The Singapore Wink

Chapter XXII

Trippet knocked on my door after he had unpacked, showered, and changed clothes. The temperature outside was pushing ninety and the humidity was even higher. Both of us had been sopping by the time we reached the hotel.

“Gin and tonic?” I said. “My boy brought some fresh limes.”

“Anything,” Trippet said.

I mixed the drink and handed it to him.

“We’ll drink to your first Singapore shoot-’em-up,” I said.

“I still expect to go into shock any moment,” Trippet said. “I must say that it didn’t seem to bother you much; but perhaps you’re used to it by now.”

“It scared the shit out of me. I thought you were the one who wasn’t bothered.”

“I nearly panicked,” he said, “and I must confess that I also noticed a slight looseness of the bowels. Any idea who it was?”

“It looked like the same car that one of Sacchetti’s men used on Raffles Place the other day. It could have been the same car, but I don’t know if it was the same man.”

“Perhaps I should call Sammy,” Trippet said.

“Lim?” I said.

“Yes. Any objections?”

“He bothers me.”

“You mean it bothers you that Sammy said that I called him and I say that he called me. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“Why?”

“He simply told you what you wanted to hear, Edward. It was a face-saving gesture. It would have embarrassed him to tell you that he thought you needed help.”

“Sorry. I forgot how sensitive I am.”

“Tell me about it.”

“What?” I said.

“Everything.”

“You mean the Dragon Lady and all?”

“Good Lord, is there another woman mixed up in it?”

“Sacchetti’s Chinese wife. I think she steals her lines from old Charlie Chan movies.”

“Extraordinary.”

“Who’s minding the store?” I said.

“I shipped both Sydney and my wife off to her parents in Topeka. In fact, their plane left just a few minutes before mine. Jack and Ramón are sharing management responsibilities, if you can call it that.”

“Who sits in the front office?”

“They take turns.”

“Ramón should be useful, providing the customers speak Spanish.”

“What’s what I thought.”

“Where did you learn Malay?” I said.

“Here and in Malaya,” Trippet said. “I spent a year out here in thirty-eight and I also did a turn here after the war.”

“Doing what?”

Trippet smiled. “This and that.”

“Lim said you were in British Intelligence during the war.”

“For a while.”

“And afterwards?”

“For a while.”

“It’s none of my business.”

“You’re right, Edward, it isn’t. Tell me about the Dragon Lady. She sounds much more interesting.”

I told him the same story that I had told first to Dangerfield and later to Lim, but the third time around the account grew thin and stale and it seemed as if I were describing by rote something that had happened a long time ago to some other persons in another place. Trippet listened carefully, not interrupting once, but nodding occasionally at times to show that he understood when the tale grew complicated. He was, as always, a very good listener and I wondered if he had learned the art while in British Intelligence.

When I was through Trippet gazed up at the ceiling and then ran both hands through his long grey hair. “The pistol,” he said. “I don’t like the pistol.”

“Why?”

“It’s not like Sammy.”

“That’s what he said.”

“What?”

“That he didn’t hand them out lightly.”

“Where do you keep it?”

“In a brown paper bag. The bag is in my suitcase.”

“That fellow Nash,” Trippet said. “Can you describe him?”

“Medium height, around fifty or fifty-five in a harsh light, compact build, deep tan, blond hair going grey. Rolls his own cigarettes.”

“Green eyes? I mean really green?”

“Right. You know him?”

“I can’t say, but I think so. It’s been a long time.”

“He came in handy,” I said.

“So it would seem.”

“But after all, Nash and I are fellow Americans.”

“A true bond.”

I yawned and stretched. “What do you say to some lunch?”

“I say it’s a good suggestion.”

We had lunch in the room and Trippet helped me to listen for the phone to ring. We listened until four o’clock but nobody called, knocked, or slipped a note under the door. I rang the bell and the houseboy came for the dishes and both Trippet and I beamed at him and Trippet inquired about his family which I thought was polite.

