Росс Томас - The Singapore Wink

“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.”

It is about 9,500 miles from Los Angeles to Singapore and Pan American Airways doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to get there. I understand that other flights are offered from Los Angeles, but the only one for which Carla Lozupone and I could get first class reservations was number 811 which left at 9:45 P.M.

I had spent most of that Saturday getting the tickets and a smallpox shot so that my International Certificate of Vaccination could be brought up to date. A call at a travel agency had given me vague assurance of two rooms at the Raffles Hotel providing that the wire got to Singapore before we did and providing that two rooms were available.