“Odalie,” I tentatively began. “There was a raid at the club tonight.”
She was in the midst of taking a sip from the Lieutenant Detective’s leftover gin rickey. She spat it out in a fine mist, and the piney scent of gin and citrus lime hit the air. Within seconds she was on the telephone, barking out one ’phone number after another at a very flustered operator, who—I gathered from the sound of it—kept returning on the line with the unacceptable news that none of the parties requested could be reached.
T
he Sergeant had said
we
. When the Lieutenant Detective asked if the Sergeant had somehow managed, in a very expedited manner and against all odds, to obtain Mr. Vitalli’s confession, the Sergeant had looked at me (with meaning!) and had said,
We did.
I felt those two simple words had never borne more weight.
You see, in the years I’d known the Sergeant, he was never a man given to frequent use of the word
we
. His habit of stinginess with that particular word only made my respect for him grow in weight and size. I suppose that’s fairly common; we always value those individuals who make us feel it is really something to have their friendship, to belong in their club. The Sergeant had a very precise mental ruler by which he measured people. He never hid it from you if you did not measure up, and he did not give a fig for how it made you feel. In his mind, that was not his problem; it was yours.
I say this now because when he gave me that look and said
we,
I knew it meant something. I knew it was a moment of great significance! I believed with my whole heart the Sergeant was a man who always did things by the book, and here he was condescending to bend the rules with me. With
me
! I knew he had a very strong sense of moral justice and it was only in the most extreme of circumstances and only with very special, like-minded individuals that he would ever dare to force Lady Justice’s hand. I don’t particularly care for the word
vigilante,
for it has a particularly anarchical and rebellious sound to it and as such does not suit the Sergeant at all. I believe the Sergeant was something more finely wrought, something acutely attuned to a higher call. And you may call me a fool, but I believe—or rather, I
believed,
as the past tense is more accurate here—when he used the word
we
it was his way of saying,
Why yes, Rose, we are cut from the same cloth.
I know I have said it before, but I will say it again: You mustn’t think there was anything improper going on between the Sergeant and myself. There were absolutely no, shall we say,
exchanges
between us. Nor did I ever “give him the check to cash later,” as Odalie was often wont to say of the promises she’d made to those suitors whose desires she did not wish to immediately gratify. No, the bond that united the Sergeant and myself was of a much more pure variety. In addition to being a role model in the professional sense, he was a husband and a father, and although I admit I was sometimes inordinately curious and disdainful about the creature who was his wife (a woman whom, by the by, I have never met), I did not necessarily want him to stop being these things. Nor did I want him to be anything less than a man of his word. I did not imagine myself his mistress. Why yes, on a few (very rare!) occasions, I had let myself imagine what it might be like to be married to the Sergeant, to have him come home and eat a meal I’d prepared especially for him, to have his handlebar mustache tickle my skin as he leaned in to kiss my cheek. To have his handlebar mustache tickle me, full stop. Oh! But I can assure you, I entertained these fantasies very sparingly, and only on special occasions.
Of course, I never let on that such images ran through my head. At work I was always the model of proper decorum and professional courtesy. Although it was plain to everyone that I’d lately fallen in with Odalie and her lot, I nonetheless believe the Sergeant knew I was not susceptible to becoming some sort of wanton flapper or else some despicable gangster’s moll. There had never been an abundance of words between us, but we’d never needed them. I’d always felt he’d known me straightaway, from the moment of that first interview. And in typing up Mr. Vitalli’s confession, I knew I had done something that went well beyond professional courtesy. Neither of us was particularly religious, but I think in some strange way we shared the abstract belief we were doing God’s work. We were two morally upright souls, ridding the world of another foul injustice. I thought of the Sergeant and myself as being a bit cleaner than the other people around us, and somehow above the dirtier politics of life. Naturally, for all these reasons and more, I was very nervous about coming into the precinct after the raid on the speakeasy.
