Man With Two Faces

by Don Swaim

  After driving us to Albuquerque, the Fairchild in tow, Bobby adamantly refused our offers of compensation.

  Diana told him, “Here’s my address. Bobby, you have a standing invitation to visit us in New York anytime. We’ll show you the sights, take you to a Broadway show, escort you to the great museums, and treat you to the Rainbow Room. Our door is always open.”

  “Thanks, ma’am, but we’re not allowed to leave the reservation. That’s a joke.”

  With Hot Mama stashed at West Mesa Airport for repairs, Diana and I checked into the Hotel Villa Condesa, tucked away on Romero Street near Old Town Plaza and San Felipe Neri Church. All adobe with beamed ceilings, tile floors, and hammered-tin chandeliers, the hostelry suited our sense of aesthetics, as did the neighboring buildings of stucco, terracotta, and wood. The Santa Fe Railroad Station was a quick cab ride away, and, of course, Route 66 would lead us to about anywhere between LA and Chicago.

  From the lobby I phoned person-to-person to Harry Wong in Manhattan.

  “Tokol, you’ve gotta come back now.”

  “Your father?”

  “Pop’s okay, but he boarded up his laundry and went into hiding. The tong’s killed at least five Cantonese, and I found out there’ve been even more murders no one knows about. The killers are hiding the corpses so few outside of Chinatown are aware of the feud. We’re a closed community here.”

  “Harry, I don’t know how long we’ll be stuck in Albuquerque. Our plane made an emergency landing, so it’s in the shop for a fix.”

  “Why do you have to be there, Tokol? I thought planes were Diana’s gig.”

  Point taken.

  She agreed to stay in New Mexico to nurse Hot Mama while I caught a commercial flight back. As much as I flew, I was at heart a rail man, adoring the elegance of the Broadway and Twentieth Century limiteds, loving the tactile vibrations under my heels of a Pullman, steel against steel. But Tokoloshe and Son Cleansing Services had disinfecting obligations around the globe, so there were times you just hadda go faster.

  Back in New York, it didn’t take me long to realize Captain Moishe O’Hara of the Fifth Precinct in Chinatown was a variegated piece of work. His brogue was as thick as his brawn, and he couldn’t resist the occasional Yiddish obscenity.

  “Sure’n, I remember you from the Policeman’s Ball, Mr. Tokoloshe, and that generous contribution you made to the Patrolmen and Detectives Widows and Orphans Asylum on Staten Island, but I guarantee you there ain’t no tong war in Chinatown. They’re just rumors. The tong wars is all in the past.”

  “I understand there have been at least five murders here in your precinct in the past week, maybe more.”

  “Random violence. Happens every day in a big city. At least we ain’t as bad as Chicago.”

  “But these have all been in Chinatown.”

  “Pure coincidence.”

  “Are you familiar with an opium and gambling den on Mott Street, Captain?”

  “Street, yes, opium and gambling, no.”

  “Then how about the Chinese Celestial Benevolent Security and Safety League?”

  “A group of outstanding young Asians doing decent work on behalf of their people, and assisting them what recently immigrated to our shores.”

  “I have some names—”

  “Got all the names I need.”

  “Captain, you don’t seem to know much about what’s happening in your own precinct.”

  “And you don’t seem to know when to shut your trap. Sergeant, come in here and show this ku fartzer to the door.”

  “You seem a bit sensitive about all this, Captain.”

  “Tokoloshe, you keep up this crap and you’ll find your own corpse in some alley with an axe decoratin’ your skull.”

  “That a threat?”

  “A friendly warning, kafin kup. For your own good. Chinatown’s a different world for foreign devils like you.”

  “Foreign devil?”

  “That’s what the Chinese call Caucasians.”

  “But you’re a…”

  “I got special dispensation.”

  It was clear I was going have to deal with the tong war without the help of O’Hara and the Fifth Precinct.

  Garbed as a longshoreman, with a patch over one eye, I called on Harry at his Doyers Street law office, empty save for Harry, a second-hand desk, and two flimsy chairs.

  “Jeez, Tokol, I didn’t recognize you at first,” he said.

  “I’m disguised because things could go south for you if the tong connects us.”

