Girl Waits with Gun (19 page)

I had put Mr. LaMotte's letter into an envelope of my own with a note of explanation, hoping to leave it in Lucy's mailbox and run off before anyone saw me. But when I tried to open the front door to Lucy's building, it wobbled and fell down, landing in the dark hallway with a bang. It had been torn off its hinges and propped up to cover the entrance.

I backed into the weedy front yard and looked up. One of the windows on the second floor had been boarded over. There were no signs of life in the building—no washing on the clothesline, no lights or curtains in the windows, no clatter of dishes or smell of dinner on the stove. Then, as I leaned closer to risk a peek through the gaping doorway, the odor hit me. Fire.

I jumped back as if the building were still burning. A woman across the street swept her porch and watched me. Three boys played with a ball on the corner, and when it bounced against the street it gave an eerie and empty echo.

A low fence between Lucy's building and the one next door had been knocked down. I stepped over it and walked around to the rear of the house, which was entirely scorched. Blackened timbers had begun to disintegrate in the autumn wind and rain, and the windows were nothing but holes offering admittance to birds and squirrels.

Where a back door might have once stood, there was nothing but a cement threshold and the burnt end of a wooden post. I took a step inside and kicked away a cracked glass doorknob and the blistered lid of an enameled pot. The rattle they made echoed around the hollow and charred interior. Even the staircase was gone. The remains of the bannister hung uselessly from the second floor.

If Lucy had been home, I didn't see how she could have made it out alive. Everyone on the upper floors would have been trapped.

I don't remember running to the trolley, but I was on board and halfway to Hackensack before I could hold my hands steady again. At the courthouse I asked to speak to Sheriff Heath.

“He just left,” the girl at the reception desk said.

“A deputy, then,” I said, pushing my hair back under my hat. I was still sweating from my race away from Lucy's. “I was to come here if—if something happened. Give them my name. It's Constance Kopp.”

With as bored and indifferent an air as she could muster, the girl went and whispered something to the guard standing on the courthouse steps. “Wait here,” she said, and the guard walked down the steps and around to the jail.

A few minutes later, a gray-haired man in a deputy's uniform walked in. “Deputy Morris, miss,” he said. He looked at the receptionist, who was watching us curiously. “This way, please.”

He took my arm and we walked down the corridor, where no one could hear us. “Sheriff Heath has been helping me and my sisters with some trouble we had,” I said.

“Yes, miss. I've been by on patrol a few times. Has he bothered you again?”

I shook my head. “It's something else. It's about a fire over in Paterson. Sometime in the last few weeks. A boarding house on Summer. Did you hear about it?”

He thought for a minute. “I might have. What about it?”

“A friend of mine could have been there. Did everyone get out?”

He shook his head. “I don't know, miss. It wouldn't be a matter for the sheriff over here in Bergen County.”

“But can't you find out?”

He looked down the hall at the receptionist. “I'd have to ask her to telephone.”

“Couldn't you, Mr. Morris? Please?”

He laughed, but not unkindly. “Begging doesn't suit you, Miss Kopp.”

FLEURETTE WAS SURPRISED
to see me come downstairs the next morning in a hat and a traveling coat. She was sitting on the floor in the parlor, sorting through a box of buttons to find a matched set for a dress she was working on.

“Where are we going?” she said, jumping to her feet.

“You're staying here,” I said. “I'm going into the city. I'll be back by suppertime.”

“The city! Without me?” She stamped her foot and the buttons scattered across the rug. What a child she could be when she didn't get her way! I swallowed my irritation and bent down to speak to her in a low voice.

“You know I can't take you. You heard what the sheriff said. No train stations, no strangers, no strange places.”

She pushed the buttons around with her toe. “You're going to go and get those pictures yourself, aren't you?” she said.

“I'm going to try. Now, I wish you'd be a good girl and stay here and do what we ask you to do.”

“I've done everything you've asked me to do!” she cried. “You and Norma and the sheriff. When do I get to do anything for myself again?” She threw herself on the divan and buried her face in the cushion, sobbing.

