Girl Waits with Gun (42 page)

Henry Kaufman took the stand in his defense but had little to say beyond his denial of the charges.

“Do you admit to having caused your motor car to collide with a buggy driven by the Misses Kopp on July 14 of last year?” Attorney Lynch asked.

“I do,” he said, “and I have paid my fine.” He spoke woodenly, as if he had memorized the answers. He was paler than when I'd last seen him and a bit thinner. He was no longer a man who looked like he was about to explode. I wondered if his attorney had persuaded him to reduce his drinking before the trial.

“Do you admit to driving to the Kopp home in Wyckoff to harass them and shoot at them after the collision?”

“I do not.”

“Are you the writer of the threatening letters sent to the Misses Kopp from August to November of last year?”

“I am not.”

“Mr. Kaufman,” Attorney Lynch said, approaching the witness stand with a sheaf of papers, “did you not provide these handwriting samples to the sheriff's office, which were used to positively match your handwriting to that of the writer of the letters?”

Mr. Kaufman leaned forward and squinted at the paper. “I admit to writing the name ‘Constance Kopp' at the suggestion of the sheriff, but the rest of it was coerced.”

“Coerced?” said Attorney Lynch with a smile. “By what means were you coerced?”

Mr. Kaufman looked around until he found me. “She was there!” he said, rising and pointing at me. “She trapped me and forced me to write out handwriting samples against my will.”

The men in the jury box smiled.

“Forced you?” Attorney Lynch said, taking a step back in amazement. “By what means does a lady like Miss Kopp force a grown man to do anything he doesn't want to do?”

Mr. Kaufman looked down and mumbled something.

“Could you repeat that for the jury?” Attorney Lynch asked.

He looked up and said, in a loud, plain voice, “She's not a regular lady.”

AFTER HIS TESTIMONY CONCLUDED
, the jury took only two and a half hours to convict Henry Kaufman. He was fined one thousand dollars and, having no means of paying the fine, was taken into custody. Mrs. Garfinkel and her father hadn't returned for the conclusion of the trial, and none of Mr. Kaufman's associates had made an appearance, either. When he was led away, there was no one to say goodbye to him.

The verdict was read at two-thirty in the afternoon. By three o'clock we were standing in front of the courthouse saying our goodbyes to the sheriff, his deputies, and the attorneys. The reporters were trying to get Fleurette's attention, but Sheriff Heath put Deputy Morris by her side to keep them away.

It was a perfect summer afternoon, with a jewel-blue sky above us and clouds that looked like they had been painted on. A breeze had risen to push the heat out of Newark's fetid streets, and a willow tree planted alongside the courthouse waved its drooping branches, whispering like the rush of water. Everything looked cleaner and brighter than it had when the trial began. The granite courthouse behind us, the rows of brick offices and shops across the street, and the trolleys running along their tracks, all seemed to speak of a crisp and orderly world in which people could walk the streets in peace. The attorneys and deputies laughed and joked with one another, and they, too, seemed younger and brighter in the light of a favorable verdict and a clear June day.

We said all the thanks we could think to say and a silence fell over the group. Norma and Fleurette turned to walk to the train station. Sheriff Heath took me by the arm and led me away from them. We walked down the stairs, and then he stopped and turned to me.

“You had more of a role in this than anyone in that courtroom knew,” he said.

“Oh—” I looked at him in surprise. “Well. We all did our part.”

The sun glared on the white steps and he squinted at me with that half-smile, half-frown I still hadn't learned to read.

“What you did will serve you well in your new occupation,” he said.

I laughed. “Occupation? I have no occupation. That's just the trouble. If we—”

He didn't let me finish. “Miss Kopp. I think you'd make a fine deputy.”

“Deputy?”

“Deputy sheriff.”

My throat went dry. I had to swallow before I spoke. “I don't understand.”

He smiled and looked down at his feet, then raised his eyes to mine.

“I'm offering you a job, Miss Kopp.”

THIS IS A WORK OF HISTORICAL FICTION
based on real events and real people. My task as a writer was to take the public record—pieced together from newspaper articles, genealogical records, court documents, and other sources—and invent the rest of the story. All of the major events described in the novel actually happened, with a few notable exceptions: There was no Lucy Blake, which means that every part of the story connected with her—the missing child, Constance's trips to New York, and the scenes at the orphanage—are all fiction. (It is true, however, that children were sent away to live with “strike mothers” during the silk strikes, and that some of those children did not return.) Although Henry Kaufman did have a secretary named M. Garfinkel, the character of Marion Garfinkel is fictional. Another significant difference is that Mrs. Kopp, Norma and Constance's mother, died a few years later than she does in my version of events. Also, to my knowledge, Norma Kopp had no interest in pigeons.

