She knew exactly why I’d chosen those words. “But not a very good operative.”
“No,” I said, “not yet.”
“If I get the house back,” she said, “I’ll go.”
“If you get the house back, I’ll let you go without complaint.”
Alas, when the final report came—Taylor and Dalessandro had done a thorough investigation—the news wasn’t good. The Finns who had presented her with the deed to the boardinghouse really were the true owners. Her husband might or might not have purchased the property in good faith, but whatever he’d done, the secret of it had died with him.
I got good and soused with her the night we finally got a verdict. She showed me to a hidden Polish dining club on the North Side, through an unmarked door between a funeral parlor and a brewery. We sat across from each other at a small, round table topped with elegant imported tile, and we washed away our sorrows with tiny, doll-size tumblers of bittersweet plum vodka. In the beginning, the liquor burned, and so did our anger; by the time half a dozen tumblers were emptied, both had faded into a hazy warmth, and we were laughing together. Earnestly, I begged her pardon for not being able to do better by her as an operative; I owed her so much. Both betrayed by our husbands, we had a lot to mourn, and not just in the current instance. I don’t remember what she said in response.
I woke the next morning with a dizzy ache all over and spent a half hour lying in bed counting the cracks in the ceiling before I was ready to rise. In the meantime, I turned my cobwebbed brain to the problem of Mrs. Borowski’s employment. We needed a position that avoided her weaknesses and took advantage of her natural strengths. If she only had to be who she was, she’d be good at it.
When I hit upon the right answer, I sat bolt upright. The resulting spell put me flat on my back for another ten minutes, but then I made my way to the office, thrilled at my discovery.
Mrs. Borowski could be of little use to us as the kind of wandering, adaptable operative that I prided myself on being. What we needed her to do was operate in place. No traveling, no disguises. Pinkerton agreed to the plan, and I presented it to her myself.
She got a position, an authentic one, as the manager of a boardinghouse on the South Side. We put out subtle whispers and murmurings that it was a good place to lay low, and over time, the city’s criminal element began to send new arrivals her way. She heard their stories over breakfast and conveyed what she’d learned to us. The information was often invaluable. She didn’t have to betray or persuade anyone. She simply listened to what was said, either to her or around her. When they thought no one was paying attention, criminals let each other’s real names slip instead of using their proper aliases. Some used their real backstories when asked where they came from, which was also useful in pinning down who they might be instead of who they said they were. They revealed themselves in their accents, their choice of words, their unguarded moments.
Her powers weren’t limited just to observation and information. Once suspects were staying in the house, we’d find ways to lure them away, sometimes for an hour or two, sometimes longer. There were countless ways to do it. In their absence, she efficiently and neatly searched their rooms, finding evidence and clues that could point us in the right direction, always returning everything perfectly to where it had been, as if she’d made chalk marks before moving shoes, bags, sheets. She could fold a shirt with crisp corners or sloppy ones, whatever the original folder had done, and precisely place something as large as a lamp or as small as a watch. She was excellent at this work. Finally, we’d found her place. I liked to think I had finally repaid the debt I owed her.
Unfortunately, I had barely gotten my feet under me as the superintendent of the small force of female detectives when the work changed again. I was pulled into another secret meeting on the floor of the costume closet, hats and shoes and disembodied mustaches piled up around me as I heard news that changed my future.
Pinkerton told me I was needed elsewhere, and what could I ever say to him but yes?
Chapter Seventeen
The Rails
Miss Kitty Overchurch of Memphis, schoolteacher who feared that Northern progressivism would harm the integrity of age-old Southern tradition. Mrs. Catarine Labreaux of New Orleans, plantation mistress and proud slave owner who thought the Negroes in her employ deserved, like children, to be protected from themselves. Mrs. Kelly O’Reilly, Irish immigrant, whose husband’s livelihood depended wholly on the cotton trade that a war with the North threatened to disrupt. Miss Katherine Filgate of Chattanooga, a spitfire who only wanted to know how Yankee infiltrators might be caught, stopped, and, if necessary, dispatched to their Maker.
I played all their parts and more.