LAUNDRY MAN (A Jack Shepherd crime thriller) (29 page)

“We’re out of sight now,” Manny took one hand off the wheel and pointed ahead. “I’m going to dump you out just before the last bus on the right side. You’ll see a bunch of Japanese there. Get on their bus with them. I’ll keep going back to the expressway and out toward the airport.”

“You’re joking.”

“Dead serious, mate.”

I was trying to decide what to say next when the Porsche slammed to a stop and Manny reached across my lap and shoved the door open. A large bus painted pink with giant green flowers idled next to us, and just as Manny had said a group of middle-aged Japanese was milling around near its open door.

“The driver’s my man. He’s a reliable bloke. Do what he says. You can trust him. Good luck, mate.”

Manny put both hands on the wheel and looked away. He didn’t offer to shake, so neither did I.

I just got out of the car and closed the door.

I WAS STANDING
in the street with my hands on my hips watching Manny’s yellow Porsche disappear when I heard a tapping sound behind me. The round-faced Thai at the wheel of the bus was beckoning through the window at me with his left hand and rapping on the glass with his right.

I walked around to the door and the Japanese all politely stepped back. There were about a dozen of them and they were carrying a collection of cameras, backpacks, and water bottles exactly like every other group of Japanese tourists I had ever seen. An elderly woman in a brown golf hat smiled and made little pushing gestures toward the open door of the bus.

“Arigato,”
I said, stifling the urge to bow.

“Gud ruck,”
she whispered as I passed.

The bus driver smiled when I mounted the steps.
“Sawadee krap, Arjan.”
Good day, professor.

I looked around and saw that the bus was completely empty, but the windows were very dark and from the outside no one would know that it wasn’t chock full of camera-wielding tourists trying to get just one more shot of the Grand Palace before flying back to the factory in Yokohama.

“My name Thavee. I be driver today.”

Although Thavee had the typically small build of a local lad, he was well fleshed out and his belly jiggled when he twisted toward me in the driver’s seat. He had shiny brown skin and jet-black hair trimmed short in a military cut, and he flashed me a toothy smile as he checked his big wing mirror. Without taking his eyes off it, he stuck out his right hand and made a rolling gesture. The Japanese outside obediently formed a neat line and began slowly climbing the steps into the bus.

Thavee pointed to the mirror, and I moved closer to him, looking over his shoulder.

A large black vehicle slowed as it came abreast of us. It was one of those big Ford Expeditions, the kind that was frequently seen around Washington bristling with Secret Service agents. The diplomatic plates marked it as belonging to the American Embassy. I could see the driver and the passenger were both westerners. I didn’t recognize either of them, but their fresh faces, short hair, white short-sleeved shirts, and gold-framed sunglasses left me in no doubt they were both government types; unless of course, they were just a couple of Mormons out sightseeing.

One of the men glanced toward the bus and I pulled back from the window.

“Mai pen rai, Arjan,”
Thavee said. “Don’t worry. Cannot see you. Window very dark.”

The SUV slowed almost to a stop and the two men in it looked us over. The one in the passenger seat shifted slightly, studying the Japanese shuffling slowly into the bus; then he lifted a walkie-talkie to his lips and I could see his mouth moving. I had no idea what he was saying, but the big vehicle resumed speed while he was still talking and quickly disappeared down the road behind Manny so I wasn’t sure it mattered. I gathered we had passed inspection.

“You sit now, please,” Thavee said to me. Then he pulled a big handle and the bus door swung shut with a hydraulic wheeze that was downright liberating.

“Bag on back seat for you,
Arjan.”

I made my way down the aisle past the Japanese who had been outside the bus but were now scattered around inside it. In the middle of a bench seat that ran all the way across the back, I found a dark blue canvas duffle bag with a heavy zipper. I picked it up as Thavee pulled away from the curb and edged into traffic, but I just held it on my lap for a while without looking inside. Up the aisle of the bus, I examined the backs of a dozen or so Japanese heads. Beyond them the blindingly whitewashed walls of the Grand Palace slid out of sight past the windshield.

