by Don Swaim
“You don’t remember me, Captain?”
“Fercockt.”
Which I happened to know was Yiddish for “all fucked up.”
“What would your superiors say if they knew you were an opium eater, a habitué of a notorious gambling den, and a man whose been bought by the tong to hide their war?”
He attempted to sit up, trying to focus through half-lidded eyes. His voice was slurred.
“You’re that Tokoo or somethin’. Some wise guy. You ain’t gonna get out of here alive.”
“Relax, Captain. Consider me an old buddy. Let’s smoke together to share all the joys of the immortal soporific.”
“Gay avek,” he said, telling me in mumbling, nearly incoherent Yiddish to go away.
“Shall I help re-light your dreamstick, Captain?”
Which I was more than delighted to do. O’Hara’s eyes glazed over.
With Fang Chen occupied at fan-tan, I took photos of the comatose captain with my Minox Riga from every angle and position, including close ups showing the opium pipe at his lips, the spittle running from his mouth, and his uniform with the badge and its number clearly visible.
Now, I had to get the hell out of there.
I pocketed the camera and put the opium paraphernalia aside, thinking I might slip out unnoticed. But nothing ever happens the way it’s supposed to.
“Where you go?”
Shit.
Fang Chen was back, and holding a meat clever at his side.
“I thought you were dealing fan-tan,” I said. “Don’t let me take you away.”
“You not smoking. Why you not smoke?”
“It just it occurred to me I have an appointment uptown on Vanderbilt Avenue with FDR’s Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau. Hank never makes a move without me. So I’ll have to come back later.”
“This not right. You gave me much money. No one leaves so soon. Mr. Baldrick Ponsby Smythe is in fan-tan room. He say he know you but never told you about this place.”
“Old Baldy’s forgetful, that’s all. Millionaires are like that. They hire other people to remember things for them.”
“You lie. Mr. Smythe never sent you here.”
“Maybe I will stay, Fang Chen. Just let me fire up the opium lamp. Ah, yes, there it goes, nice and hot. Very hot.”
“No like you no more. I put you away.”
He raised the clever, about to bring it down on me the way a butcher separates a pork shoulder. But I was too fast for him. I scooped up the red-hot opium lamp and flung it into his face. My hand was scorched, but not as badly burned as Fang Chen, with the oil-fueled flames blistering his eyes, blinding him, causing him to drop the clever.
He fell to the floor, screaming and writhing in agony, as I ran into the hall and down the stairs to the main floor, shouting, “Bangzhù! Bangzhù!” which I understood to be “Help! Help!” in Mandarin.
Instantly I was surrounded by coolie-clad goons.
“Upstairs, quick,” I said. “It’s Fang Chen. He’s been hurt by some sort of explosion. Go, go go.”
Upstairs they ran, while I scurried out the front door, absconding into the winding alleys of Chinatown. A close call. But I was conditioned to narrow escapes.
Later, I joined Diana for ngao yuk kau and tea at Woo Fat’s and described my adventure at the opium den.
“It took all my willpower not to take that second puff of poppy,” I told her.
“You’ve never been a slave to temptation.”
“Except for you.”
“Don’t get schmaltzy on me, Tokee, darling. How’s your hand?”
“Smarts, but I’ll survive.”
“That was so brave of you, picking up a hot lamp burning with oil. Let me kiss your hand for you.”
“Save it for tonight, dollface. Golly, I hope Fang Chen wasn’t seriously burned.”
“You’re all heart.”
“And what about your day, Apple Mary?”
“I took some superlative photographs of a variety of gangsters and gamblers entering and leaving Fang Chen’s, not the least of whom was Captain O’Hara himself. How about you?”
“My own pictures of him couldn’t be more compromising.”
“I’m sure he’ll be delighted to learn about it.”
That night we developed our film in Diana’s penthouse darkroom, blowing up the photos into quality oversized glossies. I made several sets.
“The next step is yours,” I told her. “Best I stay out of the picture, so to speak.”
When Diana, togged to the nines, went to the Fifth Precinct stationhouse to talk to O’Hara, she was ushered right in to his office.
She later gave me the low down.
“What can I do for you, miss?” O’Hara asked her.
