The Alienist - Caleb Carr [214]
I propped myself up on an elbow. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure,” Sara answered. “They just don’t seem…knowledgeable. It doesn’t match.”
“Match what?”
“Him. Beecham. Look at what he does. He insinuates himself into these boys’ lives, and convinces them to trust him—and these are some fairly suspicious and skeptical children, mind you.”
I thought quickly of Joseph. “On the outside, maybe,” I said. “Inside they’re praying for a real friend.”
“All right,” Sara answered, conceding the point. “And Beecham goes through just the motions required to establish that friendship. As if he knows what they need. These charity people have none of that quality. I tell you, we’re on the wrong track.”
“Sara, be realistic,” I said, getting up and joining her. “What kind of door-to-door organization that deals with large numbers of people takes the time to find out that kind of personal informa—”
And then I froze. Really froze. The simple fact of the matter, I remembered in a numbing rush, was that there was one organization that did take the time to find out just the kind of personal information that Sara was describing. An organization whose headquarters I’d passed every day for the past week without ever making a connection—and an organization whose hundreds of employees were well known for traveling neighborhood rooftops.
“Hell’s bloody bells,” I mumbled.
“What?” Sara asked urgently, seeing that I was onto something. “John, what’ve you got?”
My eyes darted to the right side of the chalkboard, specifically to the names BENJAMIN AND SOFIA ZWEIG. “Of course…,” I whispered. “Eighteen ninety-two might be a little late—but he might have met them in ’90. Or he could’ve gone back during the revisions, the whole thing was so royally botched—”
“John, damn it, what are you talking about?”
I grabbed Sara’s hand. “What time is it?”
“Nearly six. Why?”
“Someone may still be there—come on!”
I pulled Sara toward the door without further explanation. She continued to bellow questions and protests, but I refuse to answer any of them as we descended to the street in the elevator and then dashed down Broadway to Eighth Street. Wheeling left, I led Sara to Number 135. Pulling at the door to a staircase that led up to the building’s second and third floors, I breathed a sigh of relief on finding that it was still open. I turned back to Sara to find her staring with a smile at a small brass plaque that was screwed to the façade of the building, just next to the doorway:
UNITED STATES BUREAU OF CENSUS
CHARLES H. MURRAY, SUPERINTENDENT
CHAPTER 39
* * *
We entered a world of files.
Both of the floors occupied by the Census Bureau were lined with wooden filing cabinets that ran right up to the ceiling and blocked every window. Mobile ladders ran on tracks around the walls of each floor’s four rooms, and a desk sat in the center of every chamber. Harsh electrical lights with metal shades were suspended from the ceilings, throwing their glare onto floors composed of bare wood. It was a place without feeling or personality of any kind—a worthy home, in short, for bare, inhuman statistics.
The first occupied desk that Sara and I found was on the third floor. At it sat a fairly young man who wore a banker’s visor and an inexpensive but particularly well-pressed suit, the jacket of which was slung over his plain, straight-backed chair. Cuff protectors covered the lower portions of the man’s white, starched shirtsleeves, protecting those portions of the garment as the thin, sallow hands protruding from them attacked a folder full of forms.
“Excuse me?” I said, approaching the desk slowly.
The man looked up sourly. “Official hours are over.”
“Of course,” I answered quickly, recognizing an incorrigible bureaucrat when I saw one. “Had this been official business, I would have come at a more appropriate hour.”
The man eyed me up and down, then glanced at Sara. “Well?”
“We’re with the press,” I answered. “The Times, actually. My name is Moore, and