The Alienist

CHAPTER 43

It is never easier to understand the mind of a bomb-wielding anarchist than when standing amid a crush of those ladies and gentlemen who have the money and the temerity to style themselves “New York Society.” Suited, gowned, bejeweled, and perfumed, the fabled Four Hundred top families in the city, along with their various relations and hangers-on, can shove, snipe, gossip, and gorge with an abandon that the amused onlooker might find fascinating but the unfortunate interloper will deem nothing short of deplorable. I was one such interloper on Sunday evening, the twenty-first of June. Kreizler had asked me (strangely, it seemed even then) to meet him not at Seventeenth Street but in his box at the Metropolitan before the benefit performance, making it necessary for me to take a cab to the “yellow brewery” and then fight my way up the house’s narrow staircases alone. Absolutely nothing brings out the killer instinct in the upper crust of New York Society like a charity function; and as I squeezed and pushed through the vestibule, trying to coax movement out of grandes dames whose clothing and physical proportions were suited only to stationary pursuits, I occasionally ran into people I’d known during my childhood, friends of my parents who now turned away quickly when they caught my eye, or simply bowed in a minimal way that declared unmistakably, “Please, spare me the embarrassment of actually having to speak with you.” All of which was fine as far as I was concerned, except that they generally wouldn’t then step aside and allow me to get by. By the time I reached the building’s second tier my nerves, along with my clothes, had been thrown into disarray, while my ears were ringing with the din of several thousand perfectly idiotic conversations. Remedy was at hand, however: I sliced my way through to one of the pocket bars under a staircase, downed a quick glass of champagne, grabbed hold of two more, and then made directly and determinedly for Kreizler’s box.

I found Laszlo already in it, studying the evening’s program as he sat in one of the rear seats. “My God!” I said, falling into a chair next to him without spilling a drop of my champagne. “I haven’t seen anything like this since Ward McAllister died! You don’t suppose he’s risen from the grave, do you?” (For the benefit of my younger readers, Ward McAllister had been Mrs. Astor’s social éminence grise, the man who actually devised the Four Hundred system, basing it on the number of people who could fit comfortably into that great lady’s ballroom.)

“Let’s hope not,” Laszlo answered, turning to me with a welcoming—and welcome—smile. “Though one can never be truly certain about such creatures as McAllister. Well, Moore!” He put his program aside and rubbed his hands together, continuing to look much happier and healthier than he had during our last several encounters. He eyed my champagne. “You appear to be well prepared for an evening among the wolves.”

“Yes, they’re all out tonight, aren’t they?” I said, scanning the Diamond Horseshoe. I started to move to a forward seat, but Kreizler held me back.

“If you wouldn’t mind, Moore, I’d prefer that we sat in the back, tonight.” To my questioning look he answered, “I’m in no mood to be scrutinized this evening.”

I shrugged and resettled myself next to him, then continued to investigate the audience, turning soon to box 35. “Ah, I see Morgan’s brought his wife. Some poor actress will be out a diamond bracelet or two tonight, I suspect.” I looked down at the sea of bobbing heads below us. “Where in hell are they going to put all the people who are still outside—the orchestra seats are already full.”

“It’ll be a miracle if we can even hear the performance,” Kreizler said, with a laugh that puzzled me—it wasn’t the sort of thing he would usually have found amusing. “The Astor box is so overloaded it looks as though it’ll collapse, and the Rutherford boys were already too drunk to stand at seven-thirty!”

I’d taken out my folding glasses and was scrutinizing the other side of the horseshoe. “Quite a gaggle of girls in the Clews’ box,” I said. “They don’t look precisely like they came to hear Maurel. High-stakes husband-hunting, would be my guess.”

“The guardians of the social order,” Kreizler said, holding his right hand out toward the house with a sigh. “On parade, and don’t they make a sight!”

After giving Kreizler a baffled glance I said, “You’re in a rather bizarre mood—not drunk yourself, are you?”

