Vera Carol Edgarian (great novels of all time txt) 📖

“How, Vera, am I to feed them?” Julia asked in her Irish lilt. “When I have just the one wee ham?”

I suggested she slice it very thin.

Julia smiled and touched my arm.

“Hurry, Molly,” she said to her freckled maid. “These men are famished. Tell Nell to stretch the ham. Tell her to slice it very, very thin.”

“Gentlemen,” boomed Eugene Schmitz to those assembled in the parlor. Schmitz had his back to the mantel, his arms raised as if he were leading an orchestra. “Let’s divide into groups. There, with Phelan, Relief. Here, with me, Fire. Over there, Triage and Wounded. Over there, well, over there, the Chinese.” He waved in the general direction of a bespectacled man standing at the far end of the room. It was none other than the mayor’s partner in crime, Abe Ruef. As the men organized into groups, Ruef remained alone.

But Schmitz, he was surrounded. He’d understood at once the magnitude of the disaster: the gods had answered his prayers by leveling the city. Within the first hour, he’d gotten himself downtown, where he organized the city’s leaders—the editors of the largest newspapers, the heads of business, law, and the railroads, and other assorted kings; he dubbed them the Committee of Fifty and made sure to include the very men who wanted his scalp, who’d funded the effort to prosecute him. Good men; complicated men. Men who would lay down their lives for the city they loved.

“Look at them,” Julia Schmitz tsked. “They loathe my husband, yet who do they depend on to lead them?” She was proud, angry. “He’ll show them, Vera, he’ll show them the stuff he’s made of. And we won’t let them forget; they won’t be drinking Eugene Schmitz’s blood.”

Of course, Schmitz had already shown them and me what he was made of, but the times being what they were, a violinist who knew how to lead a disparate band of players might prove to be exactly what the city needed.

“I don’t think you have to offer them his blood,” I suggested, “but maybe some mugs of beer?”

Julia knit her lips to keep from laughing. “Gene mentioned you were a different sort of girl. He’s quite impressed with you.”

Had he told her exactly how different a girl I was? No, I could see in that churchgoing, righteous face, he hadn’t.

“Beer, Molly,” Julia said as the maid passed by. “Let’s put up some trays of beer.”

“But what of the coppers outside?” Molly fussed. “Don’t they get—”

“These men.” Julia pointed to the packed room. “These men first.”

The fifty assembled in the first hour after the quake. They met at the Hall of Justice, where Schmitz made sure to put his enemy, the former mayor James Phelan, in charge of the Relief Committee. As their numbers grew, the committee crossed Portsmouth Square and assembled at the Plaza Hotel. When the fire reached there, they hustled uphill to the Fairmont Hotel’s ballroom, atop Nob Hill. After years of construction and untold delays, the Fairmont was due to open that week. Built of granite, wood, terra-cotta, and steel, it was supposed to be unburnable. The Fairmont took fire late in the afternoon. Schmitz fought alongside the fire crews to save the hotel; he discovered the cistern full of water buried in front of the Hopkins mansion. The fire didn’t care. It roared across Nob Hill, devouring the mansions of Flood, Hopkins, Crocker. The mayor had shown uncommon courage, the courage of a man with nothing to lose.

When the fire’s heat drove them back, they moved to Franklin Hall, where they’d stay, calling it City Hall Temporary. When the mayor excused himself to go home for food and a change of clothes, dear God, they followed him there.

“Vera, would you mind?” Julia asked when Molly couldn’t quite handle the heavy tray of beer. “And make sure the mayor takes something. Oh, and Vera”—she touched my arm with thin, cold fingers—“tell Gene to meet me in the hall. Insist, if you have to. He’ll want to say a few words of condolence to you and Pie.”

Handsome Gene looked awful. There were flakes of ash on his coat and in his hair. Would he prove the leader the disaster required? I suspected he would be the last to know—his shoulders rounded, his bloodshot eyes darting from man to man.

He’d imposed a curfew immediately, and shut down the bars and saloons. As the flames neared Chinatown, he ordered the luckless Chinese rounded up and confined to an encampment in the Presidio. A triage center was established there, by Fort Mason, and another on the wharfs. Still, the fires raged, and what to do with thousands of dead, and hundreds of thousands of refugees who lacked shelter, food, water?

It was fear, that’s what it was. The stink in Schmitz’s parlor. Soot, sweat, damp wool, and fear.

“Would you like some beer?” I asked as I moved through the room with my tray.

There wasn’t a man present who didn’t have a strong opinion of the mayor—indeed, who hadn’t lined up for or against. The three who were determined to bring down Ruef and Schmitz were standing by the windows: Rudolph Spreckels, former mayor James Phelan, and M. H. DeYoung each put up a hundred thousand dollars toward the prosecution of Abe Ruef and Eugene Schmitz.

AB Spreckels, Rudolph’s brother and Alma de Bretteville’s lover, was also present—looking ancient, with a walrus moustache and hunched back. He leaned stiffly against the back of one of Julia Schmitz’s crewel-upholstered wing chairs, favoring a bad leg. He was an invalid, in pain. I couldn’t imagine him kissing Alma.

He took a mug from my tray and asked if the rumor was true: Was Mrs. Schmitz following with food?

“I believe so.”

“Ah, excellent. Between you and me, that’s why we’re all here.” When AB Spreckels chuckled, I saw the spark that captured Alma.

“I hear it’s ham,” I said.

“Ah, did you get that?” AB said to a man I didn’t recognize. “Ham’s