by Paul French
The great and the good of the American colony turn out to meet and greet. A banner across the room proclaims SHANGHAI AMERICANS WELCOME OUR BRAVE NEW MARSHAL. Sam Titlebaum—in blue serge suit, cowboy boots, and an emerald stickpin, with oiled-back hair—is seriously hungover but puts those perfect ivories on display; he got his teeth fixed up in return for advertising the skills of a Hungarian dentist with a place just off the Bund on XHMA. He puts his hand on the Bible and swears to uphold and defend all that is necessary. The formal oath of office over, Sam looks around for a stiff drink.
Pinch-faced Shanghai Moral Welfare Society wives look disapprovingly at his holster; dolled-up and bored businessmen’s wives eye him hungrily. Judge Helmick takes the stand, chin jutting, and welcomes Titlebaum, before reminding the crowd of lawyers and worthy burghers of the topic of the day. ‘We all know of the long-standing scourge among the American community of the ne’er-do-wells—the gamblers, the vice merchants, the sharks and buccaneers. It’s time to clean them out, folks.’ The room raises a toast to the man who’s going to save them all. Sam grins large; Little Nicky shoves a tumbler in his fist—at last, hair of the dog. The China Press and the Shanghai Mercury snappers pop flashbulbs as Sam shakes hands with Judge Helmick.
The men have got a story prepped for the press: a strategy to bring errant America on the China Coast to heel. Judge Helmick declares one Edward T. ‘Jack’ Riley target number one for the U.S. Court for China—American-run slot machines and roulette wheels are a curse on our country’s good name. Titlebaum leans in so the hacks can catch him, and he’s got the playbook down pat in no time—‘Riley is a bad man who threatens the solid reputation of this here International Settlement and the good name of the United States within it.’ Judge Helmick gets the punchline, by now well tried and tested: ‘We will have no Chicago on the Whangpoo.’
The press laps it up; Sam figures he’ll never have to pay that marker to Riley or Farren now; he’s badged up and untouchable. The judge, the consul, the fed, the district attorney, and the new marshal all toast for the cameras. Sam throws back the long-awaited glass and gags on seltzer. Little Nicky whispers in his ear, ‘No booze round the good judge, Sam. There’s work to do.’
* * *
Shanghai’s got Don Chisholm—he of the scandal-filled Shopping News—and his Führer-admiring partner Herbert Moy tuned in and loud on Nazi-funded XGRS. They call themselves ‘Mack and Bill’ and spew bile on the airwaves nightly. Moy usually kicks it off—who remembers if he’s Mack or Bill? ‘The Brits are finished, German bombers are destroying their lame morale … Buckingham Palace has been destroyed by the Luftwaffe. How much longer can they last? The French have turned tail and admitted defeat, the Swastika flies in Paris now; a new strength where before the Popular Front was weak and Jew-controlled. The Dutch have rolled over, the Belgian queen fled to the smoke-filled rathole of London and deserted her people. In Madrid a new day is dawning, the anarchists and the communists routed…’
Chisholm takes up the rant: ‘America should stay out of Europe’s business. America should concentrate on its own mess after the Jews created the Depression in ’29 and got their patsy Bolshevik Feodorvich Roosevelt elected president to represent their money. Japan is fulfilling its destiny in the Orient…’
And then it’s more from Moy: ‘China’s enemy is not Japan but rather her old foes, Britain, France. Did Tokyo forcibly spoonfeed opium to China? No, it was England. Generalíssimo Cash-My-Check takes American Jew money and feathers his own nest while his wife, with her own bloodstained hands, beds Washington politicians and siphons money to her own syphilitic family … The rising sun is just that—rising—and old Europe’s day is done.’
Mack and Bill’s hate-filled rants are the final straw for Joe. He bans Don Chisholm from Farren’s. Jack does not demur—Chisholm vouched for heroin smuggler Paul Crawley as a stand-up guy, and we all know how that ended. There are always others lining up to play the Farren’s tables. Let Dodgy Don and his SS-admiring sidekick go drink with the Hitler Youth and sieg heil all fucking night long, for all he cares.
