by Blake Pierce
She had not expected so many policemen to attend the wake, but they had come out in droves. Their uniforms almost tying the entire scene together as if they had stitched the moment themselves. In about five minutes, they’d all relocate to the cemetery, and she supposed it would be the same. Hats and policemen, swarming her like bees.
Even now, as their church pastor was reading from Psalms, she was dimly aware of a policeman giving an encouraging pat on the shoulder to her son. Jeffrey, sitting to her left and staring at the casket as if it were a problem to be solved, seemed not to notice. Ava knew how he felt and wished she could explain it. She’d done her best over the three previous days but she had come to the conclusion that it was impossible to process grief with a nine-year-old when your brain refused to accept the reality of the situation. Jeffery had not said much of anything since his father had died. At the age of nine, she supposed death was a tricky beast indeed. You were too young to fully grasp the finality of it, but old enough to understand that there was pain there, and you were expected to respond a certain way.
Ava was bookended on her right by her father, a man she usually drew comfort from. Now, though, she saw him as a man who was simply there, another face in a crowd there to her mourn the loss of her husband. Ava figured there might be more of a connection between them if her father had spent more time with her when she’d been young rather than in a boxing ring. She’d always felt guilty about savoring the night he’d come home with a shattered left hand; she’d known even then it meant the end of his boxing career. Now, Roosevelt Burr, who had chosen a boxing ring over his family, mourned another man who had chosen a career over family.
The pastor wrapped up his reading, said a prayer that Ava barely paid attention to. Some took it as a signal to come by and say “hello” or “sorry for your loss” or “he’s in a better place now.”
And then everyone was excused. As the ranks of policemen started to file out of the club and to the Model Ts that would take them to the cemetery, someone started playing a trumpet out on the front lawn. As the tune to “Blessed Assurance” filled the front room of the club in thin brassy tones, Ava caught a glimpse of something that felt familiar and whole—something that helped to remind her that yes, she was attending her husband’s wake and yes, it was all real. The sound of the trumpet, even as flat and boring as the hymn currently made it, never failed to lift her spirits. As she got to her feet and took Jeffrey’s hand, Ava thought of ways the trumpeter could improve it. A run here, a hook there, and then she could sling some voice to it.
Jazz, she thought to herself. You’re really thinking of jazz in this moment?
She felt her father’s strong hand on her arm, leading her forward. Apparently, she’d stopped walking. It was the grief, she supposed. She felt it building within her and knew that at some point the dam would break and she’d lose her mind. She wanted to look back to the casket, but did not dare.
“Ava?” a man’s voice said.
She blinked like she’d just come out of a nap and looked to her right. She recognized the face as that of Captain Douglas Minard. He had a kind face that was rudely being overtaken by age. He was nearing sixty but his life experience made him looked closer to eighty. He took her small hand in his large, calloused one. When he looked at her, she appreciated the fact that he had been crying; his eyes were red and the streaks of tears were evident around them.
“Captain,” she said. “Thank you so much for coming.”
“Of course. I wanted you to know what a great deal I thought of Clarence. He was one of the best…in and outside of the department. And oh, how he loved you and bragged about you.”
Ava smiled warmly, wondering if Captain Minard was trying to get her to cry—for that tension inside of her to snap.
“Yes, he was. He was my…”
But she could not find the right words. Every time she’d tried to describe him in the past three days, she’d felt like an idiot. It was as if her vocabulary had shriveled up and died, each loving word that described Clarence rotting on the trembling floor of her mind.
“Ava…is there anything at all that I or anyone at the department can do for you?”
Her tongue formed the word no but her brain overruled it at the last moment. Looking at Captain Minard, she wondered if the answers to a prayer she’d been sending up ever since Clarence’s death was in the process of being answered. And when the next four words came out of her mouth, they shocked her. She couldn’t help but wonder if Clarence was here, somehow, perhaps possessing her from the afterlife.
“I’d like a job.”
“A job?” Minard asked, clearly stunned. Had he not been crying previously, she thought he might have laughed at the comment.
“I need to support Jeffrey. And I want to stop the next son of a bitch from turning a child into an orphan…a wife into a widow.”
Captain Minard looked around at everyone else as they filed out, as if for a life raft out of this strange situation. He also noted Ava’s father standing about three feet away, making no attempt to hide the fact that he was listening in.
“Ava, perhaps this is your grief talking,” Minard said, his voice low. “Surely you don’t want a job with the police. Besides being a woman, the sort of people you’ll have to deal with are—”
“And what’s wrong with being a woman?” Ava asked. She was nearly hoping he’d make some ignorant comment about how women were not cut out for police work.
“Nothing. But you can’t…” He stopped here, stumped. She almost felt bad for putting him in the situation but he had, after all, asked.
“I will not just sit aside while my husband has been blown down,” she added, surprised at how confident she sounded.
“Ava, you can’t just…I mean, we have plenty of capable men to find killers and—”
“Then where is my husband’s killer?”
