The Other Typist (2 page)

I am not sure he meant it as a compliment. Working in a precinct full of policemen, I am no stranger to sarcasm. For all I know, the Lieutenant Detective could have been having a laugh at my expense. I don’t know much about Jack the Ripper. I do know that he was rumored to have been abnormally skilled with a knife.

I let the subject drop and did not bring it up to the Lieutenant Detective again. Life went on at the precinct in a more or less predictable harmony—the Sergeant kept to his uneasy pact of cooperation with the Lieutenant Detective, and in turn the Lieutenant Detective kept to his courteous-yet-always-curt interactions with me.

It all went on harmoniously, that is, until they hired the other typist.

•   •   •

I RECOGNIZED SOMETHING
was happening the very second she walked in the door for her interview. On that particular day, she entered very calmly and quietly, but I knew: It was like the eye of a hurricane. She was the dark epicenter of something we didn’t quite understand yet, the place where hot and cold mixed dangerously, and around her everything would change.

Perhaps it’s a misnomer to refer to her as “the other typist,” as there were other typists all along. I was one of three. There was a forty-year-old woman named Iris with a gaunt face, sharp jaw, and gray, birdlike eyes. Every day Iris wore a different colored ladies’ necktie. Iris was always complaisant to do extra typing when it was needed, and this was much appreciated. (
Crime does not take weekends or observe bank holidays,
the Sergeant is fond of saying.) As far as social particulars went, Iris had never been married, and it was difficult to imagine marriage had ever been one of her aspirations.

Then there was Marie, who was in many ways an opposite composite of Iris. Marie was rotund and always merry and walked with a slightly hobbled step from where an omnibus had run over her left foot when she was just a child. Marie was barely thirty but had already married twice—the first of her husbands had run off with a chorus girl. Without being able to locate him to secure a proper divorce, Marie had simply shrugged away the legal contract and married her second husband, a man named Horace, who was kind to her but was sick all the time with gout. Marie worked at the precinct because she was under no illusion that Horace would be able to provide for her. She was a sentimental woman who had married for love, despite the fact the gout was bound to get worse and keep him off his feet more and more. The crude remark was often made behind Marie’s back that between her mangled left foot and Horace’s gout-swollen feet, they probably danced one “helluva” waltz together. People never said these things while she was in the room, but Marie was no fool and she was aware this joke was often bandied about. She had decided long ago to pretend ignorance. She was generally for anything that facilitated greater camaraderie, and in consequence everybody seemed to like working with her.

And then there was me, of course. I’d worked at the precinct for a little over two years and had already garnered a reputation for being the fastest and most accurate typist. Among the three of us we were able to keep up with all the precinct’s needs, typing the paperwork for all the bookings, confessions, and correspondence. We were able to keep up, that is, until the Volstead Act triggered a serious boost in our business, so to speak.

In the beginning, the Volstead Act wasn’t very popular among the officers at the precinct, and for a while enforcement of the act was distinctly halfhearted. The patrolmen grumbled and only offered minimal assistance as the Anti-Saloon League closed down one watering hole after another. Officers who happened upon flasks of bathtub gin often let the perpetrators off with a warning, taking care, of course, to confiscate the evidence. Despite the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union’s best efforts to make the nation think so, not everyone believed the devil was really in the drink. There were even judges who couldn’t seem to muster the appropriate amount of outrage to earnestly punish the bootleggers who very fully and flagrantly flouted the law.
Seems only natural after a hard day
’
s work a man should want a tall drink of something,
the Lieutenant Detective once said quite loudly for everyone to hear, shrugging his shoulders.

Things went on like this for a time. Periodically an assortment of men from the neighborhood—many of them husbands and fathers—were hauled in for selling moonshine and allowed to go with a simple rap on the knuckles. No one cared to do much more than this.