“It’s more about what I can do for you.”
“Begorra, this is gettin’ interesting. Y’know, you’re one hell of a pip, lady. Should I close me office door?”
“It would be wise, Captain.”
O’Hara shut the door, then, leering, scooted behind his desk.
“I’ve something for you,” Diana said, as she removed from her purse a large envelope containing the photos, and put it in front of him.
“I like surprises,” he said. “French postcards? Heh, heh.”
O’Hara opened the envelope and saw himself in all of its unmitigated squalor.
“Oy gevalt! Where’d you get these?”
“That’s beside the point.”
“And you said you came because you could do somethin’ for me. Sure’n, it’s obvious you’re tryin’ to bleed me. Listen, sister, I’m gonna burn these photos and put you in handcuffs meself.”
“That wouldn’t be in your interest, Captain. You see, there’s more than one set. Are you familiar with the Beaux Arts clock in the lobby of the Astor Hotel in Times Square?”
“Who ain’t? So what?”
“If I’m not there in exactly one hour a friend will dispatch duplicate sets of these photos to all eight daily newspapers, the mayor, police commissioner, governor, attorney general, each state representative from New York City, J. Edgar Hoover—and, most important, Walter Winchell. So don’t even think about putting your paws on me.”
“If it’s long green you want, you damned nafka…”
“It’s not money. These are your instructions. You’re to meet with Harry Wong, a young lawyer who’s just opened a practice in Chinatown.”
“Ah ha. So it’s this ferkin’ Wong character who’s behind all this.”
“Harry knows nothing about the photos—or even that you’re directly mixed up with the gangs. But he’s an expert on the tongs, and he’s fully aware, despite your denials, that a deadly gang war is underway. He wants to end it, that’s all.
“So you’ll work with Harry in exposing the tong leaders, including Fang Chen and the bogus Chinese Celestial Benevolent Security and Safety League. Your men will raid it, put all inside under arrest, and ensure they’re brought to trial, thus bringing the tong war to an immediate close.
“Here’s a list of the names of everyone in the Mandarin tong faction, with many accompanying photographs. Oh, and you’ll want to dig in the basement of the Chinese Celestial Benevolent Security and Safety League. I think you’ll find a lot of important evidence, and perhaps even solve the mystery of a number of disappearances. But don’t step on the lime. It’s not good for shoe leather. Meanwhile, you may keep all the photos of yourself and the others. There are plenty more. All suitable for framing.”
I’d been afraid O’Hara might try to strong-arm her or worse before she could take a powder, but Diana insisted she was prepared, her blowgun-mini primed and ready in her purse for instant defense.
She split from the Fifth Precinct stationhouse unscathed, unruffled, and elegant, as usual.
The tong war came to an abrupt end with a police raid on the Chinese Celestial Benevolent Security and Safety League, scores of arrests, including Fang Chen, and the recovery of more bodies than the public ev
er dreamed. A few of the society gamblers, such as Baldrick Ponsby Smythe, turned state’s witnesses.
Despite the kink in his opium habit, Captain Moishe O’Hara was celebrated as a hero, praised by Winchell, upped to deputy chief, and was grand marshal of both the Jewish Great War Veterans parade, protesting the Nazi persecution of German Jews, and the St. Patrick’s Day parade.
Back at her penthouse, as I plotted my next mission, Diana and I toasted with daiquiris, which I learned to mix during my brief period as a rum runner out of Havana, which came to an end only after rival rum runners rammed our boat and sank it.
We were interrupted by her doorman, phoning from the lobby.
“Tokee, darling, you’ll never guess who’s on the way up.”
When she opened her door, in flooded the entire New Mexico Menchego family: kids, dogs, and Henrietta the chicken, who immediately went to investigate Diana’s pet king cobra Kyle. Sally’s autoharp dangled from a strap over her shoulder.
“Howdy, folks,” Bobby said, still wearing his regulation denim, boots, and straw. “We left the reservation. Y’all said your door was always open, so here we are.”
Diana said, “Bobby, so unexpected. How did you get here?”
“In the old pickup. Only had two flats. Sure is a lot of buildins’ in this burg. Say, which one is that there Rainbow Room you was talkin’ about?”
