LAUNDRY MAN (A Jack Shepherd crime thriller) (22 page)

It was a post of considerable prestige, although Stanley really didn’t need the prestige. He had been born in New York, but his grandmother was obscurely related to the Thai royal family and he still had his Thai passport. That was one of the two reasons that his law firm had represented just about every significant international corporation that did any business at all in Thailand after the mid-sixties. The other was that Stanley and the other members of his firm were all first-rate lawyers.

Stanley and I had never exactly been pals, of course, and I hadn’t really even known him all that well back when he persuaded me to abandon the real world for Bangkok and join the faculty at Chula. Still, I had come to know him pretty well since then and in particular I respected the old-fashioned sense of righteousness against which he seemed to test everything he did. Stanley was hardly the sort of guy you hung out with at the Titty Twister ogling the go-go dancers and talking crap while you chugged back the Singhas, but he was a guy I trusted.

I was pretty sure Stanley would play it straight with me when I asked him flat out about Dollar. He wouldn’t necessarily tell me everything he knew just because I asked him to, but I didn’t think he would exactly lie to me either.

When I walked up two floors to Stanley’s office I saw through his half-open door that he was on the telephone. I gave him a little wave and leaned against the wall outside his office waiting for him to finish his conversation.

After Stanley hung up, he smiled broadly and gestured at me to come in.

I TOLD STANLEY
almost everything. I told him about my telephone call from Barry Gale and I told him about what had happened afterwards. Nothing I said seemed to surprise Stanley very much. He did lean forward once and steeple his fingers. The gesture came about the time I was describing the man in Dollar’s office who had claimed to be an FBI agent named Frank Morrissey, and I thought I saw a flicker of something like dismay cross his face at the same time, but I might have been mistaken.

All I left out was the part about my ferry ride with Archie Ward in Hong Kong and Archie’s intimations that the Asian Bank of Commerce had been a front for Chinese bribe money rather than the Russian mob operation that Barry had claimed it was. I didn’t think I had the right to drag Archie’s name into whatever was going on here, and more to the point, I wasn’t absolutely sure I really believed him. To do that I would also have had to believe Barry either didn’t know the Chinese were involved with the ABC or had made up the whole business about Jimmy Kicks just to mislead me, and neither of those possibilities made any sense at all.

I wound up by telling Stanley about the reference I had found in Dollar’s address book to the Asian Bank of Commerce and the notation next to it of the name on Barry’s phony Hong Kong ID. Then I fell silent.

Stanley’s only response was to purse his lips slightly. “That’s it?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, not bothering to hide my disappointment. I had just told Stanley what I thought was one hell of a story and he was sitting there like I had strolled into his office and asked to borrow a cup of Nescafé.

Stanley got up and walked to the window and stood with his back to me for a time. Eventually he turned around and leaned against the sill, his arms folded in front of him.

“I don’t see how any of it explains why this client of Dollar’s was killed, even if everything you say is true, Jack.”

“I think Howard stumbled over something he shouldn’t have. Maybe it involved the ABC and maybe it didn’t, but I think whatever it was scared him badly enough to make him tell someone about it. And I think the person he told was Dollar.”

Stanley’s face was impassive.

“If Howard started talking to Dollar,” I continued theorizing, “maybe that’s why he was killed. It would certainly explain why Dollar looked so shaken up when Howard’s body was found and why he went to ground so fast after that.”

“So you’re saying that Jello was right, Jack? That this man Howard was laundering money for the Burmese and that Dollar was helping him?”

“Howard might have been doing something like that, but not Dollar. Dollar plays it fast and loose, but I know him. He’s not someone who would work for a bunch of drug producers just for money. If Dollar was involved in anything like that, there’s got to be something else going on.”

“Such as what?”

“Look, I know this may sound a little nuts to you, Stanley, but just follow me through it. What if the Asian Bank of Commerce was being used in some kind of intelligence operation? Say the FBI was working through the ABC, maybe using it to cover up something they didn’t want to be caught doing, and
that
was what Howard stumbled over? What if that’s what he told Dollar about?”

“Are you saying that the FBI killed Howard Kojinski to shut him up about their offshore banking activities, Jack?”

“No, I’m… well, I don’t know. Somebody killed him.”

That sounded awfully lame, even to me, but there it was.

Stanley returned to his desk and settled himself behind it, knitting his hands behind his head.

“Even assuming this theory of yours has any substance to it at all, Jack, what does it have to do with you?”

“Howard was walking around with my home telephone number written on a file and Dollar was doing a funny kind of dance all around me that had something to do with Howard. My guess is that they had a problem and they were edging toward asking me to help them out somehow. Maybe the problem even involved the ABC, but I can’t be sure of that. Anyway, then Barry Gale comes back from the dead and starts chatting me up in strange places in the middle of the night.”

“I still don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“Look, Stanley, think of it this way. If somebody thought that Howard was talking too much about the ABC—and maybe they even killed him because of that—and this same somebody thought that not only Dollar and Howard, but also Barry Gale might be talking to Jack Shepherd, what kind of conclusion do you think they would draw? Don’t you think they would probably decide I’m right in the middle of everything?”

“Why are you telling me all this, Jack?”

“You’re a pretty plugged-in guy, Stanley. You hear whispers. You know what the whispers are saying.”

“I’ve been away from the firm a long time.”

“But you’re still a player, Stanley. We both know that.”

“You’re giving me way too much credit. These days I’m just another retired old fart living out his golden years doing things that nobody cares very much about.”

This wasn’t getting me anywhere. It was time to chuck one across Stanley’s bow and see if I could get his attention that way.

“I’m only trying to find a safe place to get out of the way, Stanley. If I stumble around here and fall over something I shouldn’t, or if I mess up things I didn’t even know were happening, you’re going to think back to this afternoon and remember how you blew your chance to prevent it.”