We carried on a vague kind of conversation made up of half-phrases, grunts, long silences, and old jokes; the kind of verbal shorthand that is used by two persons who know each other well or have been married for a long time. The hamburger king had called again and was shipping his Stutz DV-32 Bearcat down from San Francisco next week or the week after. The plumber had brought his wife in to look at the Cadillac; the wife had been unimpressed. Two young ladies had phoned for me; one gave her name as Judy and the other had refused to leave either her name or number and I spent a few moments trying unsuccessfully to think who it might have been. I knew who Judy was.

The phone finally rang at a quarter to five. It had been a long afternoon and the sound was welcome so I let it ring three times. “Damned if I’m going to seem anxious,” I said and picked it up on the fourth ring.

“A man will come to your hotel at seven this evening, Mr. Cauthorne.” Once again Angelo Sacchetti’s wife didn’t think it was necessary to identify herself so I said: “Who’s this?”

“Make sure you’re not followed,” she said.

“Who’s the man?”

“You’ll recognize him,” she said and hung up.

I replaced the phone and went back to the divan where I’d been doing my waiting with my head propped up on two pillows from the bed. “The Dragon Lady,” I said. “A man’s going to pick us up at seven o’clock here.”

“Us?”

“Don’t you want to sit in? We just play for matches.”

“I mean, did she say ‘us’ or ‘you’?”

“She said ‘you’ but I interpreted it as ‘us’ which reminds me; I’d better call Dangerfield.”

I crossed the room again, looked up the number of the Strand Hotel, and asked its operator for Dangerfield’s room. She rang the room for at least two minutes and then said she was sorry, but Mr. Dangerfield did not seem to be in and would I like to leave a message. I told her to tell him to call Cauthorne.

“Not there?” Trippet said.

“No.”

“What do you think of his numbers racket headquarters theory?”

“Not much.”

“Neither do I, but it’s probably better than sitting around some hotel room.”

“What isn’t?”

Trippet went back to his own room to write a letter to his wife and to call Lim Pang Sam, he said. I continued to lie on the couch and count the cracks in the ceiling. I could have spent the time more profitably by reading a newspaper or studying Chinese or working on my bird calls, but I didn’t. I just lay there and stared at the ceiling and counted fifteen major cracks and six probables which actually were hairlines. I was waiting, I told myself, for the man who was going to take me to Angelo Sacchetti. But that wasn’t true. What I really waited for was Sacchetti to fall off the Chinese junk for the last time. I was waiting for that final grotesque, obscene wink and it arrived at a quarter past six along with the usual measure of shakes and shivers and a river of cold sweat. When it was over I headed for the bathroom and my third shower for the day. I dressed slowly, killing more time. I wore a white Egyptian cotton shirt with a button-down collar, a striped tie from some long-disbanded regiment, a dark blue poplin suit, black socks and loafers and a.38 caliber Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special which I stuck in the left-hand waistband of my trousers so that it could remind me of how much my stomach hurt. By fifteen to seven I was sitting on the edge of a chair, neat if not natty, waiting for someone to guide me to the man who the Singapore police thought would do for the prime suspect in the Carla Lozupone murder case until a better one came along.

Trippet knocked on my door at ten till seven and joined me in a final gin and tonic. “Did you talk to Lim?” I said.

“For a few minutes.”

“Did you tell him about tonight?”

“I mentioned it.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing,” Trippet said. “Nothing at all.”

The knock on the door came promptly at seven and I didn’t jump as much as I thought I would. I put my drink down, crossed the room, and opened the door. Mrs. Angelo Sacchetti had been right when she had said that I would know him. I did. It was Captain Jack Nash.

“I don’t have any choice in this thing, Cauthorne,” he said as he moved quickly into the room, flicking a brief glance at Trippet.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Just what I said.”

“How much did she offer, since you and Angelo are both Americans and all?”

“Who’s he?” Nash said, jerking his chin at Trippet.

“I haven’t changed that much, have I, Jack?” Trippet said.

Nash turned for another look. A long one. “Hey, I know you.”

“You should.”