What the hell am I doing here playing hide-and-seek with a bunch of spooks in mirrored sunglasses? Those guys were representatives of the government of the United States, weren’t they? Aren’t we all on the same side?

My sweaty jogging clothes were starting to stiffen up since Thavee, like all Thai drivers, set the air conditioning on quick-freeze whenever foreigners were around. I gave up trying to understand what was going on and decided just to settle for keeping warm.

I unzipped the black bag and found inside a change of underwear, a pair of jeans, a wide leather belt, a long-sleeved polo shirt, a dark windbreaker, and a pair of Topsiders. They all even looked to be approximately the right size, which didn’t surprise me at all. If Manny could guess I would be running through the Polo Club before even I knew I would be there, then coming up with my underwear size must have been a piece of cake.

I started to pull the clothes out of the bag when my hand fell on something else, something that did surprise me. Down at the bottom of the bag, tucked underneath the neatly folded clothes, were a handgun in a leather holster and a couple of spare clips. I removed the gun and the clips gingerly from the bag and my eyes reflexively darted around the bus to see whether anyone was watching. No one appeared to be paying the slightest attention.

I had fired handguns at ranges before, but I had never wielded one in anger and I hardly qualified as an expert on guns of any kind. Nevertheless I had no difficulty in identifying either the chrome-plated .45 or the black leather belt holster that could easily be concealed by almost any kind of jacket. Something exactly like the dark blue windbreaker that was also in the bag would do the trick nicely.

Didn’t Manny believe me? Did he still think that I really
did
intend to shoot Barry after I found him?

Then another possibility occurred to me, and it was a hugely unappealing one.

Maybe Manny already knew that Barry had something to do with Dollar’s murder and perhaps Howard’s, too. Maybe he knew I was the next name on Barry’s list. Maybe the .45 wasn’t there for me to use on Barry, but for me to protect myself
from
Barry.

I filed the thought away and shoved the gun and the spare clips back into the duffle. If Barry did have some kind of plan to kill me—and I still couldn’t imagine why he would or, even if he did, why he would be going about it in such an obscure way—I could probably talk him out of it somehow. I had made it successfully through four decades by talking people into and out of things, and so far I had done it without ever once getting into a gunfight. I didn’t have any intention of changing that now.

Sliding across the bench so that I would be partially hidden behind the empty seats in front of me, I pulled my T-shirt over my head and stripped off my still damp jogging shorts. When they hit the metal floor of the bus there was a little thud and then I remembered that I had shoved my cell phone into my pocket before I had left the apartment that morning, just in case Anita woke up before I got back and wondered where I was.

So why hasn’t she called?

I pulled on the polo shirt and the jeans, then I bent down and retrieved the phone. That was when I realized I had forgotten to turn it on, which might explain why I hadn’t heard from Anita. I sat there holding the phone for a moment and thought about calling her, but what was I going to tell her?

Darling, I’m riding in a bus with a bunch of phony Japanese tourists. I’m wearing some borrowed clothes and I have a .45 automatic in a bag on the seat next to me. Why? Well, it’s this way. I’m being slipped into Phuket by a semiretired British gangster so I can find a guy who’s been dead for a few years and who may be planning to shoot me. But don’t worry. I’ll be fine. And I’ll try to be home in time for dinner.

Nah, I decided. Maybe it would be better if I just waited to call Anita until things cleared up a little.

I snapped the cover of the phone shut without turning it on and tossed it into the duffle bag. Then I shoved my sweaty clothes and my running shoes in after it and zipped it up. I pulled on the Topsiders and unfolded the dark blue windbreaker to ward off the chill from the air conditioning. When I did, I saw the big yellow lettering across the back: FBI.

Very funny, Manny
.
Very fucking funny.

Outside the windows of the bus I watched the forest of container cranes lining the Chao Phraya River and realized we were passing the main port facilities on the river. That meant we were driving southeast. That wasn’t the direction we would be going if the bus were headed to Phuket, so I gathered I wasn’t going to Phuket overland. I settled back and wondered how Manny was going to get me there.

