For the next two days we repeated the identical procedure for every meal. At breakfast, at lunch, and at dinner my escort took me to the embassy cafeteria. We sat silently at a big table that was empty other than for us, I had my meal while watching CNN, and my escort took me back to the room when I was done. I wasn’t taken to see Pete again, and Pete didn’t come to see me.
The third day, however, was different.
I was at lunch with my escort. I was eating a cheeseburger and paying very little attention to CNN since I was sick to death of it. They were showing film of some buildings burning somewhere in the world that hadn’t even registered with me.
Then all at once it did register with me.
I was looking at Charlie’s compound in Phuket. I was watching Charlie’s house burn on CNN.
I jumped up from the table and walked over and stood under the monitor so I could hear the sound that went with the pictures. I couldn’t hear all of it, but I could hear enough.
“…started from unknown causes around four this morning,” an announcer was saying. “General Kitnarok has owned the house for several years and there had been speculation recently that he might be in seclusion there preparing to lead his followers in an uprising against the present Thai government. There is no direct indication at this time whether General Kitnarok was actually in the house when it caught fire, but sources in the American Embassy in Bangkok tell CNN that at least two badly burned bodies have been recovered from the wreckage. Neither of those bodies has yet been identified, but US government forensic specialists are assisting the Thais in their efforts to do so as quickly as possible.”
With all that helpful assistance from the United States government, I had no doubt at all that the two bodies would indeed be identified very soon. One of the bodies would turn out to be Charlie, of course. That was easy enough to guess. But who would the other one be? Jack Shepherd perhaps? That would tidy everything up rather neatly, wouldn’t it?
It might be neat, but I couldn’t believe an ending like that was actually in the cards. Pete Logan might be a loyal bureaucrat, but he was also a good FBI agent. He wasn’t the kind of man to stand around doing nothing while somebody killed and buried his old friend Jack in order to cover this whole mess up.
At least I didn’t think he was.
***
WHEN I GOT back to the table, my escort had disappeared and Pete sat picking at the French fries I had left on my plate. It looked like I was going to find out soon enough what kind of man Pete Logan was.
“These are terrible, Jack.”
Pete slathered a French fry in catsup and swallowed it.
“How can you eat shit like this? It’ll kill you.”
I just looked at Pete.
“Okay, bad choice of words,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
“You here for any reason other than to eat my French fries?”
“I have a message for you.”
I didn’t much like the sound of that. The last time I had heard that phrase it had been closely followed by two guys I knew pretty well getting shot.
“From who?” I asked anyway.
“The Prime Minister.”
“Which prime minister?”
“The Prime Minister of Thailand, you shit head. You know any others?”
“A few.”
Pete ignored me, as well he might have.
“She wonders if you could do her a little favor.”
“What kind of a favor?”
“I really don’t know. She just said she hopes you might be willing to look into something for her. She asked me to tell you to call her. She said that you have her number. Do you? Have her number, I mean?”
I didn’t take the bait.
“It’s going to be a little hard for me to do much for Kate while I’m enjoying the hospitality of the embassy, Pete. I wasn’t aware you had a work furlough program or I would have already applied.”
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Pete said. “You’re free to go. You can leave anytime you want.”
“I’m not under arrest anymore?”
“Under arrest? Good Lord, Jack, why would anyone want to arrest you?”
“I see.”
Pete said nothing. He even managed to keep his face straight.
“Does my sudden release have anything to do with that?” I pointed to the television monitor on which I had just seen the pictures of Charlie’s house in flames and heard about the two bodies the US was trying so hard to help the Thais identify.
“I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about, man.”
Pete pushed his chair back and stood up.
“Stay in touch,” he said. “Don’t be a stranger.”
Then he just gave me a little wave and walked away.
***
WITH MY ESCORT gone, I was left to find my way back to my room on my own. But then it occurred to me there really wasn’t any reason to go back there so I just walked straight out to the embassy’s front entrance and right up to the marine guard post in the lobby. The young marine on duty collected the visitor’s badge from around my neck, tapped briefly at a computer keyboard, and then tossed off a snappy salute. I walked through the main doors, crossed the lawn between the embassy building and the high concrete wall surrounding the compound, and pushed out through the revolving security gate to the street.
It wasn’t until I was standing at the curb on Wireless Road that it occurred to me that I had no idea where I was going. I was still trying to make up my mind when a taxi pulled to a stop and the driver leaned over and rolled down his window.
“Taxi, boss?”
I looked at the man, but I didn’t say anything.
“Where you want go?” the driver persisted.
Having no better idea, I opened the back door and got into the taxi.
“Where to, boss?”
Animal and man share the same instinct. Hide when you’re hurt. Go to ground. Find a place where you’ll be safe until your wounds heal.
“You know the Grand Hotel?” I asked.
“Sure thing, boss.”
