Singapore Wink (16 page)

“You did that real nice,” a voice said behind me. It was the same voice that had told me to watch it. I turned and saw a compact, deeply sunburned man who could have been either thirty-five or fifty-five. He wore a faded khaki shirt with officer epaulets, white duck trousers that were held up by a wide leather belt with a brass buckle, and grimy white tennis shoes, the kind that come up to the ankles.

“You give me the shove?” I said.

“You didn't really need it.”

“I'm not so sure. An inch or two either way could have made a difference.”

The man jammed his hands in his trouser pockets and squinted his green eyes up at the sun. “I was just heading across the square for a beer. You look as if you could use one.”

“You're probably right.”

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.”

CHAPTER XIV

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.”

She came into the room wearing another dress that I hadn't seen, a tan silk sheath that emphasized her figure through indirection. She sank into a chair, crossed her legs so that I couldn't miss anything interesting, and ran her eyes over me slowly as if reappraising a painting that had turned out to be more interesting than she had thought at first glance.

“You have good shoulders,” she said. “And your stomach's nice and flat. I like flat stomachs. Most of the men I know have pots, even the young ones. They have that little roll that hangs over their belts and turns their pants tops down.”

“They just need a new tailor to move the belt loops up.”

“I thought you were going to knock on my door when you got back,” she said.

“I wanted to smell nice for you.”

“How sweet. Have you got anything to drink?”

“No, but you can order a bottle. Just ring that bell over there and the houseboy will bring it.” I turned and headed for the bathroom again.

“Take your time,” she said.

I was taking my time by letting the hot water beat down on the shoulder that had landed on the cement sidewalk when a hand reached in and tapped me on that same shoulder. Carla Lozupone pulled the heavy shower curtains aside and stepped into the bath. “I decided to take you up on the invitation,” she said. I couldn't see any reason to scream so I put my arms around her and found her mouth hungry and her hands curious, then demanding. We left the shower running and made it to the bed where she looked up at me, ran her pink tongue over her lips, and said, “Say them to me.”

“What?”

“The words.”

So I said the words that I thought she wanted to hear, most of them with four letters, invented a few more, and her eyes glistened and her hands became more frantic and her mouth demanded everything. Afterwards she lay staring up at the ceiling as her hands ran over breasts and down to her thighs.

“You're as good as you look,” she said. “Even better. I like it that way.”

“What way?”

“In a hotel when it's casual and exciting and sensual. Like when it's with a stranger almost. But don't get any ideas, Cauthorne.”

“About what?”

“About me.”

“I was just going to comment that you're a pretty good lay. One of the best, in fact.”

“We didn't do everything.”

“No, I suppose we didn't.”

She propped herself up on her left elbow and her right hand went exploring again. I noticed that the pout was gone and that her tongue was once more playing around her lower lip. “Would you like to try everything?” she said.

“I don't see any reason why we shouldn't.” And we did. At least there wasn't anything else that either of us could think of, and she had a rather fertile imagination.

After we were dressed and the houseboy had brought a bottle of Ballantine's, and some sandwiches and Carla was on her second drink, she looked at me and said, “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Well, what happened?”

“You mean now that sex time's over let's get down to business.”

“I take it when and where I want it, Eddie.”

“Just like a hot bath, huh?”

“Did it mean any more to you than that?”

“No, I guess it didn't.”

“Well, what did you find out?”

“Oh, that. I found out where Angelo lives. It wasn't hard. I could have asked the room clerk and saved a lot of time. Angelo's a rather prominent citizen now. He's also married, but you already knew that, didn't you, even before you left the states, so the excuse about stalling for your father was just another lie in what I feel must be a long series of them.”

“All right,” she said. “So I knew he was married. I still have to see him.”

“Come off it, Carla. You've already seen him. You saw him last night after you left me. You told him that I was here and that I was looking for him and that I was going to see a man at ten o'clock this morning. You set me up, sweetheart, and when I came out of the building where I had my appointment, Angelo had somebody there to take a shot at me. It was more or less a friendly shot, just a warning. Nobody could have missed at that distance unless he was trying.”

None of what I said caused her to spill her drink. Instead, she gave the fingernails on her left hand a careful study. Then she looked up at me and smiled as if I had just complimented her on the new way that she wore her hair.

“You know what Angelo did when I told him you were in Singapore?” she said. “He laughed. He thinks you're some kind of a joke. A none-too-funny one that he's heard before. I don't think he wants you around.”

“I'm sure of it,” I said.

“Then why stay?”

“Because I want to see him.”

“Is that all?”

“That's enough.”

She shook her head. “You're keeping it all very nice and cozy, aren't you? Angelo laughed until I told him that you were hooked up with his godfather. Then he quit laughing. Why did Uncle Charlie pick you as my babysitter, Cauthorne? Not just because he likes the dimple in your smile, although I've heard that he swings that way sometimes.”

“I was available and I was anxious to see Angelo.”

“No,” she said. “There's something else. My Uncle Charlie wouldn't have gone outside if there weren't something else.”