The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

by Ross Thomas

  Carmingler picked up a pencil and poked idly at the revolver. “Nasty things, aren’t they?” he said.

  “I liked the part about the twelve-year-old boy,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “There wasn’t any.”

  “No?”

  “No. It wasn’t even Star Chamber. Not even that. It was all laid on before you got here. It was locked in.”

  “You disagree with the verdict?”

  “The method maybe. Not the verdict.”

  “The means,” Carmingler said. “You don’t like the means.” He picked up his pipe and got it going again. “You don’t really believe that we’d leave something like this to chance or whimsy?”

  “Why not?” I said. “It would match everything else. Blend right in.”

  Carmingler nodded and looked out the window. Another new building was going up. Hong Kong was booming. “There’re a couple of things I really like about old Vicker,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Well, first of all he lies better than you do.”

  “Better than anybody.”

  “Secondly, his reports.”

  “What about them?”

  “Very well written,” Carmingler said. “Damned fine reading, in fact. It’s a pity that there was hardly a word of truth in any of them.”

  “Why press about the gun?” I said. “That wasn’t necessary.”

  “Yours?”

  “Yes?”

  “I was told to.”

  “You already knew.”

  Carmingler nodded, picked up a pencil again, and used it to shove the short barrel of Vicker’s revolver back and forth. “You still don’t like these things much, do you?”

  “No.”

  “All because of your wife.” It wasn’t a question.

  “That had a lot to do with it, but you knew that.”

  “I had to ask.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “They thought you might have gotten over it, but you haven’t.”

  “No.”

  We sat there in the office for a while, neither of us saying anything. Then Carmingler shoved Vicker’s gun over to me with the pencil. “Here,” he said, “you can lock this one away with yours. I don’t think you’ll ever use one again.”

  “No,” I said, “I probably won’t.”

  CHAPTER 16

  It must have been freezing inside Bridge House prison the day that Captain Toyofuku came for Gorman Smalldane and me. He really didn’t come for me, but Smalldane insisted that I be permitted out of the cell for the first time in three months, and Toyofuku simply nodded his agreement. He didn’t speak. It was the first decent thing that I had seen any of the Japanese do and I should have noted the date, but all I can remember is that it was sometime in March, 1942.

  Escorted by two bundled-up guards, we were led to a small room on the second floor of Bridge House. It was warmer there and Toyofuku motioned us to a couple of chairs. He sat behind a table, stripped off his gloves, and produced a package of cigarettes, offering one to Smalldane.

  “How about the kid?” Smalldane said, taking a cigarette. “He hasn’t had a smoke in three months.”

  Toyofuku looked at me, shook his head sadly, and offered me a cigarette. I accepted it with a grateful sitting-down-type bow.

  After we were all lighted up, Toyofuku gazed at Smalldane and said, “You’ve got a lot of big-shot friends in the States, don’t you?” His accent was pure California, which meant that it had about as much regional character as a bowl of cold oatmeal.

  Smalldane picked it up. “I’ll make two guesses. The first is UCLA. The second is Southern Cal.”

  “Berkeley,” Toyofuku said. “Class of thirty-eight. Your son’s too young to smoke.”

  “That’s what I’ve told him.”

  “Slap the shit out of him a couple of times and he’ll stop. It’s not the Japanese way, but it works.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  Toyofuku nodded approvingly. “Now let’s not go through how I was caught in Japan when the war broke out and was forced into the army. I wasn’t. I joined in 1940. I should make major next month. I like it fine and with a few breaks we’ll keep a lot of what we’ve already taken. Not the Philippines necessarily, but maybe Indochina, Malaya, the East Indies, and some of the islands.”

  “What about China?” Smalldane said.

  “Nobody can take China.”

  “Treason.”

  “Make the most of it,” Toyofuku said and smiled for the first time. “But as I said you’ve got a lot of big-shot friends in the States. So you’re on the list. We were going to shoot you.”

