The Angel of Darkness Read online

  “DARKLY COMPELLING …

  VIVID AND ENTHRALLING.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Suspenseful … Through the observations, discoveries, and confusions of his idiosyncratic detective squad, Carr deftly scrutinizes ‘the secret sins of American society’ and the perpetual proposition that the greatest mystery is the human mind.”

  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “[An] adept mixture of period detail and psychological sleuthing … Filled with enough outsized personalities and sensational events to keep the most jaded tabloid reader eagerly turning its pages.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  “Here’s New York circa 1897, city of unparalleled corruption and splendor, city of fine dining and seedy taverns…. Few writers are as adept [as Carr] at fashioning revelations that detonate, chapter by chapter, like carefully positioned explosions.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Penetrating … An entertainingly convincing read.”

  —People

  “SOLIDLY SCARY…

  A terrific sequel … Better and more suspenseful than its pulse-pounding predecessor.”

  —The Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “[A] labyrinth of crime and psychology … What worked so well in the first book—late-nineteenth-century New York City with all its splendor and warts—is just as engaging in the second Is The Angel of Darkness as good as its predecessor? No. It’s better.”

  —San Diego Union-Tribune

  “Another crowd-pleaser … This case begins with the brazen kidnapping of an infant. Before it’s over, readers will be treated to some chilling insights from one of the earliest practitioners in psychology; plunge into a courtroom battle pitted against none other than Clarence Darrow; and follow Teddy Roosevelt with a handpicked batch of sailors through the gang-infested streets of lower Manhattan.”

  —Minneapolis Star Tribune

  “A spirited yarn … Both a tale of serial murder and an argument for understanding the criminal mind.”

  —Boston Sunday Herald

  “COMPELLING…

  A HISTORY-RICH

  PAGE-TURNER …

  One that will keep you entranced until the final pages.”

  —Memphis Commercial Appeal

  “As it was for Arthur Conan Doyle in the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, the late nineteenth century is a fascinating backdrop for a detective story…. For the millions of readers who enjoyed The Alienist, this book is a delight.”

  —Fresno Bee

  “A bewitching and richly fabricated plot, dark and dangerous and as cluttered with unexpected horrors as some of the alleys down which Kreizler and company trod in pursuit of grim justice.”

  —Eastsideweek (Seattle)

  “Entertaining and enthralling.”

  —The State (South Carolina)

  “Absorbing… The ambiance is convincingly thick and period-flavorful, the murderous details satisfyingly gruesome An enormously entertaining and satisfying reading experience.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  By Caleb Carr:

  CASING THE PROMISED LAND

  AMERICA INVULNERABLE (with James Chace)

  THE DEVIL SOLDIER

  THE ALIENIST

  THE ANGEL OF DARKNESS*

  Published by Ballantine Books

  Books published by The Random House Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk purchases for premium, educational, fund-raising, and special sales use. For details, please call 1-800-733-3000.

  To my mother and father

  “It is not having been in the dark house,

  but having left it, that counts.”

  —THEODORE ROOSEVELT

  CHAPTER 1

  June 19th, 1919

  There’s likely some polished way of starting a story like this, a clever bit of gaming that’d sucker people in surer than the best banco feeler in town. But the truth is that I haven’t got the quick tongue or the slick wit for that kind of game. Words haven’t figured much in my life, and though over the years I’ve met many of what the world counts to be the big thinkers and talkers of our times, I’ve stayed what most would call a plain man. And so a plain way of starting will suit me well.

  The first thing to do, along these plain lines, is to say why I’ve closed the shop up and come into the back office on a night when there’s still plenty of business that might be done. It’s a fine evening, the kind what I used to live for: a night when you can take in all the affairs of the avenue with nothing more than your shirtsleeves for cover, blowing the smoke of a dozen good cigarettes up to the stars above the city and feeling, on balance, like maybe there’s some point to living in this madhouse after all. The traffic—gasoline-powered automobiles and trucks these days, not just clattering old nags dragging carriages and carts—has slowed quite a bit with the passing of midnight, and soon the after-supper ladies and gents will be over from the Albemarle Hotel and the Hoffman House to pick up their fine-blended smokes. They’ll wonder why I’ve closed early, but they won’t wonder long before heading for some other shop; and after they’ve gone, quiet will settle in around this grand Flatiron Building with a purpose. She still lords it over Madison Square, the Flatiron does, with her solitary, peculiar silhouette and her fussy stone face, all of which, at the time she was built, had architects and critics going at each other tooth and nail. The Metropolitan Life Tower across the park may be taller, but it doesn’t have near the style or presence; and next to the Flatiron, buildings like Madison Square Garden, topped by its once-shocking statue of naked Diana, just seem like hangovers from another age, an age that, looking back, feels like it passed in the space of a night. It was a gay night, many folks’d say; but for some of us, it was a strange and dangerous time, when we learned things about human behavior that most sensible people would never want to know. Even the few that might’ve been curious got all the grimness they could stand from the Great War. What people want now’s a good time, and they want it with a vengeance.

