“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—”