Singapore Wink (8 page)

The Cadillac crunched up the drive and stopped in front of the entrance to the house which was dominated by a huge wrought-iron lantern that hung on a thick metal chain. The chauffeur was out and had the door open on my side of the car almost before it came to a full stop. I climbed out and paused when I noticed that Ruffo made no move.

“Aren't you invited?” I said.

“This is as far as I go, Mr. Cauthorne,” he said and let me have another look at his winning smile. “As you say, I just run the pickup and delivery service.”

I didn't have to ring the bell at the wide double doors that served as the entrance to the white-columned mansion. One of them opened as soon as I mounted the thirteen steps and started to cross the bricked veranda. And if I expected a silver-haired, Negro butler in a white coat, I was in for a disappointment. The man who opened the door was young, tanned, and dressed in a black suit, white shirt and black tie. He looked at me carefully, taking his time, and when he was through he said: “Mr. Cauthorne.”

“Yes.”

He nodded and stepped back, opening both of the double doors wide as he did so. “Mr. Cole is expecting you in the library.” In back of me I could hear the Cadillac move off, bearing the polite Mr. Ruffo to wherever he went that time of evening.

I followed the young man in the black suit into a formal entrance hall that was paved with large squares of black and white marble. There was an immense crystal chandelier about halfway down the hall and its lights played upon some pieces of cherrywood and walnut furniture that looked old and well cared for and terribly expensive. To the right of the chandelier was a gracefully curving staircase that floated up to the second floor, but we didn't get that far. Instead, the young man stopped at a paneled sliding door, knocked once, and then pressed a button that caused the door to move silently into its recess in the wall. The young man entered first and I followed. Then he stopped, stepped to one side, and in a flat voice, without inflection, said: “Mr. Cole, Mr. Cauthorne is here.”

It was a big room, oblong in shape, and it smelled of leather and the burning apple wood that flamed and crackled in the fieldstone fireplace which, at first glance, looked large enough to roast a medium-sized ox. A man rose from one of the dark leather chairs that were placed on either side of the fireplace, dropped a newspaper to the floor, and moved towards me, his right hand outstretched. I stood where I was and it took him a while to walk the thirty or so feet from the fireplace across the thick, dark brown carpet to where I waited.

“Mr. Cauthorne,” he called, “I'm delighted you could come.”

“Everybody is delighted but me,” I said and took the proffered hand and shook it politely. There didn't seem to be anything else to do.

Charles Cole turned to the young man in the black suit. “We'll dine in here, I think, Joe.” Not Jonathan, or James, or even Malcolm. Just Joe. “But first,” Cole added, “I suggest that we have a drink.”

“Yes, Mr. Cole,” Joe said. He turned and disappeared through the sliding paneled door which closed behind him. For the first time, I noticed that the door had no handles.

“There's a bit of a chill in the air for so late in the spring,” Cole said as he took my arm and steered me towards the fireplace. “I thought a fire would be pleasant.”

He indicated that I should take one of the leather chairs and he lowered himself into the other one. Then he rested his elbows on the arms of the chair, formed a steeple of his fingers, and looked at me pleasantly enough, almost as if he were the friendly family counselor who had helped many a young man out of similar difficulty. Charles Cole, I noticed as I returned his friendly gaze, was not a tall man, but neither was he short. He had an oval face and wore his hair long at the sides, perhaps to compensate for his ears which stuck out a trifle, and perhaps to compensate also for the top of his head whose pink skin glistened in the light from the fire and from the two reading lamps that stood by each of the leather chairs. His eyebrows were grey as was his hair, but the carefully trimmed military mustache that he wore beneath a straight thin nose was pure white. The mouth, now forming a slight smile, gave way to a firm chin which was just threatening to grow another one beneath it. His eyes were brown and large, or perhaps magnified by the thick black-framed glasses that he wore, and they either twinkled or sparkled behind the lenses. I was never sure.

“They say,” I said, just to be saying something, “that they call you Charlie the Fix.”

