The Singapore Wink

Chapter IV

The rain had started again, a thick, grey downpour that slowed homeward-bound traffic on Wilshire Boulevard to a fitful crawl and made drivers champ their jaws in unison as they cursed the idiot ahead. There was an opening in the curb lane and I slipped into it, turning right some two or three blocks past Doheny. Behind me a horn blasted out of pique or jealousy or both. A few blocks and a turn or two later I parked next to a fire hydrant, deciding that if a cop left a dry patrol car to write out a ticket in that rain, I no doubt deserved it.

The apartment house that I parked in front of was a fairly new two-story garden-type structure, built in a U around a swimming pool, and coated with pale yellow stucco that the rain had wetted down so that it looked like tapioca. I sat in the Volkswagen for a while, smoked a cigarette and watched the windows grow steamy. At six-thirty I draped a raincoat around my shoulders and made a dash for the shelter of the building. There were some pale pink roses growing near the outside staircase that led to the second floor, but the rain had knocked most of their petals to the ground. I was only slightly wet when I went up the stairs, turned right, and rang the bell of Christopher Small. There was a light scraping sound as someone inspected me through the security peephole. Then the door opened wide.

“Come on in, Eddie. How are you, wet?”

“Not too bad. How’re you, Marcie?”

“Fine.”

Marcie Holloway was a tall black-haired girl with blue eyes, a wide mouth with an attractive overbite, and a nose that could have been just a little snub and perhaps a trifle shiny if you worried about such things. She carried a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her narrow plaid slacks seemed to be part of a suit and she comfortably filled the white blouse that topped them. She had been living with Christopher Small for almost three years which, in that town, may have been some sort of a record.

I made another inane comment about the weather, she asked if I would like a drink, and I said that I would.

“Chris’ll be out in a minute. Scotch and soda okay?”

“Make it water.”

Marcie disappeared through a door with my raincoat and I sat down on a green divan and studied some of the photographs that almost covered the opposite wall. There seemed to be more of them than I remembered. They ran from the ceiling to near the floor, were framed by thin, black molding, and shielded by glareproof glass. They portrayed Christopher Small and friends and he seemed to have a lot of them. The room also had a built-in bookcase that held six books, some crockery, and a collection of china cats and kittens. There was a color television set in one corner, a stereo unit in another, and twin speakers were strategically placed at ceiling height in opposite corners. The rest of the furniture looked as if it came with the apartment.

Those who have eyes good enough to read the “and featuring” credits on the late show might recognize Christopher Small’s name. He had earned a comfortable living in Hollywood for more than thirty years by playing minor roles in films that called for a cab driver, a reporter, a tough sergeant, a bartender, a number two cop, or — most often of all — a number three or four gangster, the one who gets queasy about the entire setup and takes off in the getaway car before the rest of the gang has had a chance to clean out the tellers’ cages.

By his own rough estimate, Small had appeared in more than five hundred feature films and television productions, but he is probably best remembered for a picture that earned him a brief vogue during World War II. The film had the members of a New York mob deciding, for God knows what reason, that the Germans posed an even greater threat than the cops. The mob enlisted en masse, went overseas, and apparently won the war — only to gulp back their tears at the film’s end as they crowded about their mortally wounded chief while he took his own sweet time to die in Small’s arms, muttering something unlikely about brotherhood, democracy, and peace.

Small’s brief moment of fame occurred in an earlier scene in the film which required him to burst into a farmhouse, his Thompson submachine gun at the ready, and capture what appeared to be the entire German high command with the line: “Freeze the mitts, Fritz!” A radio comedian picked it up and for a while it became a popular saying around high schools and colleges. In the mid-sixties some Merry Andrews at an Eastern university decided to hold a Christopher Small Festival, but nothing ever came of it other than a press release.

Small came through the door that led to a bedroom, shook hands with me, and asked how business was. I told him that it was fine.

“Marcie getting you a drink?” he asked and lowered himself into a green overstuffed chair that matched the divan.

“Yes.”

