The Alienist (50 page)

I found Sara locked in private conversation with Mr. Harper in his small office. Neither the man nor the room matched the pleasant gold-leaf lettering on the windows. If Mr. Harper employed a cleaning service, you couldn’t tell it from the soot that coated the few pieces of furniture in his office, while the roughness of his clothing and large cigar were exceeded only by that of his unshaven face and jaggedly cut hair. Sara introduced us, but Harper didn’t offer his hand.

“I’ve read a great deal about medicine, Mr. Moore,” he explained in a coarse voice, locking his thumbs into his stained vest. “Microbes, sir! Microbes are responsible for disease, and they pass through the touch!”

For an instant I thought of telling the man that bathing might give those microbes something to worry about; but then I just nodded and turned to Sara, my face asking why in the world she’d forced me to come to this place.

“We should have thought of it right away,” she whispered, before saying out loud: “Mr. Harper was engaged by Mr. Lanford Stern of Washington Street in February, to attend to some outstanding debts.” Recognizing that this didn’t jog my memory one bit, Sara added confidentially, “Mr. Stern, you will recall, owns a number of buildings in the Washington Market area. One of his tenants is a Mr. Ghazi.”

“Oh,” I said simply. “Oh, of course. Why didn’t you just say that—”

Sara stopped me with a touch, obviously not wanting Mr. Harper to learn the real nature of our business. “I saw Mr. Stern this morning,” she said pointedly, and finally I realized why we should have thought of going back to Mr. Stern at the beginning of this phase of our search: the elder Ghazi had been months behind in his rent at the time of his son’s death. “I told him,” Sara continued, “about the man we’re anxious to find—the man who we believed worked as a collector, and whose brother has died, leaving him a great deal of money?”

I nodded and smiled, recognizing that Sara was developing her own talent for impromptu falsehoods. “Oh, yes,” I said quickly.

“Mr. Stern said that he referred all his back rent accounts to Mr. Harper,” Sara continued. “And—”

“And as I told Miss Howard, here,” Harper cut in, “if there’s estate money to be had, I want to know what my cut’ll be before I reveal anything.”

I nodded and faced the man fully—this was going to be child’s play. “Mr. Harper,” I said, with a broad flourish, “I feel confident in saying that if you can provide us with the whereabouts of Mr. Beecham, you can expect a very generous percentage. A finder’s fee, as it were. Say, five percent?”

Harper’s saliva-soaked cigar almost fell out of his mouth. “Five per—why, that
is
generous, sir. Generous, indeed! Five percent!”

“Five percent of all there is,” I repeated. “You have my word. But tell me—
do
you know Mr. Beecham’s whereabouts?”

The man looked momentarily unsure of himself. “Well—that is, I know them
approximately,
Mr. Moore. I know of where he’s
likely
to be, anyway—at least when he gets thirsty.” I gave the man a hard stare. “I can take you there, myself, honest to God! It’s a little stale-beer dive down in the Mulberry Bend, that’s where I first met him. I would tell you to wait for him here, but—the fact is that about two weeks ago I had to let him go.”

“Let him go?” I queried. “Why?”

“I’m a respectable man,” Harper answered. “And this is a respectable business. But—well, sir, the fact is you occasionally have to use a little muscle. Do some convincing. Who’s going to pay their bills without a little convincing? I originally hired Beecham because he was a big man, and strong. Said he could handle himself in a fight. So what does he do? Talks to them. Chats it up, that’s what he does. Well, shit, sir—oh. My apologies, Miss. But you’re not going to get any money out of anybody by talking to them. Especially not the immigrants. Hell, you give them the chance, they’ll talk you into the grave! That Ghazi character was a good example—I sent Beecham to his place three times and he never got one nickel out of the man.”

Harper had more he wanted to tell us, but we didn’t need to hear it. After asking him to write down the address of the stale-beer dive he’d mentioned, Sara and I told him that we were going to check his lead out that very night, and that if it led to Beecham he could expect his money very soon. Ironically, this avaricious little man had given us the first piece of free information we’d had in two days—and the only one that was destined to amount to anything.

