The Alienist - Caleb Carr [216]
“I beg your pardon?”
“An enumerator,” Murray answered, coming back down the ladder with a large envelope in one hand. “The men who do the actual counting and interviewing for the census. I hired nine hundred such men in June and July of 1890. Two weeks’ work, twenty-five dollars a week. Each man was required to fill out an application.” Opening the envelope, Murray pulled out a folded paper and handed it to me. “Beecham’s,” he said.
Trying to disguise my eagerness, I scanned the document as Murray summarized it: “He was quite qualified—just the sort of man we look for, actually. University education, unmarried, good references—all powerful recommendations.”
And so they would have been, I thought as I studied the document, had they been even remotely legitimate. The information before my eyes represented a litany of lies and an impressive set of forgeries; provided, of course, that there weren’t two John Beechams with chronic facial spasms roaming around the United States. (I wondered for a moment how high Alphonse Bertillon’s system of anthropometry would have put those odds.) Sara was looking over my shoulder at the application, and when I turned to her she nodded as if to acknowledge that she, too, had drawn the obvious conclusion from it: that in 1890, as before and after that year, Beecham was sharpening his talent for elaborate deception.
“You’ll see his address at the head of the form,” Murray continued. “At the time I dismissed him, he was still living in the same rooms.”
At the top of the sheet was written, in a hand that I recognized from the note we’d studied weeks earlier, “23 Bank Street”—near the center of Greenwich Village. “Yes,” I said slowly. “Yes, I see. Thank you.”
Looking somewhat perturbed by Sara’s and my continued interest in the application, Murray plucked the thing out of my hands and slipped it back into the large envelope. “Anything else?” he asked.
“Else?” I answered. “Oh, no, I don’t think so. You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Murray.”
“Good evening, then,” he said, sitting back down and pulling on his cuff protectors.
Sara and I moved to the door. “Oh,” I said, doing my best to feign an afterthought. “You say you dismissed Beecham, Mr. Murray. Might I inquire why, if he was so well qualified?”
“I don’t trade in gossip, Mr. Moore,” Murray answered coldly. “Besides, your business is with his brother, is it not?”
I tried another tack: “I trust he didn’t do anything untoward while he was working in the Thirteenth Ward?”
Murray grunted once. “If he had, I hardly would have promoted him from enumerator to office clerk and kept him on for another five years—” Murray caught himself and jerked his head up. “Just a minute. How did you know he was assigned to the Thirteenth Ward?”
I smiled. “It’s of no consequence. Thank you, Mr. Murray, and good evening.”
Grabbing Sara by the wrist, I started back down the stairs quickly. I could hear Murray’s chair backing up, and then he appeared at the stairway door.
“Mr. Moore!” he called angrily. “Stop, sir! I demand to know how you knew that information! Mr. Moore, do you hear—”
But we were already out the door. I kept a firm grip on Sara’s wrist as we headed west, though it wasn’t necessary for me to pull her along—she was moving at a quick, exuberant pace, and by the time we reached Fifth Avenue she had started to laugh out loud. As we came to a halt and waited for a gap in the evening traffic on the avenue to appear, Sara suddenly threw her arms around my neck.
“John!” she said breathlessly. “He’s real, he’s here—my God, we know where he lives!”
I returned her embrace, though there was caution in my voice: “We know where he lived. It’s June now—he was dismissed in December. Six months without a job may have changed a lot of things—his ability to pay