Росс Томас - The Singapore Wink

We settled ourselves at a table in a bar that was air-conditioned, not too brightly lighted, and almost empty. The waiter brought us a couple of beers and then went back to his newspaper. The man in the khaki shirt ignored the glass and drank his out of the bottle, a long, gulping drink. When he finished he put the bottle back on the table and took out a flat tin of tobacco, some papers, and rolled himself a cigarette. He rolled it quickly, not concentrating on it, just doing it as automatically as I would if I were to shake one out of a pack. When he had the cigarette going, he squinted at me through the smoke and I noticed that the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes didn’t disappear when he stopped squinting. I put his age at closer to fifty-five than thirty-five.

“I’m Colonel Nash,” he said.

“Colonel in what?” I said and told him my name.

“The Philippine Guerrilla Army.”

“That goes back a few years.”

He shrugged. “If you don’t like Colonel, you can call me Captain Nash.”

“Of the Philippine Guerrilla Navy?”

“Of the Wilfreda Maria. ”

“What’s that?”

“A kumpit. ”

“And a kumpit is a what?”

“It’s an eight-ton ship. I bought it from a Moro pirate. I’m a smuggler.”

“We all have to make a living,” I said, “but I don’t know if we have to be so explicit about how we do it.”

Colonel or Captain Nash took another drink of beer from the bottle. “What the hell,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “we’re both Americans, aren’t we?”

“You have me there.”

“Anyhow, I don’t smuggle anything into Singapore. I just sell stuff here.”

“What?”

“Timber, mostly from Borneo, out of Tawau. I load up a cargo of copra in the Philippines, sell it in Tawau where I get a good price for it in U.S. dollars, take on a cargo of timber, and sell it here. They use it for plywood.”

“When do you find time to do your smuggling?” I said.

“When I get back to the Philippines. I load up here with watches, cameras, sewing machines, English bikes, cigarettes, and whisky and then run it into either Leyte or Cebu.”

“You ever get caught?” I said.

“Not any more. I’ve got four engines in the Wilfreda Maria now and she’ll do thirty knots easy. I can always duck around in the Sulu Islands if things get too hot.”

“Where do you live in the Philippines?” I said.

“Cebu City.”

“For how long?”

“Twenty-five years. I was with the guerrillas from forty-two on and then I was liaison between the Americans and the guerrillas towards the end of the war.”

“I knew a guy who was in Cebu City about two years ago,” I said. “An American.”

“What’s his name?”

“Angelo Sacchetti.”

Nash had his beer bottle halfway up to his mouth when I mentioned the name. He stopped, looked at me with green eyes that suddenly seemed wary, and said: “Friend of yours?”

“An acquaintance.”

Nash took his interrupted drink of beer, a long, gurgling draught that emptied the bottle. “You looking for him?”

“In a way.”

“Either you’re looking for him or you’re not.”

“All right. I’m looking for him.”

“Why?”

“A personal matter.”

“I don’t think he wants to see you,” Nash said, and signaled for another beer.

“What makes you think so?”

Nash was silent until the waiter served the beer and returned to his newspaper. “Sacchetti dropped into Cebu City about two years ago and he didn’t have a dime. Well, he may have had a couple of bucks, but he wasn’t eating filets and his name wasn’t Angelo Sacchetti then either.”

“What was it?”

“Jerry Caldwell.”

“How long was he there?”

“About three or four months. He looked me up with a proposition. Loan sharking. You know, borrow five pesos and pay back six. I told him I wasn’t interested so he put the touch on me for a couple of thousand.”

“Why you?”

“Hell, I was an American like him.”

“Sorry. I forgot.”

“So I loaned it to him and he loaned it out to a couple of gamblers. For one week. They were supposed to pay him back twenty-five hundred, but they didn’t get around to it. Caldwell or Sacchetti didn’t push them too hard, at least not for a couple of weeks. Then he went downtown and bought himself a baseball bat. You know what he did with that bat?”

“No, but I can guess.”

“He got those two gamblers and broke their legs with it, that’s what. They paid up real quick after that and I don’t know of anybody else who borrowed from him who was late.”

“Why did he leave?”

“Cebu? I don’t know. He hung around the race track mostly. Gamblers were his best customers. Then one day he comes by my place. I wasn’t home, but my old lady was and she told me he took out a roll the size of a cabbage and paid off the two thousand he owed me. Then he left town. Just like that. Disappeared. The next time I see him is about two or three months later. He’s in the Hilton here with this good-looking Chinese doll. I was supposed to meet a guy there but he hadn’t showed up, so I go up to Caldwell and say: ‘Hello, Jerry.’ He just looks at me like this.” Nash made his face go cold and blank. “Then he says, ‘Sorry, mister, you’ve got the wrong party. The name is Sacchetti. Angelo Sacchetti.’ So I said, ‘Okay, Jerry, any way you want it.’ Then he turned around and walked off. So later I checked him out with this guy I’m supposed to meet in the Hilton and this guy tells me that Sacchetti is the latest local power. He’s in everything, even numbers. So I keep track of him.”

“Why?” I said.

“Hell, why not? I gave him his start, didn’t I? I knew him when and all that crap. So now he’s married into society or whatever they call it here and he lives out in that yacht of his that he named The Chicago Belle and ain’t that a hell of a name for a yacht?”

“He’s probably just sentimental.”

“I thought he was from L.A. At least that’s what he told me. He also told me that he used to be in pictures, but I sure never saw him in any.”

“He was in pictures,” I said.

“Is that where you knew him, in L.A.?”

“That’s right.”

“And you’re a friend of his?”

“Let’s just say I know him.”

Nash took another giant swallow of beer. “Well, it’s like I said, I don’t think he’s too anxious to see you.”

“What makes you think so?”

“The guy in the back of the taxi, the one that took a shot at you.”

“What about him?”

“He works for Sacchetti.”

I suppose I didn’t have to say anything. It was all there in my face and I found that it took a conscious effort to close my mouth. Nash grinned at me.

“Not used to getting shot at, huh?”

“Not for real.”

“Well, if you think it over and still want to find him, I’ll run you out in my launch. You can get me at this number.” He wrote something on a scrap of paper with a ballpoint pen and handed it to me.

“Why stick your neck out?” I said.

Nash waved his hand in a deprecatory gesture. “Hell, we’re both Americans, aren’t we?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I almost forgot again.”

I had just stripped off my clothes and was fiddling with the handles on the shower in the immense bath-cum-dressing-room that the Raffles provides its guests when I heard the knock. I wrapped a towel around my middle, went to the door, and asked who it was.

“Carla.”

I opened the door. “Come on in. I was just about to take a shower. You can join me if you like.”