Minard looked as if he’d been slapped across the face. And was that a flicker of anger she saw? Apparently, the truth hurt. Four men had seen her husband shot; four men had seen the man who had pulled the trigger. Yet his killer remained at large. Minard looked over to her father, still looking for a way out of this, but Rosie Burr only shrugged and smiled.
“You’re a singer, correct?” Minard asked. “A rather good singer from what I hear. Why not stick to jazz? Why not—”
“I’m more than a canary,” Ava interrupted. “Dames can pull a trigger just like a man.” She was getting irritated and welcomed it. She’d rather be mad than saddened in this moment. This anger might be what got her through the graveside service without crumbling into a sobbing mess.
She took a step closer to Minard, trying to remain polite and respectful but firm at the same time. “Clarence once told me that the men he worked with were like a family. That they were like brothers. He told me that if anything ever happened to him, his brothers would have my back. And now, here I am answering your question honestly. Can you do anything for me? Yes: you can get me a job as a detective.”
Minard took two steps away from her, realizing that he was still holding her hand. He released it slowly and looked around the room. The trumpet still played outside, and the front room was empty except for Ava, Captain Minard, Roosevelt Burr, and Clarence Gold’s casket. Jeffrey had apparently been ushered out by one of Clarence’s friends. Noting this, Minard worked some bass into his voice. Any semblance of sorrow or sympathy started to dissolve.
“Okay, Ava,” he said. “I will see what I can do. But I can tell you right away that you will not make detective. It’s just not a place for women. Whatever job I can land you…”
He paused here, looking to Ava’s father. Minard had surely heard of Rosie Burr’s boxing days and was choosing his words carefully.
“Any job I can get you won’t have room for advancement, but it will be a steady paycheck. Come to the office on Monday and I’ll get you squared away.”
She managed a nod because she was afraid to say anything else. It felt like a victory, sur
e, but it also felt like some high-rolling egg had called her bluff. And in an even odder way, she felt it was the first thing she’d done since Clarence had been blown down that he would be proud of her for.
“Thank you,” Ava said, not breaking eye contact.
Captain Minard turned away and took a few steps toward the door before stopping and turning back to her. “I’m glad your father was here to hear this. That way, I can’t be blamed when you start having problems. And you will have them. Most women don’t last more than two weeks.”
With that, Minard walked out the door in the direction of the trumpet’s dull tones.
Rosie chuckled and put an arm around his daughter.
“What’s funny?” Ava asked.
“Most women don’t last two weeks,” Rosie said, quoting Minard. “Damn shame for him that you aren’t ‘most women,’ huh?”
She smiled but for some reason, the comment brought on tears and she felt that tension inside of her about to break. With her head down and resting on her father’s shoulder, Ava Gold walked outside and tried to find some groove to that sorrowful old trumpet as she prepared to bury her husband.
CHAPTER THREE
Ava looked at the 37th Precinct from across the street. For just a moment, it was like peering into some other land, some fantastical place she’d only ever heard of. It was a grand-looking building, just a design choice or two away from looking elegant. It stood out easily as the premier building within a few blocks, as if a beacon to remind criminals this was where they’d end up.
A sting of nervous excitement rampaged through her as she crossed the street. She was so distracted that she nearly stepped right out in front of a Model T. The driver bellowed something about a “crazy dame,” shaking his fist as the car puttered by. It was almost as if she’d filtered out the outside world—that, for a second or two, the entire world had consisted of only her and the 37th Precinct.
Six days had passed since Clarence’s funeral. It didn’t seem like enough time to have passed to carry on, to start this new chapter of her life. But at the same time, those six days felt like an eternity. Besides…Clarence would not want her sitting around weeping over him. She felt that she was doing the right thing, without a doubt.
When she walked inside, it was a bit staggering. There was a large open space and people milling around behind desks and what she assumed was the “bullpen” she’d heard Clarence refer to a few times. She approached the front desk and looked to the pale, overweight man sitting behind it.
He regarded Ava with a smile that seemed authentic. “Help you?” he asked.
“Yes, my name is Ava Gold. I have an appointment with…well, I’m not sure with who. But Captain Minard is expecting me.”
At the mention of her name, understanding dawned in his eyes. “Ah yeah, of course. Been expecting you.” He picked up the receiver on the in-house phone on his desk. He pressed a button as if he were stabbing someone and waited a beat. He then spoke two words into the mouthpiece: “She’s here.”
Neither of them said a word and as a handful of seconds passed, Ava became aware of other men looking at her as they passed by, going about their morning duties. Some were not eyeing her as an insect like the hefty man was, but more like a juicy piece of steak to be devoured.
Less than a minute later, a middle-aged man came walking quickly through the bullpen toward the front desk. His eyes locked directly on Ava and he walked as if he were in a hurry. A mostly gray moustache covered his upper lip and he wore glasses that made his brown eyes seem to sparkle.
“Mrs. Gold?” the mustached man asked.
“Yes.”
“Good to meet ya,” he said. He impulsively seemed to want to offer his hand for a shake but then apparently decided it might not be proper. “I’m Wayne Gibb and I have the pleasure of showing you around. It’s not an orientation, but it’s the best we got.” He offered a shaky smile and then waved her on. “Follow me.”
