The Other Typist (25 page)

“No one’s going anywhere,” the Sergeant asserted. “We’ve got work to do.” We stared at him, unmoving. “Marie”—he snapped his fingers—“coffee!” Whatever odd enchantment had temporarily rooted us in place suddenly lifted, and the office hummed again as we all went about our business.

“Let me help you with that, my dear,” I overheard Odalie say to Iris, who had lumped all the case files back into one pile and was preparing to divvy them into a revised distribution. Odalie’s voice was sugary and pleasant enough, but I saw the tendons above Iris’s necktie flex defensively. Order and control were Iris’s two best friends, and I knew by the end of the hour Odalie was bound to worm her way in between them, much to Iris’s silent distress. If there was one thing I could consistently predict, it was that Odalie would always get her way.

Odalie had also not forgotten her promise to Gib. After a handful of casual, perfectly innocent-sounding inquiries, Odalie was told a representative was on his way over from the Lower East Side Boys’ Home to collect a young juvenile named Charles Whiting, who was being temporarily held in our precinct’s holding cell. To any outside observer, Odalie did not appear dreadfully interested in the case. But nonetheless, the corresponding file somehow made its way from Iris’s pile and into her own. It seemed a haphazard transaction, but I knew better. Before the lunch hour rolled around, a telephone call had been made to inform the representative he needn’t bother making the trip, and a middle-aged couple had rung the bell at our front desk to sign the boy out. They were Charlie’s parents, they claimed, despite the fact they twice referred to him as Carl (
It
’
s a pet name,
the woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Whiting explained the mistake away).

Of course I was privy to the fact these weren’t really Charlie’s parents. Everyone at the speakeasy who regularly interacted with Charlie knew his father had died in the war and his mother had drunk herself to death the year after the armistice. But it wasn’t until they had already departed, each holding one of Charlie’s hands parentally tucked into one of their own, that I was finally able to place his “mother’s” face as that of the woman who had once removed her shoes and drunkenly played “Chopsticks” on the piano with her toes.

I
have as good as admitted the journal I kept about Odalie reads like one long love-letter; it details my initial intrigue with her and quickly evolves into an outpouring of the sisterly affection I spent so many hours cultivating for her. I understand only too well how it will appear to the eyes of an outsider, and I have endeavored to keep it among my private things for as long as that arrangement holds (the doctors here are not keen on privacy). We have access to very few books here—
Too much fiction may overstimulate the mind, and as you know, your imagination is already altogether too excitable,
they tell me. With little else to do and little ability to concentrate on the ridiculous “recreational” activities they offer here, I have now reread my journal several times over. It is striking how little is mentioned about Odalie’s business affairs. At present, I can see only one entry that makes reference to the high level of Odalie’s illicit entanglements. Of course, at the time, I failed to accurately interpret the meaning of this exchange, but I made note of it thus:

Today when I came home O and G were in the back bedroom and I heard them arguing about something. I would never eavesdrop, but they must not have heard me come in and they kept at it, and then of course it got so it was too late for me to interrupt or cough or make my presence known in some other way, and so I just held my breath and stood there, quiet as can be. Curiously, they weren’t arguing over O having other suitors as they normally might have, but instead it was something about business, and O sounded a great deal more agitated than usual. At one point G shouted, Well, now that you’ve gotten your card from that almighty crook of a police commissioner, I suppose you think you don’t even need me anymore. It was a curious thing to say—to my knowledge, O has never met the Commissioner. Finally, G came storming out and made for the front door, and when he caught sight of me he gave a rude snort and shouted back something horribly slanderous to O about my being a toadie and a spy. Then he left without saying so much as hello to me and slammed the door. Thought G and I had achieved a peaceful treaty, but I see now I was a fool to think so. It is truly less of a treaty and more of a stalemate, I believe.

•   •   •

I KNOW MY PERSECUTORS
would delight in much of my journal, but I believe this particular entry would disappoint them. Their explanation for entries like this one would be of a simple nature: They would say, of course, I am a madwoman, an unreliable raconteur. But I know the truth, and I’d be willing to bet if the Commissioner himself were to ever catch wind of this entry, the entire journal might even disappear altogether.

The fact of the matter is, my journal is rather devoid of further entries on the subject because I never knew that much about Odalie’s business. I realize, of course, nobody here believes me when I say so, but I’m afraid it is simply the truth. The doctor I am seeing—Dr. Miles H. Benson; you may as well know his name, as it is no great secret—nods his head as though he believes me, but I know he is merely humoring me. He thinks if he nods his head in that sympathetic way of his I’ll come to see him as an ally and confide in him. But in truth, I have not honestly been privy to the kind of secrets I’m sure he is salivating to hear. It’s likely he has imagined a whole world for me, a world of racketeering and tommy guns and shoot-outs in curtained restaurants. Of course these imaginings are so false as to be laughable; the existence I led with Odalie was one of fine furnishings and delicate pastries and frequent trips to fancy department stores. At best, I possess a fragmented knowledge of the role Odalie played in the importation and production of alcohol, assembled mostly from bits and pieces of information acquired by indirect means (here Gib might snarkily point out that what I call “indirect means” he calls spying).

