“I got wet.”
“Must be the rain,” I said.
“So I went into this tailor shop to see if they could dry my suit and press it. I was sitting there and I noticed that the guy was taking numbers.”
“So?”
“So about the time I was ready to go another guy comes in and makes what looks like the pickup. I followed him.”
“To where?”
“To Chinatown. It’s some dive on Fish Street.”
“And you’re still waiting?”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Because if my guess is right, this place on Fish Street is just a substation. Once they count it and check the slips they’ll move it to the main headquarters.”
“And that’s where Angelo will be?”
“You got it right, Cauthome.”
“What if he is?”
I could hear Dangerfield sigh over the telephone. “Sometimes, Cauthorne, I don’t think you’ve got the brains God gave a crabapple tree. Sacchetti doesn’t much want to see you, does he?”
“Not especially.”
“Well, when his wife sends you the word, you’ll get in to see him all right, but what about getting out?”
“What about it?” I said.
“What about it?” Dangerfield mimicked me and did a fair imitation. “Angelo’s hot, Cauthorne. Red hot He might just decide to disappear and take you with him. So you’d better have somebody on the outside when you go inside.”
“And that’s you.”
“You got it right, Cauthorne.”
“Sounds like cops and robbers. Why so noble, Dangerfield?”
“I want that microfilm,” Dangerfield said.
“You’ll get it.”
“But not until you see Angelo. And if anything happened to you while you were seeing Angelo, I’d never get it.”
I started to tell him that he could come to the hotel and get the microfilm then, but he said, “The guy’s coming out now. I’ve got to go.” The phone went dead. There was nothing to do but wait for it to ring again or for someone to knock on the door. I decided to do it comfortably. I sent the houseboy down for dinner and after that I went to bed and stared up at the ceiling for a long time before I fell asleep. The next morning I waited until almost noon, but nobody called, so I caught a cab and headed for Paya Lebar International to meet my partner who seemed to think that I needed someone to help me sit around and wait for the phone to ring.
Trippet, dressed in a medium blue tropical weight suit that had scarcely a wrinkle in it, was the fourth person through health and immigration. The fifth person in the line looked at me, frowned, and then turned to the sixth person, a man with eyes that were too close together, a nose that was too pointed, a mouth that was too thin, and a chin that was too sharp and needed a shave. The man behind Trippet had long, black wavy hair and an acne-scarred face. Carla Lozupone had called him Tony and I decided that he and his fox-faced friend had made excellent time from New York.
Trippet spotted me and waved. At customs, he collected the last of his papers and I walked over to meet him. “Edward,” he said. “It was good of you to come all the way out here.”
We shook hands and I said: “Why the trip, Dick?”
“Didn’t Sammy tell you?” he said.
“He told me that you were worried about my health or something.”
Trippet’s face acquired a surprised look. “Did he now?”
“He did.”
“I wasn’t in the least worried,” Trippet said. “He rang me at four in the morning to tell me that you were involved in some kind of jiggery-pokery and that it would be most wise for me to fly out and lend a hand.”
“Doing what?” I said.
Before Trippet could answer, a voice said: “What happened, Cauthorne?” I knew the voice; the last time I’d heard it was in front of the Los Angeles airport and it had been advising me to take good care of Carla Lozupone. Now it wanted to know why I hadn’t.
I turned and said, “Hello, Tony.”
He was dressed for the tropics. He wore a persimmon-colored double-breasted linen jacket with white buttons, dark green slacks, a yellow shirt with inch-wide green stripes, and brown loafers. I decided that he had packed his Miami Beach wardrobe. His fox-faced friend wore a light-weight dark suit and his only concession to the climate was a tie that was loosened and pulled down an inch or so from his unbuttoned collar.
“This is him,” Tony said to fox-face. “Cauthorne. The guy I was telling you about.” Fox-face nodded and put on a pair of dark glasses, the better to see me with, I thought. “This is Terilizzi. He wants to know what happened, too. That’s why the boss sent him.”
“This is my partner, Mr. Trippet,” I said. “Mr. Terilizzi — and I don’t think I ever got your last name, Tony.”
“Cea,” he said to me and “hiyah” to Trippet. Nobody seemed to want to shake hands. “What happened to Carla, Cauthorne?” Cea said. “The boss wants to know bad.”
“She was strangled.”
Terilizzi took off his glasses and slipped them into his breast pocket. He nodded his head slightly, as if encouraging me to go on with the story, and then I looked fully into his eyes and I wished that he had kept his sunglasses on. His eyes had the color and warmth of chilled oysters and I had the feeling that if I looked into them long enough, I would discover something that was better left unknown.
“Where were you?” Tony Cea asked.
“I was getting beat up.”
“Who did it?”
“Who beat me up or who killed Carla?”
“I don’t give a shit who beat you up,” Cea said. “Who killed Carla?”
“The cops are looking for Sacchetti.”
“Sacchetti, huh?” Cea searched his pockets for a cigarette, found one, and lit it with a small leather-covered lighter. “He do it?”
“How should I know?”
“Well, here’s something you should know, Cauthorne,” Cea said and his mouth twisted into a crooked grin. “You should know why Terilizzi and me are here. We’re here because we’re going to find who killed Carla and then I’m going to turn him over to Terilizzi who’s just a little nuts. Not much; just enough. You follow me?”
“It’s not hard,” I said.
“Quite simple, really,” Trippet said.
“Who’d you say he was?” Cea said, jerking a thumb at Trippet.
“My partner.”
“Tell him to shut up.”
“You tell him.”
Cea glared at Trippet who gave him a polite, even friendly smile. “Now if we or the cops don’t find whoever made Carla dead in forty-eight hours, you know what I’m supposed to do?”
“Something perfectly wretched,” Trippet said.
“You,” Terilizzi said to Trippet, and made a sharp horizontal motion with his left hand.
“He can talk after all,” I said.
“Sure, he can talk,” Cea said. “He’s just a little nuts, like I said, but he can talk all right when he wants to. I was looking to tell you what I’m going to do if whoever killed Carla’s not caught.”
“All right,” I said. “What?”
“We’re going to find a reasonable facsimile,” he said, pronouncing the phrase carefully, as if he had just learned it. “We’re going to find the guy who was supposed to look after Carla but didn’t and that’s you, Cauthorne.”
“You,” Terilizzi said.
“A little screwy, but good at his job,” Cea said. “Does beautiful work; all hand carved.” Cea laughed at that and Terilizzi smiled and gave me a careful appraisal with his oystery-grey eyes. “You,” Terilizzi said again.
“I’m afraid you don’t understand the situation, Mr. Cea,” Trippet said.
“Will you get him off my back?” Cea said to me.
“You might learn something,” I said.
“You see, you are not in New York or New Jersey or even Los Angeles,” Trippet said smoothly. “At a word from either Mr. Cauthorne or myself to the proper authorities, the pair of you will be clapped into the local jail — for safekeeping, of course. The civil servants who run the Singapore prison system are most forgetful, I believe, and they might forget about you for one or even two years. It’s been known to happen.”