by Paul French
The Kempeitai aren’t crazy, though—they’re not about to slaughter their golden egg–laying goose. Farren’s and the Great Western Road are still just about outside the blockade, although getting there is now a pain—foreigners need passes to get past Tifeng and Edinburgh Roads. But Vertinsky’s Gardenia club is in the blockade, and so are plenty of others—Madam Szirmay’s Hungaria club, where the boychiks from Farren’s hang out after hours, Jock’s on Jessfield Road, where plenty of Friends line up for schooners of EWO, the Roxy with its turbaned Sikh security crew, the Ali-Baba … It’s an all-out Kempeitai takeover of the area.
Cars line up at the blockade entrances and exits. Barbed wire covers all the laneways and roads leading off Yu Yuen, leaving residents penned in, unable to get to the market. Thousands of Chinese gather at the wire waiting to see if food supplies will come through, scared to leave the Badlands in case they can’t get back to their homes. Number 76–authorised black marketeers set up stalls just inside the wire—a hundred bucks Chinese for a picul of rice; a dollar for a small catty of vegetables. It’s profiteering on a grand scale, sanctioned by the collaborators.
The Japanese Kempeitai are getting brazen. They arrest five SMP men after they find one of their own beat cops with his head staved in in an alley up by Edinburgh and Kinnear Roads. The Kempeitai say they’re rogue SMP, settling scores over cross-border firefights and skirmishes, and they torture the men at the gendarme station. Commissioner Bourne creates a stink; universally respected John Crighton negotiates, and the men are let go. They say the damn fool Jap fell off the running board of a gendarme Oldsmobile, and his philopon-hopped comrades inside didn’t even notice.
All the talk is of war, and not much else. Evacuation ships, flights leaving for Hong Kong, out via Chungking, try the Burma Road, through to the British Raj. Ships to Lourenço Marques, wherever that is, Africa someplace. It gets to some: Demon Hyde calls it quits, sells the Del Monte to number 76 interests for a rumoured quarter of a million Chinese dollars, and ships home to California. Evacuate, evacuate … but where to? Australia, Hong Kong, America? For those with no papers, or for those—like Joe—who aren’t welcome at their own consulate, those European Jews now subjects of the Third Reich, there is nowhere to go. Passports will not be renewed. The Portuguese have letters of transit for Macao and on to Lisbon—from there are possible routes to Britain or the United States. But word is thousands are waiting every day at the Lisbon docks for places that never become available. Touts scour the clubs and cafés offering false papers—identification inflation ensues as prices for a forged French passport start at a thousand francs.
The Blitz; the North African deserts; Paris filled with goose-stepping Gestapo sipping café au lait on the Champs-Élysées; London, Liverpool, and Southampton feeling the full force of Luftwaffe bombing raids nightly. Meanwhile, three or so years into the war in China, and the smoke from the ruins of Chapei still drifts across into the Badlands, smelling of sewage and leaking gas. The bluejackets on the cordons won’t let the gas company trucks through, and the leaks just keep leaking.
But on the Great Western Road, the wheels are still spinning, and Jack Riley, seemingly untouchable, has got them greased up and earning nightly despite the Kempeitai’s ever more rapacious tax demands he has to try to keep in check on behalf of the syndicate. The croupiers skim the wooden shoe across the felt, spewing cards for the baccarat crowd, and the dice roll. The Hartnells twist and tumble; Joe’s aerialist flies above the heads of the crowd in a sequinned leotard; Mike’s Music Masters are playing Artie Shaw’s ‘Nightmare’, this week’s favourite tune.
Even so, Nellie was right all along. She told Joe that Jack would be trouble. In the office upstairs one night, Joe tells Jack he needs to sort this thing with the U.S. Court, get Helmick off everyone’s back, and concentrate on negotiating with the Japanese to limit the crippling taxes. He has to get Titlebaum and his crusade out of the way, and, incidentally, the guy owes us plenty and needs to pay, U.S. marshal or no U.S. marshal. Joe hears Little Nicky has sent Jack’s seared partial dabs to Washington to see if they can make a match in their state-of-the-art crime lab. Joe is concerned, thinks Little Nicky has been aching to bust Jack for years now. But Jack’s not worried—he holds up his hands and wiggles his gnarly fingertips. Helmick and Richardson have got no proof of citizenship, and without the slots they’re stymied. He’ll never take the rap. He assures Joe that if things go badly, the Kempeitai will spring him. They need to keep the channels open from the syndicate to Jap HQ in Hongkew and number 76; he says he’s got understandings with the Japanese and the puppets.
