The Alienist

As we darted out the door Lasky made a dizzy lunge at us, but only succeeded in throwing himself back onto the floor. We passed four more guards in the cell block hallway, and I quickly told them that there’d been trouble between Lasky and Pomeroy and that the guard had been hurt. Seeing that Kreizler and I were uninjured, the guards sped on their way, while I forced Laszlo to make a dash past another group of uniformed men who stood in a confused huddle at the front gate. It didn’t take long for the guards inside to learn the truth of the situation, and soon they were howling threats as they chased after us. Fortunately, the old man we’d hired was still outside the prison gate with his rig, and by the time the pursuing guards appeared we were several hundred yards away from the place, making for the train station and—in my case, at least—praying that we wouldn’t have to wait long once we got there.

The first train to appear belonged to a small local line and was scheduled to make a dozen stops before it reached Grand Central; our predicament being what it was, however, we accepted the lengthy protraction of our trip and hopped on board. The cars were full of small-town travelers who evidently found our appearance shocking; and I must admit, if we looked half as much like fleeing outlaws as I felt, those good people were justified in their interpretation. In order to ease their anxiety, Kreizler and I went to the last of the train’s cars and stood outside its rear door on the observation platform. Watching the walls and chimneys of Sing Sing disappear into the black woods of the Hudson Valley as we sped away, I produced a small flask of whiskey, from which we both took deep pulls. When at last we could no longer see any part of the prison, we began to breathe easily again.

“You’ve got one hell of a lot of explaining to do,” I said to Laszlo, as we stood in the warm rush of air that blew back from the engine of the train. My feeling of relief was so pronounced that I could not suppress a smile, though I was quite serious about wanting answers. “You can start with why we came here.”

Kreizler took another pull from my flask, then studied it. “This is a particularly barbaric blend, Moore,” he said, avoiding my demand for information. “I’m a bit shocked.”

I drew myself up. “Kreizler…”

“Yes, yes, I know, John,” he replied, waving me to silence. “You’re entitled to some answers. But just where to begin?” Sighing once, Laszlo took another drink. “As I told you before, I spoke to Meyer earlier today. I gave him a complete outline of our work to date. I then told him about my—my exchange of words with Sara.” Grunting once shamefacedly, Laszlo kicked at the railing of the deck. “I really must apologize to her for that.”

“Yes,” I replied, “you must. What did Meyer say?”

“That he found Sara’s points concerning the role of a woman in the formation quite sound,” Kreizler answered, still a bit contrite. “I suddenly found myself arguing with him as I’d argued with Sara.” Taking another pull from the flask, Kreizler grunted again and murmured, “The fallacy, damn it all…”

“The what?” I asked, bewildered.

“Nothing,” Kreizler answered, with a shake of his head. “An aberration in my own thinking that has caused me to waste precious days. But it’s of no importance now. What is important is that as I thought the whole issue over this afternoon I found that both Meyer and Sara were right—there was powerful evidence that a woman had played an ominous role in the formation of our killer. His obsessive furtiveness, the particular breed of sadism, all such factors pointed toward the sort of conclusions that Sara had outlined. As I say, I tried to argue with Meyer, just as I’d argued with Sara, but then he brought up Jesse Pomeroy, and used my own twenty-year-old words to contradict what I was now saying. Pomeroy, after all, never even knew his own father, nor did he ever, so far as I have been able to tell, suffer excessive physical punishment as a child. Yet his was—and is—a personality in many ways similar to that of the man we seek. As you know, Pomeroy was steadfast in his unwillingness to discuss his mutilative activities at the time of his capture. I could only hope that time and solitary confinement had loosened his resolve. We were lucky there.”

I nodded, thinking back to Pomeroy’s statement. “What he said about his mother, and other children, and the scrutiny he was always under—do you think that’s really crucial?”

“I do, indeed,” Laszlo answered, his words starting to move at a characteristically quicker clip. “And so is his pronounced emphasis on the unwillingness of the people who inhabited his world to touch him. You remember what he said, about his own mother being unwilling to kiss his face? Quite probably the only physical contact with others that he ever knew as a boy was taunting or tormenting in nature. And from there we can draw a direct line to his violence.”