  “Why?” Smalldane said.

  “You wrote nasty things about us in Manchouku in 1932. Then you wrote some more nasty things when you came back in thirty-nine. We’ve got long memories, but you’ve got big-shot friends. If we hadn’t agreed to put you on the list, then they were going to take one of our bankers off. He’s in New York now and we’d very much like him to come home.”

  “This is the repatriation list?” Smalldane said.

  “Right. It’s divided into five classifications: diplomatic and consular officials, correspondents, missionaries, Canadians, and Latin Americans. Also some businessmen.”

  “When do we leave?”

  “That presents a problem,” Toyofuku said. “I studied business administration at Berkeley. The stock market fascinated me. So did the commodity market. I learned all about hedging.”

  Smalldane grunted and ground out his cigarette. I still had a couple of puffs left. “How much?”

  “Three thousand for you. Two thousand for the kid.”

  “What about that banker in New York?”

  “You could always come down with pneumonia and die. They’d just exchange him for somebody else.”

  “I haven’t got five thousand.”

  “You can get it. Just write a note.” Toyofuku took a pad from a pocket and handed it to Smalldane along with a thick fountain pen. “She’s still in good health and prosperous. She married, you know.”

  Smalldane looked up. “I didn’t.”

  “A Frenchman. She’s now a Vichy citizen. Sort of an ally of mine.”

  Smalldane finished the note and handed it to Toyofuku, who read it and said, “It tugs at the heart strings.”

  “I gave it my all,” Smalldane said.

  “You’ll sail in two or three months on the Conte Verde. It’s Italian. The Gripsholm will sail out of New York with our people. You’ll rendezvous at Lourenço Marques in Portuguese East Africa and trade ships. The Gripsholm will take you to New York, the Conte Verde will bring our people to Japan. Probably Kobe.” He tapped the note that Smalldane had written. “If this works, I’ll let her see you off.”

  “How many bets are you hedging?” Smalldane asked.

  “Twenty or so. It’s my personal share in the greater co-prosperity sphere.”

  “I think you think you’ll lose.”

  Toyofuku shrugged. It must have been something he’d learned in San Francisco. Possibly from an Italian girlfriend. “If we do, we’ll bounce back. And with a hundred thousand bucks I’ll be right on the ground floor.”

  “You know something, Captain?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m not really so sure that you could keep anyone off that repatriation list.”

  Toyofuku picked up the note from the table and offered it back to Smalldane. “Would you like to bet your lives against it?”

  Smalldane shook his head. “No, and I don’t want to play poker with you either.”

  Toyofuku smiled for the second time. “I didn’t think that you would.”

  Except for the widespread bribing, the International Red Cross handled the whole thing out of Geneva. Only three of us left the cell at Bridge House in late May: Smalldane, me, and the redheaded man who claimed to be a Mexican. They took us to General Hospital, where we were examined by a British doctor. Except for the lice, he complimented us on our health an
d then gave us a series of inoculations which made me sick. They also gave us some new clothing and Smalldane grinned when I insisted that I be permitted to change mine in complete privacy.

  “He’s very shy,” he said to a nurse.

  I wasn’t really. I needed the privacy to shift my hoard of dollars and pounds from the lice-infested money belt to the pockets of my new clothing. I distributed it evenly to avoid bulges.

  We stayed in the hospital for ten days and then a truck came to take us to the Conte Verde. Smalldane was carrying our vaccination certificates and an authorization that allowed us to draw $100 each from the ship’s purser for incidental expenses. Before we left for the ship, Smalldane borrowed $10 from me to spend on a wardboy, a born scrounger, who came back an hour later with the order: six pairs of dice.

  The Conte Verde was one of the better Italian liners that sailed the Pacific route to the Orient and had been caught in Shanghai on December 8. It carried an Italian crew of about 300, and would sail for East Africa with a contingent of Japanese foreign-office officials aboard to make sure that Japan’s new allies didn’t head straight for San Francisco. None of the Italian crew seemed overly patriotic.