  “Did you speak to O’Hara?”

  “The man’s a pill. Offered me squat. Listen, Harry, I’ve got to get into that tong headquarters on Mott Street to ask questions. How do I do it without raising suspicions? I can’t just knock at the door and be welcomed in.”

  “Go as some rich, white dude eager to play fan-tan or eat opium. Caucasians are tolerated if they bring enough cash, and I mean a lot. I happen to know that Baldrick Ponsby Smythe, a director of First Guaranty Credit Trust Corporation is a regular. So’s Max Ziegfeld, a cousin of the late Broadway impresario. Also the thoroughbred owner Alistaire van der Potts.”

  “Say, I know Smythe. Bailed him out of a big jam once. He owes me. I think I’ll use old Baldy as a referral. Whether he knows it or not.”

  “It’ll be dangerous, Tokol. More than one person has gone inside the building and never come out. It’s said the basement’s a graveyard. There are even rumors that Ambrose Bierce is buried there.”

  “I can take care of myself, Harry. Haven’t played fan-tan since my days in Singapore. I’m a bit rusty but up for it.”

  On Mott Street I knocked at the barred door of the Chinese Celestial Benevolent Security and Safety League, identified only by a small, nondescript sign containing Chinese characters, and in a boarded window a placard in English reading STOP JAPANESE AGGRESSION, a sign appearing in every store window in Chinatown.

  As I waited, stereotypical images of ancient China flowed through my mind: peasants bending knee-deep in water harvesting rice; teeming, narrow streets swarming with jinrikshas pulled by coolies; silhouetted junks at sunset with their high poops and battened sails; the Great Wall snaking into infinity; fat, grinning, self-satisfied Buddhas; fierce warlords, draped in robes, sitting with legs apart, surrounded by concubines.

  Finally, the door opened somewhat wider than a crack and a scowling Asian man peered out.

  “What you want?”

  “Nín hao, as we used to say in Macau. Smythe sent me.”

  “Who?

  “Baldrick Ponsby Smythe, one of your regulars.”

  “Who you?”

  “They call me Tokol. I’m here for the fan-tan.”

  Suspicious, the man looked into the street, right, then left. Concluding that I was alone he let me in.

  I said, “May I ask your name, sir?”

  “Me Fang Chen.”

  “Do I call you Mr. Chen or Mr. Fang?”

  He ignored my question with a snort.

  “You give me two thousand up front,” he said. “Then you play fan-tan.”

  “I didn’t think to bring that much with me.”

  “I take check.”

  Which I wrote on my numbered-only account at Banque Cantonale de Genève.

  Seemingly satisfied, he led me from the outer room to a flight of stairs. I noticed several torpedoes in coolie clothes eyeing me suspiciously, looking for trouble. Although I was packing iron I wasn’t sure if I could shoot my way back out to the street, outnumbered as I was. On the second floor we passed a succession of small rooms to a larger one where fan-tan was underway at several tables. The players were mostly silent and intent, the air torpid with cigar smoke and the odor of hops and baijiu. A doll-like Asian serving-wench kept the booze flowing.

  Fan-tan was a deceptively simple game dating to Chinese antiquity. It involved a banker, a bowl, and a handful of dried beans. Players bet on the number of beans under the bowl while gradually the banker divided the beans
as the players gambled on the remainder.

  Nobody acknowledged me as I took my seat, but I surreptitiously studied the faces of the players. I recognized one of LaGuardia’s deputy mayors, the sanitation commissioner, two state assemblymen, and the pastor of the Seventh Avenue Presbyterian Church.

  Fang Chen himself sat in as the banker at my table.

  It was only after I began to win that the other players took notice of me, in particular an idiot I knew from the newspaper society sections: Heathcote Whitney Hathaway. He got drunker and more belligerent as his losses mounted. I estimated he was out by thousands.

  And that ain’t beans.

  Millions of Americans were starving, literally, but Hathaway made no concession to the Depression, and was the type to squander a fortune only to forget about it the next day. He was also testimony to the fact that being rich did not make one smart.

  Suddenly, he stood, knocking over the table, sending the bowl and beans flying, and pulled a gun from his coat. It was an antique Nepperhan .31 percussion pocket revolver with a blue silver-plated barrel. My beloved weapons purveyor Gaetano Gagliano, had one for sale recently, and likely this was it.

