The Girl Is Murder (5 page)

I decided to stay in the lobby to see what they’d do next. An hour passed, during which I read
Archie
cover to cover, and then the two left the bar and headed toward the elevators. I watched the dial indicating which floor the car was bound for, then stepped into another car and asked the operator to take me up. I arrived too late. The hallway was empty. That meant either they had run to their room or the man was staying in one of the ones closest to the elevator. I surveyed each door in turn. On one a DO NOT DISTURB sign gently swayed to and fro.

Bingo.

I put my hand on the knob and tried to turn it. It was locked. From behind the door came a deep, feminine giggle. Surely a married woman didn’t come up to a hotel room with a man who was not her husband for innocent reasons. Was this enough evidence for Mr. Wilson?

Was it enough evidence for me?

I had Pop to think about. If he was going to get paid, if he was going to keep Mr. Wilson from going to Uncle Adam, he needed a photo, something more than the chaste pictures I’d captured in the lobby. Just as I was starting to think that the situation was hopeless, a maid came down the hallway, pushing a cart filled with towels, soap, and other amenities. I frowned and widened my eyes.

“Excuse me?” I said.

She looked up at me and grinned. “Can I help you, young lady?”

Boy, howdy, could she. “Gosh, I hope so. I thought my parents would be back in our room by now, but they haven’t arrived yet and I don’t have a key. Could you let me in?”

Her smile widened. “Of course.” She produced a ring of keys and inserted one into the door. With a click, she turned the lock and gestured me in. “Now make sure you lock it behind you,” she said.

“I will. Thanks. That was awfully swell of you.” I kept up the little-girl act until I was inside. Fortunately, the bedroom area wasn’t immediately visible to the door—there was a sitting area that one had to pass through. I quietly shut the door and armed myself with my Brownie. Then, after taking a deep breath and begging my arms to stop their shaking, I rounded the corner and captured the couple just as Mrs. Wilson was removing her brassiere.

I was out the door before she screamed.

CHAPTER

4

I DIDN’T WANT TO TELL POP what I’d done until I had the pictures in hand. The only problem was, I was broke. The year before, I never left the house without a little walking-around money in my pocket or purse, always placed there by Mama in case I needed anything. It wasn’t essentials she was thinking of, but a trip to the subway arcade, a picture show at the Rialto, or a new 78-rpm disc or comic book I just had to have that afternoon. Pop was either unaware of the financial needs of fifteen-year-old girls or simply didn’t have the money to share. Either way, it was too uncomfortable a subject to broach. I would find a way to get what I needed without bothering him.

The next morning, my Brownie in hand, I sought out the school newspaper office.

At Chapin, the newspaper had been run by everyone in rotation, the bulk of the work falling to the seniors. The paper was a privilege we all looked forward to, the information it contained a handy way to spread gossip and anoint who was worth talking about and who wasn’t. I expected something similar at P.S. 110, a sort of blind worship of the printed word, but as I neared the office, I noticed the teetering stack of untouched newspapers that remained outside the cafeteria and auditorium.

It was a shame, because what I saw as I leafed through the pages on my way to the newspaper room was a wealth of information. This wasn’t insider scoop about an exclusive school and its airy alumni. The stories were commentary on the media’s claims that ours was a generation of layabouts who would never contribute anything worthwhile. There were opinion pieces written for and against lowering the minimum age for the draft to eighteen, and profiles on the students who’d already signed up and shipped out.

I knocked on the newspaper door and waited for someone to invite me to enter. Through the small pane of glass set in the door I could see several desks with typewriters and a chalkboard covered with story ideas that someone had already marked up with lines and check marks to indicate which they’d keep and which they’d toss. Two people were at work in the room. A girl hunched over a typewriter, hunting and pecking her way through an assignment. And a boy stared down at a folder with such intensity you would’ve thought it contained Axis war plans.

The boy was familiar. He’d been the kid with the camera who’d caught me up to speed when Tom Barney was arrested.

Neither responded to my knock. I turned the knob and walked inside.

