“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.”