by Jake Needham
“What does it look like to you, Beth? You see an army somewhere out there behind me?”
She smiled with her mouth, but I could see her eyes doing calculations as she did. I wondered if she believed me, and what difference it might make if she didn’t.
Beth just stood and looked at me for a while, then all at once her body relaxed and she dropped the muzzle of my .45 until it pointed to the ground.
“Barry’s in the main house. He’s anxious to see you.”
“I’ll bet he is.”
“I’ll keep your sidearm and the magazines, Mr. Shepherd. You can get them back when you leave.”
At least Beth seemed to think I would be leaving. That was encouraging. I just hoped she and Barry were on the same page.
The big man standing with Beth gave her the magazines, then tossed my wallet and keys across the gap between us. I caught them both in the air, which pleased me unreasonably under the circumstances, and shoved them back into my pockets.
The big man walked to the gate and closed it again, securing it with quick, economical movements. Beth gestured me toward the entrance to the main house and fell into step behind me still carrying my .45.
“Just don’t shoot me in the ass,” I muttered.
FORTY FIVE
THE GREEN MARBLE floor of the foyer was polished to the sheen of a frozen lake and the walls were painted with kitschy scenes of what life was presumably like a few hundred years ago in Phuket, at least for the white guys. A band of dark-skinned, laughing local girls, naked except for a few strategically draped palm fronds here and there enthusiastically serviced visiting sailors who were sprawled on the beach in varying stages of intoxication. It was just the right sort of stuff to go with the big brass torches outside.
“Straight through,” Beth said from behind me.
I crossed the foyer and we walked at a stately pace single file along a wide, gallery-like corridor. Through a pair of open doors at the far end I could see part of a large room furnished with comfortable-looking couches and chairs arranged in front of a stone fireplace surrounded by an elaborately-carved marble mantelpiece. Improbably enough for Thailand, there was a wood fire blazing away in the fireplace. It was a scene that suggested Barry Gale had to be standing somewhere just out of sight, probably wearing a burgundy silk smoking jacket with a wide black sash and stroking the head of an Irish Setter.
The gallery was lined with oil paintings in heavy, old-fashioned gilt frames and at a quick glance they seemed to be a spectacular collection. I was no art expert, but a couple of the paintings looked a lot like Gauguins, another appeared to be a Monet, and a large canvas that had been carefully lit by concealed pencil-spots might have been a Rembrandt.
“These aren’t real, are they?” I asked Beth.
She didn’t say anything, but I heard her grunt softly. I wondered if that meant that the paintings were real or that she thought any idiot ought to know they weren’t.
When we reached the big room at the end of the gallery, Beth pointed at one of the couches by the fireplace, then turned away and walked back toward the front door without a word. Neither Barry Gale nor the Irish setter were anywhere in sight, so I settled back on the couch and looked around.
The room could have been a Ralph Lauren store, crackling fire and all, an American fantasy of what British manor houses were supposed to look like but never actually did. I would bet some decorator from New Jersey had ripped a few pages out of an old Harpers & Queen, copied as much of them as he could, and then just made the rest of it up from there. In California the result might have been funny. In Phuket it was downright scary.
“What do you think of my place, Jack?”
Barry had come into the room from somewhere behind me, but I didn’t turn around.
“Pretty terrific, huh? You see the names on those pictures out there?”
He walked past the couch and settled into a red leather wing chair that was just in front of the fire, crossing his legs at the knee and stretching his arms out along the rolled arms of the chair. He was wearing slacks that looked like black linen, a matching long-sleeved shirt, and black loafers without socks. He looked tanned and rested, not at all like a man on the run.
“So who’d you buy the place from?” I asked him. “Donald Trump?”
“That’s a pretty good one,” he chuckled.
I chuckled, too. So far we were having a hell of a time.
“Nah,” he said after he was done chuckling, “the bank took it off a couple of locals. Two old queens who were part-time politicians, part-time real estate developers, and full-time fuck-ups. They only thought they were Donald Trump.”
Barry chuckled one more time for good measure.
“How about your girlfriend outside? Another foreclosure?”
“Beth has worked for the bank…” Barry paused to think about it, “oh, almost two years now. I brought her in myself. She doesn’t know anything about the heavy lifting, of course. Just the routine stuff.”
“Yeah, I can understand how that works. Heck, I’m the trustee for this whole setup here and up until a few hours ago I didn’t even know it existed.”
Barry smiled benignly at me. He was apparently enjoying this a lot.
“Okay, Barry, you got me.” I tossed out my best shrug. “I’ll just sit here until you feel like telling me what the hell’s going on. I really don’t know what else to do.”
Barry glanced over my shoulder, then suddenly stood up and walked past me. I twisted around and saw Beth standing just inside the gallery. She and Barry exchanged a few words that I couldn’t hear and then Barry walked back and resumed his seat by the fire.
“Came here by yourself tonight, did you, Jack?”
“That’s what they say.”
“I had it all worked out for you to show up eventually, of course, but I got to be honest with you. I didn’t think you’d manage it quite this fast.”
