The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell Read Free Book Online Page A

us—the Sergeant, the Lieutenant Detective, the officers, the patrolmen, Iris, Marie, and myself—spurred by some native instinct to apologize for what we perceive to be its deficiencies, and this was certainly the case when Odalie arrived for her first day on the job.
    On that particular morning, we were all crowded around Marie’s desk having an impromptu meeting when Odalie walked in the door. The topic of discussion was our new status as a special crackdown unit, and how we all had an important part to play in the organization of each and every raid if we were to successfully shut down the neighborhood’s speakeasies. The Sergeant seemed rather impassioned by the subject; he spoke to us in tones of measured emphasis and with a sense of great command, and I daresay the men seemed considerably motivated by his efforts. Earlier that month a rumor had made its way through the grapevine that if we successfully pulled off five or more raids in the coming weeks, we’d have our picture taken for the papers and the Commissioner would make a special visit to our precinct to shake everybody’s hand. Naturally we were all very excited and nervous about this prospect; I looked around at all the eager faces and couldn’t help but notice that the promise of our little precinct making the headlines had even lured the Chief Inspector out of his office.
    Usually the Lieutenant Detective is the highest-ranking officer hanging about the office—although, to be honest, we all respected the Sergeant as the
true
overseer of the office, on account of the Sergeant’s years of experience as compared to the Lieutenant Detective’s youth and immature attitude. But that morning even the Lieutenant Detective’s supervisor—our precinct’s chief inspector—was there, hovering around Marie’s desk with the rest of us. The Chief Inspector is an elderly, long-limbed man who has always preferred to deal with the paperwork generated by the Lieutenant Detective and the Sergeant from within the confines of his private office. His most notable features are his milky gaze and white beard, and in my opinion there is something faintly wraithlike about him. This impression possibly stems from the fact that most days, the only evidence of the Chief Inspector’s existence is the thin, sweetish aroma of his pipe tobacco emanating in slender wisps from the crack under his office door.
    The meeting, as informal as it was, lurched to an awkward halt when Odalie entered the precinct. The door banged shut. We all turned to find Odalie standing in front of the threshold, peering at us with her wide blue eyes and a faint smile on her lips. Her sudden apparition and elegant countenance were utterly incongruous with her surroundings. We were struck. Even the intermittent coughing and the rustling of papers that had thrummed along throughout our meeting as a backdrop of white noise suddenly died down, deflating like a wind sock abruptly abandoned by the breeze. Odalie, to her credit, appeared absolutely unperturbed. She calmly unpinned her hat (a tidy little velveteen toque hat, pinned over her as-yet-unbobbed chignon) and removed her gloves. The Lieutenant Detective hurried over and helped her off with her winter coat. She seemed to own, as I may have already mentioned, a lot of very nice things.
    “Welcome, welcome. Glad you could make it,” I heard the Lieutenant Detective say somewhat absurdly as he held her coat. It was as though Odalie had come for a dinner party rather than to take up her post as a typist. Odalie laughed in her free, easy, musical way.
    “All right, boys, that’s that,” the Sergeant finally proclaimed, snapping our attention back to the matter at hand. “Let’s all get to work now.” He clapped his hands together twice, as though we were something dirty he was dusting off his palms. The meeting was over. The Sergeant knew a crumbling audience when he saw one. We scattered, each of us pantomiming immediate purpose in the hope that