Corporal Kenneth J. McCoy's apartment was on the top floor of a three-story building in P'u-tung. It was not at all elaborate. And it was small, one large room with a bed in a curtained alcove, and a tiny bathroom (shower, no tub) in another. There was no kitchen, but he had installed an electric hot plate so that he could make coffee. And he had an icebox to cool his beer.
But there was a tiny balcony, shielded from view, large enough for just one chair, on which he could sit when he had the time and watch the boat traffic on Soochow Creek.
There was a restaurant in the adjacent building. If he wanted something to eat, all he had to do was put his head out the window and yell at the cook, and food would be delivered to him. He often got breakfast like that, yelling down for a couple of three-minute eggs and a pot of tea. And sometimes late at night, when he was hungry, he'd call down for some kind of Chinese version of a Western omelet, eggs scrambled with onions, bits of ham, and sweet pepper.
He rarely ate in the NCO mess of the 4th Marines, although the chow there was good. It was just that there were so many places in Shanghai to eat well, and so cheaply, that unless he just happened to be near the mess at chow time, it didn't seem worth the effort to take a meal there.
The building on the other side was a brothel, the "Golden Dragon Club," where he had run an account for nearly as long as he'd been stationed in Shanghai. It was through his friend Piotr Petrovich Muller he had found the apartment. Piotr had known the proprietor of the Golden Dragon in the good old days, back in Holy Mother Russia.
The man had an unpronounceable name, but that didn't matter, because he liked to be called "General." He claimed (McCoy was sure he was lying) that he had been a General in the Army of the Czar.
When he had first moved into the apartment, McCoy had played "Vingt-et-Un" with the General long enough for the both of them to recognize the other was not a pigeon to be plucked. They had become more or less friends afterwards, despite the differences in their age and "rank."
Most of the items on the monthly bill the General rendered were for services not connected with the twenty-odd girls in the General's employ. The General's people cleaned McCoy's apartment and did his laundry. And then there were bar charges and food charges. The girls themselves were more than okay. Mostly they were Chinese, who ranged from very pretty to very elegant (no peasant wenches in the General's establishment), but there were a few Indochinese and two White Russians as well.
McCoy actually believed that the General, who exhibited a certain officer-type arrogance, had most probably been an officer, if not officially a general, in the Czarist Army. Something like captain or maybe major was what he probably had been when, like so many other White Russian "generals," he had come penniless and stateless to Shanghai twenty years before. McCoy didn't like to think how the General had survived at first-probably as a pimp, possibly by strong-arm robbery-but he was now inarguably a success.
He had an elegant apartment in one of the newer buildings, to which he sometimes invited McCoy for a Russian dinner. He drove a new American Buick, and he had a number of successful business interests now (some of them perfectly legal) in addition to the Golden Dragon.
There were eight sets of khakis hanging in the wardrobe when McCoy, naked, and still dripping from his shower, walked across the room and opened it. They were not issue. His issue khakis hung in his wall locker at the barracks. These uniforms were tailor-made. The shirts had cost him sixty cents, American, and the trousers ninety. The field scarves (Neckties) had been a nickel, and the belt (stitched layers of khaki) a dime. The belt was not regulation. Regulation was web. But McCoy knew that the only time anything would ever be said about it was at a formal inspection, and he hardly ever stood one of those anymore.
Neither were his chevrons regulation. Regulation chevrons were embroidered onto a piece of khaki and then sewn onto the shirt. McCoy's chevrons (and those of the gunnery sergeant) had been embroidered directly onto their shirts. If it was good enough for the gunny, McCoy had reasoned, it was good enough for him. And now that he had made corporal, he knew that the shirts would be worn out long before he would make sergeant.
The shirt and trousers were stiffly starched. They would not stay that way long. It was already getting humid. Shanghai was as far south as New Orleans, and every bit as muggy. Before long the starch would wilt, and it was more than likely that he would have to change uniforms when he went to the compound, which is where he had to go after he introduced himself to the Reverend Feller, who was staying at the Hotel Metropole. He did not wish to give the assholes in Motor Transport any opportunity to spread it around that Killer McCoy had shown up in a sweaty uniform looking like a fucking Chinaman.
When he was dressed, with his field scarf held in place with the prescribed USMC tie clasp, there was no longer any question that he would need another uniform before the day was over. He decided that it made more sense to take one with him than to use one of the issue uniforms in his billet. He could change in the motor pool head and avoid going to the barracks at all.
Carrying an extra uniform on a hanger, he left the apartment and trotted down the stairs. He did not lock the apartment. The way that worked was that there were some Westerners whose apartments were robbable, and some whose apartments were not. It had nothing to do with locks on doors and bars over windows. The trick was to get yourself on the list of those whose apartments were safe. One way to do this was to have it known that you were friendly with a Shanghai policeman, and the other was to be friendly with the chief of the tong whom the association had granted burglary privileges in your area.
McCoy's apartment was twice safe. When he was in town, he continued to gamble regularly with both Detective Sergeant Lester Chatworth of the Shanghai Police, and (not at the same time, of course, but when the local celebrity honored the Golden Dragon with his presence) with Lon Ci'iang, head of the Po'Ti Tong.
On the crowded street, he stopped first to buy a rice cake, and then flagged down a rickshaw.
He told the boy, a wiry, leather-skinned man of maybe twenty-five, to please take him to the Hotel Metropole, and the boy swung around to look at him in unabashed curiosity. It always shocked the Chinese to encounter a white face who spoke their language.
When the rickshaw delivered him in front of the Hotel Metropole, there were several Europeans (in Shanghai, that included Americans), among them a quartet of British officers, standing on the sidewalk there. The civilians looked at him with distaste, the officers with curiosity. When McCoy saluted crisply, one of the officers, as he returned the salute with a casual wave of his swagger stick, gave him a faint smile.
He is giving me the benefit of the doubt, McCoy thought, deciding that I wouldn't be coming here unless I were on duty. The civilians just don't like a place like this under any circumstances fouled by the presence of a Marine enlisted man.
He went to the desk and asked for the room number of the Reverend Mr. Feller. Captain Banning had been specific on the telephone about that. The missionary named Sessions was really a Marine lieutenant, but McCoy was to deal with a Reverend Feller and not the lieutenant.
As he crossed the lobby to the elevators, one of the bellboys offered to relieve him of the spare uniform, but McCoy waved him away.
The elevators were contained within an ornate metal framework, and the cage itself was glassed in. As it rose, it gave McCoy a view of the entire lobby: the potted palms, the leather couches and chairs, the hotel guests, the men already in linen and seersucker suits, and the women in their summer dresses. He could see the outlines of underwear beneath some of the dresses; and in the right light, some of the women-the younger ones mostly-showed ghostly, lovely legs.