The Alienist - Caleb Carr [226]
The effect of that storied neighborhood has always been difficult to describe to the uninitiated. Even on a pleasant spring night like the one we moved through that Thursday, the place exuded a deep sense of mortal threat; yet that threat was not always or even usually exhibited in loud or aggressive ways, such as was the case in some other shady parts of the city. In the Tenderloin, for example, a general air of defiant carousing reigned, making encounters with drunken toughs out to demonstrate their prowess a routine matter. Yet such were little more than noisy displays, generally, and a murder in the Tenderloin was still a noteworthy event. Five Points was an entirely different breed of neighborhood. Oh, there were shouts and screams to be heard, all right; but they tended to drift out of buildings, or, if they did originate outside, to be quickly stifled. Indeed, I think the most disconcerting thing about the area around Mulberry Bend (the few blocks of the Bend itself were at that time being demolished, thanks to Jake Riis’s tireless campaigning) was the surprisingly low level of outward activity. The residents of the neighborhood spent most of their time crammed into the miserable shanties and tenements that lined the streets, or, more often, packed into the dives that occupied the ground and first floors of a remarkably large number of those squalid buildings. Death and despair did their work without fanfare in the Bend, and they did a lot of it: just walking down those lonely, decrepit streets was enough to make the sunniest of souls wonder about the ultimate value of human life.
I could see that Lucius was doing just that as we reached the address Harper had given us, Number 119 Baxter Street. A few dirt- and urine-covered stone stairs next to the building’s entrance led down to a doorway that, to judge by the laughs and groans floating out of it, was the entrance to the dive we’d been told Beecham frequented. I turned to Lucius, and found him anxiously scanning the dark streets around us.
“Lucius—you and Sara stay here,” I said. “We’ll need you to keep watch.”
He nodded once, producing a handkerchief and wiping his forehead. “Good,” he said. “Fine, I mean.”
“And if there’s any trouble do not show your badge,” I added. “It’s just an invitation to murder, down here.” As Marcus and I made for the steps, I eyed Lucius once more and then murmured into Sara’s ear, “Look after him, will you?” She smiled once at that, and though I could tell that she, too, was apprehensive, I knew that her aim would remain steady through whatever followed. Marcus and I went inside.
I don’t know precisely what the caves looked like that prehistoric men are said to have inhabited, but the average Five Points dive cannot have represented any great advancement—and the one we entered that night was nothing if not average. The ceiling was only eight feet or so from the dirt floor, since the space had originally been designed as a cellar for the storefront above. There were no windows: light was provided by four filthy kerosene lamps that hung above a like number of long, low tables arranged in two rows. At these tables sat and slept the customers, their differences of age, sex, and dress more than outweighed by their common air of drunken dementia. There were about twenty people in the place that night, though only three—a pair of men and a woman, the last groaning and cackling at the incomprehensible statements of the other two—showed any real signs of life. They examined us with looks of glassy hatred when we came in, and Marcus inclined his head toward me.
“I suppose,