“That sounds like a good plan,” she said, pulling on her coat. “Good night, Betty.”
“Good night, honey.”
Billie was up and down all night. She sat by the window, staring down at the street, ruminating about Les. About three, it started raining, giving the streetlights a sickly, yellow pallor. Occasionally, a car would drive by, splashing through the puddles, or a drunk would stagger down the street. Billie barely noticed. Her mind was elsewhere.
When she finally returned to bed, she slept hard. The next thing she knew, Virgil was shaking her. “Billie!” he said. “Billie wake up!”
She bolted upright, her heart hammering. “What?”
“Have you seen Les?”
“No, why!”
“When I woke up, he was gone.”
“Oh, my God! He didn’t go to work, did he?”
He shook his head. “That’s the first place I looked. The guys hadn’t seen him.”
“Do you suppose he went looking for Bunny?”
“Could be.”
“Oh, Virg, find him.”
“I’m going to Gabe and Edie’s to see if they know anything.”
“I’m coming too,” she said, throwing off the covers.
“No, you wait here in case he shows up.”
Billie got up and made coffee, drinking cup after cup at the kitchen table. A few hours later, she heard Virgil’s footsteps on the stairs. Throwing the door open, she rushed out to meet him. He looked up at her. His face was white.
“What?” she cried.
On the landing, he slumped back against the wall, staring straight ahead.
“Virgil? What is it?”
“It turns out Les had gone to work,” he said, mechanically. “He worked with a different crew today. They had no way of knowing he was still drunk from last night.”
Billie held her breath.
“Les stepped on a bootlace, tripped, and fell twenty stories.”
* * *
Just about every Mohawk resident of North Gowanus and the majority of ironworkers from Brooklyn Local High Steel Union attended the funeral. It was a huge affair held at Sacred Heart Church, with even more attending the lunch afterward at the union hall. Father Kilpatrick said the Mass in Mohawk and led grace in their native language at lunch.
Each one of the Sims family members grieved in their own way. Some cried, some withdrew, others drank, but everyone was sensitive to everyone else’s feelings. Billie was honored to be considered part of the family, even though she was not married to Virgil. They knew how close she had been to Les and were grateful to her.
“Because of you, he started painting again,” Edie said when she stopped by to see Billie one afternoon. “I saw the easel in the bedroom last week and asked him about it. He blamed you for getting him back into it.”
Billie blurted a laugh with tears in her eyes. “He helped me too.”
“I don’t know if the Chippewa do it, but we Mohawks must give away or burn all the belongings of those who passed. This is Les’ last painting.” She handed it to Billie. It was wrapped in brown paper. “We want you to have it.”
“Thank you.”
Edie took her hand. “Thank you, Billie.”
When she left, Billie tore off the paper. It was a sweeping view of the Brooklyn rooftops at sunset as probably seen from Les’ apartment window. She didn’t understand how he did it, but he managed to capture the loneliness of the waning light in the final hours of the day.
* * *
Gradually, everyone returned to their lives, but it wasn’t easy. Billie continued to work at the soup kitchen during the day and walk the neighborhoods until dark taking photographs. She started making friends all over the city, from Brooklyn to Queens to the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
In August, Sacred Heart opened a second soup kitchen, which Edie operated, and Father Kilpatrick asked Billie to run the original site in the basement of the church. It was an all-consuming task, but Billie found it fulfilling. She remembered the days, not so long ago, when she needed charitable organizations too. They helped keep her alive, and she was glad to give back to the community.
One morning, while she was checking the shopping list, Father Kilpatrick came downstairs. He was dressed in his black clerical pants and collarino. He was a studious looking man with thin, brown hair and wire glasses.
“May I see you in my office, if you please?”
She followed him up the stairs and across the small courtyard garden. When she looked up, she saw a curtain flutter in the brownstone rectory as if someone had been watching her.
Father’s office was small, stuffy, and littered with books and papers. When she walked in, she was surprised to see Virgil. His face was taut, and his hands were clenched in his lap.
