by Paul French
Jack notices a DD’s regular who eyes up Nazedha lasciviously from the bar. He’s about to sock him one when scandal rag proprietor Don Chisholm intervenes, gives Joe a wink, and introduces the two. The guy’s an American by the name of Crawley, Paul Crawley. Word has it Crawley came out east after the Great War, spent time in Vladivostok and Tokyo, picked up the lingos. He worked out a way to make pirate copies of American movies with some guy called Goldenberg in the mid-twenties. They’d sold the flicks to a Tokyo entrepreneur for screening in cinema tents in the Japanese boondocks where Hollywood hadn’t yet reached and made forty thousand bucks. Goldenberg managed to cash the check right before he was found dead in his Ginza hotel room, penniless and missing his signature diamond pinky ring. A few months later Crawley pitches up in Harbin, married to a smoking-hot Russian, nyet-ing and da-ing, running a gambling den and selling guns and dope on the side to the ever-feuding, ammo- and dope-hungry Northern warlords. Everyone knew how to recognise Crawley in Harbin—he was the guy wearing a diamond ring on his little finger.
By the late twenties Crawley is in with a Russian gang working out of Harbin’s Hotel Moderne. They move down to Shanghai and invest in a couple of bars, selling guns and dope. As the warlord gun racket cools, they up their dope sales in league with a Cantonese confectioner with ambition who runs the Velvet Sweet Shop on the North Szechuen Road. Ah Lee mixes bonbons and Turkish delight by day and turns opium into heroin by night. He’s really good at both trades. Meanwhile, Crawley starts looking for a route to the U.S. for the product.
Once dodgy Don Chisholm introduces sleazy Paul Crawley to ever-ambitious Jack Riley, they work out a deal sweeter than any of Ah Lee’s confections. Riley kicks in some slots profits to up production over on the North Szechuen Road and takes his surplus marines and army nurses to create a new heroin route straight to the West Coast and to local interests of his acquaintance in San Francisco. It bypasses the New York syndicate and yields plenty of cash for Riley, Ah Lee, and Crawley. But it’s a seriously risky game—the feds coming at you one way; maybe a pissed-off Yasha and the Hongkew Jew boys the other—but for now those roulette wheels are getting ever closer. Pull it off for a time without anybody getting wise to it, and Jack’s got the stake he’ll need to persuade Joe to let him manage the casino end of the business. He sits down with Joe at the Venus and makes a proposal. Joe listens.
11
Summer 1936 is starting to heat up. All’s running sweet for Joe and Jack—stashes building up, clubs coining it, mugs still lining up three deep to play the slots, the dope getting through and the New York money flowing back. Seems Yasha, and by extension Lepke and Lansky in New York, are happy. Joe sees his nightclub-casino dreams becoming reality, and thinking maybe Jack is the man to run the casino; Jack is feeling easy knowing Joe and the Hongkew boys haven’t wised up to his side operation, which is giving him the extra gelt he’ll need to go into business with Joe.
At the Canidrome, the dogs run three times a week to a sellout crowd of fifty thousand punters betting small, large, and everything in between. Jack and Joe got mutts and trained them up. Neither is the horsey sort; the race club is for stuck-up Brits and the kind of Chinese who send their brats to university in Oxford or Massachusetts. Though they like to bet on the gee-gees, they have never worked out a surefire system for winning on the ponies. Joe can’t work the odds in his favour reliably enough, and Jack can’t figure how to nobble a horse. For a crooked town, the race club ponies are startlingly legit—so the nightlife boys stick to the dogs. Plus, the ponies run in the daytime, and they prefer the Canidrome evening races for their breakfast entertainment before the night’s work begins.
Now Joe and Jack are in the stands behind the large concrete entrance, waiting for the big race with their crews in tow. Joe is with Nellie, wrapped up in her trademark black sable from the Siberian Fur Store on the Avenue Joffre, even though it’s early June and the afternoon is warm with an occasional sudden rain shower. Joe’s crew of assorted pouty Peaches, frisky Follies, and hot Hollywood Blondes is there, plus Albert Rosenbaum, Doc Borovika, and the Wiengarten brothers, Sammy and Al. Jack’s just up back behind them with Nazedha looking sweet in a fox stole and a crew of Friends led by Mickey and Schmidt. Babe’s there too, back in Jack’s good books after taking the German hypnotist’s dope cure. She’s trying to straighten herself out while being gracious in losing the heart of the Slots King to Nazedha. They’re gal pals now and the ‘look into my eyes; look into my eyes’ cure seems to be holding.
