Laundry Man

saw the way to do it right away.”

Barry tapped the side of his head with one finger and hoisted his eyebrows. I struggled not to laugh.

“All the ABC had to do was arrange routine trade financing between the Burmese shell companies and a bunch of ordinary businesses the Chinese army controlled. Coal mines and toy companies, shit like that. We accepted the cash being held in the American banks as security for the loans. After that, we could shift the deposits around through our own system without anybody noticing. You following me here, Jack?”

“I think I can grasp the mechanics, Barry.”

“It was even simpler than you might think because here’s the twist I put on the deal. We took the Burmese funds out of the American shell companies as security for the loans to the Chinese, but we never made any loans.”

It took me a moment, but then I saw the brutal simplicity in what Barry was saying.

“You’re telling me that instead of laundering the money that came from the Burmese and passing it through to the Chinese, the Asian Bank of Commerce stole it?”

“Not exactly. I stole it, not the bank. I personally cleaned the motherfuckers out.”

“Why would you think you could get away with that?”

“Two reasons, Jack.”

Barry held up two fingers as if I might not be familiar with the number.

“First, what we had with the ABC was a sort of No Tell Motel for money. I mean, it’s like this. You’re at a nice little motel way out somewhere on the highway with a lady friend and you see your worst enemy with some big- tittied hooker. What are you going to do? Call his wife and say you saw him there? And then when your wife finds out you were there and she asks ‘What were you doing at the No Tell Motel?’ what are you going to say to her? Hey, it was foolproof, Jack. The money was never supposed to be there in the first place. So who the hell was going to complain that it was gone?”

“What’s the second reason?” I asked.

“Well, the second reason-and I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Jack-is you.”

“Me? I’ve got nothing to do with your deal, Barry.”

Barry smiled and there was something about the way he did it that I really didn’t like.

“Every business deal I have ever been in eventually works out the same way, Jack. Somebody gets fucked. You know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“So that’s what you’ve got to do with this deal. You’re the guy who’s getting fucked.”

FORTY SIX

“It’s this way, Jack. Even when you’re messing around with money that’s not supposed to exist, it still belongs to somebody, and they’ll still be plenty pissed when they find out it’s gone.”

“I can imagine.”

“Yeah, that was the problem I had. If the Burmese thought I had their money, they might not come after me publicly, but you can bet your ass that they’d do it privately. Sometimes it’s those private complaints that really end up fucking you in the ass. You know what I mean?”

“Not really. That’s not a problem I’ve ever had.”

“Well, Jack, that’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you here. You have it now.”

Barry tapped the side of his head with his index finger for the second time. He apparently liked that gesture a lot.

“Taking the money was easy, Jack, but I knew keeping it was a whole different deal. I needed a patsy, someone who was such a respected expert in international finance that it would be entirely believable that he was the scammer, not me. Someone exactly like you.”

“That’s nuts, Barry. Why would anyone in his right mind think that I had anything to do with all this?”

“Because your fingerprints are all over everything connected with it: the legal work, the fund transfers, even the corporate structures we used. It was all your work, Jack. You put it together.”

That didn’t make any sense. I had never had any thing to do with the Asian Bank of Commerce. The closest I had come to it was fifteen minutes in a corporate services office in Hong Kong trying to have a conversation with a human doorstop.

“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

He had me there. I shook my head.

“I own Southeast Asian Investments, Jack. Why do you think you got that invitation out of the blue to join their board of directors?” Barry grinned and spread his palms. “Hey, I always remember my buddies, don’t I?”

And just like that the pieces of the puzzle began to slide around in my mind and assemble themselves into a picture that actually made a sort of weird sense.

“The Cambodian shrimp farm deal they ask me to look into was really just a conduit for laundering money into China?” I asked carefully.

“Yep,” Barry nodded. “You’re strapped so tightly to ABC and Southeast Asian Investments that it won’t take even those Burmese idiots very long to work out that you’re the guy in the barrel here.”

“And what did I do with all this money I’m supposed to have taken?”

“Ah, Jack…” Barry spread his hands in front of him in the classic gesture of helplessness. “I only wish I knew. If I did, honest banker that I am, I’d send the information straight to the Chinese who were supposed to get the funds in the first place. You were just too smart for me.”

And that was when I started to laugh.

Barry looked puzzled. He figured I ought to be pissing myself right about then, certainly oozing some heavy sweat at the very least, but I wasn’t. I was sitting there laughing at him.

“Laugh if you want, Jack, but I hear both the Burmese and the Chinese are looking all over for their money. And they’re looking for you.”

I sat and shook my head. This was too good to be true.

“How much did you get?” I asked him. “How much did I get?’

“Nearly $50,000,000.”

I knew I might never get another moment like this again if I lived forever.

“Actually, it wasn’t quite that much, was it, Barry? It was more like $43,600,000. Plus change.”

I stared Barry straight in the eyes and relished every second of the silence that followed. He tried briefly to look unperturbed, but the effort was a dead loss.

“How the hell did you know that?” he snapped.

I could see the fear. Barry had lost control somehow. He didn’t know why or how, and that had scared the hell out of him. Slamming him right then was like slugging a drunk, but I did it anyway. I continued to stare straight into his wide black eyes and I swung from my heels.

“The money you stole was going to China all right, Barry, but it didn’t belong to any Burmese drug producers and it wasn’t meant for building heroin refineries in China. It was a CIA slush fund. It was bribe money the CIA was laundering to keep their Chinese networks going.”

Barry went completely white. I had never seen anyone go white before and I had always thought the expression to be mostly poetic license; but it wasn’t, and he did.

“Bullshit!” he sputtered.

For a moment Barry appeared to be fumbling for some even more forceful way to put his thoughts, but if that’s what he was doing, he was spectacularly unsuccessful.

“Bullshit!” he sputtered again, spittle accumulating at the corners of his mouth.

This time he pointed a finger at me, although I wasn’t quite sure what he thought that added to his point of view.

“Makes no difference to me if you believe it,” I said and tossed out my most ingratiating smile. “My ass isn’t hanging out here.”