LAUNDRY MAN (A Jack Shepherd crime thriller) by Jake Needham Read Free Book Online Page A

you should.”
    “Now don’t go getting—”
    “You Americans are all alike, aren’t you, Jack. All a bunch of tiny John Waynes at heart. Well here’s a flash for you. Life is not a movie. You’ve got to have the sense to know when to be afraid.”
    “Look, come over here and sit down.” I patted the cushion next to me with my open palm. “Let’s start over.”
    Anita stayed where she was just long enough to make it unmistakable that she was sitting because she chose to, not because I had asked her to. Then she walked over and perched on the couch.
    “I didn’t see any danger in going tonight or I wouldn’t go, Anita.”
    “You didn’t see any danger in going to a dangerous part of town and waiting for some nut who called out of a clear blue sky claiming to be a dead man? You really don’t see any danger in doing that in the middle of the night?”
    “It’s not a dangerous part of town, it’s a supermarket. And midnight isn’t really the middle of the night.”
    “Don’t pull that lawyer crap on me, hot-shot.”
    “Look, Anita, when was the last time you heard of a foreigner being assaulted by anyone in Bangkok?”
    “The week before last.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “That French photographer. It was in all the papers.”
    Come to think of it, Anita was right. A couple of weeks before, a motorcyclist had shot to death a middle-aged Frenchman walking back to his apartment after an evening spent drinking at the Crown Royal in Patpong. The foreign community had fretted about that for a few days, but the whole incident quickly slid off their radar when the
Bangkok Post
reported that the Frenchman’s Thai wife and her nineteen-year-old Thai boyfriend had hired the shooter.
    “I figured I’d be safe,” I said, “since you were out of town.”
    “Ha, ha, ha, ha.”
    “Look, Anita, I wouldn’t go if I’d thought it was dangerous. And besides, I promise to be very careful.”
    Anita folded her arms again and drew her mouth into a tight line.
    “If it’s not dangerous, why are you going to be careful?”
    She had me there. Never argue with an Italian woman who was born in France, I reminded myself for not the first time.
    “I’m very tired,” Anita suddenly announced in a voice that made it clear my sins would not be forgiven anytime soon. “I’m going to take a shower and go to bed. Good night, Jack.” And with that she stood up and left the room.
    I still had a couple of hours to kill before I had to go out to meet Barry Gale. With no prospect of peace on the horizon, I got another beer and went back to watching the Redskins.

NINE
    ABOUT TWO DOZEN high-backed wooden stools with gray seat cushions faced the narrow, L-shaped counter. I slid onto an empty stool and looked around. A small vase of flowers sat on the counter next to a stainless steel water pitcher and a bottle of chili sauce. The flowers were plastic, but somehow they still looked tried and bedraggled. I knew just how they felt.
    Took Lae Dee is really nothing more than a little food-service counter stuck up at the front of an all night Foodland where a lot of foreigners shop. Its name translates from Thai as “cheap and good.” At least, it does if you pronounce it right. Since few foreigners struggling with Thai can manage the tones, Took Lae Dee sometimes comes out with a rising rather than a falling tone, turning the translation of its name into “sorrowful and good.” Took Lae Dee is a major hangout for the Bangkok nightshift so I always thought those two dueling translations framed the place pretty accurately.
    Behind the counter a Chinese-looking woman in a white cap scraped fried rice from a wok onto a plate. A plastic ID badge with a tiny picture was clipped to her apron and made her look more like someone employed in a defense plant than a counter girl at an all-night diner. Another cook was showing off, flipping a wok full of noodles into the air and then slapping the wok smartly with a long-handled