So far, she’d said all the right things. One key question remained. “Why do you want to be a detective?”
“Because I like to do what no one else is doing. I know of only one female detective in the world—who wouldn’t want to be the second? And I need the money.”
I shook her hand and nodded without giving anything away, but her reasoning sounded solid to me.
Late in the afternoon, I found Pinkerton, who asked, “How were today’s interviews?”
“Good. I have one likely candidate.”
“A sure thing?”
“Not quite sure yet.”
“Why? What holds her back?”
“She’s beautiful,” I said. “It’s problematic.”
“Why?”
I appreciated him not assuming that it was a case of an unattractive woman being jealous of an attractive one. That played no part.
“Beautiful women are memorable.”
“Yes. It limits how you can use her.”
“So, your advice. Would you hire her anyway?”
“I hired Graham DeForest, didn’t I?”
I mulled it over. The parallel was perfect. Even knowing DeForest now as long as I had and even knowing what I knew, I still sometimes lost my breath when he walked in a room and turned his bright smile on me. His face was compelling enough to make a woman forget everything else. His looks commanded, demanded attention. Hattie would be the same.
Pinkerton said, “Physical beauty is the one thing you can’t train into them. They have it or they don’t, and you might need it. Understand?”
“Perfectly.”
“But it’s your decision,” said Pinkerton. “You’re in charge.”
There were women who swooned for all sorts of words. I love you, I want you, you’re so beautiful. I had never heard three words from a man that thrilled me so much, all the way to my very core. Perhaps because when I’d heard the other words—on the rare occasion they’d been spoken to me—I’d never quite believed them.
I believed Pinkerton trusted me completely.
You’re in charge.
These words, at last, were right.
? ? ?
After another day of interviews and another chain of disappointments—silly women, shy women, women who seemed more likely victims than saviors—I needed to take some kind of break. My brain was spinning. I was accustomed to operating in the dark, in the corners, on the job. I was not used to thinking about hiring and training and other mundane concerns. Exhilaration had given way to exhaustion. I hoped it would only be temporary.
While I’d moved out of Mrs. Borowski’s boardinghouse long before, I still kept in touch with her, and we took a meal together every so often. I thought she might be amused by my tales of hunting for fellow female operatives, so I planned to meet her for dinner. I suggested Calliope’s and hastened to add that I’d pay. She agreed.
I could tell as soon as she sat down that something was wrong. I didn’t want to pry right away, so I waited until we had enjoyed a tipple and ordered our meals from the waiter. Then I said, “Mrs. Borowski, you seem a bit—tired.”
Her story came spilling out. After all this time, she’d thought that the boardinghouse belonged to her, free and clear. Her husband had told her they owned it. But now, someone had shown up with a deed, claiming to be the owners, and she was unable to produce any evidence to the contrary.
My first thought was that we should take her case and prove these people to be charlatans. My second thought was something else entirely.
I tried to look at her with fresh eyes. It wasn’t easy—I’d thought of her in a certain way for a long time, and there was perhaps no one else living who had captured my emotions so strongly—but I was a professional operative, and I did my best. She was a motherly woman. Comfortable and comforting, even without speaking a word. There was something about her unassuming demeanor that made you want to tell her everything. When she ran the boardinghouse, she’d been organized, perceptive, in control. All essential qualities for an operative. I hadn’t seen it before, but now, I could see nothing else.
“Mrs. Borowski,” I said, “how would you like a position?”
“Does it pay?”
“Handsomely.”
I explained the work, and she said, “I don’t see that I have any other choice.”
“You always have choices. Don’t worry about that.”
“You’re so optimistic? Even you, even after everything?”
“It’s not optimism,” I said matter-of-factly. “You do have choices. That doesn’t mean they’re all good ones. For example, you could become a lady of the night.”
“On a pretty pitch-black night,” she muttered, and the fact that she could joke about that possibility gave me hope for her.
“Or you could move to the Dakota Territory. Or you could take vows as a sacred sister. Or you could hire on as a cook right here at Calliope’s. Or I could lend you money to buy the house back.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
“I’m not finished.”
The waiter brought our meals—walleye for her, a veal paillard for me—and I waited until he stepped away to continue. “I just mean there are options. And I will have Mr. Pinkerton assign someone to look into these supposed owners with their supposed deed. But I’ve also been asked to hire women as Pinkerton operatives, and I think you could be very, very good at it.”
“Oh, Kate,” she said. “What a strange turn of events.”
“I’ve seen stranger.”
“Haven’t we both,” she said and reached out to take my hand.
? ? ?
After another frustrating day of all-wrong candidates, I called a halt. My little band of two would have to do for the present. And so we began the business of turning them from ordinary women into operatives.