Chapter XII

Just like a couple of well-heeled American tourists determined to discover the real Singapore, we had dinner that night in Bugis Street which runs through one of the Chinese sections. The two- and three-story buildings that line the street are about the size of a low-cost American row house, except that as many as fifty persons might be living inside, or at least sleeping there. This forces the cooking to be done outside, virtually on the sidewalk. The specialties are displayed in stalls and served at small tables covered with fairly clean white cloths.

It was the dinner hour. Later, the street would become a market center where the stalls would sell sport shirts and razor blades instead of eight-inch prawns and steamed cockles. We found a table, sat down, and almost immediately a young Chinese appeared, carrying two hot scented towels in wooden tongs.

“What’s this for?” Carla said.

“You’re supposed to be hot and sweaty,” I said. “You can dry yourself off with it.”

I asked the man who had brought the towels what his specialty was and he claimed that he served a most remarkable roast duck. We decided to try the duck as well as some pau, which are riceballs that contain meat and prawns heavily spiced with chilis and sweetened with something that tastes like plum sauce. We began with a soup that I couldn’t identify but which turned out to be almost as good as our duck specialist promised it would be. The man who sold ducks dispatched a youngster for the pau and the soup which were the specialties of a couple of stalls farther down the street. The service was good, the price was wonderful, the duck was excellent, and if you didn’t mind a motorcycle or two going off in your ear, the blast of what seemed to be a hundred transistor radios, all tuned to different stations, and an occasional elbow in your neck from the passing crowd that thronged the street, it was all very nice, friendly and, I suppose, quite Chinese in a touristy sort of way.

When we were finished I asked Carla if she would like to take a trishaw back to the hotel.

“You mean one of those things where the man rides a bicycle in front?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head. “That’s where I draw the line, Cauthorne. I’ll do a lot of things, but I’m not going to cause another human being to have a heart attack because he has to pull me around.”

“You’re thinking of rickshaws,” I said. “They don’t have them in Singapore any more. I think the rickshaw men used to last a maximum of five years before they died of tuberculosis.”

“How long do they last pumping away on their bicycles?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Really? What a pleasant surprise.”

Before I could say something clever to that a cab appeared and I hailed it. The driver just missed a very old woman who hobbled along on tiny feet that must have been bound when she was a child, cut smartly in front of a long-haired Chinese youth on a big Honda, and came to a stop before us as if he were surprised that his brakes still worked.

I have a theory, largely unsubstantiated, that countries whose traffic moves on the left have a higher accident rate than those where it keeps to the right. It may be an entirely provincial notion, but it was lent additional support by the driver who cowboyed us the short distance back to the Raffles, never keeping more than four inches between his bumper and the car in front, and passing a couple of times when there wasn’t any space to pass. Despite my former trade, I kept closing my eyes at crucial moments which seemed to occur every fifty feet or so. It apparently didn’t bother Carla Lozupone at all.

At the hotel, I paid the driver, tipped him handsomely because I was glad to be alive, and suggested a brandy in the courtyard to Carla. She agreed and we sat there, sipping Courvoisier under the palm trees, and admiring the golf-green-like grass.

“What’s on for tomorrow,” she said. “More local color?”

“I have to see a man.”

“What about?”

“He may have some suggestions about where I can find Angelo Sacchetti.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I may run an ad in the personal column.”

“When do you see the man?”

“At ten.”

She looked at her watch. “I think I’ll go on up,” she said. “I’m a little tired.” I started to rise, but she added: “You may as well finish your drink. Knock on my door when you get back from your appointment.”

“All right.”

I watched her walk across the courtyard and enter the hotel. For no good reason at all, I left some bills on the table and followed. Carla Lozupone entered the lobby, turned towards the entrance, and spoke briefly to the turbaned Sikh doorman under the canopy. He whistled up a cab and Carla got in. I looked at my watch. It was ten-thirty and I wondered where a girl who didn’t know anyone in Singapore might be going at that time of night. I was still wondering when I fell asleep a little after midnight.


Lim Pang Sam’s office was on the ninth floor of the Asia Building on Raffles Quay not too far from Telok Ayer Basin. It was a corner office with a fine view of the harbor. A secretary ushered me in and Lim rose from behind a teak desk, walked around it, shook hands with me, said he was delighted that I was in Singapore, and managed to sound as if he really meant it.