Stanley swiveled his chair slightly away from me and studied his left hand briefly as if he had just realized how interesting it really was.

“I think you should have a little history here, Jack. There probably are a few things you ought to know.”

I nodded and after a short pause Stanley started talking, choosing his words with obvious care.

“It is true that my former law firm has done work over the years for various branches of the United States government, the kind of work that requires a special form of trust. It makes exotic copy in the press to talk about front companies and foreign banks, but the plain fact is that the world is a complicated and dangerous place. As we all understand domestic law enforcement cannot be done solely by uniformed officers cruising the streets in brightly painted cars, we must also accept a nation’s international affairs cannot always be conducted by announcing one’s undertakings publicly.”

Stanley had consciously or unconsciously slipped into his college lecturer’s cadence.

“Consequently, when national interests require a country to work quietly beyond its own borders to defend its security, it is commonly accepted that such work is frequently undertaken through the structure of apparently private businesses. That is a convenient arrangement for both the country that is pursuing its interests and the country in which those interests are located. It gives both of them the security of deniability, something essential to the conduct of modern foreign policy. In any event, these private businesses require organization and administration, which obviously cannot be done by the governments and such tasks are frequently undertaken by discreet, well-connected law firms who are experienced in such matters.”

I liked Stanley, and I usually enjoyed his lectures, but this time I wasn’t in the mood to learn how to make a watch. I just wanted to know what the hell time it was.

“Are you saying your old firm is in the business of camouflaging the FBI behind corporate front companies, Stanley? How about the CIA? You got a few of their fronts in your client files, too?”

Stanley sighed deeply.

“I am trying to communicate to you the subtlety of such an undertaking in all its forms, Jack, but—if you must put it so crudely—I guess the answer is yes. Yes, my former firm has had a long-standing relationship with the government of the United States. And, yes, from time to time it has represented companies through which the FBI, the CIA, the DEA, and even quite a few agencies you’ve almost certainly never heard of have conducted their affairs here in Asia.”

My first reaction was to laugh out loud.

“You mean In The Pink Inc is really a CIA front?”

Stanley didn’t smile, not even a little.

“What does Howard the Roach have to do with any of this?” I asked.

“I must remind you again, Jack, that I retired several years ago. The firm’s current activities are entirely out of my hands.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You don’t have to believe me, but it
is
true.”

Stanley sounded genuinely wounded I wasn’t taking him at his word and he sat silently for a while after that, apparently weighing just how much he was actually going to have to tell me to keep me happy and quiet.

“Howard once laundered money for a variety of people in which the United States government had an interest,” Stanley resumed after a moment. “The short answer is that ultimately he got caught doing it. He was then persuaded to turn his talents to the public good rather than face prosecution.”

I figured I had better push Stanley’s narrative along before old age overtook us both.

“So you’re telling me that Jello was right, aren’t you, Stanley? Howard and Dollar
were
laundering money for someone, but it wasn’t for Burmese drug dealers. It was for an American intelligence operation.”

“Jello was only half right at best. Howard and Dollar did manipulate large sums of money from time to time, it is true, but they always did it with the full knowledge of the United States government and only in support of legitimate American interests. You can’t call that money laundering.”

Stanley shook his head firmly. I wondered if that was entirely for my benefit or if some of the effort was going into convincing himself.

“No,” he repeated, “you really cannot call what Howard and Dollar were doing money laundering.”

I didn’t bother to argue with Stanley and instead pressed the more important point.

“So who were they working for? Was it the FBI?”

“It would be better, Jack, if we just left it—”

“Oh Jesus, I get it now.”

“I doubt—” Stanley began, but I cut him off before he could get wound up again.

“Stanley, let’s be absolutely clear about this. Are you telling me Howard was laundering money for some cockamamie CIA operation and Dollar was helping him do it? Is
that
what they were going to ask me to get involved in?”

“You’ve been watching too many movies, Jack.” Stanley’s voice was level, but I could hear an edge in it now. “Don’t try to reduce the real world to something simple enough for teenagers to understand while they’re stuffing popcorn in their mouths. You’ll end up looking like an idiot every time.”

“And don’t jerk me around like some dimwitted student, Stanley. You and your little buddies were having a great time playing spook until somebody took it all too seriously and killed Howard. That scared the shit out of Dollar because he knew he might be next on the list, so he took off. How am I doing so far?”

“That is
not
right!” Stanley sounded seriously angry now. “And I will not say that because it is
not
true!”

“Then you can explain it however you think you should,” I said.

“What makes you think that I have to explain anything to you, Jack?”

“Because you don’t want me to mess anything up, Stanley. You’re up to your neck in some deep shit here and you really don’t want me to keep asking questions about it.”

“Will
you keep asking questions?”

“You bet your ass I will. I will keep asking questions until I understand exactly what the hell I’m involved in here. Am I coming through loud and clear?”

Stanley gave a heavy sigh as if all the air had suddenly been let out of him and then his eyes went dead.

A stillness settled over the office after that and we both sat for a while without saying anything else. Outside the windows the sun was hanging just above a thin wisp of clouds streaking the horizon somewhere beyond the river. Then the setting edge of the sun touched the clouds, the room darkened slightly, and grayness filtered over us like a warm mist.

STANLEY TURNED TOWARD
me. He leaned forward on his elbows, his eyes seeking mine.

“The loss of British control over Hong Kong was a tremendous problem for the West,” he said. “We tried to pass it off as inconsequential, but that was not the case. Hong Kong had been our only real window on China since the end of World War II. It provided our best, sometimes our only access. In one stroke we were cut off from the few assets we had in China and we largely lost our ability to collect and evaluate intelligence data from there.”