Singapore Wink (26 page)

We must have gone a mile upriver before Nash headed the runabout towards the right bank. He pulled up to the steps of the quay and the Indian jumped out and fastened one line to a metal rung and another, smaller one, to his big toe. He grinned his yellow teeth at us once, then curled up and went to sleep.

We went up the steps of the quay, crossed the loading area, and moved down another narrow alley. At the end of the alley Nash stopped at a building that looked like a garage, took out a key, and felt in the dark for the lock. He twisted the key, put it back in his pocket, and then slid the door open. It was a wide, high door and he grunted when he pushed at it Neither Trippet nor I offered to help.

Inside the garage was a fairly new Jaguar 240 sedan. “Yours?” I said.

“Mine.”

“The smuggling business must be good.”

“It's okay,” Nash said. He handed me the key to the garage door. “Close it and lock up when I drive out.”

He started the Jaguar and backed it slowly out of the garage. I closed the door, locked it, and climbed into the back seat. Trippet sat in front. Nash switched on his lights and turned into a one-way street, traveled three blocks, and turned right. He was a rotten driver.

We wound our way through the commercial section of Singapore until we hit Upper Thomson Road. Nash made a left turn, barely missed a Volkswagen, and kept the Jaguar in second gear too long.

“How far?” I said.

“About eleven, maybe twelve miles to where we're going,” he said.

We drove in silence for fifteen or twenty minutes except for when Nash cursed at fellow motorists who invariably were in the right. After fifteen minutes or so I looked back for the fourth time and noticed that the lights of the car behind us had still not moved any closer or any farther behind for a good quarter of an hour. I shifted the revolver in my waistband to what I hoped would be a more comfortable position and when that didn't work out, I shifted it back.

At Yio Chu Kang Road a black Chevelle sedan cut in front of us, momentarily illuminated by the lights of the Jaguar. For once Nash didn't curse.

“Friend of yours?” I said.

“Not mine.”

“How about the one behind us?”

“Who?”

“We've had a tail for the last twenty minutes,” I said. “Mrs. Sacchetti said she didn't want any tails.”

Nash looked into his rear view mirror, probably for the first time that night, and the Jaguar veered to the left. Trippet grabbed for the wheel and got it back into line.

“Ill lose him,” Nash said.

“Let me out first,” Trippet said.

“Think you can do any better?”

“Anyone could.”

“Well, just watch, fellah.”

Nash pressed down on the accelerator and the Jaguar jumped ahead. He pulled up until he was only thirty or forty feet behind the black Chevelle, then blinked his lights three times in rapid succession. The Chevelle lights blinked twice. Nash cut the Jaguar lights completely and slammed on his brakes and the car skidded to a stop on the left-hand verge of the highway. He turned off the ignition.

“That doesn't make you invisible,” Trippet said.

“Watch,” Nash said.

The only thing that I could tell about the car that had been following us was that it was painted a dark color and it had two men in the front seat. Neither of them wore hats and I couldn't see their faces because they turned their heads as they sped past the parked Jaguar. Another car, also containing two men, roared by a few moments later. It looked like a Ford, but I wasn't sure.

Nash started the engine again, switched on his lights, and pulled back onto the highway. “They didn't stop, you notice,” he said. “They didn't want us to think they were tailing us.”

“You can follow from the front as well as from the rear,” I said.

“Watch,” Nash said.

Ahead of us we could see the taillights of the two cars that had passed while we were parked. The tail-lights of the lead car flashed as its brakes came on and the lights veered to the right, crossed the center line, then skittered to the left. The brake warning lights went off and suddenly the regular taillights rose up in the air, turned over three times, and went out. The car that was following pulled sharply to the right, slowed, and then sped on. The four-door black Chevelle was nowhere in sight.

“See what I mean,” Nash said.

We were almost abreast of the car that had gone off the road. It had rolled three times and it had come to rest on its top, prevented from rolling any farther by the splintered palm tree that it had crunched into. A crowd was beginning to gather. “Stop,” I told Nash.

“I'm not stopping,” he said. “We're late now; you want to see Sacchetti or not?”

“Stop or I'll break your goddamned neck,” I said.

“Don't tell me what to do, Cauthorne.”

I leaned forward, slipped my right arm around his neck, and pressed my wrist against his adam's apple. “Stop,” I said again, and eased off the pressure.

Nash stopped the car and I got out and hurried back towards the wreck. Trippet was close behind. It was almost a fifty-yard walk back to the car and by the time we got there the occupants had been pulled from the wreckage. The car was a Rover sedan and it looked to be a total loss. Gasoline trickled from its tank. The crowd chattered away in Chinese and Malay and one bystander shined a flashlight on the faces of the two occupants of the car who had been carried or dragged to the side of the road. One was Detective-Sergeant Huang who had lost an eye somehow. The other was Detective-Sergeant Tan whose legs were folded under him in an impossible position. Both of them were dead.