He turned his head and yelled back at the kitchen: “Make it two, Marcie.”

There was an answering yell which I assumed to be one of assent. Marcie and Small yelled at each other a lot.

“Doing anything?” he asked and I knew that he was talking about the stunt business.

“Nothing,” I said.

“And you’re not pushing either.”

“No, I’m not pushing.”

“You could get something if you pushed,” he said.

“There’s not much demand.”

“The hell there isn’t.”

“Let’s just say that I like what I’m doing.”

Marcie came in from the kitchen carrying the drinks on a hammered aluminum tray. She served them and then curled up on the other end of the sofa, one foot tucked under her rear in what has always seemed to me a most uncomfortable position.

“You getting the usual lecture, Eddie?” she asked.

“Chris still seems to think that I’m neglecting a promising career.”

Small stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. He wore tan, wide-wale corduroy slacks, a yellow short-sleeved shirt, and brown loafers. He had let his hair go grey and his stomach pushed a little at the front of the knit shirt, but his face was still the same: lean and long with a pointed chin, hollow cheeks, a strong thin nose, and deepset dark eyes that he could make crafty or frightened or cruel, depending upon what was called for by the script.

“Well,” he said, “you have to admit that you invested a hell of a lot of time to get where you were. Now it’s just going to waste. Your old man would be goddamned sore.”

“He’s dead,” I said.

“He’s sore wherever he is. I remember when you were just a brat — no more than five or six. He used to tell me then how someday you were going to be top stunt man.”

“Sure,” I said, “and for my tenth birthday I got fencing lessons. Just what I always wanted.”

My father had been a stunt pilot, one of the first of that strange breed who descended on Hollywood in the twenties, willing to attempt anything that the writers could dream up for ten dollars and a place to sleep. He never got over the fact that he had flown with Frank Clarke in 1927 when the dogfight for Hell’s Angels was filmed over San Francisco Bay. It was still the highlight in his life when, heading for yet another flying assignment at age sixty-one, he crashed into the tail end of a seven-car freeway pileup, went through the windshield, and bled to death before they got him to the hospital. He left me the twenty-one pre-1932 cars, a house full of furniture, and some odd memories. But as Small said, my father had always wanted me to be top stunt man. He taught me to drive at twelve, fly at fourteen, and by the time I entered UCLA I was an accomplished rider, fencer, gymnast, boxer, member of both the Stuntman’s Association and the Screen Actors Guild, and working regularly.

“I can put in a word for you at a couple of places,” Small said.

“No thanks. It just wouldn’t work out.”

“You ought to try once more anyhow,” he said. “It’s such a damned waste — all those years you spent at UCLA in their film school.”

“Just three years,” I said. “I was a dropout.”

“You ought to try anyhow,” Small said again.

“Maybe he likes what he’s doing,” Marcie said. “Maybe he just doesn’t want to go around falling off horses anymore.”

“I’ll think about it at any rate,” I said in an attempt to mollify Small and end the lecture.

“Let me know if I can help,” he said.

“Well, actually you can.”

“Just name it, kid.”

“I need some information.”

“About what?” he asked.

“Not what, who. A couple of guys.”

“Okay, who?”

“Salvatore Callese and somebody called Palmisano,” I said.

Small made his face go blank. There was absolutely no expression on it — no surprise, no warmth, no anything. He looked at Marcie. “Go see about something,” he said.

“What?”

“Christ, I don’t know what. Anything. Go cook something.”

Marcie rose quickly and started towards the kitchen. Then she paused, and turned to Small. “How about some fudge?” she said nastily.

“I mean for dinner, for God’s sake!”

“Fudge for dinner,” she yelled, and disappeared into the kitchen and started to slam some pots around.

