LAUNDRY MAN (A Jack Shepherd crime thriller)

by Jake Needham

  On the other hand, it occurred to me that armed guards aren’t particularly relevant unless whoever is being guarded expects someone to show up, so it was possible that the primary effect of me suddenly appearing out of the darkness might be to get my ass shot off. That insight caused me to recalculate the value of the element of surprise a few times, but I couldn’t make up my mind which way the balance fell so I decided not to worry about it.

  It was just after five. I walked back to the jeep and settled into the passenger seat, waiting either for darkness to fall or rational thought processes to return, whichever occurred first.

  It seemed unlikely there would be any other traffic the way I had just come—I hadn’t seen another vehicle the entire time I’d been driving—but just in case, I reversed the jeep along the track until I found a good spot to swing it around. I parked it facing out toward the ocean like I was up there to watch the sunset. If anyone did come up the road, I would probably look like just another loony tourist in a tropical daze.

  I unzipped the duffle and pushed the glasses inside. When I did, I saw the .45 and lifted it out. I used to shoot some at a range in the Maryland suburbs just outside of Washington, but I hadn’t touched a handgun since I had been in Thailand and I had certainly never pointed one at a human being. What the hell did I think I was going to do with this one? Use it to threaten Barry?

  In my personal experience with the somewhat less violent forms of coercion routinely practiced by lawyers, threats only worked when people knew you might actually carry them out. Did I look like a guy who would coolly pull the trigger on someone? And if I didn’t, or if I wasn’t, then what good was waving a prop around going to do?

  I stepped out of the jeep and slid the .45 from of its holster. I dropped the clip, hefted it in the approved two-handed grip, and bent my knees into a Weaver stance just like I had been taught. I looked down the barrel, focusing on the front sight with my left eye open just as my instructor had repeatedly reminded me. Then I racked the slide and dry-fired, feeling the solid clunk of the hammer slamming down where the cartridge ought to be.

  Okay, so maybe I could use it if I actually had to.

  Lowering the .45 I popped the clip back in and worked the slide to chamber a round. Then I set the safety, pushed it back into its holster, and stuck the whole rig back in the duffle bag. I could always decide what I was going to do with it later.

  I fiddled with the jeep’s passenger seat until I got it as far back as it would go. Then I climbed up and settled into it, propping my feet across the driver’s seat and leaning back against the door. The sun was a huge, shimmering disk of red, and the lower rim was just nudging the Andaman Sea. It would soon be dark.

  I suddenly remembered a Chinese folk tale I had once heard about a green flash that supposedly occurs occasionally when the sun sets into the ocean, a brilliant halo of emerald light that flares outward just as the upper rim of the sun sinks beneath the sea. Good fortune and eternal happiness are supposed to come to anyone who sees the green flash, or so the tale went; but that sounded like far too romantic a notion for the Chinese and I had always doubted that part of the story. Still, it was a lovely thought and I started hoping it might be true since I could certainly use some of that good fortune and eternal happiness stuff right about then.

  I wasn’t going to get my hopes up. The circumstances weren’t very encouraging. I could have been in one of Phuket’s many seafront bars about then, settled comfortably among the brown-skinned girls who were always around at the end of the day, wondering if tonight would be the night I would see the green flash at last; but instead I was slumped against the passenger door of a muddy jeep, all alone on the side of a deserted hill, waiting for it to get dark enough for me to creep up on a guy who was holed up in a walled estate that looked like it had been built by the Seven Dwarfs on their weekends off from the mine. Not really the greatest choice of venue for green flash spotting.

  In the last light of the setting sun I glanced up the road toward the big outcropping where I had been watching the compound. A little further along that road, no more than a half-mile away, the answers to all my questions were somewhere inside a lonely compound, perched on the rocky tip of a remote tropical island and guarded by some rented guns.

  And how, drawing on the sum total of my entire lifetime’s accumulated wisdom and experience, was I going to deal with that?

  I was going to wait until it got dark, try to sneak inside, and ask Barry Gale if he would mind very much telling me what in Christ’s name was going on here.

  That’s your big plan?

  Well… yeah.

  It really sucks.

  By the time I glanced back at the sun, it was gone. The night had arrived with heart-stopping suddenness and the Andaman Sea looked as if it had turned to molten pewter. The tiny atolls just west of Phuket were a scattering of pebbles flung across its surface, quick-frozen into the hardening metal.

  I hadn’t noticed if there had been a green flash or not.

  Rats.

  I’d really been counting on that.

  FORTY FOUR

  THE MOON ROSE round and full over my shoulder. It looked like a yellow flying saucer levitating out of the rain forest.

  When I figured I had stalled as long as I could, I started the jeep, turned it around, and drove slowly up the track. Just before I swung around the rocks where I had been sheltering, I cut my lights. Then I stopped and stood up in the jeep, studying the compound again through the field glasses.

