by Ross Thomas
“I can understand most of it,” I said. “Angelo found out that you were providing evidence on a more or less regular basis to the police or the FBI or God knows who. If your associates or sponsors or whatever you call them found out about it, you’d live another day, possibly two. So Angelo blackmails you out of nearly a million dollars which you paid and probably didn’t miss too much. But what I don’t understand is why Angelo pretended to die, nor do I understand why you’ve suddenly decided that I can do something to get you off the hook.”
“I’m afraid it’s a little complicated, Mr. Cauthorne.”
“Most things involving a million dollars are.”
“Yes, they are, aren’t they? But let’s take you first. What I want you to do is fairly simple. I want you to find Angelo Sacchetti, retrieve the missing records, and return them to me. For this I am willing to pay you fifty thousand dollars.”
“In Los Angeles, it was only twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“The matter has become more urgent since then.”
“Urgent enough to double the price?”
“Yes. Plus expenses, of course.”
“All right, let’s say I accept.”
“I hope that you will.”
“I haven’t yet, but let’s say that I do. Where do I find Angelo?”
“In Singapore.”
I stared at Cole. “You mean he was always in Singapore?”
Cole shook his head. “No, after he disappeared and pretended to be dead, he went to Cebu City in the Philippines. From there I understand that he went to Hong Kong and then established his present operation some eighteen months ago in Singapore.”
“What operation?”
Cole sighed and stared into the fire. “With the help of my reluctant financing and with the knowledge of tactics and procedure that he learned from my sponsors in New York, Angelo Sacchetti now runs a rather smooth operation in Singapore.”
“What kind?”
“Name it. He’s introduced numbers; he is most prominent in the loansharking business, and he has branched out lately into business insurance, or so I understand.”
“You mean the protection racket.”
“If you prefer.”
“You understand from whom?”
Cole rose and joined me at the fireplace. He gazed into it while I warmed my back. “In my dealings with the government, Mr. Cauthorne, there is as I mentioned earlier a certain amount of mutual accommodation. Quid pro quo, if you like. The government knows that Angelo is not dead and that he was in Cebu and Hong Kong and they also know what he’s doing in Singapore.”
“And that’s where you got the pictures of him,” I said. “From the government.”
“From the government,” he said.
“All right,” I said. “It’s clear so far. But why did he have to pretend to be dead?”
“Because he didn’t want to get married.”
Someone sighed deeply and I was almost surprised when I realized that it had been me. “You said it was a little complicated.”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” Cole said.
“Shall we try it again?”
“It’s not really all that complicated; it just takes a while.”
“I’ve made it this far; I may even go the distance.”
Cole nodded. “I’m sure that you will, Mr. Cauthorne.”
He moved back to his leather chair and sank into it. For the first time the strain that he was under seemed apparent. His hands twitched slightly and he kept crossing and uncrossing his legs.
“Marriage among my sponsors and their associates is a most serious matter. Virtually all of them are Catholic, at least in name, and divorce is uncommon, if not rare. They marry for life and because of the rather unusual nature of their businesses, if you will allow the term, the children of one group of my sponsors tend to marry the children of another group.”
“I’ve heard that they are called families, not groups.”
“All right. We’ll use that term, if you prefer.”
“Angelo was quite popular among the members of a certain New York family which is headed by Joe Lozupone. No doubt you’ve heard of him?”
I nodded.
“In fact, Lozupone was so taken with Angelo that he flew down to Washington to see me. His proposal was that Angelo marry his daughter, Carla.”
“Why didn’t he ask Angelo?”
“Because this is the way that things are arranged. There would be a substantial dowry, of course, and Angelo would be welcomed into the family firm, if he so desired.”
“What happened?”
“I approached Angelo who was in Washington on one of his periodic visits. He agreed and promptly hit me up for a loan of fifteen thousand dollars. I think he was gambling heavily. I informed Lozupone and he informed his daughter who was then a sophomore, I believe, at Wellesley. Lozupone himself never got past the eighth grade.”
“Then what?”
“Lozupone held an engagement party in New York. The girl, whom Angelo hadn’t seen in years, came down from Massachusetts and Angelo flew in from Los Angeles or Las Vegas or wherever he was. They literally despised each other on sight. Angelo told me the engagement was off and flew back to Los Angeles that same night. I immediately assumed my role as counselor and tactfully suggested to Lozupone that the engagement be a long one—long enough to allow the girl to get her degree and perhaps even take a tour of Europe. Lozupone readily agreed. I telephoned Angelo, and for once he was amenable. He even called Lozupone and borrowed five thousand dollars from him on the strength of his new status as future son-in-law. Well, two years ago Carla was nearing graduation and the Lozupone family was making plans for a rather sizeable wedding.”
“And it was then that Angelo decided to play dead,” I said.
“Yes. But he needed money and that’s when he came to Washington and blew the safe. Then he disappeared in Singapore and began to blackmail me a few months later. Lozupone, of course, has his own sources and he’s found out that Angelo isn’t dead. He’s now furious and has directed his anger at me. Our relations cooled, then grew strained, and finally disintegrated. Lozupone announced to his family, and to the four other families in New York, that he considered me his enemy and Joe Lozupone, I needn’t add, is a most dangerous enemy to have.”
