The Singapore Wink

by Ross Thomas

  “When I get back to the Philippines. I load up here with watches, cameras, sewing machines, English bikes, cigarettes, and whisky and then run it into either Leyte or Cebu.”

  “You ever get caught?” I said.

  “Not any more. I’ve got four engines in the Wilfreda Maria now and she’ll do thirty knots easy. I can always duck around in the Sulu Islands if things get too hot.”

  “Where do you live in the Philippines?” I said.

  “Cebu City.”

  “For how long?”

  “Twenty-five years. I was with the guerrillas from forty-two on and then I was liaison between the Americans and the guerrillas towards the end of the war.”

  “I knew a guy who was in Cebu City about two years ago,” I said. “An American.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Angelo Sacchetti.”

  Nash had his beer bottle halfway up to his mouth when I mentioned the name. He stopped, looked at me with green eyes that suddenly seemed wary, and said: “Friend of yours?”

  “An acquaintance.”

  Nash took his interrupted drink of beer, a long, gurgling draught that emptied the bottle. “You looking for him?”

  “In a way.”

  “Either you’re looking for him or you’re not.”

  “All right. I’m looking for him.”

  “Why?”

  “A personal matter.”

  “I don’t think he wants to see you,” Nash said, and signaled for another beer.

  “What makes you think so?”

  Nash was silent until the waiter served the beer and returned to his newspaper. “Sacchetti dropped into Cebu City about two years ago and he didn’t have a dime. Well, he may have had a couple of bucks, but he wasn’t eating filets and his name wasn’t Angelo Sacchetti then either.”

  “What was it?”

  “Jerry Caldwell.”

  “How long was he there?”

  “About three or four months. He looked me up with a proposition. Loan sharking. You know, borrow five pesos and pay back six. I told him I wasn’t interested so he put the touch on me for a couple of thousand.”

  “Why you?”

  “Hell, I was an American like him.”

  “Sorry. I forgot.”

  “So I loaned it to him and he loaned it out to a couple of gamblers. For one week. They were supposed to pay him back twenty-five hundred, but they didn’t get around to it. Caldwell or Sacchetti didn’t push them too hard, at least not for a couple of weeks. Then he went downtown and bought himself a baseball bat. You know what he did with that bat?”

  “No, but I can guess.”

  “He got those two gamblers and broke their legs with it, that’s what. They paid up real quick after that and I don’t know of anybody else who borrowed from him who was late.”

  “Why did he leave?”

  “Cebu? I don’t know. He hung around the race track mostly. Gamblers were his best customers. Then one day he comes by my place. I wasn’t home, but my old lady was and she told me he took out a roll the size of a cabbage and paid off the two thousand he owed me. Then he left town. Just like that. Disappeared. The next time I see him is about two or three months later. He’s in the Hilton here with this good-looking Chinese doll. I was supposed to meet a guy there but he hadn’t showed up, so I go up to Caldwell and say: ‘Hello, Jerry.’ He just looks at me like this.” Nash made his face go cold and blank. “Then he says, ‘Sorry, mister, you’ve got the wrong party. The name is Sacchetti. Angelo Sacchetti.’ So I said, ‘Okay, Jerry, any way you want it.’ Then he turned around and walked off. So later I checked him out with this guy I’m supposed to meet in the Hilton and this guy tells me that Sacchetti is the latest local power. He’s in everything, even numbers. So I keep track of him.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Hell, why not? I gave him his start, didn’t I? I knew him when and all that crap. So now he’s married into society or whatever they call it here and he lives out in that yacht of his that he named The Chicago Belle and ain’t that a hell of a name for a yacht?”

  “He’s probably just sentimental.”

  “I thought he was from L.A. At least that’s what he told me. He also told me that he used to be in pictures, but I sure never saw him in any.”

  “He was in pictures,” I said.

  “Is that where you knew him, in L.A.?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you’re a friend of his?”

  “Let’s just say I know him.”

  Nash took another giant swallow of beer. “Well, it’s like I said, I don’t think he’s too anxious to see you.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “The guy in the back of the taxi, the one that took a shot at you.”

  “What about him?”

  “He works for Sacchetti.”

  I suppose I didn’t have to say anything. It was all there in my face and I found that it took a conscious effort to close my mouth. Nash grinned at me.

  “Not used to getting shot at, huh?”

  “Not for real.”

  “Well, if you think it over and still want to find him, I’ll run you out in my launch. You can get me at this number.” He wrote something on a scrap of paper with a ballpoint pen and handed it to me.

  “Why stick your neck out?” I said.

  Nash waved his hand in a deprecatory gesture. “Hell, we’re both Americans, aren’t we?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I almost forgot again.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  I had just stripped off my clothes and was fiddling with the handles on the shower in the immense bath-cum-dressing-room that the Raffles provides its guests when I heard the knock. I wrapped a towel around my middle, went to the door, and asked who it was.

  “Carla.”

  I opened the door. “Come on in. I was just about to take a shower. You can join me if you like.”