* * *
Chinese families hide their daughters, lock them away in back rooms and attics. They dress them as boys, bind their breasts, cut their hair. They fear the Japanese emo, their akuma—demons, fiends, devils—that capture young women and force them to prostitute themselves. When these emo are finished with them, sated, but without souls or reason, they devour the women whole, who are never seen again. Free China guerillas from Chungking secretly distribute rice paper perodicals containing the letters of a young woman, the supposed estranged daughter of a puppet traitor, to her lover, a brave warrior of the Free China resistance. She declares that she will not be eaten up by the Japanese emo, or be consumed by China’s despised hanjian traitors, collaborators, literally ‘evil-doers’. Raped by the Japanese, she vows to kill in return, to avenge herself and China.
All Shanghai knows of Menghua Jie, Dream Flower Street, in the heart of the Nantao old town. Everyone knows that women are kidnapped and taken to a guarded mansion on that street occupied by the Japanese. Within, Shanghai’s daughters are turned into living ghosts, dead though alive, their final devourment long and horrible. They are destined to reside in hell, or wander the wastelands outside the city forever. Menghua Jie is but one of many places in Shanghai where women are raped and eaten by the Japanese demons. There are other occupied mansions known as weiansuo—comfort houses—where daughters disappear. Ziang Teh Road, Kungping Road, Route Dupleix. Many more exist in the lanes and alleys of Little Tokyo. People say there are more than 150 such places from Hungjao to Pootung, Hongkew to Siccawei, where the Japanese demons queue to devour the so-called weianfu, the comfort women, Shanghai’s kidnapped daughters all.
This, people believed …
* * *
PART THREE
The Hour between Dog and Wolf
L’heure entre chien et loup
A French saying referring to the moments after sunset when the sky darkens and one’s vision becomes unclear, making it difficult to distinguish between dogs and wolves, friends and foe.
Everything in Shanghai is for sale. But for the city itself, there are no bidders … Shanghai is a city of fear.
—Frederic S. Marquardt, 1940
There always has to be some place where the world sweeps its dirt and refuse.
—Josef von Sternberg, on Shanghai
30
Everybody knows that eventually the U.S. Court for China at Shanghai will come for Jack. The Settlement’s extraterritoriality laws mean you can only be tried by a court of your own country under your own nation’s laws. The SMP has long been sick of Jack T. Riley but unable to do a damn thing. There’s no law in Shanghai that says you can’t gamble, just that you can’t run a gambling joint featuring roulette wheels. But the court can’t touch Jack for the roulette wheels at Farren’s—the Badlands is Japanese-protected and way out of Judge Helmick’s jurisdiction, which is limited to American citizens and their indiscretions in the Shanghai International Settlement. And there are no laws that say you can’t operate or play a slot machine. But there is a United States law that bans gambling, and that applies on the Whangpoo to American citizens. Helmick thinks he can get an easy conviction.
The judge gives the Riley case to Charlie Richardson Jr., special assistant to the district attorney of the United States Court for China. The U.S. gambling laws will be the key to removing a man who’s been a longtime irritant to Helmick’s court—corrupting the Marine Corps with liquor and slots, rumours of more pernicious substances being traded, starting nightclub brawls in very public places, allegations of putting the fix in at the Canidrome boxing nights, doping greyhounds. Jack Riley is not Judge Helmick’s ideal of a model American citizen on the China Coast. It’s time to take down Jackpot Jack Riley, time to end his decade-long lucky streak. On Friday, September 20, 1940, the judge issues a warrant for the arrest of Edward T. ‘Jack’ Riley, on seventeen counts of violating U.S. legal s
tatutes that ‘prohibit engaging in the business of commercial gambling’.
The same day, John Crighton picks up Sam Titlebaum in his official SMP black Nash. Crighton’s snitches tell him Jack is holding court at the Fourth Marines Club on the Bubbling Well Road, his MG parked outside. The men wait opposite until Jack comes out, ready to head down to Farren’s for the night. They arrest him then and there, and take him to the holding cell at the American Court on Kiangse Road for arraignment—the Slots King with cuffs on for the first time in fifteen years. Titlebaum takes his wallet, tie, shoelaces, and loose change. They fingerprint him. Crighton and Titlebaum are shocked by Riley’s acid-burned fingertips. Jack says it’s an honour to be arrested by DSI John Crighton—congratulations on the Distinguished Service Medal. He stares straight through Titlebaum like he isn’t there. Jack spends the night in the cell.