The driver floored the accelerator and shot into traffic.
***
I SLUNK OFF to the Grand to recover from my wounds when Anita left. I had lived there for nearly six months back then and found it to be a pretty good place for mending. I had a different kind of mending to do this time, of course. Maybe it would be harder. But then again, maybe it would be easier.
I was still wearing the clothes the embassy had given me and now that I was out on the street again I wasn’t certain I looked my best in an oversized Hawaiian shirt, jeans, and black Nikes. The last place I had seen the suitcase with my own clothes in it had been at Keur’s apartment on Soi Thonglor.
Fuck it. Just one more lost bag in a lifetime of traveling.
First, I’d find a place to buy some clothes. Then after that, maybe I would try to reach Kate. I wanted to thank her for keeping me out of a Thai jail. And naturally I was curious about the message Pete had given me.
Of course, I had no intention of getting involved in whatever Kate wanted me to do. None at all. I’d had enough of Thailand to last several lifetimes. There was no way in the world I was going to let Kate talk me into having any more to do with this screwed up little country, even if she was the prime minster now.
What I had to do was to get serious about looking after myself for a change. My only client was dead and what kind of a lawyer doesn’t have any clients? Maybe it was time to go home and think about doing something new.
But where was home? I no longer had a wife. And I didn’t have a girlfriend. Or a dog or a goldfish or even a house plant. Come to think of it, I didn’t have a house plant because I didn’t have a house. I was a middle-aged man living in a borrowed apartment with absolutely nowhere to go and nothing to do.
It was time for me to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life. That was what was important now. Not chasing around Thailand after some nonsense for
Kate. Even if I did owe her a favor.
Still, I knew I really ought at least to give Kate a call before I left Thailand. That was only simple courtesy to an old friend, wasn’t it? And, to be absolutely honest, I really was a little curious about what it was she wanted me to look into for her. Even if there was no way in hell I was going to get involved. Absolutely no way.
Honestly, I was just curious.
THE END
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LAUNDRY MAN
ONE
IT BEGAN EXACTLY the way the end of the world will begin. With a telephone call at two o’clock in the morning.
“Jack Shepherd,” I croaked.
“Hey, Jack, old buddy. How you been?”
It was a man’s voice, one I didn’t recognize. I sat up and cleared my throat.
“Who’s this?” I asked
“I’m sorry to call in the middle of the night,” the man said, ignoring my question, “but this can’t wait. I’m really in deep shit here.”
I was still struggling to place the voice so I said nothing.
“I need your help, Jack. I figure I got about a week here before somebody cuts off my nuts and feeds them to the ducks.”
“I’m not going to start guessing,” I said. “Who is this?”
“Oh, man, that’s so sad. You mean to tell me you even don’t recognize your old law partner’s voice?”
“I’ve had a lot of—”
“This is Barry Gale.”
That stopped me cold.
“Surprised, huh?” the man chuckled.
“Who are you?” I repeated.
“I just told you who I am, Jack. This is Barry Gale.”
I hit the disconnect button and tossed my cell phone back on the nightstand.
***
WHEN IT RANG again, I silently cursed myself for forgetting to turn the damned thing off.
I sat up and retrieved the phone and this time I looked at the number on the screen before I answered. All it said was unavailable. I thought fleetingly of just hitting the power button, but I didn’t. Later, of course, I would wish I had.
“It’s not nice to hang up on old friends, Jack.”
“We’re not old friends.”
“Sure we are.”
“Look, pal, Barry Gale’s dead. I know it and I’m sure you know it. So unless you’re Mickey the Medium with a message from the other side, you can cut the crap. What do you want?”
“What makes you think I’m dead?” the man asked.
“Barry made a pretty flashy exit. It got a fair amount of attention.”
“You talking about the body they found in that swimming pool in Dallas?”
That was exactly what I was talking about. I said nothing.
“As I remember, and I’m pretty sure I do remember, that body had been in the water nearly a week before anybody found it so they couldn’t get fingerprints. Also I hear the guy’s face was too badly smashed up to recognize. Nobody thought it was worth bothering with DNA, and the ID was made from dental records.”
“So what? The dental records matched Barry’s, didn’t they?”
“Of course they did. They would, wouldn’t they?”
“Are you trying to tell me the body in the swimming pool in Dallas wasn’t Barry Gale’s?”
“Not likely, Jack. Not likely at all. Particularly not as we’re talking to each other on the telephone other right now.”
I tried it another way.
“Look, buddy, I’m a reasonably approachable guy. Why don’t you just tell me who you are and what you want and then I can go back to sleep?”
There was a brief silence and then the man started talking again in a tired voice.
“Your name is Jonathan William Shepherd, but your father started calling you Jack when you were a kid to keep your mother from calling you Johnny and it stuck. You graduated from Georgetown Law School and you’re admitted to the bar in the District of Columbia and in New York. Stassen & Hardy recruited you right out of law school and it’s the only place you ever practiced law. You and I made partner the same year.”
