The Alienist

brightly. He stood in a wide stance and leaned down to look first Kreizler and then me in the face.

“Only two,” he said, shaking his head. “That was stupid—stupid.” He lifted the knife, which closely resembled the one that Lucius had shown us at Delmonico’s, and pressed the flat of its blade against Laszlo’s right cheek, letting it play languorously around the lines of my friend’s face.

Laszlo watched Beecham’s hand move, and then said cautiously, “Japheth—”

Beecham growled viciously and then brought the back of his left hand hard across Laszlo’s head. “Don’t you say that name!” He seethed violently. The knife went back under one of Laszlo’s eyes, and Beecham pressed it firmly enough to bring a bead of blood from Laszlo’s cheek. “Don’t you say that name…” Beecham drew himself up and took a deep breath, as if he felt his outburst had been somewhat undignified.

“You’ve been looking for me,” he said—and then, for the first time, he smiled, showing huge, yellowing teeth. “You’ve been trying to watch me, but I’ve been watching you.” The smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “You want to watch?” He indicated the boy with his knife. “Then watch. He dies first. Cleanly. Not you, though. You’re stupid and worthless—you couldn’t even stop me. Stupid, worthless animals—you I’ll dress alive.”

As he strode back to the boy I whispered to Kreizler, “What’s he going to do?”

Laszlo was still shaking off the effects of the blow he’d taken. “I believe,” he answered, “that he intends to kill that boy. And I believe he intends for us to observe it. After which…”

I saw that a small stream of blood was running down Kreizler’s cheek and jaw. “You all right?” I asked.

“Ah,” Laszlo noised in reply, showing remarkably little concern over our prospective fates, “it’s the stupidity that hurts the most. We chase a man who’s an expert mountaineer, and then we’re surprised when he negotiates a simple masonry wall to get behind us…”

Beecham was by now crouching over the bound boy. “Why did he take off his clothes?” I asked.

Laszlo studied our attacker for a moment. “The blood,” he said at length. “He wants to keep it off his clothes.”

Having put his knife aside for a moment, Beecham began to run his hands over the young, writhing body before him.

“But is that, in fact, the only reason?” Laszlo went on, some surprise showing in his voice.

Beecham’s face continued to betray no sign of anger or lust or any other feeling. He probed the boy’s torso and limbs as an anatomy instructor might have done, pausing only when he laid hands on the young genitals. After fondling them for a few minutes he stood and stepped behind the boy, stroking the upturned buttocks with one hand and his own member with the other.

I grew sickened at the thought of what I believed must come next, and turned away. “But I thought—” My quiet mumble was almost a protest. “I thought he didn’t rape them.”

Laszlo continued to observe. “That may not mean that he hasn’t tried to,” he judged. “This is a complex moment, John. He claimed in his note that he didn’t ‘soil’ the boys. But did he try?”

I picked my head back up to see Beecham still stroking the boy and himself, failing to produce an erection in his own organ. “Well,” I said in disgust, “if he wants to do it why—”

“Because he doesn’t, in fact, want to,” Kreizler replied, his already strained neck straining further to nod his head as he began to fully comprehend what was happening. “He feels an obsessive force pushing him toward it, as toward the killing—but it isn’t desire. And while he can force himself to kill, he can’t force himself to rape.”

As if in response to Laszlo’s analysis of the scene, Beecham suddenly howled in deep-seated frustration, raising his thick arms to the heavens and shaking throughout his body. Then he looked down again, stepped quickly around to the boy’s front end once more, and slipped his long-fingered hands around the young throat.

“No!” Kreizler suddenly called. “No, Japheth, for God’s sake, it isn’t what you want to—”

“Don’t say that name!” Beecham shouted again, as the boy squealed and twisted madly in his grip. “I’ll kill you, you filthy—”

Suddenly, from my left, a somehow familiar voice came out of the darkness:

“You ain’t killing anybody, you miserable bastard.”