He laughed at that as if it were genuinely funny. “Do they indeed?” he said. “And who, may I ask, is they—my old friend Christopher Small? I thought he might mention me in passing.”

“He said you went to school together—a long time ago.”

“That's right, we did,” Cole said. “And it was a long time ago. I've made it a point to see most of his films. Some of them were quite ghastly, but he's done fairly well for himself.”

I glanced around the room. There were some more chairs and a couple of comfortable-looking sofas, all leather. Books lined two of the walls and from where I sat it looked as if someone might have read them all at one time or another. There was a pair of refectory tables, nicely carved, and at the far end of the library, placed so that it would catch the light from the French windows, was a large partners' desk that would have dominated any lesser room. In Cole's library it fitted perfectly.

“Both of you seem to have done fairly well,” I said.

“Expensive trappings are sometimes useful to impress the impressionable,” Cole said. “I would be disappointed in you, Mr. Cauthorne, if you were overly impressed.”

“Then why the treatment?”

One of his eyebrows cocked itself into a questioning arc. “Treatment?”

“Sure,” I said. “The block-long Cadillac, the Ivy League messenger boy, the suite in the old, but quite comfortable hotel, the bodyguard at the front door, and dinner in the library in front of the crackling fire. I'd call it the treatment.”

Cole chuckled. “How could you tell that Joe was a bodyguard? You're right about Ruffo, of course. Yale law school is something that one can scarcely disguise, but I thought Joe's camouflage rather good.”

“You forget one thing,” I said. “As a one-time stuntman I studied movement. I'd say that Joe would be very handy to have around in a neighborhood brawl, providing this neighborhood ever has a brawl.”

Cole chuckled again. “And you're observant, too. I like that, Mr. Cauthorne, I really do.”

The sliding door disappeared silently into the wall again and Joe wheeled in a well-stocked bar. He pushed it over to near where we sat and looked at Cole expectantly. “The usual, Mr. Cole?” he asked.

“The usual is a very dry martini which Joe does quite well, Mr. Cauthorne. Would you care to join me?”

“A martini would be fine.”

“Any particular kind of gin, Mr. Cauthorne?” Joe

“Any kind,” I said.

“On the rocks or straight up?”

“It doesn't matter.”

Joe nodded and quickly mixed the drinks with the deft, economical movements of an experienced bartender. He served me first and then handed Cole his drink. “Dinner in twenty minutes, Joe,” Cole said.

“Yes, Mr. Cole,” Joe said and trundled the movable bar across the thick carpet and through the sliding door which again closed silently behind him.

“Well, Mr. Cauthorne,” Cole said, “shall we drink to something?”

“How about to crime?”

Cole chuckled again. I decided that it was a fairly pleasant sound. “Very well, sir, to crime.”

We drank and I lit a cigarette and then waited for Cole to get to the point, providing that there was one. I didn't have to wait long.

“You know, Mr. Cauthorne, I debated with myself for almost six weeks about whether to invite you to Washington.”

“If your other guests receive invitations like the one I got, you must be rather lonely.”

Cole frowned and shook his head. “Yes, I heard about that—your young employees and the vandalism. I've already taken measures to compensate you for everything. It was most unfortunate.”

“It would have been even more unfortunate if the kid had lost a hand. How much is a hand worth in your book?”

Cole brushed his mustache with the knuckles of his left hand and then sighed. “The old methods are slow in dying, especially among the older generation. But progress is being made, I assure you, and once again I must apologize for the totally unnecessary methods of persuasion that were employed.”

“I don't know if they're as outdated as you claim,” I said. “They got me here.”

Cole took another sip of his drink. “Did they really, Mr. Cauthorne? Was it the violence, and the threat of further violence, that convinced you to come, or was it the news that Angelo Sacchetti is still alive?”

“I wondered when you would get around to him,” I said. “I was betting on after dinner—over the brandy.”

“I've had considerable research done on you, Mr. Cauthorne.” He made a vague gesture towards the draped windows. “Over there, in my desk, is a rather thick file—or dossier, if you prefer. It's all about you. I've been given to understand that you suffer from a mild psychological disturbance which stems from the time that Angelo disappeared in Singapore.”

