The Alienist

We’d spent months putting details of personality and behavior to our killer’s vague image, and “anything” was most distinctly not possible. With a rather strange pang of dread and excitement I realized that I now knew this man well enough to say that he wouldn’t have sought a job that would have required him to either curry favor with immigrant tenement dwellers or hawk the shoddy wares of manufacturers and store managers, whom he would almost certainly consider less intelligent than himself.

“All right,” I said to Lucius, “but that still leaves a wide range of people—church workers, charity and settlement people, reporters, medical services…”

“You can narrow them down, too, John,” Lucius urged, “if you just keep thinking. Take the reporters who cover the tenements—you know most of them yourself. Do you really think Beecham’s a member of that group? As for the medical services—with Beecham’s background? When did he get the training?”

I considered all this, and then shrugged. “Well, all right. So the odds are he’s involved with mission or charity work of some kind.”

“It would be easy for him,” Sara said. “He’d have gotten all the religious grounding and terminology from his parents—his father was a powerful orator, after all.”

“Fine,” I said. “But even if we narrow it down that far, we’ll have a hard time checking them all by June 21st—Marcus and I took a week and only got through a fraction. It’s completely impractical!”

Impractical it may have been, but there was no way around it. We spent the rest of that day amassing a list of all the charitable and religious organizations that did business in the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village, then divided the list up into four regional groups. Each of us took one of these sub-listings and headed out the next morning, it no longer being practical to travel in pairs if we hoped to check the dozens of organizations on our rosters. In the first few places I visited that Friday I received a somewhat less than warm reception; and though I hadn’t expected anything different, the experience nonetheless filled me with a dread of the days and perhaps weeks to come. Repeated reminders to myself that tedious footwork is often the detective’s lot did little good: I’d already gone through one such exercise earlier in our investigation (an effort that had involved trips to some of the same places I was now visiting, though for a different purpose), and taking to the crowded sidewalks again only fixed my attention rather pessimistically on the clock that was ticking down toward the Feast of Saint John the Baptist—just sixteen days away.

One aspect of this latest search did, however, give me cause for optimism: it didn’t appear that I was being followed. Nor did I find, when I returned to our headquarters at the end of the day, that any of the others had noticed any disreputable types dogging their steps. We couldn’t be certain, of course, but the logical explanation seemed to be that our enemies simply didn’t believe we could succeed without Kreizler. Throughout the weekend we saw no trace of Connor or his accomplices, or of anyone else that looked as though they might be working for Byrnes or Comstock. If one had to pursue a tedious yet nerve-racking task, it was certainly preferable to do so without having to look over one’s shoulder; although I don’t think that any of us ever really stopped taking those looks.

Though we were hopeful that John Beecham had worked for one of the charitable organizations on our list at some point during the last ten years, we didn’t think that he’d necessarily visited any of the disorderly houses involved in the killings in an official capacity. It was far more likely, to our way of thinking, that he’d become acquainted with said places as a customer. Thus, though my assignment included those organizations that targeted the poor and wayward on the West Side between Houston and Fourteenth streets, I didn’t make any inquiries at the boy-pandering brothels in that neighborhood. I did, however, stop in at the Golden Rule just long enough to pass the new information we’d gathered concerning the killer along to my young friend Joseph. There was an awkward moment, when I arrived, being as I’d never before seen the boy actually practicing his trade. When Joseph caught sight of me he quickly vanished into a vacant room, and for a moment I thought he might not come back out; but finally he did, having taken the time to wipe the paint from his face. He smiled and waved cheerfully, then listened with a great show of attentiveness as I related my news and asked him to pass it along to his friends. Having concluded my business, and anxious to get on to the many offices in the neighborhood that I had assigned myself to visit that day, I said goodbye and turned to go. Joseph caught me at the door, however, and asked if maybe we could play billiards again sometime. I assented to the idea warmly; and with that tenuous connection between us ever so slightly reinforced, the boy disappeared into the back of the Golden Rule, leaving me to feel the usual remorse at his occupation. But I left quickly, knowing that I had a great deal of work to do and little time for useless rumination.

Every conceivable vice, it seemed, had a society in New York dedicated to its prevention. Some of these were general in their approach, such as the Society for the Prevention of Crime, or the various mission societies, Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, and others. Some, like the All Night Mission, chose to make their continuous accessibility the focus of speeches and leaflets delivered by their roaming agents in the ghettos; others, such as the Bowery Mission, were simply regional in their approach. A few, like the Horse Aid Society and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, didn’t concern themselves with human beings at all. (When I came across the names of those organizations, I couldn’t help but think back to Japheth Dury’s torture and mutilation of animals: it seemed to me that organizations that offered such close contact with helpless beasts, although they made no use of rooftop visitations, might still appeal to our man’s sadistic nature. Interviews with their officers, however, produced no results.) Then there were the seemingly infinite number and variety of orphanages, all of which employed roving zealots who were constantly on the lookout for abandoned waifs. Each of these institutions had to be checked especially carefully, given the predilection for such places that John Beecham had exhibited in Chicago.

It was the kind of work that quickly absorbed hours and then days, without producing any profound sense of satisfaction or reassurance that we were doing everything possible to stave off another killing. How many archly sanctimonious churchmen and churchwomen, not to mention their civilian counterparts, did Sara, the Isaacsons, and I have to interview, and for how many tedious hours? It would be impossible to say, nor would there be much point to revealing the numbers even if I knew them—for we learned nothing. All through the following week, each of us forced ourselves again and again through a similar procedure: we’d go to the offices or headquarters of some charitable service, where the simple question of whether a John Beecham, or anyone of similar appearance and manner, had ever worked there would be answered by long, pious statements about the organization’s laudable employees and goals. Only then would the files be checked and a firmly negative reply given, at which the unlucky member of our team might finally escape the place.

If I seem either hostile or cynical in recalling this particular phase of our work, perhaps it’s because of a realization that came to me as we reached the end of that second week in June: that the only group of outcasts in the city that didn’t seem to have several privately funded and nobly titled societies dedicated to its care and reform was the very one that was currently in such grave danger—child prostitutes. As this lack became more and more apparent to me, I couldn’t help but think back to Jake Riis—a man lionized in New York’s philanthropic circles—and to his blind refusal to admit or report the facts of Giorgio Santorelli’s murder. Riis’s deliberate myopia was shared by every official I spoke to, a fact that caused me more irritation every time I encountered it. By the time I came lumbering into Number 808 Broadway late Monday afternoon I was so sick of the fatuous hypocrites who made up New York’s charitable community that I was spewing a steady stream of rather violent curses. Having thought our headquarters empty when I came in, I spun round in shock when I heard Sara’s voice:

“That’s lovely language, John. Though I must say it fairly well describes my mood at this point.” She was smoking a cigarette and staring alternately at the map of Manhattan and the chalkboard. “We’re on the wrong track,” she decided in disgust, throwing the stub of her cigarette out an open window.

I collapsed onto the divan with a moan. “You’re the one who wants to be a detective,” I said. “You ought to know that we could go on like this for months before we get a break.”

“We don’t have months,” Sara answered. “We have until Sunday.” She continued to stare and shake her head at the map and the board. “And it’s not just the monotony that’s giving me this feeling.” She cocked her head, trying to nail down whatever was flitting through her mind. “Has it occurred to you, John, that none of these organizations seems to know very much about the people they’re trying to help?”

I propped myself up on an elbow. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure,” Sara answered. “They just don’t seem…knowledgeable. It doesn’t match.”

“Match what?”

“Him. Beecham. Look at what he does. He insinuates himself into these boys’ lives, and convinces them to