“Sure, I know you,” Nash said, more slowly this time. “It was a long time ago up in North Borneo. Jesselton. You’re — let me think a moment — you’re Trippet, that’s it. Major Trippet.” He turned to me again. “How come you brought in British Intelligence, Cauthorne?”

“He didn’t,” Trippet said.

“I think it’s nice that you two know each other,” I said.

“Your friend, Captain Nash, was Colonel Nash when I knew him,” Trippet said. “Actually lieutenant-colonel in the Philippine Guerrilla Army until he was court-martialed.”

“They wiped that out, friend,” Nash said.

“He was using his good office to run guns to North Borneo when I knew him,” Trippet said.

“You never proved it.”

“He was buying them on the black market in the Philippines, or so he said. Actually, we had quite a bit of evidence that he stole them from various American Army installations. It was just after the war, in 1946.”

“Ancient history,” Nash said.

“During the war,” Trippet went on, “Nash captured a Japanese vice-admiral and then set him free. That was on Cebu, wasn’t it, Jack?”

“You know why I turned him loose.”

“For one hundred thousand dollars, according to my information.”

“Bullshit,” Nash said. “I turned him loose because the Japs were going to wipe out every Filipino on the entire island.”

“It was an excellent story; even most of the Filipinos believed it,” Trippet said. “Jack was quite the hero. It seems that the admiral’s seaplane was forced down by engine trouble and he and nine top-ranking staff officers walked right into Jack’s arms carrying with them, curiously enough, a complete set of plans for the defense of the islands. So Jack made a deal with the admiral. In exchange for the defense plans and one hundred thousand dollars, the admiral could go free providing he arranged for the phony massacre threat.”

“It wasn’t phony and there wasn’t any hundred grand,” Nash said. He produced his tin box and began to roll a cigarette. “What the hell,” he said after he got his cigarette lit, “it all happened more than twenty-five years ago anyway.”

“Go on,” I said to Trippet.

“All right. It seems that when the American command in Australia learned that Jack was planning to release the admiral, they ordered him to ignore the alleged Japanese threat. But Jack disobeyed orders, managed to get the defense plans to Australia, somehow collected the hundred thousand, released the admiral, and got a citation from the Philippine government for gallantry, and a court-martial from the Americans.”

“You want a drink?” I said to Nash.

“Sure,” he said.

“Gin all right?”

“On the rocks.”

I poured the drink and handed it to him. “That’s a phony story,” he said. “The Flip government gave me a medal, not any citation.”

“Why tell it now?” I asked Trippet.

“Because I don’t trust the good ex-colonel,” Trippet said.

“They gave me my rank back,” Nash said. “They only busted me to major anyhow.”

“Back up to my first question, Nash,” I said. “How much is she paying you?”

He looked into his drink as if the amount were written on one of the ice cubes. “Five thousand bucks. American.”

“For what?”

“For letting Sacchetti cool off.”

“Where?”

“On my kumpit. That’s where I’m going to take you.”

“And Sacchetti’s there?” I said.

“He was an hour ago.”

“Where’s your kumpit?”

“Across the island south of the naval base just off Seletar in the Johore Strait.”

“Why there?” Trippet asked.

“Look, this limey isn’t coming along, is he?” Nash said.

“He’s an American and all now,” I said. “He’s coming along.”

“Sammy was right,” Trippet said. “A hand does need to be lent.”

“What kind of crack is that?” Nash said.

I told him it was a private joke and he said that his kumpit, the Wilfreda Maria, was anchored in the strait because it had been “moving around.”

“Where’d she find you?” I said.

“Sacchetti’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“At Fat Annie’s.”

“When?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“And they’re paying you five thousand just to give him bed and board for a few days?”

Nash ground his cigarette out in an ashtray and then glanced at his watch. “Them? Not hardly. As soon as he’s through with you I’ve got to rendezvous with his yacht.”

“Where?” I said.

“They’re paying me five thousand to do it. It’ll cost you five thousand to find out where.”

“Seeing as how we’re both Americans and all,” I said.

“Yeah,” Nash said. “There’s that, too.”