The first races are perfunctory, no-good mutts, skinny little pups that might one day make the grade or be tossed in the Canidrome groundsman’s stew—too green, not worth betting on. The dark still comes in fast this time of year in Shanghai, and the racetrack is an oval of electric light beneath the black sky, blinking neon signs at either end.
EWO BEER: HERE’S LUCK
FLIT: THE WORLD’S LEADING INSECTICIDE
Everyone is hassling the Chinese boys in neat white monkey jackets working for the pari-mutuel, who rush up and down the aisles with betting slips, shrilly calling the odds, grabbing the cash lightning quick, fluttering hands back to the touts.
It’s race four, and Joe’s excited—he’s got his cream greyhound Pretty Peach running. His Chinese kennel man in a liveried jacket and white riding breeches leads the silk-jacketed dog out; there are big laughs as the mutt pauses, crouches, and shits in the dirt. Jack cracks wise about losing the extra weight; the old superstition says if they shit before the off, they’ll be two lengths up. Joe’s got fifty bucks riding on Pretty Peach, and he’s not alone: Buck, Derby, and the Harlem Gentlemen are back up in the stands with their betting slips held high.
The bugle sounds, and the kennel men shove the dogs into the traps one by one, Pretty Peach going in last. The cloudless sky reveals a few stars over the city. The odds are right for Joe’s hound, and with the dogs in the traps the bookies wipe the prices off their blackboards. There’s a rumble as the electric hare ricochets out and starts flying round the circuit. The dogs fall silent themselves a moment, and then the traps bang up as the hare rattles past. The six thin hounds burst out of the cages and chase that hare for all they’re worth.
Pretty Peach breaks clear and sweeps into the first bend holding the rails with a two-length lead, Jack shouting, ‘Told you so.’ Pretty Peach sticks to the rail, chases the hare and keeps the lead into the finishing straight. The other mutts trail like they’re going backwards, and Pretty Peach scorches the winner’s line half a dozen heads in front of the second dog. Joe and Nellie are hugging, Buck and his Harlem Gentlemen backslapping, and all those who bet on Pretty Peach are bowing towards Joe, who’s provided their payday. The rest of the folks in the bleachers tear up their ticket stubs and fling them in the air, worthless confetti falling through the arc-light beam.
Then the last race of the night. Jack’s got his mutt ready to go. Mickey O’Brien has been racing that dapple-grey dog round Hongkew Park daily, feeding her the best first-quality steak from Hongkew Market—the same steak the taipans get at DD’s for twenty bucks Mex. Blood Alley Babe’s got the big money on her, with the Friends and Fourth Marines all betting large on Jack’s hound. They’re not the only ones—Jack tells Joe to bet big on Blood Alley Babe—wink, wink.
The bookies have pinned new cards to their stands, and the layers are chalking up the prices. The boys of the pari-mutuel pass through the crowd once more. The ‘Ships’, young Chinese boys, are making ready to run the results from the track to the punters who don’t like to leave their stools, betting from off-track bars and cafés nearby. Joe nods to Jack and waves his ticket—fifty bucks on Blood Alley Babe. The bugle sounds again, and Mickey O’Brien is leading out Jack’s dog to the traps with his jockey cap on askew. The hare’s out on the rail, and the expectation is high.
The dogs fly out the traps, but Blood Alley Babe broke bad and is losing by four lengths to another dog. Then the lead dogs bump, and throw the third and fourth mutts wide, with the fi
fth getting tangled in its own sinewy legs and crashing out into the fence. Carlos Garcia’s dog, Black Dolly, is now out in front, and the swells in the Canidrome’s exclusive high tower are cheering, but Blood Alley Babe is catching up on the back straight, keeping tight to the rail and gaining yards. They’re level into the third bend and Jack is screaming from the stands, Nazedha jumping up and down. Babe shouts curses to make a sailor blush, her neck scar flushed red, and a hundred marines are on their feet and willing that bitch to edge ahead.
The dogs run stride for stride for twenty yards. Black Dolly is looking tired now, tongue lolling, visibly slowing, and Blood Alley Babe is on the outside pushing past, teeth bared, gums covered in foaming spittle. Riley’s pooch cruises across the finish line. Jack is delighted, salutes Joe, who raises an eyebrow in return. Then a grumble from somewhere up back of the stands and a loud voice, pure Glaswegian, calling out, ‘Dogs dinnae go slow like that, they doped that canine, sure as hell.’
