by Ross Thomas
“Uncle Charlie is Charles Cole?” I said.
“That’s right.”
“Then I’m Uncle Charlie’s idea of a babysitter.”
She bent forward to reach for a tall drink that rested on a long, low table in front of the divan and the navy blue dress gaped open enough to show that she didn’t like to bother with a brassiere. She took a swallow of her drink and looked at me some more.
“Sit down someplace,” she said. “Do you want a drink? If you do, Tony will mix you one. That’s Tony over there.”
I sat down in a highbacked chair that was pulled up to the table in front of the divan and started to say hello to Tony, but the shakes hit, and then the sweating started, and Angelo Sacchetti fell into the ocean again and winked his Singapore wink at me as he fell. Then it was over and Carla Lozupone stared curiously as Tony bent over me.
“I’ll take that drink now,” I said, took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat off my face.
“Give him a drink,” Carla said.
Tony looked at me dubiously. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing that a drink won’t cure,” I said.
Tony moved over to a table that was stocked with bottles and mixed me a drink. “Bourbon okay?” he said as he handed it to me.
“Fine.”
“What have you got, some form of epilepsy?” the girl asked.
“No. It’s not epilepsy.”
“Christ,” she said, “it might as well be. You were gone for five minutes.”
“No,” I said. “Not five minutes. Maybe forty seconds or a minute at the most. I’ve timed it before.”
“Does this happen often?” she asked.
“Every day,” I said and took a swallow of the drink. “Except today it was a little early.”
Carla Lozupone pushed her lower lip out a little farther. “What am I supposed to do with a babysitter who throws a fit at six o’clock every evening?”
“The best you can, I suppose.”
“What? Stick a wooden depressor in your mouth so that you won’t bite through your tongue? You’re supposed to look after me, Mr. Cauthorne, or whatever your name is.”
“It’s still Cauthorne,” I said. “Edward Cauthorne.”
“You want I should throw him out?” Tony inquired pleasantly enough and moved over to my chair.
“Tell him not to try,” I said.
Carla Lozupone looked at me and then at Tony. The pout disappeared and she licked a pink tongue over her lower lip. “Throw him out, Tony.”
The tall man with the wavy black hair fastened his hand on my left arm. “You heard the lady,” he said.
I sighed and threw the rest of my drink in his face. Then I was up. His hands went to his face and I hit him twice, a little above the belt. He doubled over just enough for my knee to catch his chin, and as he went down I chopped him, not too hard, on the back of the neck. Tony sprawled on the floor, breathing heavily but steadily through his mouth. I picked up the glass I had dropped and walked over to the table and mixed another drink. There was some Scotch, so I poured that instead of the bourbon. Then I went back to the chair, stepped over Tony, and sat down.
Carla Lozupone stared at me, her mouth slightly parted. At least she wasn’t pouting.
I raised my glass to her and then took a swallow. “I am getting a little sick of being leaned on,” I said. “I am also getting a little sick of the Lozupones and the Coles and the Calleses. But I’m especially sick of Angelo Sacchetti and that’s why I’m going to Singapore. So I can stop being sick of Sacchetti. If you want to tag along, you can. If you don’t, you can always take Tony with you. He should be good at keeping track of the passports and the luggage.”
Carla Lozupone looked at me thoughtfully. “Why do you think I’m going to Singapore?” she said.
“To patch up a busted romance, I understand.”
She laughed and she put a certain amount of bitterness into it. “With Angelo? Don’t be stupid. I can’t stand him and he can’t stand me. We never could, even when we were kids.”
“You weren’t kids together,” I said. “Angelo’s at least ten years older than you are.”
“Nine,” she said. “But he was around when I was twelve and he was twenty-one. I spent a very unpleasant Saturday afternoon with Angelo when I was twelve.”
“I can imagine.”
“I doubt that you can,” she said.
“Then why did you go through with the engagement and the rest of the act?”
She drained her glass. “Mix me another one.”
When I made no move, she added: “Please.”
I rose and picked up her glass. “I thought they must have taught you something at Wellesley. What are you drinking?”
“Vodka and tonic.”
I mixed her drink and handed it to her. “You didn’t answer my question,” I said.
“Do you get The New York Times out here?” she said.
“Not any more. We have to make do with the local product.”
“Than you don’t get a chance to read much about my father.”
“I know who he is.”
“I get to read about him all the time,” she said. “The nicest thing that they call him is a criminal. He’s supposed to be the nation’s number-one gangster. How would you like to read that about your old man?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s dead.”
She paused and lighted a cigarette. Then she blew some smoke at her glass. “I suppose he is,” she said in a low voice.
“What?”
“America’s number-one gangster. But he’s still my father and I like him. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because he likes me and he’s been good to me. He’s been very good to me.”
“That’s a reason.”
“And now he’s in trouble.”
“Your father?” I said.
“He’s in the middle of it and it’s all about Charles Cole.”
“From what I’ve heard,” I said, “your father started it.”
“Then you heard it wrong. They forced him to and now Angelo’s just providing the excuse.”
