This Is How It Really Sounds Read Online Free PDF Page B

roof’s center. This had been a mistake. Kell could be the earthiest, most magnetic man you’d ever met, but tonight they’d gotten the other Kell, the foulmouthed Irish drunk from South Philly. Gutterman threw him, too. There was something furtive and broken about him, and having him bring up the New York magazine story didn’t feel accidental. He’d buy the drinks and get Camille out of here in fifteen minutes.
    â€œHelluva scene, isn’t it?”
    The American voice came from behind him, and even without seeing its owner, he could tell it belonged to a different time. He turned to find himself staring slightly upward into the visage of a very old man. It was a face that didn’t fit in at the Bar Rouge, a square, aged face made large by its receding line of snow-white hair and eyes slightly yellowed by a vast number of years. He had to be at least in his late seventies, dressed in an old-fashioned-looking tweed sport coat and a tie held down by a clip with some sort of regimental insignia on it. What was he doing here? Harrington had lost his father a year before, and the stranger brought on a pang of nostalgia. “Yes, it is a hell of a scene. Is this your first time in Shanghai?”
    The old man smiled. “Not exactly.”
    â€œOh? When were you here before?”
    The old man smiled. “Well, to give you an indication, the last time I stood on this roof it was the Chartered Bank.”
    Harrington looked at him. “You mean, like … sixty years ago?”
    â€œSixty-four. I was here off and on from forty-six to forty-nine. I left a few weeks before Liberation.”
    The financier cocked his head. “No!”
    â€œI wouldn’t lie to you.”
    Harrington laughed. “That’s amazing!” The old man seemed to be alone, and the line to get drinks was a long one. It wouldn’t hurt to chat him up. “Let me buy you a drink and you can tell me what you were doing here sixty-four years ago.”
    The man had been in Shanghai on some other business after the war and what was then called the Chartered Bank had hired him to keep an eye on their staff. “They were having some irregularities, so they put me on as a teller. We had a little table and chairs set up on the roof, and we’d come up and have some drinks after closing time. Of course, the view was a little different then”—he motioned toward the giant picket of rainbow-lit skyscrapers across the river from them—“but it was nice.”
    â€œDid you find the thief?”
    â€œOh yeah. It was a Chinese teller, but it turned out he was put up to it by one of the British vice presidents. He was keeping a girlfriend in high style at the Grosvenor. They put the Chinese guy in jail and sent the British guy back to England. Never prosecuted him.” He grinned. “Funny how that works.”
    Harrington imagined the bank as it had been back then, with brass-barred teller windows and secretaries behind big black typewriters. The old man had traveled through that most distant and exotic land, the Past, a place he could never visit no matter how much money he had. “What was Shanghai like in 1946?”
    â€œHard,” he answered. “Real hard. Communists fighting the Nationalists. Everybody scrambling to pick up as many pieces as they could before things settled down, or fell apart. Whatever you wanted, you could get it: opium, women, a passport, a brand-new Packard. You could hire a killer for ten bucks.” He added cheerfully, “A hundred bucks for a really good one.” He tapped Harrington’s sleeve and nodded toward the bartender. “You’re up.”
    Harrington ordered drinks for his group and a Manhattan for the old man, then turned back to him. “So … I’m sorry, what’s your name?”
    â€œErnie.”
    â€œI’m Peter. Ernie, what brings you to Shanghai again?”
    â€œThe Chinese