I did not know anything about Odalie’s childhood, and therefore could not know how she had been brought up. I suppose even if I’d had such facts at my disposal, they wouldn’t have provided me any special insight, as the sexual habits of the very poor simply terrified me, and the sexual habits of the upper class were an obscure, opaque mystery to me. But the facts were Odalie seemed to feel neither the privilege nor the burden of upholding sexual mores, and as far as her own conduct—well, she did as she pleased with little sign of remorse. At parties she disappeared into darkened back rooms. She took automobile rides indiscriminately with anyone who amused her. When we went to dinner clubs, a special laugh of hers—a flirtatious one generally reserved for male company—could often be heard coming from within the walls of the coat check, muffled only slightly by a fur-and-cashmere buffer. I’m not certain why I took such a fascinated interest in Odalie’s sexual conduct (or misconduct, as I saw it), but I did. When it came to Odalie’s wild ways, I did not approve, but I was a silent judge, compelled as I was to follow and watch. Wanting to watch Odalie was a difficult impulse to resist, having as it does a kind of very potent and very dark draw.
A horrible disaster was looming on my horizon, so to speak, but from the very moment I met Odalie I was rendered utterly powerless to do anything other than watch it hurtle toward me. But, of course, if I am to tell it all in order, as I keep promising to do, there are other things I must tell first.
• • •
WE’D GONE TO the blind on a weeknight, and the next morning I still had yet to make a full recovery. That morning, as I walked into the precinct and encountered the usual heady odor of cheap whiskey and old wine that was carried in daily, I felt my stomach instantly recoil and prepare itself for an encore performance of its previous gymnastic routine. With a great effort of concentration, I managed to keep my breakfast in its proper place. In some ways I was actually grateful for the fact my workplace was regularly infused with such an unpleasant fermenting scent, as the odor of all those bootleggers and winos passing through the precinct went a long way to mask my own odor, which I was certain I was still carrying around on my person. Adding to my luck was the fact the Sergeant was unable to pay me much mind on that particular day. I would have been utterly mortified for the Sergeant to discover me in my state, but he was far too busy.
Unfortunately, however, the Lieutenant Detective was not. At some point during the morning he gamboled across the room to hand off a stack of reports to Odalie, and in passing he glanced at me and was forced to look twice.
“Looks like somebody could use a little hair of the dog,” the Lieutenant Detective said, grinning in my direction.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, mustering a sneer, then catching my throbbing head in both hands. Still grinning, the Lieutenant Detective approached my desk and sat on it in his old familiar manner.
“Somehow I’m sure you do know,” he said. I lifted my head long enough to give him a haughty look. Odalie pretended to observe the reports he’d just handed her with riveted fascination, but I was quite aware her ears remained sharply attuned to our conversation. “Look,” he said, “I’m not the disapproving sort. I’ve found myself in the same condition on occasion.” I felt my nostrils flare. What gall! To assume that I cared what he thought! To assume the two of us—the Lieutenant Detective and I—might have something in common! Blind to my indignation, he slipped something shiny and silvery out of his pocket, laid it flat on the desk, and slowly pushed it toward me in a sly gesture, all the while smiling crookedly. I became dimly aware he was offering me a flask. “A few sips of that,” he said, “and you’ll make it through the day.”
Instinctually, I sniffed and recoiled. “I beg your pardon, Lieutenant Detective—”
“Frank,” he interrupted, then leaned a little closer and added, “or Francis. But no one really calls me Francis.” He paused and colored slightly. “Only my mother.”
“I beg your pardon, Lieutenant Detective,” I continued. He flinched as though I had just bitten him. “But I’m quite fine, and I’ll thank you to remove your property, as it were, from my desk lest somebody fall under the mistaken impression that it is indeed mine.”
He hesitated, then reached for the flask and slipped it back into his jacket pocket. As he did so, a small shiver of panic ran up my spine and I glanced about frantically, worried the Sergeant might be looking in our direction. I’d surely die of shame if the Sergeant were to glimpse the Lieutenant Detective trying to slip me a flask on the job. On the job or any other time, really. In the Sergeant I had always sensed my moral and ethical equal, and he’d always treated me as though the respect was mutual. As much as I felt compelled to impress Odalie and win her approval, I felt equally if not even more compelled to retain the Sergeant’s approval and couldn’t stand to have him think I’d transformed into one of those fast modern girls of whose lifestyle he thoroughly disapproved.