  The brass torches flanking the wooden gates had been lit. They were blazing with gas flares that shot three or four feet into the air and cast an eerie, yellowish pool of light in front of the huge gates. There was a scattering of lights in a few of the building’s windows, but I saw no sign of anyone. The moonlight was bright enough on the slope for me to pick my way down through the darkness without serious risk, yet still not bright enough to make me unduly conspicuous. That was about as much good luck as I could hope for.

  I unzipped the bag and took out the .45 and the spare clips. Positioning the holster in front of my right hip, I snapped it over my belt and stuffed the spare clips into my trouser pockets. Hauling the windbreaker out of the duffle, I turned it inside out to make the yellow FBI identification on the back a little less conspicuous—somehow I didn’t think that would strike exactly the right introductory note with Barry’s armed guards—then pulled it on over my polo shirt and jeans.

  Taking a deep breath I shifted back into gear and eased the jeep on down the rough track without turning on the headlights. The tires made a swishing sound in the limestone dust as I rolled through the darkness toward the black rock wall.

  After about three hundred yards the track dipped sharply and then rose again. When I reached the top of the small rise I stopped and reexamined the view ahead. From that point onward the track faded away, so I backed carefully down from the rise, pulled the jeep off where it couldn’t be seen from the compound, and cut the engine.

  I got out, closing the door quietly behind me I took the field glasses and walked back up the rise. Stretching out flat so I wouldn’t be silhouetted against the sky, I raised the glasses.

  From where I was the ground sloped down evenly to the compound and then dropped abruptly right behind it over a cliff and into the sea. The main road was a narrow line of gray asphalt that came in from the north, made a sharp dogleg west, and ended in a small pad in front of the gates. It was rough and unlit, really not much of a road, and it was deserted.

  Now that I was closer to the compound I could see that in front of the gates there was a box set all by itself waist-high on a shiny post which had to be an intercom of some sort. Above the gates there was another box mounted on the wall. That one looked like a camera. I swung the glasses back and forth and didn’t see any other surveillance cameras along the wall. That was the good news. The bad news was that I couldn’t find any cover between the rise and the wall either, but with no surveillance and no sign of any guards
outside the walls, maybe I wouldn’t need it.

  While the light from the burning torches illuminated the area around the gate, the shadows around the rest of the wall were dark in spite of the moonlight. Unless Barry had himself some spiffy infrared sensors out there, it looked like I could make it unseen at least as far as the wall if I approached the compound from the side rather than head-on toward the gates.

  I eased back down the rise and dumped the field glasses in the jeep. Moving perpendicular to the track, I jogged in a half crouch until I was far enough on the north side of the compound that I couldn’t see the gates any longer. Taking one more careful look around and seeing nothing, I drew a deep breath and ran as quietly as I could for the wall.

  Sure enough I reached the base without any indication that I had been seen. I ended up at a spot that was dim enough to make me feel about as secure as I could hope to be under the circumstances. Up close, the wall was just what it had looked like through the field glasses. Solid rock, about fifteen feet high, and mortared so smoothly that climbing it wasn’t even worth thinking about. Staying in the shadows, I worked my way around the compound looking carefully for a weak point. I hugged the base of the wall and kept away from the gate, and I found nothing that was any help.

  There were no other entrances at all and if there was even the slightest variation in the construction of the wall it eluded me. When I reached the corner of the compound opposite to the one where I had started, I leaned cautiously out of the shadows and studied the section of the wall where the gates were. It looked exactly the same as it did everywhere else.

  The gates themselves were thickly varnished and seemed to fit together in the center with perfect precision. There was no hardware on their exterior, not even a handle or a plate suggesting a lock and I couldn’t see anything like a crack or a knothole through which I could try and sneak a peek inside.

  It was an entrance designed to make anyone who approached it feel insignificant, a supplicant begging audience with the Black Prince, and that made me mad as hell. Barry Gale was a slug who had crawled into bed with the Russian Mafia. I knew for certain he had been involved in one murder back in Dallas and I had no doubt that he was somehow connected to the killings of Howard and Dollar as well. Yet here I was, skulking around in the darkness just to talk to the bastard. My right hand slipped inside my windbreaker and closed over the grips of the .45.

  Let me get this straight, a little voice said. You’re going to pull that peashooter and blast your way in like Rambo, right through a pair of solid teak gates that would probably stop King Kong. Then you’re going to back down a bunch of goons armed with automatic rifles, scare the crap out of Barry Gale, and just lean back and listen while he spills everything. That’s what you’re going to do here?

  With a sigh, I took my hand out of my jacket and looked around again. No, of course I wasn’t going to do that, but there was only one other alternative.