“Virg?” she said.
“Please, don’t be alarmed, Miss Bassett,” Father Kilpatrick said. “Please sit down.”
Billie slid onto a chair, looking at the priest expectantly.
He took a breath and said, “Something unexpected has come up.”
Billie stared at him, not moving.
“Virgil’s wife has returned.”
“What!” she exclaimed.
Virgil looked down at his hands.
“It seems when we contacted the young woman’s mother for a birth certificate, she contacted her daughter.”
Billie’s jaw dropped. “What does she want?”
“To come back.”
“To come back?” she echoed in disbelief. “Where is she?”
“She’s here.”
“In New York?”
“Waiting in the rectory.”
Billie knew then it was Virgil’s wife observing her from behind the window curtain.
Virgil took a deep breath. “She has─” and then he hesitated, “she has a child, Billie, a little boy. He would be about the right age.”
“What do you mean the right age?” Billie asked. “Is he—is he yours, Virgil?”
“I don’t know,” he mumbled and shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. She was─”
Father Kilpatrick interrupted. “We are not here to question this woman’s virtue. The fact remains, she is your wife, your wife in the eyes of God. You must stand by her.”
Billie looked from one to the other, her heart racing. “So that’s it? Just like that, I have to go?”
The men were mute. Virgil made no attempt to argue. Neither did Father Kilpatrick.
Billie jumped to her feet and cried, “Then go to hell, Virgil Sims!” and she walked out.
Chapter 15
Billie was back once more, wondering where she would eat and sleep. It seemed as if she had been doing it her entire life. Everything she owned fit into one small suitcase. She took only her clothes, a little money, the painting from Les, and her camera.
Walking through the streets of Brooklyn gave her time to think. She was furious with Virgil and furious with herself. She had allowed desperation for a home and family to cloud her judgment. She had looked the other way and lost herself in Virgil’s world. That would not happen again. From now on, she would be in charge of her own destiny.
She also felt betrayed. Virgil had not been honest with her. He withheld that he was married and asked her to follow him all the way to New York City. Then Billie stopped walking. But she had deceived him too. For a year, she had pretended that she loved him. She never had.
Frowning, she walked on. In a way, she was relieved. Maybe she had known all along that their relationship was a house of cards; it was only a matter of time before it toppled. Her life was meant to take a different course. If only she knew what that was.
Billie took a bus to the Upper East Side of Manhattan to a German community called Yorkville. Of all the neighborhoods she had visited, she felt the most at home there. She supposed it was because of the Hofmanns.
She spent almost a week at St. Joseph’s Mission House. All day, every day, she went door to door looking for work. Times were tough, and employment was sc
arce, especially for women. Men were taking jobs previously filled by women, so the outlook was grim. Billie tried not to worry, but in a few days, she would have to vacate the mission. They made it quite clear that the housing was temporary.
On the morning of the fifth day, she went into Glaser’s Bakery. It was a small corner bakery with lace curtains in the window and cases filled with pumpernickel bread, pretzels, streusel, and poppy seeds cakes. Billie met the owner when she was photographing the neighborhood.
“Hello, Mr. Glaser, do you remember me?” she asked in German.
“Of course, I do. How does one forget a beautiful face like that!” he roared. Mr. Glaser was a barrel-chested man with heavy, dark brows and a bald head. His arms resembled tree trucks from kneading and rolling dough.
“No Mrs. Glaser today?” she asked.
“No, she is running errands.”
The tiny bell on the door rang as a tall policeman came in the shop. “Hello, Mr. O’Brian,” Glazer said in English.
“And a hearty good day to you,” Mr. O’Brian replied in an Irish brogue.
Billie thought she better hurry since the policeman was waiting and asked in English, “I was just wondering if you needed any help, Mr. Glaser?”
“Ach, no. It is all I can do to keep a roof over our heads. Why are you out looking for a job, Miss Bassett? I thought you were a married lady living in Brooklyn.”
