CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

New York City

July 1929

Her husband was dead, resting in the casket just three feet in front of her, and all Ava Gold could think was that there was an abundance of hats filling the small club during the wake. Men and women alike, both civilians and police, were wearing hats of varying shapes and sizes. It was sunny and bright outside, a gorgeous day ruined by having to lay her thirty-four-year-old husband to rest, and all of the hats around her reminded her of beach umbrellas she often saw out on Coney Island. Strange, she thought, how the brain does everything in its power to distract from the reality of death.

Currently, her brain was trying to comprehend the idea that she was going to have to live the remainder of her life without her husband. She knew it was the truth but it did not seem real. She went over the facts in her head time and time again, as if repeating the words to a song she’d sung hundreds of times: her husband, Clarence Gold, shot five times while responding to a basic robbery call. The suspect had been wearing a thick workman’s coat, was relatively short—and that’s all she knew. That was all the details the witnesses had been able to provide.

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, sure, 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.