Of the facts I do know, here are some: I know the liquor at the speakeasies ranged from the very high to the very low, running the gamut from French champagne to grain alcohol. All in all, I realize now in retrospect a pretty decent-size operation must’ve been in place, and there was surely a certain amount of importation going on. During different intervals at the speakeasies there were numerous bottles of English gin, Irish whiskey, and Russian vodka all floating about. I had also gathered from the amount of bathtub gin and moonshine in circulation that a reasonable amount of production was likewise going on. I’d overheard Odalie on the telephone several times, and from her half of the conversation I made out that these homemade varieties of alcohol were being sold over the counter at several general stores and drugstores in a variety of locations from Philadelphia to Baltimore, and that the cryptic messages Charlie Whiting sat by the ’phone and took down had something to do with this business. Once I even answered the ring of the telephone in our apartment only to have a man with a rather uncouth Chicago accent rattle off a string of store names whose illicit supplies I can only assume needed restocking. The gentleman at the other end of the line was several minutes into his itemized list before I was able to stop him by blurting out,
I beg your pardon, but I’m afraid Miss Lazare is not at home presently.
Evidently the caller was greatly taken aback by this piece of news, for he rang off immediately.

In general, though, I remained rather ignorant on the subject of Odalie’s business, and I must admit, my ignorance was of a rather self-imposed, willful variety. I am no dullard, so I suppose I should have seen the repercussions that would eventually come from my adopting this position. I did not know then—or rather, I did not want to know then—that there would come a day when I’d wish I’d taken more care to distance myself even further from Odalie’s business matters.

•   •   •

BY THAT TIME,
1925 was already half over. As the sultry days of September stretched into an Indian summer, Odalie and Gib began to quarrel more regularly. While I realize it is very unbecoming of me to say so, I suppose I was inwardly delighted with this development. I never understood the draw Gib held for Odalie in the first place, and it seemed inevitable that Odalie should want to part ways with him. Whenever we spoke about it in private, I heartily encouraged her to take the steps necessary to effect this separation. While I never said so aloud, I even fancied that their increased proclivity to fight had something to do with my presence in Odalie’s life, that I was perhaps unseating Gib in some significant way. Many of their quarrels during that time had to do with Odalie’s whereabouts. When I first moved in, Odalie was very careful to keep Gib apprised of her actions at all times. But as my tenure wore on, she grew increasingly neglectful of this duty. Silly though it may sound now, I speculated that my presence in the apartment had emboldened Odalie in some way. She was breaking free of Gib, and I was helping her! Of course, this turned out to be true in the end—but not in the manner I imagined.

The result of Odalie’s quarrels with Gib was that she needed someone to occasionally take up his role in business matters. She began to ask me for little favors. These were small tasks; typically they involved dropping off an envelope at this-or-that drugstore, or picking one up. I told myself I needed to go to the drugstore anyway, and the delivery of these envelopes was merely an innocuous little side-errand. But of course I knew better.

For her part, Odalie was extremely clever in the delivery of her requests. The first time she asked, we were on the terrace, lazing about in the late summer heat and sliding ice cubes along the backs of each other’s necks in an attempt to cool down.

“Would you mind terribly?” she asked just after making her request. I hesitated, and she sensed it. “Why, Rose,” she exclaimed, “the shape of your neck is just lovely. Has anyone ever told you that?” Indeed, they had not. “You really
could
carry off a bob in style, you know. Just think!” I felt myself blush up to the roots of my unbobbed hair.

Before I knew it, I had completed this same errand on her behalf no fewer than four times. I was unprepared, however, for her requests to escalate into something more than the occasional passing along of an envelope to a drugstore clerk. Odalie was careful to stack the odds in her favor at first, naturally. One night, we found ourselves curled up in Odalie’s room on top of the bedcovers. She had been fighting with Gib, and ever the sympathetic listener, I had been playing the part of her attentive audience. We had been holding hands, as we often did, and just as Odalie dozed off, she pulled my hand to her lips and brushed it with a kiss. “A true sister,” she murmured as she drifted off into a deep state of slumber.

The very next day she asked me a new kind of favor—one to which I found myself powerless to say no. It started off as a normal Tuesday, but eventually she compelled me to leave my post an hour prior to quitting time in order to run a “business errand.”

