffy, would you? After all, friends and colleagues, it’s summer!”
Cyrus answered by gently breaking into “White,” a popular song from the forties, what seemed to set Mr. Moore right up. He beamed a big grin at the Doctor, who only looked at him with some concern.
“There really are moments,” the Doctor said, “when I doubt your sanity, Moore.”
“Oh, come on, Kreizler!” Mr. Moore answered. “I’m telling you, everything’s going to be fine. In fact, we’ve brought you living proof that things are starting to go your way.” Mr. Moore indicated Marcus and Lucius with a little nod of his head.
“The detective sergeants?” the Doctor said quietly, looking to them. “But what can you have to do with any of this?”
Marcus glanced at Mr. Moore with some annoyance, then handed him his empty glass. “That was truly graceful, John,” he said. “Suppose you stick to bartending.”
“My pleasure!” said Mr. Moore, dancing back over to the cocktail cart.
The Doctor gave up on expecting sense from his journalistic friend and turned to the Isaacsons again. “Gentlemen? Have Moore’s nerves given way altogether, causing him to bring you here for some imaginary reason?”
“Oh, it wasn’t John,” Marcus answered quickly.
“You can thank Captain O’Brien,” Lucius added. “If ‘thank’ is the right word.”
“The head of the Detective Bureau?” Dr. Kreizler said. “And what can I thank him for?”
“The fact that you’ll be seeing quite a bit of us in the next sixty days, I’m afraid,” Marcus replied. “You’re aware, Doctor, that the court ordered a police investigation of affairs at your clinic?”
What was coming next clicked in
my head right then, as I’m sure it did in the Doctor’s; nevertheless, he said only, “Yes?”
“Well,” Lucius continued for his brother, “we’re it, I’m afraid.”
“What?” There were both shock and relief in the Doctor’s voice. “You two? But doesn’t O’Brien know—”
“That we’re friends of yours?” Marcus said. “Indeed he does. That was part of the amusement for him. You see—hmm. Now, how do we begin this?”
As the detective sergeants’ explanation of what had gone on earlier that day at Police Headquarters was peppered with their usual squabbling over who’d been responsible for what, I may as well boil the tale down myself.
It’d started with the piece of a body that Cyrus and I’d seen on the waterfront by the Cunard pier the night before. (Well, really it’d started when the Isaacsons joined the force in the first place, for their advanced methods and peculiar attitudes, linked with the fact that they were Jewish, had made them instantly and almost universally disliked. But so far as this incident in particular was concerned, it was the body that’d set it off.) It’d been obvious to everyone, from the patrolmen on the scene to Captain Hogan and then up to Captain O’Brien of the Detective Bureau, that the section of torso was likely to develop into quite a sensational case. Summer in New York is just not complete without a big, splashy murder mystery, and this one had all the earmarks, starting with the probability that more pieces of the body would soon start to wash up in other parts of town (which they did). There’d already been and would likely continue to be a lot of press coverage of the thing and great attention paid to whoever worked on and solved it. But the deal had to be played just right: the cops had to represent it to the public as something what’d be tougher than shoe leather to work out, so that they could cover themselves with laurels when the time came.
The Isaacsons had been dispatched to the scene in the middle of the night, when Captain O’Brien was asleep and nobody knew what was waiting down at the pier; otherwise, they never would’ve gotten so close in the first place. O’Brien would choke before he gave what looked to be the summer’s biggest catch to a pair of detectives who spent near all their time telling him that his methods were so out of date as to be laughable. But the Isaacsons had really finished any chance what they might’ve had of working on the thing by writing up an initial report along the lines of what we’d heard Lucius saying that night by the river: all indications were that it was a crime of passion committed by someone close to the victim, someone who knew his identifying marks and had carefully cut them away—someone, in other words, whose main concern was hiding the victim’s identity and throwing suspicion off of themselves. But for the brass at the Detective Bureau, such wasn’t good enough. They preferred the idea of a crazed anatomist or medical student dealing in body parts, the kind of spooky tale what always sparks the public’s imagination. And that’s just what they started to give out to the papers that very night. The fact that everything about the body spoke directly against such an idea, well, that kind of thing never bothered the Detective Bureau much. A real solution to a crime never rated against an invented story that could be used to their advantage.
Anyway, when Monday morning rolled around, Captain O’Brien saw the Isaacsons’ initial report and decided that if he was going to milk “the mystery of the headless body” for all it was worth, he’d have to keep the brothers as far away from it as possible. It so happened that he also needed to make an assignment that morning of two detectives to investigate conditions at the Kreizler Institute for Children and the apparent suicide of young Paulie McPherson; and he took no wee bit of fiendish Irish pleasure in informing the Isaacsons that not only were they off the torso case, they were on the McPherson business. He knew that they were acquaintances of Dr. Kreizler’s—but, like most cops, O’Brien had no liking for the Doctor and would only be tickled by making the situation even more difficult for him than it already was. If the thing turned out bad and the Isaacsons had to come down on their friend, well, that would just be a bigger laugh; and if nothing came of it, O’Brien would at least have succeeded in keeping the brothers out of the more important “headless body” business.