But at that moment it was only the Lieutenant Detective’s disapproval I had to suffer. He stood before my desk in his rumpled suit and white spats, shoving the flask deeper into his pocket and pushing a long lock of hair out of his eyes. His lips moved in silence, as if attempting to draw words from the deep well of his throat. Finally sound came out.
“Here I was, thinking how nice it was that perhaps you’d turned out to be mortal after all,” he said. “But I see you are as cold and mechanical as ever.” He fixed me with a stern gaze and turned on his heel. I watched him walk away, then winced as a sharp splinter of pain raced between my eyes. I redeposited my aching head into the cool skin of my hands and dimly heard Odalie laughing beside me. There was a mocking lilt in her voice; it was not a terribly kind variety of laugh.
“You little fool,” she said. “He was only trying to be a sport, and what he was offering would’ve helped you immensely.” She meant, of course, the contents of the flask. But not having any familiarity with the practice, I didn’t see how it could possibly make things better. I straightened my posture and stacked some papers brusquely. I rolled a blank document into the typewriter and began to punch out a report, feeling my brain cringe somewhere deep inside my skull with each loud CLACK. But I found there was a strange comfort in the excruciating pain. This was my penance, I was convinced.
At that moment, I began what I could not foresee would eventually become a long and repeated tradition of vowing to shun Odalie and failing. She was difficult to resist; she always seemed to possess one little thing you wanted, or one little thing that made you feel as though you owed it to her. The truth of the matter was the deal between us had been brokered the moment I’d agreed to move in with her. Well, sooner than that, perhaps. Perhaps it had been a signed and sealed matter from the very second I’d picked up the brooch Odalie had dropped on the day of her interview and neglected to return it.
With a shrug, Odalie dismissed the small scene between the Lieutenant Detective and myself and returned to her work without a second thought. But I was left to stew over the state of things for the rest of the morning and well into the afternoon. By quitting time I had come up with and refined several arguments I planned to present to Odalie, asserting why I could never again return to the speakeasy, not least of which was the fact it was illegal and a proper lady should never be caught in one, let alone a lady who works for the selfsame police force that was destined to someday burst in upon the scene. As every passing second brought us closer to five o’clock, I fortified my moral position and worked up my courage. But I never got a chance to enumerate such reasons to Odalie, and my eloquent pontification skills languished. As soon as we packed up to take our leave, she hijacked me in the most disarming manner, looping her arm through mine and whisking me off to a moving picture.
I had been resolved to say no to Odalie’s next proposition, no matter what it was, but here I was at a severe disadvantage, as I had never been to a moving picture before. I see now why they refer to
it as the silver screen. I sat beside Odalie in the velvety dark, mesmerized by the beautiful oval faces and thick, fluttering eyelashes of the starlets and the kohl-rimmed eyes of the villains as they were lit up by a shimmering shower of silvery light. On a platform to the left of the stage a tall, thin man with a narrow, angular nose played an upright piano, his spidery fingers moving with a jittery dexterity in perfect time to the film. Looking upward, I stared at the luminous moonbeam projected over our heads and was enchanted.
But even under the alluring spell of celluloid, I felt my attention drift away and my mind begin to wander back to the girl sitting next to me. Generally speaking, mysterious people made me nervous and I tried to avoid them. I could not understand why it should be the opposite with Odalie. Just like all the other fools around her, I had developed a taste for her brand of mystery.
It was a pleasant evening out, and when we left the movie house we decided to walk back to the hotel. Odalie was convinced a walk would do me some good. We strolled along the avenues, threading our way in and out among the cane chairs of the sidewalk cafés. It was perhaps one of the last days of the year still warm enough for outdoor dining, and there was a sort of buzz in the air created by eager patrons desperate to enjoy a last huzzah. Yellowy light spilled out from under each awning, turning the concrete beneath our feet golden and lighting up the faces of men and women who sat eating at the tables with a sort of jack-o’-lantern glow. We walked, unconsciously gathering fragments of conversations and the wafting odors of buttery garlic dishes, enjoying the street in a piecemeal way, like the pigeons who moved automatically along the same path gathering up crumbs. The fatted birds scattered as we stepped among them, then returned at some distance behind us, like a tide coming back in.
