by Jake Needham
Across the parking lot Jello talked briefly to one of the uniforms, then he reached down with one big hand and lifted the yellow tape for someone. He turned around and started back to where I was waiting, and I saw Just John walking next to him, hands jammed deep in his pockets.
“Been away, John?” I asked when they got to where I stood in the shadows against the wall. “Incidentally, have I told you what a bang-up security job you’re doing for Dollar? Keep up the good work, man.”
“Why are you so cranky, Jack?”
“I can’t imagine.”
John settled into a comfortable lean on the wall right next to me.
“Maybe there’s nothing I can do for Dollar anymore, Jack, but there’s something I can do for you,” he said.
“Oh please, tell me you’re not about to run the good-cop-bad-cop routine on me.”
“I’d be happy to spell everything out for you,” John said, “You want to hear it?”
I looked away from both of them, but I nodded slightly.
“Two guys bagging money for a major national security operation both get themselves whacked within a week. The only live connection either Jello or I can find between these two guys is a business school professor whose hands are so clean you could lick sugar off them. That doesn’t make any sense to us. That make any sense to you, Jack?”
“I’m not the only guy around who knew both Howard and Dollar.”
“That’s not the connection we’re talking about and you know it.”
Just John shook his head. I thought he was trying way too hard to get something like regret and even a little sadness into the gesture. It ended up just looking silly.
“We’re here to help you work this thing out, Jack, but you keep feeding us dog turds and calling them Twinkies.”
I took a breath and looked toward where two elderly men, one very short and the other very tall, were wheeling a metal gurney in the direction of Dollar’s body. As it rattled and knocked across the gravel, several dozen pairs of eyes silently tracked its progress toward where Dollar lay sprawled just outside the open door of my Volvo.
“We know about Barry Gale,” Just John said, his voice flat. “We know that both Howard and Dollar were dealing with him. Are you dealing with him, too, Jack? What’s your connection with Barry Gale?”
“We were partners in the same law firm once. Other than that, I don’t have a connection with him.”
“Under the circumstances, that’s pretty hard to swallow.”
“Yeah? And what circumstances are those?”
“Look at it from our point of view, Jack. Barry Gale shows up here in Bangkok. He has a quiet little meeting with you. A week later, two guys who were using his bank to front a major intelligence operation are dead and the money they were responsible for is gone. I suppose that’s just a coincidence, is it?”
“What are you saying, John?” I snapped. “That I helped Barry Gale set up Dollar and Howard in order to steal that money? Or maybe you’re saying I killed Howard and Dollar and took the money all by myself.”
John didn’t answer me, but then I hadn’t really expected him to.
The gurney clattered to a stop beside my Volvo. The policemen who had been grouped around Dollar’s body stepped back and the two old men with the gurney stepped forward. What was left of Dollar Dunne was in their hands now. The rest of us could only stand there and watch.
THIRTY SIX
“WHO DO YOU work for, John?” I asked, my eyes still on the gurney that was there to carry Dollar away. “Do you really work for the White House? Or are you just some bored little spook with a cubicle in Langley who’s way over his head in something he doesn’t understand?”
One of the men spread a bright orange body bag on the ground next to Dollar and pulled open the zipper. The sound scraped across the parking lot like a sharp object being pulled over glass.
“Ultimately we all work for the White House, Jack.”
I started to say something, but John held up one big hand.
“Let’s get back to the main point here, can we? Neither Jello nor I can figure out how you got in the middle of all this, Jack. We need to know exactly what your role really is. We really need to know right now.”
“I don’t have a role.”
“Yes, you do, Jack. Yes, you do.”
I expected the two men to lift Dollar’s body into the bag, one holding the shoulders and the other the legs, but they didn’t. Instead they went around to the same side of the body, gave it a push, and rolled it over on top of the bag. Then one of the men bent down and yanked the sides of the bag up around the body, wiggling it until Dollar was completely inside. The other man grasped the zipper and walked it closed, causing the same awful scraping sound to echo across the parking lot for a second time. After that, the two men moved to opposite ends of the bag, hefted it, and dumped it onto the gurney.
“This happened because of some bullshit CIA scheme you’re running, didn’t it, John? This happened because the CIA was using Dollar and Howard to funnel tens of millions of dollars to corrupt Chinese officials to keep them spying for you, didn’t it?”
Just John looked surprised in spite of what I gathered was his best effort not to.
I winked at him. “Gotcha.”
John gave a little snort and looked down at his shoes. “Stanley Ratikun must have told you about the NSC thing. Did he tell you the Chinese story, too?”
I didn’t say anything, but of course I didn’t have to. Just John knew he was right.
“What else did he tell you?” John asked me after a moment.
“Not much.” I thought back briefly over the conversation I’d had with Stanley. “Not anything really.”
All three of us watched silently as the gurney rattled away toward the street. When it reached the edge of the parking lot, one of the brown uniforms lifted the crime-scene tape and the two attendants wheeled the gurney under it. Then they turned left behind a white Toyota van and disappeared from sight.
