Read Online Singapore Wink by Ross Thomas - Free Book Online Page A

desperately.”
    â€œEnough to do what they did to Sydney. If I say no once more, they won’t hesitate to repeat the performance. I don’t like hospitals. I don’t want to have to come around asking how the cast feels and when are they going to take it off and whether you’ll be able to walk again without a cane.”
    A nurse entered the waiting room, gave us a curious glance, and disappeared through another door, moving with that no-nonsense stride that most nurses seem to have. Trippet stirred on his chair, as if to relieve a cramped muscle.
    â€œDo you really think you can take on this man Cole in Washington—and all the brethren—by yourself? I don’t mean to be rude, Edward, but the fact that you dealt in violence for a number of years doesn’t exactly qualify you—” He let the sentence fade away and even seemed a bit embarrassed that he’d made it. As I’ve said, he was polite.
    â€œWhat do you think I have in mind? A showdown in the lobby of the Washington Hilton?”
    â€œI’m afraid of something like that, but then I’m an incurable romantic.”
    â€œI didn’t deal in violence,” I said. “I dealt in action, or at least that’s what they liked to call it It was spurious violence—faked—no more real than the death scenes. This country has a taste for violence, both real and faked, but I think it’s having a hard time separating the two. You can switch on a news program and watch a South Vietnamese police chief put a pistol to a VC’s head and pull the trigger. Thirty minutes later you can watch a western marshal gun down the visiting bully. Which is more real to the viewer? The police chief or the marshal? I’ll put my money on the marshal.”
    â€œBut your new friends are real,” Trippet said.
    â€œVery real.”
    â€œAnd you think I might be their next target if you refused again—or would it be Ramón or Jack?”
    â€œThere’s somebody else,” I said.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œYour wife.”
    For the first time since I had known him, Trippet almost lost his poise. He ran a hand nervously through his long, grey hair. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose they are capable of that. I hadn’t thought of it.” He paused for a moment, then rose, turned to me, and made a small, almost apologetic gesture. “I say, would it be terribly inconvenient for you to give me a lift home?”
    CHAPTER VII
    There was a reception committee for me that late afternoon or early evening when I landed at Dulles International Airport and rode the doodlebug contraption from the plane to the lobby of the soaring terminal building that somehow seems a little lonely sitting out there all by itself on the edge of the Virginia hunt country. It was a committee of one who introduced himself as John Ruffo and nobody could fault him on his manners. He insisted on collecting my bag and carrying it out to the longest, blackest six-door Cadillac that I’ve ever seen except for one that’s owned by a certain Los Angeles funeral parlor. At the car the bag was almost snatched from Ruffo by a uniformed chauffeur who opened one of the two rear doors for us, saw to it that we were tucked safely inside, and then stowed the bag away in what must have been a cavern of a trunk.
    â€œMr. Cole is delighted that you could come,” Ruffo said. “Did you have a pleasant flight?”
    â€œI’d already seen the picture,” I said, “but the Scotch was excellent.”
    â€œYes,” Ruffo said, drawling the word as if my remark had been particularly profound. “We’ve taken the liberty of booking you into the Sheraton-Carlton. It’s not the Century Plaza, but it’s quite comfortable, I assure you.”
    â€œI like older hotels,” I said. “Their employees are usually older, too, and that makes for better service.”
    The envelope had been