Росс Томас - The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

“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.”

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 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.