by Amy Stewart
That stopped me. “Everyone? All the deputies? And the guards?”
“All of them.”
“But they’re the ones who know how to run the jail. And some of them have worked for five different sheriffs. It doesn’t matter about the political party. Mr. Courter hardly knows most of them. How can he decide that they’re all unfit for service?”
“It’s what he’s done. That’s why he brought those men in this morning. He’s dismissed everyone from the jail and he intends to make them scramble around and grovel to be let back in. I’m told he sees it as a loyalty test.”
I could just picture them: the young, ambitious guards who hoped to work their way up to deputy or policeman, the older men who had served long enough to know every kind of trick an inmate might try to pull, and the deputies who put their own lives at risk every time they went out on a call. A few of them carried bullet wounds and scars from knives.
Had they all lost their jobs because of me?
In the opening left by my silence, Mr. Heath said, “I want you to go and speak to John Ward about your case. He owes me enough favors. If you can win this, Courter will be forced to reinstate everyone. It doesn’t matter what you do after that. Quit, if you can’t stand it. But go ahead and—”
“Why do I have to be the one to hire a lawyer and fight and beg for a job with that awful man? Why can’t one of the other deputies do it? It doesn’t matter which one of us it is.”
The train rolled on out of the station without me. I had a feeling that I was going off to speak to a lawyer, whether I wanted to or not.
“It has to be you,” Mr. Heath said. “A sheriff who wants to push out his predecessor’s deputies and guards is hardly newsworthy. Every sheriff wants to. This fight is going to be carried out all over the state, in every county where the office of the sheriff changed political parties. There is nothing to distinguish Bergen County, or to draw attention to it, except—”
“Except for the lady deputy, fired because the sheriff has no use for a woman at the jail.” I sounded so churlish that Mr. Heath laughed in spite of himself.
“I’m afraid so. You’ll draw in the reporters. You’ll make it a public fight, and Mr. Courter won’t be able to hide what he’s trying to do.”
It had been Sheriff Heath (back when he was sheriff) who had first suggested to me that I use the newspapers to my advantage to shame John Courter and his colleagues at the prosecutor’s office into doing something about the man who had been harassing my family. What was the headline that ran all over the country? “Girl Waits with Gun.”
It sounded so foolish, two years later. I was no girl, and waiting around with a gun wasn’t what made the difference. What mattered was not that I’d been prepared to fire a weapon at my attacker, but that I—with the sheriff—had managed to rally the public to my cause. Together, we gathered evidence and built a case. We won in court, not on a street corner with a revolver.
This, of course, was Mr. Heath’s point. It was time to rally the public, and to make sure the county clerk and the elections office understood that the bright light of public scrutiny was shining on Bergen County, and even more brightly on the office of the sheriff.
When I thought about it like that, I knew that I had no choice.
35
Miss Kopp, Ousted by New Sheriff, Just Won’t Quit
Young Woman Deputy Defies Bergen County Official and Consults Lawyer to Begin Test Suit in Courts—Has Had Spectacular Public Career While in Office
hackensack—Bergen County, N.J., which suffered a sudden change of politics at the last election, lost its most comely Under-Sheriff today when Miss Constance Kopp was notified that her name had been dropped from the list of office employees by John W. Courter, the new Sheriff.
“There is nothing I can find for her to do,” declared Sheriff Courter, regarding a long list of deserving Republicans who were willing to sacrifice their time for the county. He is understood to have notified Miss Kopp that he had abolished the office of matron and that he had never recognized her as Under-Sheriff. He ignored the thrilling incident when Miss Kopp came to New York and manacled a fugitive, to say nothing of other exploits in which she earned the name of “the demon deputy.”
“My lawyer has advised me to linger about here until I am put out of the office,” she told fellow employees. “I intend to do so.”
Walter Scott has been appointed to fill the place “vacated” by Miss Kopp. When he appeared to be sworn in, Judge W. M. Seufert, of the County Court, refused to administer the oath and Scott was compelled to go to Newark and he was sworn in by Justice Parker in the Supreme Court.
Justice Parker specified in administering the oath of office that his action must not be construed as an opinion on the civil service controversy.
“I most certainly am here,” said Miss Under-Sheriff Kopp, when questioned at the sheriff’s office late this afternoon.
“Haven’t you got out yet?” was asked.
“No, I haven’t,” replied the woman deputy with asperity. When asked what her intentions were regarding holding to her official position, she asserted that she cannot be removed because of the protections of the Civil Service law.
Miss Kopp, the despised woman Under-Sheriff, has captured several criminals in her term of office and recently leaped into a river to rescue an escaped lunatic.
“you oughtn’t to invite this sort of attention,” Norma said at breakfast, when news of my court case landed on our doorstep.
I chipped at a soft-boiled egg. “It’s just one last round in the papers, then I’m quite sure I’ll never be heard from again.”
“That’s only if you lose. If you win, you can stay in your job.”
“You know I won’t work for that man.”
“You’ll have to do something.” Norma was already needling me about how I proposed to keep her in pigeon scratch if I found myself out of work, but at that moment I lacked the fortitude to be aggravated over it.
