children. A drunkard, as well. But he is not mad, nor do I think he is connected to our current business.”
“Ah,” I said, seizing the opportunity, “now, about that—”
“They’ll
We exited the Pavilion, myself seeking refuge with Kreizler under his umbrella, and then climbed into the now-covered calash. I knew what was coming: a monologue that was a kind of catharsis for Kreizler, a restatement of some of his most basic professional principles, designed to relieve the enormous responsibility of helping send a man to his death. Kreizler was a confirmed opponent of the practice of executing criminals, even vicious murderers such as Wolff; but he did not allow this opposition to affect his judgment or his definition of true insanity, which was, by comparison with that of many of his colleagues, relatively narrow. As Cyrus jumped into the driver’s seat of the calash and the carriage pulled away from Bellevue, Kreizler’s diatribe began to cover subjects I’d heard him discuss many times before: how a broad definition of insanity might make society as a whole feel better but did nothing for mental science, and only lessened the chance that the truly mentally diseased would receive proper care and treatment. It was an insistent sort of speech—Kreizler seemed to be trying to push the image of Wolff in the electrical chair further and further away—and as it wound on, I realized that there was no hope of my gaining any hard information concerning just what in hell was going on and why I’d been called into whatever it was.
Glancing about at the passing buildings in some frustration, I let my eyes come to rest on Cyrus, momentarily thinking that, since he had to listen to this sort of thing more than anyone, I might get some sympathy out of the man. I should have known better. Like Stevie Taggert, Cyrus had had a hard life before coming to work for Laszlo and was now quite devoted to my friend. As a boy in New York Cyrus had seen his parents literally torn to pieces during the draft riots of 1863, when angry hordes of white men and women, many of them recently arrived immigrants, expressed their unwillingness to fight for the causes of the Union and slave emancipation by laying hold of any blacks they could find—including young children—and dismembering them, burning them alive, tarring them, whatever medieval tortures their Old World minds could conceive. A talented musician with a splendid bass- baritone voice, Cyrus had been taken in by a pandering uncle after his parents’ death, and trained to be a “professor,” a piano player in a brothel that proferred young black women to white men of means. But his youthful nightmare had left him rather reluctant to tolerate bigoted abuse from the house’s customers. One night in 1887 he had come upon a drunken policeman taking his graft in trade, which the cop apparently thought included brutal blows from the back of his hand and taunts of “nigger bitch.” Cyrus had calmly gone to the kitchen, fetched a large butcher knife, and dispatched the cop to that special Valhalla reserved for fallen members of the New York City Police Department.
Enter Kreizler once again. Expounding a theory he called “explosive association,” he had revealed the genesis of Cyrus’s actions to the judge in the case: during the few minutes involved in the killing, Laszlo said, Cyrus had returned in his mind to the night of his parents’ death, and the well of anger that had been left untapped since that incident came gushing forth and engulfed the offending policeman. Cyrus was not insane, Kreizler announced; he had responded to the situation in the only way possible for a man with his background. The judge had been impressed by Kreizler’s arguments, but given the public mood he could hardly release Cyrus. Internment in the New York City Lunatic Asylum on Blackwells Island was suggested; but Kreizler stated that employment at his Institute would be far more likely to effect rehabilitation. The judge, anxious to be rid of the case, agreed. The affair didn’t do anything to mitigate Kreizler’s public and professional reputation as a maverick, and it certainly didn’t make the average visitor to Laszlo’s home anxious to be alone in the kitchen with Cyrus. But it did ensure the man’s loyalty.
There was no break in the pelting rain as we moved at a trot down the Bowery, the only major street in New York that, to my knowledge, has never known the presence of a church. Saloons, concert halls, and flophouses flashed by, and when we passed Cooper Square I spotted the large electric sign and shaded windows of Biff Ellison’s Paresis Hall, where Giorgio Santorelli had centered his pathetic operations. On we drove, through more tenement wastelands whose sidewalk mayhem was only slightly moderated by the rain. It was not until we had turned onto Bleecker Street and were nearing Police Headquarters that Kreizler said flatly:
“You saw the body.”
“Saw it?” I said in some annoyance, though I was relieved to finally discuss the subject. “I still see it if I close my eyes for more than a minute. What the hell was the idea of getting my whole house up and forcing me to go down there, anyway? It’s not as though I can report that kind of thing, you know that—all it did was agitate my grandmother, and that’s not much of an achievement.”
“I’m sorry, John. But you needed to see just what it is we’ll be dealing with.”
“
“You do yourself no justice, Moore,” Kreizler said. “You are a veritable cyclopedia of privileged information— though you may not realize it.”
My voice rose: “Laszlo, what in
But once again, I could get no further. As we turned onto Mulberry Street I heard calling voices, and looked up to see Link Steffens and Jake Riis running toward the carriage.
CHAPTER 5
The closer the church, the nearer to God,” was how one gangland wit had put his decision to base his criminal operations within a few blocks of Police Headquarters. The statement could have been made by any one of dozens of like characters, for the northern terminus of Mulberry Street at Bleecker (headquarters was located at Number 300) marked the heart of a jungle of tenements, brothels, concert halls, saloons, and gambling houses. One group of girls who staffed a disorderly house directly across Bleecker Street from 300 Mulberry made great sport, during their few idle hours, of sitting in the house’s green-shuttered windows and watching the doings at headquarters through opera glasses, then offering commentary to passing police officials. That was the sort of carnival atmosphere that surrounded the place. Or perhaps one should rather say that it was a circus, and a brutal Roman one at that—for several times a day, bleeding victims of crime or wounded perpetrators of it would be dragged into the rather nondescript, hotel-like structure that was the busy brain of New York’s law enforcement arm, leaving a sticky, grim reminder of the deadly nature of the building’s business on the pavement outside.
Across Mulberry Street, at Number 303, was the unofficial headquarters of the police reporters: a simple stoop where I and my colleagues spent much of our time, waiting for word of a story. It was therefore not surprising that Riis and Steffens should have been awaiting my arrival. Riis’s anxious manner and the gleeful grin that dominated Steffens’s gaunt, handsome features indicated that something particularly tasty was up.
“Well, well!” Steffens said, raising his umbrella as he jumped onto the running board of Kreizler’s carriage. “The mystery guests arrive together! Good morning, Dr. Kreizler, a pleasure to see you, sir.”
“Steffens,” Kreizler answered with a nod that was not entirely congenial.
Riis came huffing up behind Steffens, his hulking Danish frame not so lithe as that of the much younger Steffens. “Doctor,” he said, to which Kreizler only nodded. He had a positive dislike for Riis; the Dane’s pioneering work in revealing the evils of tenement life—most notably through his collection of essays and pictures called
