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

for twenty-five cents, and a French whore on the top floor cost a dollar. He’d accepted bribes from the unions on one side and from the developers of the aboveground trolleys on the other. And that, for the moment, was his biggest problem. To be a crook in San Francisco was a thing so common it was almost a matter of pride, but to alienate your fellow crooks, that was a problem.

In our house, I ate the news for breakfast and dinner and had already formed a picture in my mind of the mayor rotting in jail, and poor, poor Eugenie.

Yet here he was laughing because a nickel wasn’t real money, was it?

“Are you sure?” I offered it again, hoping in my optimist’s heart he wouldn’t take it.

He took it. Claiming it was for luck, he turned the coin over in his palm and slid it into his pocket.

I felt it was only fair to ask, “Have you got a good lawyer?”

“Vera,” warned Pie, clucking and tsking. “You must stop talking immediately.”

Tears welled in Eugenie’s eyes. “Papa says it’ll all blow past. Won’t it?” She looked to her father.

The mayor winced, knowing it wouldn’t. “In fact, I have a team of lawyers. I’m not sure what good they do me, but they’ve been at the house all night. Eugenie and her mother are very upset, aren’t you, darling?” Again, he asserted his arm around her tiny waist. “We thought we’d take a break, get some fresh air… find you girls. And here you are. Please, don’t worry,” he told his daughter. “Soon it will all be behind us.”

At this Eugenie began to sob outright. Pie stepped forward and, being an old hand at comfort, took Eugenie’s arm and led her away. As they walked on, we heard Eugenie cry, “He’s going to jail and no one has the heart to tell him.”

The mayor winced. “Walk with me?” he said. It wasn’t a question. He took my hand, tucked it under his arm, and led me across the street, so that we were walking opposite them.

He got right down to it. “Vera, you’re a bright girl. I can see you have good sense.” He glanced across the road. “Those girls, they can’t still be fretting about—”

“No, not about you,” I assured him. I looked over, and seeing that Pie was the one talking, I explained, “They’re talking about Pie’s beau. When they’re done with him, they’ll move on to hats and dresses.” I sighed. “Your daughter and my sister can talk about the wonders of a dress until even the dress gets bored.”

The mayor smiled. “And you, Vera, you don’t bother with dresses?”

“Not if I can help it.”

His eyes raked over me. “How old are you today, dear?”

“Fifteen.”

“Fifteen!” He flexed his arm, pulling me closer—so close I noticed that he’d waxed the left side of his moustache but forgotten to do the right.

As I studied him, Schmitz observed me. He clenched his jaw. “I would have guessed older.”

Me too, I thought. I am as old as that bay and those hills—older, in some ways, than this man. I had made it my secret mission to find one adult—one single adult—who could show me how to behave. The mayor wasn’t it.

“You aren’t much like your sister, are you? Or your mother,” he said.

There, the wretched question that had always plagued me. The question that folks in the neighborhood and the nuns at school and, God help me, Morie’s church pals wondered whenever they saw me with Pie: How was it that Morie, the fair, blue-eyed Swede, had produced such a dark thing as me? And if they assumed my olive skin, brown hair, and dark eyes were the legacy of our dear father, they had only to glance at the portrait she kept by her bed: Lars Johnson was as blond and fair and dead as he could be.

“It’s that terrifically sober face of yours,” Schmitz declared, pointing to my nose. “I remember that look,” he said, “from when you were quite small. Even then you saw through the malarkey.”

I saw through his malarkey.

It was Eugenie’s eleventh birthday party; I was just eight, the big girls having invited me to tag along. We were upstairs in Eugenie’s room when Schmitz came home. He called to us from the bottom of the stairs, his eyes glassy with drink. All the girls ran down to greet him and he tapped each one on the head or shoulder, like a goose counting his goslings—all the girls but one.

“Vera!” cried Eugenie. “Come down and say hello to Papa!”

No matter how many times they called, smiling up at me like merry angels, I couldn’t budge from the top of the stairs.

The girls soon moved on to the dining room for cake, but Schmitz stayed behind. Our eyes locked. All the joy leeched from his face, and I saw, in that child’s way of seeing, a ghost. Then, in a flash, he was smiling again. He even winked at me. From then on I felt nervous when I was near him. For I had seen his real face.

“Vera, I’d like to trust you with a commission.”

“You want Pie and me to look after Eugenie while you’re in prison.”

He threw back his head and laughed a single blast. “Ha! How refreshing to hear what no one else will say.” Glancing across, to where Eugenie was resting her chin on Pie’s shoulder, he added, “What’s the word on the street, eh? When do they plan on lowering the boom?”

“The papers predict next week.”

Schmitz nodded. “My lawyers tell me next Wednesday noon.” He wagged his head. “Looks like I need a miracle. Have you got one? Or maybe a prayer?” He smiled, the wily trickster.

“I’m not so good with prayers,” I admitted.

“Neither am I. I try, but I’m not sure God hears me. Say, next Wednesday, you girls will still be on break, yes?”

I nodded.

“Would you find an excuse to spend the day with Eugenie? Make up anything you like, just