Росс Томас - The Singapore Wink

It was the Dangerfield Plan, the one that the rumpled man with the red bulb of a nose had thought up in the hotel in Washington, and its merit lay in its implacable simplicity. It didn’t take Toh long to decide. “Get it,” he said.

“How do we know—” she started to say, but her father interrupted. “Get it,” he said again. The woman rose and crossed to an indifferent oil painting of Singapore’s harbor. The sky was too blue and the sea was too green. She swung the painting open and there was a small safe. She spun the dial on the combination, opened the safe, and took out a small yellow box, not as large as a cigarette package. She closed the safe, spun the dial on the combination, and swung the painting back into place. She crossed the room to her father and handed the yellow cardboard box to him.

“Microfilm,” Dangerfield said.

“Yes, microfilm,” Toh said.

“I suppose there are other copies,” Dangerfield said.

“But it doesn’t matter, does it?” Toh said.

“Not really. Not to me, anyhow, and very soon it won’t matter to anyone.”

“I take it, Mr. Dangerfield, that you are some sort of a policeman.”

“It shows that much, huh?”

“It’s quite evident. And I also take it that you will use this information,” and Toh made a slight gesture with the yellow box, “to indict this Lozupone person.”

“What do you care what I do with it?” Dangerfield said.

Toh smiled for the first time since we had arrived. “You have a curious mind, a cunning one, even devious. Such a mind could easily find other uses for such information.”

“What you’re saying is that I might use it to blackmail Lozupone; that I might cut myself in on all the money we’ve been talking about.”

“That occurred to me,” Toh said.

“Do you really care?”

“Not really. I just want to make sure that Mr. Cole will continue to have a source of income. Some of the funds that he has transferred to my son-in-law have gone for most worthwhile causes.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to Charlie Cole,” Dangerfield said.

“But you do want something to happen to the Lozupone person. You want it to happen so badly that you would sacrifice Cole, if necessary.”

“That’s right,” Dangerfield said. “Now you can give me the box.”

I rose and walked over to Toh and took the box out of his hand and put it into the pocket of my slacks. “I’ll keep it, Sam.”

Dangerfield was on his feet. “What do you mean, you’ll keep it?”

“Just what I said. I’ll keep it. I need some insurance.”

“Look, kid, give me the—”

“Shut up,” I said. “I’ve been sitting here for half an hour listening to you three. You’ve made your deal and everyone’s happy. Sacchetti can keep the money coming in from Cole, and Toh can keep on making the payments on his house and buy gasoline for the Rolls, and beer for the Singapore version of the Red Guard. You’re happy to trade the evidence on Lozupone for that, aren’t you, Toh? And what about Dangerfield? He got what he came for, what he sent me for. The Dangerfield Plan worked, didn’t it, Sam, and now you’re happy. In fact, everybody’s happy but me.”

“Okay, kid, what do you want? Your fifty thousand from Cole?”

“What I came for. I want to see Angelo.”

“What the hell difference would it make?” Dangerfield said. “Just because you get the nasties every night when Angelo falls overboard and gives you the big wink. You think just seeing him’s going to cure that? You’re crazier than I thought, Cauthorne.”

“You’re forgetting one thing,” I said.

Dangerfield shook his head. “You’re really nuts, kid.”

“You’re forgetting that I was supposed to look after Carla, but now she’s dead, and I don’t think her father’s going to be too happy with me.”

“Give me the box and I’ll put him away so quick he won’t have a chance to be unhappy,” Dangerfield said.

Toh rose and faced Dangerfield. “I think that this discussion no longer concerns either my daughter or me. If you gentlemen will excuse us, I will have my driver take you back to your hotel.”

“I’m sorry but it does concern you,” I said. “I keep the box until I see Angelo. That’s part of the price. Dangerfield just forgot to mention it, didn’t you, Sam?”

Dangerfield stared at me. “I can get it away from you, Cauthorne, one way or another.”

“Don’t try it. Just tell them that it’s part of the price.”

“You’re making a mistake,” he said.

“As long as I make it.”

Dangerfield turned to Toh. “Fix it up.”

“I don’t think it would be—”

“I don’t care what you think. Fix it so that the kid can see Angelo. Like he said, it’s part of the price.”

Toh and his daughter once again exchanged glances. It was the daughter’s turn. “Very well, Mr. Dangerfield. I will, as you say, fix it up. I’ll probably send word by messenger as to the time and place.”

“Just one thing more,” I said.

“What?” she said.

“Make it soon.”

We were halfway back to the hotel before Dangerfield spoke to me. “By God, you almost screwed it up, didn’t you?”

“Screwed what up?”

“The whole thing.”

“Angelo owes me something.”

Dangerfield grunted. “He owes that wife and the father-in-law something, too.”

“What?”

“You don’t think Angelo actually killed the Lozupone girl?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You don’t know,” Dangerfield mimicked. “God, you are dumb, Cauthorne.”

“Okay, I’m dumb.”

“It’s a frame like I said. You can smell it a mile off. And you know who hung it on him?”

“I know what you want me to say.”

“What?”

“The father-in-law and the wife, right?”

Dangerfield looked at me and smiled. Then he leaned back in the Rolls and gazed out the window. “You got it right, pal,” he said, but he seemed to be talking to himself.

The Chinese room clerk at the Raffles didn’t give me his usual cheerful smile when I asked for my key and a large manila envelope.

“There are some persons to see you, Mr. Cauthorne,” he said.

“Where?”

“In your room.”

“Do you usually let just anyone into your guests’ rooms?”

He smiled a little then, but there was more embarrassment than humor in it. “We usually let the police in, yes, sir.”

“I see. Do you have that envelope?”

He found one and I put the yellow cardboard box inside, licked the flap and sealed it, wrote my name on the front, and handed it back to him. “You have a safe, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Put this in it, will you, please?”

He nodded and then added: “I was distressed to learn of Miss Lozupone’s—”

“Yes,” I said before he had to complete the polite and meaningless ritual of expressing sorrow over the death of a stranger. “Thank you. It was a terrible thing.”

“A terrible thing,” he agreed and headed back to the safe with the envelope which contained the microfilmed evidence that could send Carla Lozupone’s father to jail.

I thought about Carla as I walked down the hall to my room where the police waited with their questions about who she was and why she had died. I didn’t think that they would ask about who would mourn her, but I wasn’t sure that I could answer them if they did. Her father would mourn, I decided. Joe Lozupone, whom she had described as a fat little man with a bald head and an accent, would be not only the chief mourner, but also the chief seeker of vengeance, a role that he had played often enough before. Perhaps her lovers would mourn her for a while and I included myself among them, one in what probably was a long casual list of men who, hearing of her death, would feel a fleeting sense of personal loss, if not of grief; men who would remember something she had said or the way her hair had looked against a pillow or the way that she had once walked across a room. It wasn’t so bad a way to be remembered if you had died for less than nothing.