He began each month's gambling with fifty dollars, twenty-five of which came from his pay (by the time they had made the deductions, this now came to about forty-nine dollars) and twenty-five of which came from the retirement fund in Barclays Bank.
He played until he either went broke or felt like quitting. If he was ahead of his original fifty dollars when he quit, he put exactly half of the excess over fifty dollars away, to be deposited to his account at Barclays. The rest was his stash for the next game.
Almost always, he went broke sometime during the month, and he never played again until after the next payday. But again, he had almost always put a lot more into Barclays Bank during the month than the twenty-five dollars he would take out after the next payday. And sometimes-not often- the cards went well, and post-game deposits were sixty, seventy dollars. Once there had been a post-game deposit of
$140.90.
As he approached the group, the bright light illuminating the table made everything but the lower arms and hands of the players seem to disappear for a moment into the darkness, but gradually his eyes became adjusted, and he could see faces to go with the hands.
The White Russian, who claimed to have been a colonel of cavalry in his Imperial Majesty's 7th Petrograd Cavalry, was at the table. Piotr Petrovich Muller (he had a German surname, he once told McCoy, because he was a descendant of the Viennese who had been imported into Moscow to build the Kremlin) was a very large man with a very closely shaven
face.
He bowed his head solemnly when he saw McCoy and then gestured for him to take an empty chair.
There was another Russian who had found post-revolution employment with the French Foreign Legion, and a Sikh, a uniformed sergeant of the Shanghai Municipal Police. There was also Detective Sergeant Lester Chatworth of the Shanghai Municipal Police, who looked up at McCoy and spoke.
"I thought you'd be out bashing Eye-talians."
Except for a thick, perfectly trimmed mustache, Chatworth looked not unlike McCoy, but he spoke with the flat, nasal accent of Liverpool.
"I thought I'd rather come here and take your money,"
McCoy said.
"Why not? Everybody else is," Detective Sergeant Chatworth said, grinning.
The men at the table had nothing at all in common except that they met Piotr Muller's rigid standard of a decent poker player: Each could play the game well enough and each, at one time or another, had lost a good deal of money gracefully. PFC Kenneth McCoy was younger than any of them by at least a decade, and a quarter of a century younger than Muller. Neither he nor any of the others associated when they were not playing cards, nor were they friendly with any of the perhaps forty other more or less temporary residents of Shanghai who were welcome at Muller's table in the basement of the Cathay Mansions.
There were no raised eyebrows when McCoy took off his blue blouse and revealed the Baby Fairbairn strapped to his arm. It was prudent, if technically illegal, to arm oneself when going out for a night on the town in Shanghai.
McCoy hung his blouse on the back of his chair, unstrapped the knife and tucked it in a pocket of the blouse, then sat down and laid his gambling money on the table. Fifty dollars American that month had converted to just over four hundred yuan. He had before him four one-hundred-yuan notes, which were printed lavender and white in England and were each the size of a British five-pound banknote. He also had some change, including an American dollar bill.
He made himself comfortable in the chair, and then watched as the hand in play was completed. When it was over, Muller nodded at him, and he reached for a fresh deck of cards, broke the seal, and went through them, finding and discarding the extra jokers. He then spread the cards out for the others to examine.
Afterward, he gathered the cards together, shuffled, announced, "Straight poker," and dealt.
Three hours later, there were twenty-odd lavender-and-white one-hundred-yuan notes in front of McCoy; the Sikh and the Foreign Legionnaire had gone bust; and it was between McCoy, Piotr Petrovich Muller, and Detective Sergeant Chatworth. A half hour after that, Muller examined the two cards he had drawn, threw his hand on the table, and pushed himself away from it.
That left only McCoy and Detective Sergeant Chatworth.
"I don't play two-handed poker," McCoy announced.
"I'm willing to quit," Chatworth said, and tossed the just-collected deck into the wastebasket, where it joined a dozen other decks of cards.
Stiff from three hours of little movement, McCoy stood up and stretched his arms over his head. He then strapped the Baby Fairbairn to his left arm, put his blouse on, and followed the others out of the storeroom.
When he was back out on the street,. McCoy considered having his ashes hauled. It had been about a week, and it was time to take care of the urge. But he decided against it. For one thing, he had too much money with him. He hadn't counted it out to the last yuan, but he'd won a bunch-say at twelve dollars to the hundred-yuan note, a little better than $250. That was too much money to have in your pocket when visiting a whorehouse.
Even if the Italian marines weren't on the warpath. The smart thing to do was go back to the billet. He put his hand up and flagged a rickshaw, and told the driver to take him down Ferry Road.
Three blocks from the compound, he saw the Italian marines, hiding in an alley. There were four of them, in uniform. The uniforms were a mixture of army and navy-army breeches and navy middie blouses.
I am minding my own business, McCoy told himself, and I am not carrying a bayonet, and I was not at the Little Club when this whole business started. With a little bit of luck, they will let me pass.
They didn't say anything to him as the rickshaw pulled past the alley and there could no longer be any question that the rickshaw passenger was a Marine. So for a moment he thought they'd decided to wait for Marines who were looking for a
fight.
And then the rickshaw was turned over on its side. The rickshaw boy started to howl with fear and rage even before McCoy hit the ground, striking the elbow of his blouse on the filth of the street.
McCoy sat up and looked around to see if there was someplace he could run. But the Italian marines had picked their spot well. There was no place to run to.
Maybe I can talk to them, McCoy thought, tell them the fucking truth, I wasn't at the Little Club, I have no quarrel with them.
Then he saw the Italian marine advancing on him with a length of bicycle chain swinging in his hand. McCoy felt a little faint, and then tasted something foul in the back of his mouth.
"I don't know who you're looking for," he said in Italian. "But it isn't me."
The Italian marine replied that his mother fucked pigs and that he was going to mash his balls.
The bicycle chain missed McCoy's leg, but before it struck the pavement with a frightening whistle, it came close enough to catch his trouser's leg and leave the imprint of the chain there. McCoy quickly slid sideward, taking the Baby Fairbairn from his sleeve as he got to his feet.
The Italian marine told him his sister sucked Greek cocks and that he was going to take the knife away and stick it up his ass.
McCoy sensed, rather than saw, that two other Italian marines were making their way behind him.
The idea was that the two would grab him and hold him while the other one used the bicycle chain. The thing to do was to get past the Italian marine with the bicycle chain.
He made a feinting motion with the knife, and the Italian marine backed up.
It looked like it might work. And there was nothing else to do.
He made another feinting move, a savage leap accompanied by as ferocious a roar as he could muster, at the exact moment that the Italian marine lunged at where McCoy's Baby Fairbairn had been.