Росс Томас - The Singapore Wink

It was a huge, white, two-story house that featured round Moorish turrets on either end and some Corinthian pillars to hold up the roof. It perhaps was the most flamboyant mish-mash of architecture that one could hope to see. On top of the roof were two-foot-high letters that read: “Tiger Balm House of Jade.”

“What’s Tiger Balm?” Dangerfield asked.

“It was very powerful medicine that was manufactured by Aw Boon Haw,” the driver said as he nipped past a Honda. “He made many millions of dollars. Then he bought newspapers and when he died they turn his house into a museum.”

“Why is it called ‘House of Jade’?” I said.

“Over one thousand pieces of jade inside. Very, very valuable. Very ancient, too.”

The house of Angelo Sacchetti’s father-in-law, Toh Kin Pui, was about a mile and a half past the patent medicine king’s mansion and located in the Tanglin residential section which, the driver informed us, featured more millionaires per square mile than anyplace else in the world. He may have exaggerated, but the neighborhood looked as if it were trying to live up to the reputation. Toh’s house, set well back from the road, was a rambling white two-story stucco structure with a red tile roof and a five-sided cupola that stuck up an extra story for no apparent reason at all except that the architect may have thought that it would lend a nice touch. The lawn was smooth and green and well-tended, and flowers bloomed everywhere. The asphalt drive curved up to a covered verandah across from which a fountain played lazily into a rocked-in pool. A Rolls-Royce Phantom V limousine was parked in the driveway and a chauffeur was running a dust cloth over its antelope brown finish. I don’t know why he bothered because it looked as if it were going to rain.

I paid the driver and Dangerfield followed me up the three steps of the verandah. I pushed a button and I suppose that a bell rang somewhere in the house because the door was opened almost immediately by a Chinese man in a white jacket.

“I’m Mr. Cauthorne,” I said. “Mrs. Sacchetti is expecting me.”

We followed the man in the white jacket down a hall and despite the air conditioning the palms of my hands began to sweat and I felt drops of perspiration form in my armpits and trickle down my sides. I held out my right hand to admire its quiver. The pain came in short stabs with every step and breath, but the pain didn’t cause the tremor or the perspiration. That came from my obsession, which was finding Angelo Sacchetti so that I could collect whatever it was that he owed me. The end of my obsession, I thought, lay just behind the door that the man in the white coat opened.

I went through the door first with Dangerfield following. “Don’t be so eager, pal,” he said. “He’s not going to run away.”

It was a living room and the furniture was ordinary, impersonal and utilitarian. There were a couple of sofas, some armchairs, a rug on the floor, and some pictures on the wall.

Several tables held vases filled with flowers, the only bright spots in the room. Angelo Sacchetti’s wife sat in one of the armchairs, much as she had sat the night before, leaning slightly forward, her hands resting on the chair’s arms, her knees together and her feet crossed at the ankles, as if it were a lesson she had learned in finishing school and she wanted to demonstrate how well she remembered it. A middle-aged Chinese in a white shirt and dark slacks, the island’s universal business uniform, rose as we entered.

“Mr. Cauthorne, this is my father, Mr. Toh.”

He bowed slightly, but did not offer to shake hands. “My associate, Mr. Dangerfield,” I said. “Mrs. Sacchetti and Mr. Toh.”

Dangerfield wasn’t much for formalities. “Where’s your husband, Mrs. Sacchetti?”

She ignored him and directed her next remark at me. “You didn’t mention that you were bringing an associate, Mr. Cauthorne.”

“No, I didn’t, did I? But Mr. Dangerfield has a rather personal interest in this matter. In fact, his interest runs almost as deep as mine.”

“In what matter?”

“The matter of stolen property,” I said. “I mentioned it last night. As soon as Angelo arrives, we can discuss it in detail.”

“I’m afraid that you are going to be disappointed,” Toh said in a curiously deep and resonant voice.

“Why?”

“Because, Mr. Cauthome,” Mrs. Sacchetti said as if mentioning her plans for next Tuesday’s bridge game, “the police are looking for him.”

“Why?” I said again.

“There was a murder last night. A woman was killed and the police say that they have found evidence that my husband committed the murder. Ridiculous, of course.” Even then there was no emotion in her voice.

“And Angelo ran?” Dangerfield said.

“Not ran, Mr. Dangerfield,” Toh said. “He simply thought it best to become incommunicado until he could clear the matter up to everyone’s satisfaction.”

“Who was the woman?” I said, but I didn’t really have to ask.

“An American, I believe,” Angelo Sacchetti’s wife said. “Her name was Carla Lozupone.”

They found Carla Lozupone’s body a long way from the Raffles Hotel. It had been dumped beside a road on the east coast of the island near Geylang, not far from a Malay kampong or village. She had been strangled with a cord or a rope and there was nothing to identify her, only a wallet that contained an American passport, an expired California driver’s license, a Social Security card, and 176 Singapore dollars. The wallet was clutched in Carla Lozupone’s right hand and the police had been forced to pry the fingers open. The name on the passport, the license, and the Social Security card was Angelo Sacchetti.

An early-rising Malay fisherman had stumbled across the body. He immediately summoned his neighbors from their thatched huts in the kampong and all of them, men, women and children, had squatted around the dead girl and palavered for a long time about what should be done. Finally, they dispatched a youth on a bicycle to find a policeman. He couldn’t find one at first and it was not until well after nine in the morning that members of Singapore’s Criminal Investigation Department arrived. It took another hour for them to check the major hotels and discover, through the help of a Raffles room clerk, that the dead girl was Carla Lozupone.

Dangerfield took over after Sacchetti’s wife told us that Carla Lozupone was dead. His questions were direct, logical and curiously compelling and I decided that he was very good at his job. We learned most of the details later because Mrs. Sacchetti and her father didn’t know much, other than that Carla Lozupone had been murdered and the police were looking for Angelo. Ton had his informants in the Singapore police and they had tipped him off that Angelo was the prime suspect. The tip came twenty minutes before the police arrived, but it seemed to have been plenty of time for Sacchetti to vanish.

“Where is he now?” Dangerfield asked.

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Sacchetti said. “I assume that he will be in touch with me.”

“Do you know what time the police think that the girl was killed?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“Did they ask where your husband was last night?”

“Yes.”

“What did you say?”

“That he was with me, on the yacht.”

“Did they believe you?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because they had already been to the yacht to question the crew.”

“And the crew said that he hadn’t been there?”

“Yes.”

“All night?”

“Yes.”

“Where was he?”

“I don’t know. He had a business appointment last night. If it ran late, he probably stayed in the city. We have a pied-à-terre that he often uses.”