The Alienist - Caleb Carr [63]
“I told you not to talk to anybody, Moore,” Ellison said. And then to the youths: “Well, girls—he’s a pretty one to look at, ain’t he? Who wants to have some fun with the reporter?”
Two of the young painted men leapt onto the bed and began to tug at my clothes. I was able to get halfway up and onto my elbows before Riley raced over and laid a shot on my jaw. Going back down, I recall hearing the singer downstairs launch into “You Made Me What I Am Today—I Hope You’re Satisfied”; then the two youths were fighting over my billfold and tearing at my pants as Riley began to bind my hands.
Unconsciousness was coming fast—but just before it arrived, I thought I caught a glimpse of Stevie Taggert jumping into the room like a wild wolf cub, brandishing a long piece of wood studded with rusty nails…
CHAPTER 12
* * *
The drug-induced dream that followed was peopled by bizarre creatures, half-human and half-animal, that flew, climbed, and slithered down the sides of a high stone wall while I watched in despair, unable to get to the ground. At one point, the primeval landscape around the wall was shaken by an earthquake that seemed to speak with Kreizler’s voice, after which the creatures in my dream became more numerous and my need to get to the ground more desperate. Consciousness, when it finally came, brought little relief, for I had no idea where I was. My head felt remarkably clear, from which I took it that I’d been asleep for many hours; but the airy, expansive room around me was completely strange. Spottily furnished with a combination of clerical desks and elegant Italian appointments, it seemed a nonsensical chamber, well suited to another dream. Arched windows in the style of the Gothic Revival ringed the space, and gave it the feel of a monastery; but the spacious dimensions were more like those of a Broadway sweatshop. Anxious to inspect the place more closely, I tried to get up, but fell back in a slight swoon; and since there seemed to be no one about to call to for assistance, I was forced to content myself with studying my strange surroundings while flat on my back.
I was lying on some sort of a divan, which I would have dated as early nineteenth century. Its green and silver covering matched several chairs, as well as a sofa and love seat, that were nearby. On one long, inlaid mahogany dining table stood a silver candelabra, next to which was a Remington typewriter. This incongruity was echoed in the room’s wall hangings: Across from my divan, an ostentatiously framed oil view of Florence hung next to an enormous map of Manhattan that was encrusted with several pins. The pins bore small red flags. On the opposite wall was a large chalkboard, notably blank, and beneath this black patch sat the most substantial of the five clerical desks, which together formed a ring at the outer perimeter of the room. Large fans hung from the ceiling, and two enormous Persian carpets, with elaborate designs against a deep green background, covered the center of the floor.
It wasn’t any sane person’s living quarters, and it certainly wasn’t an office. Hallucination, I began to think—but then I looked out the window directly in front of me and saw two familiar sights: the top of McCreery’s department store, with its elegant mansard roof and cast-iron arched windows, and, to the left, a similar top section of the St. Denis Hotel. The two institutions, I knew, occupied opposite corners of Eleventh Street, on the west side of Broadway.
“Then I must be—across the street,” I mumbled, just as sounds began to reach my ears from outside: the rhythmic clicking of horses’ hooves, and the drag of metal trolley car wheels against track. Then, suddenly, a loud bell tolled. I spun to my left as fast as my condition would allow, and out another arched window I saw what I knew to be the spire of Grace Church, on Tenth