The Alienist - Caleb Carr [228]
“Top floor,” I said, holding some money out. “In the back. Anybody home?”
The man’s grin returned. “Oh!” he said, taking the cash. “Youse mean old—” He suddenly began to blink, and then to comically contort his right jaw, cheek, and eye. Apparently unsatisfied with the results of this performance, he heightened its effect by tugging at his head with his hands. Pleased with this additional effort, he began to laugh loud. “Nah, he ain’t dere,” he finally said. “Never dere, not nights. During da day, sometimes, but not nights. You can check da roof, mebbe he’s up dere. Likes it up dere, does dat boid.”
“What about his flat?” I said. “Maybe we’d like to wait for him there.”
“Mebbe it’s locked,” the fellow answered with another grin. I held out still more money. “Den agin, mebbe it ain’t.” The man started into the building. “Ain’t cops, is youse?”
“I’m not paying you to ask questions,” I answered.
The man gave my words something that approached consideration, then nodded. “Okay. Come on wit me—but keep it quiet, right?”
We all nodded and followed the man inside. The building’s long, darkened staircase was redolent with the usual stenches of rotting refuse and human waste, and at its foot I paused to let Sara get in front of me.
“A world away from Mrs. Piedmont’s,” she whispered as she passed.
We got up the six flights of stairs without incident, and then our guide knocked on one of four doors that branched off a small landing. After getting no reply, he held up a finger. “Wait here a minute,” he said, and then he loped up the final flight of stairs to the roof. In seconds he was back, looking more relaxed. “All clear,” he announced, taking a large ring of keys from his hip pocket and unlocking the door he’d knocked on. “Hadda make sure he weren’t around. He’s a touchy one, old—” Instead of saying a name, the man began to contort his face again, which gave him another laugh. Finally, we entered the flat.
A kerosene lamp sat on a shelf by the door, and I lit it. The space that slowly became visible was essentially one narrow hallway, perhaps thirty feet in overall length, in the middle of which had been built a small partition and a doorway with a transom over it. Two recently cut chinks in the side walls were the flat’s only connections to the outside world, offering limited, bleak views across narrow airshafts into similar gaps in the walls of neighboring flats. A small stove was set up against the partition, though there were apparently no sanitary facilities, other than a rusted bucket. Only a few pieces of furniture could be seen from the front door: a plain old desk and chair on the near side of the partition, and beyond it the foot of a bed. Coats of thick, cheap paint had chipped and peeled away from the walls, revealing one another and creating the overall impression of a brown stain such as one might find at the bottom of a commode.
In this place lived the being who had once been Japheth Dury and was now the murderer John Beecham; and within this spare little hole there had to be clues, difficult as they might be to see. Without speaking, I indicated the far end of the flat to the Isaacsons; they each nodded, then proceeded past the partition and into that area. Sara and I took a few tentative steps toward the old desk, while our guide remained alertly at the front door.
Our entire search could not have taken more than five minutes, so small and sparsely furnished was the place. The old desk had three drawers that Sara began to check in the near-darkness, putting her hands in each to make sure she missed nothing. Above the desk, tacked to the crumbling wall, was some sort of a map. Leaning over to study it, I noticed a peculiar feeling under my hands: picking them up, I discovered that the top of the desk had been deeply carved into a monotonous series of unembellished grooves.