LAUNDRY MAN (A Jack Shepherd crime thriller)

by Jake Needham

  When the Bank of Thailand gave up trying to support the currency in the mid-nineties, the country’s financial collapse had wrecked almost everybody. Financiers fled the country, corporate executives turned to selling sandwiches, and one particularly luckless investor put a gun to his head in front of the stock exchange and pulled the trigger. He missed. That struck a lot of foreigners as the perfect metaphor for how Thailand had gotten into such a mess in the first place.

  Property developers were particularly hard hit. Dependent on loans from local banks to keep all their plates spinning, most of the plates came crashing down when the banks stopped lending in a knee-jerk reaction to the financial crisis and starting calling in the loans they had already made. Even now, years after the economy had begun to grow again, Bangkok was still littered with the rotting carcasses of huge structures that had been abandoned by ruined developers who couldn’t afford to finish them. Some parts of the city looked like a movie set being readied for another remake of ‘Planet of the Apes.’

  The developer who had owned the site where Anna’s now stood had been luckier than most when the crash came and the bank loans disappeared, having gotten no further than building a sales office touting an improbable high-rise condominium. What to do? An American property developer would no doubt have called his lawyers and sued everybody he could think of. The Thai developer, in happy contrast, had taken the ruined condo’s sales office and turned it into a stylish and profitable restaurant.

  We turned between Anna’s gateposts and followed the driveway to the parking area at the back of the restaurant. Jello took the first open spot he found. He got out, slammed the door, and started toward the front entrance without looking back. I followed him wordlessly.

  Anna’s was a one-story, white-pillared building of vaguely colonial design with a wide, red-tiled veranda running all the way across the front. Most people preferred to sit indoors since the large dining area was airy and spacious, but the weather was still unusually cool and the veranda looked inviting. I wasn’t particularly surprised when Jello walked to the end furthest from the front door and settled himself at a round teak table shaded by a white canvas umbrella. I pulled out a chair and joined him, folding my arms and leaning forward attentively against the table in hopes that my posture might encourage him to resume the conversation.

  Jello sat slouched down, his body relaxed, but his dark eyes flicked around with the alertness of a pool shark cruising a game. “I like to sit out here when I’ve got some serious thinking to do,” he said.

  “And is that why we’re here now? To do some serious thinking?”

  A boy with an uncertain smile and fluttering hands brought us menus before Jello could answer.

  “Not really,” he said as scanned one of the menus. “We’re here to have lunch. Okay if I order for us both?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Jello ordered several Thai dishes and two bottles of Heineken and the waiter scurried away. That apparently marked the end of the pleasantries. After that Jello got straight to the point.

  “What do you know about a man named Howard Kojinski?” he asked in his cop’s voice, the one that gave away nothing, but implied everything.

  After being mentioned as far as I could recall exactly never, Howard the Roach was now popping up everywhere I went like crab grass after a wet winter.

  “Couldn’t you have asked me that on the telephone?”

  “You never know about telephones. Shouldn’t say anything on a telephone you’re not ready to read in the newspapers tomorrow morning.”

  Jello’s reluctance to use the telephone for what seemed to me to be an innocent enough inquiry would have verged on the comic if Dollar’s recent obsession with Howard hadn’t already been worrying me. I was pretty sure now that nothing involving Howard the Roach was likely to turn out to be innocent, or for that matter, comic.

  “For instance,” Jello went on, “what do you know about his background?”

  The answer of course was little or nothing. Howard was Dollar’s client, not mine. I had always worked on the premise that I was advising whatever firm hired me, not any specific client of theirs. The clients were their problem, not mine.

  “Not a lot,” I said truthfully. “He told me once that he was from Poland.” I thought about it some more. “Isn’t he an accountant?”

  “What kind of work have you and Dollar been doing for Howard recently?”

  “Whoa,” I said, and raised my right hand, palm out. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a simple question. Seems clear enough to me.”

  “Then I’ll give you a simple answer. I won’t tell you. I’m not going to talk about anything that Dollar’s firm is doing for its clients, and you ought to know better than to ask me to.”

  The young waiter returned and set sweating bottles of Heineken on cardboard coasters in front of each of us. Jello waved the proffered glass away, wrapped a big hand around the green bottle, and downed half of it in one hit. When the boy reached to put a glass in front of me, I shook my head as well, and he snatched it back and moved away.

  “Don’t give me that lawyer crap, Jack. Just tell me the truth.”

  God knows I wasn’t all that fond of being a lawyer, but every time somebody said that kind of thing to me it still rubbed me the wrong way.

  “Look,” I said, giving my indignation free reign to strut its stuff, “why don’t you just ask Dollar if you want to know something about his firm and its clients? Leave me out of it.”

  Jello nodded, looking off toward where a chubby blonde woman was getting out of a taxi. She had leathery skin and was wearing a red dress that was much too tight and far too short. Lugging two large Fendi shopping bags, she struggled up Anna’s driveway toward the front door, the bags slapping awkwardly against her heavy thighs.

