[Jack Shepherd 02.0] Killing Plato

by Jake Needham

  CW looked at me as if I had just begun speaking in tongues.

  “What are you talking about, boy?”

  “Don’t call me boy, you redneck motherfucker. Now do you want to eat barbeque with me or don’t you?”

  CW grinned and spread his palms. “Shoot,” he said. “Why not?”

  The Cherokee was still in the hotel driveway exactly where I had left it. CW and I got in and I drove back to the main highway and headed south.

  DON’S BARBEQUE WAS at the far south end of the island, almost all the way down to the yacht harbor at Chalong Bay. The building itself looked as if it might once have been a gas station and it sat in solitary splendor alongside the potholed asphalt of an uninspiring rural highway. Its nearest neighbor was a mosque. I seriously doubted very many barbeque joints in the entire world could make a similar claim.

  A tile-roofed pavilion open on three sides fronted the building. It was furnished with poured-concrete picnic tables with matching concrete benches. In a modest nod to graciousness, blue plastic tablecloths covered at least parts of some of the concrete tables. Several electric fans hung from the ceiling struggling valiantly against the heat and humidity, but about all they succeeded in doing was pushing the heavy air around a little.

  “Well, goddamn it all to hell,” CW said as we sat down. “Looks just like home.”

  I wasn’t absolutely sure whether CW was joking or not.

  A young girl came over to the table carrying two thick plastic folders. CW ordered a beer and I asked for an iced tea. When the girl went off to get our drinks, we leafed through the folders.

  “They really got all this shit?” CW asked.

  “They do,” I assured him.

  “Enchiladas, tacos, tamales, barbequed chicken, rack of ribs. Man, oh man, Slick. This is better than getting laid.”

  The girl brought our drinks and I ordered. Then I looked around while CW made up his mind. The place was fairly crowded. Although there were a couple of women who appeared to be local girlfriends or maybe even wives, most of the customers were middle-aged Caucasian males. At one table were four men I had no doubt were Americans. They were big men: big arms, big legs, big shoulders, and big wristwatches. They had sunny, open faces with deep tan lines, and wore faded golf shirts with jeans or khakis and scuffed boots. All of their arms seemed unnaturally hairy and, deeply bleached by the sun, the hair enveloped their forearms like loosely woven blankets. They looked like oil-field workers on R&R, or maybe military or cops. I hoped they were oil-field workers.

  When the girl had taken our orders and left, CW folded his arms on the edge of the table and leaned toward me.

  “So what have you got to tell me, Slick?”

  I looked around Don’s in mock surprise. “You mean I give you all this and you want more?”

  “Don’t try my patience, boy.”

  “I thought I told you not to call me boy.”

  We stared at each other a while after that and I could feel the testosterone levels climbing. Then we both laughed a little and everything settled down.

  “You enjoying yourself here in Thailand, CW?”

  “Yeah, I like Thais. They’re primitive as hell. They talk to spirits and dead chickens, shit like that, but they’re okay.”

  “You ever make it back up to Soi Katoey again?”

  I thought I saw a touch of caution in CW’s eyes. “Why would you ask that?”

  “Just making conversation.”

  “Well then, Slick, you better watch out how you go about doing that, you hear me?”

  There was a pause as two motorbikes passed on the highway, both in need of muffler jobs.

  “I wasn’t questioning your manhood, CW, I was just asking what you’d been up to since I saw you last.”

  CW looked at me for a while, and then he sighed heavily in what seemed to me to be a genuine mixture of disgust and exasperation.

  “Ah, I wouldn’t know where to start. I’ve been running around like a two-dicked rooster with a key to the henhouse.”

  I laughed in spite of myself, but CW didn’t even smile.

  “Nobody seems to know jack shit about what they really want us to do with Karsarkis,” he continued. “They run me one way and then they run me another. I just wished they’d make up their damned minds and we could get on with it.”

  I let a moment pass, and then because it seemed as good a time as any to do it I laid out the question I had brought CW here to ask in the first place.