As we neared the park the sidewalks grew a bit wider, and I was able to walk alongside Odalie easily. I had a mind to ask her directly, once and for all, to lay some of the rumors about her to rest. I have always admired good manners in people and have adhered to the notion that there are things in this world that are simply none of my business. For all of these reasons and more, I had—up to that point—never asked Odalie a single question about her past. Before it had always seemed intrusive, but now, of course, we were room-mates, and I felt myself more entitled to know about certain things. Moreover, we were sharing our present lives together, and I was growing increasingly conscious of the fact that her past may well indeed affect my future. I screwed up my courage.
“Your friend—Gib, was it?” I said. I was careful not to say fiancé, for the way Odalie had said enfianced that night had sounded very tongue-in-cheek, and I wasn’t sure what to make of this. Odalie turned her head sharply at the mention of his name and arched an eyebrow. I gulped and pressed on. “He . . . ah, didn’t say what he did for a living . . .”
“Oh, yes, well,” Odalie said, waving a vague hand in the air. “I suppose you could call him an entrepreneur. Exports and small businesses, you know. The usual things.” The answer didn’t do much to put me at ease. She smiled, but there was a veneer about it. I had the impression I was getting the brush-off, and that this would be the permanent state of things when it came to my attempts to find out more information about Gib. I wondered: Had Odalie’s speculators really gotten it right? I had to consider the very real possibility she was indeed “a bootlegger’s girl,” as gossips at the precinct had declared, and her job at the precinct was merely a means to keep him in the know, as it were. I knew the facts were not in Gib’s favor. There had been so much alcohol at the speakeasy, and so many varieties. Someone had to be making it or at least importing it, or both, and it suddenly struck me that Gib had seemed like the party’s overseer. All night long people had been seeking him out, like guests paying their respects to the host. I thought of asking Odalie in point-blank fashion whether Gib was a bootlegger, but she appeared to sense my struggle to formulate such a question.
“Look,” she exclaimed, pointing as we neared the Plaza. “Let’s take a victoria across the park! I haven’t hired a horse-cab in ages.” She hailed the driver, and before I knew it I was staring into the big chocolate eyes of a spotted gray draft horse who was craning his neck to see over his blinders, as though he hoped to inspect and approve of his prospective passengers before being made to lug them across the length of the park. We climbed in, and I felt the springing bounce of the carriage as it rocked against our weight.
The driver shook the reins and we were off at a slow roll. It was an open cab, and the night air was beginning to acquire a bit of a chill. I pulled my jacket tighter around me and watched the trees move steadily by, the last flames of autumn burning brightly in their branches.
“You really ought to give the Lieutenant Detective an easier time of it,” Odalie said. I looked at her, shocked by this rather bold, unprompted statement. I opened my mouth, but no response offered itself up. Odalie was not looking at me; she was gazing thoughtfully at the passing trees. “He was nice to you, even after you shamed him.”
I was confused. After I’d sent the Lieutenant Detective and his flask away from my desk, he hadn’t spoken to me the rest of the day. “What do you mean?” I asked with a furrowed brow.
“Oh, nothing,” Odalie said, turning from the trees to look at me. “It’s just that he kept deflecting Marie—giving her all those little tasks, keeping her busy and away from your desk.” I shrugged. I did not see how that had anything to do with me. Odalie rolled her eyes as if I were a hopeless case. “If Marie discovers you’ve been drinking, how long do you think it’ll be before everyone knows you’ve been drinking?” For a brief second, my blood ran cold in my veins. I had not considered this. Odalie read my expression and a little smirk appeared on her face. She gazed back at the passing trees. “And what Marie knows, the Sergeant certainly knows,” she said, her voice flat and clear and full of warning.
On the other side of the park, we dismounted from the horse-cab, Odalie slipped the driver a few coins, and together we walked the few remaining blocks to the hotel in silence. Once home I realized, with little sense of victory, that I was finally entirely sober.