A little less than an hour later the bus passed through the old fishing town of Chonburi and the Gulf of Thailand came into view. Although it was flat and brown, hardly the stuff of great seascapes, the Japanese unlimbered their cameras, rushed to the right side of the bus, and started clicking frantically away. I had assumed of course that these were all Manny’s people and just part of the charade he had set up to get me out of Bangkok, but now I wasn’t so sure. They certainly looked authentic enough, pressing up against the windows and firing off their Canons and Nikons with little whoops of joy. They were either real tourists after all or this bunch was deeply into method acting.

I suddenly remembered there was a private airfield at Bang Phra, a little town just north of Chonburi, from which a flying club operated. I had been there a couple of times with friends who were members and it occurred to me that that might well be where we were headed now. Sure enough, as Bang Phra went by on our left, Thavee began to slow down. He raised his right hand above his shoulder, and without looking back, beckoned me forward. I slipped the strap of the duffle over my shoulder and walked up the aisle. I stood just behind him and balanced myself against the swaying of the bus.

“You know flying club?” Thavee asked without looking at me.

“I’ve been there.”

Thavee nodded a couple of times and bent forward to check both of his wing mirrors. As he downshifted and braked, I could see off in the distance a tattered windsock and a large blue-painted hangar with a metal roof.

“I park by hangar. Glider outside. Everybody get out to take picture with glider.”

He shot a look back over his shoulder to see if I was listening, although I couldn’t imagine what else he thought I might be doing.

“Wait for all to get away from bus,
Arjan,
then go inside hangar. Ike be there.”

“Are you telling me that this guy is going to fly me to Phuket in a glider?”

Thavee glanced back again and grinned.

“No problem,
Arjan.
You never fly in glider before?”

I shook my head.

“Then you want Thavee’s advice?”

“Sure.”

Thavee started a turn off the highway and then twisted around in the driver’s seat and gave me a long, serious look.

“Flap you arms hard,
Arjan.
Flap you arms hard.”

THE HANGAR DOORS
were wide open. Two white gliders sat pushed against the rear wall, their wings overlapping like the carcasses of giant birds awaiting the arrival of a taxidermist. Otherwise the building was empty.

Could you actually fly to Phuket in one of these things? I had heard that gliders stayed up for hours when the conditions were right, but the only time I had seen one airborne it had been mostly going in circles and that was something I was already doing fine all on my own.

I took a few steps toward the back of the hanger and examined the two gliders more closely. They were odd aircraft, awkward and beautiful at the same time. Their fuselages were thin cylinders, just wide enough to hold two people sitting in single file under an elongated Plexiglas bubble, and their wings were long and spindly, impossibly fragile-looking. From the nose of each plane a huge steel ring extended up and forward, and I assumed that was where the tow rope was hooked up to the powered aircraft that hauled them several thousand feet into the air where they were then cut loose to make their own silent way back to earth.

While I was unhappily contemplating the place on each plane where the engines should have been, a miniature door in the right-hand wall of the hangar squeaked open. A woman leaned in and beckoned to me. She was tiny, probably weighing not more than a hundred pounds, and her gray hair was neatly bobbed. I might normally have taken the woman to be somewhere in her sixties, but the brown coveralls and black work boots she wore and the red bandana on which she was wiping her grease-stained hands made me wonder.

I walked toward her and when I got closer I saw the red stitching over the right breast pocket of her coveralls.

Ike, it said.

“Okay, hotshot,” she snapped. Let’s kick the tires and light the fires.”

Well, wasn’t that wonderful? Grandma Moses here was about to take me flying in an airplane with no engine.

“You’re Ike?” I asked.

“No son, I’m the fuckin’ Easter Bunny.”

I glanced back and forth between Ike and the two gliders for a moment, but then I gave up al hope of salvation and just pointed toward the gliders. “You want me to help you pull one of these out?”

Ike snorted in disgust and stalked away, leaving the little door standing open for me.

“Not those, hotshot,” I heard her say from somewhere outside. “We’re taking the tow plane. It’s back here.”

The tow plane was a yellow Piper Cherokee with a white stripe down its side. It looked old and a little tired and there was a big dent right in the middle of the vertical stabilizer. On the other hand, there was something about it that I liked a lot: it had an engine.