“I would do it, but I’m behind. See this huge stack of reports that need transcribing here? All that’s for the Sergeant, and I think he is growing quite intolerant of me these days. But you . . . you’re always so on top of your reports, Rose! You can afford to step out for an hour. Oh, and it won’t even be that! Much less, I’d say. Just slip out the door quietly, and I’ll make sure no one notices you’ve gone,” she said.

“Oh, I’m not sure—”

“It’s really easy,” she promised. “It’s a little bit out of the way, but all you have to do is pick up a message.”

As I began to demur, she stiffened and gave me a look.

“Oh, Rose, I can see you’re put out. Please, never mind then. Don’t bother yourself over it. I’ll just telephone and ask Gib. . . .”

Of course I stopped her, and with a contradictory mixture of eagerness and reluctance I wrote down the address she gave. On my way out the door, she hurried after me and grabbed my wrist and said, “Oh! I almost forgot—for cab fare,” while giving me an open-mouthed wink. As I hailed a taxi and climbed in, I glanced at the denomination of the bills clutched in my fist and realized she had just handed me enough money to pay a city taxi to chauffeur me all the way to St. Paul and back.

It had been muggy and overcast all day long, and though it was only September and not yet five o’clock, the sky had already turned a dark sickly green color. The driver, probably hoping for some semblance of a fresh breeze, had all the windows rolled down in the taxi, but it didn’t seem to help much. When I handed him the slip of paper containing the address, he nodded and seemed to understand where we were going, so for most of the ride I simply sank into the back seat, leaning my head back and sweating rather indelicately on the leather upholstery. Eventually we pulled up in front of a brick building somewhere along the East River. The driver waited expectantly, but I was slow to make my move—the building didn’t even look inhabited. Whatever the edifice was, it certainly wasn’t a residential building; it appeared to be more of a disused factory of some sort. I noticed a few of the large glass windows on the upper floors had been smashed out, giving the building the air of a toothy jack-o’-lantern.

“Well?” the driver prodded, peering back over the seat and pushing the brim of his newsboy cap up so as to get a better look at me. I peeled a few bills from the wad Odalie had handed me just minutes earlier and paid him.

“You can keep the extra seeds.” It was a slang expression I’d heard Odalie use at least a dozen times. Along with her clothes, I was evidently trying on Odalie’s vocabulary and mannerisms.

“Thanks,” he said gruffly. It sounded like skepticism, but I assumed he likely meant it in earnest, as I’d just handed him a rather large tip. I did not, at that time, consider the possibility his cynical tone had anything to do with the fact he’d picked me up in front of the police precinct and was now dropping me off along a rather dubious stretch of the East River.

Once out of the car, I approached the only door I could discern along the building’s entire facade. I heard the cab pull away behind me. Somewhere out on the East River a garbage scow gave a great blast of its horn and the far-off shrieks of bickering seagulls echoed over the water. The door before me was heavy, wooden, and padlocked. By then I was certain I had written down the address incorrectly, but since the taxi was already long gone and there didn’t appear to be a convenient way to telephone Odalie, I figured I might as well knock on the door. I reached up with a cautious hand and rapped on the wooden door timidly. It gave a mighty shake, and the padlock jingled on its chain. I looked around with an air of embarrassment, as I suddenly felt very foolish. I suppose I expected very little in the way of a response. But almost as soon as my feeble knocking died down, a rectangular peephole I had not initially detected slid open with violent force.

“What d’ya want?” a low voice boomed. I squinted into the dark of the peephole and, with a gasp, discerned a rather beady eye looking out at me. I stood there, blinking stupidly. “I said, now, what d’ya want?” the voice repeated.

“I’m here . . . on behalf of Odalie Lazare,” I said. The peephole slid shut, its closure proving to be as violent as its opening. A heavy bolt sounded and keys jingled as a series of locks were undone. The door swung open, and I found myself staring at a thickly muscled, red-haired man wearing a fisherman’s sweater and knit cap. He was quite large. The level of my eyes, I noticed, came to about the middle stripes upon the man’s chest.

“Hurry up!” he barked, and without thinking I stepped over the threshold and plunged into the darkness inside. It was some kind of antechamber. The door was swiftly shut and bolted behind me. The padlock and chain were just for show apparently; the more I looked around, the more I realized everything that truly locked was bolted from within. Which meant, of course, the structure was regularly occupied by people—the last thing I’d expected.

“Odalie sent you?” the redhead asked. I nodded. He looked me over from head to toe, as though deciding whether the curious phenomenon in question was actually possible. He let out a huff that made me think the matter ultimately went undecided. “This way,” he said, evidently no longer interested in the specifics of my person. He began walking rapidly down a hallway, and as he moved I realized his lantern was the only source of light around.