Odalie had been unable to do very much over the telephone on the night of the raid. The largest chunk of information she’d been able to procure had come from a fourteen-year-old street urchin named Charlie Whiting who sometimes delivered messages for Gib and Odalie. Charlie was paid to sit in a back room and answer the telephone like an office boy and write down cryptic orders like
Philadelphia, 110
(which Charlie usually spelled “Filladelfeea”) or sometimes
Baltimore, 50
(which Charlie usually spelled “Bawlamore”). Charlie had emerged from the back room that night to deliver a message to Gib, and afterward had stuck around to see if he could get away with a few swallows of gin before somebody disapprovingly remarked upon his age. He was a smallish, almost elfin boy, petite even for a fourteen-year-old, and had always loudly lamented this fact. But in the confusion of the raid, Charlie had benefited from his smaller stature and had managed to slip out a basement window.
It was almost dawn when we received a very apologetic knock at our door—the ’phone line was tied up, the bell-boy explained, and we were needed downstairs to dispense with the rather youthful “guest” who had come to call upon us. Standing in the echoing cathedral of the lobby with his newsboy cap tipped far back on his head as he gazed in awe at his present surroundings, Charlie appeared smaller and younger than ever. But Odalie clearly cared nothing for the impressionable fragility of true youth. She marched right up to him and snapped her fingers in his upward-gazing face, in response to which he blinked as though coming out of a hypnotic trance. Almost immediately Odalie began reeling off a list of names, counting them down one by one on her fingers. To each name Charlie alternately said
yes, no,
or else
think so, ma’am
to indicate who had been “pinched” by the police, as he phrased it. By the time the sun had risen and we were dressed and headed to the precinct for a new day of work, Odalie had drafted together a sort of makeshift partial list.
When we arrived that morning at the precinct, Odalie fixed herself a cup of coffee and walked very slowly in the direction of the holding cell, tacitly gazing into the bars with a casual air. It was as though she were a visitor strolling down the salon of a large echoing museum, coolly contemplating the lesser-known works of a great master. Equally passive and reserved were Gib, Redmond, and the many other prominent faces I recognized from the speakeasy. Unflinching, they held Odalie’s gaze but remained silent, not a single one of them giving the slightest indication they were already acquainted with the woman staring at them from the other side of the bars. I intuited a whole conversation was taking place, despite the fact not a word was spoken. I resolved I would watch Odalie closely that day, curious as to what her plan would be. It was a sure bet she had a plan.
Of course I was a little on edge about my own fate that morning; I was very aware of the fact I had been at the selfsame speakeasy that was now at the center of scrutiny. Although I had deduced from the tacit exchange of looks between Odalie and the men in the holding cell that her anonymity was assured, it was not entirely clear mine would likewise be maintained. Even the Lieutenant Detective was a source of worry for me, as he had neither made any of the arrests, nor explained to anybody at the precinct why he was suspiciously absent at the time the raid went into effect. I fretted over what he would say. Would my name be mentioned? I knew him to be a man who was quite content to stretch the truth when it aided his cause, but I doubted he would feel comfortable telling the Sergeant a handful of outright lies.
But as it turned out, all my fretting on this particular score was for nothing. A wave of relief swept over me when I was told the Lieutenant Detective had telephoned earlier that morning and would not be coming in. He reported that a sudden and very uncomfortable stomach illness had forced his early departure from the raid, and as it had not yet subsided he was going to have to absent himself from the precinct for the day. If I had to make a conjecture on the matter, I would guess lying is very likely less difficult when it is done over the telephone. It is interesting to me how technology has in many ways facilitated and refined the practice of deception.
Somehow Odalie got herself assigned to each and every case that bore any relation to the speakeasy. They started with Gib, as I predicted they would. It was one of the Sergeant’s clever interview tactics. The formula of it was simple, and he always did the same thing: He started with “the big fish,” as he called it, and had a dialogue about what the consequences might be if the big fish didn’t come clean. Then the big fish was redeposited to the holding cell and left to grow increasingly nervous as one by one, smaller fry were extracted and escorted to the interrogation room. By the end of the day the big fish was usually talking, fearful the smaller fish had already given him up. I was sure Odalie would lose her cool when they hauled Gib from the holding cell, roughly shoving him as they did. But she never broke. Odalie never showed the slightest sign of elevated interest. Instead, she got up, coolly gathered together some files and rolls of stenotype paper, and
clack-clack-clack
ed in her high heels down the hall in calm pursuit of the Sergeant.
