Laundry Man

“Welcome to Phuket, Professeur. Just think of this as Casablanca with no fucking heroes.”

The man straightened up, flicked away his cigarette, and threw me a professional-looking salute.

“I’m Captain Tom, a genuine civilian no longer affiliated with any military unit, government agency, or other form of socially oppressive organization.”

“Captain of what?” I asked.

“Ah well, merde…”

The man shrugged in that elaborate sort of way that only looks right on a Frenchman.

“They used to call me Major Tom, but that sounded too bourgeois so I busted myself down to captain.”

Christ, another one.

The man checked his watch. “Enough of the small talk, Professeur. We shall go, no?”

FORTY ONE

Captain Tom dropped the jeep into gear and accelerated up the road.

There was no sign of life around us, but the foliage was so thick that the Taj Mahal could have been a hundred yards off in either direction and I would never have spotted it. As we came to the end of the asphalt surface, a track continued straight into the dense rain forest. I braced myself when we left the roadway, but the dirt was unexpectedly smooth. Captain Tom never even slowed down.

We drove for a few minutes in silence and then Tom glanced over and pointed to the storage space in front of my seat.

“Monsieur Emmanuel said to get that for you.”

There was a dark blue nylon pouch in the open compartment. I pulled it out and unzipped it. Inside was a map of Phuket, a gold American Express card, and a California driver’s license with a picture that looked as much like me as any driver’s license photograph ever had. The credit card and the license were both in the name of Benny Glup, and the driver’s license had an address in Redondo Beach, a place just south of the Los Angeles airport where I had actually been once back in another life.

I held up the license and gave Captain Tom a look. “Benny Glup?”

Tom shrugged again, perhaps a little less elaborately this time since he was driving.

“It’s a name. You have a problem with it?”

“Probably no more than the real Benny Glup had, whoever the poor bastard is. Or was.”

“He never existed. The license is from of a batch of DEA covers a pal of Monsieur Emmanuel’s gave us.”

The shifting alliances among the players in Southeast Asia were a slippery thing, particularly when you were mostly on the outside looking in. I didn’t even want to try and guess what Manny might be doing for the DEA in return for a big bag of cover IDs.

I reached down between my legs and pulled out the duffle bag with my dirty clothes in it. Unzipping the duffle, I tossed the dark blue pouch inside.

“Those glasses are for you, too,” Captain Tom said, pointing to a pair of dark gray night-vision field glasses tucked under the edge of my seat.

When I added the field glasses to my duffle bag, something made me lift out the.45. Mostly I just wanted to see what Tom would say when he saw it.

His glanced over, but only briefly.

“Piece of faggot shit,” he said, hardly batting an eye.

Without slowing down, Tom bent forward and reached around to the small of his back. Lifting his shirt, he produced a black automatic with a nasty profile.

“Now take this sweet bebe here. Glock 30. All polymer. Even with a fifteen-round magazine it weighs less than thirty ounces and it’s got a trigger pull that’s silky as pussy hair. Load it with 230-gram hollow points and you can stop a truck if you can handle the kick.”

Tom shot me a quick look to check out my reaction.

“I could loan it to you. Better than that fucking piece-of-shit.45.”

“Couldn’t you just get me a bazooka instead?” I asked.

Tom tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and thought for a moment. “It’s no problem if you can give me a couple of hours.”

“That was just a joke, Tom.”

“Oh, oui,” he said, but he didn’t laugh.

After another twenty minutes the track we were following suddenly emerged from the folds of moist greenery and intersected a well-maintained asphalt highway with very little traffic. We turned south and before long I saw a pair of bridges up in the distance.

“Those are the Sarasin Bridges,” Captain Tom said when he noticed me looking. “Phuket is just on the other side, but Nai Harn Beach is all the way down at the south end of the island. We’ve still got at least another hour of driving.”

“Is that where Barry Gale is?”

“That’s where the Phuket Yacht Club is. Benny Glup has a room there.”

“I wondered what the credit card was for.”

“The room’s already taken care of-Monsieur Emmanuel’s got a friend at the hotel- but use the credit card for anything else you want. Order some champagne if you want. The bills don’t go to us anyway.”

“Forget the champagne, Tom. What about Barry Gale? When are you taking me to him?”

Captain Tom didn’t answer my question immediately. He kept his eyes fixed on the road and didn’t speak again until we had crossed the bridge and were rolling steadily down the divided highway on the other side.

“Monsieur Emmanuel told me to take you to the Phuket Yacht Club, Professeur. My instructions are that you’re on your own from there.”

We slammed through a pothole and Tom fought to keep the jeep moving in a straight line. Slowing down didn’t seem to cross his mind as an option.

“The man you’re looking for is in a villa on the southwestern tip of the island. It’s a few miles east of the Yacht Club.”

Tom glanced over to check out my reaction. I tried not to give him one.

“I’m leaving mon bebe here with you. That map you have has a route marked out from the Yacht Club up through the ruins of an old tin mine and then onto a four-wheel track that circles above the main road and intercepts it just north of the villa.”

“Can’t I just use the regular highway?”

Captain Tom looked at me like I had just ridden in with a bunch of tourists, which in a manner of speaking I guess I had.

“That’s what they’d expect. Nobody would think you might be coming in from the east, and that could be worth something to you. Besides, the track takes you down on the compound from a little above it so you can see what you’re getting into before you get there.”

“Are you sure Barry Gale is there?” I asked.

“Not absolutely,” Tom admitted with what I thought was undue good cheer, “but we figure he must be. There is a guy there who meets the description. And we know there’s a tall Chinese woman with him.”

“What would it take to make sure?”

Captain Tom took both hands off the wheel and rubbed the back of his neck without slowing down. The muddy jeep wobbled along on its own for a moment.

“Well, somebody could go up there and ring the doorbell, I guess.”

I hoped the rest of the ideas Tom had were better than that.

“Do you know how this guy got to Phuket?” I asked, changing the subject.