The Alienist

It was all so much hot air, of course. Oh, Roosevelt dragged us down to Mulberry Street, all right, and locked us up for a few hours in his office, where we got one hell of a lecture about honor and trust and living up to one’s word; but eventually I told him the truth about what had happened that night, although not until I was fairly sure that Kreizler and the Isaacsons had had enough time to get where they were going. I explained to Theodore that I hadn’t really lied to him, since I myself hadn’t known what was going on before I showed up at the opera; indeed, I said, I still didn’t have explanations for many of the things that had happened up on the reservoir walls, although I intended to get them. And I promised that as soon as I did, I’d come straight to Mulberry Street and share the information. Roosevelt calmed down considerably as I was saying all this; and when Sara pointed out that the important thing, about which there could be no doubt, was that Beecham was dead, Theodore’s mood began to brighten considerably. As he’d told us several weeks earlier, the successful conclusion of the case meant a great deal to him personally (although, given the affair’s many complexities, he’d never be able to make much hay out of it professionally); and by the time Sara and I finally got up to leave his office, at about four o’clock, Theodore had traded criticism of some of that night’s developments for characteristically effusive praise of our team’s work as a whole.

“Unconventional, without doubt,” he clicked, putting a hand on each of our shoulders as he walked us out, “but, all in all, a magnificent effort. Magnificent. Think of it—a man with no connection to his victims, a man who could have been anyone in this city, identified and stopped.” He shook his head with an appreciative sigh. “No one would ever believe it. And to get Connor in the bargain!” I saw Sara wince just a bit at that; but she worked hard to conceal the reaction. “Yes, I will very much enjoy hearing just how our friend Kreizler cooked up that last part of his scheme.” Theodore rubbed his jowl and stared at the floor for a few seconds, then looked up at us again. “Well, then—what will you all do now?”

It was a simple question, yet one whose implications were, I suddenly discovered, thoroughly unpleasant. “What will we—?” I echoed. “Well, we—that is—I don’t really know. There are—details to tie up.”

“Of course,” Roosevelt answered. “But, I mean to say, the case is over—you’ve won!” He turned to Sara, as if expecting agreement.

She nodded slowly, looking as confused and uncomfortable as I felt. “Yes,” she finally managed to say, in the face of Theodore’s expectant expression.

There followed a long, peculiar pause, during which the vague but unsettling emotion that had been produced by the thought of the case being over took a stronger hold on each of us. In an attempt to banish it, Theodore changed the subject deliberately.

“At any rate,” he said, with a slap of his hands to his chest, “a fortunate and intriguing end. Timely, as well. I leave tomorrow for St. Louis.”

“Ah, yes,” I said, happy to talk about something else. “The convention. It’ll be McKinley, I take it?”

“On the first ballot,” Theodore replied with mounting gusto. “The convention is merely a formality.”

I gave him a needling smile. “Picked out a house in Washington yet?”

As always, Theodore grew stormy at any suggestion that he indulged in ambitious maneuvering; but then, remembering that I was an old friend who would never have questioned his basic motives, he let the storm pass. “Not quite. By thunder, though, what possibilities! Perhaps the Navy Department will—”

Sara let out a sudden, uncontrollable laugh, then covered her mouth quickly. “Oh,” she said. “I am sorry, Commissioner. It’s just that—well, I never would have thought of you as a Navy man.”

“Yes, Roosevelt,” I added, “when you come right down to it, what in the world do you know about naval matters?”

“Why,” he answered indignantly, “I wrote a book on the naval war of 1812—it was very well received!”

“Ah, well,” I answered, nodding, “that does make all the difference.”

Theodore’s smile returned. “Yes, Navy’s the place to be. From there we can start planning for a reckoning with those blasted Spaniards! Why—”

“Please,” I cut in, holding up a hand. “I don’t want to know.”

Sara and I moved to the staircase while Theodore stood in the doorway of his office with his hands on his hips. As always his energy seemed not in the least diminished by a long night of activity, and his beacon of a smile was still visible when we reached the end of the dark hall.

“Don’t want to know?” Theodore shouted after us merrily as we started down the stairs. “But you could come along! Why, with the work you people have done, the Spanish empire shouldn’t represent any great challenge! Come to think of it, there’s an idea in that—the psychology of the king of Spain! Yes, bring your chalkboard to Washington and we’ll decide just the right way to thrash him!”

His voice finally became inaudible as we left the building.

Sara and I walked the short block over to Lafayette Place, still in a kind of shock that prevented our going back over the conclusion of the case in any detail. Not that we didn’t want to clarify many of the things that had happened at the reservoir; but we both knew that we didn’t possess enough information to do so on our own. And the hard knowledge that we did possess was going to take time and wisdom to come to grips with. Of nothing was this more true than the fact that Sara had put an end to a man’s life that night.

“I suppose one of us was destined to do it,” she said wearily, after we’d turned onto Lafayette Place and begun to walk north. Her eyes stared blankly at the sidewalk. “Although I never would have thought that it would be me…”

“If anyone ever had it coming, Connor did,” I said, trying to be reassuring without committing the deadly sin (to Sara’s way of thinking) of mollycoddling.

“Oh, I know that, John,” she answered simply. “Honestly I do. Still…” Her voice trailed off, and then she stopped and took a deep breath, looking at the quiet street around her. Her eyes continued to wander from darkened building to darkened building, and finally came to rest on mine—then, in a quick motion that surprised me, she put her arms around me and laid her head on my chest. “It’s really over now, isn’t it, John?”

“You sound sorry,” I said, touching her hair.

“A little,” Sara answered. “Not for anything that’s happened—but I’ve never had an experience like this. And I wonder how many more I’ll be allowed.”

I lifted her head by the chin and looked deep into her green gaze. “Somehow, I get the feeling you’re done with people allowing you to do things. Not that you were ever very good at it, to start with.”

She smiled at that, then walked over to the curb. “Perhaps you’re right.” She turned when she heard a horse’s hooves. “Oh, there’s good luck—a hansom.”

Holding her right hand up to her face, Sara extended her index finger and thumb and, to my consternation, put them in her mouth. She then drew breath and blew hard, producing a whistle that almost split my head open. I clapped my hands to my ears and looked at her in shock, getting another big smile in return.

“I’ve been practicing that,” she said, as the cab clattered over and stopped next to her. “Stevie taught me. It’s fairly good, don’t you think?” She climbed up into the hansom, still smiling. “Good night, John. And thank you.” Rapping on the roof of the cab, she called out “Gramercy Park, driver!” and was gone.

Alone for the first time that night, I took a moment to try to decide just where I was going. I was bone- weary, to be sure, but sleep was somehow out of the question. Strolling through the still streets was definitely called for; not, as I say, to make sense of all that had happened, but simply to absorb the fact that it had. John Beecham was dead: the focus of my life, however gruesome, had been removed, and with a sudden ache of dread I realized that come Monday morning I’d have to decide whether or not I was going to report for duty back at the Times. The thought, brief and passing though it was, seemed nothing short of horrible— to spend more days and nights hanging around in front of Police Headquarters, waiting for a lead or a story to materialize, and then shooting off to get the facts on some bit of domestic violence or some housebreaking on Fifth Avenue…

Without intending to, I’d come to a stop at the corner of Great Jones Street. Looking down the block, I saw that the lights of the New Brighton Dance Hall were still burning bright. Perhaps explanations were not so far off after all, I thought; and then, before I’d consciously decided to go, my feet were carrying me toward the place.

I was still several doors away when I started to hear loud music echoing out of the New Brighton (Paul Kelly