Joe shrugs, says okay. Farren’s needs to keep earning—tickets out of town and new boltholes will cost plenty. Nellie is pissed at Joe and says so: he needs to dump Jack Riley more than he needs to dump the showgirls. It’s her final warning, although Joe doesn’t know it.
32
The appointed date—December 4, 1940—and Jack is back in court. He showed bravado last time, ponying up the bail money like a carny barker, but that doesn’t mean it’s not serious cash. A no-show would mean he would forfeit the money, and that would leave Jack close to cash-broke, with all the rest tied up in his venues, Farren’s, and power company stocks. With his slots out of action and stashed in Y’Poo, that old Chilean passport from way back when, and his seared dabs, Jack figures there’s no case, or at worst a slap on the wrist and a fine. His ace in the hole is the Japs: as the main parley between the syndicate and the Kempeitai, he’s worth a lot in kickbacks and connections. He’s confident they’ll spring him pretty quickly if Judge Helmick tries to stick a jail term on him. The future is Badlands wheels now anyway; the slots can go rust.
The public gallery is packed with Friends once again, and Jack is suited and booted, his pockets stuffed with U.S. currency once more just in case. It’s showtime.
Charlie Richardson Jr. appears, a glint in his eyes. He brings out a file from the U.S. consulate in Shanghai from a decade ago. It seems good old Jack had once tried to register as a U.S. citizen—the file, signed by Riley, claimed he’d been born in San Francisco and that his birth certificate had been destroyed in the earthquake back in 1906. How very convenient.
Then Richardson calls Dr. Juan Marin, Chile’s chargé d’affaires and consul general in Shanghai. Turns out the Chilean consul general in Yokohama back in ’32 was recalled and jailed for corruption in Santiago. All passports issued at that time are null and void. Jack’s lawyer argues that none of it matters, as Riley’s not running slots anyway. The court doesn’t care, they’ve got a hundred witnesses who’ll say they saw the machines. There are photographs, E. T. Riley–embossed tokens; hell, there are advertisements in the marines’ newspaper. The gambling charge stands. Riley starts to look antsy; his lawyer continues to object but is swiftly batted away by a determined Judge Helmick.
Next up is Little Nicky. Nicholson’s a Treasury agent, so he can’t make arrests in Shanghai—he needs the U.S. marshals for that or cooperation from the SMP. But what Nicky can do is go to the feds and get the FBI’s attention and time. This access is the clincher, and he knows it. Joe had heard right; Nicky had indeed sent Riley’s seared dabs from Shanghai to the feds in Washington. The feds seriously burned the midnight oil looking through thousands and thousands of records till they found a match—nine men had been on Jack’s case twenty-four-seven for weeks. Here were records for Fahnie Albert Becker, formerly of the U.S. Navy Yangtze Patrol, 1917 to 1919, and also John Fonley Becker, back on the Yangtze again in 1921. Jack looks queasy up in the dock. A Treasury agent’s arm is long and reaches into the United States Navy bureaucracy too. Little Nicky has even tracked down Becker’s old paybooks and induction records, had them mimeographed and sent to Shanghai, and now presents them for the court’s perusal. It’s undeniable; Jack is looking seriously antsy now. But Nick has one more interesting point to make to Judge Helmick.
The FBI takes an interest in many things and has many responsibilities—anti-trust violations,
bad banks, interstate shipment of stolen automobiles, illegal sales of contraband contraceptives, the prevention of prizefights, the seizure of stag films and smutty books, all crimes on Native Indian reservations and, most pertinently, in the U.S. Court for China at Shanghai that day, investigations and apprehensions of all escaped federal prisoners, wherever they may be.
And guess what? The FBI got the bit between their teeth, put in some extra hours of searching, and those prints from Little Nicky match those of one John Becker on file with the Oklahoma State Penitentiary at McAlester, where he’d been sent down for twenty-five years in May 1923 and escaped after just two. Jack had done his best to sear off those dabs with acid back in San Francisco, but prints go deep, and the feds managed to get enough matches despite the scarring to positively match Shanghai Jack Riley to McAlester John Becker.
Nicky can’t resist pointing out that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Oklahoma State Penitentiary both still consider John Becker wanted and are looking forward to seeing him again upon his long-awaited return to the United States from the International Settlement of Shanghai.
There’s always a paper trail. Charlie Richardson has done what he promised to do: prove beyond reasonable doubt that Jack Riley—John Becker to you—is an American citizen. Richardson, Nicky, and Judge Helmick look mighty pleased with themselves; Bourne and Crighton are on the public benches smiling at the U.S. court taking care of one of their errant own and likely to remove a major long-term irritant to the SMP too; Sam Titlebaum is checking himself in the mirror, slicking down his hair and getting ready to tell the assembled press that the U.S. marshals always get their man.
