The Alienist

Moore awakens in the middle of the night to a loud knocking on the front door of his grandmother’s house at 19 Washington Square. The date is March 3, 1896. At the door, Moore finds 11-year-old Stevie Taggert, “driver and general errand boy” for Dr. Laszlo Kreizler. Kreizler has sent Stevie on an urgent matter, and Stevie, frightened, insists that Moore must accompany him. Moore agrees, and Stevie proceeds to drive the carriage rapidly toward the Lower East Side, New York City’s notorious tenement district. Moore explains that Stevie had numerous run-ins with the law before being rescued and finding a new home at the Kreizler Institute for Children. The carriage races through the impoverished neighborhoods and arrives at the East River, where the Williamsburg Bridge is under construction. Several police officers await, including an obnoxious sergeant named Flynn, who recognizes Stevie and threatens him before changing his tone when he learns that Moore is a police reporter for the Times. Atop the bridge’s western anchor, Moore finds detective sergeant Patrick Connor, along with the police commissioner himself, Theodore Roosevelt. Moore notes that Roosevelt appears unsettled. Roosevelt warns Moore and Flynn that they should prepare themselves for a ghastly sight. “And then,” Moore writes in the chapter’s concluding sentence, “I saw it” (15).

Moore sees the bound, naked, mutilated body of a young boy, his face painted (i.e., with make-up), dressed to look like a female sex worker. As a shocked and sickened Moore stumbles toward the nearest railing, a flippant-sounding Sergeant Flynn recognizes the victim as Giorgio Santorelli, whom Flynn repeatedly refers to as “it” (17). Santorelli, approximately 13 years old, was known as “Gloria” when he worked at Paresis Hall, later identified as a brothel that caters to men with a fetish for young boys dressed as girls. After chastising Flynn for his callousness, Roosevelt hands Moore a cryptic note from Kreizler hinting at serious mistakes and proposing a meeting for tomorrow. Moore then reflects on Roosevelt’s ongoing battle against police corruption, one reason why, according to Roosevelt, murder cases involving victims from immigrant neighborhoods are seldom investigated, let alone solved. Roosevelt asks Moore to accompany Kreizler to police headquarters the next day and to “be discreet” about it (22).

Later that morning, Kreizler awakens again at his grandmother’s house, flips through the morning edition of the Times, and takes a phone call from Kreizler, who asks Moore to accompany him to the section of Bellevue Hospital that was then known as the “Insane Pavilion.” There, Kreizler plans to assess Henry Wolff, a tenement dweller who, on the night prior, had killed his neighbor’s five-year-old daughter with a gunshot to the head. Arriving at Bellevue, Moore spots Cyrus Montrose, an “enormous” man who serves as “Laszlo’s valet, occasional driver, effective bodyguard, and alter ego,” and whose “broad, black features did not seem to register my approach” (28). Moore explains that Cyrus, like Stevie, came to Kreizler after problems with the law, in Cyrus’s case a murder triggered by childhood trauma.

Inside the hospital, the inmates’ relentless and anguished cries become hushed when they spot Kreizler walking through the halls, for they believe they might benefit from Kreizler’s favorable assessment and court testimony on their behalf. Kreizler is frustrated to learn that Wolff has been injected with chloral hydrate, a common drug that Kreizler correctly regards as both addictive and destructive but that his many antagonists in the late-19th-century medical community insist upon pushing as safe and effective. Kreizler interviews Wolff and concludes that the accused murderer is sane. On the way out of the Pavilion, Kreizler predicts, based on experience, that people will want to hear that Wolff is insane, for it presents “difficulties, if we are forced to accept that our society produces sane men who commit such acts” (33). As their carriage turns toward police headquarters on Mulberry Street, where Roosevelt awaits in his office, Moore and Kreizler spot Link Steffens and Jake Riis approaching in haste. 

Lincoln Steffens and Jacob Riis, two of New York City’s famous muckraking journalists (though Steffens’s achievement of wider fame lies in the future), suspect that Kreizler’s presence at police headquarters means something important. Kreizler is infuriated to learn that Detective Sergeant Connor has told the two muckrakers that the child-killer Wolff likely also killed the Santorelli boy. Kreizler rushes into police headquarters to chastise the careless detective for spreading false information. Meanwhile, Moore encounters a childhood friend named Sara Howard, Roosevelt’s secretary and the first woman ever to work at police headquarters.

In the hallway, Moore and Sara have an unpleasant confrontation with two gangsters whose presence in the building has riled Roosevelt (called “president” at police headquarters for his position as president of the board of commissioners; Roosevelt is not yet president of the United States): Paul Kelly from the dangerous Five Points neighborhood, and Biff Ellison, the large and flamboyant owner of Paresis Hall, where Georgio Santorelli, aka “Gloria,” worked before he was killed. Kelly’s charm and self-control contrast with the gaudy and overtly menacing Ellison, who threatens Sara by reminding her that bad things happen to girls who walk alone in the city. Kelly suggests that the police must be looking into the murder only because the boy was an illegitimate child of some wealthy New Yorker, for otherwise such cases are never investigated. Kelly also warns Moore to keep Kelly’s name out of the story.

