The Other Typist Read Online Free PDF

Lieutenant Detective shook himself, sighed, and got up from his seat. He leaned out the doorway of the interrogation room and called to a couple of deputies to help remove the drunken man now snoring loudly on the floor. I set about tidying up the stenographer’s desk and removing the used paper from the shorthand machine. What I’d been typing was likely useless. You couldn’t take a drunk man’s words down as testimony—at least not a man so drunk as to be incomprehensible. The suspect had become as inanimate as a sack of potatoes and barely opened his eyes as he was lifted and hauled away.
    “I thought for certain that man was sober,” the Lieutenant Detective murmured, more to himself, it seemed, than to me.
    “I did as well,” I said. “Couldn’t smell a drop on him, and he was so lucid at the start. Guess he had us both fooled.” The Lieutenant Detective looked up, surprised. This perhaps was the lengthiest exchange we’d shared in months. He regarded me for a few seconds. A strangely appreciative smile spread over his face, but it made me uncomfortable, and I was forced to look away. We went back to putting the room in order, both of us carefully tiptoeing around the puddle of vomit in the middle as we did so.
    “He sort of does, you know,” the Lieutenant Detective said.
    “Who? Does what?”
    “The Sarge. Look like Mayor Hylan.”
    I bristled. “How rude! Although I can’t say I’m surprised by your disrespect, really.” My voice came out sounding shrill, uncontrolled. I was vaguely horrified. I adopted a brisker pace in gathering together a stack of files and headed for the door.
    “It’s not an insult,” the Lieutenant Detective said, his eyes widening in surprise. This proved to be too much for me. Almost to the door, I whirled about on him.
    “Mayor Hylan has been called a communist, and as you very well know, the Sergeant is
not
some sort of dirty Bolshevik. He is a
good
man.” I hesitated before adding, “You would no doubt be vastly improved if you were only
half
the man . . .”
    I trailed off in this lecture, remembering my place and, more importantly, my desire to remain employed. Young and disrespectful though he might be, the Lieutenant Detective technically outranked both the Sergeant and myself. It wouldn’t do to dress him down too severely, so I halted and waited to be reprimanded in return. But he only gazed at me for several seconds, a solemn, pitying expression creeping into his eyes. “I stand corrected,” he said. This was unexpected, and I stood blinking and dumbstruck for the space of a full minute. Then, having no desire to stay and attempt to determine the sincerity of this comment, I simply turned on my heel and left the room.
    It was all a lot to absorb. My job is often full of unruly men doing unruly things, but there was an air of absurdity—of dark absurdity—about the events of that Friday. And that exchange with the Lieutenant Detective! I felt humiliated, somehow, to have been brought down to such a level.
    I got off the streetcar on the Brooklyn side of the bridge and began making my way home, absorbed in thought, still possessed by images of the crazy man who may or may not have drowned a man in the East River, of the Lieutenant Detective and his solemn expressions, of the new typist who had come in for an interview (the name of that latter individual playing musically in my head, tripping along to the pace of my own steps like a child’s song:
Oh-dah-lee, Oh-dah-lee, Oh-dah-lee . . .
).
I thought of the brooch and what the Sergeant would say if he knew it was tucked away in the back of my desk drawer. I mused on the fact that, secretly, I rather agreed with the Lieutenant Detective about the Sergeant’s resemblance to Mayor Hylan. All of these thoughts and more skirted the edges of my reverie as I walked home automatically and with unseeing eyes.
    Preoccupied thus, I wasn’t at all prepared for the ambush that awaited me back at the