Росс Томас - The Singapore Wink

“Most of the pieces were missing,” I said. “They still are.”

“You’re Dangerfield,” Trippet said.

The heavy man behind the desk nodded his white domed head slowly. “That’s right, Mr. Trippet. Sam Dangerfield of the FBI as your partner here sometimes calls me. Special Agent Dangerfield with twenty-seven years in the bureau.”

“It’s a lot of money, isn’t it, Sam?” I said. “More than enough to pay off the mortgage at Bowie.”

“You don’t know how much, kid.” He looked at Nash. “Any trouble?”

Nash finished rolling a cigarette before he answered. “Two cops. They had a wreck.”

“Dead?”

“Dead.”

“That makes three,” I said.

Dangerfield smiled and he didn’t bother to make it a pleasant one. “You figured out the Lozupone girl, huh?”

“About two minutes ago. But you’re right, Sam, I’m a little dumb. I should have tumbled when we were at Toh’s house and you knew too much about the letter to the Panama bank. I didn’t know as much about it as you did and the only way you could have known was to have seen it. So you must have seen Carla. In fact, you must have been the last one to see her.”

“One of the last, Cauthorne,” he said. “One of the last.”

“Okay,” I said. “Now for the kicker. Where’s Sacchetti?”

“Tell him, Cousin Jack,” Dangerfield said.

I looked at Nash. “Sacchetti’s in Cebu,” he said.

“Doing what?”

“Being dead.”

“Been dead for almost twenty months, hasn’t he?” Dangerfield said to Nash.

Nash looked up at the ceiling as if counting the months. “About that.”

Dangerfield poured gin into a glass. “I’m going to tell you about it, Cauthorne. I’m going to tell you because you got mixed up in it all accidental-like and I’m going to tell you because I like you, kid. I really do. You’re just not too bright.”

“I’m not much on keeping secrets either,” I said.

He took a swallow of his drink and stared at me over the rim of the glass. Then he put it down, belched, and reached for a cigarette. “You’ll keep this one,” he said and looked at Nash. “How much time we got?”

Nash glanced at his watch. “About a half hour.”

“Good a way to kill time as any,” Dangerfield said. He motioned to the Chinese by the door. “Open it up; it’s too goddamned hot in here.”

The Chinese opened the door and leaned against the sill again, his arms still folded across his chest.

“You were going to tell me what happened to Sacchetti,” I said. “I’m still interested.”

Dangerfield nodded. “I know you are, kid. I know you are. Well, it seems when Sacchetti went over the side of that junk he had a sampan close by and swam underwater to it and then lit out for the Philippines. He didn’t know anyone there, but it seemed like as good a place as any to operate out of.”

“With Cole’s microfilm,” I said.

“That’s right. With Charlie’s microfilm. The only trouble was he ran out of money so he nosed around and learned that Cousin Jack here was loansharking it so he made the approach. Well, Jack loaned him — what was it, five thousand?”

“Six,” Nash said.

“Six. Jack loaned him six and was supposed to get back seven, but Angelo dropped the whole bundle on the ponies and then couldn’t pay up. Jack naturally got impatient and he took Angelo by the hand and showed him a couple of ex-gamblers who’d been customers until they couldn’t pay. They were scooting around Cebu on platforms built on roller skates because their legs wouldn’t work any more.”

“Nash told me about the baseball bats,” I said. “Only it was Angelo who was supposed to have used them.”

“Jack tells a good story,” Dangerfield said comfortably.

“Very good,” I said.

“Since he couldn’t pay, Angelo decided to cut Jack in. Angelo had always wanted his own shop. You know how he’d been around New York and Los Angeles, always on the fringe, always for peanuts. Well, his idea was to blackmail Godfather Cole for the nut and then set up an operation in Singapore. Except he didn’t think he could swing it by himself, so he cut in Jack, like I said, because Jack knew the territory which sounds like something out of a song, doesn’t it?”

“Not much,” I said.

“Yeah. Well, Angelo told Jack about how he could blackmail Cole and Jack told him about how to set up the fix in Singapore. So together they started the blackmail on Cole. Then Jack got a good look at all of the microfilm that Angelo had and it looked like a goldmine and I’m afraid that Jack got greedy.”

“Not too greedy,” Nash said. “I cut you in.

“I’m your cousin,” Dangerfield said. “We just kept it in the family.”

“What happened to Sacchetti?” I said.

“He had an accident,” Dangerfield said.

“What kind?”

“A fatal one. He got run over by a jeep taxi while crossing the street; it could happen to anyone.”

“Only his name wasn’t Angelo Sacchetti then.”

“No; I’m afraid that the papers they found on his body said he was someone called Jerry Caldwell.”

“You and Nash are really cousins?” I said.

“Grew up together,” Dangerfield said.

“In Baltimore,” Nash said.

“How much time now?” Dangerfield said to Nash.

“Twenty minutes.”

“Going to have to cut this short, Cauthorne. We have to catch the tide.”

“You’re going someplace?” I said.

“All of us are,” he said. “A short cruise.”

“I won’t keep you then.”

“You’ve been plenty of laughs, Cauthorne.”

“You’re sure Sacchetti’s dead?” I said.

“Sure.”

“Then who married Toh’s daughter?”

“My second cousin,” Dangerfield said. “Jack’s kid. With a mustache and longer hair who was to say that he wasn’t Angelo Sacchetti? Nobody in Singapore knew Angelo anyway.”

“Where’s he now?”

“Jack’s kid? In Panama City.”

“Picking up the Lozupone million from the bank?”

“You got it right, Cauthorne.”

“I’m sorry that I don’t,” Trippet said.

Dangerfield gave us another unpleasant smile. “Okay, I’ll tell it quick. Jack and I grew up together, like he said, in Baltimore. He got in a little trouble in thirty-nine and caught a boat to Manila and then did this and that until he wound up in Cebu. I went to law school. I was always the goody-goody. You believe that, Cauthorne, don’t you?”

“Sure,” I said.

“We kept in touch by letter and after the war, I helped him on a few things. Information from the bureau that he could use.”

“And you split whatever you made?” I said.

“It wasn’t much. So when he got Cole’s microfilm dumped into his hands, after Angelo had his accident, Jack got in touch with me. He needed somebody in the States who knew how Lozupone, Cole, and the rest of the boys operated, and how much they could be tapped for. That’s me. He also needed somebody who knew how numbers and the rest of it were set up, and again, that’s me. Jack’s part was to put the fix in at Singapore which he did through Toh for three hundred grand and didn’t make any secret about the fact that he’d bought protection.”

“Toh and his daughter know that Nash’s son isn’t really Sacchetti?”

“They know,” Dangerfield said. “But they don’t give a damn. The marriage was nothing but one of convenience anyway; Jack’s son doesn’t go for girls much.”

“He likes boys,” Nash said. “His goddamned mother ruined him.”

“That was Jack’s first wife,” Dangerfield said. “Now he’s married to a nice Chinese girl.”

“I heard.”

“So everything was going along smooth in Singapore. The numbers were making money, the loan-sharking was taking hold, the protection was paying off, and Toh kept everyone in line by threatening to call a race riot if anything happened to his son-in-law. Everybody played ball and then Charlie Cole got dicey and called Callese in L.A. without checking with me.”