by Amy Stewart
Contents
* * *
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
Historical Notes and Sources
Read More from the Kopp Sisters Series
Learn More About the Kopp Sisters
About the Author
Connect with HMH
Copyright © 2018 by the Stewart-Brown Trust
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.
hmhco.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Stewart, Amy, author.
Title: Miss Kopp just won’t quit / Amy Stewart.
Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018. | Series: A Kopp sisters novel ; 4
Identifiers: LCCN 2018004749 (print) | LCCN 2017061492 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328736536 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328736512 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: United States—Social life and customs—1865-1918—Fiction. | Women detectives—Fiction. | Sisters—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths. | FICTION / Biographical. | GSAFD: Historical fiction. | Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3619.T49343 (print) | LCC PS3619.T49343 M56 2018 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004749
Jacket illustration and design by Jim Tierney
Author photograph © Terrence McNally
v1.0818
To Nicole Angeloro
“Miss Kopp is the best police officer and detective in the State of New Jersey. She does not know the meaning of fear and with her bravery she also uses brains.”
—Sheriff Heath, quoted in the New York Herald, April 11, 1916
1
on the day I took Anna Kayser to the insane asylum, I was first obliged to catch a thief.
I say “obliged” as if it were a hardship, but in fact I enjoy a good chase. A man fleeing a crime scene presents any sworn officer with the rare gift of an easy win. Nothing is more heartening than a solid arrest, made after a little gratifying physical exertion, particularly when the thief is caught in the act and there are no bothersome questions later about a lack of evidence or an unreliable witness.
My duties are hardly ever so straightforward, and my victories rarely so decisive, as Anna Kayser’s case would demonstrate. Perhaps this is why the business with the thief lingers so clearly in my memory.
The scene of this particular crime was the Italian butcher where I liked to stop for my lunch. The proprietor, Mr. Giordano, put out a kind of Italian sausage called salsicciotto on Tuesdays that he seasoned with salt and peppercorns, then smothered in olive oil for two months, to extraordinary effect. He could sell every last one in an afternoon if he wanted to, but by doling them out on Tuesdays, he found that he could lure people into his shop once a week and make sure they left with all manner of goods imported from Italy: soap, perfume, hard cheese, enameled plates, lemon candy. The profits from those trinkets helped compensate for the cost of shipping over the extravagantly priced olive oil in which he aged the salsicciotto. I was but one of many willing participants in his scheme. Along with the sausage I took a bag of lemon candy weekly, finding it useful to dispense during interrogations.
The man ran out of the shop just as I rounded the corner onto Passaic Avenue. Mr. Giordano gave chase, but the thief had the advantage: he was young and trim, while the butcher was a rotund gentleman of advanced age who could do little more than stump along, huffing and shaking his fist.
He would’ve been out of luck, but there I happened to be, in my uniform, equipped with a gun, handcuffs, and a badge. I did what any officer of the law would do: I tucked my handbag under my arm, gathered my skirts in my hands, and ran him down.
Mr. Giordano heard my boots pounding along behind him on the wooden sidewalk and jumped out of the way. I must’ve given him a start, because he launched into a coughing fit when he saw who had come to his rescue.
In giving chase, I flew past a livery driver watering his horses, a druggist sweeping out his shop, and a boy of about twelve staring idly into a bookstore window. The boy was too engrossed or slow-witted to step out of the way. I’m sorry to say I shoved him down to the ground, rather roughly. I hated to do it, but children are sturdy and quick to heal. I raced on.
The thief himself hadn’t looked back and had no idea who was in pursuit, which was a shame, as men often stumble and lose their resolve when confronted by a lady deputy. I was always happy to use the element of surprise to my advantage. But this one ducked down a side street, deft as you please, no doubt believing that if he stayed on bustling Passaic Avenue, more passers-by would join the chase and he’d soon be caught.
The detour didn’t bother me, though. I preferred to go after him on a quiet tree-lined lane, with no more danger of loiterers stumbling into my path. I rounded the corner effortlessly and picked up speed.
He chose for his escape a neighborhood of large and graceful homes that offered very few places to hide. I closed the distance between us and was already looking for a soft patch of grass ahead on which to toss him down, but he saw an opportunity ahead. He’d done this before—I had to credit him that. He hurled himself over a low fence and into a backyard.
Here is where an agile man of slight build has the advantage. I was forced to abandon my handbag and to heft myself over the fence in the most undignified manner. Hems caught on nails, seams split, and stockings were shredded into ribbons. I landed on one knee and knew right away I’d be limping for a week. It occurred to me, at last, to wonder what, exactly, the man had stolen, and if he was really worth catching. If I’d abandoned the chase at that moment, no one—not even Mr. Giordano—would’ve blamed me.
But no matter, I had to have him. The man stumbled into a backyard populated by placid hens under the supervision of an overworked bantam rooster. He (the man, not the rooster) turned his head just long enough to cast a wistful glance at the chicken coop, which might’ve offered him a hiding place, a chicken dinner, or both, had I not been thumping along behind him.