Jack moves over the bleachers towards a bunch of Highlanders in kilts. Now there are marines and Friends and Jack throwing the first punch, and it’s on. The fight sprawls over the benches as women scramble out of the way. Joe and Nellie watch and the Harlem Gentlemen cheer while the Highlanders, outnumbered, back off from the coshes and lead pipes of the Friends. There’s a crush at the gate to get out and someone’s killed the arc lights, and Joe is hustling Nellie off the stands, and there’s thumping and shouting and clothes getting torn, and a Peach falling out of her shoes and getting trampled, and the off-duty Frenchtown Tonkinese flics who do the Canidrome’s security are getting between the brawlers, and a bookie’s stand is upset and then another, and a man topples off his steps and is thrown to the ground, and then someone yells ‘Razors, Razors!’ and there’s a Highlander with a badly gashed face holding his cheek together as someone who looks a lot like Jack Riley turns and walks away, patting his jacket lapels, smoothing back his brilliantined hair, and the flics are blowing whistles, and the loudspeakers are oblivious to the fracas, telling everyone to remember there’s a meet tomorrow at two-thirty, come rain or shine.
Jack is out a side entrance with Nazedha, Mickey, and some Friends, as Schmidt shows his Mauser in a shoulder holster and clears a path real fast. They pile into a Packard and head for DD’s. Buck and his boys have formed a circle round Derby and are edging out, staring down anyone who might want to see a genuine California switchblade up close. A platoon of Peaches, Follies, and Hollywood Blondes are swinging handbags, pulling well manicured but seriously sharp fingernails down the cheeks of anyone who gets in their way. Joe’s got Nellie up the stairs and through a side entrance into the Canidrome Club kitchens while down in the bleachers the driftwood and trash of Frenchtown along with the pi-seh, lieu-maung beggars and loafers are rolling in the dust of the track, grabbing coins flung from the bookies’ smashed stands. And the loudspeakers repeat—tomorrow, two-thirty, cash sweep, come rain or shine.
Carlos Garcia, up in the members’ bar in the tower, sipping stengahs with Louis Bouvier, doesn’t give a shit; it’s a full house. The bookies all kick him back ten per cent of their take just to operate trackside. The Central Bank of China has built one of its biggest branches right next door to the stadium, there’s so much money flowing through the complex, every day, come rain or shine.
12
U.S. Treasury Agent Martin ‘Nick’ Nicholson was no novice. He fancied himself the Elliot Ness of the Orient, and was evangelical about stamping out American involvement in the dope business. He’d worked hard to smash the dope rings at home. Now he’d come to Shanghai to do the same and declared that the summer of 1936 would be the hottest on record for the dope traffickers.
Nicholson isn’t much to look at: five foot two in his brogues, with a blue small-brimmed hat. His grey pinstriped suit with its Brooks Brothers cut makes his short legs look even shorter, his body even stockier. He’s as wide as he is tall in those suits. Jack Riley dubs him ‘Little Nicky’, which pisses him off but sticks. Little Nicky can’t miss those slot machines all over town and wonders just who Jack T. Riley is. He checks the card index of U.S. citizens resident in Shanghai at the U.S. consulate and finds nobody of that name registered. He figures, correctly, that Jack bunkers down in Frenchtown, but the notoriously easily bought Frenchtown police, the Garde Municipal, aren’t proving cooperative in confirming that hunch. Yet every slot in the Settlement and Frenchtown pays out tokens stamped ‘ETR’. The man swaggers up and down Blood Alley backslapping marines, bankrolling their in-house newspaper with his advertising. He passes out the punch at the Bamboo Hut to senior U.S. military officers, and funds Don Chisholm’s Shopping News scandal rag while charming the taipans of the American business community at DD’s. Little Nicky is not unaware that the income from hosting Riley’s slots is the biggest single earner for the Marines Club. Little Nicky thinks Jack T. Riley needs a little closer scrutiny. He contacts the FBI back home to find out what they have, but the feds come back with no records on file. Little Nicky is stymied on that front.
