The Fools in Town Are on Our Side (21 page)

“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 and 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.”

“Whatever you say.”

“We've got enough.”

“What will we do with it?”

“You're going to get an education with yours.”

“I am already educated.”

“You don't even know how to read and write.”

“I am wise in the ways of the world.”

“Where'd you learn that one?”

I shrugged. “I heard it someplace.”

Smalldane shook his head. “Okay, let's agree that you're smart. You can shill a crap game, pimp for a whorehouse, speak six or seven languages, roll drunks, and hustle the rubes. But you can't read or write and you're goddamned well going to school to learn how.”

“Will you go too, Gorman?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I'm too old.”

“What will you do?”

“I don't know yet, kid. But I think I've got an idea.”

In Rio the FBI agents came aboard and started asking Smalldane how he'd acquired a son since he had never married.

“What do you care?” he said. “The kid's American.”

“We've checked your record, Mr. Smalldane. You've never even been engaged.”

“So he's a bastard.”

There were two of them. One was rather young, somewhere in his twenties. The other was older, thirty-five or so. Both were suspicious.

“If he's not an American citizen, Mr. Smalldane, he can't be permitted to enter the—”

“Tell them, Lucifer.”

“My name is William Smalldane. I was born in San Francisco on—”

“For Christ's sake, the real one,” Smalldane said.

“Oh,” I said. “I am eight years old and my name is Lucifer Clarence Dye and I was born December 5, 1933, in Moncrief, Montana, United States of America, and my father's name was Dr. Clarence Dye and I live at—at—” I stopped.

“He lives with me,” Smalldane said. “He's my ward.”

“Where are his parents?” the younger man asked.

“Dead.”

“This is most irregular,” the older man said, and it was the first time I'd heard that phrase. I regret that it wasn't the last.

“Cable Moncrief, Montana, and find out whether there was a Lucifer Clarence Dye born there on December 5, 1933, like the kid says.”

“Well, if you'll accept responsibility for him—”

“I'll accept it. Where do I sign?”

“That'll be done in New York,” the older one said. “Still I don't know.”

“Hell, he's too dumb to be a spy,” Smalldane said. “He can't even read or write.”

That was when I made up my mind to go to school.