What now? I only needed a few hours away, but I managed to set off a full-blown tantrum just by walking past Fleurette. I sighed and looked out the window. Norma was out there raking leaves. I knew she wanted to get away, too. It was unpleasant to be confined to the house for so long. We were living such queer and isolated lives out here by ourselves.

I sat down next to Fleurette and put my hand on her back the way I used to when she was a little girl. Into the pillow she said, “And next week is my birthday and what are we going to do about that?”

“It is? Are you going to be fifteen or sixteen?”

She gave me a little punch in the leg. “Seventeen. You know that.”

“Already? Well, you're right. We should take you somewhere.”

She sniffed and sat up. Her eyes looked like the clear night sky when she cried. “Where?” she asked.

“Anywhere you want to go. As long as the sheriff agrees.”

“You'll ask him?”

“I will.”

LUCY DIDN'T DIE IN THE FIRE
. No one did. It started in the rear corner of the house—I could picture Henry Kaufman and his friends sneaking around with a bucket of kerosene—but the man living downstairs smelled it right away and ran upstairs to wake the others. He must have been the one whose room I'd backed into when I went to see Lucy. It had seemed like such a drab and miserable little room, but the man who lived in it had done something heroic. I wondered where he'd gone. I wondered where any of them had gone. Deputy Morris hadn't been able to tell me that. With Lucy's whereabouts unknown, I had no choice but to go to Mr. LaMotte's myself before he threw the pictures away.

The train got me into New York by noon. There was a tearoom near the station where ladies could have lunch, so I stopped there first and ate a ham salad sandwich and a pineapple ring with a cherry on top. There was coconut cake for dessert. I wasn't hungry anymore, but I'd grown tired of our farm cooking and couldn't resist something as exotic as coconut. I ordered a slice and drank a cup of coffee with it. The buttons on my dress were about to pop, I'd stuffed myself so. I was glad for the long walk to Mr. LaMotte's studio.

He was sitting at his desk, looking as if he'd been waiting for me. “Miss Kopp!” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet as I walked in. “Just in time.”

I took a step forward and knocked a pile of envelopes off a chair. “Pardon me,” I said, crouching down to retrieve them. The envelopes were blank except for a name written in light pencil on the front of each one:
Wapole, Dowd, Kurtz, Wood.
They didn't seem to be in any particular order, so I scooped them up and returned them to the chair.

“Not to worry,” he said. “They have a tendency to leap out at a person. Can't be helped.” I thought that it could be helped with the employment of a filing cabinet and a secretary to file them, but I didn't say so.

“I hope I haven't kept you waiting,” I said. “Your letter only just arrived yesterday, so I didn't have time to reply.”

He cocked his head to the left and looked at me over the tops of his spectacles. “Oh, yes, the photographs. I have them here, and I would be most happy to let you look through them. But first I have a favor to ask of you.”

Before he could continue, the door opened and a mountain of a man pushed his way into the tiny office. He wore the largest wool overcoat I'd ever seen on a person, and a black hat that a small child could have hidden inside. A shadow fell across his face, but I could see an enormous mustache above lips the size of sausages, and two bulging chins. “Is this her?” he asked in a growl that could only come from the Bronx.

Mr. LaMotte rushed around to stand between us. “Mr. Hopper! I wasn't expecting you so soon. Please let me introduce you to Miss Kopp.”

I extended my hand and found it gripped roughly by something that felt like a catcher's mitt.

“How do you do?” I said. “I didn't realize I was expected.”

“You're not here about the job?” the man grunted.

Mr. LaMotte waved his hands to silence us. “I was just getting around to that,” he said. “Miss Kopp, I wonder if you might do a favor for my associate Mr. Hopper. You see, from time to time, we have need of a girl photographer, and—”

“A photographer?” I said, taking a step back and overturning yet another pile of envelopes. “I don't know a thing about photography. I'm only here because you said—”

“I said I'd be willing to do you a favor,” Mr. LaMotte said, having regained his calm. “Now I'm asking you to do a favor for me. This gentleman would like you to pay a visit to a hotel for ladies just off Fifth Avenue.”