“Know who they are?” Trippet said.

“Singapore police. They were the ones who talked to me.”

“Could you tell how it happened?” he said.

“No,” I said. “Could you?”

“I'm not sure, but I think that the Chevelle forced them to swerve. It came out of nowhere from the left. Then a tire must have blown.”

“Or someone shot it out.”

“I didn't hear anything,” Trippet said, “and that's a damned difficult shot.”

“So were the ones that missed us this afternoon and I didn't hear those either.”

“Wasn't that some kind of signal that Nash gave the Chevelle when he blinked his lights?” Trippet said.

“It was a signal.”

“They had it worked out in advance.”

“Not all the way,” I said. “It must have been a contingency plan.”

“Now they'll be looking for Sacchetti because of two dead policemen.”

“They'll never prove it,” I said. “Did you see anything that you can swear to?”

“No.”

“Neither did I.”

There wasn't anything to be done for Tan and Huang so we went back to the Jaguar and got in.

“They're both dead,” Trippet told Nash.

“Too bad. You ready now?”

“We're ready,” I said.

Two miles from the wreck Nash turned right onto a dirt road and bounced past houses that were built on stilts over swamp and water. It seemed to grow hotter. Nobody said anything until he pulled the car up at what was apparently the end of the road. “From here on, we walk,” he said.

We got out and followed him down a path that led to a crude dock.

“This the strait?” I said.

“This is it.”

“Now what?”

“We wait,” Nash said. “Somebody'll be along.”

We waited five minutes and then I could hear the oar-locks of a rowboat. Nash said something in Chinese and a voice answered. It sounded familiar.

“This way,” Nash said. He headed out to the end of the dock and Trippet and I followed. A rowboat was drawn up alongside and a man was standing up, holding onto the dock. “You two into the stern,” Nash said.

The man in the boat turned on a flashlight and Trippet and I crawled down into the boat. “Let them hold the light for me,” Nash said. The man who was standing up passed the flashlight to Trippet and he shined it on the bow of the boat. Nash got in. Trippet flashed the light over the man who was standing up in the boat and I understood why his voice seemed familiar. He was the tall, lean Chinese who had once shot at me on Raffles Place and later had clubbed me unconscious with a revolver in the saloon of
The Chicago Belle.
He looked almost naked without his pistol.

The Chinese shoved us off from the dock and then sat down and unshipped the oars. He rowed for fifteen minutes. Then we bumped against a large dim bulk and Nash said, “Okay, up the ladder. Use the flashlight.”

Trippet shined the flashlight around until he found a rope ladder with wooden steps. “You guys first,” Nash said.

“This your
kumpit?
” I said.

“This is it.”

From its running lights the
Wilfreda Maria
seemed to be about sixty or seventy feet long. I climbed up the ladder and then helped Trippet onto the deck. We let Nash manage by himself. The deck was lighted by five or six haphazardly placed naked bulbs and by the glow from the windows of what seemed to be a cabin and a wheelhouse that was aft. Nash headed for it. “This way,” he said and I noticed that the Chinese who had rowed the boat was right behind us.

“You sure Sacchetti is here?” I said, and my voice cracked like a thirteen-year-old adolescent's.

Nash grinned. “You're really eager, aren't you, Cauthorne?”

“I've waited long enough.”

“The great man is just inside,” he said. “Right through that door.”

I put my hand on the knob, then stopped, because it seemed for a moment that the shakes and the horrors were due, but that passed, and I opened the door. Inside there were two bunks, some chairs, and a deal table that held a gin bottle and a glass. The man in the blue shirt who sat behind the table stared at me curiously for what seemed to be a long time. Then he said, “Hello, Cauthorne,” but neither his face nor his voice belonged to Angelo Sacchetti.

They belonged to Sam Dangerfield.

CHAPTER XXIV

Trippet, Nash and the lean Chinese had followed me into the cabin whose stifling small space reeked of stale sweat, mingled with the odor of rotting copra that had the sweet and sour locker room smell of old jock straps and dirty sneakers.

“Hello, Sam,” I said.

“Sit down,” Dangerfield said. “Want a drink? Don't think I ever offered you a drink before, did I?”

“Not of your own booze.”

“Well?”

“No thanks.”

“This your partner?” he said, nodding his head at Trippet.

“That's right.”

“Trippet, isn't it?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Sit down, Mr. Trippet.”

We all sat down, except for the Chinese who stood by the door, his arms folded across his chest. “You were getting too close, Cauthorne,” Dangerfield said as he burrowed his blue eyes into me. “You're dumb, but you were getting too close.”

“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?”