The Other Typist (15 page)

The house where Cora-Sue found employ was of the usual requisite ill-repute, yet had a good reputation for being very “traditional.” This meant it was a brothel in the old salon tradition, and most of the ladies who worked there, when not immediately engaged with a customer, spent their idle hours sitting in the parlor like proper ladies waiting to be called upon and courted. Well, perhaps ladies with coarser manners, for Gib informed me the “ladies” mostly occupied themselves with sitting around telling vulgar jokes and betting at cards. But despite the sailor’s language and the gambling, a sort of drawing room atmosphere nevertheless prevailed. Oftentimes a man named Lionel, a student over at the music academy looking for extra practice, would even sit and play the piano, alternately pounding and trilling out everything from the latest popular band music to lovely little Beethoven sonatas, lending the overall ambience a jovial yet genteel, dignified air.

The proprietress of the establishment, a shrill redheaded woman who went by the name Annabel (it was rumored her given Christian name was really Jane but had been changed to avoid some previous legal difficulties), was not keen on the idea of hiring employees who came with children in tow, but when little Odalie introduced herself to Annabel by giving a flirtatious curtsy and a wink, Annabel immediately identified the miniature coquette’s potential as a petite hostess who might amuse the customers by serving them drinks.

And so it was the two Buford women found employ and managed, for a time at least, to eke out a living Cora-Sue couldn’t drink up the very same day. Cora-Sue took dollars for performing her services upstairs, while downstairs the men lifted their lemonades and whiskeys from a silver tray and placed pennies or the occasional nickel into Odalie’s sticky palm, giving the tiny hand a small squeeze. Gib’s description of what a hit the tiny Odalie was with the customers came as no surprise to me. A born performer, she stamped out tenacious little dances whenever she thought it might delight someone and even learned to patter out a few tunes on the piano at Lionel’s instruction. The men delighted in her plucky nature, and it was not uncommon to find her seated at the card table, perched on some customer’s knee and playing a hand of poker on his very amused behalf. As Gib recounted this chapter of Odalie’s history, I formed the idea that this era must’ve marked a sort of early education for Odalie, as it was during her time at the brothel that she began to understand and hone her manipulative powers over people, and over men in particular.

There was one habitué (a term Gib said Odalie was fond of using—French, I’m told, for
regular
) who eventually took a more vigorous interest in Odalie. The man, one Mr. Istvan Czakó, was a dapper, middle-aged Hungarian of short stature but very deep pockets and an almost Baroque predilection for what one might call civilized perversions. Shortly after the Buford women began working and living at Annabel’s place, Czakó rarely found the time anymore to make the journey upstairs to the second floor of the brothel, satisfied as he was to watch his new little muse dance and sing and to have her sit in his lap whenever she would agree to it. At first, Annabel did not mind, as Czakó stayed for hours and always managed to spend just as much money on the drinks he consumed while in Odalie’s company as he would if he had engaged the private ministrations of one of the more
mature
ladies at the house. But when it was discovered Czakó was slipping money directly to Odalie on the side (and furthermore that it was a large enough sum to be paper money and not merely the kind that jingles), Annabel was outraged and demanded her proper commission.
The police would certainly want to know about his preference for the younger set,
Annabel suggested, with that telltale flinty gleam in her eye.

It cannot be said that Odalie was kidnapped exactly, for when Czakó elected to sail for France to avoid the persecution Annabel promised, Odalie packed her things and stole away quite willingly. There was perhaps a moment or two of remorse, of sorrow for the helpless alcohol-sodden mother she was leaving behind, but all such sentiments soon vaporized into a cloud of glamorous cigarette smoke once she and Czakó reached Paris. Czakó, who’d previously lived in Paris for many years, was only too happy to dazzle his young ingenue with the sights and sounds of the city. Together they took in museums, concerts, society salons, street cafés. It was during this time the myth of their familial relations first circulated. Required to explain the presence of a young girl in his company, Czakó was content to let strangers believe she was his daughter. For those old acquaintances who already knew him, he casually asserted she was his niece, born of a distant American relation and left in his charge for reasons that (I assume he very expertly and indirectly implied) were too sad to explain in any more than the vaguest detail.