Gibb opened the little swinging door that led behind the bullpen. When Ava walked through, she was pretty sure everyone in the station stopped breathing for a moment. It was eerily quiet and she could feel their stares on her. She supposed she understood it—but that didn’t make it right. The passing of the Nineteenth Amendment had not changed nearly as much as people wanted to believe it did. Yes, women could vote, but they were also still seen as nothing more than living, breathing units to keep homes tidy for their husbands; they were expected to clean and cook and spit out a baby whenever their husbands thought the timing was practical.
She did her best to look past this as Gibb walked her through the precinct. She’d heard Clarence talk about it countless times but to see it up close was dreamlike. She saw all of the offices and hallways, the rogues’ gallery on the far right wall by a group of desks she assumed were taken by detectives. She saw signs indicating the direction of the mailroom, the holding cells, and even the small gymnasium—which she knew, thanks to Clarence, was often used to store prisoners captured late at night so they could be photographed and profiled in the morning She wished she could get poetic and misty-eyed by realizing she was walking the same halls Clarence had once occupied, but she didn’t. She wasn’t dare going to cry in front of these men who were already betting on her to fail.
“You, of course, will be placed with the Women’s Bureau,” Gibb said. “There’s a nice bunch of dames in the bureau that will get you worked in to everything.”
She had several questions about the Women’s Bureau, but she did not want to seem too eager or ill-informed so she stayed quiet. She followed Gibb and listened to his lackluster tour of the precinct: breakroom, restrooms, bullpen, location of the in-house phones that connected all of the offices, armory, and the location of the Women’s Bureau. She was not all that surprised to find that it was located near the back of the building. It was also down a small flight of stairs, as if making sure the women knew they weren’t actually part of the club upstairs.
As she and Gibb walked along, she saw many men starting at her. Some gave sly little smiles. It all made her wonder if they simply didn’t care that they’d spent several years working with her husband—getting to know him and respect him. Did all of that vanish just because she’d had the audacity to assume she could work here? She wondered if Gibb knew. She assumed he did if Minard had assigned him to her. She wasn’t sure if she appreciated the fact that Gibb had not mentioned it or if it angered her.
“There will be some paperwork, of course,” Gibb said as they came to the bottom of the stairs that led to the Women’s Bureau. “But we’ll get that all to you by the end of the day. Any questions?”
She had many but didn’t want to seem foolish, so she simply asked the most pressing one. “Is there some sort of training program?”
Gibb shrugged, and Ava could also see that he was doing his best to suppress a smile. “You’re about to get it. You’ve been assigned to partner with a current woman in the bureau. She’ll show you the ropes.”
They came to the end of the hallway, where a set of double doors sat in the wall. A sign hung from the doorframe that read NYPDWB. As if the situation itself wasn’t awkward enough, Ava thought, even the abbreviation is awkward.
Gibb opened the door but did not step inside. He gave a smile and said, “If you have any questions, any of these ladies should be able to answer them. If not, you can come back up to the front and ask for me.”
“Thank you,” Ava said.
And with that, Ava walked into the room and took the first step on the path she was determined would become a career.
***
Almost instantly, it was clear that these women—fourteen in all—knew that no one took them seriously and they took it with something like honor. They were all cordial, though there was something different about all of them. Ava could tell that much without even speaking to any of them.
A short woman with broad shoulders met her as she stepped in through the door. She had a homely face but her hair looked as if i
t was taken excellent care of. It bobbed slightly above her shoulders when she walked over to Ava.
“Gold, right?” the woman asked.
“Yes, that’s right. Ava Gold.”
“Ava, my name is Frances Knight. I’ll be overseeing you until you get your feet under you. I’ve been here from the start—which isn’t long, let me tell you—and I know just about everything there is to know about the WB—the Women’s Bureau.”
Before Ava could say a word, Frances Knight placed a hand to her back and led her across the room. As they walked side by side, Ava realized that she was easily eight inches taller than Frances. She took a look around the room and noted very quickly that this place, in comparison to the rest of the building, was little more than a slightly remodeled basement.
“Your desk is here,” Frances said, nodding to a desk that sat like driftwood in front of them. “And no, we can’t move it.”
The desk was an ancient beast of a thing, pushed into the corner. It was so old and scarred that Ava could easily imagine portions of the Constitution had been penned on it. A stack of papers sat on it, along with two brand new pens.
“Standard protocol says you have to read all of those documents,” Frances said. “There’s no tests or training or reciting afterwards. You just have to sign a paper that says you read it all and understand it.”
“Okay…”
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to this report I’m working on. Let me know if you have any questions.”
Frances spoke fast and by the time she started making her way back across the room, Ava felt as if she’d just survived a hurricane. Ava looked around the room as she took her seat and saw that a few of the women were looking at her. She also noticed that only a few of them wore makeup of any kind and their hairstyles were plain and drab for the most part. There were nine women currently in the room, but fourteen desks. Of those nine women, three were looking at her curiously, and another with something like worry.
