Uncle Gaston and niece Volume One

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Gaston Larreau smiled to himself. Guests, noting the expression, anxiously returned it with one of their own, but truly the little man was smiling in his own amusement. It pleased him that celebrities and others of importance vied for invitations to his weekly affairs. It gave him a certain inner sense of superiority. He knew what they thought of him… Canada's czar of the underworld; yet, to be seen at one of Gaston's Larreau's Mont Royale affairs was to be mentioned in the society columns of the Montreal World. He hated them all; they were frauds and parasites; yet, he appreciated them too, for they gave him an air of legitimacy.

Gaston Larreau stood five-feet-seven-inches tall in his exclusively hand designed, one-hundred-and-fifty dollar elevator shoes; he was abundant of girth, broad at the shoulders, balding, and meticulous of dress. His head, like his face, was round and set close to his shoulders, and his small grey, almost colorless, eyes were spaced too-wide apart, just as his too-small ears clung tight to his head. The cicatrix left from an aged razor wound ran the length of his right cheek, ending at the corner of his mouth, making the flesh there puffed and malformed until he smiled, and then the line of strong golden upper teeth became predominant.

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