“Things change,” she replied in German. “Do you know of anyone hiring?”
“No, but good luck.” He reached in the bakery case, handing her a pretzel.
“Danke,” she said and started for the door.
The policeman stopped her. “Say, didn’t I see you takin’ pictures around here a few weeks ago?”
“Yes, that was me.”
“Stop by the station. They’re looking for a photographer. You’ll be a shoe-in if you speak German. That’s a combination they don’t find easily.”
“I’ll go there right now,” Billie said, opening the door. “Thank you very much!”
She bolted her pretzel and walked right down to the police station. A few hours later, she had landed a job as a crime scene photographer. It was far from her dream vocation, but she was relieved to be employed.
* * *
The next day, Billie started at the precinct. She was trained by an outgoing young man who, in spite of his grisly profession, was quick to laugh and good-natured. He was short and overweight with a shock of blond hair that stood straight up on his head. Billie thought he looked like a giant baby.
“Don’t let it get you down, Miss Bassett,” Leonard Quiggle said the first day. “You’ll see a lot of gore. Just pretend it’s a movie set. When you look through the camera, everything is once removed anyway.”
Billie took a deep breath and nodded. They had been sitting in the station by the sergeant’s desk all night, waiting for an assignment. Billie had the precinct’s camera on her lap. It was a large, cumbersome piece she would wear on a strap around her neck.
Leonard was paging through the paper. “Did you see the shot of Dillinger’s body a few weeks back?”
“I did,” Billie replied. “Leggy girls and all.”
He laughed. “Everyone wants publicity. How would ya like being a crime scene photographer in Chicago with all those mob stiffs?”
The sergeant looked up. “It makes this place look boring.”
They sat for a while in silence, listening to the clock ticking.
Suddenly, the phone rang, and Billie jumped. The sergeant answered, grunted a few words, and handed a piece of paper to Leonard. “Go get ‘em, Tiger,” he said.
Leonard waddled down the station steps with Billie behind him. Four blocks away, they met a policeman at the crime scene. “A hooker,” the officer said, pointing to the bloody body of a young woman in an alley.
Leonard put a bulb in his camera. “I’ll do the first few shots, Miss Bassett.”
Billie looked down at the corpse and grimaced. It was sprawled out in the alley in a pool of blood. When she realized the officer was watching her reaction, she turned her face. She must not let them see it bothered her.
Leonard stepped around the body, wheezing slightly, getting shots of the wound, the position of the body, and the blood on the ground. “Now you take some,” he said. “Remember, you are creating a record.”
He watched Billie as she worked, instructing her about what shots the police would want.
“A sharper angle on that,” he said.
When she squatted down, he responded, “Good. That’s it.”
When she photographed the wound, he instructed, “Closer.”
She noticed a streak of blood on the wall of the warehouse. “Do you want this?” she asked.
Leonard mumbled, “Damn, I didn’t notice that.”
Billie took the shot.
As they walked back to the station, Leonard asked, “What d’ya think?”
Billie hesitated. “Well, it’s a whole new form of photography I’ve never considered.”
He laughed, and she noticed deep dimples in his round cheeks.
“Diplomatically put,” he said. “Frankly, I hate the job.”
“You do?”
“You’d have to be sick to enjoy it. I like flowers.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Flowers, that’s what I photograph in my free time. That and babies.”
Billie laughed. “That’s quite a departure.”
“This pays the bills,” he said. “It’s the other stuff I love.”
She nodded and thought of Les. “I understand completely.”
* * *
Billie was only in training for a few nights. After that, she was on her own. She photographed all kinds of crimes, from robberies to assaults, to grisly murder scenes. Often, she served as a translator for the police too. Most of the officers spoke a smattering of German, but no one was as fluent as Billie.
She moved out of the mission and into a boarding house. The room was small but furnished, and the food was good. Best of all, she had her own bathroom.