But they say it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, and in our case the squeaky wheel was Assistant Attorney General Mabel Willebrandt and the grease was us. I can’t claim to be an expert on her legal career, but from what I’ve read in all the papers, Mrs. Willebrandt holds the dubious distinction of taking on issues of poorly enforced legislation her lazier and more prudent male counterparts won’t touch, and then proceeding to tackle such issues with surprising gusto, often making headlines in the process. I suppose it is only natural Mrs. Willebrandt has made herself into a patron saint of lost legal causes; she is a woman, after all, and there is little risk in letting a woman have charge of the unpopular issues. When a woman fails at her profession it is considered something rather different from when a man fails at his. However, it was clear Mrs. Willebrandt had no intention of failing, and she proved herself to be both tenacious and resourceful. While she was unable to make much of an alliance with Mayor Hylan, she did succeed in talking some “good sense” into the mayor’s wife, Miriam. Between the two of them, they succeeded in stirring up enough press to make the case that New York City should set more of an example for the rest of the nation and take more decisive action in trying to convert itself into a model “dry” city. I tell you all this because the result of all the political posturing was our precinct was selected to serve as a special apparatus of “the Noble Experiment.” This is what I mean when I say we were to be the grease intended to quiet Mrs. Willebrandt’s squeaky wheel.

The official decree was we were supposed to operate the city’s first “crackdown unit.” We were to set an example for other precincts to later follow. Extra men were added to our payroll, and we were commissioned with the task of ferreting out the neighborhood’s major speakeasies and conducting raids. Of course, a police precinct is a funny thing; the chemistry by which it operates is something like a recipe, and when the ingredients are altered it can take a while until relations come into harmony again. The officers at our precinct were not keen on the introduction of new men, and even less wild about the idea of participating in the chaotic raids that were sure to make them more unwelcome in the neighborhood than they already were, but they had little choice other than to comply. While the men bemoaned these changes, the Sergeant appeared to take his new responsibility seriously. I got the distinct impression he saw it as both a professional opportunity as well as a moral honor, and the inevitable day came when he announced he wanted every individual who so much as transported a single bottle of whiskey over the New York–New Jersey state line to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, a command that kept not only the officers but also the typists at our precinct very busy. It was not long before the unprocessed paperwork began to cause a bit of a clog in the whole system and the holding cell became nothing more than a place for bootleggers to meet their competition and suggest cooperative strategies to avoid future detection by the police.

That’s when the Sergeant telephoned the employment agency and asked them to send over another typist.

•   •   •

ODALIE’S HAIR
was not yet bobbed when she came in for an interview. If it had been, I doubt the Sergeant would have hired her, although I’m certain the Lieutenant Detective would not have minded. Even before Odalie bobbed her hair, I had my suspicions the Lieutenant Detective liked that variety of shocking hairstyle, and the kind of woman who dared to wear it.

I can recall the day Odalie came in and removed her cloche to reveal her jet-black hair swinging in a similar shape just beneath. It had been cut to her chin, the line of it very precise. I remember observing that the cut brought out something vaguely and fashionably Oriental in Odalie’s face, especially around the eyes, and the sheen of her hair was very glossy, as though she wore a helmet made of finely polished enamel. I also remember catching the Lieutenant Detective regarding her from across the room. He complimented Odalie on her bravery and taste several times that day. As for the Sergeant, he did not officially comment except to mumble over his lunch, to no one in particular, that men were likely to get the wrong idea about a woman with short hair.

But all of that came later. As I said, on the day of her interview Odalie’s hair was not yet bobbed. She arrived at the precinct that morning, her face demurely powdered, her hair slicked into a tidy chignon. I remember she wore white gloves and an expensive-looking ladies’ suit that matched the robin’s egg blue of her eyes, but it was really her voice that left the deepest impression on me, as it revealed the most about what I was later to understand was her true character. It was a husky voice with the kind of low rattling timbre that made you watch the childish curl of her lips very closely to ensure you’d caught the words that were issuing from her mouth accurately. Her voice was like this until something delighted her or made her laugh, and then it rose and fell musically, like someone practicing scales on a piano. It was a paradox of innocent surprise and devilish complicity that proved intoxicating to everyone who heard it, and I wonder sometimes—even now—whether that voice was something she had carefully crafted over the years or if she had simply been born with it.