“As sober as a judge,” Laszlo answered. “Not that any of the judges here are sober. And let me hasten to add, Moore, in reply to that very concerned look on your face, that I have not taken leave of my senses, either. Ah, there’s Roosevelt.” Kreizler held up his arm to wave, then winced a bit.

“Still giving you trouble?” I asked.

“Only occasionally,” he answered. “It really wasn’t much of a shot. I shall have to take that up with the man—” Kreizler seemed to catch himself as he glanced at me, and then he brightened deliberately. “Someday. Now, tell me, John—where are the other members of the team at this moment?”

I could feel that the “very concerned” look was still on my face, but at this last question I finally shrugged and let it go. “They’ve gone up to High Bridge with the detectives,” I said. “To get in position early.”

“High Bridge?” Kreizler repeated eagerly. “Then they’re expecting it to be High Bridge Tower?”

I nodded. “That was our interpretation.”

Kreizler’s eyes, quick and electric to that point, became positively brilliant with excitement. “Yes,” he murmured. “Yes, of course. It was the only other intelligent choice.”

“Other?” I said.

Shaking his head quickly he replied, “Nothing of importance. You didn’t tell them about our arrangement?”

“I told them where I was going,” I answered, a bit defensively. “But I didn’t tell them exactly why.”

“Excellent.” Kreizler sat back, looking deeply pleased. “Then there’s no way Roosevelt can know…”

“Know what?” I asked, starting to get that old familiar feeling that I’d walked into the wrong theater during the middle of a performance.

“Hmm?” Kreizler noised, as if barely conscious of my presence. “Oh. I’ll explain it later.” He pointed suddenly to the orchestra pit. “Splendid—here’s Seidl.”

Out to the podium strode the nobly profiled, long-haired Anton Seidl, once Richard Wagner’s private secretary and now the finest orchestra leader in New York. His Roman nose graced by a pair of pincenez that somehow managed to stay on their perch throughout the vigorous exertions that characterized his conducting style, Seidl commanded instant respect in the pit; and when he turned his stern glare on the audience many of the chattering society types also grew hushed and fearful for several minutes. But then the houselights went down and Seidl slashed into the powerful overture of Don Giovanni, at which the noise in the boxes began to grow again. Soon they were at a more annoying level than ever; Kreizler, however, continued to sit with a look of utter serenity on his face.

Indeed, for two and a half acts Laszlo endured that boorish audience’s ignorance of the musical miracle that was taking place onstage with confounding equanimity. Maurel’s singing and acting were as brilliant as ever, and his supporting cast—particularly Edouard de Reszke as Leporello—were superb; their only thanks, however, was the very occasional round of applause and ever more distracting talk and bustle in the house. Frances Saville’s Zerlina was a thorough delight, though her singing talents did not stop the besotted Rutherford boys from cheering in a way that indicated she was indistinguishable in their minds from the average Bowery concert hall dancer. During the intermissions the crowd behaved largely as it had before the performance—like a great herd of glittering jungle beasts—and by the time Vittorio Arimondi, playing the dead Commendatore, began to pound on Don Giovanni’s door I was utterly sick of the general atmosphere and utterly bewildered as to why Kreizler had asked me to come.

I soon had the beginnings of an answer. Just as Arimondi swept onstage and held a statuesque finger out toward Maurel, with Seidl whipping the orchestra into a crescendo such as I have rarely heard, even at the Metropolitan, Laszlo calmly stood up, took a deep, satisfied breath, and touched my shoulder.

“All right, Moore,” he whispered. “Let’s go, shall we?”

“Go?” I said, getting up and stepping with him to the darkest recesses of the box. “Go where? I’m supposed to meet Roosevelt after the performance.”