His name really wasn’t Christopher Small. It was Fiore Smaldore and he had been born in East Harlem on 108th Street and by the time he was fourteen he was running numbers after school. His older brother, Vincent Smaldore, had risen quickly in the gangland hierarchy and seemed destined for a brilliant career until one October morning in 1931 when somebody dumped his body out at the corner of 106th Street and Lexington Avenue, a casualty of the bitter feud between Joe (the Boss) Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano. The older brother of Fiore Smaldore (soon to become Christopher Small) had insisted that the youngest member of the family finish high school, but the seven bullets in the body of Vincent convinced the younger brother that safety lay elsewhere. Los Angeles was as far as he could get before his money ran out on Christmas Day, 1931. He drifted into motion pictures, first as an extra and then as a bit player when they discovered that he had a voice that recorded well. It satisfied him, and his friends and enemies back in New York, inveterate movie-goers all, liked to punch each other in the ribs whenever they saw him on the screen. They also thought that it was nice to know a motion picture actor who could show them around Hollywood even if he weren’t a real star. There wasn’t much Small could do about it, and over the years he had served as tour leader for a large number of those who made their very good livings on the darker side of the law in such cities as New York, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, and Kansas City.

“It wasn’t so bad in the forties and the fifties,” Small once told me. “We’d go to places like Ciro’s and the Derby and Romanoff’s and we’d get our pictures like you see over there on the wall took. But now you know where they got to go? Disneyland, that’s where. Christ, I must have been to Disneyland fifty times.” The pictures, I once noted, were all signed and bore such salutations as “To Chris, a swell guy, from his pal, Nick,” or “Thanks for a swell time, your buddy, Vito.”

Small was now leaning towards me, his elbows on his knees, a look of apparently genuine concern on his face. “What do Callese and Palmisano want?” he said.

“You know them?” I said.

“I know them. What do they want with you?”

“They want me to see a man in Washington.”

“What man?”

“The godfather of Angelo Sacchetti. They say that Angelo isn’t dead and that his godfather wants me to find him.”

“Where?”

“Christ, I don’t know where.”

“Why you?”

“I don’t know that either.”

Small rose and walked over to the bookshelves and picked up one of the china kittens. “Marcie collects these things, you know,” he said.

“I know. I gave her a couple.”

“Salvatore Callese,” Small said to the kitten. “Or The Yellow Spats Kid as they used to call him a long time ago in Newark.”

“He still wears them,” I said.

“What?”

“Spats. Only they’re pearl grey now.”

“He’ll always wear them. You want to know why?”

“Okay. Why?”

“Because his feet are cold. You want to know why his feet are cold, even on a warm day in Los Angeles?” Small turned from the collection of cats and kittens, leaned over the back of the green overstuffed chair, and stared at me with eyes that seemed almost haunted.

“Okay,” I said again. “Why are his feet cold even on a warm day in Los Angeles?”

“Because about thirty-seven years ago when he was just a punk the 116th Street boys caught him screwing one of the guy’s sisters. So you know what they did? They had a party. They got a washtub full of ice and dumped some rock salt in it to make it good and cold and then they put the beer in and they also took off Callese’s shoes and socks and put his feet in the tub so that they’d cool off. They kept them in there for about three hours until all the beer was drunk up and then they took him back to Newark and dumped him. He damned near lost both feet and they’ve been cold ever since and that’s why he wears spats and that’s why they used to call him The Yellow Spats Kid.”

“What happened then?”

Small walked around the chair and sat on one of its arms. “He waited. He waited until he could walk again and then he started. One by one he picked them off. Some got run over, some got cut up, and some got shot. He was thorough. That’s one thing you can say for Callese, he’s thorough. He did such a good job that they finally moved him over to Manhattan, downtown, and then when Siegel got it, they sent him out here to help look after things. He’s been doing it ever since.”

“What about Palmisano?”

“Him.” Small sniffed as if he smelled something bad. “Giuseppe Palmisano, alias Joe Dominoes. He’s fresh out of Atlanta where he did a straight six for conspiracy to violate the narcotics laws. No parole, no time off for good behavior. An ordinary soldier and not too bright. You want to know why he’s sometimes called Joe Dominoes?”

“Why?”

“You notice how his left arm sticks out funny — like he can’t straighten it out?”

“I noticed,” I said.