Everything else happened more or less as I described it. I invented dialogue, personalities, backstories, and scenes that helped piece together the stories behind the events described in the public record. Most of the people who appear here as secondary characters—people such as Bessie Kopp, John Courter, John Ward, Peter McGinnis, and Cordelia Heath—are also real people who led lives that I know little about. The personality traits, ambitions, and actions I ascribed to them are my own embellishments to the few facts I do know about them.

The circumstances surrounding Fleurette's birth are not entirely known, but the basic facts—the identity of her mother and father, the relevant dates, and the fact that Fleurette grew up not knowing the truth—have been verified through court documents and interviews with Fleurette's son.

I used real letters and newspaper articles in the book to help anchor the story in reality. I'd like to acknowledge the following sources for text that I reproduced word for word, or with very slight modifications:

The incidents described on pages 45–46 are all sourced from
New York Times
articles in the 1890s.

The filming of the trolley car accident (page 60) actually happened in Paterson around the time of the Kopp sisters' accident with Henry Kaufman.

The text of the letters from Henry Kaufman on pages 84, 154, 227, 234, and 238 come from court records of the original indictment and multiple newspaper accounts, with slight modifications.

The other crimes Sheriff Heath dealt with, as described on pages 219–20, all actually occurred and were sourced from Hackensack newspapers of the day.

The story that Fleurette read on page 244 came from
Stories of Pioneer Life: For Young Readers
by Florence Bass, published in 1900.

The headline “Girl Waits with Gun” (page 258) came from the
Philadelphia Sun
article that ran on November 23, 1914, but most of the text comes from two similar stories that each ran in the Philadelphia Evening-Ledger, one titled “Oh, for a Chance to Shoot at the Nasty Prowlers!” (November 21, 1914) and the other titled “Girl, Armed, Waits for Black Handers on Street Corner” (November 23, 1914).

“Arrest in Black Hand Letters Case” (page 271) ran in the
Bergen Evening-Record
on December 3, 1914, although I added a line about the fictional Marion Garfinkel posting bail.

The text of the letter from George Ewing dated December 21, 1914 (pages 278–79) was printed in several newspaper accounts, including one in the
Bergen Evening-News
on January 23, 1915.

The story of the night watchman beaten to death (page 283) ran in the
New York Times
on December 27, 1914, under the headline “Held in Murder Inquiry.”

“Says He Was Kopp Black Hand ‘Gang'” (pages 295–96) ran in the
New York Tribune
on January 23, 1915.

“Saved of Prison Term by Sheriff” (pages 372–73) appeared in the
Trenton Evening Times
on March 8, 1915.

“Celebrated Kopp Case on Trial Today at Newark” (page 385) appeared in the
Bergen Evening-Record
on June 3, 1915.

“Kopp Sisters Tell of Death Threats,” from the
New York Times,
June 3, 1915, is the source of Constance's quote in the epigraph and some of her dialogue during the trial (page 389).

The headlines Norma cut out of the paper and sent by pigeon post were all actual headlines from Paterson-area newspapers of the day.

Passaic and Bergen County history buffs will notice that I took a few liberties with geography, train schedules, streetcar routes, and other such details. What can I say? This is a work of fiction, and sometimes the story takes over. If my characters started riding over a bridge, I let them, even if no bridge existed at that place.

I'd like to thank the following people for their help with the research: Maria Hopper, genealogist extraordinaire; Jonathan Rapoport; and the staff and volunteers at the Ridgewood Public Library, Paterson Public Library, Hackensack Public Library, Hawthorne Historical Society, Bergen County Historical Society, and the Passaic County Historical Society at Lambert Castle. Extra heaps of thanks go to Inspector Mickey Bradley at the Bergen County Sheriff's Office for an impromptu tour of the old jail and Sheriff Heath's living quarters, as well as his willingness to preserve and share Heath's photographs.

Most of all, heartfelt thanks go to Dennis and Deanne O'Dell, John Birgel (father and son), and members of the Heath and Ward families for their willingness to talk about their ancestors with a complete stranger and to share their stories.

My retelling of the Kopp sisters' story owes its life to four people who believed in it as much as I did: my husband, Scott Brown; my first reader, Masie Cochran; my agent, Michelle Tessler; and my editor, Andrea Schulz. Thanks to everyone at HMH for giving Constance, Norma, and Fleurette a home.

A
MY
S
TEWART
is the award-winning author of six books, including the bestsellers
The Drunken Botanist
and
Wicked Plants
. She and her husband live in Eureka, California, where they own a bookstore called Eureka Books.