Chapter 1: Death and the Fool

              Auditions were murder.

             On New Year’s Eve I went to the final casting call of 1942, the last opportunity I’d have to say I was in something that year that didn’t involve wearing a mask, a fur suit, or hawking kitchen products at the Lions Convention. I was trying out for a new musical called You Bet Your Life, which, thankfully, had nothing to do with the Germans. Unfortunately, judging from the score, it also had little acquaintance with the western scale. The audition was a standard cattle call in a room large enough to serve as a field hospital. Hundreds of women with 8 x 10s in hand lined the walls while two men – one big, one small – roamed in a parallel line judging our attributes. I made it through “too old,” “too short,” and “too fat,” before one of the proctors stopped before me.

              “Name?” he asked.

              “Rosie Winter.”

              His pencil scratched across his clipboard. “You sing?”

              “Like a bird.”

              “Dance?”

              “Better than Pavlova.”

              He took a gander at gams that had so little muscle it was a wonder I could climb stairs. “What was the last thing you were in?”

              “The backseat of a Willys-Knight.”

              I was dismissed at “too much personality.”

              I was used to rejection, but my dismissal from You Bet Your Life didn’t just signify another lost part in another bad show; it meant I’d officially hit rock bottom. I hadn’t been cast in anything in six months. Not only was it time to consider another career, I was going to be kicked out of my boarding house, an establishment that only offered low cost rooms to working actresses. If that wasn’t enough to put the sour on my puss, the love of my life had shipped out the month before after deciding the Navy had more to offer him than I did.            

            On the bright side, I had a day job. I worked at McCain & Son, a small detective agency located at Fifth and East 38th, a spit from Broadway. I’d found the job courtesy of the Ladies Employment Guild (motto: Girls, get a LEG up on the workforce). When I started, there were only two employees, Jim McCain, owner and operator (and, I assumed, the “& Son” of the title) and his secretary, a well-endowed, well-preserved middle-aged doll I eventually learned was named Agnes, but was usually referred to as honey, baby, or cupcake. As much joy as Agnes brought into Jim’s life, at some point he figured out that he couldn’t function in an office where the only alphabetical thing was the soup. That’s why he hired me.

              While Agnes did whatever it was Agnes did, I answered phones, scheduled appointments, filed, and fantasized. I’d grown up reading the pulps so working for a private investigator was a dream for me. I imagined I was the lithe and lovely sidekick to a dick whose piercing gaze could immediately discern truth from trouble. Together, we’d break into dark warehouses, guarded mansions, and underground lairs, hunting down evil-doers with names like Captain Zero, The Bleeder, or The Domino Lady. Alas, Dime Detective got it all wrong. As far as I could tell, detecting was a synonym for waiting and both were dull work. Jim waited in his office for clients to call. Then he waited for cheating husbands to leave their chippies’ houses. Then he waited for his film to develop as proof of the affair. There was nothing glamorous about it.

              At least, I think that was the case. There was another side to Jim’s business, a side we couldn’t see. Through the front door came the cuckolded men and women with their desperate rheumy eyes, but there was a back entrance too, where clients demanding anonymity entered Jim’s office by climbing up the fire escape and through a window. Agnes and I never saw these people, but we could hear the low drone of their voices as they recounted misdoings that never ended up in the notes Jim gave me to type. I gave these mysterious strangers names like The Mumbler and The Lisper and grew capable of identifying who was who based only on a whispered sibilant “s.” As Agnes and I passed our time in the reception area, I spun tales about what was happening in the inner office. Money laundering, number running, strike breaking – I attributed all of it to those nameless, faceless individuals who’d been reduced to vocal tics. Agnes silently listened to my musings, a wry smile hinting she was far more aware of the truth than she’d ever let on.

            I liked Agnes. I liked the job. I liked Jim. He was loud and boisterous and so disorganized he could lose things he never knew he had. I didn’t know him very well, but I trusted him in some implicit way. He was one of the few bright spots remaining in a world that was rapidly approaching complete darkness.