“How much?” I asked.
Alma’s laugh was all bells and winks. “You’re not too proud, are you?” She squinted at me. “I forget your name.”
“Vera,” I said.
“Oh, right, Vera.” Alma sounded vague, as if she were trying to recall something she’d heard about me. Shrugging, she fondled her mesh evening bag—a bag no one on our street had any business owning, any more than Pie had any business owning that hat. Alma de Bretteville was bought and paid for, and so were we.
“Five dollars should put you right.”
“We’ll think on it,” I said.
“Will not,” Pie mouthed, so only I could see.
“Well, ducks, think on it while I visit my ma,” Alma said. “I’ll stay until one of us gets cross. That should give you all of six minutes.” Laughing, she disappeared inside her parents’ shabby house.
Pie waited for the door to shut, then wheeled in my direction. “What kind of girl buys a hat off a person’s head?”
“Someone who’s going places,” I said.
Something was happening—something I couldn’t yet see. The horn at the Ferry Building downtown was blasting and the seagulls overhead screeched in reply; on the corner boys in breeches were hawking the morning editions of the Examiner and the Call. Between here and there, the city was rising in its estimation, and we were rising too. I decided that one day Alma and I would be great friends.
“Think on it, Pie. Five dollars would buy you two hats.”
Pie wouldn’t hear of it. Her hat wasn’t a hat but a dream.
Years later, when we were both quite ancient, I asked Pie what she remembered about the time of the quake. She didn’t pause to consider. “All that we lost. Isn’t it the same for you?” She peered at me from behind thick glasses.
I smiled, for of course I remembered the opposite: those I found. Alma being one.
“You sure were determined to keep her hands off your hat,” I said.
“My hat?” Pie replied. “What hat?”
We walked on, faster now, so deep in our private worries that when Pie’s best friend, Eugenie, called to us, we didn’t hear her. It took Eugenie’s whistle—diminutive Eugenie Schmitz had quite a set of pipes—to cut through.
Pie waved eagerly. “Smile, Vera. For cripes’ sakes, smile.”
Eugenie was with her father, the mayor. The papers called him Handsome Gene. They also called him a crook.
“I thought he was hiding out before he got indicted?”
“Shh,” Pie whispered. “He’ll hear you.”
“Pie, I can’t hear me.”
Mayor Eugene Schmitz, German-born, with a thick head of hair, a handlebar moustache, and a beard, plowed toward us, all bells and smiles.
I supposed every era has a politician like him: good-looking and loose-natured, an ordinary person capable of extraordinary indulgences. He’d risen on questionable merits from playing the violin and conducting the two-bit Columbia Theatre to serving as San Francisco’s mayor. The fact that Schmitz and the sheriff and every member of the city’s Board of Supervisors were corrupt grafters wasn’t news—the news was that anyone cared.
“V, not a word,” warned Pie, “about James, and certainly nothing about the Haj.”
I looked at my sister with wonder. “Why would I?”
“Why? Why do you say any of the things you do?” she replied. “Because you love to stir.”
I should have been insulted, but the fact is, it was true.
Half a block away, Eugenie, with her head bowed, clutched a small parcel to her ribs.
“What’s that she’s holding?” I asked.
“Your birthday present, silly.”
“Quick, tell me it isn’t a rosary.”
Pie lowered her gaze. “I told her not to—”
“Why does she insist on converting pagans?”
Pie laughed. “That’s what I said you’d say.”
Even at a distance you could see that the Schmitzes’ troubles rode heavy on their shoulders. They walked bent, as if facing a stiff wind. The mayor had his arm wrapped tight around Eugenie.
She had barely survived the most recent flu epidemic. She was thin and drawn, a handkerchief at the ready, half tucked in the sleeve of her coat. In contrast, her father radiated health; his thick, wavy hair required a Board of Supervisors all its own. He was accused of corruption on any number of fronts.
We’d known the family forever. Pie and Eugenie chose each other as best friends in the first grade—back when the mayor wasn’t anything but a violinist. Somehow, even then, the Schmitzes lived in a better house than they should. But as we lived in a better house than we should, the friendship didn’t seem so odd.
“Happy birthday, Vera!” boomed Schmitz as we collided with them at the side of the road.
Eugenie’s eyes were red from weeping. She thrust her present at me. “I hope you like it.”
I knew I wouldn’t. Worse, I feared my real opinion would show on my face, as if my face were a page everyone should read.
Pie elbowed me. “Go on, open it.”
It wasn’t a rosary after all, but a pair of handkerchiefs Eugenie had embroidered with a thin, curly V. I was so relieved, I hugged her hard.
“Bravo,” exclaimed the mayor, his smile fading as he scanned the road to see if anyone was watching. I’d heard reporters had staked out their house.
My gaze fell to the mayor’s feet. There was a coin in the dirt beside his boot. The mayor and I reached for it at the same time, but I was quicker.
“Here,” I said, offering him the coin. “It must have dropped from your pocket.”
“Don’t touch it!” cried Eugenie.
“Why not?” I insisted. “It isn’t a bribe or anything.”
“Oh, Vera.” Pie shook her head.
But the mayor understood. I’d said the thing you must not say to a man accused of living on bribes.
“No, no,” he protested, laughing. “Finders keepers.”
For months the Bulletin and the Chronicle had been building a case against the mayor. His many transgressions included greasing city contracts, and the payola he received from the city’s saloons, stockyards, and Frenchie restaurants. Schmitz held a partnership stake in the Standard Lodge, a truly wretched place, where a Mexican prostitute in the basement could be had