Just John pushed at the gravel with the toe of his shoe.
“This happened, Jack, because $43,600,000, plus change, is unaccounted for.”
“Christ, you guys go first-class, don’t you? What did you think you could get for $43,000,000? Mao’s body?”
Just John gave me an imitation of a smile. “That’s not my point.”
“Then what is your point?”
“Dollar and Howard knew where that money went.”
“Well, my guess is you’re going to have one hell of a hard time sweating it out of them now.”
“You still don’t get it, do you, Jack? That’s why somebody stuck Dollar’s body in your car. They think you know where the money is.” John leaned close to my ear. “And they wanted to remind you that they know where you are.”
“For Christ’s sakes, John, I’m just a college teacher!”
I pointed angrily toward where Dollar’s body had disappeared behind the white Toyota van.
“And he was just a lawyer. Guys like us push papers around when somebody tells us to. That’s all we do. It’s guys like you who screw around with stupid schemes that get people killed, not us. I don’t know where any money is, and I’ve got nothing to do with whatever is going on here. How many times do you want to hear it?”
John’s sigh was long and deep.
“Let me run it down one more time for you, Jack. Dollar and Howard were using the ABC to handle enough black money that somebody is willing to kill people to get at it. Barry Gale fronts the ABC. Gale disappears one day, then he turns up in Bangkok and goes straight to you. You get curious and start sniffing around the ABC and that idiot Tommy turns up in your apartment and tells you to back off.”
John saw me blink.
“Gotcha,” he grinned. “Yeah, sure we know about Tommy going to your apartment, but that’s not what you should be focusing on here, Jack. Focus on what this looks like to us when we put it all together. Focus on how it looks to anybody wondering where you fit in. How do
you think it adds up?”
Just John waited patiently for me to meet his eyes before he finished.
“It adds up to you being the link between Howard and Dollar’s operation and the ABC, Jack. That’s how it adds up.”
“That’s not how it is,” I said.
The people who had been in the parking lot began to drift away and first one then the other of the mercury-vapor lights snapped off. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t get that orange bag out of my mind and the darkness only made it more vivid. It was almost as if the bag had left behind a vapor trail where it crossed the lot, a luminescent orange wake that still hung in the air all the way from the door of my Volvo out into the street.
“Look, I can’t help you,” I finally said, not knowing what else to say. “Why don’t you just go find Barry and ask him what’s going on?”
“Jello and I sort of thought you might do that for us.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
“Oh, fuck, Jack.” Just John sounded genuinely disgusted. “When are you going to show us some respect, man? You figure we think you’re down here in Bangkok’s favorite hot spot to check out the action? Or maybe just because you were dying for a beer?”
“An unfortunate choice of words.”
“Not for me, Jack.”
“You know a lot of people,” Jello said. “And you’re not the kind of guy to sit around and wait for something to happen. We figure you either know where Barry Gale is or you have some way to contact him.”
“Somebody has been following me around town for weeks already, John, and we both know who it is. So what’s the problem? You’ve already found out who I know and where I go. And you know I’m not hanging out with Barry Gale.”
I had no doubt at all now that it was John’s people who’d been on my tail—that would certainly account for the high-tech tracking device—although it was dollars to donuts that nobody had let Jello in on the plan.
That immediately raised an even thornier question, however, one I wasn’t sure I was too keen on answering for myself right then.
If it really was Just John’s people following me, were they the people who killed Dollar and left his body in my car? Or, at the very least, wouldn’t they know who did?
I thought back for a moment on my conversation with Stanley.
In my experience, the CIA does not go around killing American citizens in order to advance vast and shadowy conspiracies.
Maybe not, it occurred to me now, but how about in order to hide small and fucked-up ones?
“I’ve got nothing to do with any of this,” I repeated stubbornly.
“Then, Jack, you’re going to have to give us something,” Just John said. “Something that might make us believe you.”
“Like what?”
“Like Barry Gale.”
“I don’t have Barry Gale.”
“Get him.”
A patrolman started rolling up the yellow tape and the spectators continued to thin out. In another few minutes the parking lot would be empty, as empty as if nothing had ever happened there at all.
Some son of a bitch is going to kill me if I don’t get myself out of this, I thought. Sure as hell, some son of a bitch is going to kill me just like he did Dollar and Howard, and I’m not even going to know why.
“Barry Gale told me that the ABC was raided by somebody and lost a lot of money,” I finally told John and Jello. “He’s scared shitless that the Russian mobsters who set the whole deal up in the first place will think that he scammed the bank himself.”
“So why did he come looking for you?”
Just John asked the question like a man who already knew the answer and just wanted to see if I would tell him the truth.
“He asked me to help him find the money and get it back.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said I wouldn’t get involved and I haven’t seen him since. That’s all I know. I can’t help you find him.”
Just John’s eyes were locked on mine.
“Yes, you can, Jack. And I’m absolutely sure that you will.”
I didn’t respond, but I could feel John watching me as my eyes drifted away from his and back across the parking lot.