The girl continued to ignore me. Her task was so strenuous that her Coke-bottle glasses practically met the page she was trying to type. The boy looked up at my entrance and then returned to the folder he had been looking through. From my new vantage I could see that it was full of glossy photographs. He wore a hat on his head, a fedora similar to one Pop owned. The band across it held a piece of paper in place that read PRESS.

“Hi,” I said to the room in general. Still nothing from the girl, though the boy removed his hat at the sound of my voice, as though he was embarrassed to be caught wearing it. I approached him and decided that he was my best bet. “Remember me?”

If he did, his face didn’t show it.

“I saw you taking pictures of Tom Barney the other day. When he was being arrested.” Still nothing. Was I really that unmemorable? “That’s a great camera you’ve got.” I held up the Brownie and wiggled it. “As you can see, I’m not so well outfitted.”

“You new?”

“I just moved here this summer.”

He nodded, then focused on cleaning his lens with a handkerchief that had been burrowed in his pocket. Initials were embroidered in one corner: P. L. “The editor already left for class. You looking to shoot for us?”

I couldn’t tell if he thought that would be a good thing or not, though I suspected, given the hint of desperation in his voice, that anyone being interested in what he and the girl with the thick glasses did would be welcome.

“Oh, I’m not good enough for that.” What was the best way to get someone to do something for you? Mama believed false modesty and flattery were the keys that opened every door. Whenever someone acted like she was nothing more than a dumb immigrant, she played it up, batting her eyes and musing that if she were as smart as they were, she would be so much better off. “I want to learn,” I said. “I’ve read the paper and it’s … amazing. The photos are really good. Like Dorothea Lange good.” Okay, so I exaggerated.

“Really?” He wasn’t unattractive, but there was a paleness to his skin and a scrawniness to his body that implied he either spent every hour of the day indoors or had been a sickly child who had never quite grown out of it.

“Our paper was a joke at my old school. Nobody took it seriously. I’d love to be able to do what you do, but I can’t even develop film.”

“I could teach you.”

“Seriously?”

“You got anything in the camera now?”

I nodded and passed him the Brownie. “I’m Iris,” I said.

“Paul,” he countered, and shook my hand. He tipped his head toward the girl in the Coke-bottle glasses. “That’s Pearl.”

I said hi and got a nod in response. Paul led me to a small room connected to the one we were in. Inside sat several trays of chemicals that combined to make the air virtually unbreathable. He flipped a switch, turned on a fan, and warned me that the room would be completely black when he turned out the lights.

He wasn’t kidding. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.

“I’m starting by taking the film out and putting it on a reel. Then I’m going to put it in the developing tank.”

I made a noise that I hoped sounded like “That’s fascinating.”

“What’s your last name?” asked Paul.

“Anderson.”

He moved something in the dark. “You Jewish?”

“No,” I said before the question had left the air.

“Oh. Sorry,” said Paul. “I thought you might be.”

And what?
I wanted to say.
You were going to blame the war on me? Tell me that I wasn’t allowed in the newspaper office? Ask me if it was true our kind made love through a hole in a sheet?

“There’s a club that meets after school for Jewish students. I belong and so does Pearl. She’s my sister.”

“Oh.” I forgot that the Lower East Side wasn’t quite so homogeneous when it came to religious beliefs. At Chapin, I was one of the only Jews in my class. I quickly learned not to talk about my religion, an easy task since neither Pop nor Mama was particularly observant. But when I stayed with Adam and Miriam, that changed. I was expected to cover my head and attend synagogue, even if it meant drawing attention to myself.

When Pop and I moved, I went back to my old ways. After all, I was the daughter of Arthur Anderson, not Arthur Ackerman. It was so much easier to pretend not to be Jewish. That way I could fool myself into believing that what was happening overseas had nothing to do with me or my family.

The lights came back on. “I just thought, if you were Jewish, you might want to come, too,” said Paul.

I felt like a creep. He was trying to help me out. And now it was too late to do anything but either admit my lie or keep pretending it was the truth. “Well, I’m not, but thanks.”