The Menchegos pitched their tent on the living room floor. Being a desert family they were unperturbed about Kyle. We showed them the sights, treated them to Shall We Dance with Astaire and Rogers, and introduced them to Winchell at Table 50 at the Stork Club.
Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. Let’s go to press.
Flash! Nazi Germany has become a threat to world peace. It’s criminal that a thug like Hitler could rise so high in politics. His hatred of the Israelites is contemptible, and when an assassin shoots him down no sane man will mourn. Meanwhile, to our shame, an isolationist movement is growing in America led by the Lone Ostrich, Charles A. Lindbergh, who is on my drop-dead list. I say to all you Nazi lovers in America, you Razis, your death threats against me won’t work. My pal J. Edgar Hoover’s got my back.
Flash! This reporter has learned that a Nazi spy ring is operating with impunity under our very noses, and yet the authorities seem to know nothing about it. But one man does: C.A. My Certain Acquaintance is putting his life on the line to bring down this abominable espionage conspiracy, and C.A is well aware of what the Nazis do when they catch an infiltrator in their midst.
…For Jergens Lotion, this is Walter Winchell wishing you lotions of love.
five
Nazis 1938
We weren’t at war with the Nazis. So why did Dedrick Leitner try to kill me?
Maybe because I got wind of Leitner’s sweet little spy ring? Still…
It all began at a new jazz club called Café Society opened by Barney Josephson, a newcomer to the city, in the basement of 2 Sheridan Square in the Village.
I was fond of the neighborhood, and once crashed at a pad on Carmine Street, sharing a mattress with Gaetano Gagliano, a nearsighted goombah crony caught up in the fracas between Joe The Boss Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano, who declared himself capo di tutti capi. That was in 1930, a tale for another time. Gaetano taught me all I knew about firepower.
Despite the hoards of uptown tourists crowding the watering holes and coffee houses in the narrow Village streets, one could live there mud cheap, which is why it drew so many down-and-outers pretending to be writers and artists, such as the poet Max Bodenheim. He wore dark glasses and claimed to be blind as he begged for coins at the edge of Washington Square, and from time to time I stuffed his tin cup.
Even though they hosed down the streets at night it was a dirty place.
You didn’t have to dress up to get a table at Café Society, so Diana and I dressed down, she in turban hat, puffed-sleeved shirt, and blue poplin palazzo pants—all of her own design; I in v-neck sweater, high-waisted, heavily-pleated plaids with extra cuffs, and my gat in an ankle holster.
There, the swells weren’t treated better than anyone else no matter how much folding green they dished out. The dive appointed a doorman, but was so egalitarian the patrons were required to open and close the doors themselves. It was the first club in New York outside of the jazz joints on West 52nd to dash racial barriers, so the bigots had to get their kicks elsewhere.
Barney was a young guy who rode into town with seven ones and a fifty-cent piece in his pocket—plus the argyles that dressed up a pair of snazzy shoes. His old man being a cobbler, Barney, as a fashion statement, wore patent leather, black-and-white wingtips.
Reared in Jersey, he formerly sold footwear at his family’s shop in Trenton. Barney had opening-night heebie-jeebies, so Diana and I sat with him as he confessed knowing more about soles and heels than cabarets.
“It bugged me that the only way blacks could visit a club outside of Harlem was to play in the band,” he said. “So I borrowed six grand and opened this joint. I call it a political cabaret with jazz, which is why that effigy of Hitler dangles from the ceiling over the Steinway.”
“Nice touch,” I said. I was impressed.
Barney billed himself as a saloon impresario.
“I’m not hiring a line of half-naked dancing girls or Negro comics who play on white stereotypes of blacks.”
Word got around. The opening night headliners were Billie Holiday and boogie woogie piano hotshot Big Joe Turner, while Jack Gilford, a comedian discovered by Borsch Belt comic Milton Berle, was MC.
The room, exceeding the official seating capacity of two-hundred ten, included Clare Boothe Luce, Tallulah Bankhead, Paul Robeson, and Orson Welles. I also recognized right-wing columnist Westbrook Pegler sitting at a table with a skinny creep who seemed to have shrunk inside his double-breasted worsted.