  Certainly that drive is what’ll be powering the type of folks who’ll be on their way over to my shop to try and buy the smokes they’ll need for long hours at the city’s gaming tables and dance halls. The weather alone would rule out any darker, motivations. The breezy, light arms of the night air will wrap themselves around all those keen, hopeful souls, and they’ll tear into the town like a meat district dog who’s smelled out a bit of bone at the bottom of an ash heap. Most of their activities won’t amount to nothing, of course, but that doesn’t matter; part of the strange fun of getting rooked into thinking that anything’s possible on the beaten, dirty streets of this Big Onion is knowing that if you don’t find what you’re looking for tonight, it’s all that much more important that you try again tomorrow.

  I remember that feeling; I had it many times myself before I reached my present lamentable state. Being forever on the verge of coughing up a lung has taken away much of my joy in this existence, for it’s hard to relish the world’s pleasures when you’re leaving pools of blood and pus wherever you go like some wretched, wounded animal. Still, though, my memory’s as good as ever, and to be sure, I can recall the raw joy that nights like this used to bring, the feeling of being outside and on your own, with the whole world stretched out and waiting. Yes, even with the hack I know that you don’t come in from a night like this without a damned good reason. But that’s exactly what Mr. John Schuyler Moore has given me.

  He came in about an hour ago, drunk as a lord (which will surprise exactly nobody what knows the man) and spewing a lot of vitriol about the cowardice of editors and publishers and the American people in general. To hear him talk (or maybe I should say, to hear the wine and whiskey talk), it’s a miracle this country’s made
it as far as we have, what with all the secret horror, tragedy, and mayhem that infest our society. Mind you, I don’t argue the man’s point; I spent too many years in the house and employ of Doctor Laszlo Kreizler, eminent alienist and friend to both me and Mr. Moore, to write my guest’s gloomy estimations off as a drunkard’s ravings. But as oftentimes happens with your inebriates, my visitor wasn’t going to let his bitterness stay generalized for too long: he was looking for somebody specific to go after, and in the absence of anybody else it was pretty obvious that I’d do.

  His particular complaint had to do with the book he’s been writing these last several months, ever since President Roosevelt died. I read the thing, we all did; gave Mr. Moore our thoughts on it, and wished him well; but there wasn’t one of us, including the Doctor, what seriously believed he had a prayer of finding a publisher for it. The manuscript told the tale of the Beecham murders, the first case that the Doctor, Mr. Moore, Miss Sara Howard, the two detectives Isaacson, Cyrus Montrose, and I had occasion to undertake together: not the sort of tale that any publisher in his right mind is going to place before the public. True, there’s them what likes to get a little scare out of their evening read; but there’s also a limit to how far that particular taste goes, and the Beecham tale was as far over that limit as you could likely get, in this day and age. Maybe it is a story that needs telling, like Mr. Moore claims; but there’s plenty of stories that need telling what never get told, just because people can’t bear the listening.

  My first mistake this evening was to make that little observation to Mr. Moore.

  He gave me what’s a rare look, for him: hard and truly angry. I’ve known John Schuyler Moore since I was eleven years old, which would be some twenty-four years, and I would be hard-pressed to name a fairer, more decent, or generally kinder man. But he does run deep, and like most that do, there’s a pool of hurt and bitterness inside him that sometimes can’t help but stream on out. I’ve seen different things bring it on, but it’s never been stronger than tonight: he wanted the Beecham story heard, and he was in a genuine rage with all them what were going to prevent him from telling it, not to mention anybody that might even try to understand such skittishness. Which in this case—unfortunately—was me.

  He isn’t young any longer, Mr. Moore isn’t, and the ruddy ripples of skin around his starched collar tell of how he’s lived his life; but in the angry eyes was the same fire that’s always driven him when faced with injustice and what he sees as stupidity. And the man doesn’t back down at sixty-odd years any more than he did when he was my age. Knowing all this, I figured a fine airing of opinions was on its way, and I climbed up one of the wooden ladders in the store to fetch a large jar that contains a particularly pricey mix of Turkish and Georgian leaves. Then I set a second wicker chair out under the little striped canopy that covers my two front windows—S. TAGGERT, TOBACCONIST, FINE FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC BLENDS in the best gold leaf—and set to work rolling the goods in my tastiest English papers. In that setting the two of us had at it, the May breeze continuing to carry the nastier smells of the city off to points east.

  “So, Stevie,” declares the great journalist himself, in the same tone of voice what’s gotten him fired off newspapers up and down the East Coast, “I take it that in the end you, too, are going to prove a willing partner to the conspiracy of silence that surrounds the private horrors of American society.”

  “Have a smoke, Mr. Moore,” answers yours truly, the unaware conspirator, “and think about what you just said. This is me, Stevie, the same what has gone on ungodly pursuits like the Beecham case with you since he was a boy.”

  “That’s who I thought I was talking to,” comments my companion unsteadily, “but your tone led me to wonder if I might not be mistaken.”

  “Light?” says I, whipping a match against my pants as Mr. Moore fumbles in his pockets. “It ain’t that you’re mistaken,” I go on, “but you’ve got to know how to approach people.”

  “Ah!” says he. “And so now I, who have worked for the finest journals in this country, who currently comment on the greatest affairs of the day in the pages of The New York Times, now I do not know how to approach my public!”