But he makes life tricky for everyone else. He gets the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in D.C. to formally petition the SMP to get tough on the dealers. Nicky gets proactive and joins them in a raid on Leong’s Moon Palace dope den, they pull in a few bleary-eyed marines and some China Coaster dames, those foreign women of various nationalities who live by their wits along the China coast and whom the generous call ‘courtesans’ and the less generous have other names for. Nicky pulls Babe off a cot and gets a righteous stiletto scrape down the shins for his trouble; it seems the German hypno’s cure didn’t take. The SMP cart them off to the cells, but they all get let go the next day. The marines are back to barracks while Babe screams the place down until Jack Riley sends his henchman Schmidt over with bail money and an envelope for the SMP’s Christmas party fund.
Still Little Nicky keeps on digging in the Shanghai dirt. He gets a tip-off that a Eurasian nurse is carrying dope back to the States. Nicky finds her with a stash of dope in her trunk, a fresh-stamped Macao visa in a newly issued Portuguese passport, and a ticket to California on a Dollar Line boat. The passport comes from a Portuguese gang; the visa appears genuine enough. Nick knows the Portuguese consulate in Shanghai is legendarily pliable. He traces the tip-off and arranges to meet the dime-dropper, but it never happens. The French Garde find a dead Eurasian answering to the man’s description, a horn-handled knife in his back, on some wasteland close by French Park on Route Voyron. The flics give big Gallic shrugs and mutter ‘Greeks probably, Corsicans possibly, gypsies potentially, Macanese maybe’. Once more Little Nicky hits a dead end and sits in his office sweltering and getting nowhere.
* * *
It’s now late summer 1936, and the Velvet Sweet Shop heroin factory sideline has swelled Jack Riley’s coffers considerably. Little Nicky’s hunch about his digs was correct; he’s got a nice Frenchtown pad in the Route des Soeurs and is hunkered down in there with Nazedha. She wants to make it all cosy and Russian-style; Jack’s left it bare, stark—like an orphan’s dormitory, a sailor’s bunk, a prisoner’s cell. Nazedha tries to soften the edges of Jack Riley somewhat, but she doesn’t get much further than a bowl or two of potpourri. Still, it’s close by the Canidrome for the fights and the dogs, and right by a couple of decent restaurants with private rooms for discreet meetings. It’s also opposite a hole in the wall called the Manila Bar, a jukeboxy little joint where Babe hangs out these days drinking gin and French, off the dope again after the scare of the Moon Palace raid and a night in the cells, chewing gum cadged from the sailor clientele, betting on the bronzed Argentine boys at the jai alai over the road, and picking up moneyed tourists to refresh her purse.
She tipped Jack to the new apartment and sorts out the rent to keep Jack incognito. For a good weekly tip the White Russian concierge looks the other way. The apartment is rented by Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence, who run some kind of import–export gig. Anyone needs Jack urgently, they call the Manila on Shanghai-76772 and Babe answers, A
staire singing ‘Cheek to Cheek’ in the background. Jack figures it’s best the city’s standover men as well as Little Nicky, the U.S. marshals and the SMP don’t know where he bunks.
13
Little Nicky wants to let Shanghai know D.C. isn’t going to tolerate the flood of dope into America. Yasha’s got his Green Gang associates in Shanghai not just shipping opium but manufacturing Cadillacs and morphine ampoules on a massive scale. ‘Shanghai is now both a distribution and a manufacturing center,’ Nicky tells the North-China Daily News. ‘Morphine and heroin are speedily taking the place of opium as the main narcotics being smuggled to the United States … There’s dope coming in, in large quantities, to organised crime in New York City and as much now suddenly flooding into the ports of Los Angeles and San Francisco. I’m here to end that.’ Those in the know raise an eyebrow. New York, sure, and a little to L.A., but who’s shifting large quantities of Shanghai dope to San Francisco?
* * *
Sunday night, the day before New Year’s Eve 1936—there’s smoke at the back of the Red Rose at four a.m. Some local Chinese call the police, and the cops from Hongkew station bust in the back door to find Sammy Wiengarten starting to roast in the back office. A fire’s raging, the safe door’s swinging open, and the Christmas takings are gone. Sammy is cooking in his captain’s chair with his head back, but not so much the cops don’t notice that someone kindly staved in the back of his skull before they set fire to the place and walked out with nine thousand bucks (according to his brother, Al, who’d totted it up earlier that night). Another ten minutes and Sammy would have been cinders, the whole thing put down to a burglary gone wrong or old Sammy falling asleep at his desk with a lit cigarette. The cops drag out what is left of Sammy Wiengarten and then stand back, watching the Red Rose incinerate, vodka bottles popping, the timbers cracking like the castanets of its White Russian faux-jazz manouche band.