The Alienist - Caleb Carr [58]
Kreizler looked up, as close to beaming as he was likely to get. “My dear Detective Sergeant, this is almost as impressive as it is unexpected!”
Marcus looked away, smiling self-consciously, as Lucius piped up in the same worried tone. “Please remember, Doctor, that it has no legal or forensic significance. It’s a clue, and could be used for investigative purposes, nothing else.”
“And nothing else, Detective Sergeant, is needed. Except, possibly”—Laszlo clapped his hands twice and the waiters reappeared—“dessert. Which you gentlemen have thoroughly earned.” The waiters took away our last dinner dishes and returned with Alliance pears: steeped in wine, deep-fried, powdered with sugar, and smothered in apricot sauce. I thought Lucius would have an attack when he saw them. Kreizler kept his eyes on the two brothers. “This is truly commendable work. But I’m afraid, gentlemen, that you have undertaken it under slightly…false premises. For which I apologize.”
We then explained our activities fully to the Isaacsons, as we consumed the pears and some delicious petits fours that followed. Nothing was left out of our account: the condition of Giorgio Santorelli’s body, the troubles with Flynn and Connor, our meeting with Roosevelt, and Sara’s conversation with Mrs. Santorelli were all discussed in detail. Nor did any of us try to sugarcoat the issue—the person we were hunting, Kreizler said, might be unconsciously urging us to find him, but his conscious thoughts were fixed on violence, and if we got too close that violence might easily spill over onto us. The warning did give Marcus and Lucius some little pause, as did the thought that our business would be undertaken in secret and disavowed by all city officials if discovered. But both men’s overarching reaction to the prospect was excitement. Any good detective would have felt the same, for it was the chance of a lifetime: to try new techniques, to operate outside the stifling pressures of departmental bureaucracy, and to make one’s name if the affair were concluded successfully.
And, I must confess, after the meal we’d just eaten and the wine that had accompanied it, such a conclusion seemed somewhat inevitable. Whatever reservations Kreizler, Sara, and I had had about the Isaacsons’ peculiar personal behavior, their work far outweighed such considerations: in the space of a day, we’d been given a general idea of our murderer’s physical stature and weapon of choice, as well as a permanent image of one physical attribute that might ultimately prove his undoing. Add to all this the fruit of Sara’s initiative—an initial impression of what the killer’s victims had in common—and success seemed, to a man in my drunken state, well within our grasp.
Yet it also seemed to me that my own part in this stage of the work had been too minor. I had made no inauguratory contribution, except to escort Sara earlier that day; and as we fairly well carried Lucius Isaacson to a cab, the clock in Del’s having long since tolled two, I combed my rather fuzzy mind for a way to right that situation. What I came up with was equally fuzzy: after getting Sara and Kreizler a hansom and saying good night to them (he would drop her off at Gramercy Park), I turned south and made for Paresis Hall.
CHAPTER 11
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Knowing that I would need to be on my toes once I reached the hall, I decided to walk the mile or so to Cooper Square and let the cold air sober me up a bit. Broadway was nearly deserted, except for the occasional group of young men in white uniforms who were shoveling snow into large wagons. This was the private army of Colonel Waring, the street-cleaning genius who had tidied up Providence, Rhode Island, and then been imported to work the same magic in New York. Waring’s boys were unquestionably efficient—the amount of snow, horse manure, and general garbage on the streets had declined sharply since their advent—but their uniforms