  “I’m going to tell you something I shouldn’t, Jack. I’m going to tell you because I think you’re entitled to know exactly what’s going on here, but you’re not going to be happy to hear it.” Jello sounded like a librarian who was about to describe the best way to burn books. “Are you okay with that?”

  “Look, Jello, you’re buying lunch. You can tell me anything you want to, but I’m not going to talk to you about Dollar’s clients and nothing you can say is going to change that.”

  The waiter reappeared, settled his tray on the empty table next to ours, and stilled his hands long enough to serve the food. Jello inspected each plate as it was placed on the table—somtam, a papaya salad with chilies; stir-fried morning glory in oyster sauce; prawn curry; lemongrass chicken; and spicy noodles. Apparently everything met with his approval because he began spooning bits of each dish onto his plate of rice even before the waiter had collected the tray and withdrawn.

  Jello ate for a while, saying nothing while I served myself, and then as I started to eat, he cleared his throat lightly.

  “Howard Kojinski isn’t an accountant from Poland.”

  “Really?” I hoped my tone of voice reflected my general lack of interest in the subject.

  “He was born in New Jersey, did ten years in the U.S. army, mostly in Germany, and then became an airline reservations agent. A few years later he somehow wound up working as a mid-level coke mule for the Colombians. He got busted making a run to Houston and did a few months in prison in Texas.”

  “Gee,” I said. “That’s fascinating.”

  Jello ignored me and went on.

  “He must have used his time there making friends and learning new skills because he went to Hong Kong right after that and set himself up running a small-time money laundry. He turned out to be pretty good at it, and now he moves cash all over Asia for a lot of people you don’t want to know about. Recently we think he’s become the primary money launderer for a group of major Burmese heroin producers.”

  I burst out laughing. I gathered that wasn’t exactly the reaction Jello had been expecting.

  “You think that’s funny?” he snapped.

  “Christ, I think
it’s hysterical.”

  I shook my head and finished off the Heineken.

  “Look, Jello, unless you’re just generally full of crap, you’ve got the wrong man. Howard the Roach couldn’t launder money if you gave him a new Whirlpool with a sign on the door that says ‘In Here, Stupid.’ If the Burmese are using Howard to handle their cash, I can promise you it’s a giant step toward wiping out the drug trade in Asia.”

  I was still shaking my head. How anyone who knew Howard could think he was equipped to handle anything more complex than taking a whiz without soaking his shoes was utterly beyond me.

  “Howard doesn’t just move money around for these guys,” Jello continued, apparently unimpressed with my skepticism. “He invests it for them. Suddenly Howard Kojinski has started turning up in all kinds of strange places.”

  “Such as?”

  “I can’t tell you that, Jack.”

  I snorted, and Jello looked annoyed.

  “Have you told Dollar any of this?” I asked.

  Jello sighed deeply and his expression softened. “Yeah, sort of.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Jello chugged the rest of his Heineken and stuffed a heaping spoonful of somtam into his mouth right behind it.

  “I told him and he said it was bullshit, but he refused to tell me anything about Howard’s business. He said it would be a breach of ethics.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s your answer.”

  “But it’s not bullshit, Jack. That’s the point. It’s all absolutely true.” Jello tapped the empty Heineken bottle against the table with a crisp little rat-a-tat-tat. “That’s when I started wondering if Dollar might be involved, too.”

  “Involved in what?”

  Jello just sat there impassively, looking at me with dead cop eyes.

  I shook my head. “Please tell me you’re not saying you think Dollar Dunne and Howard the Roach are working together to launder money for a bunch of Burmese heroin producers.”

  Jello didn’t say anything. He just looked at me with what might or might not have been a slight smile. Then he nodded.

  What in the hell was happening here? First Barry Gale was in cahoots with the Russian mob and now Dollar Dunne is supposedly moving money for Burmese drug lords? Whatever happened to the good old days when the worst thing you could accuse a lawyer of was ambulance chasing?

  “How long have you known Dollar?” I asked Jello.

  “Nine or ten years. A little longer maybe.”

  “And you’re sitting here now, seriously telling me that all of a sudden you’ve decided he’s the kind of a guy who launders drug money?”

  “I think he may be, Jack. God help me, but I think he may be.”

  Jello spun the empty Heineken bottle in his big hand.

  “Are you willing to help me find out for sure?” he asked.

  I should have seen that coming, I thought to myself. I should have seen that coming, but I hadn’t.

  “All I want you to do is poke around a little, Jack. Nothing heavy-duty. Just keep your eyes and ears open, really, then let me know what you see and hear.”

  “You can’t be serious, Jello. Dollar’s been your friend for a long time. He’s my friend, too.”

  “Friendship’s got nothing to do with this.”

  “Yes, it does. I’m not spying on Dollar Dunne, Jello. Not for you or for anyone else.”

  I pushed back from the table and stood up while Jello watched expressionlessly.

  “That’s the end of this conversation, Jello.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Now I’m going to get a taxi back to my office and you’re going to let me do that without arguing about it. Then I’m going to forget we were ever here today and I’m going to forget about everything you’ve said, and you’re going to let me do that, too. Do we understand each other?”

  Jello just looked at me without answering. After a moment I turned my back on him and started walking toward Silom Road.