The Volvo’s passenger door was still hanging open and the car’s interior light was shining like a beacon in the darkness. It was the only indication left of the spot where Dollar’s body had been lying when two men zipped it into a bright orange bag and hauled it away.
THIRTY SEVEN
WHEN I GOT home, Anita was packing for a trip to an art show in Hong Kong. She had so much stuff spread around the bedroom that I could hardly find a place to walk much less sit down, but boy was I glad to see her. Actually, I would have probably been glad to see almost anybody about then who had no interest in killing me; and as far as I knew, Anita didn’t. At least not right at that moment.
Anita asked me how I had spent the evening. I thought it was probably best to keep things simple. So I lied.
My reward was that we went to bed early.
When I woke the next morning, I lay still and kept my mind empty as long as I could. Eventually, in spite of my best efforts at inducing amnesia, a fresh surge of foreboding overwhelmed me. I got up and, taking care not to wake Anita, I pulled on some running shorts and an old Jerry Garcia T-shirt, then padded out to the front door to pick up the Bangkok Post.
I put on some coffee and while it was dripping I flipped through the Post looking to see what spin they would put on Dollar being found dead inside my car the night before. I didn’t immediately see any mention at all of it, so I fixed a bowl of bran flakes, poured a mug of black coffee, and took everything over to the kitchen table so I could read the paper more carefully while I ate. I was finishing the bran flakes and was halfway through my second cup of coffee when I realized why I hadn’t noticed the story the first time I looked.
It wasn’t there.
Maybe the Post was just trying to avoid scaring the tourists, but I was suspicious that there was more to it than that. First there had been that odd little story they had run passing off Howard’s death as a suicide, and now there was no mention at all of Dollar’s murder. The killing of a prominent member of Bangkok’s foreign community was a newsworthy enough event, so why was the Post ignoring it?
Maybe they got the story too late last night to make their deadline. Maybe the Post was just lazy and printed whatever was given to them and nobody had handed them the story all neatly wrapped up. Maybe whoever was responsible for Dollar’s murder had enough leverage to tell the Post what they could print and what they couldn’t.
Maybe I was getting paranoid.
I slipped back into the bedroom, put on my running shoes, and took the stairs down to loosen up a little. When I pushed open the metal door at the bottom of the stairwell, I looked glumly at the empty space in the garage where the Volvo usually was.
It hadn’t been until the tow truck drove into the parking lot the night before and backed up to the Volvo’s bumper that it had occurred to me I wouldn’t be driving home after the cops were done. The tow truck driver brought over the clipboard for my signature and I tried to ask him where they were taking my car, but his English was limited and my Thai didn’t include the vocabulary for having my car towed after a dead body had been removed from it. I figured I could ask Jello about it later.
When I watched the man hooking up to the Volvo, it suddenly occurred to me that the garbage bag full of stuff from Dollar’s house was still in my trunk. If the Thai cops found that, I figured the fun would really begin; but Jello and John were both still standing around and trying to retrieve the bag would have made me pretty conspicuous. I just left it where it was and hoped for the best. After all, a couple of years back the local cops had impounded a truck and never noticed a dead body in the back until the smell became impossible to ignore any longer. I always had sheer incompetence going for me.
I WALKED BRISKLY down the driveway wheeling my arms in ineffectual warm-up
gestures, turned into Soi Chidlom, and jogged slowly toward Ploenchit Road. The morning air was fresh and the slight breeze blowing from the north kept the humidity down. I made the traffic light on Ploenchit, crossed over, and jogged south on a narrow soi running alongside a shaded canal.
The waters of the little canal looked fresh and blue and the grassy bank was lined with tall trees that knitted at their upper branches into an almost continuous canopy. The softly shifting mottle of morning light through the branches dappled the water in a way that made me think of Monet, and it wasn’t often that anything in Bangkok made me think of Monet.
When I got to the Polo Club it was still too early for the gate attendants to be paying much attention so on impulse I dodged past the traffic barrier, tossed the uniformed guard a quick salute, and ran inside before he could stop me. Of course, it was unlikely he would have stopped me anyway. Thai security guards seldom challenged foreigners regardless of where they were going, and a foreigner mad enough to be running the streets of Bangkok in a Jerry Garcia T-shirt before seven o’clock in the morning would have been one to avoid in particular.
I ran across the parking lot, loped down the wide brown-tiled walkway between the tennis courts and the bar, and emerged onto a large field of neatly clipped grass. Circling it between white railings was a sand track about fifteen feet wide with a yellow sign that warned me to watch out for passing horses. Although the track wasn’t meant for runners, I soon settled into a comfortable jog on the loosely packed sand.
With Howard and Dollar both dead and too many people starting to look at me as the only remaining link to the ABC’s missing money, Barry Gale was the only person left who might have a way to call off the dogs. I had to find Barry and I thought I could do that. Maybe Manny would help me and maybe he wouldn’t, but either way I could do it. I was starting to feel certain of that.