“I have a letter for you from Trippet,” I said and handed the envelope to him. He read it, standing up, and smiled.

“I never could understand what Dickie is doing in the car business,” Lim said.

“His wife says that he likes to get out of the house.”

Lim read the letter again and smiled once more. “We were at school together, you know.”

“So I understand.”

“Please,” Lim said, motioning to one of the teak and fabric chairs that was drawn up to his desk. “I was about to have some tea. Would you care to join me, or do you prefer coffee?”

“Tea would be nice.”

He picked up his telephone, pushed a button, and said something in what I took to be Mandarin Chinese. He was a smooth-faced man of middle height, with just the trace of a pot. He must have been Trippet’s age or even older, but his hair was full and black and his eyes were steady and clear behind gold-rimmed Ben Franklin glasses that he wore half-way down a broad nose. His dress was that of the typical Singapore businessman: white shirt, tie, and slacks. His voice and accent were very much like Trippet’s and when he smiled, which he did often, I couldn’t help but feel that he enjoyed doing whatever he did.

The secretary served the tea and Lim kept the ceremony to a minimum. After his first or second sip, he leaned forward in his chair, offered me a Lucky Strike which I accepted, and lit it for me with a silver desk lighter.

“American cigarettes are one of my vices,” he said. “It always make me feel rather relieved when I find someone else who still smokes. So many of my friends and acquaintances have quit.”

“They are probably wise.”

“No doubt,” he said and smiled again. “But one of the keenest pleasures in life is to succumb to one’s vices.”

I smiled at that and sipped my tea. “Dickie’s letter says that you are here on a confidential matter,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m looking for someone. An American.”

“May I inquire whom he might be?”

“A man named Angelo Sacchetti.”

“Yes,” Lim said in noncommittal voice, drummed his fingers on the desk, and peered at me over his spectacles.

“By that I take it that you may know him,” I said.

“No, I don’t know him. Let us just say that I’ve heard of him. He—” Lim broke off and turned around in his chair to take a look at the harbor. He enjoyed the view for a few moments before he spun around and spoke. “Mr. Cauthorne, please excuse what you may consider to be my rudeness, but you are not with the CIA or one of those other intelligence organizations that the Americans and the British seem to be so fond of creating?”

“No,” I said. “I’m not with the CIA.”

There was a pause and Lim swung his chair around so that he could count the ships in the harbor. “I’m sure that Dickie would not have provided a letter of introduction if you were, but still I had to make sure.”

“Maybe the letter’s a fake.”

Lim swung back again and gave me another smile. “No,” he said, “after you telephoned yesterday, I called Dickie in Los Angeles. You are who you say you are. More tea?”

“Please. It seems strange that a businessman would go to all that trouble, but then I’d say that you are more than just a businessman.”

“Yes, it does seem that way doesn’t it?” Lim said as he poured my tea.

I decided that if Lim had something that he wanted to tell me, he would, so we sipped our tea and looked at each other over the rims of our cups until Lim made up his mind about what he wanted to talk about next.

“We are a small nation, Mr. Cauthorne. A tiny one of only two million persons and seventy-five percent of us are Chinese. We have great wealth here and also great poverty, although it is not nearly as severe as it is in other Asian countries. Next to Japan, I suppose, Singapore is better off than any other country. Asian, that is. We are southeast Asia’s major entrepot, or at least we like to think so and our economy rests primarily on this international trade, although we are making some progress in industrialization. Still, we have neither the time nor the money to engage in the full-time business of espionage. But we are curious about persons who come to Singapore and take up residence here. Not that we don’t welcome foreign capital — from virtually anyplace — but still we are, shall we say, rather curious.”

Lim paused and smiled again. “I suppose one could say that I am Singapore’s secret service.”

“Then it doesn’t seem to be much of a secret.”

“Oh, it isn’t. It isn’t at all. Everyone knows it and sometimes we all joke about it. But someone had to do it and the Prime Minister decided that I was the one.”

“Why you?”

“Because, I would say, I can afford it.”