9
Ihave not explained yet about the little lapse in my professional discretion that has fallen under great scrutiny as of late. By this I mean the now-infamous report I filed at the precinct outlining the confessed crimes of a one Mr. Edgar Vitalli.
The advantage of hindsight, of course, is that one finally sees the sequence of things, the little turning points that add up to a final resultant direction. I’ve already mentioned my doctor’s encouragement that I explain my actions with an emphasis on chronology. Life is a series of chain reactions, he says, and the relationship between cause and effect cannot be underestimated. And so, of course, I see now with utter clarity that the incident with the brooch was one such turning point, and moving in with Odalie was another, but typing up the confession of Edgar Vitalli was the most serious variety of turning point, as it marked the point of no return.
If you ask me do I feel sorry for Edgar Vitalli, I will tell you no. I am quite certain Mr. Vitalli falls into the category to which modern criminologists have given the name serial killers, and it is difficult to feel sympathy for a man like that. I understand now what I did was not right, but I cannot say in all honesty I fully regret the outcome produced by my actions. That I played some small part in Mr. Vitalli’s being condemned gives me some satisfaction. Secretly I am only sorry his ultimate punishment has not yet been carried out. I say secretly because I know if I confessed my delight to my doctor I would be deemed an outright monster, so I keep my unrepentant feelings to myself. I am no bloodthirsty heathen, mind you. But like any truly moral person, I like to see justice prevail.
For the sake of consistency and of telling things accurately, I suppose I ought to recount a few of the details that led up to my transcribing Mr. Vitalli’s confession. The difficulty is in knowing where to begin, but it’s probably best to explain a little about Mr. Vitalli
himself.
They say some men are simply not the marrying kind. This was not the case with Edgar Vitalli. Mr. Vitalli was perhaps too much the marrying kind—as the courthouse records had it, he married five times in four years. Despite the fact Mr. Vitalli was himself a youthful and handsome man, his wives were of a different ilk, all of them older and comfortably widowed. Moreover, this was not the sum total of what his wives held in common. They also shared the curious and uncanny fact they’d all suffered mortal accidents while taking a bath, and that they’d all been thoughtfully relieved of their wealth just prior to their deaths.
I suspect it was Mr. Vitalli’s attitude that made the Sergeant’s blood boil the most. You see, Mr. Vitalli was the worst kind of gutter rat (to use the Sergeant’s vernacular)—the kind slicked down with snake oil. He was a confidence man; not terribly educated, but he had a way about him that suggested he thought himself rather smart. It might even be said Mr. Vitalli fancied himself a genius, for he implied as much on more than one occasion during his interviews with the Sergeant. Everyone who encountered him at the precinct felt instantly sure of his guilt, and all of us were eager to see justice served, and served swiftly. But twice he had gone to trial, twice he had elected to represent himself, and twice he had won over the jury’s sympathies.
During his second trial I was curious to see how such a travesty of justice might occur. I sat in attendance for a day and watched Mr. Vitalli operate on the jury, removing their prejudices with the casual precision of a surgeon removing a patient’s tonsils. With the men in the jury box he played the congenial drinking buddy, an average Joe, blameless for being glad to be free of the nagging, castrating constraints of marriage (oh, but he implied, couldn’t they relate?). With the women who sat in the court audience, he simply licked the full, roguish pink lips that lurked under his black mustache and smiled with his long, wolfish white teeth as though to say to each of them, My only crime against the world is I’ve been allotted more than my fair share of charm, and besides, I can’t be blamed for being handsome. The women appeared to agree and, perhaps as a testament to Mr. Vitalli’s good looks, were even more sympathetic to Mr. Vitalli’s cause than the men were. In the end he labored very little to prove he had not been involved in his wife’s drowning. Instead, he devoted his efforts to proving even if he had been involved—hypothetically speaking, of course (wink, wink)—he was not to blame. Watching this, it was perhaps the first time I became conscious there existed a distinction between guilt and blame. Mr. Vitalli couldn’t prove himself innocent, but he could prove he was blameless, at least as far as that weak-minded popularity club they called a courtroom was concerned.
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