by Paul French
Al Israel, Joe’s old mentor at the Del Monte, saw the Badlands mushroom around him, and the transition left him feeling exhausted. What had been a sweet thing became a world of extortion, violence, and gang war. As the Western Roads District became the Badlands, Al was confronted with a never-ending queue of those offering protection and wanting taxes—the Chinese puppet collaborators at their number 76 Jessfield Road fortress, the Kempeitai, rogue ronin, local lieu-maung on the make, and pi-seh chancers. He told them all to fuck off. He wasn’t paying. When the loafers and thugs associated with Cabbage Moh and the Fah Wah triad drug gangs wanted to sell dope in his joint, he slammed the door in their face; when the white-armband wearing representatives of the Kempeitai came demanding taxes, he refused to pay; when gangsters associated with number 76 wanted to run his roulette wheels for themselves, he laughed at them. Al was kicking sixty, but he hadn’t mellowed any. He was adamant and stubborn; Al Israel had run the Del Monte before any of these thugs came to town. He hadn’t paid the Green Gang when they put the squeeze on him, he’d sent the Corsican mob’s bogus Sûreté detectives packing, and he wasn’t paying any arriviste lowlife now. Al got Demon to beef up the protection on the door, put ex-SMP Sikh heavies on the street gates to allow in only genuine punters, and moved himself and Bertha into an apartment on the top floor to guard his nightly take. The demands got more vocal; every night troublemakers tried to bust in, tear the place up, destroy business, scare the customers, force Al to sell to them. He saw them all off, till that August night.
They bury Al at the Jewish cemetery run by the Shanghai Chevra Kadisha, up on Baikal Road in Y’Poo. The great and the good of the Shanghai rackets travel north across the Soochow Creek, motoring slowly through Hongkew in black suits, to see him off. Bertha stands over the grave while Al’s legions of friends and customers crowd round the turned earth: fellow members of Jack’s Town baseball team, the old-time Portuguese and American gangsters who’ve known him from the start, the high hats of the Canidrome where he hung out before work sipping champagne. The Natashas who’d danced in his Del Monte chorus lines hang back so as not to annoy Bertha, who has eyed them warily over the years. Joe is a pallbearer, as is Demon, now running the Del Monte solo. Swiss thief Elly Widler, Sam Levy from the Venus, Mickey O’Brien, and Jack Riley make up the numbers and help them carry the coffin.
All the old-school Shanghai Jewish nightlife crew follow behind—Al Wiengarten, who came down from Tientsin, Sol Greenberg from the Casanova, Fred Stern and Joe Klein who ran the Elite, Monte Berg from the Little Club, Berlin refugee Freddy Kaufmann from the Cathay Tower nightclub, every Yiddisher bar and cabaret owner from Wayside and Broadway to Frenchtown and the Western Roads. Graveside, Bertha is distraught; she has to be held up and supported to stop her from sinking at the knees in grief into the Y’Poo dirt. But canny Al had invested thirty years of Avenue Haig profits in diamonds, kept in a bank vault in California; she can return home grieving but rich, and needs nothing except the safebox number.
Just two days after the Farren–Riley deal is struck, here is a stark reminder to any who thought Shanghai’s Western Roads would be easy money: the foreign joints of the Badlands all pay their taxes, no exceptions. Any attempts to avoid payment to the Badlands powers that be, to bar the drug dealers they sanction to trade in the Badlands, would be met with a deadly response.
* * *
At the end of September, Demon sees Bertha off at the docks on an evacuation ship back Stateside; the boys have made sure she travels first class. Sam Levy arranges for the Manila Rhythm Boys to form up dockside and play Al’s favourite tunes for her as the ship slips its moorings and heads downriver to the East China Sea. Back on the Avenue Haig, Al’s murder proves to be just the start of a downward spiral. Al, the longtime survivor, was the first victim of the Badlands, but far from the last.
