City of Devils

by Paul French

  Let everyone know the juicy details. Editorial: Rm 540, 233 Nanking Rd. Tel: Shanghai—10695

  * * *

  40

  The Garden Bridge is a no-go—bluejacket sentries and barricades, papers demanded. It’s the same all up the creek westwards, with every bridge a Japanese barricade. It’s possible to cross farther up, into Paoshan via sampan if you can dodge the Japanese river patrol boats with their sweeping searchlights. The corner of Gordon and Markham roads, the far northwest of the Settlement, is the frontline—manned by the American company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. And luckily for Jack, these guys still love him.

  It’s early March when the Volunteers take over the wire that marks the divide between foreign Shanghai and occupied territory. The Markham Road trolley-bus terminus is fully locked down with the American company behind sandbags, a 37mm gun on wagon wheels that can stop a Japanese tank if necessary (and it will be necessary, sooner or later). More Volunteers are up in front pointing rifles at the sentries, who point right back. The bluejackets are edgy—itchy trigger fingers twitching, these philopon-dosed conscripts have been methamphetamined ever since raping Nanking back in the cruel winter of ’37.

  The Volunteers sort Jack out with some chow and coffee. Jack shares his stash of Doc Borovika’s bennies all round to welcome hands. They’re sipping bourbon from hip flasks and ragging Moy and Chisholm on XGRS, who are roasting FDR for signing the Lend-Lease Act—sending dollars to London? Why prolong the English people’s agony in a futile resistance? Churchill is ‘syphilitic’ and Roosevelt is ‘mentally deranged and idiotic’, spouts Moy; Roosevelt’s a ‘war mongerer’, a ‘double crosser’; US Steel and Standard Oil’s profits are all that will be defended; ‘a German victory’s inevitable’; ‘Why are Americans preparing to fight to defend the British Empire in Shanghai? Put down your guns, get on your evacuation ships, and go home to your sweethearts.’ It’s easier to flip to another station, forget it all, catch the Big Band sounds—Jimmy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller … American standards tinkle out over the Japanese lines, over the cluster of beggar boats and sampans on the Soochow Creek.

  The Volunteers can get people through the wire and across the creek into Hongkew—Free China agents, black-marketeers, refugees with money to pay their way. By midnight the fizzing streetlamps are on reduced power, the Gordon Road Police Post on a skeleton crew with just the Riot Squad waiting for a ‘tip and run’ call—the tip comes in and the Riot Squad are suited, booted, armed, and out the door in under five minutes. The old Fourth Marines regimental hospital is in blackout, and what used to be the Shanghai Mint is now shuttered—they couldn’t mint the coins fast enough to keep up with the falling exchange rate. Towards the border the streetlights disappear completely, shot out by snipers—who’s going to be fool enough to go up a ladder and repair them with trigger-happy snipers just yards away?

  Enough men are still honoured to help out old pal Jack, Lucky Jack, Tulsa shitkicker Jack, stand-up guy, fellow American, veteran—Semper fi! Just down the line, just beyond the wire, just past where the Jap sentries are, they have a friendly sampan waiting, no questions asked. Jackpot Riley dips into his trusty baseball bag for some cash for the boys. Get a drink on old Jack and speak of me kindly, fellas. There are a few coppers for the old woman on her sampan, her ‘honey barge’ piled high with Settlement shit for transportation upriver as fertiliser—the stink’s so bad the river patrols never search it. They travel across the Soochow Creek, until just beyond the searchlights, when Jack is off and over the wall of the Cantonese Cemetery, avoided by patrols that fear opium ghosts and kuei huo fireballs.

  Chapei is a total wasteland. Body parts are scattered about the cemetery where bombs have landed, uprooting the corpses from their flimsy papier-mâché coffins. Beyond the cemetery walls just about anyone who can has gone, fled. Riley tramps east, across the ruins to Hongkew and the Northern External Roads, to Jukong Alley, back to the Trenches and then … where? Boats out are nonexistent, the Whangpoo now almost totally silted up.

  Here he is back in Hongkew, where it all started, knocking heads at the Venus for Sam and Girgee, tossing dice out back of the Isis picture house on the North Szechuen Road, where the Joe and Jack show began. It’s war-ravaged territory now, but it might be a bolthole, buy Jack time to think.

