“It scared the shit out of me. I thought you were the one who wasn’t bothered.”
“I nearly panicked,” he said, “and I must confess that I also noticed a slight looseness of the bowels. Any idea who it was?”
“It looked like the same car that one of Sacchetti’s men used on Raffles Place the other day. It could have been the same car, but I don’t know if it was the same man.”
“Perhaps I should call Sammy,” Trippet said.
“Lim?” I said.
“Yes. Any objections?”
“He bothers me.”
“You mean it bothers you that Sammy said that I called him and I say that he called me. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Why?”
“He simply told you what you wanted to hear, Edward. It was a face-saving gesture. It would have embarrassed him to tell you that he thought you needed help.”
“Sorry. I forgot how sensitive I am.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What?” I said.
“Everything.”
“You mean the Dragon Lady and all?”
“Good Lord, is there another woman mixed up in it?”
“Sacchetti’s Chinese wife. I think she steals her lines from old Charlie Chan movies.”
“Extraordinary.”
“Who’s minding the store?” I said.
“I shipped both Sydney and my wife off to her parents in Topeka. In fact, their plane left just a few minutes before mine. Jack and Ramón are sharing management responsibilities, if you can call it that.”
“Who sits in the front office?”
“They take turns.”
“Ramón should be useful, providing the customers speak Spanish.”
“What’s what I thought.”
“Where did you learn Malay?” I said.
“Here and in Malaya,” Trippet said. “I spent a year out here in thirty-eight and I also did a turn here after the war.”
“Doing what?”
Trippet smiled. “This and that.”
“Lim said you were in British Intelligence during the war.”
“For a while.”
“And afterwards?”
“For a while.”
“It’s none of my business.”
“You’re right, Edward, it isn’t. Tell me about the Dragon Lady. She sounds much more interesting.”
I told him the same story that I had told first to Dangerfield and later to Lim, but the third time around the account grew thin and stale and it seemed as if I were describing by rote something that had happened a long time ago to some other persons in another place. Trippet listened carefully, not interrupting once, but nodding occasionally at times to show that he understood when the tale grew complicated. He was, as always, a very good listener and I wondered if he had learned the art while in British Intelligence.
When I was through Trippet gazed up at the ceiling and then ran both hands through his long grey hair. “The pistol,” he said. “I don’t like the pistol.”
“Why?”
“It’s not like Sammy.”
“That’s what he said.”
“What?”
“That he didn’t hand them out lightly.”
“Where do you keep it?”
“In a brown paper bag. The bag is in my suitcase.”
“That fellow Nash,” Trippet said. “Can you describe him?”
“Medium height, around fifty or fifty-five in a harsh light, compact build, deep tan, blond hair going grey. Rolls his own cigarettes.”
“Green eyes? I mean really green?”
“Right. You know him?”
“I can’t say, but I think so. It’s been a long time.”
“He came in handy,” I said.
“So it would seem.”
“But after all, Nash and I are fellow Americans.”
“A true bond.”
I yawned and stretched. “What do you say to some lunch?”
“I say it’s a good suggestion.”
We had lunch in the room and Trippet helped me to listen for the phone to ring. We listened until four o’clock but nobody called, knocked, or slipped a note under the door. I rang the bell and the houseboy came for the dishes and both Trippet and I beamed at him and Trippet inquired about his family which I thought was polite.
We carried on a vague kind of conversation made up of half-phrases, grunts, long silences, and old jokes; the kind of verbal shorthand that is used by two persons who know each other well or have been married for a long time. The hamburger king had called again and was shipping his Stutz DV-32 Bearcat down from San Francisco next week or the week after. The plumber had brought his wife in to look at the Cadillac; the wife had been unimpressed. Two young ladies had phoned for me; one gave her name as Judy and the other had refused to leave either her name or number and I spent a few moments trying unsuccessfully to think who it might have been. I knew who Judy was.
The phone finally rang at a quarter to five. It had been a long afternoon and the sound was welcome so I let it ring three times. “Damned if I’m going to seem anxious,” I said and picked it up on the fourth ring.
“A man will come to your hotel at seven this evening, Mr. Cauthorne.” Once again Angelo Sacchetti’s wife didn’t think it was necessary to identify herself so I said: “Who’s this?”
“Make sure you’re not followed,” she said.
“Who’s the man?”
“You’ll recognize him,” she said and hung up.
I replaced the phone and went back to the divan where I’d been doing my waiting with my head propped up on two pillows from the bed. “The Dragon Lady,” I said. “A man’s going to pick us up at seven o’clock here.”
“Us?”
“Don’t you want to sit in? We just play for matches.”
“I mean, did she say ‘us’ or ‘you’?”
“She said ‘you’ but I interpreted it as ‘us’ which reminds me; I’d better call Dangerfield.”
I crossed the room again, looked up the number of the Strand Hotel, and asked its operator for Dangerfield’s room. She rang the room for at least two minutes and then said she was sorry, but Mr. Dangerfield did not seem to be in and would I like to leave a message. I told her to tell him to call Cauthorne.
“Not there?” Trippet said.
“No.”
“What do you think of his numbers racket headquarters theory?”
“Not much.”
“Neither do I, but it’s probably better than sitting around some hotel room.”
“What isn’t?”
Trippet went back to his own room to write a letter to his wife and to call Lim Pang Sam, he said. I continued to lie on the couch and count the cracks in the ceiling. I could have spent the time more profitably by reading a newspaper or studying Chinese or working on my bird calls, but I didn’t. I just lay there and stared at the ceiling and counted fifteen major cracks and six probables which actually were hairlines. I was waiting, I told myself, for the man who was going to take me to Angelo Sacchetti. But that wasn’t true. What I really waited for was Sacchetti to fall off the Chinese junk for the last time. I was waiting for that final grotesque, obscene wink and it arrived at a quarter past six along with the usual measure of shakes and shivers and a river of cold sweat. When it was over I headed for the bathroom and my third shower for the day. I dressed slowly, killing more time. I wore a white Egyptian cotton shirt with a button-down collar, a striped tie from some long-disbanded regiment, a dark blue poplin suit, black socks and loafers and a.38 caliber Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special which I stuck in the left-hand waistband of my trousers so that it could remind me of how much my stomach hurt. By fifteen to seven I was sitting on the edge of a chair, neat if not natty, waiting for someone to guide me to the man who the Singapore police thought would do for the prime suspect in the Carla Lozupone murder case until a better one came along.
Trippet knocked on my door at ten till seven and joined me in a final gin and tonic. “Did you talk to Lim?” I said.