“Do you always talk like this?” I said.
“Like what?”
“In fragments. You know, bits and pieces. Why don’t you just spell it all out? Start with the beginning. That’s a good place; then go through the middle, and wind up at the end. With luck, I can follow you.”
She took a deep breath and pushed the top of her dress out in an interesting manner. “Okay,” she said. “From the beginning. It all started several years ago. I was a sophomore at Wellesley and I’d come home for a weekend. It was a Saturday afternoon and they were in my father’s den.”
“Who?”
“My father and his friends. Or associates or whatever you want to call them. There were four or five of them.”
“All right,” I said.
“I eavesdropped. I was curious, so I eavesdropped.”
“All right,” I said again.
“The door to the den was open. It opens into the living room and they didn’t know I was there. Sometimes they talked in Italian and sometimes in English.”
“About what?”
“About Charles Cole or Uncle Charlie. They were telling my father that he should be eliminated. Killed or murdered is more accurate.”
She paused and took a long swallow of her drink. “I’d read about it. I had read everything I could find about it and about my father, but I’d never heard them talk like that. I couldn’t help but listen.”
“To what?”
She took another deep breath. “Those who wanted Cole out of the way said that he had too much power, that he’d become too expensive, and that he was producing too little. My father argued against them and it got rough. I mean really rough. I didn’t know my father could talk like that. They didn’t reach any decision that night, but I could tell my old man was worried. He had argued that Charles Cole knew too much;
that there were too many documents in his possession. If he were to die, those documents might get in the wrong hands. His associates didn’t want to listen to him.”
“But they had to?” I said.
She nodded. “He’s number one, I guess you could call it. They had to listen to him, at least for a while. But then, about six months later, my old man drove up to Wellesley for parents’ day.” She paused and stared into her drink. “That was funny.”
“What?”
“My father in his Mercedes 600 driving up to Wellesley with Tony here. They all knew who he was, of course.”
“Who?”
“My friends at school.”
“How’d they react?”
“How do you expect?”
“You were snubbed?”
She smiled and shook her head. “Just the opposite. I was made. All they had for fathers were stockbrokers and lawyers and corporation presidents. I was the only one who had a real live gangster with a certified hood for a chauffeur. There was my father, a little round man without too much hair, an eighth grade education, and a noticeable accent. And there were all the young girls making over him as if he were their favorite poet-politician. He liked it. He liked it very much.”
“But he didn’t drive up just for parents’ day,” I said.
“No. He came up to ask me to become engaged to Angelo. He had never asked me to do anything before. Nothing for him anyway. So I asked him why and he told me. It was the first time that he’d ever really talked to me. You know, as if I were an adult.”
“What were his reasons?”
She looked at me then. “How much do you know about all this?”
“More than I should probably, but it seems to be a different version.”
She nodded at that and said, “You may as well have the right one.”
The right one, it seemed, was that Joe Lozupone asked his daughter to become engaged to the godson of Charles Cole for one reason only, and it wasn’t because he was overly fond of Angelo’ Sacchetti, as Charles Cole had claimed. The five New York families were divided, three to two against Cole. Lozupone felt that if his daughter became engaged to Sacchetti it would provide him with the excuse that he needed to side with Cole. There would be a blood tie, or at least something that was close to a blood tie. Carla Lozupone agreed. The engagement was announced, the party was held, and the rest was much as Charles Cole had told me, except for one thing. Lozupone could now hold out no longer against the three families after it was learned that Angelo Sacchetti was still alive, but had not returned to marry the daughter. He was forced to announce his opposition to Cole.
“I kept up with it all,” Carla said. “I even went into mourning when Angelo was reported dead. And then when they discovered that he was alive, I told people I was going to Singapore to marry him. I did all this without consulting my old man. It’s given him time. Now he and the rest of them have run out of time. But as long as they think there’s a chance of my marrying Angelo, my old man can stall, and Charles Cole will stay alive.”
“And if you don’t marry him?”
She shrugged and it was a fatalistic, resigned expression. “My father will have to vote yes on Charles Cole’s death and when he does, he’ll also be voting for his own death because he’s certain that enough evidence will turn up in Cole’s files to convict him. He has a bad heart; a prison sentence would kill him.”
She was silent for a while as she fiddled with the ice in her glass. “He has an alternative, of course.”
“What?” I said.
“He could start a war. It would be easy and while it lasted, they’d forget about Cole. If he won, Cole would still be safe. If my father lost, it wouldn’t matter. He might as well be dead.”
“So by going to Singapore, you’re buying him time.”
“That’s about all, isn’t it?” she said. “Two weeks, three weeks at the most. Maybe he can work something out in the meantime. He’s very good at that.”
“You must care about him a great deal,” I said.
She shrugged. “He’s my father and as I said he’s been good to me. The only thing I wouldn’t do for him is marry Angelo Sacchetti. I just can’t do that.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said, as Tony began to stir on the floor beside me. “I don’t think you’ll have to.”
