The Alienist - Caleb Carr [38]
A dark, dank hallway led us to the operating theater, a very long room that was kept dry and warm by a gas space heater that hissed in one corner. The walls were smooth and whitewashed, and white cabinets with glass doors ran along each wall, holding a collection of gruesome, glistening instruments. On white shelves above these were a collection of chilling models: realistically painted plaster casts of human and simian heads, with their skulls partly removed to reveal brain positioning and their faces still expressive of their death throes. Sharing the shelf space with these was a large collection of actual brains from a wide variety of creatures, housed in specimen jars full of formaldehyde. The remainder of the wall space was occupied by charts of human and animal nervous systems. In the center of the room were two steel operating tables, with channels for draining bodily fluids running down the center of their beds to the foot, where they emptied into steel receptacles on the floor. There were forms of roughly human dimensions on each of these tables, covered with sterile sheets. A pronounced aroma of animal decay and earth emanated from them.
Standing by the tables were two men, both wearing three-piece wool suits, the taller man’s a subdued but fashionably checked pattern, the shorter’s simple black. Their faces were almost totally obscured by the harsh glare of the electric operating lamps that were positioned above the tables and between us.
“Gentlemen,” Laszlo said, moving directly toward them. “I am Dr. Kreizler. I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”
“Not at all, Doctor,” said the taller man, shaking Kreizler’s hand. As he leaned into the bright light around the table I could see that his Semitic features were quite handsome—strong nose, steady brown eyes, and a good head of curling hair. The shorter man, by contrast, had small eyes, a fleshy face that was beaded with sweat, and thinning hair. They both looked to be in their early thirties. “I’m Sergeant Marcus Isaacson,” the taller man went on, “and this is my brother, Lucius.”
The shorter man looked annoyed as he extended a hand. “Detective Sergeant Lucius Isaacson, Doctor,” he said. Then, leaning back and speaking out of the side of his mouth, he murmured, “Don’t do that again. You said you wouldn’t.”
Marcus Isaacson rolled his eyes, then tried to smile at us as he, too, spoke out of the side of his mouth. “What? What did I do?”
“Don’t introduce me as your brother,” Lucius Isaacson whispered urgently.
“Gentlemen,” Kreizler said, a little perplexed by this spat. “Allow me to introduce a friend of mine, John Schuyler Moore.” I shook hands with them both as Kreizler continued: “Commissioner Roosevelt speaks quite highly of your talents, and thinks you may be able to give me some assistance with a bit of research I’m doing. You have two areas of speciality that particularly interest me—”
“Yes,” Marcus said, “criminal science and forensic medicine.”
Kreizler went on: “First of all, I’d like to know—”
“If you’re wondering about our names,” Marcus interrupted, “our mother and father were very concerned, when they arrived in America, that their