Early the next morning, Jack receives a number of special deliveries: ham and eggs, courtesy of Sam Levy; a freshly pressed grey-striped suit and suede shoes from Evelyn, with bulging pockets the warders don’t notice because they’re concentrating on her curves; bennies in a cigarette carton from Babe via Doc Borovika. Jack extracts the tabs and passes the cigarettes round the warders. Then it’s up to the courtroom. Plenty of Friends are present, rounded up by Mickey O’Brien, laughing in the gallery. Jack’s freshly pressed trouser and jacket pockets are stuffed with dollar bills. They poke out of his shirt pocket, his socks, Jack mugging all the while like a slimline Fatty Arbuckle for the crowd. He’s got a high-dollar disreputable lawyer arguing a mile a minute for him like crazy, raising objections right, left, and centre.
There’s a catch to the Shanghai justice system: the American court has jurisdiction over American citizens, but only if the U.S. Court can prove that you are, beyond a reasonable doubt, really a genuine American citizen. If they can’t, then you walk free. The court clerk asks Jack how he pleads.
‘Guilty. Provided you can prove I am a United States citizen.’ And he winks at Judge Helmick.
Jack’s lawyer tells the court Jack is a Chilean citizen. Here’s his passport, admittedly out of date, but issued in Yokohama in 1932. He puts it to Helmick straight: if you can’t prove Jack T. Riley is a U.S. citizen, then you have no authority over him. The judge pops a vein at the disrespect, orders fifty thousand Chinese dollars bail—that’s a cool twenty-five Gs in American dollars, ten times more than the court has ever requested of anyone before. Helmick has decided to set an example amid pressure from the consul general, the Municipal Council big cheeses, and Commissioner Bourne.
Smarting, Special Assistant to the DA Charlie Richardson tells the court he will prove ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ that Riley is an American. The lawyer is waving his arms, calling the bail amount a travesty. The judge is fuming, and Little Nicky is red-faced at the fact Jack’s thrown a spanner in the works in less than two minutes in court. The public gallery is whooping, and Jack is licking his thumb and speed-counting bills with a big grin on his mug. He pulls fifty large ones out of here, there, and everywhere; Friends lean over the rails and hand him wads of notes Joe has pre-stashed from the Farren’s safe for just such an eventuality. Jack mock bows, licks his thumb again, finishes the count, and hands the pile over to the court clerk. He tells him he’d better count it as you can’t trust anyone these days, winks big for the crowd, and flips the Friends his trademark tip of the hat. It’s pure theatre, Jackpot Jack style.
Jack steps down from the stand and tells Helmick there’ll always be a drink for him behind the bar at DD’s, and that his credit’s good at Farren’s if he fancies spinning a wheel or two. Helmick storms out of the courtroom, followed by his flunkies. Fifty Chinese Nationalist grand in big stacks on the court clerk’s desk, and Riley walks free, leaving Mickey to grab the receipt. Just like back in ’25 in Oklahoma, he leaves without looking back. Turning left onto Kiangse Road, he dodges the hacks and the snappers waiting on the steps round the corner at the court’s main entrance on the Foochow Road. Evelyn has raced ahead and got the MG ready, and now she brings it over, slides across out of the the driver’s seat for Jack, and they take off.
Jack is laughing like crazy and fishtailing the car through the traffic lights, down to the border with Frenchtown on the Avenue Eddy just south of the racecourse. Straight through—the flics know the red roadster and salute Jack as he flies past. Jack heads west straight down the long Avenue Joffre till it hits Avenue Haig, then he cuts across Edinburgh Road onto the Great Western Road. There’s a chichi party waiting at Farren’s, with all the familiar faces—Joe, Babe, Sam Levy, Elly Widler, Albert Rosenbaum, the doc, most of the old Red Rose gang, old Bill Hawkins and Stuart Price, the Town team guys, as well as various Friends. There’s a buffet stacked with cold cuts and plates of more ham and eggs, done in the Venus Café style. The drinks are already pouring; Carlos Garcia is popping a bottle of genuine French champagne, and there’s a steaming jug of Folgers coffee for Jack. To top it all off, the Fourth Marines band is up on stage and launches into ‘Hail to the Chief’.
