It was fucked up. I knew it was. Providing whiskey to the parlors never felt that way, because I was giving people what they wanted, but being a victim of a numbers racket wasn’t what people wanted, nobody wanted to be made into a fool. When it came down to it, it didn’t matter much. I’d do it. The small pangs of regret I would feel would pass. I probably would not have even had them if I hadn’t been living in a crappy apartment with Mr. Sunshine and a struggling prostitute. I would pad Vlad’s wallet and then hopefully mine while shaking coins out of pants with holes.

I wasn’t a good person. I wasn’t going to pretend I was. Anyone who believed he was inherently good was one of the worst sons of bitches to know. There was nothing more disingenuous than those who denied the existence of a meandering river of poison that twisted around the base of their brain, ready to break the dam when they needed to and maybe before. People did what they had to do, what they wanted to do. They worried about themselves, their bottom line. I would worry about mine too. Capitalism. Fascism. Survival of the fittest. Me or you.

Holding my glass out to indicate I needed yet another shot, I grinned when the handsome man across from me filled it and once again said, “Na Zdorovie.”

“Na Zdorovie,” I muttered, realizing I did have a taste for vodka after all.

There was no good. There was no decent. There was only indecency, with a padlock and a paper or without.

21

June 1935

I should have assumed when Igor proposed to Millie back in January that there would be a big wedding to follow. Millie wasn’t the type to agree to courthouse nuptials the way Sally had. She was the kind of girl who wanted the works and had parents who would indulge her.

Millie’s father was a podiatrist, a fact I was painfully aware of whenever I shook his hand. While I assumed he wore gloves and, you know, washed, I could not understand how anyone would want a career where they spent so much time with feet. Though Millie’s old man was nice enough, it took me aback how intent my father seemed to be on impressing him. Taros had even sprung for the prenuptial dinner the night before Igor and Millie’s wedding, which had evidently sent his new wife into quite a rage. I guess Sally had wanted a dinner reception after their quickie wedding in March and Taros had denied her due to the lightness of his wallet. It served my father right that he’d be facing years of headaches to come, and I derived some semblance of pleasure from his apparent suffering. He was living the life he’d spent the majority of his years warning us against. Hypocrisy had its ramifications.