The war for China continues. Generalíssimo Chiang Kai-shek organizes the Free China resistance from the wartime capital of Chungking at the head of the Yangtze. The Japanese Air Force bombs the city nightly, but it’s a natural fortress of rock. In the run-up to the ‘Double Ten’—October 10, Free China’s National Day—Generalíssimo-loyal guerillas ramp up their activites. A puppet official is shot dead by an unknown sniper as part of the covert battle across the city. Criminals take advantage of the chaos, and on Frenchtown’s Rue du Consulat two employees of an import-export firm that refused to pay protection money are horrifically injured by bombs lobbed through the front door. Three days later hand grenades are tossed into a crowd on the Szechuen Road Bridge, wounding a dozen civilians. Why? Nobody knows. On September 30, 1938, Free China scores a major victory with the assassination of Tang Shao-yi, whom General Doihara of Japan had hoped would become China’s compliant puppet president. Tang is gunned down in his Frenchtown living room by Free China hitmen posing as antique sellers and offering him looted treasure.
SMP and puppet thugs trade shots on Jessfield Road, killing two cops. Commissioner Bourne orders all SMP men in the Western Roads District to patrol in groups, with safety catches off. The puppets squat in several big houses along Jessfield Road on either side of number 76, fill them with newly deputised and armed thugs, and build sandbagged machine-gun emplacements on the street. On the other side of the Badlands, they occupy a Formosan Islander–run gambling joint near the Del Monte, install more number 76 guns-for-hire, and put an additional squeeze on the Hwa-Wei lottery parlours and dope dens.
The violence drags on through the winter. Another hit man narrowly misses killing puppet Shanghai mayor Fu Xiao’an, titular Chinese bossman of the Western Roads casinos and dope dens, a fat seventy-year-old traitor transplanted south after loyal service in Manchukuo. The gunman kills Fu’s bodyguard. The Kempeitai give chase and corner the hit man, who shoots himself in the head rather than face interrogation. Japanese soldiers cut out his heart and liver and place them before the dead Japanese bodyguard as a sacrifice. It ratchets up the stakes spectacularly. Two dozen puppet officials are assassinated across the city by Free China hit squads—Japanese police, wives and children of puppet officials, innocent bystanders, taxi dancers going home all get hit in the crossfire. And it’s just the beginning as the fight for the Badlands melds into the war for Shanghai and becomes an inseparable part of the overarching struggle for survival by China herself.
* * *
SHOPPING NEWS —‘BREVITIES’—
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1938
So the Shanghai Municipal Council has again granted the American-controlled Shanghai Power Company permission to put Settlement users of electricity thru’ the wringers … this time for a surcharge of 150 per cent. In other words, this so-called public utility is to be allowed to collect its charges upon what amounts practically to a gold dollar basis. INTERESTING IS THAT THE FRENCHTOWN POWER COMPANY WHO HAVE THE SAME GENERAL OPERATING COSTS TO MEET (BUT DON’T HAVE TO FEED GOLD DOLLARS TO THE NEW YORK FATCATS) HAVE INCREASED TO DATE ONLY FIFTEEN PER CENT!!!! WHAT GIVES GRANDEES OF THE MUNICIPAL COUNCIL? WE KNOW YOU’D ALL LIKE TO KNOW.
The police in the Western District—that’s the Badlands to most of us now—have been ordered by our wistful Willies to look the other way if they notice any trouble, fill their ears with cotton wool so the sound of shooting will sound like peas popping, and if they’re actually shot at to stand perfectly still so as not to spoil the dear, darling pi-seh gunman’s aim. Darn if we wouldn’t like to put Commissioner Bourne and his sidekick DSI Crighton on a Badlands patrol … at 26 shillings a week. We’ll bet a million those gentry would scram so fast you could play checkers on their shirttails.
Looking desperately for that extra special birthday gift for the taipan or tycoon in your life? Problem solved, if you visit Alexander Clark’s at Sassoon House (Tel: Shanghai—10719) where a new range of the famous Rolex Oyster timepieces are now in stock—waterproof and with chronometer precision because, as we all know, time is money in Shanghai. Take this issue of Shopping News with you for a 10 per cent discount on any watch in stock.
Times are tight for everyone but those infamously rapacious Shanghai Gas Tycoons, it seems. They know winter’s a’coming and they’re planning yet another surcharge. The Municipal Council has to approve it, but since when did the Gas Fuhrers not have enough Council members in their pockets? They’ll vote it through, that is when they come back from their summer recess at the Columbia Country Club, or filling their lungs with fresh air up at the Mokanshan resorts. But they’ll be back next week and we urge our four thousand subscribers to hit the phones and shout PHOOEY!