Sore as my neck was, it turned quickly to catch sight of Connor, walking down the promenade and holding an impressive Webley .445 revolver. Behind him came two figures who had by now taken on the status of old acquaintances: the same thugs who’d come after Sara and me in the Santorellis’ tenement, who’d dogged Laszlo’s and my steps during our trip to visit Adam Dury, and whom I’d unceremoniously ejected from the Boston–New York train.

Connor’s shifty eyes went thin as he stepped toward Beecham. “You hear me? Get the hell away from that kid.”

Very slowly, Beecham released his grip on the boy. His face became an absolute blank, and then it changed dramatically: for the first time an emotion—terrible fear—became apparent in the widening of the eyes. Just when it seemed that those organs could open no further, they began to blink, rapidly and uncontrollably.

“Connor!” I said, finally overcoming my astonishment. Turning to Laszlo for an explanation, I saw him eyeing our apparent rescuer with a look of both hatred and satisfaction.

“Yes,” Laszlo said evenly. “Connor…”

“Get those two down,” Connor said to one of his men, as he leaned over to pick up Kreizler’s Colt. He kept the Webley trained on Beecham as the man to his right moved somewhat grudgingly to free first Laszlo and then me. “And you,” Connor said to the cowering murderer. “Get your fucking clothes on, you blasted sodomite.”

But Beecham made no move to comply. His expression became more fearful, he huddled closer to the wall— and then the spasming began. Initially it was slow, involving only the blinking of the eyes and a tug at the right corner of the mouth; but soon the entire right side of the face was contracting violently and at a quick clip, producing a pathetic effect that I must admit would have seemed, under other circumstances, cruelly laughable.

As he watched this transformation take place, a look of blatant disgust came into Connor’s bearded face. “My God,” he said. “You sick, miserable bastard…” He turned to the man on his left. “Mike—cover him up, for God’s sake.” The man went over, picked up Beecham’s clothes, and threw them at him. Beecham grabbed the garments and held them close, but didn’t try to dress himself.

Once Laszlo and I were back standing on the promenade we both spent a few seconds trying to loosen up our painfully cramped arms and shoulders, while Connor’s thugs went over to stand behind their chief again.

“Aren’t you going to untie the boy?” Laszlo said, his voice still marked by harsh bitterness.

Connor shook his head. “Let’s get a few things straight, first, Doctor,” he said, as if, despite the Webley, he was afraid of what Kreizler might do. “Our business is with this one here”—he indicated Beecham—“and only with him. You get on out of here and there’ll be nothing more to it. The whole business ends tonight.”

“Indeed it does,” Laszlo replied. “But not in the way that you anticipate, I’m afraid.”

“Meaning?” Connor asked.

“Meaning that our leaving is out of the question,” Kreizler answered. “You made it so when you fouled my home with your murderous presence.”

Connor shook his head quickly. “Now, just you wait, Doctor—I wanted none of that! I was doing my job, following the orders I’d been given, and that little bitch—” Kreizler’s face betrayed open rage and he took half a step forward. Connor gripped the Webley tighter. “Don’t do it, Doctor—don’t give me a reason. Like I say, we’re only here to do this one, but you know full well I’d be happy to make it the three of you. That might not please my bosses—but if you give me cause, so help me, I’ll shoot you down.”

For the first time, Beecham seemed to fix his attention on what was happening around him. His face still spasming, he turned to look at Connor and his thugs; then, in a sudden flurry, he scurried over near Laszlo’s legs.

“They—” he said tremulously. “They’re going—going to kill me.”

Connor chuckled once gruffly. “Yes, it’s dead you’ll be when they take you off this wall, you damned fool butcher. All of this trouble over you, and what are you? A poor excuse for a man, with your whining and crawling.” Connor began to swagger a bit in front of his cohorts. “Hard to believe, ain’t it, fellas? That— thing there is what this has all been about. Just because his idea of fun is to fuck little boys and then cut them up.”

“Liar!” Beecham suddenly bellowed, balling his fists but staying in a crouching