“I have friends.”
“So do I, Jack, and if you don’t give me a straight answer about how you got here so quickly you’ll find out who they are.”
So much for the chit chat part of our program.
“I found some telephone bills and other stuff at Dollar’s that pointed me to Phuket. Then I got a guy I know to ask around and he located this place. I couldn’t tell you how he actually did that even if I wanted to, which I don’t.”
Putting Mango Manny’s name on the table didn’t seem fair or necessary, so I didn’t.
“You don’t need to know any more than that,” I added.
“You’ve got a pair there big enough to bowl with, don’t you, Jack? Not many people tell me what I need or don’t need to know.”
Then Barry’s eyes started to dance.
“Okay, smart guy, so after your secret pal located me, he smuggled you into Phuket on a private plane or some shit like that. Is that about it?”
I nodded.
“Don’t you think someone might have seen you take off from Bangkok?”
“I didn’t say we left from Bangkok.”
“Then where did you leave from?”
“It doesn’t matter, but no one saw me leave.”
“And you’re just as sure that no one saw you arrive on Phuket?”
“Just as sure.”
“So you weren’t followed here.”
“My friend made sure of that.”
“So I guess if I shoot you through the head and bury you somewhere out there, no one will ever figure out what happened to you, huh? Except maybe this secret pal of yours.”
That thought introduced an unwelcome twist to the conversation, but I pushed on anyway.
“You’re not going to do that.”
“I’m not? Really?”
“No.”
“And you’d bet your life on that, so to speak.”
“I guess I already have.”
Barry nodded slowly as if he was weighing the wisdom of my wager. I certainly was.
“How come you’re so confident her
e, Jack? I don’t see it myself.”
“Because you want something from me.” I looked Barry in the eye and kept on talking. “You showed up in Bangkok and gave me that cock-and-bull story about being on the run because the ABC had been scammed and you were afraid the Russians would think it was you. But let me tell you what I think is really happening here.”
Barry watched me, but he said nothing.
“My guess is that you’ve run your own little con on the bank, skimmed off a bunch of money for yourself, and then led me here because you need me to help you come up with a way to cover your ass.”
“Very interesting theory, Jack, very imaginative. I’ve always said you were a smart guy and I was right. You really are a smart guy.”
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your confidence in me.”
“What’s more, you’ve almost got it all right. Still, I’m afraid you’re a bit off about one thing, and I have to say that it’s something pretty important.”
I said nothing.
“Here’s the thing, Jack. Once you showed up here, the job I wanted you to do for me was finished. I’ve got no more use for you anymore.”
Barry smiled. Not knowing what else to do, I smiled back. Then I just waited. I knew the rest was coming. Barry was just warming up.
“I bought the Asia Bank of Commerce for Jimmy Kicks just like I told you, a safe little money laundry in a nice out-of-the-way place. But it wasn’t long before I realized I was on to something really big here. Everybody needs a bank they can trust, Jack. Even crooks and criminals.”
Barry leaped out of his chair and began to pace the room while he talked, his arms wheeling wildly.
“There’s a river of dirty money out there, my friend! Drugs, guns, bribes, rackets, scams, outright theft. Shit, it’s a fucking ocean! I once saw a bunch of garbage bags in a Houston warehouse with fifty million dollars in them, just stuffed in there like trash. Have you ever seen fifty million dollars in hundred-dollar bills, Jack?”
I shook my head, but Barry hardly seemed to notice.
“Before I got this deal working, all anybody could do with all that money was buy some more dope or maybe a couple of shitty strip malls in Tampa. That’s not power, Jack. Cash is power! But not if it’s in bags in some fucking warehouse. If you can’t get your cash into the banking system, you might as well start using it to wipe your ass because that’s all it’s good for. It’s nothing but wastepaper.”
“A lot of people have tried large-scale money laundering, Barry. They always get caught.”
“All a bunch of fucking amateurs, Jack!” he sneered. “Just yokels with no vision!”
I nodded in encouragement and Barry took flight again.
“We put the word out discreetly that the ABC was a reliable bank owned by reliable people and that it didn’t ask a lot of questions about its depositors. After that, the damnedest stuff started turning up on our doorstep. You know why? Because we were part of the international banking system and when folks put their money with us it became part of the international banking system! After that I could send it any place in the world without anyone knowing anything at all about where it came from.”
“I wouldn’t want you to think I’m not enjoying our little chat here, Barry, but what the hell has any of this got to do with me?”
“Just be patient, Jack, hear me out. It was like this. First, of course, it was mostly just dipshit local scumbags who put money with us, but after the word got around, we had the Russians, the Burmese, the Colombians, the Mexicans, the South Africans, everybody! We started getting into bigger and bigger money, but most of it was just going right through us. I started thinking about ways we could hang on to a bigger piece.”
Why didn’t that surprise me?