I shrugged. “Why don’t you get rid of him like you got rid of the others?”
“I’ll answer that in a moment. When Angelo’s death was reported, Carla went into mourning. When it was discovered that he was alive, Lozupone swore that Angelo would marry her. It was an affair of honor to him and he takes such things seriously. In an effort to heal the breach between Lozupone and myself, a representative of another New York family approached me and suggested that I provide Carla with an appropriate escort to Singapore where she intends to find Angelo and to marry him. I agreed. I agreed to provide you, Mr. Cauthorne.”
“Then you made a mistake,” I said. “But you still haven’t told me why you just don’t take Lozupone out of circulation by dropping some of that mysterious evidence in the mail to the FBI or somebody.”
“Because, Mr. Cauthorne, I don’t have it. Angelo has the only copies that exist. And I need that information. I need it very much and this charade with the girl Carla will give me breathing time.”
“He’ll still keep on blackmailing you; he’s smart enough to have had other copies made.”
“I’m not worried about the blackmail, Mr. Cauthorne. I’m worried about Lozupone. Angelo can be bought; Lozupone cannot. The only thing that concerns me about Angelo is that nothing must happen to him, or the blackmail material will be promptly forwarded to New York by a third party. The arrangement wheezes with age, but it works.”
“You’re in trouble, Mr. Cole,” I said. “It’s almost a pity that I can’t help you.”
Cole gripped the arms of his chair and leaned towards me. His eyes no longer twinkled or flashed behind the thick glasses. They seemed to grow still and flat. His tone lost its
warmth when he spoke and his voice had the accents of someone who had grown up in East Harlem, the hard way.
“Don’t give me that shit, Cauthorne. There’s a phone on my desk. All I have to do is pick it up and by tomorrow morning your partner’s wife will be in the hospital with acid burns and they aren’t easy to fix.”
“Don’t try it,” I said.
“I have nothing to lose,” he said and I hoped that his threat was as empty as his voice.
I looked at him for what seemed to be minutes, but it could have been only five seconds or so. “You never really got all the way out of it, did you?”
“Out of what?”
“The gutter.”
“This is no game, no make-believe, sonny boy. For the sake of your physical as well as mental health you’ve got two things to do. You’ll take the girl Carla to Singapore and you’ll also retrieve the documents from Angelo.”
“How?”
“I don’t know how. That’s your job. Use the girl. Charm her. Tell Angelo you’ll get her—and the family, especially the family—off his back in exchange for the documents. Figure it out yourself. That’s what you’re being paid fifty thousand dollars to do.”
I made the decision then, the decision that I had known I would make all along. I rose and started towards the door.
“Acid, Cauthorne,” Cole called after me. “You’re forgetting the acid.”
I stopped and turned. “I’m not forgetting anything. I’ll go, but not because of anything you’ve said. I’m going for myself and I’m not taking any jilted female with me.”
“That’s part of it,” he said. “I need the time.”
“Not my part.”
“She goes.”
“Why doesn’t she go by herself? She can talk Angelo into getting married and they can spend their honeymoon in Pago Pago.”
“I don’t think so,” Cole said.
“Why not?”
“Because Angelo married a Chinese girl in Singapore a year and a half ago.”
CHAPTER IX
After that there was some more conversation, but nothing important, and Joe, the ubiquitous bodyguard, escorted me to the elongated Cadillac where I was faintly surprised to find that the polite Mr. Ruffo was absent, but I decided that even Yale law school graduates needed their rest.
At the hotel I undressed and sat in a chair by a window and stared out at the quiet Washington scene. I thought about Charles Cole in his huge white-columned house and wondered why there wasn’t a family and a wife in a pleasant room in one of the wings, playing Monopoly perhaps, while the head of the household plotted in the library to keep himself from getting killed. I thought about Cole for a while and what he wanted me to do, and then I thought about Angelo Sacchetti and speculated about how he was spending all of his money. Unwisely, I hoped. Then I quit speculating and went to sleep and I was doing quite well at it until eight o’clock the next morning when somebody started to bang on the sitting room door. I got up, struggled into a robe, and stumbled towards the noise.
“Who is it?” I yelled through the door.
“The FBI. Open up.”
“Christ,” I said and opened the door.
He needed a shave for one thing, and for another his blue suit, stained and unpressed, had a hard time buttoning itself over his belly. He shoved past me into the room, asking: “How’s it going, Cauthorne?” as he moved.
I slammed the door shut. “You’re not the FBI. You’re not even the house dick.”
“Don’t kid yourself, buster,” he said and tossed a shapeless felt hat on one of the chairs.
A few thick strands of black hair were matted across a wide, white dome and the rest of the hair was going grey above the ears. He had a big round face and a double chin with a Major Hoople nose that glowed merrily. Some capillaries had exploded in his cheeks and his eyes, despite the redness of the whites, offered deep blue pupils that were steady and calculating.
“I’m Sam Dangerfield.”
“Not Dangerfield of the FBI?”
“You got it right.”
“Never heard of you. Is there anything to prove it?”