What’s the bee in your bonnet? Editorial: Rm 540, 233 Nanking Rd. Tel: Shanghai—10695
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23
From tiger to rabbit—Chinese New Year 1939, and Shanghai’s buzzing with the news that a Riley–Farren joint is in progress, and it’ll be the biggest casino in the Badlands. On the Great Western Road the painters are in, and Nellie is auditioning dancers. Jack and Mickey head down to the docks and meet an incoming U.S. Navy transport that found room for three Manila-made teak roulette tables with Bakelite wheels, American-style double-zero felt layout. Things of great beauty. There are more tables for baccarat and dice, and Joe has ordered a red carpet to be rolled out on opening night.
It’s taking longer than Joe and Jack might have hoped. Both of them needed to raise money to grease the endless palms—number 76, the Kempeitai, Chinese cops, the guys who deliver the coal, connect the water, plug in the electricity, and those who collect the trash. Squeeze, cumshaw, kickback. Work is stopped by thugs claiming to be from the unions, then by more thugs claiming to be strikebreakers and wanting money to break strikers’ heads on the flagstones. Pitched battles ensue between the two sides. Months drag frustratingly by. Joe has laid out for air-conditioning and a dehydrator to chill the place so he can keep the windows closed and the mosquitoes out along with the less pleasant smells of the Badlands gutters. But that doesn’t come cheap—they need to pay to boost electricity from the Frenchtown grid. Joe figured it would be a while before they could open the doors—hell, it’d be a while until the joint had doors. Still, they were on their way at last.
But first, Joe needs a crew. The Nazis, Japanese artillery strikes, and a little providence provide. With so many Chapei and Hongkew joints bombed out, their enforcement teams are looking for new employment. Walter Lunzer was the contact, a big bear of a mensch who’d tended the bar and watched the door of more than a couple Jewish-owned Hongkew joints, always with a twelve-gauge under the till. He’d been a low-level gangster in Vienna’s Jewish ghetto till the Germans rolled in, and then he and his crew had decided to sail for Shanghai and pastures new and Nazi free.
Wally Lunzer comes down to the Western Roads from Chapei with his crew of good-looking boychiks, all slicked-back hair and sharp suits, to a man in total fucking awe of Dapper Joe. Lunzer packs a Mauser Red 9 under his meaty armpit while the boys keep knuckledusters and rubber coshs about their person, ball bearing–filled saps in their trouser pockets, and Bengal razors in their breast pockets. The boychiks don’t need to be taught how to smile wide for tips, ‘ma’am’ the married dames, kick the hopheads to the curb, recognise a nasty drunk who is about to start swinging, and a bad debt at a hundred yards, scan the crowd for dips and purse snatchers and give gentle reminders to regulars whose chits were due. Joe snaps up the team to run security for Farren’s. Nellie was right when she said better them than the Friends of Riley.
* * *
Back at the Manhattan, Jack guzzles hot-plate coffee to make it till first light. He’s getting older; the routine gets tougher. Coffee and Benzedrine leave his nerves jagged, but hell, they beat the sleepy eye. He gets night sweats, he gets fearsome comedowns, his moods swing erratically, and Nazedha gets the worst of it. He shoots Navy nostalgia bullshit with Mickey while the coin is counted, and Schmidt watches the door with his Mauser on the bar and the safety off.
The deal with Farren is a seriously hefty investment, but it’ll pay back fast, even with the Kempeitai taxes to pay. The slots still pour cash nightly, thanks to the ever-faithful marines. The soldiers stay out of the Badlands by order of the MPs and have their fun in the Settlement, where Jack’s slots are dominant. DD’s is still selling dance tickets and booze to the Shanghailander and Chinese swells crazy for high-octane cocktails, like DD’s house special: equal parts brandy and Italian vermouth, a dash of absinthe, another of Angostura bitters, well shaken with a cherry and a squeeze of lemon peel on top. Double up the measures for the regulars and go heavy on the absinthe.