“Pay a visit to a hotel?” Sheriff Heath had only just warned us to stay away from hotels. “I couldn't possibly.”

“We only want you to inquire about the rooms and ask to see one with a rear-facing window on an upper floor. They'll give you a key and send you up by yourself. Just go and take a photograph of the room, and get a picture of whatever you can see from the window. Then return the key to the desk and bring the camera back here to me. I'll have your photographs waiting.”

Before I could compose an answer, Mr. LaMotte added, “You look like a woman who can handle herself, Miss Kopp.”

“Well, I—”

“Please be assured that we are not asking you to be involved in anything disreputable. The matter we are investigating concerns only a witness to a crime. We must confirm certain details of her story by attesting to the layout of the room and the view from the window. Nothing more. We would go ourselves, but they will only permit ladies upstairs, and I have none in my employment at present.”

Mr. Hopper was breathing in that way that large men breathed, as if fueled by a boiler room instead of a pair of lungs. He still hadn't removed his hat. I couldn't get a good look at his face.

“Is Mr. Hopper one of your—”

“Associates. He handles investigations for several of the better attorneys in Manhattan. His reputation is beyond question. He enjoys the high regard of both the police and officers of the court.”

Mr. Hopper made a sound that could have been a grunt of agreement. We both looked at him, but when he said nothing, Mr. LaMotte continued.

“He will accompany you to the hotel and bring you back here as soon as your work is completed. I assure you it won't take but an hour, and that is only if you enjoy a leisurely stroll up Fifth Avenue and visit some of our fine shops along the way.”

Now Mr. Hopper chortled—a noise that sounded more like the eruption of a minor volcano—at the idea of enjoying a leisurely stroll with me.

I was too astonished to take offense. Never in my life had I been thrown into so many unexpected situations in such a short time. Mr. LaMotte took my silence for acquiescence and wasted no time in getting a camera in my hands. It was a little box camera that had been rigged to resemble a ladies' handbag. I admired the soft Italian leather handle and the fine tweed covering the box. This was a well-made instrument. As soon as it was in my hands, I decided that I should have one of my own someday.

“Hold it against yourself, just like that,” Mr. LaMotte said. “There's nothing to it. This little lever slides across to open the shutter. Just go slowly, until you feel it engage on the other side. Then wind the key until the next number appears. You have eight pictures. Please do use them all. I must develop the film immediately, so a half-used roll doesn't save me anything. Get as much light as you can in the room and hold the camera perfectly still. Is that all clear? You can do that, can't you?”

He smiled up at me with genuine fondness, the way one might regard a niece one was bringing into the family business. I couldn't help but return the smile.

“It is, Mr. LaMotte. It's perfectly clear. But why are you asking me to do this? Surely if you need a girl photographer, you can find one in this city.”

He stepped back and studied me for a minute. “You look capable, Miss Kopp. You are—forgive me for saying—substantial.”

I saw no reason to take offense at that.

“And serious,” he added quickly. “You seem like you could handle any sort of trouble that might—not that there will be any trouble, it's just . . . well—”

“It's all right,” I said. “I'll be fine.” With that I slid the camera's strap over my wrist and looked in the direction of the towering figure that was Mr. Hopper. He hadn't made a move. He was just waiting. I had a feeling that in his line of work, he spent a good deal of time waiting. “Shall we go?”

Mr. Hopper opened the door and pressed himself against it to make room for me to pass. He smelled of tobacco and wintergreen. Soon we were out in the pale October sunlight, marching toward Fifth Avenue like two soldiers.

He was not a man for conversation, but that suited me just fine. I made a point of not looking in a single shop window so he would not think I was the kind of girl who wanted to fritter away time trying on hats or squealing over bracelets. I don't know why it mattered to me what Mr. Hopper thought. I had not gone looking for a job as a girl photographer, but now that I had it, I intended to do it right.