And then it happened.
I say
it
happened because still to this day I am not entirely sure what Odalie did, although now with the advantage of hindsight I have a handful of very strong theories. What I
do
know for certain is this: Fifteen minutes after Odalie followed Gib and the Sergeant into the interrogation room, we heard footsteps coming down the hall and, surprised that someone should emerge so soon, turned to look. We were further surprised when our eyes met with the sight of Gib, alone and moving in a casual stroll in the direction of the precinct entrance. Every head in the precinct turned to watch him. He was apparently free to go. I remember he was almost merry about it, which was in keeping with his character, for after all Gib always
did
enjoy having a good gloat. With an air of arrogant simplicity, he whistled a cheerful tune and slid his charcoal gray fedora back into place on his head, cocking the brim ever so slightly to one side in the style he customarily wore it. He pushed through the front door with a jaunty swing of his shoulder, and the last trace we saw of him was the silhouette of his hat bobbing in a series of disjointed flashes as his image broke up through the tessellated glass of the precinct’s entrance door. With every passing second his shape grew further shattered as he ambled down the stairs of the stoop and away from the building.
I glanced around the room and made eye contact with Marie, who was filing reports on the other side of the room. Though she had always been a heavyset woman, it seemed like overnight Marie had grown very visibly pregnant, her belly already straining at the fabric of her dress with the queer, perfectly smooth roundness of a balloon. Her watery blue eyes were made more blue by the blotchy redness of her complexion. Even her posture had shifted all of a sudden; she stood with one hand or the other almost always balled into a fist and pushing into her lower back, wedged into her flesh deeply as if to leverage her spine. She caught my eye, rolled her bottom lip out, and shrugged, as if to say,
Who knows what these men are about? He looked guilty to me, too.
Then she returned to her filing.
In the wake of Gib’s exit, the din of noise around me resumed itself. I couldn’t help but wonder what Odalie had possibly said in order to secure Gib’s release, for surely she must’ve said something to the Sergeant that made him agree to let Gib go in good conscience. At the time, it only made sense to me that Odalie must’ve had to cook up something rather elaborate in order to convince the Sergeant, as after all the Sergeant was an upright man and would have little tolerance for anything that sounded remotely like tomfoolery. Sure, I thought, he had collaborated with me when it came to helping Vitalli’s confession along, but that was something altogether different. As I’ve said, the Sergeant and I shared a bond, and together we answered to a higher calling. The affair with Vitalli was a matter of ensuring justice did not slip through the cracks, as it is all too often wont to do. I could not let myself believe for a second it would not be the same with the Sergeant and Odalie. No, I thought, Odalie must’ve had to trot out the best stuff her imagination had to offer, but Odalie was nothing if not creative.
Of course I felt a little funny about this, given my loyalty to the Sergeant. Odalie was tricking him, and after all, that is what she had come to the precinct to do. By that time, I had come to accept what I already knew to be the truth. The rumors had been right about Odalie—or at least half right. She had taken the typing position at our precinct in order to manipulate the system, but the bootlegger she was ultimately protecting was herself. Please don’t misunderstand; I don’t mean to imply I only just then comprehended that fact. I am not an utter dunce. From the very first night Odalie had taken me into the speakeasy, even when I thought perhaps she was a mere attendee and not its ringleader, I understood the simple truth that Odalie was in fact a woman who walked both sides of the law. What I didn’t realize is that by putting my hand in hers and crossing into that very first blind, I
myself
had become a woman who walked both sides of the law. On the day after the raid, as Odalie pulled some sort of ruse on the Sergeant in order to free her cohorts, I could hardly raise an objection.
Whatever it was Odalie said to the Sergeant, it proved effective. For the remainder of the afternoon, the exoneration that had allowed Gib to gloat all the way to the front door and down the precinct stoop was reissued several times for a number of the other men in the holding cell. Their handling became routine: a brief questioning session followed immediately by a prompt and perfunctory release. Suspects that had been arrested at the speakeasy went into the interrogation room with Odalie and the Sergeant and reemerged after no more than ten or fifteen minutes, only to saunter through the main floor of the precinct and sail out the front door.