The Singapore Wink

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.

Still there was hope for Singapore. A Lochinvar from the hills of Hollywood had arrived in town, equipped with a bad case of the shakes and the horrors. In addition, Lochinvar had the Republic’s four-man secret service on his side, providing they weren’t too busy totting up the books, and there was also a friendly smuggler standing by to lend assistance because, after all, he and Lochinvar were both Americans.

But it was an even richer scene than that, I thought There was the nervous counselor for the mob, or whatever it was called, roaming through the empty rooms of his mansion on Foxhall Road and wondering if his years of playing the informer had finally caught up with him. There was Joe Lozupone, so alone and friendless and frightened that the only person he could trust to pay off his blackmailer was his daughter, the comely Carla, whose attitude towards sex might be described as comfortably casual, and finally, there was Sam Dangerfield of the FBI who after twenty-seven years in the bureau, still seemed astonished that crime actually paid. I wondered what Dangerfield was doing that evening and I decided that he was probably drinking somebody else’s whisky.

Perhaps richest of all was the deadline — the three days that I had to get out of town. I wondered why it was three days and not four or two, or even twenty-four hours. There seemed to be only one way to find out so I took a scrap of paper out of my pocket and called the telephone number that was on it.

A woman answered the phone and she had to shout over a Stones record that was blasting away in the background. She shouted “hallo” and I asked for Captain Nash.

“Who?”

“Nash. Captain Nash.”

“Oh, you mean Snooky. Here, honey, it for you.”

“Hello, Snooky,” I said. “This is Cauthorne.”

“I thought you might call.”

“You mentioned that you had a launch.”

“Well, it’s not really a launch, it’s more of a runabout.”

“Will it get us out to The Chicago Belle?”

“Sure. You want to go tonight?”

“I thought I might.”

“You got an invitation?”

“No.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What does that mean?” I said.

“Nothing. Just uh-huh. You on the expense account?”

“Isn’t everybody?”

“Well, we’re both Americans and all, but if you’re on the expense account—”

“How about a hundred dollars?” I said.

“U.S.?”

“U.S.”

“Tell you what,” Nash said. “I’m in Chinatown. You take a cab to the corner of Southbridge Road and Gross Street. Then get a trishaw and tell him you want to go to Fat Annie’s. He’ll know where it is.”

“All right. When?”

“Be here around eight o’clock and we’ll eat something first.”

“What’s Fat Annie’s, a restaurant?”

Nash chuckled. “It’s a whorehouse, pal, what’d you expect?”

“A whorehouse,” I said and hung up.

Singapore is never quiet really, and Chinatown, a square mile jammed with tiled-roofed buildings, seems to scream all night and all day. Packed into the mile are 100,000 persons and an old sweat who had been born in Shanghai in 1898 once told me that it reminded him more than anyplace else in the world of the China that he had known before the fall of the Chings in 1912. I suppose you can find anything you want in Singapore’s Chinatown, from an opium den to what may be the last of the wandering minstrels who will sing you a plaintive love song from the Tang for a dime. There is not much privacy there; every square foot is constantly in use and sometimes it is rented by the hour to those in need of a nap. The colors can almost blind you, and foot-high Chinese characters in searing red and gold and violet tout the merits of fresh young puppy and year-old eggs.

My pedicab driver pumped me down Chin Chew Street, yelling at the pedestrians who cheerfully yelled back. The family wash, impaled on long bamboo poles, almost formed a canopy across the street and the hawkers poked whatever they were selling into my face. Four Samusis walked by, dressed in their blue blouses and pantaloons, tough, broad-shouldered women who belong to a sisterhood that shuns men and embraces hard, manual labor instead.

It was all there: the stalls selling red and white cakes and squid and rice and monkey; the key makers and the goldsmiths pounding away on their metal, sometimes in rhythm to the music, Chinese, American and English, that growled out of the never silent transistors; the stench of dirt and sweat mingled with the more subtle odors of crushed frangipani, sandalwood, and charcoal fires, and always the sound of human voices endlessly calling to each other from balcony to street, and from street to unshuttered window.

Fat Annie’s didn’t look like much and I asked my human engine, a medium-sized Chinese who seemed to have lost most of his teeth, whether he was sure that he had the right place. He rolled his eyes as if to describe the thousand and one delights that awaited me inside so I paid a dollar for the quarter-hour ride, which was three or four times what I owed him, and pushed through an open red door into a small cubicle where an old woman sat on a low bench smoking a long-stemmed pipe.

“Captain Nash,” I said.

She nodded and pointed her pipe at another door. I went through that into a larger room where there were some tables and chairs, no customers, a rattan bar in one corner with some bottles behind it, and what seemed to be a brand new National cash register on top of its left end. Next to the cash register was an abacus and a woman who sat quietly on a low, sturdy stool. The woman weighed at least three hundred pounds.

She watched me walk towards her with black eyes that had almost disappeared into the fat folds of her round face. “I’m looking for Captain Nash,” I said.

“He’s in the parlor through that door,” she said and moved her head a half an inch towards a door to the left of the bar. It took her a while to move her head and even longer to get it back into place. Her voice was surprising, not just because of its American accent, but also because of its soft, even melodious tone.

“You from the States?” she asked.

“Los Angeles.”

She nodded. “I thought so. That’s why Snooky comes here, because I’m from the States.”

“San Francisco?”

She laughed and her whole body jiggled like a three-hundred-pound bowl of vanilla pudding. “Not even close. I was born in Honolulu. You want a girl? They’re not all up yet, but I can promise you a nice young one.”