  “This game’s crooked!” he shouted, voice slurred, as he fired a shot into the pressed-tin ceiling. “I never took a loss like this before, so I know it’s fixed.”

  The players scattered in panic, some ducking under tables, other running for the stairs.

  Hathaway yelled at Fang Chen, “Fork over my dough or I’ll shoot you in your yellow belly. You’re not taking advantage of me just because I’m a Hathaway. It’s the principle on account of I could buy every man here in a heartbeat.”

  As if Hathaway knew something about principles.

  Fang Chen kowtowed and handed Hathaway a wad of bills.

  He counted the money in satisfaction and then threw it into air, the bills fluttering down, before returning the Nepperhan to his coat pocket.

  “Keep your damned dough, rice ball. Last time I’ll gamble in this place. I’m siccing the dicks on you. Going to close this join down.”

  Hathaway may or may not have been right that the game was crooked, but he was unassailably and incontrovertibly correct he would never play at Fang Chen’s again.

  He did not reach the door.

  Fang Chen neatly, and with butcher-like professionalism, split the back of Hathaway’s patrician skull in half with a meat cleaver.

  The fan-tan players, those left in the room, watched gaping as Fang Chen’s minions swiftly scooped up the bills and the revolver, removed the body with the cleaver still protruding from what was once Hathaway’s brain, and mopped up the blood. Then the tables were reset and the games continued. Just as silently and intently as before.

  Why should a little murder disrupt fan-tan?

  I went on to enjoy significant winnings, although I suspect Fang Chen let me score as an incentive to return. As I was leaving I encountered him in the hall.

  I said, “Are you aware you just murdered an important New York society figure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Questions will be asked.”

  “What Mr. Hathaway say about the police not permitted, even though we have arrangement with them.”

  “What happens when his body’s discovered?”

  “Will not happen. We have hidden place for it.”

  “But there were lots of witnesses, including a deputy mayor. Someone will—”

  “No one will talk. The secrets of house will remain here, and if anyone, yellow or white, reveals our private matters, he and every member of his family, children to grandparents, will die agonizing death. It is the way of the tong. Did not Mr. Baldrick Ponsby Smythe explain this to you before you came?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “Then this will put you on notice, Mr. Tokol.”

  I had a lot to process. Hathaway’s murder, names to register, faces to remember, Fang Chen’s threat.

  As I prepared to go down the stairs, I smelled the mystical fumes of the pipe, familiar to me from my days in the Orient. I followed my nose and entered a long, narrow warren, quite dark, where I saw a series of wooden bunks on which men were reclining. Some were asleep, others on their sides smoking elongated pipes.

  Fang Chen approached me from behind.

  “You like?”

  He held a pipe, needle, lamp, and a jade box carved with images of kewpie doll maidens and fire-breathing dragons, which I knew contained opium.

  I recalled from my previous voyages in pipe dreaming, that while smoking, all my ominous and apocalyptic thoughts vanished, and I’d find myself floating as if reaching Valhalla, the true nirvana, not some farfetched theological theory for it. But now I resisted. I wasn’t ready to soar to an opiated-engineered heaven, particularly one that required ever increasing return visits.

  “Maybe next time, Fang Chen.”

  “You come back. Me like you. Bring money.”

  About to depart the opium lair, I observed, apparently comatose on one of the cribs, a bulky gent who appeared familiar. Looking closer I saw he was Police Captain Moishe O’Hara.

  Fang Chen ushered me to Mott Street where, after the semi-darkness inside, the afternoon glare blinded me like an explosion of suns.

  I relayed my experience at the Chinese Celestial Benevolent Security and Safety League to Harry Wong as I sat on a wobbly chair across from his desk.

  He said, “You risked your life, Tokol, but, obviously, not as much as the late Heathcote Whitney Hathaway.”

  “Fang Chen’s isn’t the place for a drunken outburst, no matter how rich you are.”

  “Hathaway’s body will never be found. I understand the number of tong murders is escalating, but the police list the victims only as missing persons. Even the press isn’t reporting it.” He sighed. “Tokol, this has gotten too big for either of us. Maybe it was a mistake involving you.”