“No one wants to work for him,” Fleurette put in. “Everyone hates him.”
“A solid majority of the voters liked him well enough,” Norma said.
Fleurette yawned. Talk of the campaign bored her before the election, and now that it was over, she had no interest in it. She wouldn’t even have been at the table, as she was in the habit of sleeping late, but Norma had put a stop to that since the election. If there was any chance that we were to be deprived of my wages, Fleurette needed to be up and out the door in pursuit of an income.
“Fleurette’s right. No one wants to work for him,” I said. “But if I’m to fight this case, I’ve no choice but to proceed as if I do. Once the case has been won and the others guaranteed their jobs, I’ll hand in my notice.”
“As long as you find something else, because I can’t possibly bring in more than I already do,” Fleurette said.
“You don’t bring in a thing,” Norma said. “You spend it all before you walk in the door.”
“But I pay to keep myself!” Fleurette objected. “Think of the savings!”
Norma would not think of the savings. “You don’t pay your keep. There’s food and firewood, and heating gas, and all the costs of running this place. You don’t put in a dime for any of that, and now you’ll have to.”
“But you can’t depend upon me.” Fleurette managed to make that sound entirely reasonable. “Constance will have to find something.”
“I will,” I said, “but Mr. Ward doesn’t want me out looking for another position until my case is settled. It’s better to wait until after Christmas anyway.”
Never had Christmas been such a cheerless prospect. Francis would have us over, as always, and a day of Bessie’s fine cooking would undoubtedly shore us up. But Francis would have his opinions about the turn of events at the sheriff’s office, and the advisability of my taking this opportunity to find a quieter line of work, or perhaps (as he liked to suggest) selling the farm and settling up our affairs in such a way that Norma and I could be looked
after once Fleurette was satisfactorily married.
Francis had a cozy picture in mind of me and Norma rooming together in some small cottage in town: two twin beds in an attic with a wash-stand and a toilet adjacent, and a little parlor where we’d sit in the evening and complain about the price of running the gas lights. I couldn’t bear to hear about it again.
Over the next few weeks, the stories about my case ran in every paper in New Jersey and New York, and clippings were starting to trickle in from as far away as Texas and Nevada. They came in pale blue envelopes accompanied by notes from schoolgirls wishing me well. They came on official city letterhead, from police chiefs offering me a position as matron if I were to be ejected from New Jersey. (It didn’t seem so far-fetched that I might be ejected from the entire state, given the controversy.) One even arrived from an inmate in Vicksburg, Mississippi, who had picked up the paper just before her arrest and persuaded a sympathetic guard to let her dash off a note to me, which she enclosed along with the article.
“Those ladies are lucky to have you at the jail” was all it said.
“Girl Deputy Fired” read the headline from Mississippi, but I wasn’t fired, not yet. I followed John Ward’s advice and turned up at the jail every day. Mr. Courter (I could still not grant him the dignity of his title) had no choice but to allow me inside: Judge Seufert’s office was in the adjacent courthouse, and any attempt to lock me out before the civil service commission’s ruling would be met with a swift court order.
I was fortunate, at least, that Judge Seufert had been the one to refuse to swear in my replacement. I wondered if Mr. Heath had a hand in it. The judge had always taken my side and very much approved of the idea of a lady deputy who could step in and take a firm hand with wayward girls. The decision concerning my fate was not his, ultimately—it fell to the civil service commission to rule on the matter—but in his refusal to swear in the new deputy, he’d sent a strong message that I was not to be trifled with until the decision came down.
Meanwhile, I went to work every day and behaved as if nothing had happened. The jail ran more or less as it always had, the only change being that a belligerent and deeply unpopular man occupied the office of sheriff. Mr. Courter must’ve thought he could dismiss us and have us gone that afternoon. He obviously hadn’t considered the possibility that we’d be stuck working together for another month after he’d made it plain that our presence wasn’t desired.
He had his supporters, of course, among the guards and deputies. They’d been loyal to Sheriff Heath in the way that any man in law enforcement was broadly loyal to his chief, but some of them were unconcerned with ideology or any particular philosophy of criminal justice. They wore the uniform, they guarded the jail, they caught a criminal now and then, and for that they were paid a good wage. It wouldn’t bother them to work for Mr. Courter. He was simply the new sheriff. The inmates hadn’t changed, and the criminals wouldn’t change, so they were satisfied, and did what they could to ingratiate themselves to the man now occupying the sheriff’s office.
Mr. Courter tended to huddle with that small band of loyalists behind closed doors, and to call on them when there were arrests to be made, inmates to be transported, or eviction papers to be served. All the routine civil and criminal work of the sheriff’s office continued, except that it was conducted by a much diminished force.
I never once saw Mr. Courter walk through the jail, or speak a word to the inmates. He hadn’t, as far as I knew, asked a question about how the jail was run or given us any direction whatsoever. He seemed strangely uninterested in the day-to-day workings of the facility of which he’d endeavored so mightily to seize control. He’d campaigned vigorously against Sheriff Heath over the security at the jail, and the escape attempts, but had done nothing yet to change how the place was run, nor given any indication of how his plans were to be carried out.