“And so,” Marcus finished up, “here we are. I’m sorry, Doctor. We’ll try to make it as convenient and—well—dignified for you as we can.”
“Indeed we will,” Lucius tacked on anxiously.
The Doctor moved in quickly to put them at their ease. “Don’t let yourselves feel odd about it, either of you. There was nothing you could have done. Such a move was to be expected, really. We must try to make the most of it.” His voice became touched by sadness for a moment. “I’ve racked my own mind, and those of my staff, for any clue as to what drove the McPherson boy to take his own life—without success, I’m afraid. I’m as certain as I can be that there was no incident at the Institute to spark it, though you must of course decide all that for yourselves. I do hope you know, however, that there are no two people in the world I would sooner trust with the matter than yourselves.”
“Thank you, sir,” Lucius mumbled.
“Yes,” Marcus said. “Though I’m afraid we’ll be a damned nuisance to you.”
“Nonsense,” Doctor Kreizler added—and I could hear in his voice that the relief he felt over things working out this way was growing into a kind of happiness. I glanced at Mr. Moore and Miss Howard and found them smiling in a fashion what said they were positively delighted things had worked out this way, and it was no big job to figure out why: while the Isaacsons’ new assignment would only increase the chances of the Doctor taking on the Linares case, it would also cinch it that we’d have the talents of the detective sergeants on tap twenty-four hours a day. Such was cause for smiles, indeed.
“It’s all a lot of noise over nothing, anyway,” Mr. Moore said as he handed a second round of drinks to everyone. “The word at the Times is that this whole affair is going to blow over.”
“Is it?” the Doctor mumbled, not too reassured. “Absolutely.”
As Mr. Moore reached the Doctor’s chair, I noticed that he bent over somewhat suddenly to hand the Doctor his cocktail: and as he did, a packet of papers and letters came flying out of the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Oh, dammit,” Mr. Moore said, in a voice that might’ve sounded completely genuine if I hadn’t known that the larger purpose of the evening was to get the Doctor to sign on for the Linares case. “Laszlo,” he went on, indicating the papers and handing a drink to Lucius, “would you mind…?”
The Doctor reached to the floor and picked up the scattered documents, giving them a quick once-over as he arranged them back into a pile. He suddenly stopped when he reached something:
It was the photograph of little Ana Linares.
As I’m sure the cagey Mr. Moore knew he would, the Doctor paused to study the thing. And as he did, he began to smile.
“What a charming child,” he said quietly. “The daughter of a friend, John?”
“Hmm?” Mr. Moore noised, all innocence.
“Well, she’s entirely too beautiful to be a relation,” the Doctor went on, to which the others laughed a little: their first mistake, for the Doctor had not shown the picture to any of them. If they knew the smiling, pretty face it displayed, then something was up. The Doctor glanced at them all carefully. “Such being the case,” he said quietly, continuing to address Mr. Moore, “who is she?”
“Oh,” Mr. Moore answered, retrieving the packet of letters and folded documents, “it’s nothing, Laszlo. Forget it.”
As this little dance continued, I saw Detective Sergeant Lucius pick up the evening edition of the Times and plaster it over his face nervously, though it was obvious he wasn’t reading a word.
The Doctor leaned toward Mr. Moore. “What do you mean, ‘it’s nothing’? Have you taken to carrying pictures of anonymous children?”
“No. But it’s—well, it’s nothing you should worry about.”
“I’m not worried,” the Doctor protested. �
��Why should I be worried?”
“That’s right,” Mr. Moore said. “No reason.”
The Doctor eyed him. “Is it something you’re worried about?”
Mr. Moore sipped his drink and held up a hand. “Laszlo, please—you’ve got enough on your mind. Let’s just skip it.”
“John,” the Doctor answered, standing and speaking with genuine concern now, “if you’re in some kind of trouble—”
He stopped as Miss Howard reached up to touch his arm. “You needn’t press John, Doctor,” Miss Howard said. “The fact is, it’s a little matter I’m looking into. He’s been giving me some help, that’s all. I lent him the photograph.”
Leaning back and turning to Miss Howard, the Doctor grew less concerned and more intrigued. “Ah! A case, Sara?”
“Yes,” was her simple answer.
I could see that the Doctor was continuing to make much of his friends’ holding back, and his next remark was a bit more pointed: “Detective Sergeant,” he said to the ever-nervous Lucius, “I believe you’ll have more success reading that paper if you turn it right side up.”
“Oh!” Lucius answered, fixing the problem with a rustle of newsprint as Marcus let out a little sigh. “Yes, I—suppose you’re right, Doctor.”
There was another moment of silence, after which the Doctor spoke again: “I take it you two are also giving Miss Howard some help with her case.”
“Oh, not really,” Marcus answered uneasily. “Not much, that is. Still, the thing is—interesting, in a way.”
“Actually, Doctor,” Miss Howard said, “we could use your thoughts on it. Informally, I mean. If it wouldn’t be an imposition, that is.”
“Of course,” the Doctor replied; and the way he said it, it seemed to me that he was beginning to form an idea of what was going on and might be agreeing to take the first few steps down the road toward getting involved.
