The Alienist

“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 dancer. 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.”

“Taking—?” Kreizler asked leadingly.

“Taking an indirect route, in case we’re followed.”

Laszlo nodded. “Good. All right, Moore.”

As Kreizler slipped into the saloon, I looked back into the house and realized that no other members of the audience would have been able to see this exchange taking place—such was obviously why Laszlo had asked that we sit in the back of the box. Then, glancing at Stevie as he continued to suffer under the yoke of evening clothes, I had another realization: these two were supposed, by supplying vaguely similar silhouettes, to give the impression that Kreizler and I were still in the theater. But for what purpose? Where was Kreizler rushing off to? Questions continued to proliferate in my head, but the man with the answers was already on his way out of the building; and so, with Don Giovanni bellowing in horror as he descended into the inferno, I followed Kreizler to the Broadway doors of the Metropolitan.

His mood, when I caught up to him, was one of exhilarated determination. “We’ll walk,” he said to the doorman outside, who then waved off a group of anxious cab drivers.

“Kreizler, damn it,” I said in exasperation, as I followed him to the corner of Broadway. “You might at least tell me where we’re going!”

“I should’ve thought you would have determined that by now,” he answered, waving me on. “We’re going to find Beecham.”

The words hit me rather hard, making it necessary for Laszlo to grab me by my lapel and pull me along. As I stumbled with him to the curb and then waited for the traffic to let us cross, Laszlo chuckled once. “Don’t worry, John,” he said, “it’s only a few blocks, but that should give us enough time to attend to all your questions.”

“A few blocks?” I said, trying to shake off my daze as we wound through horse manure and rolling carriages and finally got across Broadway. “To High Bridge Tower? It’s miles away!”

“I’m afraid Beecham won’t be at High Bridge Tower tonight, Moore,” Kreizler answered. “Our friends are destined for a rather frustrating vigil.”

As we proceeded down Thirty-ninth Street, the noise of Broadway faded behind us and our voices began to echo off the darkened row houses that stretched on toward Sixth Avenue. “And where the hell is he going to be, then?”

“You can determine that for yourself,” Kreizler answered, his stride picking up ever more speed. “Remember what he left behind in his flat!”

“Laszlo,” I said angrily, grabbing his arm. “I’m not out here to play games! You’ve got me abandoning people I’ve been working with for months, not to mention leaving Roosevelt fairly well in the lurch—so just stand still and tell me what the hell is going on!”

For a moment he managed to trade his enthusiasm for compassion. “I’m sorry about the others, John—truly I am. If I could have thought of another way…But there isn’t one. Please understand, if the police are at all involved in this it will result in Beecham’s death—I’m as certain of that as I am of anything. Oh, I don’t mean that Roosevelt himself would play a part, but during the trip to the Tombs, or while he’s in his cell, there will be an incident of some kind. A detective, or a guard, or some other prisoner, perhaps—probably claiming self-defense—will most assuredly put an end to the rather large set of problems that you and I have come to know as John Beecham.”

“But Sara,” I protested. “And the Isaacsons. Surely they deserve—”

“I couldn’t take that chance!” Kreizler declared, continuing east with insistent steps. “They work for Roosevelt, they all owe their positions to him. I couldn’t take the chance that they wouldn’t tell him what I was planning. I couldn’t even tell you all of it, because I knew you’d pledged to share everything you knew with Theodore—and you’re not a man to break your word.”

That mollified me a bit, I must admit; but as I hustled to keep up with him, I continued to press hard for details. “But what are you planning? And how the hell long have you been planning it?”

“Since the morning after Mary was killed,” he answered, with just a trace of bitterness. We came to another halt at the corner of Sixth Avenue, and Kreizler turned to me, the black eyes still gleaming. “My initial withdrawal from the investigation was a purely emotional reaction, one that I probably would have reconsidered, in time. But on that morning I realized something—since I had become the main focus of our antagonists’ attention, my withdrawal was likely to give the rest of you a free hand.”

I paused to consider that. “And it did,” I judged after a few seconds. “We never saw any of Byrnes’s men again.”

“I did, however,” Kreizler answered. “And still do. I’ve had quite a time, leading them around the city. It was absurd, really, but I stayed with it, trusting that the rest of you—combining your own abilities with what you’d learned during our time together—would be able to find a set of clues that would make a definite prediction of Beecham’s next move possible.” As we started through the Sixth Avenue traffic, Laszlo held up his right hand, counting off considerations: “I’d already made the same assumptions you had about the twenty-first of June—Saint John the Baptist’s Day. That left the determination of victim and location in your hands. I had great