They spent the better part of Odalie’s formative years in France, living leisurely off Czakó’s vast fortune. According to Gib, Odalie always maintained Czakó was a Hungarian aristocrat of some sort, which, from what I’ve read about aristocrats, might account in some part for his perversions. Eventually, Odalie was even enrolled in school and donned the ribboned cap, starched white sailor’s collar, navy pleats, and dark kneesocks of a proper little
française
(a uniform, it must be noted, Czakó sometimes requested she wear during nonschool hours). By her late teens, she had grown into a polished young lady of many accomplishments. She was fluent in French and English (she had also acquired a smattering of Hungarian by then, though it was probably not useful in polite company). She furthered the studies in piano she had long ago begun with Lionel, and although she was not terribly gifted, she could always be counted upon to crank out a jaunty little tune.

In the days of her suburban Chicago childhood, Odalie had always been something of a tomboy, and even after her “finishing” years in France she was still at her core an athlete, having never lost that lanky, careless grace that was hers from birth. Czakó often took her south for the summers, where she excelled at tennis and golf and made the other hotel guests murmur in admiration of her fearlessness as she swam farther out than anybody else into the gold-flecked azure horizon of the Mediterranean. Meanwhile a proud and possessive Czakó looked on from a steamer chair, the wiry carpet of iron-gray hair on his denuded barrel chest shining dully in the Riviera sunshine.

Those were—Gib ventured to guess as he told the story—probably the happiest days of the Hungarian’s life. Perhaps Czakó even allowed himself to believe Odalie would never grow up, and that the war—which by this time had begun in Europe—would never truly touch them. It wasn’t until the sinking of the
Lusitania
that they finally felt compelled to gain a greater physical distance from the action, and together they made the journey back across the Atlantic on a stomach of nerves. They arrived in New York, which had grown boisterous with the politics of the Great War. Men stood on soapboxes and yelled about the divided interests of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, but for a time Czakó and Odalie were able to skirt around all the commotion and go up the elevator to the newly insulated oasis of an apartment Czakó had secured for them on Park Avenue.

But their respite was short-lived. The trouble the Black Hand had stirred up at the start of the war meant there were fissures beginning to show in the great castles of Hungary. The aristocrats had already seen their finest hours, and were now losing some of their popularity. The commotion caused by the tussle between the anarchists and monarchists allowed for Czakó’s private banker to reveal himself for what the fellow truly was: a capitalist. Czakó sent wire after wire, each one increasingly more desperate. But after three weeks it was evident the banker had no intention of ever being found.
Oh,
Czakó lamented regretfully for weeks after coming face-to-face with the realization that his banker would likely never be reached,
I should have seen it all coming and relocated my wealth into the hands of the Americans, or better still, the Swiss!

It’s not at all clear whether Odalie contemplated leaving Czakó at this point. Knowing her a little as I do now, it is likely she would have. But if she harbored seditious sentiments, she kept them to herself. Perhaps still feeling a little guilty for having left her mother at the nadir of their mutual misfortune, she remained with Czakó and convinced him they should live more frugally (he was inexperienced in such tactics and required instruction—though I found it difficult to believe Odalie was an expert in this practice), cutting back on their expenses and converting what was left of his fortune into Liberty Bonds.

With the end of the war and the rise of the Volstead Act, Odalie saw another opportunity for beneficial investment and suggested as much to Czakó. By this time, Odalie had long since left the greater traces of her childhood behind, and the dynamic that bound the two of them together had shifted. Czakó’s trips to her bed had decreased over the years in proportion to the number of birthdays she had accumulated, yet his heed of her financial advice increased. For the first time in her life, Odalie was allowed to keep a separate apartment. This was perhaps a secret gesture on Czakó’s part to protect himself. Czakó was aware their new business venture wasn’t exactly legal, but he probably figured the less he knew about that, the better.

“You see, she’s self-made in many ways,” Gib commented approvingly upon the conclusion of his story. “I mean, just as much as John D. Rockefeller is, or any of those other slobs, for that matter.”

I stared at Gib, my mouth agape, still trying to take in the deluge of information I had just been given. The notion that I’d been living with a woman who was quite possibly the nation’s premier female bootlegger came as a bit of a shock. A queer magnetic field had dropped around me, and my moral compass was spinning. It was one thing to sneak into the occasional speakeasy; it was quite another to supply it and clear a tidy profit. For months I had hovered at Odalie’s elbow sipping champagne, comforted by the assumption that if anyone’s hands were dirty, so to speak, it was only Gib’s hands and Gib’s alone. This revised version of my evenings with Odalie was difficult to wrap my mind around.

“And—Czakó?” I stammered.

“Oh yes,” Gib answered with an amused smile. “He’s still in the picture. Checks in regularly and likes to take his piece of the pie, you know. And I suppose you have to admit it was his seed money. But it wouldn’ta come to nothin’—ya know—if it weren’t for Odalie.”

