The Alienist - Caleb Carr [127]
Pomeroy made no move after he’d stopped talking, but sat stone still and waited for a reaction from Kreizler.
“You say it was always that way, Jesse,” Laszlo said. “For as long as you can remember? With everyone you knew?”
“Everyone but my dad,” Pomeroy answered, with a humorless, almost pitiable laugh. “He must’ve got so tired of looking at me he ran off. Not that I know—I don’t remember him at all. But it’s what I figured, based on how my mama used to act.”
Again, Kreizler’s face danced with anticipation for the briefest of instants. “And how was that?”
“That was like—this!” In a flash Jesse was up and holding his caged head just a couple of feet away from Laszlo’s face. I got to my feet, but Jesse made no further move forward. “Tell your bodyguard he can set down, Doc,” he said, his good eye locked on Kreizler. “I’m just giving you a demonstration. Always like this, was how it seemed to me. Every minute, watching me, what for I couldn’t tell you. For my own good, she used to say, but she didn’t act like it.” The collar cap was weighing heavy on Jesse’s outstretched neck, and he finally turned away. “Yeah, she sure took an interest in this old face of mine.” The dead laugh came back. “Never wanted to kiss it, though, I can tell you!” Something seemed to strike him, and he paused quietly, again looking up at the chink in the wall. “That first boy I went after, I made him kiss it. He didn’t want to, but after I—well. He did it.”
Laszlo waited a few seconds before asking: “And the man whose face you burned today?”
Jesse spat at the floor through the bars of the collar cap. “That idiot—the same damned thing! Just couldn’t keep his eyes to himself, I musta told him twenty goddamned times to—” Catching himself, Pomeroy suddenly spun on Kreizler, with real fear in his face; then the fear quickly vanished, and that lethal smile came back. “Whup. Looks like I shot it to hell, didn’t I? Fine piece of work, Doc.”
Laszlo stood up. “It was none of my doing, Jesse.”
“Yeah,” Pomeroy laughed. “Maybe you’re right. As long as I live, I’ll never know how you get me to talking that way. If I had a hat, I’d tip it. But, since I don’t—”
In one fast move Pomeroy bent over, grabbed a gleaming object out of one of his boots, and held it out toward us menacingly. Tightening his body he stood on his toes, ready to spring forward. I backed up instinctively against the wall behind me, and Kreizler did likewise, though more slowly. As a series of wet chortles came out of Pomeroy’s mouth, I looked closer to see that his weapon was a long shard of thick glass, wrapped at one end with a bloodstained rag.
CHAPTER 24
* * *
More swiftly than most men could have managed it even without being shackled, Pomeroy kicked the stool he’d been sitting on across the room and jammed it under the knob of the door, preventing entry from the hall outside.
“Don’t worry,” he said, still grinning. “I got no desire to cut you two up—I just want to have a little fun with that big idiot outside!” He turned away from us, laughed again, and called out: “Hey, Lasky! You ready to lose your job? When the warden sees what I done to these boys, he won’t let you guard the shithouse!”
Lasky cursed in reply and began pounding on the door. Pomeroy kept the shard of glass leveled in the general direction of our throats but made no more threatening move, just laughed harder and harder as the guard’s rage mounted. It wasn’t long before the door began to loosen on its hinges, and soon after that the stool fell away from the knob. In a noisy burst Lasky hurtled into the room, the door crashing to the floor as he did. After struggling to his feet he saw first that Kreizler and I were all right and next that