Kreizler didn’t answer, but calmly opened the door to the saloon, out of which stepped Cyrus Montrose and Stevie Taggert. They were dressed in clothes that closely resembled Kreizler’s and mine. I was surprised and very happy to see them both, especially Stevie. The boy looked quite recovered from the beating he’d taken at Connor’s hands, though he was obviously uncomfortable in such attire, and not very happy to be at the opera.

“Don’t worry, Stevie,” I said, taking a swipe at his shoulder. “It’s never been known to actually kill anyone.”

Stevie stuck a finger into his collar and tried to loosen the thing with a few tugs. “What I wouldn’t give for a cigarette,” he mumbled under his breath. “Don’t have one, do you, Mr. Moore?”

“Now, now, Stevie,” Kreizler said sternly, gathering up his cloak. “We’ve discussed that.” He turned to Cyrus. “You’re clear on what to do?”

“Yes, sir,” Cyrus answered evenly. “At the end of the performance Mr. Roosevelt will want to know where you’ve gone. I’ll tell him I don’t know. Then we’re to bring the rig to the place you spoke of.”

“Taking—?” Kreizler asked leadingly.

“Taking an indirect route, in case we’re followed.”

Laszlo nodded. “Good. All right, Moore.”

As Kreizler slipped into the saloon, I looked back into the house and realized that no other members of the audience would have been able to see this exchange taking place—such was obviously why Laszlo had asked that we sit in the back of the box. Then, glancing at Stevie as he continued to suffer under the yoke of evening clothes, I had another realization: these two were supposed, by supplying vaguely similar silhouettes, to give the impression that Kreizler and I were still in the theater. But for what purpose? Where was Kreizler rushing off to? Questions continued to proliferate in my head, but the man with the answers was already on his way out of the building; and so, with Don Giovanni bellowing in horror as he descended into the inferno, I followed Kreizler to the Broadway doors of the Metropolitan.

His mood, when I caught up to him, was one of exhilarated determination. “We’ll walk,” he said to the doorman outside, who then waved off a group of anxious cab drivers.

“Kreizler, damn it,” I said in exasperation, as I followed him to the corner of Broadway. “You might at least tell me where we’re going!”

“I should’ve thought you would have determined that by now,” he answered, waving me on. “We’re going to find Beecham.”

The words hit me rather hard, making it necessary for Laszlo to grab me by my lapel and pull me along. As I stumbled with him to the curb and then waited for the traffic to let us cross, Laszlo chuckled once. “Don’t worry, John,” he said, “it’s only a few blocks, but that should give us enough time to attend to all your questions.”

“A few blocks?” I said, trying to shake off my daze as we wound through horse manure and rolling carriages and finally got across Broadway. “To High Bridge Tower? It’s miles away!”

“I’m afraid Beecham won’t be at High Bridge Tower tonight, Moore,” Kreizler answered. “Our friends are destined for a rather frustrating vigil.”

As we proceeded down Thirty-ninth Street, the noise of Broadway faded behind us and our voices began to echo off the darkened row houses that stretched on toward Sixth Avenue. “And where the hell is he going to be, then?”

“You can determine that for yourself,” Kreizler answered, his stride picking up ever more speed. “Remember what he left behind in his flat!”

“Laszlo,” I said angrily, grabbing his arm. “I’m not out here to play games! You’ve got me abandoning people I’ve been working with for months, not to mention leaving Roosevelt fairly well in the lurch—so just stand still and tell me what the hell is going on!”

For a moment he managed to trade his enthusiasm for compassion. “I’m sorry about the others, John—truly I am. If I could have thought of another way…But there isn’t one. Please understand, if the police are at all involved in this it will result in Beecham’s death—I’m as certain of that as I am of anything. Oh, I don’t mean that Roosevelt himself would play a part, but during the trip to the Tombs, or while he’s in his cell, there will be an incident of some kind. A detective, or a guard, or some other prisoner, perhaps—probably claiming self-defense—will most assuredly put an end to the rather large set of problems that you and I have come to know as John Beecham.”