  She came into the room wearing another dress that I hadn’t seen, a tan silk sheath that emphasized her figure through indirection. She sank into a chair, crossed her legs so that I couldn’t miss anything interesting, and ran her eyes over me slowly as if reappraising a painting that had turned out to be more interesting than she had thought at first glance.

  “You have good shoulders,” she said. “And your stomach’s nice and flat. I like flat stomachs. Most of the men I know have pots, even the young ones. They have that little roll that hangs over their belts and turns their pants tops down.”

  “They just need a new tailor to move the belt loops up.”

  “I thought you were going to knock on my door when you got back,” she said.

  “I wanted to smell nice for you.”

  “How sweet. Have you got anything to drink?”

  “No, but you can order a bottle. Just ring that bell over there and the houseboy will bring it.” I turned and headed for the bathroom again.

  “Take your time,” she said.

  I was taking my time by letting the hot water beat down on the shoulder that had landed on the cement sidewalk when a hand reached in and tapped me on that same shoulder. Carla Lozupone pulled the heavy shower curtains aside and stepped into the bath. “I decided to take you up on the invitation,” she said. I couldn’t see any reason to scream so I put my arms around her and found her mouth hungry and her hands curious, then demanding. We left the shower running and made it to the bed where she looked up at me, ran her pink tongue over her lips, and said, “Say them to me.”

  “What?”

  “The words.”

  So I said the words that I thought she wanted to hear, most of them with four letters, invented a few more, and her eyes glistened and her hands became more frantic and her mouth demanded everything. Afterwards she lay staring up at the ceiling as her hands ran over breasts and down to her thighs.

  “You’re as good as you look,” she said. “Even better. I like it that way.”

  “What way?”

  “In a hotel when it’s casual a
nd exciting and sensual. Like when it’s with a stranger almost. But don’t get any ideas, Cauthorne.”

  “About what?”

  “About me.”

  “I was just going to comment that you’re a pretty good lay. One of the best, in fact.”

  “We didn’t do everything.”

  “No, I suppose we didn’t.”

  She propped herself up on her left elbow and her right hand went exploring again. I noticed that the pout was gone and that her tongue was once more playing around her lower lip. “Would you like to try everything?” she said.

  “I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t.” And we did. At least there wasn’t anything else that either of us could think of, and she had a rather fertile imagination.

  After we were dressed and the houseboy had brought a bottle of Ballantine’s, and some sandwiches and Carla was on her second drink, she looked at me and said, “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Well, what happened?”

  “You mean now that sex time’s over let’s get down to business.”

  “I take it when and where I want it, Eddie.”

  “Just like a hot bath, huh?”

  “Did it mean any more to you than that?”

  “No, I guess it didn’t.”

  “Well, what did you find out?”

  “Oh, that. I found out where Angelo lives. It wasn’t hard. I could have asked the room clerk and saved a lot of time. Angelo’s a rather prominent citizen now. He’s also married, but you already knew that, didn’t you, even before you left the states, so the excuse about stalling for your father was just another lie in what I feel must be a long series of them.”

  “All right,” she said. “So I knew he was married. I still have to see him.”

  “Come off it, Carla. You’ve already seen him. You saw him last night after you left me. You told him that I was here and that I was looking for him and that I was going to see a man at ten o’clock this morning. You set me up, sweetheart, and when I came out of the building where I had my appointment, Angelo had somebody there to take a shot at me. It was more or less a friendly shot, just a warning. Nobody could have missed at that distance unless he was trying.”

  None of what I said caused her to spill her drink. Instead, she gave the fingernails on her left hand a careful study. Then she looked up at me and smiled as if I had just complimented her on the new way that she wore her hair.

  “You know what Angelo did when I told him you were in Singapore?” she said. “He laughed. He thinks you’re some kind of a joke. A none-too-funny one that he’s heard before. I don’t think he wants you around.”

  “I’m sure of it,” I said.

  “Then why stay?”

  “Because I want to see him.”

  “Is that all?”

  “That’s enough.”

  She shook her head. “You’re keeping it all very nice and cozy, aren’t you? Angelo laughed until I told him that you were hooked up with his godfather. Then he quit laughing. Why did Uncle Charlie pick you as my babysitter, Cauthorne? Not just because he likes the dimple in your smile, although I’ve heard that he swings that way sometimes.”

  “I was available and I was anxious to see Angelo.”

  “No,” she said. “There’s something else. My Uncle Charlie wouldn’t have gone outside if there weren’t something else.”

  “Outside of what?”

  “What do you think?” she said.

  “I think you’re clannish.”

  “I’m doing what I have to do.”

  “And getting me shot at is part of it.”

  “That’s your hard times.”

  “You seem to have some of your own,” I said.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll spell it out for you. Angelo has something that belongs to my father. I’m here to buy it back.”

  It all fell into place then. I could almost hear the click. Angelo was not only blackmailing Charles Cole for having furnished incriminating information about old friends and acquaintances to the proper authorities, he was also blackmailing Joe Lozupone with the letters or records or whatever it was that he had stolen from his godfather’s safe. Angelo Sacchetti, I decided, must be making a great deal of money.

  “Why you?” I said.

  “Because there wasn’t anyone else.”