CHAPTER 41

A
s we came out of Harper’s building we ran headlong into the Isaacsons, who had found my note. Immediately repairing to Brübacher’s Wine Garden, the four of us went over what the account settler had said. Then we devised a plan for the evening. Our options were fairly straightforward: if we should locate Beecham we wouldn’t confront him, but rather telephone Theodore and have him send down several detectives—men whose faces would be unknown to Beecham—whom we’d set to work shadowing the man. Alternately, if we were able to find out where Beecham lived, but if for some reason he wasn’t in, we’d quickly search his place for evidence that might permit an immediate arrest. That much settled, we all drained our glasses and, at about eight-thirty, boarded a streetcar and began our expedition into Five Points.

The effect of that storied neighborhood has always been difficult to describe to the uninitiated. Even on a pleasant spring night like the one we moved through that Thursday, the place exuded a deep sense of mortal threat; yet that threat was not always or even usually exhibited in loud or aggressive ways, such as was the case in some other shady parts of the city. In the Tenderloin, for example, a general air of defiant carousing reigned, making encounters with drunken toughs out to demonstrate their prowess a routine matter. Yet such were little more than noisy displays, generally, and a murder in the Tenderloin was still a noteworthy event. Five Points was an entirely different breed of neighborhood. Oh, there were shouts and screams to be heard, all right; but they tended to drift out of buildings, or, if they did originate outside, to be quickly stifled. Indeed, I think the most disconcerting thing about the area around Mulberry Bend (the few blocks of the Bend itself were at that time being demolished, thanks to Jake Riis’s tireless campaigning) was the surprisingly low level of outward activity. The residents of the neighborhood spent most of their time crammed into the miserable shanties and tenements that lined the streets, or, more often, packed into the dives that occupied the ground and first floors of a remarkably large number of those squalid buildings. Death and despair did their work without fanfare in the Bend, and they did a lot of it: just walking down those lonely, decrepit streets was enough to make the sunniest of souls wonder about the ultimate value of human life.

I could see that Lucius was doing just that as we reached the address Harper had given us, Number 119 Baxter Street. A few dirt- and urine-covered stone stairs next to the building’s entrance led down to a doorway that, to judge by the laughs and groans floating out of it, was the entrance to the dive we’d been told Beecham frequented. I turned to Lucius, and found him anxiously scanning the dark streets around us.

“Lucius—you and Sara stay here,” I said. “We’ll need you to keep watch.”

He nodded once, producing a handkerchief and wiping his forehead. “Good,” he said. “Fine, I mean.”

“And if there’s any trouble do
not
show your badge,” I added. “It’s just an invitation to murder, down here.” As Marcus and I made for the steps, I eyed Lucius once more and then murmured into Sara’s ear, “Look after him, will you?” She smiled once at that, and though I could tell that she, too, was apprehensive, I knew that her aim would remain steady through whatever followed. Marcus and I went inside.

I don’t know precisely what the caves looked like that prehistoric men are said to have inhabited, but the average Five Points dive cannot have represented any great advancement—and the one we entered that night was nothing if not average. The ceiling was only eight feet or so from the dirt floor, since the space had originally been designed as a cellar for the storefront above. There were no windows: light was provided by four filthy kerosene lamps that hung above a like number of long, low tables arranged in two rows. At these tables sat and slept the customers, their differences of age, sex, and dress more than outweighed by their common air of drunken dementia. There were about twenty people in the place that night, though only three—a pair of men and a woman, the last groaning and cackling at the incomprehensible statements of the other two—showed any real signs of life. They examined us with looks of glassy hatred when we came in, and Marcus inclined his head toward me.

“I suppose,” he whispered, “that the key in here is to move slowly.”

I nodded, and then we wandered back to the “bar”—a plank resting on two ash barrels at the far end of the room. Immediately, two glasses of the substance from which such places took their name were placed in front of us. Stale beer was a flat, repellant mixture of the dregs that were collected from dozens of kegs in slightly more reputable houses—I paid for the drinks but made no move to touch mine, and Marcus pushed his glass aside.

The bartender who stood before us was about five and a half feet tall, with tawny hair, a matching mustache, and a typical look of slightly crazed resentment on his face.

