He turned to Song. “You’re going with me.” It was not a question.
She took a deep breath. “Yes.” She had the diamonds, they were in her pocket, so why did the words seem to catch in her throat and not want to come out?
He took her in his arms. “But there’s a problem,” he said, and she pulled back to see him. “I can’t leave my men here.”
“Get them! What time is it?”
“Around quarter to eight.”
“Get them.”
“Song! How many tickets can you buy?”
“How many men do you have?”
“Three. And they play with five others. So you see-”
“Bring them all,” she said.
“Are you sure you-”
“Hurry! Meet me at the Old Dock off Broadway Road. The anchor goes up at nine thirty-go! Make them believe you.” And she gave him a push, away from her.
At the front door of Ladow’s, he talked his way quickly past Senhor Tamaral, the Macanese floor manager whose suit hung loose from his whippet frame. The cavernous ballroom was full, and he sidestepped waiters, and silk-clad dance hostesses. Once, this place had seemed grand to him, with its two-story box-beam ceiling, its balcony mezzanines running the length of the room on each side. Now it was all finished.
He waited until the song ended, then whispered to Earl Whaley. “Call a break. Please. Emergency.”
Earl’s brows drew together. “Who do you think you are? We are thirty minutes from a break.”
“Something’s happened.” He motioned with his eyes toward the door and the outside. “We have to talk.” At last Whaley relented, and the men pulled in around F. C. Stoffer’s piano, to hear Thomas’s explanation.
“Bullshit” was Earl’s reaction, when he finished.
“It’s true. Tickets for everyone who wants to go. Tonight.”
“You know how much money that is?” said Stoffer.
“Who’s this friend?” said Alonzo. “Mister Lin?”
“No. Lin’s in Hong Kong.”
“I know,” said Ernest. “His sister. That fine woman.” His guess was confirmed by Thomas’s face.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” said Alonzo. “She coming too?”
But Earl cut back in. “Now listen! This is all nothing, empty as a gin bottle Sunday morning. You don’t believe him.” His eyes circled his men. “Do you?”
Uncertainty skipped from one to the other. All had seen the buildup of soldiers, and each had found his own explanation to rationalize it, until tonight.
“I been paying you for years,” said Earl, “and you’re gonna listen to him? Look at all that yellow on him. And he plays their music, too, every day of the week. Classical! With a damn German!”
“A Jew,” said Thomas. “From Austria.”
This Earl waved away. “Don’t believe what he says. He’s not one of us.”
“He is,” said Ernest.
Thomas raised his hands. “It doesn’t matter what I play, or who I am. We all came here for the same reason, and I never wanted to leave either. But if they invade the Lonely Island, it’s going to vanish beneath the water. You won’t be playing anymore. And tonight we can go, all of us, before it happens.”
“Bullshit,” Earl repeated.
A silence fell as the line deepened in the sand. Finally Alonzo spoke, slowly. “You keep talkin’ like that. You go on. You just go right ahead on.” He rose, relaxed, flaunting the accumulation of years behind him. “I’m getting my bass.”
Thomas almost collapsed in thanks.
“Us too,” said Ernest, and he and Charles laid their horns in their cases.
“Listen to me!” Earl thundered. “Any one of you goes down to the dock to try to get on this imaginary boat, don’t bother coming back. You won’t have a job here tomorrow!”
“Earl,” said Thomas. “Come with us.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Whaley retorted. “Well? Earl?” he said to his guitar player, Earl West.
“Not going,” said West.
He fixed his eyes on the bassist, Reginald Jones. “You?”
Jones shook his head. “Take more than that to make me leave my Filipina sweetie.”
“Stoffer?” Earl said to his pianist. “You going?”
Stoffer said, “No. Staying with you.”
Thomas sank inside, his eyes searching the five of them one last time. “You sure?”
No one spoke. The minute hand was advancing. Thomas seemed to hear Lin Ming’s voice, as clear as if his friend were not in Hong Kong but still standing next to him. An inch of gold can’t buy an inch of time. They’d had their inch. Time to go.
He led the way, and the four of them strode past a dance floor full of stilled, silent patrons. As they stepped out into the street, Thomas said only one word to Alonzo, maybe the bluest word he knew at that moment, “Keiko.”
“A hell of a thing,” said the older man, and turned toward their apartment, which was close.
Thomas waited outside while the three of them ran upstairs, the brothers to grab a few belongings, and Alonzo to say good-bye.
“You don’t have your things,” said Ernest when they came back down.
“I have my music.” Thomas raised his briefcase.
Alonzo came down last, sick with sorrow, and they took off together at a run, back up Rue Vincent Mathieu toward Avenue Édouard VII.
Thomas kept asking people the time on the trolley, until the car clanged to a stop on the Bund and they jumped off, instruments swinging; it was nine fifteen. “It’s faster to cross the Garden Bridge on foot. But we can’t run,” he said. “Walk.” And so in an agony of slow, absurd steps they covered the long stretch past Jardine Matheson, Canadian Pacific, and the British Consulate, casual American musicians out with their instruments on Sunday night. Then they came to the bridge.
“Tomette!” shouted one of the sentries.
They halted.
“Ogigi oshite!” another screamed, and they all understood this too, since no one in Shanghai crossed this bridge without bowing to Japan. Alonzo managed it as best he could with one hand balancing his instrument case.
It was not enough. One of the soldiers raised the butt of his rifle and knocked Alonzo to the ground. He fell awkwardly, and his bass hit with a dissonance of wood and strings.
“Nanda?” the soldier demanded, taking a swing at the case to make the sound again.
“No!” Alonzo pleaded. “Please, no, it’s an instrument-” And he got to his knees beside the case. “Look. Look. I’ll show you. All right?” Slowly, cautiously, because seven bayonet-tipped rifles were now aimed at his head, he eased his long-fingered hands toward the brass latches, unsnapped them, and lifted the lid.
The soldiers leaned forward. Excited spatters of Japanese were exchanged. “Now listen, fellows.” Alonzo had somehow regained his paternal calm. “Lemme just show you.” And he lifted the instrument, set it on its end pin, and gave it a practiced twirl until it landed light and exact against his hand. The soldiers rumbled, their weapons still poised, and he plucked off a quick, rippling run.
“Jūbun!” cried one of the soldiers with a wave of his arm, and Alonzo grabbed the case with one hand and the neck of the bass with the other as the three of them sprinted across, laughing through their fear, flying. They could see the German and Soviet consulates at the other end, and the huddled brown stone walls of Broadway Mansions.
Church bells pealed the time: nine thirty.
Too late too late too late. They ran gasping, heaving, turned right at the Astor House to reach the Old Dock faster. “There it is,” Thomas said, and suddenly in front of them was the liner, the sheer black vertical hull of it. Sailors were just working loose the ropes.
Song stood watching them from up above a wooden piling, saw as they came running, and then stopped short at the ship in front of them. The river was deep here, and the liners nestled up to their berths instead of using lighters.