  “Don’t take on airs,” I answers. “The Times’s given you the sack twice that I know of, exactly because you didn’t know how to approach your public. The Beecham case was strong stuff, maybe too strong for your readers to take first horse out of the gate. Could be you should’ve eased them into it, started with something that didn’t involve talk about slaughtered boy-whores, cannibalism, and eyeballs in a jar.”

  A smoky hiss comes from the great scribe, and the smallest nod indicates that he thinks maybe I’m right: maybe the story of a tormented killer who took out his rage on some of the most unfortunate young men in this city wasn’t the best way to acquaint people with either the psychological theories of Dr. Kreizler or the secret sins of American society. This realization (if I’m right and he’s having it) obviously doesn’t set Mr. Moore up much. A deep, whining groan that comes out of him seems to say: I’m taking professional advice from a petty criminal-turned-tobacconist. I laugh at this; I have to, for there’s more of a pouting child in Mr. Moore’s manner, now, than there is of an enraged old man.

  “Let’s look back on it for a moment,” I say, feeling better now that his anger’s giving way to a bit of resignation. “Let’s think about all those cases, and see if we can’t find one that might be less of an out-and-out shocker but still suit the purpose.”

  “It can’t be done, Stevie,” Mr. Moore mumbles, depressed. “You know as well as I do that the Beecham case was the first and best illustration of the things Kreizler’s been trying to say all these years.”

  “Maybe,” I reply. “Then again, maybe there’s others as good. You always acknowledged that I had the best memory of all of us—it may be that I can help you think of one.” I’m being a little coy, here: I already know the case I’d put forward as the most puzzling and fascinating of all we ever worked on. But if I advocate it too fast and with too much vigor, well, it’ll just be the rag in front of the bull to a man in Mr. Moore’s condition. He produces a flask, is about to take a pull, then jumps a foot or so in the air when a flatbed Ford motor truck backfires like a cannon out in the avenue. Your old folks’ll react that way to such things; haven’t ever quite got used to the sounds of modern times. Anyway, after he settles back into his chair with a grunt, Mr. Moore allows himself a minute to think my suggestion over. But a slow shake of the head indicates that he’s come full circle to the same hopeless conclusion: in all our experiences together, there’s nothing as good, nothing as clear, as the Beecham case. I take a deep breath, followed by a drag off my stick, and then I say it quietly:

  “What about Libby Hatch?”

  My friend goes a little pale and looks at me like maybe the old girl herself’s going to appear from inside the shop and let him have it if he says the wrong thing. Her name’ll produce that effect on anyone who ever crossed paths or purposes with her.

  “Libby Hatch?” Mr. Moore echoes quietly. “No. No, you couldn’t. It’s not—well, it—well, you just couldn’t …” He keeps on in that vein until I get enough room in edgewise to ask exactly why you couldn’t. “Well,” he answers, still sounding like a half-terrified kid, “how could you—how could anyone—” And then some part of his brain that hasn’t been clouded by drink remembers that the woman’s been dead for better than twenty years: he puffs up his chest and gets a little bolder.

  “In the first place,” he says (and up goes a finger, with more at the ready to indicate that there’s a whole arsenal of points coming), “I thought you were talking about a story that wouldn’t be as gruesome as Beecham’s. In the Hatch case you’ve not only got kidnappings, but murdered infants, grave robbing—and we did the grave robbing, for God’s sake—”

  “True,” I say, “but—” But there’s no buts—Mr. Moore is not letting reason get into this. Up bangs another finger, and he bulls on:


  “Second, the moral implications”—he does love that little phrase—“of the Hatch case are, if anything, even more disturbing than those of the Beecham affair.”

  “That’s right,” I chime in, “and that’s just why—”

  “And finally,” he booms, “even if the story weren’t so damned horrifying and disturbing, you, Stevie Taggert, would not be the man to tell it.”

  This point I find a little confusing. It hasn’t actually occurred to me that I am the man to tell the story, but I don’t much like the statement that I couldn’t be. Seems to imply something.

  Hoping I’ve taken his meaning wrong, I ask straight out just what’s to prevent me from relating the terrible saga of Libby Hatch, if I so desire. Much to my disappointment, Mr. Moore answers that I haven’t got the education and I haven’t got the training. “What do you think?” he says, his stock of injured pride still not tapped out, “that writing a book’s like doing up a sales receipt? That there’s nothing more to the author’s craft than there is to peddling tobacco?”

  At this point, I become a little less amused by the inebriate next to me; but I’m going to give him one last chance.

  “Are you forgetting,” I ask quietly, “that Doctor Kreizler himself saw to my education after I went to live with him?”

  “A few years of informal training,” huffs Mr. Editorial Page. “Nothing to compare to a Harvard education.”

  “Well, you just catch me where I go wrong,” I shoot back, “but a Harvard education hasn’t done much to get your little manuscript out to the world.” His eyes go narrow at that. “Of course,” I continue, rubbing the salt in, “I’ve never taken to liquor, which seems to be the main requirement for gentlemen in your trade. But other than that, I figure I measure up okay against you scribblers.”