“Don’ wan’ the drinks?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Information. About a customer.”

“Fuck,” the man snorted. “Ge’ out.”

I produced more money. “Just one or two questions.”

The man looked around anxiously and, seeing that the trio of relatively
compos mentis
customers were no longer watching us, slipped the money into his pocket. “Well?”

I shot the name Beecham over the bartender’s bow, producing no reaction; but when I went on to describe a tall man with a facial twitch, I could see by the heightened glimmer in the fellow’s sickly bright eyes that our friend Mitchell Harper had played straight with us.

“A block up,” the bartender mumbled. “Number 155. Top floor, inna back.”

Marcus looked at me dubiously, and the bartender caught it. “Seen it myself!” he insisted. “You frumma girl’s fam’ly?”

“Girl?” I said.

The bartender nodded. “Too’ a girl up there. Mother thought she’d been ’napped. Didn’ hurt her, though—but did near kill a man that mentioned it in here.”

I weighed that. “He drinks a lot?”

“Didn’ used to. Never unnerstood what he was doin’ here when he first showed up. Lately more, though.”

I looked to Marcus, who gave me a quick nod. After dumping some more money on the bar we turned to go, but the bartender grabbed my arm. “You heard nuthin’ from me,” he said urgently. “Tha’s no man to cross.” He bared several yellow and gray teeth. “Iss quite a pick he carries.”

Marcus and I started away again, leaving the bartender to drain the two glasses of stale beer he’d poured for us. Once more we exercised great care in walking by the near-dead bodies at the tables, and though one man by the door did turn and begin to urinate unconsciously on the floor as we passed, there didn’t seem anything personal in the act.

As Marcus stepped over the puddle of urine he murmured to me, “So Beecham’s drinking.”

“Yes,” I answered, opening the front door. “I remember Kreizler saying once that our man might be entering a final, self-destructive phase. Anybody who drinks in a joint like this has certainly done that.”

We got back outside to find Sara and Lucius looking just as anxious as we’d left them. “Come on,” I said quickly, leading the way north. “We’ve got an address.”

Number 155 Baxter Street was an unremarkable New York tenement, though in any other neighborhood the women and children who were hanging out its windows on that seasonable night would have been laughing or singing or at least screaming at one another. Here they simply sat with their heads in their hands, the youngest of them looking as worldly and tired as the oldest, and none of them exhibiting any interest in what occurred on the street. A man who I placed at about thirty was seated on the stoop, swinging a nightstick that looked to be authentic police issue. It wasn’t difficult to judge, after getting a glimpse of the man’s blow-twisted features and surly grin, just how he’d laid hands on the trophy. I mounted the stoop, and the end of the nightstick poked my chest just hard enough to stop me from going further.

“Business?” the crooked-faced man said, his breath reeking of camphor-laced liquor.

“We’re here to see a resident,” I answered.

The man laughed. “Don’t git gay wit me, swell. Business?”

I paused before answering. “Who are you supposed to be?”

The laugh died. “I’m
supposed
to be da mug what watches dis building—for da landlord. So don’t git gay wit me, boy, less youse wanna taste dis sap.” He was speaking in the Bowery slang long since immortalized by the city’s toughs, a language that was always a little difficult to take seriously; still, I didn’t like the look of the nightstick, and went for my billfold once again.

“Top floor,” I said, holding some money out. “In the back. Anybody home?”

The man’s grin returned. “Oh!” he said, taking the cash. “Youse mean old—” He suddenly began to blink, and then to comically contort his right jaw, cheek, and eye. Apparently unsatisfied with the results of this performance, he heightened its effect by tugging at his head with his hands. Pleased with this additional effort, he began to laugh loud. “Nah, he ain’t dere,” he finally said. “Never dere, not nights. During da day, sometimes, but not nights. You can check da roof, mebbe he’s up dere. Likes it up dere, does dat boid.”

“What about his flat?” I said. “Maybe we’d like to wait for him there.”

“Mebbe it’s locked,” the fellow answered with another grin. I held out still more money. “Den agin, mebbe it ain’t.” The man started into the building. “Ain’t cops, is youse?”