  “You mean that there was no one else that your father could trust to make the payoff and not keep whatever it is that you’re trying to buy back.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How much?” I said.

  “A million.”

  “Where do you keep it, in your cosmetic kit?”

  “You’re not funny, Cauthorne. It’s in a Panama bank. They’re better than the Swiss ones; they ask fewer questions. All I have to do is give Angelo a letter and he’ll be a million dollars richer.”

  “Then it sounds simple. You could have done that last night, picked up whatever it is that he has, and caught the first plane out this morning.”

  “That was the plan.”

  “But something came up?”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “Angelo wanted something else. More money, I’d say.”

  “No. He’ll settle for a million.”

  “He will this time, but what about next time?”

  “There won’t be a next time,” she said.

  “If it’s blackmail, there will be. Your father seems like an easy touch.”

  “My father,” she said in a thin, hard voice, “is not easy about anything. And that’s something that Angelo knows. He’ll risk it this time; never again.”

  “Blackmailers are strange,” I said. “Their victims make it simple for them and their greed is almost pathological, otherwise they wouldn’t be blackmailers.”

  Carla stared at me. “My father gave me a message for Angelo. He made me memorize it. That wasn’t hard to do because it was a simple message. I gave it to him last night.”

  “What was it?”

  “It was, ‘Once, I pay; twice, you’re dead.’”

  “As you say, it’s simple.”

  “Angelo understood it.”

  “So everybody’s happy.”

  “Everybody but Angelo. As I said, he wants something else.”

  “What?”

  “He wants you out of Singapore.”

  “Why? I’m harmless.”

  “Angelo doesn’t think so.”

  “What does he think?”

  “He thinks you’re in Charles Cole’s pocket.”

  “And that bothers him?”

  “It makes him nervous.”

  “Angelo was never nervous in his life.”

  Carla made an impatient gesture with her left hand. “All right, Cauthorne, we can sit here and have some more of this bright and brittle conversation, but it’s beginning to drag. Angelo won’t give me what I want until you’re gone. I don’t know the real reason why you want to see Angelo and I don’t really care. I suspect that it’s as he says, you’re Charles Cole’s heavy, either for money or because you have to. I don’t care about that either. But if you are after Angelo, I mean really after him, either for your own reasons or because dear Uncle Charlie has you in some kind of a box, I strongly advise you to forget it. You see, if anything happens to Angelo, if he were to get shot or drowned or run over, then a copy of the information he has goes to Washington and my father goes to jail which really means that he goes to his grave because prison would kill him.” She paused and stared at me again. “But not,” she said, “before somebody killed you.”

  “You know, Carla, you’re really rather good.”

  “At what?”

  “At passing along secondhand threats. What’s more, you seem to enjoy it. But I’m not at all interested in what you say that somebody else says that they’re going to do to me because, first of all, you’re a liar—a good one—but still a liar. And second, I’m in Singapore for one reason and that’s to find Angelo Sacchetti.”

&nbs
p; “Why?”

  “Because I owe him something.”

  “What?”

  “I won’t know until I’ve paid him.”

  “Angelo doesn’t want to see you.”

  “I won’t interfere with his plans for the weekend.”

  She rose and headed for the door, but turned just before she got there.

  “You say you don’t like secondhand messages, but I have one more for you. From Angelo.”

  “All right.”

  “He said you have three days. He said to tell you that. He said you would understand.”

  “What happens after three days?” I said.

  She looked at me thoughtfully for several moments. “He didn’t say. I asked him, but he didn’t say. Not in so many words at least.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He winked,” she said. “That’s all. He just winked.”

  CHAPTER XV

  Despite its pretensions of multi-racial hegemony, Singapore remains essentially a Chinese city. Many of its citizens have realized only recently, as history goes, that they won’t, after all, retire on their savings to a comfortable old age in Shanghai or Canton or Fukien Province or northern Kwangtung.

  But these are the older Chinese and more than half of the population of what Somerset Maugham once called “the laughing city” is under twenty-one and has forgotten, or never knew, the old ties with the mainland whether it was China, Malaya or India.

  However, old and young alike remember when their prime minister, the ebulient Mr. Lee, who sometimes talks of a third China, wept when he was forced to announce that Singapore was, almost overnight, because of racial and political conflict, no longer a part of the Malaysian Federation. It was then that the new republic emerged, untried and shaky, to find itself balancing alone on a political tightrope that stretched from east to west.

  From what Lim Pang Sam had told me, the father-in-law of Angelo Sacchetti could make that tightrope vibrate dangerously because of his tight control over Singapore’s militant far left elements who apparently were quite willing to start a race riot at a nod from the father-in-law, Toh Kin Pui. A prolonged riot among Chinese, Malays, and Indians could wreck Singapore’s economy and crush its government. So, in essence, Angelo Sacchetti, who got his name from a box of noodles and whose father died young, with only Sonny from Chicago engraved on his tombstone if, indeed, there were one, now had the fix in at Singapore. And I had to agree with Lim Pang Sam. It seemed unlikely that Angelo Sacchetti would be heading back to the United States anytime soon.