How much longer was I going to sit there looking at Barry Gale’s cover name in Dollar’s computer address book and tell myself that it might only be a coincidence? How long was I going to try and convince myself that it really meant nothing, and more importantly, that it had absolutely nothing to do with me?
Over the last few days two big trains had been rumbling through my life-one carrying Barry Gale and Jimmy Kicks, and the other carrying Dollar Dunne and Howard the Roach. I had felt both of them gathering speed, relentlessly building momentum toward something, although I hadn’t had the slightest idea where either one was headed.
But now I knew. Both trains were barreling right down the same track, heading straight for each other.
And I was standing directly between them.
I NEEDED HELP before I got crushed, and Stanley Ratikun was the only guy I could think of to go to with something like this. For a couple of decades Stanley had been the managing partner of one of Bangkok’s oldest international law firms. Then he retired and became director of the Sasin Institute of Business Administration at Chulalongkorn University, which made him more or less my boss. At least technically.
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.
THIRTY
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 Nescafe.
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
“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