  41

  It’s the end of March. Jack’s been holed up in a small flat at the Young Allen Court apartment buildings on Hongkew’s Chapoo Road for two mind-numbingly boring weeks with nothing but time to reflect and ruminate on his life’s turning points. Life comes like snapshots from a Kodak box Brownie. That shithole orphanage in Oklahoma, with drunk custodians who half starved the little bastards so they could skim the charitable donations for their all-night hooch and craps sessions. Hitting out and heading for Denver to polish brass in a brothel at just seven years old, calling the punters ‘sir’ and the working girls ‘sister’. A decade later, standing on the deck of the U.S.S. Quiros on Yangtze patrol duty, maybe his only settled time of order and belonging. His honourable discharge in ’21, barhopping the ports of the west coast, each night ending with a hangover, a flophouse, and the big Q: What now, buddy? On the midnight shift driving taxis on Tulsa’s mean streets. The wrong crowd offering him easy money to work as a wheels man. Bad, bad decision, Jacky boy. The inside of a cell, furnished by the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, a Sodom of seriously disturbed men and convicted sexual predators. Stepping out that morning with the baseball team, outside the gates, walking away, waiting for the bullet, waiting for the dogs. Jumping that freight to San Francisco and becoming a new man, becoming Edward T. ‘Jack’ Riley. He knows now there has only been one place that felt like home, that offered sanctuary and asked no questions: Shanghai.

  All so long ago. And now …

  Young Allen Court is run by some Russian woman who rented rooms to Babe back in her Hongkew days, before she moved up and over to Frenchtown. The place is near deserted, with just a few down-at-the-heels Japanese working girls and some itinerant Chinese short-timers. Mickey sends a final ten grand in Chinese devalued dollars with Schmidt, whose German passport gets him through the Jap wires and into Hongkew without a bag search from the Kempeitai. They’re all good Axis friends now—Schmidt’s raised arm and heil Hitler gets a tenno-heika banzai—‘Long live the Emperor!’—in return. He gets the cash to Jack and heads back, but his luck runs out when he finds John Crighton, Sam Titlebaum, and Little Nicky waiting for him with open arms on the Bund side of the bridge.

  * * *

  Jack has grown a moustache, just like the papers said Louis Lepke did while hiding out in Brooklyn, just like Dillinger did before Hoover’s feds caught up with him and gunned him down. He’s ditched the trademark pinstriped suit for khaki trousers and a brown lumber jacket Babe picked up at the Pennywise store. No more Slots King, no more gambling kingpin, no more Farren’s pit boss—just a regular working stiff bedding down in Hongkew, with missing shirt buttons and broken shoelaces knotted together. He’s registered with the landlady under the first name that came to mind—Lawrence Frank, the name Babe dreamed up for his bogus lease on his old Frenchtown pad, all those years ago with Nazedha. It’s another alias, one more nom de plume in a long, long list. He’s been on the run since the start of December, three and half months, and he’s down to just ten thousand Chinese bucks in his pocket. Jack’s only plan now is to stow away on a tramp steamer to Manila, or maybe a Portuguese blockade-runner to Macao. It’s a pipe dream: Shanghai’s surrounded, the docks locked down; the Whangpoo is silting up as the Chinese dredgers have been scuttled. There’s no way out.

  Broken furniture and a vermin-ridden bed. Broth and bread twice a day, plus the occasional sticks of yakitori from the Chapoo Road street stalls. They’re brought by a Japanese girl working out of the building who does him favours for pay. She doesn’t speak any English; he talks to himself at night. A fly-speckled light bulb provides an hour or two of erratic electricity, and then a stinking, leaking old kerosene
lamp does for light. The walls bulge with damp, covered with graffiti in Japanese kanji, and sniper holes let in drafts. Outside, bats swoop against the moonlit grey clouds—bats were good joss, said the Chinese. Once-Lucky Jack is in dire need of some good joss.

