“I imagine you might also try to help me a little.”
“A little, perhaps. The truth is you don’t need help. You’re savvy enough to do this single-handed. So go forth. Assuming you want the promotion, of course.”
“If it comes with a raise in pay.”
“It does.”
“Then, yes, I do.”
He smiled, a big open grin. “You could thank me, you know.”
I returned the grin. “I could! And you could thank me for taking the job.”
We shook hands, which we’d rarely done, and my elbow nearly knocked over a stack of hats piled by the window.
“Make me proud,” he said.
“I intend to.”
And that was how it began. Not just the first woman detective, I would now be the first woman supervisor of detectives. I would tackle the challenge with everything in me. I couldn’t wait.
? ? ?
Once I started looking, nearly every woman in the world seemed like a potential operative. I even considered hiring a woman who tried to pick my pocket on the elevated train. As I rode toward Hyde Park, leaving the Van Buren station behind us, a woman in black exclaimed just in front of me, “Oh no! Was that Van Buren? Does anyone know?” I turned back because, of course, I wanted to confirm that was the station we’d left, and in a split second, I realized it was a trick. Pinkerton had been working on a book about how to identify criminals, and I’d read a draft recently. This gambit was on the list.
When her hand went to my pocket, my hand went to her wrist and locked it tight. Then I asked her to come to the office the next day, not telling her it was a detective office, knowing how that might seem to someone who’d been caught in an illegal act. In the end, she did not show up for our appointment, understandably. I decided it was probably for the best. Perhaps my colleagues wouldn’t necessarily warm to someone with her history. It was important to me first and foremost that I choose the right women for the job, but it was also important to consider the conditions and give everyone the best chance for success.
I also placed a newspaper ad and interviewed several candidates who answered it. I’d deliberately left the wording vague. Only the most interested women, I thought, would apply. I imagined a series of adventuresses, women who were almost bold enough to traipse out onto the frontier but stayed in Chicago for one reason or another. Unfortunately, truth didn’t live up to my imagination.
On the first day I’d named in the advertisement, a parade of women appeared at the office to interview. Five, ten, a dozen. I judged them and found them wanting as soon as they walked in. Some simply wanted to sit at a desk and thought that this work would be clerical or even merely decorative. Other women barely glanced at me when they came in, their eyes still searching for a man in authority.
After lunch, I was exhausted. The fifteenth interviewee, a woman with brown hair gone gray at the temples, strode confidently into my office and asked, “Is the boss here?”
I answered, “I’m the boss.”
The look she gave me could only be described as one of distaste. “I don’t answer to anyone in a corset.”
Immediately, I invited her to leave, and it would be hard to say which of us was more relieved when the door closed behind her.
Much of the afternoon brought more of the same. But finally, a woman walked in who I thought might be promising. She was the twenty-first.
“Your name?”
“Hattie Lawton,” she said, extending a hand. It was delicate and birdlike, and so was she. Glossy chestnut hair, small round shoulders. A print dress in tones of copper and rust that somehow called attention to her striking green eyes. Narrow ankles in expensive shoes. Skin like a china doll. She was among the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. This might come in handy as an operative, or it might make her useless. Beautiful women were memorable.
“Current profession?”
“I’m an actress,” she said, and something in me soured. I’d met a lot of actresses, and most of them I’d cared little for. In the wings, they’d often say, Oh, look at you, you’re such a good girl; if my father overheard, he would look them up and down and ask wolfishly, What kind of girl were you? Too many of them smiled and simpered in response, and I’d have to look away, knowing what was to come.
Then she added, “Well, I want to be an actress. My parents disapprove.”
“I know what that’s like.”
She smiled, and her smile was a sweet one, not too perfect. She had a crooked tooth. Not in front, but farther back. It only showed with her widest smile. It made me start to like her again.
I sketched the life of an operative for her in a few short strokes. How we helped out on cases that didn’t go directly to the police for one reason or another. How we were able to capture dangerous criminals, counterfeiters, murderers, all sorts of untoward types. How we rarely took public credit and had to be satisfied with private knowledge of our success, hush hush.
She replied, a glint in her green eyes, “Sounds perfect.”
Then I asked her, “Are you sure you can do what’s required?”
“Well, what’s required?”
She was sharp. Things were definitely looking up. “A good question, but one I can’t fully answer. You have to lie to people’s faces. You have to stay out late, get up early, go days without contacting friends and family if needed.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I have no friends.” I wondered if that was perhaps the first time anyone had offered up a lack of friendships as a qualification for a position. Truth be told, it was helpful.
“Well, the fewer people you have to explain yourself to, the better. This isn’t a desk job. There are nights you won’t be home for dinner. You’ll need to travel at the drop of a hat.”
“I’m ready,” she said.