“Why don’t you tell them the truth?” Sam asked.
“The truth doesn’t sell soap. Keep it light and happy and entertaining. Give ’em hope, kid!” Evie said, imitating Mr. Phillips’s booming baritone.
“But that makes you no better than those phony con men on Forty-second Street,” Sam said. “You’re the real McCoy, Sheba. You don’t need to fake it.”
Evie sat up, glaring. “I did not come to this party to hear a lecture from you, Sam Lloyd. You steal people’s wallets. Don’t act like you’re better than I am.”
“Me? Sure, I’m a thief and a con. But not you, kid. Unfortunately, you care. I know you.”
“No, you don’t,” Evie said, lying back again. “You just think you do because you’re my pretend fiancé. But nobody really knows anybody. We’re all just a bunch of Pears soap ads walking around clean and neat, ready to wash away to slivers.”
“What’s real, then?”
“I dunno anymore, Sam. I really don’t. I just… don’t wanna think about it.”
Sam felt the air going out of the evening. “Well, before you get completely blotto, I need your services.”
Evie laughed and applauded slowly. “I should’ve guessed. Well, nothin’ doin’. You didn’t come through for me tonight, so I am under no obligation to help you. And you still haven’t told me what happened!”
“Sorry, doll. Honest, I am. At the last minute, I got a message from my canary.”
“Your what?”
“My—what’d you call him? Creepy man?”
“Oh. Him,” Evie said, blowing a wayward curl off her forehead.
“He almost never gets in touch. I’m the one who puts out the word for him. But he slipped a note under my door telling me to meet him at the radio shop at nine.”
“I hope the shop was at least playing my show,” Evie grumbled. “Well? What’d you find out?”
“That’s the funny thing: He never showed.”
“There’s quite a bit of that going around,” Evie said pointedly.
“When I got there, the place was dark and all locked up. I woulda picked the lock, but if I got pinched, I was afraid it wouldn’t look too good for your fiancé to be a jailbird,” Sam said. “But I don’t like it. Something smells.”
“You just have an overactive imagination, Sam.”
“Doll, when my imagination’s overactive, it usually involves activities polite society doesn’t allow me to talk about. I thought you’d be on my side here.”
Evie softened. “Gee, Sam, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I have to find the truth.” Sam Lloyd did not ask for favors. Whatever he needed, he paid for or took—no strings, no debts. So it took everything he had to offer Evie the file again. “Please?” he asked, the word unfamiliar. “Could you please try one more time?”
The soft pleading of Sam’s tone stirred Evie’s sympathy. “All right, Sam. I’ll see what I can do.” She sat up and patted the seat of the divan. “Here. I won’t bite. Unless you start to sing.”
Sam bounded over and sat beside her. Evie took the file and put everything she had into it, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get a read. She broke away, woozy and angry.
“Thanks anyway, kid,” Sam said, taking the file back.
“I refuse to be beaten!” Evie groused, reaching for it again.
Sam tucked it inside his jacket pocket. “Nah, it’s jake, doll. I’ll… I’ll take you back to the party—”
“Sam!” Evie said, jumping up from the divan and knocking over a tableside bust of a stern-looking Roman general. “Stay!” she said, righting the bust at the last second. “Good boy.”
Sam’s eyebrows shot up.
“Listen, Sam: Do you still have that photograph from Anna Polot… Pala… Anna Anna?”
Sam took out his wallet and fished out the photo he now kept inside its folds. “It’s just a picture of me with my mother.”
“I know. But it’s worth a try, isn’t it?”
Sam grinned. “That’s my girl.”
“I am not your girl,” Evie said, fighting a smile.
At first, the photo was also cold. But Evie wasn’t about to lose again. She concentrated until there was a momentary spark, and then she reached into that spark of memory, teasing it into flame. She saw a woman with brown hair pinned at the back of her neck and dark, full brows and knew at a glance that she was Sam’s mother. In Miriam’s hands was the very photograph Evie held now.