A City Tossed and Broken (8 page)

I thanked him, wondering at his great kindness to help a girl he didn’t know. I got out of the motor and shut the door. The press of people almost carried me away, but I found my feet.

The auto lurched forward, almost running a young man down.

“Don’t worry, Miss Sump! I’ll find you!”

I stood there, still as stone as the name clanged inside me.

He thought I was Lily Sump.

I had to stop writing for a moment. I’m feeling so light-headed.

There is a man in the square wearing pink pajamas and a pink bathrobe. He is barefoot. I wonder if I am dreaming.

A woman near me had spread out a cloth and started to feed her family from a basket as though she was picnicking in a park. They were all so calm, even the children, as they ate rolls and drank from their mugs. I went over and offered her five dollars for a roll and a cup of milk. Can you imagine, five dollars for a roll! She was glad to get it. She gave me an apple, too.

My head is clearer now to tell the rest.

I didn’t get on the ferry. I stood there for whole minutes while people pushed around me. Now that they were close to their method of escape, they were anxious and some of them were wailing and shouting.

My brain started to work, but slowly, as various thoughts surfaced, as though I was swimming in a thick, oily river and struggling to get my head above water.

Why
wouldn’t
he assume I was Lily? I remember him taking my handkerchief to wipe my face — the handkerchief with
L E S
embroidered on the corner. I was wearing a fine nightgown with ribbons and lace. When we came upstairs I went straight to her room and dressed in her clothes.

And when he’d found Lily, she was in the kitchen, dressed in a working girl’s clothes.

He had never met her. Never seen a photograph, I suppose. I had overseen the packing of the photographs. There had been one or two of Lily. They were in a trunk in Mrs. Sump’s room. I was to have unpacked it today.

All this time, I marveled at the kindness of a man who would rescue a parlormaid. He wasn’t. He was rescuing an heiress.

An heiress. Not Minnie Bonner, the maid. Not the girl whose family had lost everything. Not the girl whose mother was living in a poor rooming house and waiting tables at a tavern not nearly as clean and respectable as the one she’d once proudly owned. Not the daughter of a gambler who had left his family forever.

If he had known who I was, I doubt I would have been standing there so close to safety across the bay. No, I would be one of the countless poor left to find her own way.

He had offered Lily his mother’s home, his ticket back East. I couldn’t accept it. When the ferry arrived, I watched the people crowd aboard. I watched it leave. Then I turned back to the burning city.

Rumors swirl in the square and are blown like cinders from group to group. Los Angeles has been destroyed. A tidal wave is heading our way. President Teddy Roosevelt is coming to San Francisco personally to see the ruins.

Then there are other rumors that sound more plausible. Someone said there was no water to fight the fires, but how could that be? We are surrounded by water! There is a hydrant on almost every corner. Someone said the fire chief had been badly injured, scalded by steam, and wasn’t expected to live.

There are no newspapers to be had, and no news to believe except what is in front of your eyes. With no telephone service and no telegraph, how will the news get out? How will help come?

A woman just walked by me, whispering over and over, “It’s the end of the world!”

But it is not the end of me.

As I sat in the square and ate my food the panic started to lift and I could think again.

I looked around me at the chaos and I thought:
Order will come to this place again, but what will happen to me? I will be sent home by Mr. Crandall, if he is kind enough to front me money for a ticket. He will no doubt complete the transaction and sell the tavern. Things like that have a tendency to go on, no matter who is dead.

I keep thinking about that strongbox.

Inside it is a book full of secrets, and one of those secrets has to do with how my father was cheated out of his business. And there is money enough to take with me. Nobody but Mr. and Mrs. Sump knows it is there.

Is that stealing?
I wonder.

I sat and thought on this for a bit.

First of all, I would be stealing from a thief. Mr. Sump had cheated us.

And was it stealing, if I
was
Lily Sump?

April 18, 1906

Wednesday

Noon

I am back on Nob Hill, and I was wrong. The firemen can’t fight the fires because there is no water. South of Market is on fire. The wind is blowing ash and smoke all the way up here. Now I can both see and feel the fires. The air is growing hot.