Later, it’s time to go to work. Trucks fan out across the Settlement with white men driving and Chinese coolies hunched in back. Mickey O’Brien rides shotgun in one, Schmidt in another. They stop at Van’s Dutch and the Santa Anna. They move on to the Handy Randy, the Lambeth Bar, the Jinx. At each stop they load slot machines onto the truck, one after another. Down Seymour Road to Frank’s, the New Clipper, and the Service Bar. To the Savoy and then Eddy’s and Bruno’s. Farther along they stop at Ma Jackson’s Tavern, the Fourth Marines Club, and the Del Conte, a bar usually packed with marines from the Ferry Road barracks close by. They head north up to Hongkew, to the Astoria Bakery, the Magnet Café, and the Oceana Bar along Broadway, the Mascot bar and the Barcelona on Wayside. More slots, and more bars, taverns, nightclubs, cafés. By the end of the night there’s not a slot machine left in the International Settlement of Shanghai. Jack and Mickey gather them all up and stash them in anonymous godowns in Y’poo. For the first time in years, the International Settlement of Shanghai is slots-free, and it’s courtesy of the Slots King himself. An indictment on gambling charges for operating slots? What slots would those be, Your Honour?
31
September turns to October—the Blitz hits London; the RAF hits back, destroying Antwerp; the Luftwaffe can’t get dominance of the skies over southern England and Hitler cancels his planned invasion. Closer to home, Japan invades French Indochina, and that means any pretence of Shanghai’s Frenchtown as being under total Japanese dominance is well and truly over.
Regardless of world events, the wheels at Farren’s continue to spin every night. Joe holds court at the bar, while three weeks out from his next appearance before the judge, Jack gets back to pit-bossing upstairs like old times. The regular crowd are glad to see him back—bullion-rich roulette addict Alice Daisy Simmons proffers a small bar of gold to Jack and Al that, in these gold-secure times, ensures she’ll be spinning Farren’s wheels for a fortnight without thinking about cashing in for more chips. Most of Shanghai is drowning under stagflation and watching their life’s savings disappear, but Alice is in the gold business, and it’s never been better. She can play the tables all night and not care. Jack and Al make sure she gets whatever she wants. But outside, the violence continues.
A top SMP cop investigating corruption in the force is shot at; he returns fire and the gunmen scatter. A lieu-maung gang bursts into the Paramount with guns and handcuffs, looking to kidnap four wealthy Chinese playboys inside for big ransoms. They fire shots when they can’t find them; Nellie and the chorus line dive for cover. Nellie swears she’s had just about enough of this shit. A puppet official leaves the Metropole Gardens Ballroom and hails a waiting taxi. He opens the back door and two gunmen inside, waiting, fire four shots into him, killing him instantly. A Yu Yuen Road café dealing dope and cocaine out the back door is firebombed with Molotov cocktails while the Johnson Garden ballroom, a new Chinese-run Badlands joint, is burnt to the ground. The North-China
Daily News reports that it’s all due to gang rivalries in the Badlands—and so it may be, but not foreign gangs. The syndicate holds.
The Kempeitai continue to assert their authority and now challenge the SMP overtly. Right on the border of Frenchtown, a gambling house and opium den of immense proportions now operates out of a mansion on tree-lined Route Courbet. The boss is a Mr. Kan, so tight with number 76 they are like Siamese twins. The Garde Municipal have been warned off by their new Kempeitai masters; Frenchtown police are a sham under Vichy collaborator control, the French Concession courts now administered by the Japanese. Across in the Settlement, the Japanese open the Asia Club on Gordon Road and turn that strip of the Sinza District into a new street of sin. Sinza becomes a Badlands in miniature, with all the trappings. The Japanese police patrol the area while the SMP keep out; Sinza Road Municipal Police Station becomes a ghost town, and Commissioner Bourne sits and simmers, having effectively surrendered that district without a fight.
Roadblocks go up around the Badlands in late November; it’s an island within an island. The Japs pull rolls of barbed wire out from number 76 and place them across Yu Yuen Road, on Avenue Road, and along Jessfield Road, while also blocking off the Tsao Chia Tu Village food market. Cordons in place, bluejacket sentries commence checking everyone passing through. They manhandle foreign women, tip customers out of rickshaws and pedicabs, toss car trunks and upend shopping baskets onto the dirty street. The SMP complain, and are told it’s in response to the shooting of a sentry on Yu Yuen Road. The sniper’s bullet went clean through his jaw, blowing his face off—Wally Lunzer saw it all going past in a rickshaw. Strange thing is, as Wally told it, the soldier got sniped at in the afternoon, but the Japs had rolled out the barbed-wire barricades at lunchtime. It’s a classic Imperial Army–engineered ‘incident’—use an event to justify a reaction and forget the order those events came in.