Kreizler joins Moore in Roosevelt’s office. Moore explains that he met Roosevelt 20 years earlier as an undergraduate at Harvard, where Kreizler, by then a graduate student, engaged in a public debate with Professor William James, a famous philosopher whose emphasis on “free will” clashed with Kreizler’s evolving belief in individual psychological context as a significant influence upon each person’s behavior. Roosevelt sided with James and even used an ethnic slur in reference to Kreizler’s Hungarian heritage, prompting a challenge from Kreizler and an “affair of honor” that led to a spirited boxing match (47). By far the abler and more experienced boxer, Roosevelt won the fight but also developed a sincere respect for Kreizler, who proved himself a determined pugilist despite a badly injured and deformed left arm. That respect explains Roosevelt’s willingness to bring Kreizler into the current investigation.

Kreizler turns the conversation to an unsolved case from three years earlier: a brother and sister (later identified as the Zweig children, of Austrian-Jewish descent) murdered, their eyes removed, and their mutilated bodies discovered atop a water tower in the tenement district. Kreizler suggests exhuming the remains of the two murdered children to determine whether the eyes were cut out by a knife or other man-made tool. Roosevelt stuns Kreizler with news that two additional boys, both commercially sexually exploited, have been found murdered in a similar fashion in recent months. Kreizler believes all five murders could be the work of one man.

Moore is surprised to learn that Roosevelt regards him as Kreizler’s possible assistant, for Moore has no idea what he could possibly contribute to the unfolding investigation, which Kreizler views as an “auxiliary effort,” a rogue venture undertaken in secret (58). To assist him in his work, Kreizler requests from Roosevelt a few young and trustworthy police detectives with no connection to the corrupt old guard. Knowing how unconventional, audacious, and dangerous this investigation will be, Roosevelt nonetheless agrees to the request. After leaving Roosevelt’s office, Moore and Kreizler discover a smelly, balled-up rag, wrapped in a page torn from one of Kreizler’s books, lying on the floor of their carriage. Moore assumes a prank, but the look on Kreizler’s face suggests something more ominous.

After arranging for a leave of absence from the Times, Moore takes a carriage to the Kreizler Institute. Applicants to the institute—parents of children with behavioral problems—wait in the front hall outside Kreizler’s office. Provided the children are otherwise healthy, Kreizler believes he can help them simply by removing them from dysfunctional home environments and enrolling them as residents of the institute. Amid the bustle of parents and young residents, current and prospective, Kreizler quietly informs Moore that the exhumed remains of the Zweig children are on an examination table in his ground-floor operating theater.

Kreizler and Moore venture downstairs, where they meet the young detectives sent by Roosevelt, two nervous and quibbling Jewish brothers named Lucius and Marcus Isaacson. Kreizler is pleased to discover that the Isaacsons, for all their idiosyncrasies, demonstrate impressive aptitude for forensic investigation. Moore returns to his grandmother’s house to find “a very agitated” Sara, Roosevelt’s secretary, waiting for him there (75).

Sara informs Moore that Sergeant Connor and another man paid a visit to Georgio Santorelli’s parents. Cyrus drives Sara and Moore to the Santorelli flat, located in one of the city’s worst neighborhoods. A group of German-speaking residents sits outside the tenement building drinking beer. Moore describes the horrors he and Sara discover inside the building, including a pitch-black hallway, a ghastly smell, and an abandoned baby.

Arriving at the tiny Santorelli flat, they learn from a distressed Mrs. Santorelli that six men, including the police officers and two priests, paid them a visit, tried to bribe her husband into maintaining silence about his son’s murder, and then roughed him up when he refused. Moore runs back outside and tells Cyrus to retrieve first-aid materials. When he hears why Moore needs those materials, one of the beer-drinking Germans declares, “Damned cops. I hate those damned guineas, but I’ll tell you, I hate cops more!” (80). Back inside the flat, Mrs. Santorelli explains how her son Georgio started down the path that led to sex work with other men, how Mr. Santorelli tried to beat those inclinations out of the boy, and how the boy only became more obstinate with each beating. After a sudden pounding on the door, two thugs enter. Moore and Sara flee. Near the entrance to the building, with the two thugs in pursuit, Sara clutches her revolver and prepares to fire in self-defense. The Germans suddenly intervene and give the two thugs a beating. Moore and Sara escape with Cyrus.