Late one afternoon, as she was finishing a shift, Leonard stopped by the station. “I’m heading to Shulman’s to get a bite to eat. Join me.”
“No thanks. My stomach’s on edge from that last shoot.”
“Come on, at least have a drink,” he coaxed. “Enough of this going back to your room and burying your face in a book. If you aren’t taking photos, you’re reading. Anyway, I want you to meet my sister, Corky.”
“All right, one drink.”
Shulman’s was a small, dark German tavern that smelled of sauerkraut and stale beer. It was down the block from the station. There was a long bar, tables with red-checkered cloths, and wooden snuff boards. Leonard directed Billie to the back where two women were sitting and smoking.
“This is my sister, Corky,” Leonard said as they sat down.
“How do you do?” the woman said to Billie, blowing her smoke and smiling. She looked nothing like Leonard. She was sleek and sophisticated with brown, chin-length sculpted hair and hard, angular features. Fashionably dressed, she was wearing a chic, belted metropolitan and amber-colored cloche.
“And this is Lillian,” Leonard added. Like Corky, Lillian was a woman in her early thirties. She had dark hair and glasses and was wearing a tailored blue dress with a bright red handkerchief in the breast pocket. She shook Billie’s hand and flashed her a dazzling smile. “So nice to meet you.”
“Lillian is a high school principal, and Corky is a reporter for The New York Times,” Leonard explained.
“What do you think of the boys down at the station?” Corky asked. “Can’t be easy being a girl working with that bunch of bums.”
“They’re nice. They have been extremely patient with me.”
She looked at Billie’s ring finger. “The absence of a ring explains that,” she said dryly.
“Leonard said you have a real talent for photography,” Lillian interjected.
“
It helps when you love what you do,” Billie replied.
When the waiter came to take her order, without realizing it, Billie slipped into German.
Corky narrowed her eyes. “You don’t look German. Where are you from?”
He looked at Billie and shook his head. “She’s always the hard-boiled reporter constantly interviewing.”
“I don’t mind,” Billie said. “I’m from all over but originally the Midwest.”
“You’re new to the city then?”
“New to this part, yes. Until recently, I was living in North Gowanus.”
“Ah, ha,” Corky said, raising an eyebrow. “North Gowanus. Now I see it, but you pass most of the time as Southern European, right?”
“Corky, what the hell is wrong with you?” Leonard barked. “Where are your manners?”
Billie wasn’t offended. She found Corky’s bluntness refreshing. “Yes, I’m Chippewa Indian.”
“Still,” Corky said, ignoring her brother. “Speaking German doesn’t fit.”
“I was a hired girl for several summers in Minnesota. The farmers were German.”
“Ah, so they taught you their language?”
“Yes.”
Lillian leaned forward. “Have you heard that Hitler character speak on the radio?”
“I’ve seen him in the newsreels,” Billie replied.
“Can you understand what he’s saying?”
“Yes.”
Leonard shuddered. “A real monster. Unfortunately, some of the Germans around here like him.”
Corky tapped her cigarette in the ashtray. “Max says he’s targeting the Jews.”
“Max is Jewish?” Leonard asked.
“He is, and he has a brother over there. He’s getting worried.”
“I’ve been reading a lot about this Hitler,” Billie said. “His organization is not only targeting Jews. They’re going after gypsies, communists, and homosexuals too.”
Leonard darted a look at Corky then said, “Enough about politics. How about another drink for everyone? I’ll buy.”
* * *
That entire autumn, Billie endured crime scenes and gore. She had to remind herself that she was lucky. To have work, especially in photography, was extremely fortunate. Nevertheless, she lived for her free time. She would walk the streets of New York, capturing shots of ordinary Americans, and develop them in her makeshift darkroom at night. Making do without an enlarger, she worked with only a few trays, a developing tank, and a piece of glass in the bathroom. Then she would hang her photos on a clothesline and wait for the magic to happen. Her results motivated her. Her skills were steadily improving.
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