The interview was brief. I don’t imagine the Sergeant or the Lieutenant Detective needed to know much more about the woman to be hired as our new typist other than how fast she could type (they tested her with a stopwatch, and she laughed as though they had just come up with the most intelligent and delightful game), was she presentable, and did she have good manners. There generally just wasn’t much more to vetting a new typist. And Odalie, with that voice, had them both instantly charmed. When they asked her would she mind having to hear about the often extremely unsavory acts of the criminals who were brought into the precinct, she laughed her musical, jingling laugh and then dropped into that husky timbre to joke that she was not the sort of girl you might call
squeamish,
and that it was only her meals at Mouquin’s that she insisted on being particularly
savory
anyhow. I did not think the remark was really all that clever, but the Sergeant and the Lieutenant Detective both chuckled, already eager, I believe—even at that early stage—to be liked by her. I eavesdropped from across the room and heard them tell her she was hired, starting the next Monday. In that second, I swore Odalie’s eyes flicked across the room and rested on my face for the briefest of instants, and that a tiny smile twisted itself into the corners of her mouth. But this impression was fleeting, and later it was difficult to be sure she had looked in my direction at all.

Damned nice girl,
the Lieutenant Detective had said after Odalie departed. His summary was simple, but it actually described something I hadn’t quite put my finger on at that point. The truth was I was probably younger—perhaps as much as five years Odalie’s junior—yet the word
girl
applied to her in a much more powerful way than it did to me. Part of Odalie’s allure was the way she carried with her a sort of grown-up girlishness. There was an excitement in the air around her, an excitement that might include you in some way, as though you were her secret collaborator. Her voice quivered with a sort of tomboy energy that suggested, despite her refined poise and sophistication, she was a robust individual—someone not above climbing a tree or beating you at a game of tennis. And in that observation was another thing I had begun to realize: The voluptuous glee in Odalie’s demeanor hinted at privilege, at a childhood that had been filled with automobiles and tennis courts, things that had been absent from my own childhood, and—I would humbly venture to guess—absent from the Sergeant’s and the Lieutenant Detective’s childhoods as well. Yes, her mannerisms hinted at wealth, but perhaps wisely made no concrete claim. In this regard she was somewhat exotic to us, but in a way we probably only perceived unconsciously. And just as it is with all exotic creatures, we simply held our breath as she approached, for fear of scaring her off. No one at the precinct dared to question the reason this well-to-do young woman stood before us, laughing as though delighted to be considered for a lowly typist’s job. I’ve always prided myself on my sharp instincts and critical eye, and yet even in my early state of disapproval the one thing I did not do was to question why Odalie should want employment. I can only say we are all susceptible to blind spots when exposed to the right dazzling flash.

That day, after she made her farewells and was told to return on Monday, she strode off in her childish, slightly tripping little walk through the precinct and out the front door. But as she did so, something fell from the lapel of her blue jacket and skittered noisily across the floor. My eyes instantly went to the tile where the object that had dropped lay glinting under the light of the bare electric bulbs. I knew I ought to call out to alert her, but I remained silent and Odalie continued on, seeming not to notice it. She disappeared through the door, and I simply sat frozen as several minutes passed. Curious, I finally shook myself into motion. I got up quietly from my seat and walked over to the spot where the object had been abandoned upon the floor.

It was a brooch—a very expensive-looking one, with opals, diamonds, and black onyx stones all set into a very modern starburst pattern. There was some quality about the brooch that seemed to mirror the very essence of Odalie herself, as though it were in some way a portrait of her in miniature. In a flash, I had stooped and quickly returned to my desk with the brooch concealed tightly in my palm, the sharp edges of its setting digging into my flesh. I sat and held the lovely object under my desktop near my lap—out of sight of the others—and simply gazed at it, mesmerized. It glittered softly, even in shadow. Eventually, I was called to do some typing and was forced to shake myself free from the brooch’s spell. I opened a desk drawer and tucked it away, far into the back under some papers, telling myself I would return it to Odalie first thing when she came back to start her new job on Monday, and already knowing in the pit of my stomach that this was a lie.