CHAPTER XI
It is about 9,500 miles from Los Angeles to Singapore and Pan American Airways doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to get there. I understand that other flights are offered from Los Angeles, but the only one for which Carla Lozupone and I could get first class reservations was number 811 which left at 9:45 P.M.
I had spent most of that Saturday getting the tickets and a smallpox shot so that my International Certificate of Vaccination could be brought up to date. A call at a travel agency had given me vague assurance of two rooms at the Raffles Hotel providing that the wire got to Singapore before we did and providing that two rooms were available.
Carla Lozupone, with Tony bringing up the rear as well as the luggage, met me in the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire. She was dressed for travel in a lightweight black and white checked pants suit and her pout was back in place. “What do we do,” she said instead of hello, “fly all night?”
“All night and part of the day after tomorrow,” I said.
“San Francisco’s better. There’s a direct flight out of San Francisco.”
“We’ll try that next time,” I said.
Tony joined us after he paid Carla Lozupone’s bill, entrusted her luggage to a bellhop, and ordered his rented car to be brought up from the hotel’s garage. “Had your fit yet?” he asked.
I looked at my watch. “About two hours ago, thanks.”
“That drink in the face crap,” he said. “I seen that on television lots of times.”
“That’s where I learned it.”
He nodded pleasantly enough. “You didn’t hurt me bad though. I been hurt worse than that.”
“I pulled them,” I said. “If I hadn’t, you’d have been in the hospital with your jaws wired together and your neck in a cast.”
He thought about that for a moment. “Thanks for pulling them then.”
“You’re welcome.”
“But my stomach still hurts some.”
“I didn’t pull those,” I said.
“No,” he said, “I didn’t think you did.”
The car that Tony had rented was a new Chrysler and he drove it well. There wasn’t much conversation until we reached the airport and he pulled up in front of the Pan American entrance. Then he turned around in the seat. “Not much use in me coming in, is there, Carla?”
“None,” she said and started gathering up her purse and cosmetic kit.
“What’ll I tell the boss? I’m flying back tomorrow.”
“Tell him whatever you want to.”
“I mean do you want I should tell him you’re okay and everything?”
“Yes,” she said. “Tell him that.”
Tony looked at me. “I wouldn’t want you to make me out a liar, friend. Take good care of her.”
“You sure you wouldn’t like to come along?” I said. “You could look after both of us.”
“I’m not kidding, friend,” he said.
“I didn’t think you were.”
We touched down at Honolulu International a little after midnight, some fifteen minutes late, switched to Flight 841 which took off at 1:45 A.M., another fifteen minutes late, and then flew forever until we reached Guam. After they picked up the milk there we flew for what seemed to be another couple of weeks until we landed at Manila International. From Manila we flew to Tan-Soh-Nhut, which is four and a half miles outside of Saigon where all the fun goes on, and then, finally, a month or so later, we landed at Paya Lebar International Airport at 1:10 P.M. Monday. We were seven and one half miles from the center of Singapore and only forty minutes late.
Carla Lozupone, I discovered, didn’t care much for airplanes. She had thre
e martinis in quick succession after we left Honolulu, tossed down a couple of red capsules, and fell asleep. She awakened in Manila, asked where we were, ordered a double martini, and promptly went back to sleep. Vietnam failed to interest her and thirty minutes out of Singapore she departed for the ladies’ room with her cosmetics kit and the comment: “I’m a mess.”
It was a long, long flight and it gave me time to think, more time than I really needed. I thought about Charles Cole for a while and decided that his summoning me to Washington had been the desperate, or even frantic, act of a thoroughly frightened man who would do anything if it would let him live a little longer, a year, a month or even a day. He apparently was convinced that his only hope was for me to recover the blackmail kit from Angelo Sacchetti. The only way that I could do that was to use the scheme advanced by the rumpled and unlikely FBI agent, Sam Dangerfield. I thought about what I had come to regard as the Dangerfield Plan for a few moments, but not many, because it was too much like wondering if I had six friends who would serve as pallbearers only to discover that I didn’t Essentially, Dangerfield and Cole wanted the same tiling and that was the information now in Angelo Sacchetti’s hands or his safe-deposit box or under his pillow—information that could put Joe Lozupone away in Leavenworth or Atlanta to either run a sewing machine or grow vegetables in the greenhouse for years to come. But if the girl with the pout, who slept next to me on the plane that flew over the Pacific, were telling the truth, Joe Lozupone was the only thing that stood between Charles Cole and a bullet, a knife, a one-way excursion on Chesapeake Bay, or whatever was in style that year.
There seemed to be only one constant and that was Angelo Sacchetti, and while I was wondering about him, somewhere past Guam, I fell asleep and dreamed a dream that I couldn’t recall, but which had me sweating when I awakened as we landed in Manila, the town that they once called the Pearl of the Orient.
At Singapore airport they sent a bus to transport us from the plane to the Arrivals Building. It was hot, but then it’s always hot in Singapore. We breezed through the health and immigration authorities, recovered our baggage from customs, and found a smiling Malay porter who located us a cab while I changed some American Express checks into Singapore dollars.