After the third stunning set he left, and stood shivering on the street, hand up for a rickshaw, thinking that he had work to do. This time he did not even blink at paying a man to haul him through the cold like a beast of burden; all the best people did it. He already knew better than to tip, too. If you tipped, they lost respect for you. As for being alone on Christmas Eve, jazz men were wandering men, men of the blues, and it was correct for him to be on the road. It fit.
On his front steps, he had barely touched the key to the lock when Uncle Hua swung the door back from inside. “Master have guest,” he said.
“Thank you.” Thomas stepped into the parlor, where the sight of Lin Ming, on the settee, sparked a grin. “Pleasure to see you!”
“You too,” said Lin. “Did you hear the news about Chiang Kai-shek?”
“No.” Thomas had heard people at the Canidrome talking about the kidnapping, but had not tuned in to it.
“They released him, because he promised to fight side by side with the Communists! And because H. H. Kung and T. V. Soong paid a huge amount of money. It is the big news.”
“That’s good, right? Maybe you can beat Japan now.” Thomas was thinking of the ruination Weatherford had predicted if they took Shanghai.
“Yes! Drive those bandits out!” Lin was reaching around inside his padded jacket. “Ah! Here.” He found the bottle he had been digging for, and uncorked it. “Tomorrow is Christmas, and that is another reason I came-I have nowhere else to go. Sit, Little Greene. Drink this with me.”
On opening night Lin Ming arrived early. The great curved ceiling was hung with cascades of light, and the clamshell behind the stage shone in radiating bars of ivory and gold. White-coated kitchen staff adjusted camellias in bud vases and straightened starched linens, and Lin saw that every one of them had his face scrubbed and hair slicked back. All his workers were refugees who had streamed in from the Japanese-ravaged areas up north, starving, desperate; every day there were more. War was written all over the faces of the jostling, sharp-boned workers who came begging for employment. He could have hired and fired every day if he wanted. “Kuai ma!” he cried with a handclap, spur the horse!
Zhou, his floor manager, had overseen so many cabarets that he rarely indulged in even a flicker of excitement anymore, but the size of the well-dressed crowd waiting outside made him catch Lin’s eye and mouth the words Zhen ta ma jue, damned incredible. When the hour came, they opened the doors to men in suits, tuxes, and long Chinese gowns, to qipao- clad Chinese women, and white ladies in full-length evening dresses. The wealthiest Chinese entered with pods of Russian bodyguards, rogue kidnappings and ransoms being a constant threat to anyone of importance. At exclusive venues like the Royal, thugs with guns on display were the norm.
The patrons were a mix of Chinese, foreigners, and Japanese, twenty thousand of whom lived in Shanghai. Among their ranks were not only jazz lovers but also the best jazz players in Shanghai, next to the Americans-not that Lin would ever hire Japanese jazz musicians. They had their own clubs up in Zhabei, now a heavily Japanese area. But he welcomed them as patrons the way he welcomed all people, for this was one of the unwritten rules of Ye Shanghai: politics and affiliations were left at the door. All were welcome, all were equal.
A parallel and less attractive truth was that no one wanted to face the facts of war, especially after dark, the time for enjoyment. To make this easier, people referred to every incursion, every skirmish-and-annexation as an incident: the Mukden Incident, the Great Wall Incident, even what people called the January Twenty-eighth Incident here in Shanghai, which was what led to the Japanese being the only ones allowed to bear arms in a Chinese city. But as long as each thing was an “incident,” people could go on working and playing and spending their money the way they were going to do tonight. “Hello,” Lin said to each guest who passed him. “Welcome to the new Royal.”
He recognized the head of the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, and behind him the Tai-pan of the big trading house Jardine’s, with his longtime French mistress, whom he squired about openly these days now that his wife had passed over. The man had grieved long and decently, and now even the flintiest matrons tolerated the ripe, heavy-lidded Héloïse on his arm. Lin never ceased to find amusement in the habits of white people.
His smile lit even brighter when he saw the composer Aaron Avshalomov. Born in Siberia, the Russian had spent most of his life in China and wrote concert pieces blending Western and Chinese music; he was admired as a composer, and his presence here raised the tone. He was dressed as he often was in a black silk Chinese gown, which paired oddly with his large, forward-set blue eyes and his angled, leonine face. “Hello, Ah Fu! So nice to see you,” said Lin.
They closed the doors when every seat was taken and the dance floor was crowded with people talking, standing, waiting for the lights to dim. When they did, a single spot bathed the center of the stage, and Lin stepped up with raised arms. “New Year’s Eve!” he shouted, and a roaring cheer enveloped him. “Your waiters are ready to bring the finest food and the best liquors, as we bring in nineteen thirty-seven! The dance floor is yours!”
The crowd screamed again. Behind him, the first musicians strode out in their blue suits. He prayed that Thomas was going to be ready, and spread his arms wide. “Please welcome back the Kansas City Kings!”
The room exploded, and the words were lost as Thomas stepped out behind him into the light, somehow tall and imposing even though he was a man of slight and ordinary build.
He slid into place at the keyboard, under the spotlight, raised his right hand, and ran off a complex, instantly impressive Lisztian phrase that sent a gasp through the hall. As abruptly as the line had started, it stopped, a warm-up. The same hand lifted again, and tapping time with his feet, he counted down the opening bar of “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” which needed only a few notes to send the crowd prancing onto the floor in delight.
Good. Lin heard how the arrangement drew attention away from Thomas’s piano, which, after the showy intro, became all but invisible, keeping time, no more. He was young, green, just out of his thatched cottage, but he was already doing something fresh by quoting the classics. Lin hoped it would reassure those who still thought of jazz as a savage and dangerous current in the yang bang he, the river of foreign culture. No one listening to this could see jazz as something wild that came from the jungle. Yet despite Thomas’s style, the Kings were hot, especially the toe-tapping, knob-kneed young brothers, Charles and Ernest Higgins, who broke the song’s theme over and over on their saxophones in tight harmony, while the brass called out melody lines and the guitar slapped a rhythm underneath.
And the money was flowing: two songs in, the ballroom was over capacity and they were turning people away. Every time Lin passed the business office, he heard the safe opening and closing. Du was going to be pleased.
The boss arrived shortly after midnight, when ’thirty-seven took off with an ear-rattling fusillade of popping champagne corks, and a chorus of “Auld Lang Syne.” The band had just started back in with dance music when Du appeared. He had Fiery Old Crow and Flowery Flag on either side, and Song bringing up the rear in a tea-length qipao like some calendar girl from the ’twenties. “Little Sister,” Lin said, and she gave him the warm smile they always shared as she vanished up the lobby stairs behind her master.