Laundry Man

“Montecristos. Cubans, no less,” I said turning the box over in my hands. “Isn’t this a breach of national security or something?”

“Working in the White House has got to have some perks, doesn’t it?”

We both smiled, but I suspected at different things.

“It’s a real shame you had to give them those bank records,” the man said as he closed his briefcase. “Now that they’ve got their hands on the slush fund again, shutting down these guys will be a bitch.”

I scratched at the back of my neck with one hand and made a show of thoughtful deliberation.

“You have to understand that I needed to see your reaction before I gave you the last little bit of it,” I said after a pause. “I had to see if you already knew.”

My visitor eyed me a moment, a half-smile creeping over his face, and then he leaned against the wall, waiting.

“I have no idea where the money is,” I said. “Neither do they.”

I paused to let that sink in.

“And now that they’ve killed Barry Gale, they’ll never find it.”

There was a look of puzzlement in my visitor’s nod. “But what about the bank records you gave them?” he asked.

“The network I got them into was the university network at Chula, not the Asian Bank of Commerce. What Phony Frank got was a list of transactions I’d made up for the final exam in my international banking class. I don’t think they’ll be of much use to someone who’s trying to overthrow the Chinese government.”

My visitor stuck his tongue into the corner of his cheek.

“You’re shittin’ me,” he laughed.

“I shit you not, partner.”

The man laughed some more and clapped me on the shoulder.

“You sure you don’t want a job at the White House, Jack? You’re just the kind of sneaky, deceitful bastard who would fit right in.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the red and yellow plumes of the setting sun coloring the sky above the Andaman Sea. They were bombarding the heavens like rockets, bursting against the clouds and sprinkling a dusting of pink and gold over the gunmetal surface of the sea.

“No thanks,” I said after a moment. “I’m fine right here.”

AFTER MY VISITOR left I took one of the Montecristos out of the box and went back out on the terrace. I dragged a chair around until I could slump back into it and prop my feet up on the railing, then I lit the cigar, cupping my hand around its tip to block off the ocean winds until a red coal was burning deep inside. Taking my time, I nursed a tiny cone of ash into life at its tip.

I sat there smoking quietly and soon I was enveloped by a night deeper than any I could remember. I stole away into it and thought back over what my visitor had said.

Did the White House really know nothing about any of this?

Had no one there ever heard of Just John or Phony Frank, or about the murders of Dollar Dunne or Howard the Roach or Barry Gale?

Maybe he had told me the truth. Maybe nobody there knew anything.

But then again, maybe somebody there knew everything.

What else would he have said if they had?

Tilting my head back, I looked up at a canopy of stars that was so radiant, so lustrously deep and rich that all at once I felt a sensation of being released from the world. It was as if at any moment I was about to be lifted gently away from the earth and drawn straight up into the sky.

I took a deep draw on my cigar. The wet ocean air collected the gray wisps of smoke and tugged them away into the night.