The next hurdle was only a low stone wall. He cleared it with a nimble leap, as if he did that sort of thing every day, and he probably did. I tossed one leg over and knocked a few stones loose with the other, but by then I was only five feet behind and saw victory ahead.
It was my great good fortune that the next garden held no chickens or any other sort of hindrance, only a generous expanse of lawn fringed by an inviting bed of chrysanthemums that gave me the soft landing spot I required.
“Oooof” was all he could say when I took him by the collar and tossed him down. I landed on top of him, which was just as well, because his shirt tore when
I grabbed him and he might’ve slipped right out of it and vanished, had I not thrown myself on him.
I didn’t say a thing at first, because I’d given that last sprint all I had and wouldn’t have lasted a minute more. It took us both a short while to recover ourselves. No one was at home in the house whose garden we’d just trampled: otherwise, the sight of a rather substantially sized woman sprawled atop a slender shop-thief certainly would’ve brought the entire family out.
Once we were sitting upright, and I had a firm grip on the thief’s arm, we sized each other up for the first time. I found myself in possession of a tired-looking factory man, with the bloodshot eyes and glazed aspect of a drunkard.
The thief, for his part, didn’t seem particularly surprised to have been caught by a tall lady in a battered gray hat. The business of thievery leads to all sorts of surprises: one must be prepared for novelties. He tried half-heartedly to shrug me off and muttered something in what I took to be Polish. When I refused to let go, he allowed himself to be dragged to his feet. The papery orange petals of the chrysanthemums adhered to us, making us look as though we’d been showered in confetti. I didn’t bother to brush them off. The man hadn’t yet been handcuffed and was likely to be slippery.
“Let’s see what you stole,” I proposed. When he only looked at me dejectedly, I yanked open his jacket and found within it a long and slender salami (not the salsicciotto, mind you—those were kept behind the counter under Mr. Giordano’s watchful eye—but the cheap type that hung in the window and were easy to snatch). He’d also lifted a loaf of bread, now flattened, and a bottle of the yellow Italian spirits that Mr. Giordano sold as a curative.
It wasn’t much of a haul, considering the trouble he put me through. I hated to throw a man in jail for stealing his lunch and bore some faint hope that I might return him to the shopkeeper and negotiate a truce.
“What’s your name?” I asked (sternly, one had to be stern).
He spat on the ground, which was every habitual criminal’s idea of how to ignore a question put to him by the law.
“Well, you made an awful lot of trouble.” I slipped the handcuffs from my belt and bound his wrists behind his back. “Try to work up a convincing apology before we get there.”
The man seemed to take my meaning and perhaps had some idea that I might be trying to help him, as much as any officer could. He had a resignation about him that suggested he’d done all this before. He walked limply alongside me, with his head down. For a man who gave such a spirited chase, he was as soft as a bundle of rags under my grip.
I retrieved my handbag at the edge of the fence and in a few minutes we were back at the shop. Mr. Giordano was sitting outside on an overturned barrel with the anticipation of a man waiting along a parade route. When we rounded the corner, he jumped up, beaming, and clapped his hands together. He was very pleasant-looking: old Italian men always are. His eyes gleamed, his cheeks were ruddy, and he grinned with unabashed delight at the prospect of a good story to tell over the dinner table that night.
Then came the words I’d been hoping not to hear.
“He took from me before! He steal anything I have. Egg, butter, shoe, soap, tin plate, button.” Mr. Giordano ticked the items off with his stubby fingers.
It made for quite a list, but I didn’t doubt it. The shop was overfull of small merchandise, easy to pocket.
“He stole needful things, then,” I offered, hoping to play to his sympathies.
“Needful! I only sell needful things! Look down his pants. Black shoes for little girl.”
It hardly need be said that I had no wish to look down his pants and was grateful to the thief for sparing us both the indignity. He appeared well-versed in the universal language of accusative shopkeepers, and shook his trousers as vigorously as he could considering that both his wrists were cuffed together. It was enough to make the shoes—tiny darling shoes of a sort rarely seen in Hackensack—fall from his trousers.
The shopkeeper snatched them up triumphantly, and rummaged through the man’s pockets for the rest of his stolen goods. He looked disgusted over the condition of the loaf of bread, but set the salami carefully aside for resale and tucked the bottle of liquor into his apron.
Then he poked at my badge, which happens more often than one might think. People seem to feel they have a right to put their fingers all over a deputy’s star, as if they own it.
“Sheriff?” he asked. “Sheriff Heath? Go tell him. He knows this one.” Then he pushed his finger into the thief’s chest. I had to step between them before all this poking escalated to fisticuffs.
With the likelihood of a peaceful settlement ever more remote, I said, “Mr. Giordano, are you quite sure this is the man who stole from you before? Couldn’t it have been someone else? These thieves move awfully fast and it’s hard to get a good look at them.”