Mary Palmer, Kreizler’s housekeeper, welcomes Moore into Kreizler’s house. Like Cyrus, Mary has been rescued by Kreizler from a difficult past, having suffered severe childhood trauma at the hands of her sexually abusive father, whom she eventually murdered. Mary also suffers from motor aphasia and therefore struggles to speak. Sara arrives at the home and announces to Moore and Kreizler that Roosevelt has appointed her his official liaison to the investigation. Looking confident as always, Sara is dressed to accompany Moore and Kreizler to the opera. Mary appears agitated.

At the Metropolitan Opera, Moore spots Roosevelt with Mayor Strong. Moore also sees J. P. Morgan, the city’s financial titan, sitting in his usual place. Roosevelt and Strong pay a visit to Kreizler’s box. Strong, unaware of the group’s clandestine involvement in Roosevelt’s investigation, chastises the controversial Kreizler for appearing in person at police headquarters. He even expresses displeasure over Sara’s decision to associate herself socially with the Kreizler circle. Roosevelt squirms in his seat as the mayor continues to denigrate Kreizler, for whom this show of intolerance constitutes “an outrageous but nonetheless typical incident” (84).

Kreizler, Moore, and Sara meet Lucius and Marcus Isaacson for a late dinner at Delmonico’s. Lucius reveals the results of the forensic examination from earlier in the day, which suggest that the killer strangled the Zweig children and then removed their eyes with a knife. Marcus then hypothesizes, based on knife-wound angles, that the killer stands at least six-foot-two. Marcus proceeds to describe a brand-new identification method, not yet widely accepted and certainly not admissible in court, called fingerprinting. Against all odds, the Isaacsons have even managed to pull a large fingerprint, preserved in a bloodstain, from the Zweig sister’s remains. Deeply impressed by the Isaacsons’ work, Kreizler decides to reveal the full details of the Santorelli murder and Roosevelt’s clandestine operation. The Isaacsons are thrilled that they will have the opportunity to work with Kreizler’s team and employ modern methods of investigation. After dinner, Moore makes a solo visit to Paresis Hall.

On his walk to Paresis Hall, Moore encounters a gang of four toughs about to beat up two men, one of the toughs yelling an anti-gay slur. When Moore intervenes by telling the toughs that six cops are headed their way, the toughs run off in the direction of the cops, an unexpected reaction showing that, far from fearing the police, they see them as ideal targets for their free-floating anger and violence. Moore arrives at Paresis Hall, where men openly solicit sex from young males dressed as girls. Razor Riley, one of Biff Ellison’s thugs, puts a knife to Moore’s throat from behind. Ellison, however, buys Moore a drink after Moore assures him that Roosevelt does not suspect the Paresis Hall owner of murdering one of his own employees. Ellison reveals that “Gloria” had become unruly before “she” was killed.

With some reluctance, Ellison agrees to let Moore examine the upstairs room in which “Gloria” worked. When he enters the room alone, Moore finds a boy, approximately 15 years old, face painted like those of the others, sitting on the bed crying. The boy mistakes Moore for a client and asks him to come back in an hour but then warms up when he learns that Moore is a reporter, for he wants Moore to know that “Gloria” never even left “her” room the night “she” was killed. Moore collapses onto the bed and realizes that Ellison slipped some chloral into his drink. Ellison, Riley, and two painted men appear at the door. The fading Moore hears them talking about what they plan to do with him as they begin to undress him and tie his hands. The last thing Moore sees before he blacks out is a weapon-wielding Stevie Taggert bursting through the door.

Moore awakens some time later in a place he doesn’t recognize. It turns out to be the Kreizler team’s new headquarters at 808 Broadway, complete with impromptu furnishings, a chalkboard, and a large map of Manhattan. Moore learns from Cyrus that Stevie happened to spot the Times reporter walking the streets and decided to follow him to Paresis. Kreizler congratulates Moore for discovering that the Santorelli boy was never seen leaving his room on the night of the murder. The alienist also warns his friend to be more careful in the future. Lucius informs Kreizler that the remains of the two young boys murdered earlier in the year should arrive at the institute by lunchtime.

Lucius announces that the two murdered boys appear to have been killed by the same man who killed Santorelli and the Zweig children. The team assembles at 808 Broadway. Each member occupies one of five desks. Kreizler begins building a preliminary profile by writing on the chalkboard what they already know or suspect about the killer. Kreizler then presents each member with reading materials, including philosophical and psychological works penned by luminaries both historical and modern, from John Locke to William James. The point, Kreizler explains, is to “rid ourselves of misconceptions about human behavior,” abandon concepts such as “evil and barbarity and madness,” and familiarize everyone with “psychological determinism,” the theory, embraced by Kreizler, that childhood experiences shape perceptions and actions in adulthood (129). Kreizler’s team settles in for weeks’ worth of reading and discussion. Moore begins to understand Kreizler’s work in much broader philosophical and psychological contexts. Moore also begins to see its relevance to the current investigation. By early April, everyone has learned a great deal about the principles of their work. Then the killer strikes again.