Then Helmick makes the biggest error of his otherwise spotless career: he recesses the court for tiffin before pronouncing the sentence. Seems he just couldn’t resist drawing out his victory and savouring every last drop of it. The guards take Jack downstairs, and Mickey slips them a fat envelope on the way. They look the other way and act surprised as Riley walks out a side door away from the holding cell. A nondescript car is waiting; he hops in the back and disappears into the Shanghai traffic.
Jack is buzzing. He’s just jumped bail on the largest sum ever demanded by a court in Shanghai. Back in the court, tiffin cancelled, it’s mayhem. Helmick has ordered the bond forfeit; Titlebaum is questioning the guards; Little Nicky is demanding the SMP call in all officers on leave; Crighton has commandeered the courthouse telephone. Jack has now officially absconded and is on the run. Cue Shanghai’s biggest ever manhunt.
* * *
Jack Riley is through the barricade at Yu Yuen Road and back in the Badlands. He’s got Japanese friends who can ease his passage; his gendarme-issued laissez passer is still good for now. But it’s not funny any more, not like back in September. Helmick gets to keep all that bail money now, and Jack’s savings are set to dwindle, thanks to the exchange rates. It’s bad—raising cash is hard in hyper-inflationary times, and life on the lam will be expensive. He’s a fugitive and will have to sell his power company stocks to raise money. Selling the clubs and bars is problematic—it has to be through back-door means, and he’ll no doubt take a major hit on it. Mickey is preparing to roll out the slots again, back into Chapei and the Badlands where the SMP can’t confiscate them easily; back into Frenchtown where the Garde Municipal follows Imperial Army orders. But it’ll be a trickle of coin compared to the old flood. Stagflation will kill what take there is.
He needs a place to stay, but Farren’s is out. It’s too obvious. There are already SMP men lining the bar waiting for Jack to show his face, scaring the punters; they stick out in their wide-cut suits, extra bulky to cover their shoulder holsters. For now he crashes in a back room at the Six Nations Casino under Elly Widler’s protection, but the Six Nations may not be safe for long.
* * *
The December snows have come earlier than usual; the temperatures are the lowest since recordkeeping began. Shanghai appears to be freezing to a halt. The trolley cars push slowly along the Bubbling Well Road, lights barely penetrating the icy December fog, all the way to the border of the Settlement and the Badlands. The gongs clang; all change at Yu Yuen Road, barbed-wire barricades blocking the tracks. If you want to keep going, it’s collars up, a never-say-die ‘tramp’ rickshaw, a taxi if you can find one, or head off on foot. The lines at the barricades are long, the bluejackets slapping anyone, man or woman, who smokes in their presence. Shanghailander men have stopped wearing hats at the barricades as the touchy Japanese Kempeitai sometimes take it as a slight, a sign of disrespect. They want it known that things have changed—Japan is top dog in the city now. Chinese are forced to bow to the bluejackets—several refuse and get themselves bayoneted, left to die on the pavement. Papers are checked by the brave sons of Nippon, who frisk you down for those hidden dollar bills that mean you’re on your way with no comment, no slapped face, no questions. The barbed wire is pulled back and you’re through. Number 76 thugs line up to pat you down for any leftovers on the Badlands side.
The snow covers all the sin and dirt of Shanghai and makes even the worst slum, the filthiest rookery or shadowy laneway, look clean and new and virginal, smoothing out the hard edges, coating the charred timbers, covering the city’s cavities. But Badlands snow is flecked black, unlike the rest of Shanghai now. Number 76 and the gangsters have their own coal supply, and the smuts fly through the air like they do nowhere else in the shivering, beleaguered Solitary Island. By day the Badlands, snow or no snow, is filth, dirt, poverty. Yet it still comes alive at night, when the darkness hides most of the detritus and the neon reveals nothing but smudged red reflections in puddles of brackish melt.
One hundred years of old Shanghailander certainties are breaking down; the hierarchies are collapsing. The limey taipans and grey-haired Yankee potentates of the Far East are no longer the natural superiors of the stateless White Russian baker, the Jewish refugee tailor, the Romanian waiter, the Macanese bartender, Manilaman trumpet player, or gypsy troubadour. Shanghailanders of all stripes now look at each other with desperate eyes, the old Settlement deferences of a century gone. Money, and the getting of it, counts most now, and in a world of squeeze, corruption, cumshaw, double-dealing, and black marketeering, the once despised rise up. The dragon is the symbol of the city, but the rat is Shanghai’s future.