Mr. Giordano stuck his chin out defiantly. “No. It is him. Go to his house. Look for tin plates with painted roses. Look for sewing box with Giordano label. My wife!”
The effrontery of the theft of Mrs. Giordano’s sewing kit was too much for even the man who did it, for he, too, turned shamefacedly away.
“He take money, too, but you won’t find that,” the shopkeeper said. “All gone.”
That changed things. Money made it a more serious crime.
“Have you reported him to the police?” I asked.
Mr. Giordano nodded vigorously. “I report, I report, I report. Ask the sheriff.”
What could I do, then, but to take him to jail? I turned out the man’s shirt pockets for good measure and found a package of handkerchiefs with the Giordano ribbon still attached. If he had anything else tucked away, it would fall to the male guards to find it.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Giordano, and this man is sorry too,” I offered. The thief didn’t respond to a firm shake of the arm, so I tapped him under the chin and made him raise his eyes.
“Zorry,” the thief said.
Mr. Giordano spat on the sidewalk. “Poles.”
2
the county jail sat alongside the courthouse, which meant that I was obliged to march my thief past the gaggle of reporters who congregated on the steps when court wasn’t in session. It was an intemperate afternoon for late September, so the men huddled in a tight circle, shivering in their summer-weight suits, hands clamped on top of their hats against a frolicsome wind. Upon seeing that I had a man in my custody, they chased after me, waving their notebooks, shouting some version of my name in a newsmen’s chorus.
“Miss Kopp!”
“Miss Deputy!”
“Police-lady!”
No one knew what to call me. Only one of them addressed me as Deputy Kopp, but he spoiled it right away with his inane questions.
“What’d this poor gent do, Deputy Kopp? Ask you to marry him? Did he get down on one knee?”
I wheeled around to face them, but I allowed the man in my custody to keep his back turned. “You know better. The man hasn’t even been booked.”
“Did you make that arrest all by yourself?” called a squat older man in the rumpled tweed characteristic of his profession.
“Do they allow lady officers to arrest a man?” shouted another.
“How’d you manage to catch a fellow?” asked a third, but he was laughed down by the others. Anyone could see that I towered over the man in my custody.
“If I failed to catch a man in the act of committing a crime, then you’d have a story to write,” I told them. “The story would be that I wasn’t capable of doing the job. I’m sorry to have deprived you of your column inches, but if you’re in need of wrongdoing to write up for the evening edition, go sniff around the prosecutor’s office.”
That won me a round of laughter and a good-natured farewell. The prosecutor’s office, housed in the courthouse next to the jail, maintained a long-standing feud with Sheriff Heath, made worse by the fact that Detective Courter of that office was running for sheriff. I was feeling just bold enough to remind them
of it.
Only one reporter stayed behind. I recognized him from the Hackensack Republican pass tucked in the brim of his bowler. “I don’t give a hill of beans about what the old sheriff thinks,” he said. “What I want to know is what the new sheriff’s going to say when a girl cop goes around dragging men off to jail.”
I was at least able to take a little satisfaction from closing the door in his face.
The campaign season of 1916 had only just begun in earnest. Sheriff Heath was running, somewhat reluctantly, for a seat in Congress. It hadn’t been his choice to step down as sheriff. The law in New Jersey prevented a sheriff from succeeding himself in office, which meant that he couldn’t run for his office again until someone else had occupied it for at least one term. The local party officials had put him up for the legislature instead.
If Sheriff Heath had an appetite for serving in Congress, he didn’t show it. He was a born lawman, happiest when he had a house robber to chase through the woods or a jewel-theft ring to break up. He ran the jail with efficiency, fairness, compassion, and even, believe it or not, conviviality. He appreciated the company of criminals, as long as they were behind bars. As such, he seemed to genuinely enjoy running a county jail.
His wife, Cordelia, was another matter. Any woman would hate living in the cramped sheriff’s apartment on the ground floor of the jail: she couldn’t be faulted for that. But it was also painfully obvious that her ambitions exceeded those of her husband’s, and always had. She aspired to a wallpapered parlor in Washington and a dinner table set for ambassadors and judges. Mrs. Heath longed to be a legislator’s wife, and considered it a deficiency in her husband’s character that he was not yet elected to the office that she expected of him. As such, she’d taken a far greater interest in the election than he had, and ran his campaign with spirit and vigor.
I should explain who, exactly, was to become the next sheriff of Bergen County. I hadn’t yet met the man, so at that moment I was wondering about him myself. His name was William Conklin. He’d served as sheriff before, and in fact had hired Sheriff Heath as a deputy in 1910. I’d been told to expect someone older and more experienced (Sheriff Heath and I were both nearing forty, while Mr. Conklin was of our fathers’ generation), but I also believed he would share, more or less, in Sheriff Heath’s ideas about the running of the jail. They were both of the Democratic Party, and one had trained and taught the other.