  42

  Jack’s seen it all in his mind’s eye before it happens. Someone has dropped a dime, claimed the reward. Who? Babe, unlikely; Mickey, never; Evelyn, quite possibly; a Friend turned Judas, most probably; Joe? Certainly, if he’d known where Jack was. The last Friend he’d seen was Schmidt, and he’d bet a year’s slots takings that the German had talked—it’s each man for himself now. He knows the procedure: Crighton will have sweated Schmidt till he broke down. Then Crighton would call Titlebaum before dialling Shanghai-15380, a ‘tip and run’ call to raise the Red Maria. A bell would ring in the Gordon Road Police Station, and the Riot Squad would assemble, receive their instructions, be issued their arms, pull on their bulletproof vests, pile into the back of the Red Maria and head across the Settlement to the Garden Bridge and across into Hongkew. Crighton would alert the Japanese police they were heading north of the Creek, laissez passers prearranged to prevent any misunderstanding, and then …

  They’ll cordon off the street, surround the complex, cover the entrances on Chapoo and the side streets, and put snipers on the buildings opposite with .303s and P14 Enfields with scopes. There’ll be a five-man entry team, an armoured raiding party to kick in the door, with tin helmets and metal shields. They’ll be backed up by the snipers, a fourteen-man rifle squad and more vans with a couple of dozen SMP Chinese constables out of the Dixwell Road Station armed with batons. The entry team will let the snipers pick you off as you contemplate a window jump or appear on the roof. But if they get close to you on the stairs, they’ll shoot you in the guts as a standard takedown technique. If it gets dark they’ll bring up floodlights, tighten the cordon, and bring the snipers in closer. The riflemen will then mask up and lob the tear gas and the stink bombs in, and start shooting through the smoke at anything and everything.

  He hears the rumble of the Red Maria. Crouched down and looking out the window onto Chapoo Road he sees the Riot Squad come out the back, armoured vests on, rifles held close across their bodies, looks of grim determination on their faces under their protective tin helmets. Snipers enter the buildings opposite. In a minute he sees them appear on the roof across the road. He hears the quick march of police boots, a squad of oilskin-caped Chinese constables with batons closing off each end of the street. And then he sees the temporary barrier pulled back and a black SMP Nash pull up by the Red Maria—Crighton, Little Nicky, and Titlebaum inside. Crighton motions to the Riot Squad officer in charge; Little Nicky and Titlebaum move round to the trunk of the Nash, open it, and pull out shotguns they start loading. They don’t waste any time.

  Tear gas comes rolling in, and Jack heads out of his room, through the hole in the wall with a screen over it into what had been apartment number 25. The girl is in the room but she’s frozen rigid, too scared to speak, nothing except a quiet sob. Titlebaum is down behind the Red Maria with a megaphone, telling Jack to quit. He can hear Crighton and Little Nicky barking orders and coordinating the entry squad with their shields. Shit, they’ve even brought along some Japanese Kempeitai. He knows it will be hand grenades next, if they decide to up the ante, and random shooting.

  Jack ducks under the metal frame of the bed—he’s not hiding, just wants a chance if they come in guns blazing. The Japanese girl cowers in a corner covering her head, whimpering. Jack feels bad—this isn’t her trouble, but she’s in the middle of it now. There are things to consider; those snipers sure like to test their skills, and Bourne ordered the armourers to modify every SMP-issued gun so no officer can ever put the safety on and get caught coming up slow.

  Titlebaum comes up the stairs and kicks in the door of number 24, shouting for Jack to give it up. John Crighton follows him, beige mac billowing out behind him like a cape. He’s got Little Nicky with him too, carrying a pump-action that looks to be half his height. It’s getting crowded out there. He can hear them shouting to one another—he can hear they’ve got his baseball bag, they’ve found his last stash. Jack lies under the bed and waits. The U.S. marshal comes through the hole in the wall and into the room with his Winchester pump-action lowered; Crighton is right behind with Little Nicky in tow. The girl might have motioned to the bed, or maybe it’s just that there’s no place else he could be. Titlebaum points the rifle underneath the bed frame, motioning for Jack to come on out from there.

  Dead ain’t me, thinks Jack; I’ll take my chances. Shanghai is the ultimate city of second chances. There’s always the opportunity to live another day, to win another round … but not today. Jack scrabbles out from under the bed, the brown trousers and lumber jacket over his pyjamas, tan brogues with no socks on, flashing the marshal his best stained-teeth Tulsa grin, a nod to John Crighton behind him. It wasn’t meant to end this way, but then it isn’t over just yet.