  And I can’t believe I’m going to do that either.

  Manny’s underground network had successfully smuggled me onto Phuket undetected. I had found Barry Gale’s secret bolt-hole, waited until I had the cover of darkness, and then crept all the way to his very gate without anybody spotting me.

  So now I’m just going to walk up and ring the goddamned doorbell?

  Wonderful plan, Jack. Really fucking wonderful.

  I stepped quickly out of the shadows and rounded the corner into the wavering circle of light cast by the gas torches before I had any more time to think about how stupid I felt. There was a single, red button next to a white number pad on the intercom box and I gave it a solid push.

  “Yes?”

  The voice that rattled out of the box’s loudspeaker was cold and metallic. Worse, it sounded entirely unperturbed. So much for the element of surprise.

  “I’m here to see Barry Gale.”

  It was a wimpy thing to say and I had to bend down slightly to speak into the intercom, so I felt even wimpier. After all the maneuvering and calculating of advantages and possibilities, now I was just some jerk standing in the dark outside the castle and begging this faceless retainer for an audience with his master.

  “Who is this?” the voice asked.

  Banks of floodlights set back in recesses at the top of the wall suddenly came to life and bathed the entrance to the compound so brightly that the flames from the brass torches seemed to have been snuffed out.

  I hit the button again. But this time I didn’t bend down.

  “This is Jack Shepherd.”

  Squinting against the glare, I let the button go, but then I banged it again with my fist and yelled at the little box. “And I’m sick of this goddamned bullshit. You can tell Barry he’s got ten seconds to open this gate or I’m coming back here with every cop I can find and maybe the fucking United States Marines, too.”

  I slapped the box with one hand, turned my back on it, and started walking toward the gates, although I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do when I got to them.

  “Don’t you know it’s rude to drop in on friends unannounced, Jack?” Barry Gale’s voice startled me and I swiveled toward where it seemed to have come from, but there was nothing to see except the black intercom box. “You could at least have called so the cook would have had time to put out an extra plate for dinner.”

  “We’re not friends, Barry!” I was shouting back at the intercom box, but of course I wasn’t pressing the button so Barry couldn’t hear me. “And you can stick your goddamned dinner up your goddamned ass!”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the gates move and I glanced back at them. The shiny teak panels opened a crack. A man slipped out of the compound and looked me over without expression. He was a local, not particularly big or formidable, but the black assault rifle in his hands more than made up for any personal deficiencies.

  The man took a few steps in my direction, then stopped, moved off to one side, and gestured me forward with the muzzle of the rifle. His round, slightly shiny face was expressionless and my eyes kept shifting back and forth between it and the rifle. The man gestured again in an impatient way, this time clearly pointing with his free hand toward the opening in the gates. I walked forward keeping a wary eye on the rifle.

  As I stepped between the thick teak panels, someone on the outer edge of my peripheral vision swept my legs cleanly out from under me. I went to the ground and knees pressed into my back as I tried to catch my breath. Practiced hands patted me down. When the hands came to the .45, they snapped the holster off my belt and paused. Then they started over me again. They took the spare clips from the pockets of my jeans, my wallet, and my keys.

  “Stand.”

  It was a man’s voice, and I felt the knees move and the weight lift off my back.

  I pushed myself up slowly and dusted off with a show of casual deliberation. It was a childish gesture of defiance, but I did it anyway.

  When I eventually lifted my eyes, I saw two Thai men a few paces in front of me watching with blank faces. One was the man who had opened the gate and the other might have been the guard I had watched through my glasses patrolling the compound, although I wasn’t sure. Both of them were armed, but their weapons dangled casually at their sides. That seemed to me to be a good sign.

  “Nice jacket, Mr. Shepherd.”

  It was a woman’s voice from behind me.

  “I like the inside-out thing,” she added. “Very subtle.”

  When I turned around, Beth was holding my .45. She had taken it from the holster, but unlike the men’s rifles, it wasn’t pointed at the ground. It was pointed right at my belly. So much for good signs. Next to her was one of the men I had seen that day in Lumpini Park, the big one. He was holding my wallet, keys, and the extra clips, so I gathered it was probably his knees that had just been in my back.

  “What were you going to do with this thing, Mr. Shepherd?” Beth wiggled the .45. “Shoot Barry?”

  “I doubt it, Beth. But you never know.”

 
Beth laughed just like she had laughed that morning we were running around the lake in Lumpini Park and even in this bizarre and secret place it still had the sound of a happy child in the park on a sunny morning.

  “Jeez, that would have come as a real surprise to all of us. Particularly Barry.”

  I tried to read the expression in Beth’s eyes, but now they were cop’s eyes and I couldn’t.

  “Did you come here alone tonight, Mr. Shepherd?”

  “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 extra clips, 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 clips 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.