I loathed the horse-faced Pegler for every incendiary word that spewed from his poisoned pen. I had met the man at some dull society affair Diana dragged me to, and after he uttered ten words I was tempted to floor him. Somehow, however, I managed to appear more or less civil.
Big Joe Turner, a three-hundred pounder, floored us with “Roll ’em Pete,” “Low Down Dog,” and “It’s All Right, Baby,” while Billie slithered under our skins with “God Bless the Child,” “If Dreams Come True,” and “I Can’t Get Started.”
As we were leaving, we passed Pegler’s table, and he grabbed my sleeve, which made me want to shudder.
“Mr. Tokoloshe, do you remember me? We met at a party on Park Avenue. Had a lively chat, as I recall.”
“How could I forget, Pegler? We discussed that new term you coined in the World-Telegram, bleeding hearts, to describe liberals trying to make lynching a federal crime.”
“We have enough laws on the books. The states can handle themselves.”
“No doubt the black citizens of Mississippi are applauding your high-minded position.”
“I’m not totally in favor of extralegal executions, but there were only seven lynchings in the entire nation last year, which suggests the evil is being dealt with on a local level.”
“Only seven? Then that should satisfy those poor, dead souls—and their grieving families.”
“I’m beginning to think you may be a bleeding-heart liberal yourself, Mr. Tokoloshe.”
“Which by default must make me an admirer of Franklin and Eleanor.”
“Ah yes, Old Moosejaw and La Boca Grande. When Giuseppe Zangara attempted to murder Roosevelt in Miami five years ago, but shot the mayor of Chicago by mistake, clearly he assassinated the wrong man.”
“Just why are you here tonight, Pegler? Café Society doesn’t seem to be your kind of place. In fact, nothing in the Village does.”
“I’m attempting to know the reds better so I can characterize them more accurately in my column. My five-million readers crave to be informed.”
“And who’s your little pal in the big suit?”
“Meet
Herr Dedrick Leitner, originally from Germany, who is about to acquire his citizenship papers, and who wants to more suitably understand America’s odd cultural tastes.”
Leitner half rose, snapping his heels.
I said, “Then I’m sure Herr Leitner must be amused by the clever Hitler simulacrum suspended from the ceiling.”
Leitner, in a noticeable German accent, said, “Even I appreciate a little Jewish humor from time to time.”
I said, “Yeah, betcha old Adolph himself laughs at a good dirty joke—when he’s out on the town with Göring, Goebbels, and the boys.”
“Some may disparage Mr. Hitler, Mr. Tokoloshe,” Pegler said, “but the Fuehrer is the only man alive who can save the world from Bolshevism, and, of course, he’s getting the Jewish problem under control.”
“What Jewish problem?”
“Even you aren’t so naïve as to claim you don’t know.”
“No, Pegler, I don’t know, not being Jewish or anything else. I guess I’ll just have to read your column to find out—assuming I find it sufficiently sanitary to handle the newsprint on which it’s printed. Auf Wiedersehen.”
I was in a near fury as Diana and I emerged from the smoky warren into the crisp, Manhattan night. She clutched my arm.
“Easy, Tokee, darling, catch your breath. You did superbly. Never blew your wig once.”
“I did blow it. It just didn’t tilt.”
As we hunted for an uptown cab, she said, “Let me tell you something strange. I’ve seen that German man, Mr. Leitner, before. At the shop my seamstress operates on East Eighty-Second in Yorkville. Her name is Frieda Waxweiler, and she’s sewing some of my own designs for me.”
“Obviously, given her last name, she’s German.”
“Although she was born in The Bronx.”
“Yorkville is the city’s major German enclave.”
“Not to ignore all the Hungarians, Czechoslovaks, and Poles who also live there.”
“So you believe there’s a peculiar connection between Waxweiler and Leitner?”
“Frieda only sews women’s apparel, Tokee, and I’ve never seen a man in her shop—except him. There’s something else that’s odd. Every time I go in, I see lots of mail and packages from all over the globe. I can’t help but notice that the mail comes from faraway places like Argentina, Uruguay, France, Holland, Spain. Frieda’s a simple seamstress, a lovely older woman. Who would she know in all those countries?”
