The Alienist

in a dark corner of the city. I would have been lucky to escape with a dismissal; forced internment at the Bloomingdale Asylum would have been the more likely result.

“I haven’t spoken to Kreizler in years,” Roosevelt mused at length. “Although he sent me a very decent note when”—for a moment his words became awkward—“that is, at a very difficult time.”

I understood. Theodore was referring to the death of his first wife, Alice, who had passed away in 1884 after giving birth to their daughter, who bore the same name. His loss that day had been doubly staggering, for his mother had died within hours of his wife. Theodore had dealt with the tragedy typically, sealing off the sad, sacrosanct memory of his bride, and never mentioning her again.

He tried to rouse himself, and turned to me. “Still, the good doctor must have called you here for a reason.”

“I’m deuced if I can see it,” I replied with a shrug.

“Yes,” Theodore said with another affectionate chuckle. “As inscrutable as any Chinaman, our friend Kreizler. And perhaps, like him, I’ve been among the strange and awful too long, these past months. But I think I may be able to divine his purpose. You see, Moore, I’ve had to ignore all the other killings like this one, because there’s no desire to investigate them in the department. Even if there were, none of our detectives is trained to make sense of such butchery. But this boy, this horrible, bloody mess—justice can only be blind so long. I’ve a scheme, and I think Kreizler has a scheme—and I think you’re the one to bring us together.”

“Me?”

“Why not? Just as you did at Harvard, when we all met.”

“But what am I supposed to do?”

“Bring Kreizler to my office tomorrow. Late morning, as he says. We’ll share thoughts and see what can be done. But mind you, be discreet—as far as anyone else is concerned, it’s a social reunion of old friends.”

“Damn it, Roosevelt, what is a social reunion of old friends?”

But I’d lost him to the rapture of a plan. He ignored my plaintive question, took a deep breath, barreled his chest, and appeared far more comfortable than he had to that point. “Action, Moore—we shall respond with action!”

And then he grabbed me around the shoulders in a tight hug, his enthusiasm and moral certainty all back in full force. As for my own sense of certainty, any kind of certainty, I waited in vain for its arrival. All I knew was that I was being drawn into something that involved the two most passionately determined men I’d ever known—and that thought offered me no comfort as we went back downstairs to Kreizler’s carriage, leaving the body of the pitiable Santorelli boy alone on that tower, high in the freezing sky that was still untouched by any trace of dawn.

CHAPTER 4

Cold, cutting March rain came with the morning. I rose early to find that Harriet had, mercifully, prepared me a breakfast of strong coffee, toast, and fruit (which she, drawing on the experience of a family full of inebriates, believed essential for anyone who imbibed often). I settled into my grandmother’s glass- enclosed nook, overlooking her still-dormant rose garden in the rear yard, and decided to digest the morning edition of the Times before trying to telephone the Kreizler Institute. With the rain pattering on the copper roof and glass walls around me, I inhaled the fragrance of the few plants and flowers that my grandmother kept alive year-round and took in the paper, trying to reestablish contact with a world that, in light of the previous evening’s events, seemed suddenly and disturbingly removed.

SPAIN IS FULL OF WRATH, I learned; the question of American support for the nationalist rebels in Cuba (the U.S. Congress was considering granting them full belligerent status, and thus effectively recognizing their cause) was continuing to cause the vicious, crumbling regime in Madrid much worry. Boss Tom Platt, the town’s cadaverous old Republican mastermind, was assailed by the editors of the Times for trying to prostitute the imminent reorganization of the city into a Greater New York—one that would include Brooklyn and Staten Island, as well as Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan—to his own nefarious purposes. The approaching Democratic and Republican conventions both promised to center around the question of bimetallism, or whether or not America’s solid old gold standard should be sullied by the introduction of silver-based currency. Three hundred and eleven black Americans had taken ship for Liberia; and the Italians were rioting because their troops had been badly defeated by Abyssinian tribesmen on the other side of that dark continent.

Momentous as all this no doubt was, it held little interest for a man in my mood. I turned to lighter matters. There were bicycling elephants at Proctor’s Theatre; a troop of Hindu fakirs at Hubert’s Fourteenth Street Museum; Max Alvary was a brilliant Tristan at the Academy of Music; and Lillian Russell was The Goddess of Truth at Abbey’s. Eleanora Duse was “no Bernhardt” in Camille, and Otis Skinner in Hamlet shared her penchant for weeping too easily and too often. The Prisoner of Zenda was in its fourth week at the Lyceum—I had seen it twice and thought for a moment about going again that night. It was a grand escape from the worries of the usual day (not to mention the grim sights of an extraordinary night): castles with watery moats, sword battles, a diverting mystery, and stunning, swooning women…

Yet even as I thought of the play, my eyes wandered to other items. A man on Ninth Street who had once cut his brother’s throat while drunk, drank again and shot his mother; there were still no clues in the particularly vicious murder of artist Max Eglau at the Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes; a man named John Mackin, who had killed his wife and mother-in-law and then tried to end his own life by cutting his throat, had recovered from the wound but was now trying to starve himself. The authorities had convinced Mackin to eat by showing him the frightful force-feeding apparatus that would otherwise be used to keep him alive for the executioner…

I threw the paper aside. Taking in a last heavy gulp of sweet black coffee, and then a section of a peach shipped from Georgia, I redoubled my resolve to get to the Lyceum box office. I had just started back for my room to dress when the telephone let out with a loud clang, and I heard my grandmother in her morning room exclaim “Oh, God!” in alarm and anger. The telephone bell did that to her, yet she never entertained any suggestion that it be removed, or at least muffled.

Harriet appeared from the kitchen, her soft, middle-aged features specked with soap bubbles. “It’s the telephone, sir,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. “Dr. Kreizler calling.”

Pulling my Chinese robe tighter, I headed for the little wooden box near the kitchen and took up the heavy black receiver, putting it to my ear as I placed my other hand on the anchored mouthpiece. “Yes?” I said. “Is that you, Laszlo?”

“Ah, so you’re awake, Moore,” I heard him say. “Good.” The sound was faint, but the manner was, as always, energetic. The words bore the lilt of a European accent: Kreizler had immigrated to the United States as a child, when his German father, a wealthy publisher and 1848 republican, and Hungarian mother had fled monarchist persecution to begin a somewhat celebrated life in New York as fashionable political exiles. “What time does Roosevelt want us?” he asked, without any thought that Theodore might have refused his suggestion.

“Before lunch!” I said, raising my volume as if to overcome the faintness of his voice.

“Why the devil are you shouting?” Kreizler said. “Before lunch, eh? Excellent. Then we’ve time. You’ve seen the paper? The bit on this man Wolff?”

“No.”

“Read it while you’re dressing, then.”

I glanced at my robe. “How did you know that I—”

“They have him at Bellevue. I’m supposed to assess him, anyway, and we can ask a few additional questions, to determine if he’s connected to our business. Then on to Mulberry Street, a brief stop at the Institute, and lunch at Del’s—squab, I should think, or the pigeon crepinettes. Ranhofer’s poivrade sauce with truffles is superb.”

“But—”