Jake Needham - Laundry Man

“Then I figure you’ve got about eight minutes to say whatever it is you want to say,” I said, raggedness creeping into my voice. “After five miles I generally drop dead, and that lamppost we just passed was my four-mile mark.”

One of the boys flung himself into the air and executed what looked to me like a pretty nifty spinning kick. As he did, he loosed an earsplitting shout that caused my companion to swivel her head sharply toward him.

There was another silence after that and this time it began to annoy me.

“Look, lady, if Barry thought sending you around would intimidate me somehow, you can tell him he doesn’t remember me very well.”

“My name’s not ‘lady.’“

“Oh? As I recall, you were a little hazy on that point when you introduced yourself.”

Now my eyes were forward, too, waiting her out.

“My name is Elizabeth Staley. Most people call me Beth.”

I stepped up my pace a bit, running faster as we passed a group of Japanese men who had just appeared from somewhere. They looked like a visiting sumo team, but they moved with remarkable grace and economy, gliding along as easily as marathoners. The woman effortlessly matched me stride for stride.

“Who the hell are you, Beth?”

She glanced at me and said nothing so I gave her another nudge. “I get the feeling you’re a cop of some kind.”

“I work for a private company, Mr. Shepherd. We provide personal security for Mr. Gale.”

“You’re a bodyguard?”

“I am a private security officer.”

I snorted, probably a little louder than really necessary to make my point.

We reached the south side of the park and I started to turn back toward the lake where my usual finishing line was, but Beth pointed in the other direction to where a green wooden picnic table sat empty under some low-hanging gum trees.

“You and I need to talk, Mr. Shepherd.”

“What about?”

“There are some things you need to know.”

“There are a lot of things I need to know, but I doubt you’re going to tell me about any of them.”

Beth smiled and I noticed it was a very nice smile.

“You might be surprised,” she said.

Maybe she was right. Pretty much everything these days seemed to be a surprise to me.

“This way,” Beth went on, pointing again at the picnic table, “if you don’t mind.”

I slowed down and looked at Beth. “Look, before this goes any further-”

But Beth couldn’t hear me. She had already turned away and was running toward the picnic table at the same even pace she had maintained all the way around the lake. She was already halfway there.

I shook my head and followed.

We sat together on top of the table, our feet resting on one of the benches. I could hear the city coming awake out beyond the tree line that surrounded the park.

“What’s this all about, Beth?”

“I’m concerned about you.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing.

“They may know you’re helping Mr. Gale,” she went on after a moment. “They may think you know what happened to the money and come after you.”

“But I’m not helping Barry.”

“Then why were you making inquiries in Hong Kong about the Asian Bank of Commerce?”

I stared at Beth. How could she know that?

“You weren’t exactly making a secret of it,” she said as if she were reading my mind. “You even left your business card at the bank’s registered office.”

Archie must have been right after all. Somebody was following me when I was in Hong Kong. Was it somebody Beth sent or was it somebody else? And regardless of who it was, why on earth had anybody been interested enough in what I was doing in Hong Kong to go to the effort of following me around? I hadn’t even been particularly interested in what I was doing in Hong Kong.

“It doesn’t matter why you were doing it,” Beth went on before I could ask her any of the questions piling up rapidly in my mind. “I wanted you to know that you’re safe.”

“Safe?”

“We’ve had a loose net on you ever since your meeting with Mr. Gale.”

That was the second time in a week someone had used the phrase “loose net” in connection with me. I didn’t like the sound of it now any more than I had the first time.

“That was you following me in Hong Kong?”

“We weren’t following you. Some colleagues of mine were running counter-surveillance procedures. Mr. Gale asked me to keep an eye out for a few days to see if anyone followed you after your meeting.”

“You’re scaring me, Beth.”

“I don’t mean to. You were clean in Hong Kong. You should know that.”

“I can’t tell you how happy it makes me.” Then the obvious question occurred to me. “Did Barry send you here to tell me all this?”

Beth shook her head. Droplets of sweat dislodged from her hair rolled down her forehead, and into her eyes. She wiped them away with her hand.

“I just thought you ought to know I have you covered,” she said. “I didn’t want you to worry.”

I studied Beth and wondered about what she was really saying, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“I guess I don’t get any of this,” I finally said.

“It’s not very complicated. Barry is afraid somebody may try to get to the missing money through you. He asked me to keep an eye out to make sure that doesn’t happen. That’s what I’m doing and I wanted to tell you that.”

Something behind me caught Beth’s attention and she looked away over my shoulder. I turned to follow her eyes and saw two men were walking toward us across the grass, the same two men who had disappeared earlier after I ran past them. Both of them were sweating and suffering badly in the morning heat and humidity and they looked even less like real runners now than they had when I passed them by the lake. I glanced at Beth and saw she obviously knew who they were so we sat and waited in silence until they got to the table.

Beth said something to the men in a language I didn’t recognize and I realized then they weren’t locals after all. The language sounded vaguely like a Chinese dialect, but I didn’t know a single word of any Chinese dialect so I couldn’t be sure. Beth had a question in her voice when she spoke-I was pretty sure of at least that much-and one of the men nodded quickly in response, giving a single crisp snap of his head. After that both men waited patiently while Beth looked off into space for a few moments.

“Okay,” she finally said.

Then she added something else in whatever language it was she was speaking and both men immediately turned and walked away without another word.

Beth took a deep breath and wiped both hands over her face.

“It looks like somebody may be interested in you after all,” she said.

“You mean somebody is following me?”

“There does appear to be surveillance of some kind operating.”

I blinked at that. “You have got to be kidding.”

Beth shook her head.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you saying that Jimmy Kicks-”

Beth interrupted, waving my question away.

“I don’t know. We’ll keep you covered with a counter-surveillance team until I’m sure what’s going on. Just keep on doing whatever you normally do and don’t worry about it.”

“Counter-surveillance team? Look, Beth, what the hell is really going on here?”

“I already told you-”

“All of a sudden you sound more like a spook than a bodyguard to me, Beth. Is that it? Are you really a spook?”

“I am exactly who I told you I am, Mr. Shepherd. I am not associated with any intelligence agency.”