I looked at Gib’s face. He had the very oily skin handsome, olive-toned men so often do. When he smiled, an event that was rare, his countenance positively gleamed. Now, as he posed as though contemplating Odalie’s accomplishments with pride, his face shone brilliantly in the morning sunshine. I wanted so badly to disapprove—of Gib, of Odalie, of all of it—but I found myself in an even greater state of curiosity and awe.

Of course, I couldn’t know then what Gib’s smile secretly hinted at—that this story might very well be just that, a story, and that the truth of Odalie’s childhood might never reveal itself to her admirers, obscured as it was by layer after layer of misdirection. It’s funny; I have often imagined how different the world must look through Odalie’s eyes, as hers are the only ones that have a complete view of the tricks behind the magic. I once read in a newspaper about Houdini and how he famously said his professional life was merely a constant record of disillusion, and I cannot help but wonder now if this is how Odalie, too, saw the world around her. Looking back now, I see it’s quite possible.

T
here is something darkly thrilling about standing on the balcony of a very tall building and looking over the edge with the silent knowledge that it is in one’s own power to jump. Jumping is, of course, very unwise—an act fated to resolve itself in total self-annihilation. Let there be no illusion in that. And yet one is nonetheless tempted to consider the dare. It was like that for me in the late spring of ’25, when an opportunity presented itself for me to take a metaphorical plunge, a plunge from which I somehow sensed I’d never recover.

How to describe what transpired? I suppose I might put it this way: My work at the precinct came to something of a fork in the road, and I found myself unexpectedly torn—morbidly drawn to the dark moral abyss with the unabashed sentiment of a lover, like Mina self-destructively drawn to her Count Dracula.

Two months had passed since our—the Sergeant’s and my—last interview with Edgar Vitalli. I remember winter dropped away in a hurry that year, like a guest who’d suddenly become cognizant he’d overstayed his welcome at the party. By April, the sun’s rays beat down with a vital force, and the fresh breezes of spring were already laced with the thicker heralds of the hot, humid summer still to come. The bright light of the mornings struck a contrast with my dark afternoons at the precinct, which seemed filled to the brim with more gruesome details of grisly confessions than usual. This was possibly due to the fact the workload within our typing pool had been somewhat redistributed. Marie had gotten herself in the family way again, so the Sergeant had restricted her duties to the simplest of filing activities, as it was thought that hearing about rapes and murders might distress her and hurry the baby along before its time. The prospect of a woman succumbing to the labor pains of childbirth while at the precinct made the men more queasy than anything a suspected murderer could possibly recount.

“This is a perfect example,” the Sergeant said once he had gathered us in a circle and reallocated our assignments, “of why women need to occupy themselves with different work than men.” We all nodded somberly. I assume Odalie did, too, though she stood behind me and I could not see her. “I understand this is not an easy job for womenfolk. If it were up to me, I don’t think I would have a single one of you ladies expose yourselves to what goes on in this precinct at all,” the Sergeant continued. “But of course, we cannot function without someone to do the typing and filing, and the officers and patrolmen have proven themselves utterly helpless on that score.” He turned a kind, paternalistic gaze on Marie. “And we mustn’t forget, my dear, you have always brewed the best coffee,” he said, the note of approbation not lost on Marie, whose doughy cheeks puffed with a smile. “I anticipate you can certainly go on doing that, and occupy yourself with the filing, and it will always be greatly appreciated.” The Sergeant dismissed us with a wave of his hand, and the cluster of bodies around him broke up. Marie, Iris, Odalie, and I scattered our separate ways and resumed our previous work.

The Lieutenant Detective was not there that morning, but none of us thought there was anything very unusual about this. He was the representative from our precinct who was most often sent directly to the scene of the crime, and he often leveraged this fact so he might adhere to a schedule of his own making. It was no secret he had a distaste for keeping regular office hours, and we all assumed he would saunter into the precinct sometime in the afternoon, only pretending to have been somewhere on official police business earlier in the morning.

But later that week, I learned that the Lieutenant Detective had been called to a hotel in another district to give his opinion about a woman who had been found drowned in a bathtub in one of the hotel’s rooms. Her body had been left in a familiar pose, and the contents of her hotel safe picked clean. Of course all of us at the precinct knew immediately who had done it, but it took the Sergeant and the Lieutenant Detective nearly a week to put together enough evidence to prove Mr. Vitalli was even acquainted with the victim, as this time he had not been married to the drowned woman. “He’s not taking the time to marry them anymore,” I overheard the Lieutenant Detective say in a low voice to the Sergeant. “Just goes straight to murder and theft. He’s picking up the pace; we’ve let him get far too comfortable.”