“Well, they caught him one night, four of them, and they busted his arm in four places. Each one got to bust it once. Then they cut his throat and left him to bleed to death, only he didn’t, but they nicked his vocal cords or something and that’s why he talks so high and that’s why he wears turtleneck sweaters — he was wearing one, wasn’t he?”

“I thought he was just trying to be stylish.”

Small shook his head. “No, he’s always worn them, ever since they cut his throat.”

I took another swallow of my drink and waited. Small was staring at the floor now, his own drink held in both hands. I doubt that he still knew I was in the room.

“All right,” I said. “Why do they call him Joe Dominoes?”

Small snapped back from wherever he had been with a slight start. “Why? Well, all this happened about the time that Wallace Beery had just made Viva Villa! You ever see it?”

“I’ve seen it.”

“You remember the scene where Beery decides to save ammunition and he lines — what was it — three or four prisoners up in a row? Then he uses one bullet to pass through the bodies of the three or four prisoners he wants executed. Well, Palmisano, after he got well, saw this flick and he decided that it seemed like a good idea. So the story goes that he caught up with all four of them at once, lined them up in a row, and used one 30.06 slug from an old army rifle he had to kill all four of them and they just fell over like dominoes. That’s what they say anyhow and that’s why they call him Joe Dominoes.”

“You know some nice people,” I said.

“You know why I know them.”

“Yes, you told me. What about the godfather of Sacchetti? Do you know him?”

Small was silent for several moments, staring at the carpet again. Then he said, “I think I’ll have another drink. You want one?”

“No thanks.”

He rose and disappeared into the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with a drink that was darker in color than the one he had had before. He took a long swallow of it and then lit a cigarette.

“The godfather,” I said.

“In Washington.”

“That’s right, in Washington.”

“You remember that I once told you about my brother and how he wanted me to finish high school and all.”

“I remember.”

“I didn’t tell you why though, did I?”

“No.”

Small sighed. “Well, believe it or not I was taking a college preparatory course. You know, so I could get into college. Can you imagine that — in East Harlem?” He laughed, but there wasn’t any humor in it, just a certain amount of bitterness. “There were only two of us taking that course, me and the other guy who’s the godfather of Angelo Sacchetti.”

“You’ve lost me,” I said.

“A long time ago, about seven or eight years before you were born, they had a meeting in Atlantic City.”

“They?”

He gave me a disgusted look. “You want a name for it?”

“Does it have one?”

“Why don’t you ask J. Edgar Hoover?”

“I don’t have to. He calls it the Cosa Nostra.”

“La Cosa Nostra is what he calls it.”

“Is that its name?”

“No,” Small said, “but it’s always good for a few laughs. So let’s get back to the meeting.”

“In Atlantic City.”

“That’s right. They were all there, Costello, Luciano, Vito Genovese, even Capone and his brothers. Anybody who was anybody. They got together at this meeting and decided that they needed to reorganize their operations. They were going to lay out territories, cut out the wars, and improve their image, although nobody was using that word then you understand. They just wanted to get more respectable and one of the ways they decided to go about it was to send some of the younger, brighter punks to college. So they went around the room to find out if there were any candidates. My brother was there and he put in my name and promised them that he’d break my neck if I dropped out of high school. Costello said he knew a young kid who he’d do the same thing to, so out of that entire crowd they could only come up with two they could send to college, me and this kid that Costello nominated.”

Small paused and took another long swallow of his drink. “Well, the other kid made it. You know what happened to me — I already told you that. But they got a tutor for the other kid and he not only finished high school, but they got him into Harvard and they put him through in style. I mean he didn’t lack for anything. Then when he got through Harvard, they sent him down to the University of Virginia’s law school. I hear he breezed through that.”

“And this is the man in Washington who wants to see me?” I said.

“He’s the one.”

“How did he get to be Sacchetti’s godfather?”

“Because Angelo Sacchetti was Sonny from Chicago’s kid and Sonny from Chicago once saved this guy’s life.”

“You lost me again.”

Small sighed, this time more deeply than before. “I shouldn’t be telling you all this. It’s just going to get you in trouble.”