I took a deep breath. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Lim, but does this bring us any closer to Angelo Sacchetti?”

He nodded. “Indeed it does. I became interested in Mr. Sacchetti when he turned up here a year and a half ago after he had drowned in our harbor.” Lim reached into his desk and brought out a manila folder and flipped through it. “I believe you were involved in that so-called accident, Mr. Cauthorne?”

“You know I was.”

“Yes. There’s a report on it here and then Dickie refreshed my memory when I spoke to him last night. Refreshed my memory! My word, I’m beginning to sound like a policeman or a spy or something equally sinister.”

“What about Sacchetti?” I said.

“He turned up here, back from the dead, as it were, a year and a half ago. He arrived on a flight from Hong Kong and his perfectly valid passport indicated that he had spent some time in the Philippines. Cebu City, I believe. Yes, here it is in the file.” Lim moved his finger down the page of the file he held before him. “He opened a rather large account with a draft from a Swiss bank, rented a luxurious apartment, and proceeded to become quite social.”

“Then what?”

“Then a most curious thing happened. It seems that almost everyone in Singapore began to select a combination of three numbers and wager small sums that this number would turn up the following day as the last three digits on the totalizators either at the Singapore Turf Club or the race courses in Malaya or even in Hong Kong.”

“Totalizators?” I said.

“Yes,” Lim said. “I believe you call them parimutuel machines in the U.S.”

“I believe we do.”

“Well, up until then our gambling (and we Chinese are incurable gamblers) had been dominated by our so-called secret societies. At last count, I think there were about three hundred fifty of them. They not only ran the gambling, but also prostitution, what’s left of the opium trade, most of the smuggling, and just about everything else that might be described as illegal — even a bit of piracy.”

“You said up until then.”

“Yes, I did,” Lim said. “It seems that these small bets on the combination of race course digits are now being collected by hitherto unemployed youngsters, juvenile delinquents, I think one could call them, who have banded together in packs and describe themselves as the Billy the Kid Gang or the Yankee Boys or even Hell’s Angels.”

“We try to spread our culture around.”

Lim smiled. “The films do it: that and television. At any rate, our Criminal Investigation Department has got onto it and they’ve found that an extraordinary amount of money is being collected daily by these youngsters.”

“How much?” I asked.

“Around one hundred thousand dollars a day.”

“That’s about thirty-three thousand, American.”

“Yes.”

“Are there payoffs?”

“I beg your pardon,” Lim said.

“Does anyone ever win?”

“Oh, to be sure. People win every day.”

“What are the odds?”

Lim turned to his file again. “I’ll have to look it up. Yes, here it is. The payoff, as you call it, is four hundred to one.”

“That’s low,” I said.

“How?”

“The real odds are about six hundred to one. Whoever’s running it is skimming about two hundred dollars off the top of each hit.”

“Interesting,” Lim murmured. “I’ll make a note of that.” And he did.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You found that the numbers racket was set up by Angelo Sacchetti.”

Lim nodded. “Yes, and he has it quite well organized. Not only that, but he’s gone into several other activities. For instance, if a merchant doesn’t pay a certain weekly sum, he finds his establishment vandalized.”

“What about your secret societies? Don’t they resent an outsider moving in?”

The Lucky Strikes were offered again by Lim and once again I accepted one because it made him feel better. “At first,” he said. “Then there were a couple of mysterious deaths and the societies’ opposition seemed to diminish. Considerably. The deaths were, I believe, most painful.”

“Why don’t you just throw him out?” I said.

“Sacchetti?”

“Yes.”

Lim inhaled his cigarette and blew out a thin stream of smoke. “I’m afraid, Mr. Cauthorne, that it’s not as simple as that.”

“Why? He’s a foreigner. Just don’t renew his visa.”

“Yes, he is a foreigner, but Mr. Sacchetti married just after he arrived here.”

“So I heard.”

“Did you hear whom he married?”

“No.”

“It was the daughter of one of our leading citizens who is quite active in politics. He has used his considerable influence to prevent any move being made against his new son-in-law.”

“What was it, love at first sight?”

Lim shook his head slowly. “No, I don’t believe so. I understand that Mr. Sacchetti paid a little over three hundred thousand American dollars for the hand of his bride.”

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