It took several days, but by virtue of sheer persistence they were able to compel Mr. Vitalli to come in for an interview, and at last he was successfully summoned. But our joy over this fact was short-lived; it was clear from the outset Mr. Vitalli—not even troubling himself to hide the amused sneer on his face—was anticipating a faithful reproduction of his previous interviews. As the Lieutenant Detective escorted Mr. Vitalli to the interrogation room (diplomatically calling it the
interview room,
which of course had a friendlier ring to it), the Chief Inspector put in an unexpected appearance, emerging from a cloud of pipe smoke that filled the doorway of his office as though he were a genie responding to a rub at the bottle.

“Irving,” he said, using the Sergeant’s given name and laying his spidery, long-fingered hand upon the Sergeant’s shoulder, “I don’t need to tell you how crucial having a confession has become to this case.”

The Sergeant’s mustache twitched. “No, Gerald, you don’t.”

“Good luck to you. Remember—he’s a wily one. Best to be clever, try to lay the trap. . . .”

As the Chief Inspector’s tepid, useless advice trailed off, the Sergeant walked away with a purposeful, determined stride. “Rose?” the Sergeant called over his shoulder, giving me the cue to follow him. My heart began to pound. After what happened last time, the prospect of going into the interrogation room with Vitalli again filled me with dread, but I could see no way out of it. With trembling knees, I fell into step behind the Sergeant. The regular whir of activity around us had lurched to a standstill in reverence for the task that lay before us. All heads turned in our direction. It was as if we were crossing a stage.

“Psst,”
Iris whispered in my direction, and thoughtfully thrust an extra roll of stenotype paper into my hands as I passed her. “Let’s hope the Sergeant gets something out of him this time,” she said in a low voice, her necktie trembling at her throat and her tiny birdlike mouth not even seeming to move. I passed by Odalie, who arched an eyebrow—a skeptical gesture, but one I had come to understand was not altogether unfriendly and was, in fact, meant to convey a feeling of camaraderie. I walked past Marie, who was already looking quite shiny-faced and round-bellied in spite of the fact her pregnancy had only been announced a few days prior that week. She winked and gave me a stalwart nod, as though I were going off to bare-knuckle fight Mr. Vitalli myself.

Once inside the interrogation room, I swung the door shut behind me and scurried quickly across the space, sliding into the tiny stenographer’s desk as innocuously as I could manage. Mr. Vitalli was already holding court, leaning back in his chair, giving a loud monologue that compared the virtues of married life to those of bachelorhood. Needless to say, it was not very polite fare, and I shall not repeat it here. I replaced the empty roll of stenotype paper with the one Iris had handed me (she must’ve known; leave it to her to keep a constant mental account of these things!) and waited. Mr. Vitalli flicked a glance in my direction and paused midsentence, his eyes narrowing as they locked with my own. I realized I had been afraid of this moment, that I had been nervous to come face-to-face with him again. It was clear Mr. Vitalli had not alerted anyone to the little incident that had transpired between us, but on instinct I understood this was not a gesture of complicity with me. He was simply waiting for the most advantageous opportunity, and he was not done sizing me up.

“You’re a married man, Sergeant, are you not?” Mr. Vitalli asked in a patronizing voice, though we were all well aware he already knew the answer. Ordinarily, the Sergeant wouldn’t have allowed a suspect to engage him in this way, but I knew the Sergeant was desperate to keep Mr. Vitalli talking by any means necessary. He cleared his throat.

“I am.”

“Ah. Well,” Mr. Vitalli said, throwing his hands in the air as though the Sergeant had just offered up perfect proof of his point. “Then you are privy to the fact that women are not always the angels they would have you believe they are.”

“That so?” the Lieutenant Detective piped up in a relaxed, friendly voice, sensing an opportunity to steer the conversation. “Are you thinking of any of your wives in particular?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say
in particular
 . . . more generally, I suppose.” Mr. Vitalli turned, ran his eyes up and down the length of the Lieutenant Detective, and revealed his wolfish teeth in a knowing smile. “And you are of course a bachelor, I presume?” The Lieutenant Detective stiffened and flicked a wary glance in the direction of the Sergeant, who gave him a very slight, almost imperceptible nod.

“Yes.”