  “Did your men kill Mike O’Connell?”

  CW looked at me without answering. I tried to read his eyes, looking for surprise, but they had gone flat.

  “Well, did they?” I asked again.

  “Son, you watch your mouth or I’m gonna kick your goddamned ass.”

  “Somebody shot him, CW, somebody who knew exactly what they were doing. Local hitters don’t use silenced sniper rifles. A couple of wild shots off the back of a motorcycle with a handgun is the best they can manage.”

  “And that’s why you think it was my boys who killed O’Connell?”

  “Marcus York was in Bangkok the day O’Connell was shot. Do you want me to believe that was just a coincidence?”

  “I don’t give two shits what you believe. You can go fuck yourself right up your sorry ass with a garden rake for all I care.”

  The air was so heavy it felt almost solid. I could probably have reached right out with my hand and ripped away a piece of it. Sweat ran in tiny rivulets behind my ears and down my back.

  “I know what’s going down here, CW. I have friends at the NIA. They laid it all out for me.”

  “What the hell is the NIA?”

  “The National Intelligence Agency. The Thai CIA.”

  “Well, whoopee do.”

  “They showed me transcripts of the intercepts they’ve been running of your email.”

  “Intercepts of my email?”

  “Not your personal email; the communications between your operational headquarters here and Washington.”

  “Are you pulling my pecker, son?”

  “Nope, they got it all, CW. They know what your instructions are.”

  “Well then, son, maybe you better tell me, because I ain’t all that clear what those instructions are myself.”

  “You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”

  “Say whatever you want. Don’t make no difference to me.”

  “You’re not here to take Plato Karsarkis back,” I said, “because the Thais aren’t going to extradite him.”

  CW’s eyes shifted onto mine and stayed there. He stared at me like a fish gazing out of a tank.

  “You’re here to kill him.”

  “What?” CW reared back away from the table. “We’re here to do what?”

  “I saw the intercepts, CW.”

  “I don’t know what you saw, you sorry motherfucker, but whatever it was, it was a crock of shit.”

  CW reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a telephone that looked like an Ericsson. He slammed it down on the table so hard that for a moment I thought he had broken it.

  “That’s what I use to talk to Washington, dickweed. I don’t even use email.”

  “You’re not using email to communicate with Washington?” Now it was my turn to feel ambushed. “Not at all?”

  CW shook his head. “If what your Thai spy buddies showed you were real intercepts rather than something they just made up, they weren’t intercepts from the United States Marshals Service. We ain’t hired killers, Slick. We’re just here to haul this asshole back to Washington and then he’s somebody else’s problem.”

  “But then why not get the Thais to agree to extradition? Surely Washington could do that if they really wanted to.”

  CW consulted a spot somewhere over my shoulder and seemed to think for a while before he answered. “We’d like to do it all nice and legal, Slick, but you’re a smart guy and you know how things work out here. The government of the United States of America isn’t gonna be p
ushed around by a bunch of third-world peckerwoods who’ve been bought and paid for.”

  “So you’re going to kidnap Karsarkis. Is that about the size of it?”

  “What do you expect me to do? Just stand around holding my dick in my hand?”

  “Certainly not in Phuket. Not when there’re so many people here willing to hold it for you.”

  CW didn’t laugh and he didn’t smile. He just pointed his forefinger at me.

  “We’ll do what we have to do,” he said. “And don’t you forget it.”

  Two guys came in and sat at a table not far away. They glanced over at us briefly but without any obvious interest. I made them for Irish. It’s hard for Irish guys to be inconspicuous at a beach resort, regardless of how hard they try. They were slim and hard-looking with reddish hair cut very short and skin so pale they both glowed like a pair of Japanese lanterns. I wondered if the men were part of Karsarkis’ IRA bodyguard or if they were just a couple of Paddy sex tourists recouping their strength for another run at the massage parlors.

  “You think that’s right?” I asked CW. “You happy with that?”

  “With what?’