  “No, Harry, the key is getting the fuzz to move. I now have something on Moishe O’Hara that might make him act, whether the prick likes it or not.”

  Diana returned to New York sooner than expected after solo-flying Hot Mama, her engines mended, from Albuquerque.

  She said, “It was a failure of the magneto switch, which came loose in flight due to a flawed bolt assembly. Yes, Tokee, darling, a stupid, defective bolt. The malfunction was no doubt made worse by the bird strike.”

  We celebrated her safe return on brownstone-lined Swing Street, where the jazz joints shouldered both sides from Fifth to Sixth. Leon & Eddie’s, the Famous Door, Jimmy Ryan’s, the Spotlight Club, and the most celebrated, the Onyx Club at 62 West 52nd.

  Without the hearts and souls of black musicians, jazz wouldn’t exist, and Swing Street was one of the few fully-integrated places in America. Diana and I were regulars at the Onyx, a one-time speakeasy, where the cigarette smoke was as engulfing as a London fog. Its proprietor, ex-bootlegger Joe Helbock, always gave us a ringside table.

  “Tokol, Diana,” he said, “you guys ain’t been in for awhile.”

  “We flew cross country, Joe.” I said. “Had a little mishap somewhere over New Mexico. But we’re back in good form.”

  “Gotta surprise for you. Guess who’s gonna be jamming after hours tonight? Bunny Berigan, Art Tatum, Benny Goodman, Django Reinhardt, Lester Young, and Maxine Sullivan. Ya won’t find that lineup in one place again.”

  Deep into morning, sated and orgasmically fulfilled by the healing genius known as jazz, I laid out for Diana a plan to end Chinatown’s tong war.

  “It’s tricky, Tokee,” she said. “Lots could go wrong.”

  “I need to return to Fang Chen’s when Captain O’Hara’s in the building. I learned from Harry that O’Hara’s always there on Friday afternoons, sometimes doesn’t leave for two days.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “Impossible. The only women allowed are Chinese concubines, harlots, and wenches.”

  “I’m superb at disguises. Have you ever seen me as a gun moll?”


  “I have a better idea. Camouflage yourself as Apple Mary selling Granny Smiths, Cortlands, and Winesaps across the street. Use your Graflex Speed Graphic concealed under a babushka. I need photos of anyone entering or leaving, particularly O’Hara.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll be inside with my Minox Riga.”

  Unlike Diana’s weighty Speed Graphic, the favorite of my cigar-chomping press photographer pal Weegee, the Minox Riga was tiny, easy to conceal. Mine was an experimental model personally assembled by its inventor Walter Zapp, a genius I’d met while doing hush-hush work in Tallin, Estonia. Zapp’s camera had a 15mm f/3.5 lens using 8x11mm film, but with extraordinary resolution—even in the dark.

  Zapp, eyes bulging behind his thick glasses, told me at the time, “I decided cameras were too heavy, so I built one that could fit in the palm of my hand. And you’re holding it, Tokol. Just don’t get caught.”

  I knew Zapp’s camera would one day become the rage among spies.

  Fang Chen met me when I returned to the Chinese Celestial Benevolent Security and Safety League, extracted an enormous roll of cash from me, and, at my behest, led me to the place of pipe dreams. As expected, Moishe O’Hara was there, serenely smoking, the room otherwise empty. I took the crib next to his.

  “Hello, Captain, mind if I join you?”

  A mumbled non-response.

  Fang Chen assembled all my accoutrements, watching as I fired the lamp, tamped the opium into the pipe’s bowl, holding the bowl over the flame, inhaling, allowing the smoke to curl, and experiencing the first sensation of euphoria.

  “Ah, you do this before,” he said.

  “I’m an old China hand.”

  Soon I heard a ringing in my ears like that of celestial bells. But I warded off the overwhelming compulsion to take another puff. I was on the job.

  “I leave now,” Fang Chen said. “Go to fan-tan room. You smoke. Enjoy.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Fang Chen,” I said raising the pipe to my lips.

  After he slipped out, I spoke softly to my somnolent neighbor while he lay on his side in the adjoining bunk.