The Alienist - Caleb Carr [11]
SPAIN IS FULL OF WRATH, I learned; the question of American support for the nationalist rebels in Cuba (the U.S. Congress was considering granting them full belligerent status, and thus effectively recognizing their cause) was continuing to cause the vicious, crumbling regime in Madrid much worry. Boss Tom Platt, the town’s cadaverous old Republican mastermind, was assailed by the editors of the Times for trying to prostitute the imminent reorganization of the city into a Greater New York—one that would include Brooklyn and Staten Island, as well as Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan—to his own nefarious purposes. The approaching Democratic and Republican conventions both promised to center around the question of bimetallism, or whether or not America’s solid old gold standard should be sullied by the introduction of silver-based currency. Three hundred and eleven black Americans had taken ship for Liberia; and the Italians were rioting because their troops had been badly defeated by Abyssinian tribesmen on the other side of that dark continent.
Momentous as all this no doubt was, it held little interest for a man in my mood. I turned to lighter matters. There were bicycling elephants at Proctor’s Theatre; a troop of Hindu fakirs at Hubert’s Fourteenth Street Museum; Max Alvary was a brilliant Tristan at the Academy of Music; and Lillian Russell was The Goddess of Truth at Abbey’s. Eleanora Duse was “no Bernhardt” in Camille, and Otis Skinner in Hamlet shared her penchant for weeping too easily and too often. The Prisoner of Zenda was in its fourth week at the Lyceum—I had seen it twice and thought for a moment about going again that night. It was a grand escape from the worries of the usual day (not to mention the grim sights of an extraordinary night): castles with watery moats, sword battles, a diverting mystery, and stunning, swooning women…
Yet even as I thought of the play, my eyes wandered to other items. A man on Ninth Street who had once cut his brother’s throat while drunk, drank again and shot his mother; there were still no clues in the particularly vicious murder of artist Max Eglau at the Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes; a man named John Mackin, who had killed his wife and mother-in-law and then tried to end his own life by cutting his throat, had recovered from the wound but was now trying to starve himself. The authorities had convinced Mackin to eat by showing him the frightful force-feeding apparatus that would otherwise be used to keep him alive for the executioner…
I threw the paper aside. Taking in a last heavy gulp of sweet black coffee, and then a section of a peach shipped from Georgia, I redoubled my resolve to get to the Lyceum box office. I had just started back for my room to dress when the telephone let out with a loud clang, and I heard my grandmother in her morning room exclaim “Oh, God!” in alarm and anger. The telephone bell did that to her, yet she never entertained any suggestion that it be removed, or at least muffled.
Harriet appeared from the kitchen, her soft, middle-aged features specked with soap bubbles. “It’s the telephone, sir,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. “Dr. Kreizler calling.”
Pulling my Chinese robe tighter, I headed for the little wooden box near the kitchen and took up the heavy black receiver, putting it to my ear as I placed my other hand on the anchored mouthpiece. “Yes?” I said. “Is that you, Laszlo?”
“Ah, so you’re awake, Moore,” I heard him say. “Good.” The sound was faint, but the manner was, as always, energetic. The words bore the lilt of a European accent: Kreizler had immigrated to