The Alienist - Caleb Carr [18]
There was no break in the pelting rain as we moved at a trot down the Bowery, the only major street in New York that, to my knowledge, has never known the presence of a church. Saloons, concert halls, and flophouses flashed by, and when we passed Cooper Square I spotted the large electric sign and shaded windows of Biff Ellison’s Paresis Hall, where Giorgio Santorelli had centered his pathetic operations. On we drove, through more tenement wastelands whose sidewalk mayhem was only slightly moderated by the rain. It was not until we had turned onto Bleecker Street and were nearing Police Headquarters that Kreizler said flatly:
“You saw the body.”
“Saw it?” I said in some annoyance, though I was relieved to finally discuss the subject. “I still see it if I close my eyes for more than a minute. What the hell was the idea of getting my whole house up and forcing me to go down there, anyway? It’s not as though I can report that kind of thing, you know that—all it did was agitate my grandmother, and that’s not much of an achievement.”
“I’m sorry, John. But you needed to see just what it is we’ll be dealing with.”
“I am not dealing with anything!” I protested again. “I’m only a reporter, remember, a reporter with a gruesome story that I can’t tell.”
“You do yourself no justice, Moore,” Kreizler said. “You are a veritable cyclopedia of privileged information—though you may not realize it.”
My voice rose: “Laszlo, what in hell—”
But once again, I could get no further. As we turned onto Mulberry Street I heard calling voices, and looked up to see Link Steffens and Jake Riis running toward the carriage.
CHAPTER 5
* * *
The closer the church, the nearer to God,” was how one gangland wit had put his decision to base his criminal operations within a few blocks of Police Headquarters. The statement could have been made by any one of dozens of like characters, for the northern terminus of Mulberry Street at Bleecker (headquarters was located at Number 300) marked the heart of a jungle of tenements, brothels, concert halls, saloons, and gambling houses. One group of girls who staffed a disorderly house directly across Bleecker Street from 300 Mulberry made great sport, during their few idle hours, of sitting in the house’s green-shuttered windows and watching the doings at headquarters through opera glasses, then offering commentary to passing police officials. That was the sort of carnival atmosphere that surrounded the place. Or perhaps one should rather say that it was a circus, and a brutal Roman one at that—for several times a day, bleeding victims of crime or wounded perpetrators of it would be dragged into the rather nondescript, hotel-like structure that was the busy brain of New York’s law enforcement arm, leaving a sticky, grim reminder of the deadly nature of the building’s business on the pavement outside.
Across Mulberry Street, at Number 303, was the unofficial headquarters of the police reporters: a simple stoop where I and my colleagues spent much of our time, waiting for word of a story. It was therefore not surprising that Riis and Steffens should have been awaiting my arrival. Riis’s anxious manner and the gleeful grin that dominated Steffens’s gaunt, handsome features indicated that something particularly tasty was up.
“Well, well!” Steffens said, raising his umbrella as he jumped onto the running board of Kreizler’s carriage. “The mystery guests arrive together! Good morning, Dr. Kreizler, a pleasure to see you, sir.”
“Steffens,” Kreizler