  He didn’t try to stop me, and this time I didn’t look back.

  FIFTEEN

  ALTHOUGH THAI INTERNATIONAL had more flights out of Bangkok than any other airline, I was on the Cathay Pacific four o’clock to Hong Kong.

  I usually fly Cathay or Singapore Airlines instead of Thai because of something an official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had once told me at a cocktail party. He was a man who had to fly a lot and, being a government official, he had no choice but to fly on Thai. Making small talk at the party, I had asked the man how he thought Thai compared to other airlines. “Whenever you fly Thai International,” he told me with a glum expression, “always remember that your pilots got their jobs exactly the way everyone else in Thailand got their jobs.”

  I’ve never quite forgotten that. So I fly Cathay Pacific.

  The man sitting next to me introduced himself even before I had my seatbelt buckled. In spite of my best efforts not to, I learned in short order that he was a microchip importer from San Francisco and that he was going to Hong Kong to meet with a financial consultant after attending a trade show of some kind in Bangkok. This financial consultant, the man explained to me, was going to reorganize his entire company using offshore banks so that he could completely avoid paying any taxes. The scheme had something to do with utilizing offshore deposits to guarantee loans made to him through California banks, but I was paying as little attention as possible and that was all I got. The guy was reading a book to prepare for his meeting and he held it up for me to see. I glanced over politely and had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing out loud. The book was called Offshore Money Havens: How to Live Tax Free for the Rest of Your Life.

  When the guy asked me what kind of work I did, I thought fast. We were going to be sitting together for the next three hours and telling the truth seemed to be an absolute guarantee that every one of them would be hell on earth. I briefly considered telling him I was an Internal Revenue Service agent on overseas assignment, but that would have been just plain cruel. Instead, I said I was a life insurance executive from Minneapolis, which was the dullest thing I could come up with at short notice. It must have been a good choice because the man didn’t say another word to me for the rest of the trip.

  Why was it that so many Americans look at offshore banking as some sort of occult wizardry? I had a sudden vision of huge airplanes stuffed with microchip importers from San Francisco whizzing endlessly around the globe in search of a fabled and mystical land called Offshore, a place forever beyond the reach of greedy governments, combative creditors, and vengeful ex-wives. I myself have always pictured Offshore as a land ruled by Peter Sellers, but now that he was dead, I imagine that Rowan Atkinson must have taken over the throne. I wondered what people spend their days doing in Offshore. What do they eat? What do they wear? Do they have sex? Well, I could guess the answer to that one. Not with all that money around. Money is so much more interesting than sex for almost everyone.

  My flight landed in Hong Kong exactly on time. Southeast Asian Investments had sent a driver to the airport and the fellow made the trip to the venerable Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Connaught Road in what must have been record time. Still, it was after nine when we got to the hotel. That was too late to do anything in particular, but too early just to sit in my room. Watching Hong Kong television was too awful a thought even to consider.

  I stuck my head in the Captain’s Bar off the Mandarin’s lobby, but the place was filled with middle-aged Englishmen entertaining their Chinese daughters. It was a depressing scene and I didn’t go in. I had skipped the meal on the plane so I briefly considered the possibility of a late evening snack in one of the hotel’s restaurants, but eventually I gave up trying to make a decision and just set out walking to see where I would end up.

  I liked walking in Hong Kong. In winter the climate was balmy and the humidity was low and in every season the intensity of the place was overwhelming. Bangkok was a tropical city. No matter how busy it might be, there was always a languor in the
air you could never quite shake. Hong Kong, on the other hand, was all energy all the time. It was like being inside a pinball machine.

  Leaving the Mandarin, I turned right and walked east toward the Wanchai district or, as it had been dubbed by the American troops who took their R&R there during the Vietnam War, the Wanch. The Wanch had a history, but like a lot of history most of it was made up. From the day William Holden first came to Hong Kong, moved into a hotel filled with good-hearted whores, and fell in love with Suzie Wong, it was the Wanch which became the real Hong Kong in the eyes of the world.

  Nightlife in the Wanch never attained the status of Bangkok’s, of course, not even at the height of the Vietnam War when thousands of fresh-faced kids from places like Nebraska and Ohio flooded its streets, all of them looking for a Suzie Wong of their own. Most of the bargirls in the Wanch were more like bar grandmothers who put on their make-up with a garden trowel, but maybe that wasn’t so important when you were nineteen years old, it was three in the morning, and the ninth bottle of San Miguel had just gone down so smoothly and, best of all, stayed down.

  I circled around the golden glass-clad bulk of the Admiralty Centre, its bronze-mirrored surface twisting and shimmering with the city’s garish nighttime light show. Heading up Queensway, I fought my way through the crowds still jamming the sidewalks even at this hour. Almost entirely Chinese, the throng pulsed and surged as if driven by some otherworldly energy source.

  About a half-mile down Lockhart Road, I spotted the dirty brick façade of the Old China Hand pub which was something of a local monument. The Hand had been a Hong Kong expat hangout longer than anyone I knew could remember. I could hardly imagine the deals and schemes that had been whispered of within its dingy interior.