The first shock this morning was the worst, but not the last. The earth keeps shuddering from time to time, and each time I feel it my whole body responds with panic. Until the shuddering goes away.

When I climbed Nob Hill and got to the house it was still early, I believe before eight o’clock, though it’s hard to tell since the clock on the mantel is smashed.

I had to screw tight every nerve to get myself to go inside. I walked through the house with my hands clasped into fists to stop them from shaking. I didn’t know if I could climb those stairs again. But I knew what I had to do.

If I could read that ledger, I could read what Mr. Sump’s business transactions truly were, and no doubt there would be listed payments to a Mr. Andrew Jewell, and listed next to those payments perhaps what the service was that he rendered. I wasn’t sure, but I felt sure enough to think that if I confronted Mr. Crandall with this evidence he might hold back the sale. It might not be too late.

I hesitated on the landing. Mr. Sump still lay at the top. The blanket had slipped off and I could see his face.

I didn’t say a prayer. I suppose I should have. I’ll say one tonight. But right then, I just tried to understand how someone could be so alive, so full of
force
, and then in an instant or two . . . just something that looked like ash.

My mouth was dry and my hands were icy cold. I bent down and lifted one corner of the blanket, then lifted it a bit more.

I saw his hand, grayish white, on the carpet. Almost as though he were, even in death, still straining to reach for his watch.

For a moment I stood, looking at that hand. I was struck with horror at myself, at what I was about to do.

I did it.

I slid the watch out, clutched it to my chest, and ran, down the stairs and straight to the study. I collapsed on the floor, my back against the desk. My fingers gripped the watch, waiting for my heart to slow down.

When I was calm I turned the watch over in my fingers. At first I was disappointed. There was no key I could discern on the chain. But I examined the ornament — a small lily, with diamond chips — and saw a faint line on the gold backing. I wriggled the backing and it slid forward and fell off into my hand. It was in the shape of a key.

I went to the fireplace where the gilt carvings surrounded the mantel. I tried to remember exactly where Mr. Sump had been standing. I pressed this and that in the wood and nothing happened. The woodwork was intricate here, carved into the shapes of cupids holding up wreaths and laurel leaves and bowls of fruit — it was all so ornate it seemed hideously sinister to me. I pressed one thing and then another and I almost gave up, and then I closed my eyes and thought back to Mr. Sump and tried to remember everything — how he stood, how he moved, what he said.

He said, “my precious flower.”

And that’s when I saw the fleur-de-lis.

The words in French mean “lily flower,” and it is the symbol of the monarchy in France. My father told me about it. He grew up in Lille, in France, and it was on that city’s coat of arms.

Mr. Sump’s daughter was his precious flower.

There was only one fleur-de-lis in the tangle of gilt leaves. I pressed it and the hidden panel slid open.

I reached inside for the strongbox. I shut the panel, then walked to the desk and put the metal box down. I placed the flat key in the odd-shaped lock and turned it, and it opened.

Laid on top of the neatly stacked bundles of cash was a ledger. I took out the ledger and shook out the cash. It was impossible to tell how much it was — there were five stacks of hundred- dollar bills.

I was more interested in the ledger. Holding it in my hands, I took a seat at the desk.

That’s when the aftershock hit. I heard the rumble and now I knew what it was. This wasn’t like the small shakes and bumps of the morning. This had enough power to terrify. The house shook. The lamp in the corner crashed to the floor. I managed to get the ledger and strongbox and crawled underneath the desk, hanging on for dear life.

It was not a long shake, but it was a hard one. The chandelier over my head creaked and swung, the glass pendants making a noise like music without notes. The desk gave a final heave and I bumped up against it, banging my head.

The shaking stopped.

