Laundry Man

pathways unchanged for a century still twisted among fanciful pavilions and the same stone giants, half human and half animal, still guarded a royal temple where thousands of candle flames flickered endlessly under the unsmiling gaze of the Emerald Buddha.

“Okay,” Manny said to me as we turned suddenly into the road leading to the main gates of the Grand Palace where the tour groups entered. “Look at the buses.”

I looked. Tourist buses were lined up nose to tail along both sides of the road like two freight trains parked in a rail yard.

“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.

THIRTY NINE

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