Jake Needham - Laundry Man

“I know where they are.”

“Then why didn’t you just say so?”

“Even by your standards of non sequitur, Tommy, I thought you were kidding.”

“This is no time for jokes, Jack. You are walking in deep shit, my friend, and I’m trying to help you here.”

He paused, but I stayed poker-faced. What the hell was Tommy talking about?

“I want you to go to the squash courts at exactly ten and wait there. Someone wants to talk to you.”

“Who-”

“Just be there, Jack,” Tommy interrupted. “And for Christ’s sake try to be discreet about it for once in your life, would you?”

Then he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and walked away from me without a backward glance.

I looked at my watch and saw that it was a quarter to ten so I spent the next few minutes wondering what I was going to do. Once or twice I caught a glimpse of Anita across the garden, but I got a distinct impression she was keeping her distance. I wasn’t sure I blamed her. So far the cast of characters she had encountered in my company made that look like a smart choice.

An unnaturally thin German girl dressed in arty black cornered me for a few moments against the rose bushes and gushed on about a television documentary she was making concerning female homosexuality among the hill tribes. Then two English stockbrokers I knew spent a few minutes trying to convince me that the Thai stock market was just about to take off. It all added up to standard Thai cocktail party chatter: nothing but sex and money.

At five minutes to ten I looked around for Tommy, but he was nowhere to be seen. Helpless to resist the intrigue, I abandoned my empty glass on a nearby table and headed toward the club’s front entry. Anyone who saw me would probably assume I was going to the toilet, but instead of turning left I turned right just past the bowling green and went through the door to the squash courts.

Only a single dim light was burning, so I flipped on the big overheads and looked around. All three courts were empty, of course, as were the wooden bleachers that rose a half-dozen tiers behind each of them. Feeling a little silly I sat down in the first row behind the court furthest from the door and waited. The bright lights glared off the white walls, throwing my reflection into high relief on the glass back wall of the courts. I thought I looked a little fuzzy.

After a few minutes the door opened and a young, well-dressed man stepped inside, quickly closing the door behind him. He was tall for a Thai and lanky, and he moved with a confidence that made him look a little dangerous. I had never seen him before, I was sure of that, and the expression on his face suggested that he had probably never seen me before either.

“You Khun Jay?”

The man’s voice was polite, but he seemed a little twitchy. He had such a thick accent that I saw it was going to be difficult understanding whatever it was that he wanted to tell me.

“Jack, not Jay. It’s Jack Shepherd.”

“Arai na krap?” What?

“I said I’m Jack Shepherd. Not Jay Shepherd.”

There was a hint of puzzlement in the man’s nod.

“Krap. You wait please.”

The man stepped back outside, but just as I was standing up to follow him the new minister of finance walked in.

“Mr. Shepherd,” he nodded pleasantly. “Sit down. Please.”

I sat down.

The minister stood in the doorway studying me for a moment, a half-smile on his face, and then he walked over and sat a few feet away on the same bleacher where I was. He settled himself comfortably, crossing his legs at the knee, and then he leaned forward slightly and laced his fingers together, resting his hands in his lap.

He was an average-sized man, probably in his sixties. His patent leather shoes gleamed even in the low light and he wore his tuxedo like a man who was accustomed to wearing a tuxedo. He had a full head of silver-gray hair, hard black eyes, heavy-rimmed glasses, and the patient air of a traveler forced to camp out temporarily with barbarians.

“It is a very dull party, isn’t it, Mr. Shepherd?”

“It was until about thirty seconds ago.”

The minister chuckled appreciatively, then he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and extracted a black leather Dunhill cigar case. Pulling off the top he held it out to me and I saw the brown and white bands even before he spoke.

“Cigar, Jack? Montecristos are your brand, aren’t they?”

I glanced from the cigars to the minister’s face, but he was expressionless.

“No? You must have picked up all you needed when you were in Hong Kong.”

The minister selected a cigar for himself, closed the case, and returned it to his jacket. Then he dipped into a side pocket and removed a cutter and a box of matches. He inspected the Montecristo, clipped the end, and lit it. I noticed he took his time about doing it.

“I think I’m getting the message here, Minister,” I said quietly as he drew on his cigar.

“No, Mr. Shepherd, we haven’t gotten to the message yet. All I’ve done is convey that we know a great deal about what everyone around here is doing. Including you.”

“Who’s we?”

The minister took another puff on his Montecristo, then resumed, ignoring my question.

“We know, for example, that you made some inquiries in Hong Kong concerning the Asian Bank of Commerce. May I ask why you were you pursuing that particular line of inquiry up there, Mr. Shepherd?”

“I thought you already knew what everyone around here was doing. Including me.”

The minister laughed, apparently genuinely.

“We do, Mr. Shepherd, but sometimes we have a little trouble understanding why they do it.”

I said nothing.

“Actually, Mr. Shepherd, I don’t suppose it matters. My message to you tonight is the same regardless of your motives.”

The minister took another puff on his Montecristo, but he kept his eyes locked on mine.

“You must stop asking questions about the ABC.”

“And why is that, sir?”

“You might embarrass someone, Mr. Shepherd. If names happen to come up in the course of your inquiries-names of people who are, let us say, politically prominent and might have had some small, perhaps even accidental involvement with the ABC-you might cause them to lose face. You know Asia well, I am told. Surely you must know how bad a thing it is to lose face.”

“Accidental involvement? I don’t understand.”

The bleachers squeaked as the minister shifted his weight.

“You Americans have become obsessed with what you insist on calling transparency in government, Mr. Shepherd. But those of us who actually do the work of governing understand that we must occasionally engage in undertakings that we would not particularly like to become public. Frequently, those activities involve financial arrangements, and naturally those arrangements are generally routed through helpful banks like the ABC. It’s just the way things are done in Asia, Mr. Shepherd. It has always been so, and it will always be so.”

“Just for the sake of conversation, Minister, what do you suppose might happen if some of these arrangements you’re talking about looked as if they might become public?”

“Oh, I don’t really know, Mr. Shepherd.”

The minister waved his Montecristo in a little zigzag motion.

“But we have a saying here in Thailand that you might do well to remember: When the elephants move, the grass is trampled.”

The minister slowly stood, rolling his shoulders and stretching slightly.

“I always thought that was an African expression,” I said, watching him.

His eyes flickered for a moment, met mine, and then looked away. With his left hand in the front pocket of his jacket and his head tilted down, he walked toward the door that led back out of the squash courts. When he reached it, he took his hand out of his pocket, put it on the knob, and looked back over his shoulder.