“You must be Annie,” I said.

“Not Annie, Fat Annie!” she said and roared out another laugh as she clapped her hands to her stomach and jiggled it mightily. When she was through laughing and jiggling she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “What about a girl? Make you a hell of a good price with a young tricky one seeing it’s so early.”

“Later maybe. Right now I have to see Nash.”

“Like I said, through that door.”

I went through the door and into what Fat Annie had called the parlor and found that her description was accurate. It was a medium-sized room filled with dark Victorian furniture and lighted with softly glowing lamps that sat on marble-topped tables whose legs were carved into whorls and clefts and curlicues. The floor was covered with a dark oriental rug and the pale green walls held gilt-framed nostalgic paintings of rural England. In the center of the room was a small table of dark wood that held a chess set. Bent over the pieces were Nash and a very young, very pretty Chinese girl dressed in a miniskirt It apparently was Nash’s move and he didn’t seem too sure about what it should be.

“Hello, Cauthorne,” Nash said without looking up. “Be with you in a moment.”

He studied the chessboard and then moved a bishop. The girl shot her queen down the board and said: “Check and mate in two move.”

Nash studied the board a few moments and then sighed and leaned back in his chair.

“That’s three in a row,” he said.

The girl held up four fingers. “Four in row. You owe me four dollah.”

“All right, four,” Nash said and took the money out of his shirt pocket and paid her. “You run along now, Betty Lou.”

The girl rose gracefully, smiled at me, and left through the door that I had entered.

“Betty Lou?”

“It’s close enough,” Nash said.

“When can we leave?” I said.

“Let’s eat first.” He shouted something in Chinese and an old man dressed in a black blouse and black trousers shuffled in. Nash spoke again in Chinese and then handed over some money. The old man asked a question, Nash replied, and the man, who looked eighty, but may well have been forty-five, shuffled out.

“He’ll pick it up along the street,” Nash said.

“Where did you learn Chinese?” I said.

“I got a Chinese wife. Nothing’s better, unless maybe a Japanese one, but I still don’t like the Japs on account of I got to know them too well during the war. Mean bastards. But let’s have a drink.” He rose and crossed the room to a table where a bottle of whisky and some glasses stood. I started to say “fine,” but I never got it out because the shakes hit, and Sacchetti started falling into the harbor again, and when I came out of it Nash stood in front of me, holding two drinks, and staring at me the way everyone stared at me, as if they were afraid they might miss something really interesting when I swallowed my tongue.

“Malaria?” he said. “If it is, its the goddamndest case I ever saw.”

I found my handkerchief and dried my face and hands. My shirt was soaked. “It’s not malaria,” I said.

“Happen often?”

“Often enough.”

He shook his head in what I assumed was sympathy and handed me a drink. “You feel up to going?”

“It won’t happen again. At least not today.”

We had the drink and some ten minutes later the old man was back with a tray full of food that he served on the small table. I could identify the rice, the noodles drenched with thick brown gravy, the strips of pork, and giant prawns. A couple of dishes were unfamiliar. We ate with chopsticks and considering my lack of practice, I got along well enough.

“What’s this,” I said as I picked up a morsel from a common bowl and chewed it thoughtfully. “Veal?”

Nash sampled a piece of the meat, frowned, shook his head, and then tried another. “Puppy,” he announced. “Good, isn’t it?”

“Delicious,” I said.

Nash’s boat was a fairly new fiber glass speedster that was about fifteen feet long and powered by a large outboard engine. It was tied up at a crowded quay on Singapore River between two broadbeamed tonkangs with eyes the size of automobile tires painted on their bows to ward off evil spirits. At least, that’s what Nash said. We went down the ten steps to the water’s edge where Nash used his foot to wake a sleeping Indian who had a line to the runabout tied to a big toe.

“My watchman,” he said.

“Where do you keep your kumpit?” I said.

“Out in the roads. One of these tonkangs will lighten my cargo tomorrow or the next day.”

The watchman held the runabout while we climbed in. He then sprawled out on the bottom step and went to sleep again. Nash started the motor, backed us out into the river, and headed for the harbor and The Chicago Belle.

“What are you going to do when we get there?” he shouted above the engine.

“Ask to see Sacchetti.”

He shook his head and then shrugged as if he had dealt with fools before. The Chicago Belle was riding at anchor about one hundred yards out into the basin and the closer we came, the larger she looked.

“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” Nash yelled.

“I don’t know that much about yachts.”

“Built in Hong Kong, 1959,” he yelled.

All I could tell about it, or her, was that she looked large, fast, and expensive. We came alongside where an accommodation ladder led down from the deck to a foot or so above the water. Nash tossed me a line and I made the runabout fast to the lowest step of the ladder. I stood up in the runabout and started to step onto the ladder when a blinding light from the deck hit me in the face and a voice asked: “What do you want, please?”

“My name’s Cauthorne. I want to see Mr. Sacchetti.”

“I knew it wasn’t going to be simple,” Nash said as I ducked my head and used a hand to shield my eyes from the glare of the searchlight.

“Mr. Sacchetti is not here,” the voice said. “Please go.”

“I’m coming aboard,” I said and started up the steps.

The blinding light went out and I looked up. A tall, lean Chinese in a white shirt and dark slacks stood at the top of the steps, illuminated by the lights from the yacht. He looked familiar and I suppose he should have because the last time I had seen him he had been pointing a gun at me through the window of a taxicab on Raffles Place. He still had a gun, it was still pointed at me and it looked very much like the one that I had seen before.