  Tante Katerine met us at the dock with a basket of fruit, booze, cigarettes, and her new husband, a wisp of a man, about sixty-five, whom she introduced as M’sieu Gauvreau in French and as Mr. Soft stick in English, assuring us that he didn’t understand a word.

  “He does something in the Vichy government,” Tante Katerine said, holding my hand in both of hers, “but nothing in bed.” She shrugged, released my hand, and patted her new husband on the cheek. He smiled, delighted at any attention.

  “Lucifer’s too thin and you owe me eleven thousand dollars,” she said to Smalldane. “That Captain Toyofuku was such a nice man, but greedy.”

  “There’s a redheaded Mexican on board,” I said.

  “Don’t trust him,” Tante Katerine said automatically. “When do you intend to repay me, Gorm?”

  “After the war.”

  “Yes,” she said and smiled sadly. “After the war.”

  “What are your plans, Kate?” Smalldane said.

  “Fatten Lucifer up,” she said. “He’s far too thin.”

  “He’s been in jail. What are your plans?”

  She turned to smile at her husband and to tell him in French that he wouldn’t be shivering if he had worn his long underwear as she had suggested. He replied that the weather was too warm and that it made him itch. She said that she had no desire to become a widow and he said that he would wear it from now on even if it did make him itch. It was all very domestic and it was one of those conversations about nothing that somehow become inextricably stuck in memory. It’s really the only thing I remember that M. Gauvreau ever said.

  “I have no plans, Gorm,” Tante Katerine said, turning from her husband. “He talks about returning to France, but he’s only dreaming. They have no use for him there. My only plans are to keep alive. As long as he lives, the Japanese will let me alone. Just promise me one thing.”

  “What?” Smalldane said.

  “Take care of Lucifer. Get him safely to America,”

  “All right.”

  “See that he brushes his teeth.”

  “All right.”

  “Make him change his underwear.”

  “All right.”

  “Lucifer.”

  “Yes, Tante Katerine.”

  “Look after Gorman.”

  “Yes, ma am.”

  “Don’t let him drink too much.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Keep him away from the poules. The bad ones at least.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She leaned down to kiss me and then fussed with my clothing, straightening it here and there. “I’ll miss you, Lucifer. Don’t trust that redheaded Mexican. Stay away from him.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She turned back to Smalldane. “I don’t want to come aboard, Gorm. I don’t think I could.”

  “I know.”

  He kissed her then. It was a long, friendly, warm, passionate, memorable kiss that I watched with delight. M. Gauvreau turned his head and cleared his throat, but no one paid him any attention.

  A harried official from the Swiss Consulate stopped to tell us to get aboard. Tante Katerine backed away from Smalldane, still holding his hands. I think she was doing Ginger Rogers then. “Come back to me, Gorm,” she said. “Come back to me in Shanghai.”

  Smalldane winked at her, gathered her up in his arms again, and then smacked her sharply on the butt. M. Gauvreau hissed in some breath.

  “We’ll both come back, Kate.”

  She nodded, her right fist to her mouth, a few tears streaming down her cheeks, but not so many that they would ruin her makeup. She waved a little with her left hand as we started up the gangplank. When we were halfway up, Smalldane whispered to me, “Don’t ruin her scene. Turn and wave at her and rub your knuckles in your eyes like you’re crying.”

  I turned and waved and knuckled my left eye.

  “Gorm!” Tante Katerine shouted.

  Smalldane turned. “What?” he yelled.

  “Make him change his underwear.”

  It was the last thing she said, the last time I ever saw her.

  We sailed out of Shanghai on June 8, 1942, carrying 1,036 missionaries, both ecclesiastical and medical, nurses, State Department types, correspondents, most of whom Smalldane knew, children, wives, assorted businessmen with varying degrees of influence, a handful of Canadians, two spies (or so Smalldane said), a smuggled kitten, and one redheaded Mexican.

