LAUNDRY MAN (A Jack Shepherd crime thriller) Read Online Free PDF Page A

glasses of cold water in front of each of us, positioning them carefully on tiny squares of coarse, white cotton.
    Darcy smiled at me and waited until the maid had glided silently out of the room before she said anything else.
    “Nata is out in the cottage running some stuff. She ought to be in any minute.”
    Nata had been Darcy’s companion for almost fifteen years and, not surprisingly, she was one of the primary reasons why Darcy had chosen Bangkok for her retirement. The daughter of a Thai general who had ended up on the wrong side of some long-forgotten military coup, Nata was a stunningly beautiful woman who must have been in her late forties. She was very slight with wispy, wide-set eyes, and she seldom wore make-up. Her skin was smooth and milky-looking, so white that you could go snow-blind just looking at it.
    I was the pretty much the only foreigner I knew who hadn’t ended up in Thailand because of the women.
    “So tell me, doll, what’s on your mind? I get the feeling you didn’t come all the way out here looking for a free lunch.”
    “I guess I did in a manner of speaking. I need something.”
    “Don’t we all?”
    “I’ve got to meet somebody tonight, and I don’t want to sound completely stupid when I do.”
    “Uh-huh.” Darcy’s face was professionally empty, waiting.
    “I just need a little background. Nothing heavy duty.”
    “Tell me the story. Let me decide that.”
    I told Darcy about the telephone call and about my summons to Foodland that night. I also told her what I remembered about Barry Gale’s so-called suicide and the stories linking the Texas State Bank with money laundering by Russian mobsters. But I didn’t know much so that didn’t take very long.
    “What I need is a digest of the press coverage around the time Barry Gale is supposed to have died,” I finished. “Can you manage that?”
    “Exactly what are you looking for?”
    “To be honest, I’m not sure. Anything that would prepare me for however this conversation tonight ends up going, I guess. Whatever that means.”
    “I don’t see how any of the public stuff is going to help you figure out whether this really
is
your guy, if that’s what you’re trying to do.”
    “Well…”
    “Yeah, I know,” Darcy laughed. “You’d also like to see if I could come up with anything that might not have made the papers.”
    “Something like that.”
    “For you, Jack, anything.”
    Darcy stood up and held out her hand.
    “Let’s take a walk out to the cottage, doll.”

SIX
    THE BUILDING THAT Darcy called a cottage was actually the size of a whole house even if it didn’t look much like one. Had it not been for a door on the first level and two small windows on the second, it would have resembled a solid cube of stucco.
    The first floor was a single brightly lit room with at least a dozen computer workstations positioned around its walls. Three matronly-looking Thai women, all apparently well into their sixties if not older, moved silently from station to station checking the screens and occasionally tapping a few characters on one of the keyboards. In the center of the room, on a low platform, there was a far more elaborate workstation equipped with four huge thin-panel displays supported by sleek, black pedestals.
    Nata perched at the center of the platform in an orthopedic chair and rested her folded forearms on the table in front of a keyboard. She was looking from one display to the other, twisting her brows in concentration. A thin microphone on a chrome boom curved in front of her mouth and I had the impression she had been murmuring into it when we came in, but when she saw us she pushed herself back from the table and flicked the boom up over her head like a surfer chick flipping up sunglasses.
    “Hey, Jack boy! Long time.”
    “I was in the neighborhood, so—”
    “Yeah, yeah. What is it this time? You never come to see me except when you want something.”
    “That’s not entirely true,” I said,