We deputies kept our heads down and steadfastly avoided any talk of the civil service case. We saw to it that the shifts were covered, that the kitchen ran as it should, that the laundry crew did its work, and that the ordinary intakes and discharges were handled properly. A few cast about for other jobs, but there wasn’t much on offer beyond a factory shift. With the threat of war drawing ever nearer, most of the men hoped for a victory at the civil service commission and the opportunity to cling to their jobs in the face of uncertainty.
If I’d been fighting this alone, I would’ve been the least popular person at the Hackensack Jail. Everyone would’ve turned against me in an effort to curry favor with the boss. But instead, the other deputies were depending upon me. They had all gone in secret to meet with John Ward, and to have the situation explained to them.
“Miss Kopp’s bearing the brunt of this,” he told them, “but she’s doing it for all of you, and you’d damned well better show her some courtesy. If she wins, you all keep your jobs, whether you want them or not.”
Mr. Ward managed to persuade them, to my everlasting relief. The men remained quietly cordial, and helped me in whatever small ways they could, without ever attracting Mr. Courter’s suspicion.
I saw Mr. Heath only once over the weeks it took for the commission to decide my case. He was walking out of a bank as I happened to pass by. The setting, naturally, brought to mind the financial difficulties the election had rained down on both of us, but on him in particular.
“Are you a bank president now?” I asked, trying to sound light about it.
“A bank clerk, if I’m lucky,” he said. “They wanted to put me on guard duty, but Cordelia won’t hear of it. I’m not permitted to take a job that requires me to carry anything more lethal than a pencil.”
I hated to see him stripped of his badge. He looked diminished without it. I was wearing mine, of course, and he noticed. “You’re still fighting. I knew you would.”
“I’m only doing it to help the others. Mr. Ward assures me it’s a straightforward case. He says the civil service laws are unambiguous, just as the Republicans intended when they wrote them.”
“Then you won’t have any trouble keeping your job.”
“A job I don’t want anymore.” My voice broke just then, and I hated myself for it. I sounded like a petulant child. “I won’t work for him. He hasn’t spoken a word to me in all this time.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” Mr. Heath said. “I’d work for him, if he promised never to speak to me.”
“Don’t make a joke of it. It’s unbearable, watching him going in and out of your office, and driving off in your wagon.”
He looked at me in surprise. “Miss Kopp. It was never my office. It belongs to the citizens. They put me there for three years, and then they decided to give it to him. You’d best get used to that, if you want to work in public service.”
I glanced up and down the street, feeling as forlorn and desperate as I ever had. Men were going in and out of the bank in their everyday suits, women were rushing past in their new winter coats, and on the street was a steady parade of black automobiles. The world had gone on, but I had not.
“I don’t know that I do want to work in public service anymore, Sheriff—Mr. Heath. The position seems to have lost whatever attraction it once held for me.”
He crossed his arms in front of him and looked down at his shoes. “You might as well call me Bob. Everyone else does.”
I couldn’t bear it. “I don’t believe I will.”
36
even my own inmates followed the news, as the papers circulated among the guards and made their way into the jail laundry and kitchen. Everyone knew that I’d turned the fight for my job into a national scandal.
“I ought to be asking for your autograph,” said Ruth Williams, the actress turned robber.
“I don’t want any sort of celebrity over it,” I said, “but I didn’t have a choice. I’m only trying to stay in my position to look after you.”
“What is going to happen to us?” called Ida Smith from the other end of the cell block. She and Louise Wils
on had seen no progress in their case. They were stalwart in their refusal to testify against the young men, and claimed to have no knowledge of any other crimes they might’ve committed beyond robbing the chauffeur.
I never could persuade them to tell the truth. It was all too common at the jail for girls to get romantic ideas in their heads, and to refuse to testify against a man sitting in a cell downstairs. There was no percentage in remaining loyal to a man who would allow them to get mixed up in a crime, but they didn’t see it that way.
Providencia Monafo was sitting silently in her cell when I went by, working at a bit of knitting with the blunt wooden needles the inmates were allowed. She never knitted or performed any kind of domestic art when she first came to jail, but after almost a year behind bars, she’d taken up a few pastimes: the sort of utilitarian knitting she’d been taught as a girl (mittens and slippers, mostly), a few solitary card games, and a simple cross-stitch meant only to enliven the hems of the house dresses she wore every day.
She looked better, too. She put her hair up in the same neat bun every day. Her skin, which had been ravaged by the effects of lice and unhygienic living, had responded to the jail’s modest regimen of daily soap, water, and petroleum jelly. It wasn’t much, but she was now a cleaner, better-rested, and infinitely healthier woman than she’d been a year ago.
“You can’t stay,” she said when I walked over and leaned against the bars of her cell.
“Well, that isn’t for you to decide,” I said, in an effort to be light-hearted about it.
Providencia shook her head and stared darkly at me: she was immune to anything like humor. “If he don’t want you here, you should go.”
She was right, of course. Even if I won my case, it was impossible to think of working for John Courter. He refused to say a word to me as I came and went at the jail. We stayed out of each other’s way, and I have no doubt that he, too, was counting the days until the commission ruled.