The Alienist - Caleb Carr [60]
The essential purpose of Paresis Hall was to arrange affairs between customers and the various types of prostitutes who worked there. This second group included everything from youths like Giorgio Santorelli to homosexuals who did not favor women’s clothes to the occasional bona fide female, who hung about in the hope that some one of the souls who wandered in would rediscover his heterosexuality to her profit. Most of the assignations worked out in the Hall took place at cheap hotels in the neighborhood, though the second floor had a dozen or so rooms out of which young boys who particularly pleased Ellison were allowed to conduct their business.
But what was more distinctive about the Hall, along with only a few other such places in town, was a near total lack of the secretiveness that usually marked homosexual dealings in the city. Released from the need to be in any way careful, Ellison’s patrons cavorted raucously and spent freely, and the Hall did enormous business. In the end, however, neither the scale nor the unusualness of its operations could keep it from being at heart like any other dive: sordid, smoky, and thoroughly disheartening.
I hadn’t been inside the door thirty seconds before there was a small but strong arm around my torso and a cold piece of metal at my throat. The sudden aroma of lilac alerted me to Ellison’s presence in the general area behind me; and I assumed that the metal I felt was the signature weapon of one of Biff’s cronies, Razor Riley. Riley was a skinny, dangerous little miscreant from Hell’s Kitchen who, though a Gopher, occasionally ran with and worked for Ellison, whose sexual preferences he shared.
“I thought Kelly and me made ourselves pretty clear the other day, Moore,” Ellison boomed. I still couldn’t see him. “You ain’t tying me to the Santorelli business. You gutsy or just crazy coming in here like this?”
“Neither, Biff,” I said, as clearly as extreme fear would allow: Riley was notoriously fond of cutting people up. “I just wanted you to know that I did you a good turn.”
Ellison laughed. “You, scribbler? What could you do for me?” At that he came around to face me, his ridiculous checked suit and gray bowler all reeking of cologne. He held a long, thin cigar in one beefy hand.
“I told the commissioner you didn’t have anything to do with it,” I gasped.
He came close, his thick lips parting to release the stench of bad whiskey. “Yeah?” he said, his little eyes gleaming. “And did you convince him?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Oh? How?”
“Simple. I told him it wasn’t your style.”
Ellison had to pause as the mass of cells that, in his case, passed for a brain mulled this over. Then he smiled. “Say—you’re right, Moore. It ain’t my style! Well, whattaya know—let ’im go, Razor.”
At that the several employees and customers who had gathered to see if there would be bloodshed dispersed in disappointment. I turned to the wiry figure of Razor Riley and watched as he folded his favorite weapon, pocketed it, and then smoothed his waxed mustache. He put his hands on his hips, ready to fight—but I just straightened my white tie and neatened my cuffs.
“Try milk, Riley,” I said. “I hear it helps the bones grow.”
Riley went for his pocket again, but Ellison laughed and restrained him with an effusive hug. “Aw, that’s all right, Razor, let the guy crack wise, it ain’t gonna hurt you.” Then he turned to me and put an arm around my neck. “Come on, Moore, I’ll buy you a drink. And you can tell me how come it is you turned into my pal all of a sudden.”
We stood at the bar, and I could see all the sad business of the Hall reflected in a large mirror that ran along the wall behind the endless bottles of bad liquor. Remembering exactly who and what I was dealing with, I abandoned the cherished idea of a brandy (besides being of shockingly poor quality, it was likely to be laced with any combination of camphor, benzine, cocaine shavings, and chloral hydrate) and ordered a beer. The swill I was given