I said nothing. The man apparently didn’t care.
“Your home address was 1701 Great Falls Road. It was a big white house out in Potomac, Maryland. Regrettably your happy home dissolved when your wife, the lovely Laura, took up with that proctologist out in Virginia. Dr. Butthole, you called him. How am I doing?”
“Very impressive,” I said.
“I’m an impressive guy.”
“Is that it?” I asked. “You recite a few things you’ve found out about me somewhere and now I’m supposed to believe you’re Barry Gale risen from the dead?”
“Hell, Jack, I could go on all night. How about this? Your office at Stassen & Hardy was about as far away from the reception area as it was possible for you to get and still be in the same building with the rest of us. You had a big glass table that you used for a desk. Goddamn, Jack, I’m sure you were the only lawyer in the world with a glass desk. It was like you were trying to look purer than the rest of us. Was that it, Jack? Was that what the glass desk was all about? And, oh yeah, you had that big yellow couch with the deep cushions where you took naps in the afternoon.”
“Look, I still don’t know what this is all about, but—”
“We had a part-time receptionist, a little Vietnamese girl who was going to law school somewhere and worked as the relief girl on weekends. Remember? You fucked her right on that yellow couch one Saturday afternoon and then you admitted it to me a couple of weeks later after you’d sucked up an extra martini one night at the bar in the Mayflower Hotel. You seemed to be all cut up with guilt over it and said you hadn’t told anyone else. Had you told anyone else, Jack?”
In the silence I could hear the guy breathing and I was sure he could hear me, too, except I was probably breathing a lot louder.
Because he was right.
I hadn’t told anyone else.
The man went on before I could figure out what to say.
“You like living in Bangkok, Jack? I hear you’re a teacher now. In some business school. That right?”
“Yes. I teach at Chulalongkorn University.”
“No more lawyering? No more of that big-time stuff we used to do?”
“I don’t practice law anymore if that’s what you’re asking me.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Not particularly. I still do a little consulting sometimes.”
“Consulting, huh? Is that right?” The man barked an abrupt laugh. “You want to consult with me, Jack?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Still a fucking hard-on, are you?”
“I just don’t particularly like being the butt of some clown’s crappy little joke.”
“Oh, this is no joke, Jack. I wish to Christ it was, but it isn’t.”
I said nothing.
“Do you know that place called Took Lae Dee?” the man eventually asked. “The little food counter up in the front of the all-night Foodland on Sukhumvit Road?”
“Yeah. I know where it is.”
“Meet me there tomorrow, around midnight. Just grab a stool and I’ll find you.”
“Midnight?”
“Is that a problem for you?”
“Yeah, that’s a problem for me. What makes you think I’d even consider coming to some damned supermarket at midnight just because a wacko pretending to be a dead guy calls me up and tells me to? I don’t know how you found out all those things about me, but if you think that’s enough—”
The man started laughing.
“Oh, it’s more than enough, Jack.”
He laughed some more. Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance and I listened to it without saying anything else.
“I know you, my friend. You’d never pass up a chance to hear a story like this. Never. Especially not when it�
��s coming from a guy who’s gone to all the trouble I have to make himself dead.”
And with that, the man hung up.
LAUNDRY MAN
TWO
I TOSSED AND turned for a while after that, but I knew I wasn’t going back to sleep anytime soon. Eventually I gave up trying altogether and I went into my study and took a Montecristo out of the humidor on my desk. I pulled open the sliding door and walked out on the balcony.
Generally Bangkok’s foreign residents went to considerable lengths to avoid breathing the city’s air until it had been thoroughly dried, adequately chilled, and comprehensively decontaminated. Not only was the stuff hot and soggy, usually it smelled spoiled and a little sour, like it had been breathed by way too many people already. But this was January, the middle of winter in Thailand, and the southernmost edge of a large dome of Siberian air had slipped down from China and momentarily broken Bangkok’s muggy heat. The air had turned pleasingly cool, even sweet, and it was richly thickened with the syrupy fragrances of frangipani, jasmine, and gardenias.
I cut and lit my cigar and I stood there smoking and looking out over the city for a long time.
When people in Washington first began to hear that I was leaving to live in Bangkok and teach at Chulalongkorn University, a few of them jumped to the conclusion I was making a point of some kind, abandoning the land of my birth for reasons that were probably political and no doubt wacky. Others who heard what I was doing—and I noticed this group seemed to be composed mainly of women—attributed my change of address to middle-aged male angst fueled by overly moist fantasies of slim, submissive Thai women serving me brightly colored tropical drinks with little umbrellas in them. Most people, of course, fell into neither of those categories. Most people just assumed that I had lost my damned mind.
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