“I’m not paying you to ask questions,” I answered.

The man gave my words something that approached consideration, then nodded. “Okay. Come on wit me—but keep it quiet, right?”

We all nodded and followed the man inside. The building’s long, darkened staircase was redolent with the usual stenches of rotting refuse and human waste, and at its foot I paused to let Sara get in front of me.

“A world away from Mrs. Piedmont’s,” she whispered as she passed.

We got up the six flights of stairs without incident, and then our guide knocked on one of four doors that branched off a small landing. After getting no reply, he held up a finger. “Wait here a minute,” he said, and then he loped up the final flight of stairs to the roof. In seconds he was back, looking more relaxed. “All clear,” he announced, taking a large ring of keys from his hip pocket and unlocking the door he’d knocked on. “Hadda make sure he weren’t around. He’s a touchy one, old—” Instead of saying a name, the man began to contort his face again, which gave him another laugh. Finally, we entered the flat.

A kerosene lamp sat on a shelf by the door, and I lit it. The space that slowly became visible was essentially one narrow hallway, perhaps thirty feet in overall length, in the middle of which had been built a small partition and a doorway with a transom over it. Two recently cut chinks in the side walls were the flat’s only connections to the outside world, offering limited, bleak views across narrow airshafts into similar gaps in the walls of neighboring flats. A small stove was set up against the partition, though there were apparently no sanitary facilities, other than a rusted bucket. Only a few pieces of furniture could be seen from the front door: a plain old desk and chair on the near side of the partition, and beyond it the foot of a bed. Coats of thick, cheap paint had chipped and peeled away from the walls, revealing one another and creating the overall impression of a brown stain such as one might find at the bottom of a commode.

In this place lived the being who had once been Japheth Dury and was now the murderer John Beecham; and within this spare little hole there had to be clues, difficult as they might be to see. Without speaking, I indicated the far end of the flat to the Isaacsons; they each nodded, then proceeded past the partition and into that area. Sara and I took a few tentative steps toward the old desk, while our guide remained alertly at the front door.

Our entire search could not have taken more than five minutes, so small and sparsely furnished was the place. The old desk had three drawers that Sara began to check in the near-darkness, putting her hands in each to make sure she missed nothing. Above the desk, tacked to the crumbling wall, was some sort of a map. Leaning over to study it, I noticed a peculiar feeling under my hands: picking them up, I discovered that the top of the desk had been deeply carved into a monotonous series of unembellished grooves. Putting my hands back down I looked at the map again: I was able to recognize the outline of Manhattan, but the marks that had been drawn over that outline were strange to me: a series of straight, intersecting lines with arcane numbers and symbols scribbled in at various points. I was about to put my head closer when I heard Sara say:

“Here. John.”

Looking down I saw her remove a small wooden box from the bottom drawer. She placed it on the grooved desktop rather fearfully, then stood away.

Affixed to the lid of the box was an old daguerreotype, very similar in style and composition to the Civil War work of the eminent photographer Mathew Brady. Based on the picture’s aged and battered condition I judged it to be of about the same vintage as Brady’s work. The image displayed was that of a dead white man: scalped, eviscerated, and emasculated, with arrows protruding from his arms and legs. His eyes were missing. There were no identifying marks on the picture, but it was obviously one of the Reverend Victor Dury’s creations.

The box on which the daguerreotype was mounted was closed tightly, but there seemed to be an aroma emanating from it—the same sort of aroma that’d been present in Beecham’s room at Mrs. Piedmont’s: rotting animal flesh. My heart sank as I laid hold of the thing, although before I could open it I heard Marcus’s voice:

“Oh, no. God,
how
…”

Then there were bustling sounds, and Marcus stumbled out to where Sara and I were standing. Even in the lamplight I could see that he was pale—a surprising condition, given that I’d watched the man calmly photograph scenes that would’ve turned most people’s stomachs. In a few seconds Lucius followed him in, bearing something in his arms.

“John!” Lucius called in quiet urgency. “John, it—it’s evidence! Good lord, I think we’ve got a straight murder investigation now!”