“From what you’ve said, I’m already in trouble.”

He thought about that for a moment and then seemed to come to a decision. Or perhaps he was just acting it all out; I could never tell.

“All right,” he said finally. “This Sonny from Chicago, nobody ever found out his real name, showed up in New York one day with a one-year-old kid on one arm and a violin case in the other.” He paused and looked at me skeptically. “You think I’m kidding about the violin case, don’t you?”

“You’re telling it,” I said.

“Then keep your looks to yourself.”

“Go on.”

“Well, it seems that this Sonny’s wife was an ex-hooker who had got into some trouble with one of the Chicago outfits and they dumped her into Lake Michigan. I don’t know what kind of trouble it was. So this Sonny takes his violin case and takes out seven of the guys who he thought were responsible for it and he brings his kid and his Thompson down to New York. Well, by this time the kid I went to high school with is through with law school and he’s back in New York and running a few errands for Costello. He meets this Sonny from Chicago who’s also gone to work for Costello and they start palling around together. You know why?”

“I couldn’t even guess,” I said.

“Because this Sonny from Chicago looks nice, you know, neat — just like a college kid. He speaks well, dresses conservatively, and this kid I went to high school with has turned into something of a snob because of his education. You follow me?”

“So far.”

“Well, the guy who’s gone to college gets into trouble — not with Costello, but with somebody else, it doesn’t matter who. But it’s bad trouble, very bad, and Sonny from Chicago and this kid get caught in a fight down in the Village. Somehow Sonny saves the kid’s life and the kid promises that he’ll make it up to him.”

Small gave me another of his long pauses. “Well?” I said.

“Well, they catch Sonny from Chicago trying to cheat in a crap game two weeks later and they just nail him to the wall and leave him there. The college kid hears about it, so he takes this one-year-old baby of Sonny from Chicago’s to raise. He becomes his godfather.”

“And the baby was Angelo Sacchetti.”

“That’s right.”

“Why the name Sacchetti?”

“I don’t know, but somebody once told me that he got it off a box of noodles.”

“What happened to the college kid — the godfather?”

“They sent him to Washington.”

“Why?”

“Why does anybody send anybody to Washington? As their lobbyist.”

“I’d say he forgot to register.”

“Don’t kid yourself.”

“What does he do?”

Small managed a pained expression. He did it very well, I thought. “Let’s just say he looks after their interests.”

“And this guy reared Angelo Sacchetti?”

“He tried to anyhow. Maybe you don’t know it but Angelo had about nine governesses and maybe as many tutors. He was kicked out of four prep schools and three colleges. The only thing he ever liked was sports and that’s how he wound up out here.”

“His godfather put the word in?”

“Right,” Small said.

“Does the godfather have a name?”

“It used to be Carlos Colanero. Now it’s Charles Cole, and in certain circles it’s even Charlie the Fix.”

“You seem to know a lot,” I said.

Small gestured at the framed pictures on the wall behind him. “With a few drinks in them they sometimes talk a lot — to one of their own kind.”

“Why does Cole want me to find Angelo?”

“I don’t know,” Small said. “Angelo hung around sometimes, but not much. Then he was dead for a couple of years and nobody seemed to go into mourning. Now you say he’s alive.”

“And they want me to find him.”

“Not they. Charles Cole does, and when you meet him you’ll have gone about as high as you can go.”

“You think I’ll meet him then?” I said.

There was still another pause. Finally Small said, “Cole does and Cole usually gets his way.”

“Any advice?”

“Sure. Change your name and disappear. This isn’t just a search for the missing heir. It’s some kind of big mess or they wouldn’t send Callese out on an errand-boy’s job and he wouldn’t go on one. Somehow, they’ve got you all wrapped up in it.”

I thought about that for a moment while Small watched me intently. “I think I’ll say no,” I said.

“They don’t understand what it means.”

“There isn’t much they can do.”

“There’s just one thing,” Small said.

“What?”

“They can make you wish you’d said yes.”