“But Sara,” I protested. “And the Isaacsons. Surely they deserve—”

“I couldn’t take that chance!” Kreizler declared, continuing east with insistent steps. “They work for Roosevelt, they all owe their positions to him. I couldn’t take the chance that they wouldn’t tell him what I was planning. I couldn’t even tell you all of it, because I knew you’d pledged to share everything you knew with Theodore—and you’re not a man to break your word.”

That mollified me a bit, I must admit; but as I hustled to keep up with him, I continued to press hard for details. “But what are you planning? And how the hell long have you been planning it?”

“Since the morning after Mary was killed,” he answered, with just a trace of bitterness. We came to another halt at the corner of Sixth Avenue, and Kreizler turned to me, the black eyes still gleaming. “My initial withdrawal from the investigation was a purely emotional reaction, one that I probably would have reconsidered, in time. But on that morning I realized something—since I had become the main focus of our antagonists’ attention, my withdrawal was likely to give the rest of you a free hand.”

I paused to consider that. “And it did,” I judged after a few seconds. “We never saw any of Byrnes’s men again.”

“I did, however,” Kreizler answered. “And still do. I’ve had quite a time, leading them around the city. It was absurd, really, but I stayed with it, trusting that the rest of you—combining your own abilities with what you’d learned during our time together—would be able to find a set of clues that would make a definite prediction of Beecham’s next move possible.” As we started through the Sixth Avenue traffic, Laszlo held up his right hand, counting off considerations: “I’d already made the same assumptions you had about the twenty-first of June—Saint John the Baptist’s Day. That left the determination of victim and location in your hands. I had great hopes that your young friend Joseph would give us help with the first of those questions—”

“He very nearly did,” I said, a now familiar pang of guilt and pain tugging at me. “As it was, he gave us an idea of who the victim wouldn’t be—we knew he didn’t come from one of the disorderly houses, that he was a street cruiser.”

“Yes,” Laszlo said, as we got to the east side of the avenue. “The boy did great service, and his death was a tragedy.” He hissed once, in deep remorse. “There are moments when this entire case, when everything and everyone that comes into any kind of contact with the life of John Beecham, seem destined for a tragic end…” His determination came suddenly bounding back: “At any rate, what Joseph said about a ‘castle,’ from which the intended victim would be able to view the entire city, was an unqualified help—that is, when considered in conjunction with what you found at Beecham’s flat. That really was a superb piece of work, by the way—your finding the place, I mean.”

I only nodded and smiled in appreciation, having by now abandoned any further attempt to question the course of action that Kreizler had evidently settled on for the evening. If such comparatively speedy aquiescence seems surprising, it must be remembered that for weeks I had worked without the benefit of Laszlo’s friendship and guidance, and had often felt their absence keenly. To be once again walking purposefully by his side, to hear him dissecting the case in such a deliberate and confident manner, and, above all, to know that Sara, the Isaacsons, and I, along with the investigation itself, had been in his thoughts throughout the time we’d spent apart, all gave me a great deal of joy and relief. I knew that he was now working somewhat at cross-purposes with the rest of our team; and it was easy to see that his wild-eyed enthusiasm contained an unpredictable and perhaps uncontrollable element; but such considerations seemed to count for little as we made our way down Thirty-ninth Street. We were on the correct trail, I was certain of that much, and my own excitement soon made short work of the small, prudent voice in the back of my mind that said that we were only two, rushing in to perform a task that had originally been planned for scores.

I gave Kreizler a conspiratorial glance. “When Roosevelt finds that we’ve left the opera,” I said, “he’ll tear the city apart looking for us.”

Laszlo shrugged. “He’d be better off using his head. He has the clues he needs to determine our whereabouts.”

“The clues? You mean the things in Beecham’s flat?” I grew puzzled yet again. “But it was what we found there that led us to decide on High Bridge Tower—that and the business about a castle.”