  Titlebaum gut-slams Jack with his Winchester and drops him to his knees. He swings back for a head shot, but Crighton holds him back. This is not how we do it. The SMP man slaps the cuffs on Jack, pats him down, takes the few yen he’s got in his pocket. Titlebaum and Crighton walk Jack Riley out of Young Allen Court, one on each side, holding an arm apiece. Titlebaum is never one to miss the press; he’s made sure the snappers are lined up for the walk. Crighton, mac done up tight now, has his hat on, pays the hacks no mind. Sam hands his own hat to Jack, allowing him to cover his face from the flashbulbs while making sure they get the brave marshal’s profile full on. At the curb they stand back as two big khaki-turbaned Sikh constables manhandle Jack Riley into the Red Maria, where he knows a righteous kicking will ensue for putting the Riot Squad to all this bother. The doors of the Red Maria slam shut.

  43

  It’s a Shanghai procession: SMP cop cars, bells clanging, with Crighton’s jet-black Nash leading the way. They are taking Shanghai’s public enemy number one to his court date, March 29, 1941. Riley is in handcuffs and ankle straps back in the Red Maria, motorcycle outriders with Thompson-wielding cops on the pillions as escort. His blood is still on the floor from the Sikh-administered kicking the day before. He’s wearing those brown workingman’s trousers and lumber jacket, but the moustache is gone—they made him use blunt clippers, and his top lip’s got a nasty nick. The Riot Squad’s on duty outside the court, Chinese constables with truncheons to push back the crowds. Riley is escorted in by the six-foot Sikhs, the Thompson sniper on the Red Maria’s roof scanning the crowd for any breakout attempts from Riley’s Friends.

  Jack’s back in the dock at the U.S. court facing seventeen counts of gambling, but they can’t pin the Farren’s shootout on him. Surprise, surprise, Schmidt coughed, after feeling the weight of the Shanghai phone book on his head, to Jack’s whereabouts—but he isn’t talking about the Farren’s raid, given his starring role, and neither will anybody else. Incrimination. By now everyone knows that this time around the feds can’t match the partial acid-seared dabs from Farren’s to Jack’s Navy records. The court can levy a sentence for the gambling charges, but it’ll be the time due to the Oklahoma State Pen that’ll rack up Jack Riley’s prison years.

  The judge hands down eighteen months, one for each count and an additional thirty days for luck—chickenfeed. Jack’s lawyer says okay—he’ll do the time without appeal in Ward Road over in Y’Poo. But Judge Helmick says no. He’s to do the time stateside. It’s Helmick’s revenge for the grandstanding, the runaround on Jack’s nationality, that stunt with the fifty grand. He’ll do the time at McNeil Island, and the judge insists that there’s those twenty-three years from McAlester still to do. You can bet the guards from the Oklahoma State Pen will catch the ferry across the Puget Sound and be waiting outside McNeil’s gates after eighteen months to reclaim their man. Federal judge the Honourable Milton J. Helmick hands down the sentence with a smile on his face. ‘It is unfortunate that you could not apply y
our talents and intelligence to more legitimate pursuits, Mr Becker.’

  Jack pays him no mind. His eyes wander up to the gallery, where what remains of the crew sits. Babe, Mickey, a Friend or two … and Joe, dapper as ever with his horn-rimmed glasses on. They make eye contact while Helmick drones on about good and bad, right and wrong. Jack grins up at Joe, but Joe just stares back, cuts him dead and heads for the door.

  44

  The S.S. President Cleveland of American President Lines weighs anchor downriver from the Bund, sailing for home. Aboard are American evacuees from the Solitary Island. Jack is glad to be out of Ward Road Gaol—it’s been twenty years since he’s seen the inside of a prison cell.

  Ward Road, the Shanghai Bastille, the world’s largest purpose-built prison, a thousand convicts crammed inside with tough White Russian and Sikh guards. Riley’s cell is spitting distance from the execution chamber, where the drop from the noose efficiently went straight down into the jail’s morgue. Inmates are stripped of tie, collar, shoelaces, suspenders, belt, and razor blades, and put in a ten-by-six-foot cell with one wooden bench, a two-inch-thick mattress with regulation blanket, a board secured to the wall as a table, a stool nailed to the floor, and a dung hole the Brits called a lavatory, which stinks day and night. The food is shit—you can’t tell the coffee from the tea from the cocoa. Cause trouble and it’s the isolation room, with ‘rubber wallpaper’ for the guards to bounce you off. Lockdown at five p.m.; lights out at eight p.m.; rise and shine at six a.m. One library book and one illustrated magazine permitted per week; one half hour’s outdoor exercise a day, in enforced silence; one shower a week in tepid water. Brit tradition means you get a pint of beer a day—Jack passed his on to the old lags.