  “Kidnapping a man. Putting him in chains and dragging him out of the country with a gun to his head no matter what the Thais might have to say about it.”

  CW shook his head very slowly at me while his eyes watched the Irishmen. “We don’t use chains.”

  I noticed he didn’t mention anything about the gun-to-the-head part.

  “I was exaggerating,” I said. “For effect. But I’d still like an answer to the question. Do you think it’s right?”

  “Ah, put a sock in it, you little shit. Who the fuck do you think you are, sitting there all high and mighty and passing judgment on me? Do you have the slightest idea who we’re dealing with here? Do you know who Plato Karsarkis is, Slick?”

  “I think so.”

  “I don’t think so. He funnels his hot oil deals through all kinds of companies—”

  “I know all about that,” I said.

  “Oh, do you now?” CW looked at me with what seemed to be genuine curiosity. “Then where do you think the money from those deals actually goes, Slick? What do you think it pays for? When some bastards plant another nail bomb at an embassy or blow up another discothèque, you just remember you had a nice civilized dinner one night with the man who gave them the money they needed to do it. You think about that and you tell me how you feel when you see kids lying on the ground with their arms and their legs blown off. You tell me then you know who Plato Karsarkis really is.”

  I said nothing.

  “Karsarkis is the motherfucking devil, Slick. I shit you not. He does business with arms dealers and terrorists; he launders money and passes it to people who shouldn’t have it; he bribes some people and kills the ones he can’t bribe. He’s everywhere, and he’s nowhere. He is a wisp of smoke, and when things go wrong, he’s gone.”

  CW stuck his hand in front of my face and snapped his fingers.

  “Like that.”

  I almost slapped his hand away, but I didn’t.

  “Did he kill Cynthia Kim?” I asked instead.

  “I don’t care.” CW’s voice crackled like dry leaves. “If he didn’t, he killed a thousand others.”

  I gazed out at the road and watched a middle-aged man roar by on a motorbike, two little children wedged on the seat between him and the handlebars.

  “I’m taking Karsarkis back however I have to do it,” CW went on when I didn’t say anything. “I’m gonna jack that fucker up and then haul his ass back. After that somebody else can decide what to do with him.”

  I said nothing.

  “And as for you, my little friend, you better stay the hell out of my way. I can put your dick in the dirt anytime I want to. You got that, boy?”

  I looked back at CW and caught him full in the eyes. Very slowly he turned his head away from me, moving it carefully, like a man with a bad headache who didn’t want to make it any worse.

  “You don’t frighten me, CW.”

  “Why not?” He sounded genuinely curious.

  “Because you’re a little man in a big game,” I said. “And you don’t even know what the game is. I like you, but the truth is you don’t matter here. You’re just an extra in somebody else’s big scene.”

  A tired-looking old woman with a leathery face shuffled over to the table carrying two slabs of barbequed ribs and dishes of coleslaw and beans. The edges of the slabs were crusty with blackened fat and the meat was deep red and moist-looking. CW and I sat in silence as the woman put the plates in front of us, then shuffled away again and returned a moment later with a bowl of sauce. It was deep mahogany in color with chunks of green jalapeños floating in it. She also brought a glass jar filled with toothpicks and two hand towels in plastic packets.

  The ribs were so tender I didn’t even need a knife to separate them. I pulled the smallest one off the end of the rack and dipped it into the sauce, then chewed away the meat. I dropped the bone on the plate and glanced up at CW. He seemed to be concentrating on his food.

  Neither of us talked much while we ate and the subject of Plato Karsarkis didn’t come up again. When we were finished, I paid the check.

  After that, I drove CW back to Patong and left him at the Holiday Inn.

  THIRTY SEVEN

  I SPENT THE night at Panwaburi, the same hotel where Anita and I had stayed the last time we had been in Phuket. Maybe that wasn’t a good idea, but I did it anyway. The next morning I had coffee and toast from room service, then I got in the Cherokee and headed for Plato Karsarkis’ house. Karsarkis wasn’t expecting me—at least not as far as I knew—but there wasn’t anybody else left for me to annoy.

