Jake Needham - Laundry Man

Citibank and Standard Chartered were no doubt holding their reception there in order to make the biggest possible splash. After all, the new minister of finance was an Oxford graduate who had done a brief turn at Harvard Business School. Even better, he was reported to like foreigners well enough and, everyone present fervently hoped, perhaps even foreign banks. He was the kind of Thai many other Thais referred to among themselves, at least when they were certain their voices weren’t carrying too far, as a brown Brit.

Ministers of finance came and went fairly rapidly in Thailand and the next time around the foreign banks might not be so lucky. They were more likely to get a local politician from Ubon Ratchathani, someone who hadn’t been able to stand foreigners since his daughter married a shoe salesman from Brisbane and ran off to live in Queensland. That was why most of the foreign banks figured they had better grab the chance to kiss this particular minister’s butt while it was still around to be kissed.

When we mounted the steps, a short gray-haired man in a dark suit stepped forward and pressed his hands together in a wai, the graceful Thai gesture of greeting that is nuanced in ways foreigners are helpless to unravel. I returned the wai in my normal clunky fashion and then offered my hand, too, just to make certain I had touched all of the cultural bases.

“Khun Teuk, may I introduce-”

“Completely unnecessary, Jack.” Teuk beamed like a man who had just won the lottery. “Everyone in Bangkok knows Anita.”

“You are very generous, Khun Teuk.” Anita tilted her head gracefully to one side and waied . She did it a lot better than I did, and Teuk beamed again.

“Please, this way.” Teuk pointed up the walkway toward the gardens that flanked the swimming pool. “It was such a nice night that we decided to move things outside.”

“I wondered where everyone was.”

“Well, the guest list is a little smaller than usual. We didn’t invite every hanger-on in town this time.” He giggled slightly, a nervous high-pitched whinnying sound. “Almost everyone is here already. Don’t know what Bangkok is coming to. People showing up on time? Next it’s going to be locusts.” He whinnied again.

When Teuk turned away, Anita leaned slightly toward me.

“Who the hell is that?” she stage-whispered without turning her head.

“A guy from Citibank. I’m not really sure what he does.”

“So these are the kind of people you hang around with when I’m away, huh?”

I couldn’t think of any answer to that, but a waiter with a tray of drinks intercepted us at just that moment and bailed me out. We each selected a Campari and soda, and then stepped down off the walkway into the gardens and looked around.

A luxuriant, emerald-green lawn bordered with mango, oak, and gum trees stretched fifty yards or more from where we stood to the polo field on the south. To the east a thick grove of tall palms protected the deep lawn from the intrusion of the city. The trees were hung with white fairy lights and wicker tables and chairs had been set up under them in small groups. Formally-dressed people mingled on the lawn, while a string quartet played Mozart on a platform almost hidden under a bank of white orchids. The night was a study in jade and auburn sprinkled with black and white.

“Jack!”

I heard the voice calling me and looked around.

“Over here, Jack!”

A hand was flapping at us from a group of men standing near the center of the lawn so I took Anita’s elbow and we started over. About halfway there the crowd parted and I saw that the hand belonged to a government official I saw around town occasionally.

Anita went back into her stage whisper.

“Do I know him?”

“I don’t think so.”

I kept my eyes on the group and tried to answer Anita without moving my lips.

“His name’s Tammarat something or another, but everybody calls him Tommy.”

“Another Citibank guy?”

“Nope. Officially, he’s a deputy to the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But if you don’t already know that he’s really something at the NIA, he’ll be happy to drop hints until you get the idea.”

“NIA?”

“The National Intelligence Agency.”

Anita glanced over to see if I was joking.

“You mean he’s a spy?” she asked.

“Yeah, something like that, I guess.”

“A Thai spy?” Anita was beginning to giggle. “Who does he spy on? Laos?”

“Jack, Jack!” Tommy rushed toward us before I could think what to say to that and clasped my right hand with both of his like a politician working the crowd. “And this must be the famous Anita.”

Anita couldn’t hold back any longer. She burst out laughing, and Tommy’s manner changed abruptly. His eyes went flat, examining first her and then me.

I improvised. “There was this joke I heard yesterday when I was in Hong Kong, Tommy, and I told it to Anita while we were walking in. I think she just got it.”

“Ah…” Tommy looked at me without expression. “That must be why you’re late tonight. Telling funny jokes is very time-consuming.”

“Waiting for Anita to get dressed is very time-consuming.”

I felt Anita’s hand brush my elbow. “Jack, I see Laura over there. Would you excuse me?”

She favored Tommy with her most charming smile, wai ed and slipped away.

I didn’t know anyone in Bangkok named Laura, of course, and I was certain that neither did Anita.

Tommy watched silently until Anita had disappeared into the crowd, then he placed his hand in the small of my back and nudged me in the direction of the men he had been talking to.

“Come over here a minute, Jack. I want you to meet some people.”

Tommy made the usual introductions all around, and as usual I missed almost everyone’s names except for the last man Tommy introduced.

“Jack, you know Manny Marcus, don’t you?”

“Q Bar?” I asked as we shook hands, and the man nodded without saying anything.

Mango Manny’s double-breasted black jacket was buttoned tightly over his paunch and with it he wore a yellow tie, black shirt, and huge diamond ring. His thinning hair, unnaturally black, was slicked back against his skull and even in the low light it glinted and glistened. In spite of the darkness, Manny wore gold Cartier sunglasses with very dark lenses. I knew the shades were Cartier because they said so on both earpieces.

“Some mutual friends of ours recently suggested I call you,” I ventured carefully, not sure how much I should say but not wanting to pretend I had never heard of Manny either.

Manny took off his Cartiers, folded them carefully, and pushed them into his breast pocket.

“Too bad you didn’t,” he said.

“I didn’t see any reason to bother you.”

Manny let his eyes linger on mine for a moment. “No,” he said, “you probably wouldn’t.”

While I was still trying to work out what that was supposed to mean, I felt Tommy’s hand on my back again.

“Jack, I need to talk to you about a little business matter without bothering our friends here.”

Tommy mumbled apologies to the group and then nudged me away out of their earshot. He draped one arm over my shoulders and lowered his voice.

“Do you know where the squash courts are?”

Tommy’s question didn’t make much sense so I didn’t answer right away. Was Tommy about to challenge me to a squash game? That didn’t seem likely.

“The squash courts, Jack. Are you listening to me?”

“I heard you. Why are you asking me about squash courts?”

Tommy looked at me levelly.

“They’re out near the main entrance,” he said. “Just on the other side of-”