The Other Typist Read Online Free PDF Page A

kitchen knife stabbing.
An accidental crime of passion
is always how the lawyers describe crimes like that later on in the courts. Not that I always attend the trials, but I
do
like to sit in from time to time, and I have always found the pairing of the words
accidental
and
passion
to be an odd turn of phrase—as if the accident were loving someone, not killing them. In any case, the man’s story was a very familiar one, and I took down everything he said with an automatic reflexivity.
    But much to our surprise, ten minutes into the confession the suspect quite abruptly began describing a different crime altogether—something about drowning a man in the East River. Confused, I caught the Lieutenant Detective’s eye, and we exchanged a hesitant look. The Lieutenant Detective shrugged, and his eyes seemed to say,
Well, if the chap wants to confess to two murders and not just one, let him hang himself.
Keeping all traces of urgency out of his voice, the Lieutenant Detective dropped his line of questioning about the man’s wife and began to ask instead about this mystery drowning. He changed gears ever so gently, I noticed, and took a casual tack. The mood in the room significantly shifted, and it was suddenly as if the Lieutenant Detective was talking to a friend and discussing something as inconsequential as the weather. On instinct I felt my touch on the stenotype grow lighter and my presence recede into the wall, and it was as if they were alone. Finally, the man leaned over and dropped his voice to a whisper. The mayor had told him to do it, the man said; he was only following orders. I looked again at the Lieutenant Detective. I could tell by his external demeanor that he was struggling to maintain an unimpressed skepticism, but he had flinched at the mention of Mayor Hylan’s name, and the corners of his mouth had gone taut with an involuntary tension.
    “And why,” the Lieutenant Detective asked in a condescending voice that clearly implied he was humoring our suspect, “would the mayor want you to attack this man?”
    “Because,” our suspect said, “he was part of the invisible government! The corrupt one!” It was then, as the man shouted, that I began to detect a premiere whiff of bathtub gin on the man’s breath. He began to hiccup loudly. His mention of “the invisible government” was, I believe, a reference to a controversial speech Mayor Hylan had given, accusing men like Rockefeller of having too much control over politics. I realized we were hearing the mayor’s speech repeated through a filter of booze and possible insanity. The Lieutenant Detective struggled to reclaim order over the situation and reorient his line of questioning, but before he could successfully accomplish this aim, the suspect began to hiccup more loudly and worked himself into a state of extreme agitation. He began shouting again. “The mayor told me to do it! I’m a soldier of righteousness, I tell you, a soldier!”
    Just then, the Sergeant poked his head in the door to see what all the commotion was about. Our suspect took one look at the Sergeant and leapt out of his chair. He snapped his hand to his forehead in a salute.
    “Reporting for duty, Mr. Mayor, sir!”
    The Sergeant blinked at the man saluting him, utterly stupefied. The scar on the Lieutenant Detective’s forehead rolled into a series of S’s, configured by the deep furrows of his concerned brow. It took us all a few minutes to realize we were witnessing an absurd case of mistaken identity. Suddenly the suspect spun around in a frenzy, vomited with a startling ferocity, and finally ended his spasms by passing out cold on the floor, his cheek pressed against the tile and his tongue lolling thickly out of his mouth. The whole room filled with the wretched smell of rancid, partially digested alcohol. The Sergeant looked at us, unamused.
    “Get him out of here” was all the Sergeant said, and disappeared. We sat there, stunned for a few seconds, until the