Dangerfield looked up at the ceiling. “Every goddamn one of them has seen that lousy TV series.” Then he looked at me and his eyes seemed not only calculating, but curiously alive and intelligent. “I’ve got something to prove it. You want to see?”
“Even then I wouldn’t believe it.”
Dangerfield started to search his pockets, finally produced a folding, black case from his hip pocket, and handed it to me, but even it was a little dogeared. It said that he was Samuel C. Dangerfield, special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I handed it back to him.
“So what can I do for you?”
“You can offer me a drink, for one thing,” Dangerfield said and headed for the Scotch that still sat on the coffee table. “I got a bad one.” He poured three fingers of Scotch into a glass, emptied some of the melted ice from the bucket into another, and downed the drink, chasing it with the water. Then he poured another one, moved over to the chair where his hat rested, tossed it on the floor, and sat down with a sigh. “That’s better,” he said. “Much better.”
I went over to the phone. “I’m going to have some breakfast sent up. Do you want some or will you just drink it?”
“You buying?”
“I’ll buy.”
“Four fried eggs, a double order of bacon, home fried potatoes, lots of toast and some coffee. And see if you can get another bottle.”
“At eight in the morning?”
“I’ll try when the bellhop gets here.” He gave the bottle on the table a judicious glance. “There’s enough left to coast on.”
“How about some ice?”
“Never use it.”
While I phoned the order in Dangerfield searched his pockets again and finally found a crumpled package of cigarettes in one of them, but it turned out to be empty. “You got a cigarette?” he asked after I had hung up.
I found a pack on the coffee table and tossed it to him. “Anything else?”
“If you got an electric razor, I’ll borrow it after breakfast,” he said, running a thick-fingered hand over his stubble.
“Did you really want to see me, or is it just that your check was late this month?”
“I want something,” he said.
“What?”
“I’ll tell you later. Go take a shower, get dressed. You look like a goddamned ponce in that silly looking robe.”
“Go to hell,” I said and started towards the bedroom. I paused at the door. “If the breakfast comes, forge my name. You ought to be pretty good at that. And add a twenty percent tip.”
Dangerfield waved his drink at me and grinned. “Fifteen percent’s plenty.”
Mr. Hoover’s finest was attacking his breakfast when I came out of the bedroom. I pulled a chair up to the room-service table and took the metal cover off my plate and regarded my poached egg without enthusiasm. Dangerfield poured a shot of Scotch into his coffee and sipped it noisily.
“Eat up, but if you can’t, I’ll take care of it for you.”
“I need the strength,” I said and started on the egg.
Dangerfield finished the four eggs, the bacon, the potatoes, the toast and a third cup of Scotch-laced coffee before I finished my egg and one cup of coffee. He leaned back in his chair, patted his belly, and said: “By God, I might live.”
I put my fork down and looked at him. “What do you want?”
“Information, Brother Cauthorne, information. It’s how I make my living, such as it is. You know what I am after twenty-seven lousy years in the bureau? I’m a lousy GS-13, that’s what. And you want to know why? Because I haven’t got what they call managerial potential. You know what a GS-13 makes? With a five-step increase like I’ve got he makes a lousy $16,809 a year. Christ, punks right out of law school make that much. And you know what else I’ve got to show for it? I got a Levittown house out in Bowie with a twenty-year mo
rtgage, two kids in college, four suits, a five-year-old car, and a fat wife.”
“And a thirst,” I said.
“You got it right. A thirst.”
“But for more than booze.”
Dangerfield grinned at me. “You’re not as stupid as I thought, Brother Cauthorne.”
“I studied hard at night school. But one thing I don’t get. Why the fake lush act? You’re no lush; not even a good fake one. You eat too much and the last thing a lush thinks about is food.”
“I thought it was a pretty good show,” Dangerfield said, grinning once more. “It’s supposed to disarm people—make them think that maybe I’m not really listening or don’t understand what they’re saying. It usually works.”
“Not with me,” I said.
“Okay,” Dangerfield said, unlodged a morsel of bacon from between his teeth with his little finger, and inspected it carefully before flicking it to the carpet “You’ve got trouble, Cauthorne.”
“Everyone has trouble.”
“Not your kind.”
“It’s got a name?”
“Sure,” Dangerfield said. “It’s called bad.”
“Thank God you’re here to help, Special Agent.”
He looked at me sourly. “You don’t like it much, do you?”
“What?”
“The fat man in the forty-nine fifty suit who busts in and drinks your booze at eight in the morning.”
“You can drop the lush act,” I said. “They wouldn’t keep you on the payroll five minutes if you were a real drunk.”
Dangerfield grinned at that. “I think I’ll have another small one just to settle the nerves,” he said. He poured one, rose, and walked over to a chair, taking the bottle with him. “Care to join me? The hop’s bringing up a refill at ten.”
“I’ve got a plane to catch at ten.”
“There’s another plane at twelve. You’ll catch that one. We’ve got some talking to do.”
“About what?”
“Don’t start being dumb again, just when I got my hopes up,” Dangerfield said as he raised his glass and smiled at it contentedly. “I don’t get much Chivas Regal. Can’t afford it.”