Jack is moving in the direction he wants to, towards the wide-open Badlands of infinite possibility. But it’s taking a serious toll on his legendarily short fuse, and there are nightly rows with Nazedha. Still, it comes like a bolt. Mickey O’Brien tugs his sleeve outside the door of DD’s, pulls him to one side, and whispers in his ear that she’s gone, Jack, taken off with some Dutchie. Took the S.S. Potsdam to Sumatra, married the guy on the ship, going to be a planter’s wife in Medan. Jack slugs Mickey right there on the Avenue Joffre, outside DD’s, swells gawping, and lays in to him till Schmidt, who’s waiting in the Packard, pulls him off.
Fuck it. Fuck her. There’s too much else to think about; too much else in Jack’s benny-fried brain. The war is the bad news now. It looks like Free China is finished. They can assassinate the odd puppet official in Hongkew, but they’re on the retreat and Tokyo’s on the advance. Soochow, Nanking, and right up the Yangtze; Amoy, Foochow, Canton down to the border with British Hong Kong—all Jap territory now. D.C. is now thinking maybe Shanghai is indefensible and the coming fight is between the U.S. and Japan. They’re preparing. Marines are to be shipped out, not shipped in; soon there will barely be a thousand left in Shanghai to liberate from their wages. Jack locks himself in the Manhattan for two days, stares at a bottle of Johnnie Walker and considers taking his first swig since 1924. Then an old memory shows up, with what some might suggest is perfect timing. She’s no regular, that’s for sure. She looks like she took a wrong turn somewhere on the Avenue Eddy and hit Blood Alley rather than the Cathay Hotel. She walks in the door unannounced in a cloud of chypre, and he knows her straight off—Evelyn Something Russian, but she’s got a Brit accent? Oleaga, that’s it—she’s still using that name, though the Russian gent’s long gone. She looks good, though she’s the wrong side of forty in a young dame’s town. He remembers that night in Manila—punching out Paco, taking Evelyn back to his room, seeing her off at the docks the next day, her perfume trace on his sheets for a week. Evelyn tells Jack she’s been floating between Manila and up and down the China Coast; Tientsin, Weihaiwei, Amoy down to Hong Kong. She’s pitched up permanently in Shanghai now and is looking to do some business. She’s read about the Farren tie-up, heard about Jack’s girl trouble. Maybe she’s got something else that might interest Jack? It’s time to return the favour for his having sorted the nasty Paco problem way back when. Jack says he’s always interested in a proposition, runs his eye up and down her long legs, but remembers they used to call her Evil Evelyn. He takes her home.
Jack drinks coffee the next morning with Evelyn, pours out his woes, shoots some old-time nostalgia shit about Manila. They reminisce on the early-morning breakfasts back with Ed Mitchell at the Rhonda Grill, the Navy dances at the Metro. Seems an age ago to Jack, who is, as usual, wired and jangly from not having slept. Evil Evelyn lays out her proposition: she’s looking to set up a brothel on the Avenue Joffre, in the heart of Little Russia where nobody ever calls the flics—she’s got contacts who will sort it with the Garde Municipal and put up half the cash; Riley can stake her the other half. It’ll make a mint and pay back the investment real fast. It’s a brothel with a difference—gigolos for bored white Shanghailander women—and it’ll pay twice for all concerned, once on the day and once more for the clients to keep their afternoon activities from their husbands. It’s a gigolo whorehouse turned blackmail sting. Jack knew the evil in Evelyn wouldn’t take long to show itself. But you know what? It’s Shanghai—it might j
ust pan out. After all, Don Chisholm drives a brand-new German Mercedes up and down the Bubbling Well Road like some kind of Shanghailander Gauleiter on his own blackmail earnings from the Shopping News.
But he remembers his promise to Joe—no more sidelines—and he passes; brothels aren’t his thing anyway and queering his Badlands pitch would be crazy now it’s got this far. Evelyn smooths down her dress, puts on her lipstick, heads for the door, and says, ‘Well, Jack, dear, if you ever reconsider…’
* * *
The Chinese army has retreated from Shanghai back to Soochow, to Nanking, to Hankow—defeated each time by the Japanese Imperial Army. They evacuate from the Solitary Island up the mighty Yangtze to the fortress city of Chungking, now capital of Free China. There they regroup in the caves and wait for the Mitsubishi bombers of the Japanese Air Force. Chungking is blitzed, bombed, firestormed nightly … but after the bombers retreat to refuel and rearm, the city emerges once more into the mists that regularly cloud the final Nationalist metropolis.