“Then you can’t know the ungainly secrets of the fairer sex as the Sergeant and I do,” Mr. Vitalli continued. He lifted a hand to preen his mustache as he spoke. “You can’t know that every angel of a woman likewise has within her the secret face of a demon. They all do. But you won’t see this demon side unless you marry them.” He paused. “Or become otherwise
familiar
with them.” He gave a lecherous chuckle, as though musing over the different kinds of familiarity he had known, then coughed politely and continued. “They all keep this side hidden from public view, you see.” As his eyes roved about the room, they landed on me again and stopped to linger. Suddenly his eyes narrowed. Now my heart was pounding so loudly, my ears began to thunder with my heartbeat. “Of course, from time to time a rare lady will slip up when she’s not expecting to, and brazenly show her demonic face to a perfect stranger.”

Now I knew for certain he was not going to let it go, that he was going to target me, and I felt the cold tingle of perspiration breaking out on my brow. Only Vitalli was looking at me; the Sergeant and the Lieutenant Detective remained riveted on his person, and for this I am grateful.

His tone was casual, but his gaze was white-hot with spite. “Take your young typist here. Rose, was it? I’ll bet, as composed as she presents herself now, you’d probably imagine she is always quite the well-mannered
lady,
would you not?”

“All right!” the Lieutenant Detective said sternly. “That’s enough out of you. It’s time you spoke to the subject at hand and told us about your wives, not about our typists.”

Mr. Vitalli’s eyebrows shot up in the air, and he looked at the Lieutenant Detective, then turned to regard me, and finally turned back to the Lieutenant Detective. A look of amused recognition crept into his features, as if Mr. Vitalli was suddenly seeing the two of us for the first time.

“Goodness!” he said with a tone of innocence and a wicked smile. “Why, I had no idea you had already found romance, Lieutenant. And in the workplace, no less. How bold of you. I suppose I should shake your hand.”

“I said that’s enough!”

I glanced at the Lieutenant Detective, but he would not make eye contact with me. His eyes were fastened on the notebook lying on the table before him. A series of blotchy red roses had vined their way from his cheekbones to the roots of his hair, climbing in and around the pink rims of his ears. Even in my state of distress I felt a tiny prick of offense at this, as I can only assume he was mortified by the mere thought that someone might think we could be romantically involved.

“Settle down now, Vitalli,” came the Sergeant’s cool, calm baritone. “We’ve let you have your bit of fun. I’m afraid it’s time for you to start telling us the truth. If you come clean, perhaps we can help you reach a more amenable arrangement with regard to your sentence.”

But it turned out Mr. Vitalli did not think he needed the Sergeant’s help. In a repeat of the tactics that had worked only too well for him the last time, he simply sat there, smiling in silence, each time they asked him a question about the murders. For two hours, the Sergeant and the Lieutenant Detective put their questions to a man who might as well have been a mannequin. The silence that followed each question was so vacuous, it rang mockingly in our ears. The Sergeant and the Lieutenant Detective took turns pacing the room, while I sat with my fingers itching to press down the shorthand keys, my wrists poised in the air and my nerves all abristle, as though the stenotype sitting before me might go off like a gun. But as the minutes ticked by and the questions repeatedly bounced off Vitalli like rubber balls thrown against a brick wall, the spirit of determination in the room began to flag.

He’d only talk just so much as was necessary to keep us from giving up. It seemed as though his confession was nearby but always just out of sight. Finally, during a particularly long lull in the interrogation, Mr. Vitalli reached across the table, picked up a photograph taken of the scene, and inspected it with an air of professional interest.

“Did you take this?” he inquired of the Lieutenant Detective. The Lieutenant Detective raised an eyebrow and cautiously nodded.

“Our regular man was out sick.” The Lieutenant Detective paused and cocked his head as though struck by a new stratagem. He adopted an easy demeanor, his frown vanished, and the scar along his forehead smoothed itself flat. He grinned amicably. “But to tell the truth, I’m not very good at operating a camera. And as you can imagine, it’s difficult getting a good photograph when you’re obliged not to disturb anything. So I apologize if I didn’t do justice in capturing your work.”

Mr. Vitalli smiled politely at the baited compliment. Instead of affirming or denying the accusation, he cleared his throat as though a change of subject had just occurred to him. “Oh. Of course. But where are my manners? You want my statement, correct? How rude of me. Please, allow me to give my statement.” He cleared his throat. The Sergeant and the Lieutenant Detective exchanged a sudden look, laced with the involuntary excitement of two hungry animals. They leaned in, struggling to maintain the skeptical expressions on their faces. Mr. Vitalli smiled and sat back contentedly in his chair.