“No, John,” Kreizler answered, his hands moving again as he spoke. “It was part of what you found at Beecham’s flat that led you to such a conclusion. Think again. What did he leave behind?”

I went over it in my mind. “The collection of eyes…the map…and the box with the daguerreotype on it.”

“Correct. Now think what conscious or unconscious considerations caused him to leave only those things. The eyes tell you unmistakably that you have the right man. The map gives you a general idea of where he’ll strike next. And the box—”

“The box tells us the same thing,” I interjected quickly. “The daguerreotype lets us know that we’ve found Japheth Dury.”

“True,” Kreizler said emphatically, “but what about the thing that’s in the box?”

I wasn’t following him. “The heart?” I mumbled in confusion. “It was an old, dried-up heart—you think it was his mother’s.”

“Yes. Now, put the map and the contents of the box together.”

“The city water system…and the heart…”

“Now add what Joseph said.”

“A castle or a fort,” I answered, still not getting it. “A place from which you can see the whole city.”

“And…?” Kreizler urged.

As we turned and began to walk up Fifth Avenue, the answer hit me like a cartload of bricks. Stretching away for two blocks to the north and one block to the west, its walls as high as the buildings around them and as prodigious as those of the fabled city of Troy, was the Croton Reservoir. Built in the Egyptian mausoleum style, it was indeed a castlelike fortress, on whose ramparts New Yorkers often strolled, enjoying the splendid, panoramic views of the city (as well as of the man-made lake within) that the structure afforded. In addition, the Croton was the main distributing reservoir for all of New York; it was, quite simply, the heart of the city’s water system, the center to which all aqueducts fed and from which all mains and arteries drew their supply. Astounded, I turned to Kreizler.

“Yes, John,” he said, smiling as we approached the thing. “Here.” Then he pulled me in close under the walls of the reservoir, which were deserted at that late hour, and lowered his voice. “The rest of you no doubt discussed the possibility that Beecham knows our first move would be to watch the waterfronts—but in the absence of a suitable alternative, you remained focused on those areas.” Laszlo looked up and, for the first time that night, displayed some little bit of apprehension. “If my guess is correct, he’s up there now.”

“This early?” I asked. “I thought you said—”

“Tonight is very different,” Kreizler answered quickly. “Tonight he has set his table early, the better to be ready for his guests.” Reaching inside his cloak, Kreizler produced a Colt revolver. “Take this, will you, Moore? But do not use it, unless you must. There is much I want to ask this man.”

Kreizler started to move toward the massive main gate and staircase of the reservoir, which strongly resembled the entranceway to an Egyptian temple of the dead. Given our purpose that night, the similarity caused a strong shiver to rattle my bones. I stopped Laszlo as we neared the portal.

“One thing,” I whispered to him. “You say Byrnes’s men have been following you—how do you know they’re not watching us now?”

There was something about the blank way in which he looked back at me that was deeply unsettling: like a man who has divined his fate and has no intention of trying to avoid it.

“Oh, I don’t know that they’re not,” he answered, quietly and simply. “In fact, I’m counting on the fact that they are.”

With that, Laszlo entered the gate and took to the broad, dark stairs that wound up through the massive wall to the promenade. I shrugged helplessly at his cryptic words and was about to follow him, when a faint glimmer of brass somewhere on the other side of Fifth Avenue suddenly caught my eye. I stopped short and tried to locate the source.

On Forty-first Street, beneath one broad-boughed tree whose leaves provided an effective refuge from the glow of the arc streetlamps on the avenue, was an elegant black brougham, whose lanterns were glittering ever so slightly. Both horse and driver appeared to be asleep. For a moment the sense of dread that I felt about climbing the reservoir walls heightened dramatically; but then I shook it off and moved to catch up to Kreizler, telling myself that there had to be a great many people in New York besides Paul Kelly who owned elegant black broughams.