What use social class, background, snobbishness, if it offers you no rewards? Like everyone else you’re hungry, with holes in your shoes; you walk rather than taxi, or cram onto a previously unfamiliar trolley car; you count your smokes carefully, rationing them, then queue with God knows who for more, and pay double the price of last week. War brings a sort of equality, and yesterday’s winners are rarely today’s victors. The harlot wears tailored clothes and puts on new cosmetics; she’s showered in black market perfume while the taipan’s wife darns her stockings and wears the old fashions, the 1936 season eked out. Access is all; contacts are like gold dust. This is the time when another type thrives: the eternal survivors, those who know how to operate in the shadows, work the black market, think nothing of taking from those weaker than them. Still the foundation remains the teeming masses of China, the four hundred million ‘black ants’, ever and always at the bottom of the pile.
* * *
Joe cuts Jack off, sends word that he’s not welcome on the Great Western Road. Crighton, Nicky, and Titlebaum would all love an excuse to shutter Farren’s. Jack had said he’d sort it with the court and he hasn’t—he’s failed Joe. Jack expects what’s his, though, and sends word back via Mickey. Joe tells Mickey there’s nothing to give; with Jack on the lam the Japanese have taken the opportunity to tear up their verbal agreement with the syndicate, and now the Kempeitai are upping the taxes arbitrarily. There’s no more negotiation over sticks of yakitori and glasses of Asahi beer up in Little Tokyo. Tell Jack to get out of town and stay gone, Joe says. Mickey knows Jack’s not going to like that. Joe shrugs, throws his arms wide; there’s nothing he can do for him.
But what if Jack
gets crazy ideas? Joe shuts Farren’s for a couple of nights, heads home for the first time in a month, and tells Nellie he’s boltholing till the air clears and Riley has shot town. She tells him to bolthole for as long as he wants, because she’s done. This isn’t how it was supposed to be—hiding out from some lowlife American gangster; Joe still working his way through the chorus lines; theirs is the biggest casino in town, but paying all the money to the Japs. Joe begs and pleads, asks her for one last chance. She turns those dark eyes on him and says no more. She’s out the door and down the stairs. He sees the Buick on the street with the engine running, smoke misting out the exhaust. He realises she’s packed, loaded the car already, and she’s not coming back.
Nellie heads to the docks once more; they’re as crowded as ever. The Buick pushes through the crowds, the chauffeur leaning hard on the horn, scattering Chinese families clutching their belongings in bulging burlap sacks, children strapped to their backs, trying desperately to get on the already overcrowded steamers heading upriver—away from the Japanese. If they can make it back inland, back to their remote ancestral villages, then perhaps they can disappear, be safe, survive. The Buick, along with other Shanghailanders’ cars, heads farther along the quayside to where evacuation and repatriation ships are moored, filled with the last of those who can afford to leave. Last time Nellie came here she was unprepared, she had no ticket and had to go back home to Joe. But this time she’s ready. The Chinese chauffeur pulls up close to the gangplank, instructs the milling porters to take the lady’s luggage from the trunk. He holds the door open for Nellie, and she steps out onto the quayside. She hands the chauffeur an envelope—a last token, a last gift. He tips his hat and nods, turns and drives away. The porters carry her bags up the gangplank while she shows her ticket to the purser. The small gate is opened, and Nellie walks up the steep gangplank. She has stepped off Chinese soil, off the terra firma of Shanghai into the comforting embrace of the ship. She is shown to her cabin, her trunk already there. She tips the porter, closes the door, slips the lock. She will unpack later, but for now, from her handbag, she takes out the Movado Pullman travel clock with the dark-red Morocco leather case Joe bought her back in the days when they still lived in that cold-water apartment on Woo Foo Lane and danced every night under the spotlight at the old, now long gone, Majestic Hotel. She places the clock on her bedside table, lies down, the freshly laundered pillow under her head, and gazes at its face, the second hand ticking the minutes by. She thinks back over the fifteen years since the Midnight Frolics, meeting Joe, dancing in Kobe, Batavia, Manila, Singapore. She remembers the Majestic and dancing with Douglas Fairbanks, Whitey’s band, Woo Foo Lane early mornings when they didn’t have much but were happy. The Follies tours and then the Paramount, the Canidrome … countless chorus lines recruited, rehearsed; her Aztec shimmy; those waltzes and tangoes with Joe. As Nellie feels the ship slip its moorings she chooses not to think of Joe’s infidelities, the rows, the fights, the stupidity of doing business with Riley. Rather she thinks of the sprung floor of the Majestic, the cut of Joe’s suit, the shine of his shoes, the flash of his smile as they moved effortlessly, knowing the eyes of the entire crowd were upon them. Shanghai had been good to them for longer than it was good to most. But Nellie knew that Shanghai always exacted her price in return for the good times and the profits, and Joe was now going to have to pay it.