“A lot of people know that,” I said.

“True. But also in that file—or dossier—are copies of the notes made by the analyst that you consulted for—I believe it was nine months. A Dr. Fisher.”

“Fisher didn't give them to you.”

“No,” Cole said, smiling slightly. “He didn't. He doesn't even know that I have them. As I said, they are copies.”

“Then you do know a lot about me.”

“More, perhaps, than you know about yourself.”

“I see.”

“I must say, Mr. Cauthorne, you are taking all this extremely well.”

“You want something from me, Mr. Cole. I'm just waiting to find out what it is so I can say no.”

“Well, now, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's just go a step at a time. From your analyst's notes, I gather that you suffer from mild, periodic seizures during which you experience trembling, excessive perspiration, and a recurring hallucinatory experience which has Angelo falling into the sea and winking at you as he falls. That's not exactly Dr. Fisher's description, but rather more of a layman's translation of his notes.”

“As lay translations go,” I said, “it's not bad.”

“Dr. Fisher's notes imply that you blame yourself for Angelo's alleged death and that this created a certain amount of deep-seated guilt which triggered the recurring hallucinatory experiences (again, I must say I'm paraphrasing the good doctor). I've taken the liberty, Mr. Cauthorne, to have two other qualified medical persons go over Dr. Fisher's notes. Your name, of course, was carefully obliterated. It's their opinion that if you personally were to find Angelo Sacchetti alive, your psychological discomforts would disappear. Otherwise, they may grow worse.”

I finished my drink and put the glass on a table. “So the deal is that in exchange for finding Angelo for you, I cure myself. That's the surface deal, but there's more to it than that, isn't there?”

“A great deal more,” Cole said.

“Why don't you use your own people to find Angelo?”

“I don't think that would do.”

“Why not?”

“Because my dear godson is blackmailing me.”

“Some of the boys could take care of that, couldn't they?”

Cole put his glass down, made a steeple of his fingers again, and stared up at the ceiling. “I'm afraid not, Mr. Cauthorne. You see, if the persons I would ordinarily call on in such a situation were to find out what Angelo is blackmailing me with, I'm afraid that I would remain alive—at the most—for only twenty-four hours.”

CHAPTER VIII

Before Cole could continue, the sliding door opened again and Joe, the bodyguard, wheeled in the dinner which he served on a small table with the same efficient movements that he had used to mix the drinks. I decided that he must be handy to have around. Dinner was a thick filet, a superb salad, and a baked potato. A bottle of burgundy was equally excellent.

“It's what you usually have at home, isn't it, Mr. Cauthorne?” Cole said after Joe had gone.

“Your chef is better than mine.”

“Well, let's enjoy our dinner and then we can continue our discussion afterwards—over the brandy, as you suggested earlier.”

“It was growing interesting,” I said.

“It will get even more so,” Cole said and started to carve up his steak.

We ate almost in silence and when we were through Joe promptly appeared and cleared away the dishes and served the brandy and coffee. When he had gone once more, Cole offered me a cigar which I refused, carefully lighted one for himself, took a sip of his brandy, and said, “Now, where were we?”

“Angelo Sacchetti was blackmailing you.”

“Yes.”

“I assume that you've been paying.”

“I have indeed, Mr. Cauthorne. In the past eighteen months I have paid only slightly less than a million dollars.”

I smiled for what must have been the first time that evening. “Then you're in real trouble.”

“You seem inordinately pleased.”

“Wouldn't you be in my position?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I suppose I would. My enemy's troubles are my good fortune and all that sort of thing. You do consider me your enemy?”

“Let's just say I doubt that we'll ever be close friends.”

Cole drew on his cigar and then slowly blew the smoke out. I noticed that he inhaled it. “You've heard,” he said, “that they call me Charlie the Fix. Do you have any idea of what the nickname implies?”

“Some,” I said. “The corruption of public officials and civil servants probably. A few bribes here and there. A little subornation of perjury, I suppose, plus the discreet use of a sizable political slush fund.”