  The day was so bright the air seemed almost white. The world was a cloud of light veined with streaks of blue. I couldn’t remember ever experiencing light that intense before. Although my sunglasses were as dark as pitch, the day scratched at my eyes like sandpaper.

  Once through Phuket Town I punched it and made the turnoff from the main highway to Karsarkis’ estate in less than half an hour. Driving west on the two-lane asphalt I passed through the eerie, symmetrical ranks of rubber trees that had been my main landmark on my previous trip and a couple of miles later I turned onto the loose-packed gravel of the narrow track that led to Karsarkis’ gate.

  As I took a curve around a grove of palm trees I was surprised to find a dark gray minivan blocking the road. I slowed to a crawl to slip by it and had just registered that the van looked to be American, perhaps a Chevrolet, when a man stepped out from in front of it and raised his right hand at me, palm out like a traffic cop.

  Ordinarily I wouldn’t have pulled over, but the man was a westerner who looked vaguely familiar. He was dressed in some kind of khaki uniform. There were no insignia on it, at least none that I could see, but he had a holstered sidearm on his hip.

  I lowered my window and the man walked slowly toward me with one hand resting casually on the butt of his pistol. He reminded me of a highway patrolman making a traffic stop, and that was when I realized why he looked so familiar. He was the man who had been with Marcus York at the Blue Lotus Pub in Patong the night CW and I had watched the katoeys boogieing down on Soi Crocodile.

  He looked me over carefully. “You’re Jack Shepherd, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m—”

  “I know who you are. I just don’t remember your name.”

  “Chuck Parker,” he said. “Deputy United States Marshal.”

  “Right.”

  “Could you step out of the vehicle, sir?”

  “What?”

  “I asked if you’d step out of the vehicle, sir. We just need to have a quick word with you, and then you can be on your way.”

  “I’m fine here,” I said. “Say whatever you want.”

  Chuck Parker first looked surprised and then he looked confused. He didn’t seem accustomed to having people say they weren’t going t
o do whatever he told them to do. Now that someone had, he wasn’t all that certain what to do about it. His head swiveled back and forth on his fleshy neck as if he was searching for help. When I heard the open-handed slap against the Cherokee’s passenger door, I knew he had found it.

  “Move it, asshole.” Marcus York slammed the door with his palm one more time for good measure. “Get out of the fucking car.”

  From the first moment I had met York something made me wonder about him. I didn’t have the slightest idea what he was if he wasn’t really a marshal, but right at that moment it didn’t matter. Playing with Chuck Parker was one thing, but looking into Marcus York’s hard black eyes right then left me with no doubt that playing with him would be quite another regardless of who he might really be. I opened the door and got out of the Cherokee.

  “A rental?” Parker asked, looking it over.

  “What?”

  “I asked you if this was a rental, sir.” Parker gestured unnecessarily at the Cherokee.

  “Yes,” I said, “it is. But why do you care one way or another?”

  Parker didn’t answer. Instead he pointed to the gray minivan.

  “Would you step over there please?”

  I nodded my head and followed Parker. When he opened the van’s sliding door I saw the interior was bigger than I would have expected and was fitted out with all kinds of things. There were two upholstered benches at right angles and in front of them was a low table with storage space underneath. At the very rear of the minivan was a floor-to-ceiling rack of electronic equipment. I didn’t know what it actually was, but I doubted it was a stereo system.

  Parker gestured for me to get inside and I did. I took the bench facing forward and Parker took the other one.

  “You are on your way to see Plato Karsarkis, are you not?”

  “I am,” I said.

  “Are you armed, sir?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “It’s a simple enough question. Are you armed?”

  “Only with my sly wit.”

  Parker nodded as gravely as if I’d given him a perfectly sensible answer. Since York hadn’t joined us in the minivan, I was just starting to wonder where he had gone when the obvious answer occurred to me. York was searching my Cherokee.