“How so?”

“Well, Moore, I’ll offer you yet another statement from Professor James. It’s a concept that he often brought up in class in the old days, and one which struck me like a thunderbolt the first time I read it in the Principles.” Laszlo turned to the sky and tried hard to remember the exact wording. “‘If all cold things were wet and all wet things cold, if all hard things pricked our skin, and no other things did so; is it likely that we should discriminate between coldness and wetness, and hardness and pungency respectively?’ As always, James wouldn’t see this idea through to its logical conclusion, in the dynamic realm of behavior. He discussed only functions, such as taste and touch—but everything I have ever seen indicates that it works dynamically, as well. Imagine it, Moore. Imagine that you had—because of disfigurement, cruelty, or some other misfortune—never known any human touch that was not stern or even harsh. How should you feel about it?”

I shrugged and lit a cigarette. “Rotten, I guess.”

“Perhaps. But in all likelihood you would not feel that it was extraordinary. Put it this way—if I say the word ‘mother’ to you, your mind will immediately run through a set of unconscious but entirely familiar associations based on experience. So will mine. And both of our sets of associations will doubtless be a mixture of the good and the bad, as will almost any person’s. But how many people will have a set of associations as uniformly negative as we know Jesse Pomeroy’s to be? Indeed, in Jesse’s case we can go beyond the limited concept of mother to the notion of humanity generally. Say the word ‘people’ to him and his mind leaps only to images of humiliation and pain, as routinely as if I were to say ‘train’ to you and you were to answer ‘movement.’”

“Is that what you meant when you told Lasky that Pomeroy was enjoying the beating he was getting?”

“It was. You may have noticed that Jesse deliberately constructed that entire event. It’s not hard to see why. Throughout his childhood he was surrounded by tormentors, and for the last twenty years virtually the only people he’s come into contact with have been men like Lasky. His experiences, both in prison and out, cause him to believe that interaction with his own species can only be adversarial and violent—he even compares himself empathetically to an animal in a menagerie. Such is his reality. That he will be beaten and berated, given his current circumstances, he knows; all he can do is attempt to set the terms of that abuse, to manipulate the participants into their actions as he once manipulated the children he tortured and killed. It’s the only kind of power or satisfaction—the only method of ensuring his psychic survival—he’s ever known, and he therefore employs it.”

As I smoked and struggled with this idea, I began to pace the deck. “But isn’t there something—well, something inside of him, inside of any person that would object to that kind of a situation? I mean, wouldn’t there be sadness or despair, even about his own mother? The desire to be loved, at least? Isn’t every child born with—”

“Be careful, Moore,” Kreizler warned as he lit a cigarette of his own. “You’re about to suggest that we’re born with specific a priori concepts of need and desire—an understandable thought, perhaps, were there any evidence to support it. The organism knows one drive from the beginning—survival. And yes, for most of us, that drive is somehow intimately bound up with the notion of a mother. But were our experiences terribly different—if the concept of mother suggested frustration and finally danger, rather than sustenance and nurturing—the instinct for survival would cause us to structure our outlook differently. Jesse Pomeroy experienced this. I now believe our killer did, too.” Laszlo drew heavily on his cigarette. “I can thank Pomeroy, for that. Meyer, as well. But most of all, I must thank Sara. And I intend to do so.”

Kreizler was true to that declaration. At one of the small towns we passed through on our way back to Grand Central he asked the station attendant if it would be possible to send what he assured the man was an urgent wire ahead to New York. The attendant agreed and Kreizler wrote out the message, which ordered Sara to meet us at Delmonico’s at eleven o’clock. Laszlo and I had no time to change for dinner once we reached the city, but Charlie Delmonico had seen us in far worse shape in our time, and when we arrived at Madison Square he made us feel as welcome as ever.

Sara was waiting at a table in the main dining room, one that looked out onto the park across Fifth Avenue and was as far from the other parties in the restaurant as possible. She expressed both concern for our safety—the wire had made her anxious—and then, once she saw that we were unharmed, great curiosity about our trip. Her