Smalldane wasn’t as interested in eating the sandwiches as he was in examining their filling. On the dozenth one that he opened, he found what he was looking for, a note from Tante Katerine.
“Well, it looks like we have Christmas dinner after all, Lucifer.” I shook my head and made a vague kind of gesture that took in the entire cell. We were all scruffy by then, dirty, cold, and incredibly hungry. Most of the prisoners sat or knelt huddled in their filthy blankets, their sunken eyes staring at the pile of sandwiches. The Chinese prisoners were the worst of all because they didn’t for a minute believe that they would share in our luck. They looked, then looked away, and then looked back again. They couldn’t help themselves.
“Aw, shit,” Smalldane said. He took four of the sandwiches and gave me the rest. “Here, Tiny Tim, it’s your last chance to play Scrooge.”
“Who’re they?” I said.
“Go pass out the sandwiches and I’ll tell you.”
I crawled around the filthy floor, passing out cute little pâté de fois gras Sandwiches which had all the crust carefully sliced off. Some said thank you. Others said Merry Christmas or God bless you. And still others just silently snatched the food from my hand and crammed it into their mouths.
“What’s the note from Tante Katerine say?” I asked Smalldane when I crawled back to our row.
“Read it yourself. But, hell, you can’t read. She says that a boat’s leaving for the States with foreign civilians that are going to be traded for Japanese civilians. You got that?”
I nodded.
“She’s trying to juice our way on to that boat. She’s gone to the Swiss Embassy, to Wu, to everybody she can think of. It’s cost her a packet. She mentioned how much, of course.”
I nodded again. “Of course. How much?”
“Six thousand American so far.”
I was impressed, not with the amount so much as with Tante Katerine’s willingness to part with a dollar that didn’t guarantee her a rapid return of at least eight percent compounded semi-annually. I started to cry. It was the first time I’d cried since I’d been in jail.
“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” Smalldane said.
“I want to go home,” I said.
“Your home’s in the States now, kid.”
“I don’t know anybody there,” I said between sobs, “I want to go home to Number Twenty-seven and Tante Katerine.”
Smalldane sighed and patted me on the shoulder. “You can’t anymore.”
“Why?”
“They closed it down today. That’s what Kate says. The whorehouse is no longer your home.”
When you’re eight years old and in jail and someone tells you that the only home you ever really remember no longer exists, it hits hard. I think I went into shock for a few moments and then I stopped crying and started to bawl — in earnest. Smalldane kept patting away on my shoulder, a little embarrassed. He nodded apologetically at the rest of the prisoners, some of whom nodded back, some sympathetically, some dully. But none complained. Finally, Smalldane got bored with my emotional exhibition, leaned over, and speaking Cantonese, whispered into my ear: “If you don’t silence yourself, my cowardly little turtle, I will sell you to the fat Japanese guard for the night. He has offered more than a fair price.”
I shut up.
“That’s better,” Smalldane said. “Now for your education. First the alphabet.”
It took me an hour to memorize the alphabet by rote and another hour to learn how to draw William Smalldane with my finger in the dirt and filth of the floor. I didn’t know which letter was which, but I could draw it fairly well after an hour.
“That’s my new name?”
“That’s it,” Smalldane said.
“Please, Gorman, could you teach me something else?”
“What?”
“Could you teach me how to draw Lucifer Clarence Dye?”
He smiled at me, a sad kind of a smile, I thought, then nodded and said, “Sure, kid. You might even need it again one of these days.”
Chapter 14
They didn’t waste any time. The phone rang in my room in the Sycamore Hotel (Swankerton’s Oldest and Finest) before the bellhop got through showing me how the color television set worked. I gave him a dollar and a smile and nodded my goodbye as I picked up the green instrument and said hello.
“Mr. Dye?” It was a woman’s voice.
“Yes.”
“Would you hold on for Mr. Ramsey Lynch?”
I told her yes and then Lynch was talking, his voice as smooth and as buttery as his brother’s, but deeper, more confident, and with much less contentiousness in the tone. It was a good voice for a liar and I automatically assumed that he was one of the best.
“Welcome to Swankerton, Mr. Dye,” Lynch said.
“Thank you.”
“I understand that you’re the man.”
“From whom?”
“From here and there.”
“That’s where, not who.”
“Well, Brother Gerald did mention you to me.”
“I thought he might.”
“He sent his best.”
“His best what?”
Lynch chuckled. It was a rich, warm, comfortable sound such as fat men make after they no longer mind being fat. “Regards, of course,” he said. “Gerry mentioned that he’d recommended you highly.”
“So I heard.”
“Surprised?”
“Probably not as much as I should be, but then Gerald was always full of surprises.”
Lynch chuckled again, happily. “Even as a kid. Never knew what he’d do next. But the real reason I called is that we’re having a little policy meeting this afternoon, and I kind of thought you might like to sit in.”
“What kind of policy?”
“Civic policy, Mr. Dye. Seems that there may be sort of a hassle going on during the next couple of months so we thought we’d lay out some ground rules.”
“Your ground and your rules,” I said.
Lynch thought that was funny, too, but not as much as before, and his chuckle was reduced to three or four sharp, deep barks.
“Well, what do you say?”
“All right. What time?”
“About an hour from now. Around five.”
“Where?” I said.
“My place, but don’t worry about it. We’ll send someone for you. Room eight-nineteen, isn’t it?”
I looked at the telephone to make sure. “Eight-nineteen,” I said.
“Look forward to it,” Lynch said before he said goodbye and we hung up.
I stood there by the phone for a few moments and then picked it up and asked the operator for Victor Orcutt. Carol Thackerty answered in what was called, for God knows what reason, the Eddie Rickenbacker suite. Maybe he had once slept there when they were still calling it the Theodore Bilbo suite.
“Is your room all right?” Orcutt said when he came on.
“It’s fine. The chief adversary just called.”
“Lynch.” He didn’t make it a question. He just said Lynch to confirm a fact and to give his mind time to hop around and sort out all of the implications.
“He wants to meet me at five this afternoon. Or maybe they call it evening down here.”
“Evening,” Orcutt said.
“I agreed.”
“Good.”
“He said he wants to lay out some ground rules.”
“There aren’t any,” Orcutt said.
“I know. It’s probably just a mutual sizing-up session. He said that some others will be there.”
“What else?”
“I think Gerald Vicker wants his brother to settle a grudge for him and the brother wants to find out how much trouble that could be.”