Jake Needham - Laundry Man

I lifted the telephone and made the call I had been mentally rehearsing on and off as I tossed restlessly through the night, struggling with dark dreams that either made no sense, or worse, did.

It took me quite a while to reach the man I wanted to reach, but after I did and I told him enough to get his attention, he said he would leave immediately. Still, it would take him at least a full day to get to Phuket, possibly longer.

After that I walked the beach for an hour wondering if I had done the right thing.

When I got back to the hotel I wandered around until I found a shop and bought some T-shirts and a bathing suit. Around noon I called Anita, but I didn’t tell her much. I said that I’d had to go out of town for a couple of days and that I would explain when I got back. Surely the whole story sounded unbelievably strange to her, but I guess she must have heard something in my voice because she didn’t question me too closely. She only told me to keep safe and left it at that.

Later in the afternoon I put on my running shoes and jogged listlessly on Nai Harn Beach for a half-hour. I was pleased and a little surprised to find that the footing was firm and I began stretching myself, pushing harder and harder until I was up to my usual pace. Almost before I realized it, I had covered several miles and with each crunch of my shoes on the hard-packed sand I became still more certain.

Yes, you’ve done the right thing. You’ve got to try at least.

The longer I ran the more my conviction hardened and I ran the beach that afternoon until the blood pounding in my ears was all I could hear and the ache of my legs was all I could feel.

Then I did it all over again the next morning. And I did it once more the next afternoon.

IT WAS MY third morning in Phuket. I finished my run and came back to my room and found him sitting quietly on the floor outside the door. We talked until early afternoon and I told him everything. Then we ordered some sandwiches and coffee from room service and I went over it all again. This time he took notes.

When I was done he started asking long and detailed questions and I answered them all as well as I could. It was almost six that evening before we both finally fell silent.

Tired of talking, we walked out onto the terrace and watched in silence as the sun slid toward the surface of the sea, aiming itself exactly at a gap between two tiny islands that were several miles offshore. Five or ten minutes must have passed without either of us saying another word.

Eventually it was my visitor who broke the silence.

“What made you so sure I didn’t know about all this already, Jack?”

“I wasn’t sure.” I thought about it some more. “You just don’t seem to me to be a guy who would be part of this kind of thing.”

“Too honorable?”

“Not really. Just too smart.”

We let our half-smiles hang in the air for a moment.

“How long have we known each other, Jack?” the man finally asked.

“Oh God, I don’t know. We were roommates our last year at Georgetown, so I guess that makes it… what? Twenty-odd years now?”

The man nodded. “Yeah, about that.”

The sun hid behind a cloud for a moment and the terrace slipped into a gray half-light.

“When I was first appointed White House counsel, I heard from everybody I’d ever met. I had a million best friends. You were probably the only guy I’d ever known who didn’t call me.”

“I was probably the only guy you’d ever known who didn’t want anything from you then.”

“But you do now.”

“Yeah.”

“Then lay it out for me, Jack. Tell me exactly what it is that you do want.”

I put it as plainly as I could.

“I want to be absolutely certain the president knows about this. If he does, and it’s what he wants, then there’s not a damned thing I can do about it no matter what I believe. But if he doesn’t know, he ought to, then he can do whatever he thinks he should.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

The bottom rim of the sun touched the ocean at last and we watched silently as the huge red ball slid through the horizon.

“I can tell you right now, Jack, nothing like this came out of the White House. I don’t know who these guys are, but they’re not ours. It sounds to me like somebody at the Pentagon or CIA has gone way over the edge.”

The man shook his head in disgust.

“I really hate goddamned fucking cowboys like that. There are so many good people who care so much, but sometimes…”

He trailed off with a rueful smile.

Just as the sun’s topmost edge plopped out of sight, there was a sudden bright flare. An arc of brilliant emerald green exploded out of the ocean and expanded like a shock wave until it was swallowed up by the darkening sky.

Damn. So there really is a green flash. How about that?

I turned to say something about it and saw that my visitor was holding out his hand.

“I’ve got to leave, Jack, but I can promise you one thing. I will tell the president the whole story tomorrow. You have my word on that.”

We shook and I walked him back inside. We crossed the room through the gathering gloom.

“Oh, hey, I almost forgot,” my visitor suddenly said.

The man picked up his briefcase from where he had left it by the door. He swung it onto the desk and snapped open the catches. Reaching inside he produced a box of cigars and handed it to me.

“Montecristos. Cubans, no less,” I said turning the box over in my hands. “Isn’t this a breach of national security or something?”

“Working in the White House has got to have some perks, doesn’t it?”

We both smiled, but I suspected at different things.

“It’s a real shame you had to give them those bank records,” the man said as he closed his briefcase. “Now that they’ve got their hands on the slush fund again, shutting down these guys will be a bitch.”

I scratched at the back of my neck with one hand and made a show of thoughtful deliberation.

“You have to understand that I needed to see your reaction before I gave you the last little bit of it,” I said after a pause. “I had to see if you already knew.”

My visitor eyed me a moment, a half-smile creeping over his face, and then he leaned against the wall, waiting.

“I have no idea where the money is,” I said. “Neither do they.”

I paused to let that sink in.

“And now that they’ve killed Barry Gale, they’ll never find it.”

There was a look of puzzlement in my visitor’s nod. “But what about the bank records you gave them?” he asked.

“The network I got them into was the university network at Chula, not the Asian Bank of Commerce. What Phony Frank got was a list of transactions I’d made up for the final exam in my international banking class. I don’t think they’ll be of much use to someone who’s trying to overthrow the Chinese government.”

My visitor stuck his tongue into the corner of his cheek.

“You’re shittin’ me,” he laughed.

“I shit you not, partner.”

The man laughed some more and clapped me on the shoulder.

“You sure you don’t want a job at the White House, Jack? You’re just the kind of sneaky, deceitful bastard who would fit right in.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the red and yellow plumes of the setting sun coloring the sky above the Andaman Sea. They were bombarding the heavens like rockets, bursting against the clouds and sprinkling a dusting of pink and gold over the gunmetal surface of the sea.

“No thanks,” I said after a moment. “I’m fine right here.”

AFTER MY VISITOR left I took one of the Montecristos out of the box and went back out on the terrace. I dragged a chair around until I could slump back into it and prop my feet up on the railing, then I lit the cigar, cupping my hand around its tip to block off the ocean winds until a red coal was burning deep inside. Taking my time, I nursed a tiny cone of ash into life at its tip.