Jake Needham - Laundry Man

Jello ate for a while, saying nothing while I served myself, and then as I started to eat, he cleared his throat lightly.

“Howard Kojinski isn’t an accountant from Poland.”

“Really?” I hoped my tone of voice reflected my general lack of interest in the subject.

“He was born in New Jersey, did ten years in the U.S. army, mostly in Germany, and then became an airline reservations agent. A few years later he somehow wound up working as a mid-level coke mule for the Colombians. He got busted making a run to Houston and did a few months in prison in Texas.”

“Gee,” I said. “That’s fascinating.”

Jello ignored me and went on.

“He must have used his time there making friends and learning new skills because he went to Hong Kong right after that and set himself up running a small-time money laundry. He turned out to be pretty good at it, and now he moves cash all over Asia for a lot of people you don’t want to know about. Recently we think he’s become the primary money launderer for a group of major Burmese heroin producers.”

I burst out laughing. I gathered that wasn’t exactly the reaction Jello had been expecting.

“You think that’s funny?” he snapped.

“Christ, I think it’s hysterical .”

I shook my head and finished off the Heineken.

“Look, Jello, unless you’re just generally full of crap, you’ve got the wrong man. Howard the Roach couldn’t launder money if you gave him a new Whirlpool with a sign on the door that says ‘In Here, Stupid.’ If the Burmese are using Howard to handle their cash, I can promise you it’s a giant step toward wiping out the drug trade in Asia.”

I was still shaking my head. How anyone who knew Howard could think he was equipped to handle anything more complex than taking a whiz without soaking his shoes was utterly beyond me.

“Howard doesn’t just move money around for these guys,” Jello continued, apparently unimpressed with my skepticism. “He invests it for them. Suddenly Howard Kojinski has started turning up in all kinds of strange places.”

“Such as?”

“I can’t tell you that, Jack.”

I snorted, and Jello looked annoyed.

“Have you told Dollar any of this?” I asked.

Jello sighed deeply and his expression softened. “Yeah, sort of.”

“What does that mean?”

Jello chugged the rest of his Heineken and stuffed a heaping spoonful of somtam into his mouth right behind it.

“I told him and he said it was bullshit, but he refused to tell me anything about Howard’s business. He said it would be a breach of ethics.”

“Yeah, well, there’s your answer.”

“But it’s not bullshit, Jack. That’s the point. It’s all absolutely true.” Jello tapped the empty Heineken bottle against the table with a crisp little rat-a-tat-tat. “That’s when I started wondering if Dollar might be involved, too.”

“Involved in what?”

Jello just sat there impassively, looking at me with dead cop eyes.

I shook my head. “Please tell me you’re not saying you think Dollar Dunne and Howard the Roach are working together to launder money for a bunch of Burmese heroin producers.”

Jello didn’t say anything. He just looked at me with what might or might not have been a slight smile. Then he nodded.

What in the hell was happening here? First Barry Gale was in cahoots with the Russian mob and now Dollar Dunne is supposedly moving money for Burmese drug lords? Whatever happened to the good old days when the worst thing you could accuse a lawyer of was ambulance chasing?

“How long have you known Dollar?” I asked Jello.

“Nine or ten years. A little longer maybe.”

“And you’re sitting here now, seriously telling me that all of a sudden you’ve decided he’s the kind of a guy who launders drug money?”

“I think he may be, Jack. God help me, but I think he may be.”

Jello spun the empty Heineken bottle in his big hand.

“Are you willing to help me find out for sure?” he asked.

I should have seen that coming, I thought to myself. I should have seen that coming, but I hadn’t.

“All I want you to do is poke around a little, Jack. Nothing heavy-duty. Just keep your eyes and ears open, really, then let me know what you see and hear.”

“You can’t be serious, Jello. Dollar’s been your friend for a long time. He’s my friend, too.”

“Friendship’s got nothing to do with this.”

“Yes, it does. I’m not spying on Dollar Dunne, Jello. Not for you or for anyone else.”

I pushed back from the table and stood up while Jello watched expressionlessly.

“That’s the end of this conversation, Jello.”

“I can see that.”

“Now I’m going to get a taxi back to my office and you’re going to let me do that without arguing about it. Then I’m going to forget we were ever here today and I’m going to forget about everything you’ve said, and you’re going to let me do that, too. Do we understand each other?”

Jello just looked at me without answering. After a moment I turned my back on him and started walking toward Silom Road.

He didn’t try to stop me, and this time I didn’t look back.

Although Thai International had more flights out of Bangkok than any other airline, I was on the Cathay Pacific four o’clock to Hong Kong.

I usually fly Cathay or Singapore Airlines instead of Thai because of something an official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had once told me at a cocktail party. He was a man who had to fly a lot and, being a government official, he had no choice but to fly on Thai. Making small talk at the party, I had asked the man how he thought Thai compared to other airlines. “Whenever you fly Thai International,” he told me with a glum expression, “always remember that your pilots got their jobs exactly the way everyone else in Thailand got their jobs.”

I’ve never quite forgotten that. So I fly Cathay Pacific.

The man sitting next to me introduced himself even before I had my seatbelt buckled. In spite of my best efforts not to, I learned in short order that he was a microchip importer from San Francisco and that he was going to Hong Kong to meet with a financial consultant after attending a trade show of some kind in Bangkok. This financial consultant, the man explained to me, was going to reorganize his entire company using offshore banks so that he could completely avoid paying any taxes. The scheme had something to do with utilizing offshore deposits to guarantee loans made to him through California banks, but I was paying as little attention as possible and that was all I got. The guy was reading a book to prepare for his meeting and he held it up for me to see. I glanced over politely and had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing out loud. The book was called Offshore Money Havens: How to Live Tax Free for the Rest of Your Life.

When the guy asked me what kind of work I did, I thought fast. We were going to be sitting together for the next three hours and telling the truth seemed to be an absolute guarantee that every one of them would be hell on earth. I briefly considered telling him I was an Internal Revenue Service agent on overseas assignment, but that would have been just plain cruel. Instead, I said I was a life insurance executive from Minneapolis, which was the dullest thing I could come up with at short notice. It must have been a good choice because the man didn’t say another word to me for the rest of the trip.

Why was it that so many Americans look at offshore banking as some sort of occult wizardry? I had a sudden vision of huge airplanes stuffed with microchip importers from San Francisco whizzing endlessly around the globe in search of a fabled and mystical land called Offshore, a place forever beyond the reach of greedy governments, combative creditors, and vengeful ex-wives. I myself have always pictured Offshore as a land ruled by Peter Sellers, but now that he was dead, I imagine that Rowan Atkinson must have taken over the throne. I wondered what people spend their days doing in Offshore. What do they eat? What do they wear? Do they have sex? Well, I could guess the answer to that one. Not with all that money around. Money is so much more interesting than sex for almost everyone.