The Alienist - Caleb Carr [95]
Marcus smiled just a bit. “A customer, then.”
“And you never guessed which one it was?” I asked.
“No, sir,” Joseph answered. “Fatima said that if I kept it all secret and was good, then maybe the man would take me away, too, someday.”
I put my arm back around his shoulders tightly, looking out over the rooftops once more. “You must hope that doesn’t ever happen, Joseph.” I said, and then his brown eyes began to shed tears again.
The Golden Rule didn’t yield any more significant information that evening, nor did the other residents of the building or the block that we questioned. Before departing the scene, however, I felt I ought to ask the boy Joseph if he wanted to leave Scotch Ann’s employ—he seemed entirely too young for such business, even by disorderly house standards, and I thought there was a good chance that I could get Kreizler to take him on as a charity case at the Institute. But Joseph, orphaned since age three, had already had his fill of institutes, orphanages, and foster homes (not to mention alleyways and empty railroad cars), and nothing I said about Kreizler’s place being “different” had any effect on him. The Golden Rule had been the only home he’d ever known where he hadn’t been ill fed and beaten—repulsive as she might be, Scotch Ann had an interest in keeping her boys relatively healthy and scar-free. That fact counted for more with Joseph than anything I might say about the place’s evils and dangers. In addition, his suspicions about men who promised a better life somewhere else had only been heightened by the saga of Ali ibn-Ghazi and his “saint.”
Sad as it made me, Joseph’s decision was unappealable: in 1896 there was no way to go over the boy’s head and persuade a government agency (such as those created in recent years) to forcibly remove him from the Golden Rule. American society did not then generally recognize (as much of it still does not) that children might not be fully responsible for their own actions and decisions: childhood has never been viewed by most Americans as a separate and special stage of growth, fundamentally different from adulthood and subject to its own rules and laws. By and large children were and are seen as miniature adults, and according to the laws of 1896 if they wanted to abandon their lives to vice, that was their business—and their lookout. And so there seemed to be nothing for me to do but say goodbye to that frightened little ten-year-old, and wonder if he wouldn’t be the next boy to cross paths with the butcher who was haunting such disreputable houses as the Golden Rule; but then, just as I was leaving the place, an idea occurred to me, one that I thought might both help keep Joseph safe and advance our investigation.
“Joseph,” I said, kneeling down to speak to him in the entranceway to the club, “do you have many friends who work in other places like this?”
“Many?” he answered, putting a finger to his mouth pensively. “Let’s see—I guess I do know some. Why?”
“I want you to tell them what I’m going to tell you. The man who killed Fatima has killed other children who do this kind of work—mostly boys, though maybe not only boys. The main thing to remember is that for some reason that we don’t understand yet they all come from houses like yours. So I want you to tell your friends that from now on they’ve got to be very, very careful about their customers.”
Joseph reacted to this rather urgent statement by drawing back a bit and looking up and down the street fearfully. But he didn’t run away. “Why only places like this?” he asked.
“Like I say, we don’t know. But he’ll probably be back, so tell everyone you know to keep their eyes open. Look for someone who gets angry when any of you are”—I strained for a word—“difficult.”
“You mean uppity?” Joseph asked. “That’s what Scotch Ann calls it—uppity.”
“Right. He may have picked Fatima because of it. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. But watch for it. And, most important of all—don’t go anywhere with anyone. Never leave the club, no matter how nice