  We sailed for Singapore where the Japanese liner Asama Maru joined us on June 10. She was carrying North and South Americans from Korea, Japan, and Manchuria. She was just out of Hong Kong, where she had stopped to pick up some more U.S. and Canadian citizens. As soon as we had cleared Singapore and were sailing south toward the Dutch East Indies and the Coral Sea, Smalldane made me his proposition. We spent the next two days going over figures before I agreed to finance the venture that eventually was to launch Smalldane Communications, Inc.

  It was a crap game, of course, and when Smalldane got through explaining the odds to me, he made a projection of the profit potential

  “We’ve got about a thousand persons aboard,” he said. “Let’s say that three hundred of them are gamblers. When we reach Lourenço Marques the passengers aboard the Asama Maru will double up with us on the Gripsholm. That’ll give us a total of some sixteen hundred passengers. Out of that there should be five hundred hard-nosed gamblers—the kind who’ll bet their last dime. Now we know that they’ve all got the hundred-dollar draw from the purser. So one hundred times five hundred is what?”

  “Fifty thousand,” I said.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “We’re rich.”

  “But it is still gambling,” I said.

  “Of course it’s gambling.”

  “In that event one must lose so that the other might win,” I said, switching to French to help the logic of my thoughts along.

  “Oui, M’sieu Petit Merde,” Smalldane said.

  “Then I stand the chance to lose my money, and you much face. I would very much like it the other way around.”

  “The odds,” Smalldane said. “Remember the odds. We bet only against the dice. We bank the game. Time is on our side. Sixty to seventy-five days. Maybe three months.”

  “The risk is great.”

  “The rewards are greater.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “I have been in deep conversation with the redheaded Mexican,” Smalldane said in Cantonese. “He is a man of much wealth but strange tastes. He longs for you, but is shy. He has offered me a modest sum to—”

  “When do we start the game?” I said.

  “Tonight,” he said. “I was lying about the Mexican, kid.”

  “I know,” I said. “Already he sleeps with two of the nurses from Hong Kong.”

  The wire services
were the first to fall. AP dropped a little more than $300; UP was good for $275, and INS had only $100 to contribute. Smalldane lent it all back to them on markers at ten percent interest for the remainder of the trip. Collectively, they lost somewhere around $2,000. The doctors and businessmen were next. My job was to return the dice to the proper shooter and quote the odds.

  “Two to one no four,” I said to a portly physician from New York.

  “Hard way, dice,” the portly physician said on his knees and bounced them against the bulkhead for a seven. Smalldane gathered up the money. I handed the dice to the next shooter. By the time we arrived in Lourenço Marques on July 23, 1942, the Conte Verde crapshooters were broke, we were $21,795 in the black and anxious for the fresh meat aboard the Asama Maru.

  The Swedish passenger liner Gripsholm was already docked at Lourenço Marques when the Conte Verde and the Asama Maru arrived and docked on either side of her. The crap game was suspended until the new supply of gamblers assembled on the Gripsholm. I wandered up to the deck while the rest of the passengers were packing and getting ready to debark. A Japanese boy of about my age was leaning over the rail of the Gripsholm, spitting into the water. He looked up, and we stared at each other.

  “How’s the food on that tub?” he said.

  “Lousy,” I said. “How’s it on yours?”

  “Lousy.”

  He leaned over and spat into the water again. I did the same thing from my rail.

  “Where you from?” he said.

  “Shanghai. Where you from?”

  “New York.”

  We played spit in the ocean again.

  “You American?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess. You Japanese?”

  He nodded slowly and spat one more time. “That’s what they tell me,” he said.

  The crap game started up two days after we left Lourenço Marques bound for Rio, and by the time we had rounded the Cape of Good Hope, the informal gaming firm of Smalldane and Dye was $39,792 ahead. I helped Smalldane count it. When we were finished he looked at me. “Let’s quit winners, Lucifer.”