The Singapore Wink

Chapter X

After the plane landed at Los Angeles International I took a cab to Santa Monica and La Brea and got there too late for lunch with Trippet, but in plenty of time to learn that I had an appointment at the Beverly Wilshire at six that evening with Miss Carla Lozupone.

“Someone called about an hour ago,” Trippet said. “He didn’t sound very friendly.”

“I haven’t met any of them who are.”

Trippet wanted to know what had happened so I told him, leaving out only Cole’s threat concerning the acid. I also told Trippet about the plan that Dangerfield dreamed up to retrieve the evidence from Sacchetti. I had spent four and a half hours on the plane thinking about Dangerfield’s plan, trying to improve on it, and the only conclusion I had come to was that it would probably land me in either of two places, the hospital or the cemetery.

“Surely, you’re not going through with it?” Trippet said and brushed his long grey hair from his eyes.

“There’s only one thing I know that I’m going to do. That’s fly to Singapore and find Angelo Sacchetti.”

“And the evidence?”

“I don’t know. If he hands it over to me, fine. But I don’t think I’ll wrestle him for it.”

Trippet rummaged through the office desk. “Where do we keep the stationery?”

“Bottom left-hand drawer,” I said.

He found a sheet, took out his broad-nibbed fountain pen, and began to write. “You don’t know anyone in Singapore, do you?”

“Just Angelo Sacchetti.”

“This is a letter of introduction to Sammy Lim. He’s an awfully nice chap. We were at school together, you know.”

“I didn’t.”

“Yes,” Trippet said and kept on writing. “His grandfather and mine founded one of the first Chinese-British export-import firms in Singapore. Trippet and Lim, Ltd. It caused a terrible stir. Sammy’s full name is Lim Pang Sam. He’s now managing director and also principal stockholder, although I still hold some interest. Haven’t seen him in years, but we correspond quite regularly.”

Trippet signed the letter with a bit of flourish, asked me if there was a blotter, and I told him no, that I hadn’t used a blotter in years, probably because I hadn’t owned a fountain pen in years. He said he couldn’t stand ball-point pens and I told him he was against progress. By this time he had waved the letter around enough for the ink to dry, so he handed it to me. Trippet wrote a nice hand and it read:

“Dickie?” I said and handed the letter back to him.

Trippet rummaged around in the desk until he found an envelope. “Well, after all, we were at school together,” he said as he folded the letter and placed it in the envelope and handed it to me.

“Thanks very much,” I said and put the envelope in an inside jacket pocket.

“Not at all. When do you think you’ll leave?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to get a smallpox shot first and I guess it’ll depend on the fair Carla and her wishes.”

Trippet shook his head. “I fail to see, Edward, why you agreed to serve as her escort or chaperone or whatever you are.”

“Because it was easier to acquiesce than to argue, I suppose. Or maybe I just like to have people walking over me.”

Trippet frowned. “That sounds suspiciously like self-pity.”

“Whatever it is, I plan to get rid of it in Singapore.”

“You’re banking an awfully lot on this trip, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I suppose I am. Wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “In my rather haphazard life I have, upon occasion, attempted the geographical cure, I suppose you might call it. But I always found that it had one distinct drawback.”

“What?”

“I had to go along with me.”

We walked around the corner to one of the bars and had a drink while Trippet brought me up to date on Sydney Durant. He had visited Sydney at the hospital earlier that day and all our principal body repair man could tell him was that there had been four of them. They had picked him up in front of his rooming house at one-thirty in the morning and had driven him to a quiet residential street, just off Sunset. Two of them had held him while another had clamped a gag over his mouth. The fourth member of the party had slammed the door. Then they hopped into their car and sped off, leaving Sydney to wander down to Sunset holding his shattered hands in front of him. It had been dark and he couldn’t give a good description of the men to either Trippet or the police.

“I assured him that his hands would be all right,” Trippet said. “When he gets well enough to leave the hospital I plan to take him home with me so that Barbara can look after him.”

“I may not get the chance to see Sydney,” I said. “But tell him that when he gets well enough we need him to help out in front until his hands are healed. Tell him we want him to learn the management side.”

“Sometimes, Edward, the humanitarian side of your nature absolutely surprises me.”

“Sometimes, Dickie, it surprises me, too.”

Trippet began his usual leisurely stroll homewards and I stood on the corner for fifteen minutes until I hailed a cab which dropped me in front of the Beverly Wilshire at five minutes after six. I asked the room clerk for Miss Lozupone’s room number and he informed me that the hotel policy was not to give out such information and that if I wished to speak to Miss Lozupone, I should use the house phone. I told him I thought that the hotel policy was sound and asked where the house phones were located. He pointed them out and I picked one up and asked for Miss Carla Lozupone. A male voice answered.

“Miss Lozupone, please,” I said.

“This Cauthorne?”

“Yes.”

“Come on up. She’s waiting for you.”

I asked the voice what the room number was. He told me and I rode the elevator up to the seventh floor, walked down the hall, and knocked on a door. A tall man of about thirty with long, wavy black hair and acne-scarred cheeks opened the door.

“You Cauthorne?”

“I’m Cauthorne,” I said.

“Come on in,” he said and opened the door wide enough to let me enter, provided I turned sideways.

Inside I found myself in what must have been the Beverly Wilshire’s Spanish Fandango suite. The furniture was all black mahogany with red velvet upholstery that was held in place by brass nailheads. There were some tables with beaten brass tops that looked a little Moorish and Mexico got in its innings with some pictures of peasants in wide sombreros leaning against white adobe walls in what looked to be an impossibly yellow sunshine.

She was sitting on a low, long divan that matched the rest of the furniture in the room. Her dress was navy blue and had three large white buttons down the front and ended far enough above her knees for the view to be fascinating. She wore her black hair long and straight and it framed a pair of dark eyes, an almost perfect nose whose nostrils flared just a little, and a full, lipsticked mouth that seemed to have pouted its way through life. Except for the pout, and a chin that some might have thought too small, she could have been called striking, or even beautiful, if you were feeling generous that day. But with or without the pout she was undeniably sexy and I had the notion that she spent a lot of time working at it.

“So you’re Uncle Charlie’s idea of a babysitter,” she said as if she didn’t care much for Uncle Charlie’s ideas.

“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.”