He poured developer into the tank and looked at his watch. As an eternity passed, I struggled to find something to say, but nothing seemed appropriate. Paul drained the developer and poured in the stop bath. Another look at his watch. Was he timing how long the developing took, or how long he was going to be stuck with me? “You know about the Jive Hive?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“It’s a club just for teens that they run out of the fire hall on East Broadway. It’s open every Saturday night. You should come.”

Was he asking me on a date? Is that how it happened—some boy you’d just met invited you out before you knew his last name? “What do people do there?”

He drained the stop bath and poured in the fixer. “Dance. Play cards. Just bust loose, really. A bunch of kids run it. It’s a good time.”

“Thanks. Maybe I’ll come by sometime. If I’m not busy.” The bell rang, warning us that we had ten minutes until first period began.

Paul glanced at his watch as though he didn’t believe what the bell was telling him. “Nuts. This needs at least another five minutes and then the film needs to be rinsed.”

“I could do it,” I said. “I’d hate for you to be late for your first class.”

He looked at his watch again. “I’m responsible for making sure the room is secure.”

“The doors lock from the inside, right? I can make sure they’re locked before I leave.”

He looked at me skeptically for a moment. “All right. Just make sure the doors are locked. After you rinse the film, it’s going to need to dry for a couple of hours. If you want, we can make prints after school. I’ll be back here right after last bell.” He exited the tiny room and in the split second the door was open I could see Pearl watching me.

Once I was safely behind the closed door, I rinsed the negative of a naked Mrs. Wilson scrambling to hide herself behind a hotel sheet, and mused over my inability to share my own secrets.

I DIDN’T LOCK THE PHOTO LAB DOOR or the newspaper room door. Instead, I hung the film to dry and wedged enough newspaper into both doors’ jambs to keep them from closing properly. There was no chance I was going to risk having Paul make prints of my photos. I’d stop by after lunch to get my film. Then I’d figure out another way to get prints made.

My hope of going back to the lab was thwarted by a schedule change. Instead of letting us out for lunch at the normal time, we were kept in our classroom while the president’s Appeal to Youth was broadcast over the PA system. As President Roosevelt warned the youth of the world that the Nazis, Fascists, and Japanese had nothing to offer them but death, I pictured Paul examining my film with a shocked look on his face. As soon as the speech was over and we were released to the cafeteria, I took a detour to the newspaper office and went to retrieve the roll. Unfortunately, someone had gotten there before me. The wad of newspaper had been removed from the door jamb and once again the knob was fixed and locked.

I felt sick at the discovery. How was I going to explain having pictures like that in my possession? Paul was going to think I was weird, for sure. And what if he told someone else? Or worse—what if they wrote about it in the school paper?

I was useless in my afternoon classes. Every time someone looked my way, I was certain they knew about the photos I’d taken. I headed out of P.S. 110 with a heavy heart. I’d almost cleared the property line when Paul’s sister Pearl caught my eye. With a gesture I might’ve missed if I hadn’t been looking for it, she waved. I checked behind me to make sure I was the person she was signaling to, then crossed the distance to her, terrified that I was going to have to endure some humiliating news from this odd, silent girl.

She put a finger to her lips, passed me a folder, and then spun on her heel.

She hadn’t just returned my film; she’d made prints. Each image was carefully covered with a sheet of paper to keep it from sticking to the next one on the pile.

Pearl was gone before I could thank her.

Pop wasn’t home when I returned from school. I left the photos beside the typewriter on his desk and focused on my homework. At six-thirty he arrived, his tired gait making it clear he’d spent the afternoon walking the streets in pursuit of something for a case. He landed so heavily in his desk chair that I could hear him make contact with the wood. With a sigh he removed the prosthetic and tossed it aside. It landed in the doorway, spanning the distance between him and me.

“Iris?” he said after a minute had passed.

I approached his door slowly, unable to read if it was anger or pleasure coloring my name. “Yes, Pop?”

“What’s this?” He limply held the stack of 8 × 10s, so fresh they still smelled of their chemical bath.