I poked my head out from underneath the desk. Some of the glass globes of the chandelier had crashed to the floor. A crystal vase that had survived the initial quake had finally given up and toppled down from a shelf. The secret panel had popped open — I guess because I hadn’t shut it properly — and I saw something gray poking out. I went over and withdrew a cloth sack. It had been shoved to the very back of the compartment. This time when I closed the compartment door I locked it. I took the bundle over to the desk and shook it. A stack of papers slid out. I guessed they were some sort of certificates. On the top paper I saw the words
BEARER BOND
and
BACKED BY GOLD
and the amount: $10,000.

There looked to be a stack about two inches thick. I riffled through them and they all seemed to be for the same amount. I wasn’t sure what that meant, or what a “bearer bond” was. I started to add up the totals but I got lost in zeroes. I realized these had to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I took the sack and placed it in the bottom of the strongbox, then stacked the cash on top. All of it wouldn’t fit so I put some back in the safe. Then I sat down and opened the ledger again.

I was disappointed to discover it was just amounts and names, and I didn’t know the names and what they meant. In tiny writing at the top of one page was written “SF Board of Supervisors” and then a list of names and amounts. Bribes, I guessed. A notation read “Home Telephone Co.” And next to it an address of a wire factory. Then a notation about the “United Railroads” and more lists of amounts and names. It seemed amazing to me that Mr. Sump would write down such a long list of bribes, but then again, how else could he keep track of it? There were so many.

On one page was written “Arthur Langley, $5,000,” but it was crossed out. So that was the source of the feud, I suppose.

I flipped back a few pages and found some Philadelphia notations, names of streets surrounding the tavern. Under the street address of our tavern was written the name of one of the Philadelphia city supervisors and “$3,000.” So he had bribed people back there, too. I remembered inspectors coming around, more than usual last year. Once they threatened to close the place, but my mother fought it and won.

Then I saw the name Andrew Jewell. There were three payments of a thousand dollars each and then a final payment of three thousand. The date was January 25. It was only a month later that Mr. Sump gave us an eviction notice.

There was more — addresses of buildings bought and sold. Records of other transactions. Account numbers. The name of the San Francisco mayor, a date a week from now, and amounts with question marks.

I wasn’t sure exactly what I held in my hands but I knew one thing: Mr. Sump had been a crook. I had a feeling this little book could have put Mr. Sump in jail for a long time, had he lived.

Did Mr. Crandall know? I didn’t think so. I couldn’t imagine that kind man from this morning helping to destroy a family in Philadelphia, paying bribes to politicians.

I slid the ledger back into the strongbox. The question was where to hide it. It was too heavy for me to carry very far.

I would have to hide it here and plan what to do. But where? As I sat and thought, I heard footsteps out in the main hall.

There was no time to put the strongbox back behind the wall. I ran as quietly as I could to the sofa and shoved it underneath. Then I tiptoed out into the hallway. The footsteps were heading toward me, and in another moment Mr. Crandall came around the corner, walking quickly. He no longer looked like the perfectly dressed attorney in a dark suit and hat from this morning. His clothes were covered in ash and spotted with tiny burn holes. He gave a start when he saw me.

“Miss Sump! What are you doing here? I put you on the ferry.”

“I couldn’t get on, so —”

He brushed past me and went into the study, still talking. He began to go through the desk. With every phrase he opened another drawer, looked inside, and shut it with a bang. I could not get a word in if I tried.

“Then you should have waited for the next one! You could have been safe across the bay. Now I shall have to look after you, too.” BANG.

“There’s no telling how badly this will go.” BANG.

“The Army has arrived downtown and is patrolling, but looters will be out I am sure. Another fire has started in Hayes Valley.” BANG.

“If the fires join, the entire downtown could be up in flames, and part of the Western Addition, too.” BANG.

“Do you understand? There’s no water. The water mains are broken!” BANG.

He turned to me, rising on his toes and back down again, as if to make himself taller as he delivered his pronouncement.

“Lily — if I may call you that — I am your guardian now. You are my ward. I drew up your father’s will myself. You are the only heir, and my responsibility. The money will all go into a trust, which I will administer until you are twenty-one. Forgive me for speaking of this now, but . . .” He ran his hand through his hair and it came back streaked with gray. He stared at it.