KILLING PLATO (A Jack Shepherd crime thriller) Read Online Free PDF

wi of a Suzuki.
    When we got to the top of the steps that led up to the front doors, I stopped and turned around. The elevation of the rise gave onto a view out over the dense mangrove forests and across most of the sleeping island. The moon had risen and it cast a dim glow over the landscape. I could see a highway far away and for a moment I tracked a single pair of distant headlights creeping along its length. I thought I could almost see a pale glimmer of moonlight on the sea out on the eastern horizon, but probably it was just my imagination.
    “Not bad,” I said to Anita.
    I glanced over and saw her looking at me strangely.
    “No, really. It’s not bad at all. Sort of like living in Big Sur, I guess. That is if you can imagine living in Big Sur with the Thai army guarding your outer perimeter and IRA patrols roaming around inside your fence line.”
    Then I lifted my right arm over my head and waved it back and forth a couple of times.
    “Who are you waving to?” Anita asked.
    “I just wanted to be sure we haven’t missed anyone,” I told her.
    Anita was silent for a moment.
    “Are you ready now, Jack?”
    “Yes,” I said, “I think I am.”
    I said I was ready, but I wasn’t. And not being able to find the goddamned doorbell didn’t do much to help either.
    THE PAIR OF glass doors at the top of the short flight of steps was positioned in a glass wall. I had to admit the effect was spectacular, but if it was an intelligence test to see who could figure out where the freaking doorbell was, I flunked.
    So what did Karsarkis expect us to do? Knock on the glass like a couple of ninnies?
    I could see right through the doors, across the corridor, and out the other side, straight into an interior courtyard where there was a huge rectangular swimming pool with water so Tidy-Bowl blue it looked like it had been dyed. Arranged in groupings around the pool were a dozen or more teak lounge chairs with white canvas cushions, most of them shaded by large beach umbrellas. Several groves of strategically placed palm trees set off the whole tableau.
    “Wouldn’t you think he could afford a doorbell?”
    I addressed the question to Anita. I didn’t really expect her to answer, and of course she didn’t.
    I was just giving consideration to reaching for a rock when a maid in an ankle-length black skirt and white blouse silently materialized and swung open both doors. She stepped back as we entered, inclining her head and bringing her palms together in front of her face, the tips of her fingers reaching just to the bridge of her nose.
    It was a traditional gesture Thais call a
wai
and I have always thought it a uniquely warm and elegant form of greeting that makes the western handshake seem hopelessly gawky by comparison. Of course, the
wai
is also a profoundly nuanced signal of relative social standing, and the way Thais wield it frequently leaves me a little bewildered. The inferior
wais
the superior, and the younger
wais
the older. That much I understand, but I still screw up my response most of the time because I am never entirely certain how to deal with the subtleties inherent in that equation. For instance, how to respond to a
wai
from a waiter who is really old? What carries the greater weight, the age or the station?
    Sinc Kjuswai
    We followed the maid as she led us down the wide glass corridor that defined the front of Karsarkis’ house. Lining it were a succession of small sculptures displayed on tall pedestals, and I paused briefly to examine one that turned out to be a likeness of a very fat woman bending forward and displaying her formidable rear end. The piece was made of something that looked like terracotta, and the material and the soft lighting of the corridor combined to cause the woman’s imposing posterior to glow with a bright pink sheen.
    “I’ve heard that having a huge pink bottom helps females attract males,” I whispered to Anita.
    She shifted her eyes toward me, but said nothing.
    “Of