“Then some Burmese jerk-offs brought us a deal they had going with the Chinese and I saw my chance. You know the army really runs the drug trade in China, don’t you, Jack? Well, these Burmese yahoos had done a deal with the Chinese army because they were swimming in raw morphine base and wanted to diversify into finished products. They agreed to finance the construction of four heroin refineries just across the border into China. The Burmese would provide the morphine base and Chinese army would look after the refineries and transport the processed heroin to the coast for shipment to North America and Europe. The deal was for everybody to split the proceeds from the operation right down the middle.”
I shook my head impatiently. It seemed to irritate Barry that I wasn’t hanging on his every word, but he went on anyway.
“The problem was how to get the money to finance the refineries and pay off the generals in China without anyone knowing where it came from.”
Barry was still watching me, reveling in relating his great adventure to someone he thought would truly appreciate its nuances. He wanted me to be interested in what he was saying. I was, of course, but I tried not to show it.
“The Burmese had a shitload of cash split up among a bunch of shell companies with accounts in American banks, of all places, which the stupid cocksuckers thought was so damned clever of them. The problem was, naturally, that they couldn’t figure out how to move any of it from the US to China without being conspicuous, but I saw the way to do it right away.”
Barry tapped the side of his head with one finger and hoisted his eyebrows. I struggled not to laugh.
“All the ABC had to do was arrange routine trade financing between the Burmese shell companies and a bunch of ordinary businesses the Chinese army controlled. Coal mines and toy companies, shit like that. We accepted the cash being held in the American banks as security for the loans. After that, we could shift the deposits around through our own system without anybody noticing. You following me here, Jack?”
“I think I can grasp the mechanics, Barry.”
“It was even simpler than you might think because here’s the twist I put on the deal. We took the Burmese funds out of the American shell companies as security for the loans to the Chinese, but we never made any loans.”
It took me a moment, but then I saw the brutal simplicity in what Barry was saying.
“You’re telling me that instead of laundering the money that came from the Burmese and passing it through to the Chinese, the Asian Bank of Commerce stole it?”
“Not exactly. I stole it, not the bank. I personally cleaned the motherfuckers out.”
“Why would you think you could get away with that?”
“Two reasons, Jack.”
Barry held up two fingers as if I might not be familiar with the number.
“First, what we had with the ABC was a sort of No Tell Motel for money. I mean, it’s like this. You’re at a nice little motel way out somewhere on the highway with a lady friend and you see your worst enemy with some big-tittied hooker. What are you going to do? Call his wife and say you saw him there? And then when your wife finds out you were there and she asks ‘What were you doing at the No Tell Motel?’ what are you going to say to her? Hey, it was foolproof, Jack. The money was never supposed to be there in the first place. So who the hell was going to complain that it was gone?”
“What’s the second reason?” I asked.
“Well, the second reason—and I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Jack—is you.”
“Me? I’ve got nothing to do with your deal, Barry.”
Barry smiled and there was something about the way he did it that I really didn’t like.
“Every business deal I have ever been in eventually works out the same way, Jack. Somebody gets fucked. You know what I mean?”
I nodded.
“So that’s what you’ve got to do with this deal. You’re the guy who’s getting fucked.”
FORTY SIX
“IT’S THIS WAY, Jack. Even when you’re messing around with money that’s not supposed to exist, it still belongs to somebody, and they’ll still be plenty pissed when they find out it’s gone.”
“I can imagine.”
“Yeah, that was the problem I ha
d. If the Burmese thought I had their money, they might not come after me publicly, but you can bet your ass that they’d do it privately. Sometimes it’s those private complaints that really end up fucking you in the ass. You know what I mean?”
“Not really. That’s not a problem I’ve ever had.”
“Well, Jack, that’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you here. You have it now.”
Barry tapped the side of his head with his index finger for the second time. He apparently liked that gesture a lot.
“Taking the money was easy, Jack, but I knew keeping it was a whole different deal. I needed a patsy, someone who was such a respected expert in international finance that it would be entirely believable that he was the scammer, not me. Someone exactly like you.”
“That’s nuts, Barry. Why would anyone in his right mind think that I had anything to do with all this?”
“Because your fingerprints are all over everything connected with it: the legal work, the fund transfers, even the corporate structures we used. It was all your work, Jack. You put it together.”
That didn’t make any sense. I had never had any thing to do with the Asian Bank of Commerce. The closest I had come to it was fifteen minutes in a corporate services office in Hong Kong trying to have a conversation with a human doorstop.
“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
He had me there. I shook my head.
“I own Southeast Asian Investments, Jack. Why do you think you got that invitation out of the blue to join their board of directors?” Barry grinned and spread his palms. “Hey, I always remember my buddies, don’t I?”
And just like that the pieces of the puzzle began to slide around in my mind and assemble themselves into a picture that actually made a sort of weird sense.
“The Cambodian shrimp farm deal they ask me to look into was really just a conduit for laundering money into China?” I asked carefully.
“Yep,” Barry nodded. “You’re strapped so tightly to ABC and Southeast Asian Investments that it won’t take even those Burmese idiots very long to work out that you’re the guy in the barrel here.”