The book that introduced Jack Shepherd
LAUNDRY MAN
WHEN NATA FINISHED reading the story, she looked at Darcy. “Maybe this guy Gale really is still around,” she said.
“Then who was the stiff in the pool?” Darcy asked.
No one said anything since the answer was pretty obvious. If Barry Gale was still alive, Wilkins was the prime candidate for the Esther Williams role. Moreover, that opened the possibility that Barry might have had something to do with arranging the casting.
“You think this guy might be indexed somewhere with EDGAR?” Darcy asked Nata.
“Who’s—” I started to ask.
“Never mind,” Darcy interrupted, and obediently I fell silent.
Nata typed briefly and then slid her hand over a trackball sitting next to the keyboard. As she rolled the cursor around one of the screens and clicked here and there, both she and Darcy leaned in closer. After a moment I saw them exchange a look and then Darcy leaned over Nata’s shoulder and typed a few keystrokes. After that they both watched the other screen in silence.
“That’s pretty amazing,” Nata finally said, more to herself than to Darcy or me.
She clicked the left mouse button on the trackball twice, looked at the screen for a long time in silence, and finally rotated her chair until she was facing me.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Jack.”
Up until then I thought we had been doing just fine.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I found the name Barry Gale in a keyword search of EDGAR’s primary data index,” Nata explained. “But when I went to the locations referenced in the search, there was nothing there. All the references came up as invalid entries.”
“Does that happen a lot?”
Darcy glanced at Nata for a moment and then shook her head. “Never.”
“What are you saying?” I asked, looking from one to the other.
“There are a couple of possibilities, I guess,” Nata took over again. “Three, really. Mistakes in data paths can occur. Maybe this is just the result of a simple input error.”
“But you don’t think so.” I was sure, at least, of that much. Nata’s face made it plain. “What else?” I asked.
“The references may have been there once, then deleted for some reason and the index entries were overlooked.”
“I didn’t think database entries were ever deleted, just updated.”
“Right. Usually they’re not.”
“So then what’s the third reason?” I asked.
Nata hesitated, glancing at Darcy, who nodded once.
“The entries may be encrypted with a unique key that we don’t have,” she said. “That’s never happened before either, but theoretically I suppose it’s possible.”
“And what would that mean?”
“There’s generally a turf battle of some kind going on in Washington, Jack. It might just be that one agency has something going and it’s taking particular care to make sure that another agency can’t find out about it. It could be that sort of thing.”
“Could be?”
“Look, Jack, we’re good, but we’re not perfect. Some of the really big hitters can bury stuff so deep we can’t get to it. To tell you the absolute truth, it hasn’t happened before, but it is possible.”
“Really big hitters? What are you telling me? What kind of database is this anyway?”
Nata felt silent, then glanced toward Darcy again. Darcy sighed and folded her arms.
“Don’t put me in a bad spot here, Jack. Let’s just say that it is a comprehensive summary of…” Darcy paused, weighing her words, “nonpublic U.S. intelligence data concerning foreign organized crime activity. If there was any real connection between your man, the Texas State Bank, and the Russian mob, it would be in here.”
“In other words,” I said, “you’ve hacked the FBI.”
“If we had, you wouldn’t want us to tell you, would you?”
I had always thought the expression about someone’s eyes twinkling was pure poetic exaggeration, but right at that moment Darcy’s actually did.
“So what can you tell me that won’t get me twenty to life?”
“My gut says you’re about to step into it here, Jack,” Darcy said. “I’d back off and let it go if I were you.”
That wasn’t exactly what I had been expecting to hear.
“Don’t you think that’s sensationalizing this thing a little, Darcy? How can it hurt just to meet a guy at Foodland and talk to him?”
“He may tell you something you’re better off not hearing,” she said.
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“Do you want some help?” Nata asked.
“Help? Doing what?”
“If you’re really going to meet this guy, it might be a good idea to have somebody throw a loose net over you. That way you’d pick up on any surveillance that might be on you or any other funny business that might be going on.”
“I don’t like the sound of this very much.”
“You asked for our advice and I’m giving it to you.”
“Look, if there’s really something nasty going on here, the last thing I want is to get you two involved.”
“Oh, not us,” Darcy jumped back in. “You know my policy about avoiding operations. But we could find somebody to cover you without much trouble.”
“How about Mango Manny?” Nata asked, looking at Darcy.
“That’s a good thought,” she answered. “You know him, Jack?”
“I don’t think so. I imagine I’d remember meeting anybody with a name like Mango Manny.”
“His real name is Emmanuel Marcus. He’s a Brit. Used to be a top hitter in London, but he made a couple of silly mistakes and had to relocate on short notice.”
“Mistakes?”
“Oh, you know. Hit the wrong people a couple of times. That sort of thing.”
Darcy made it sound like the fellow had done nothing worse than misdirect a few Federal Express packages.
“Manny’s been in Bangkok… oh, four or five years now, I think. He owns Q Bar, that place on Soi 11 where the hipper-than-thou crowd hangs out. You’ve been there, haven’t you?”
“Nope. Too expensive for me. I’m more a Cheap Charlie’s kind of guy.”
“Manny’s very well connected. Plays golf with all the right generals and government ministers. But the important thing is that he’s got a really first-class organization.”
“You mean at his bar?”
“No, not that. Manny brought the marijuana business here into the twenty-first century. Really made it fly, so to speak.”
“He’s a drug dealer?”
Darcy looked down and kicked her toe at the carpet. “He’s more of a… management consultant. Besides, he won’t touch anything but grass. The man’s not a criminal, Jack.”
I took a deep breath.
“Just let me be sure I understand what you’re telling me here,” I said. “Just because you can’t find a couple of references to Barry Gale in your magic machine, you’re seriously proposing that I get some screw-up cockney hit man turned godfather to the Thai marijuana trade to work security for me when I go to the Foodland tonight to meet a dead guy. Have I pretty much got it?”
“Manny’s not a cockney,” Darcy said. “He went to Cambridge.”
“Oh well, that changes everything.”
“He’s really a pretty good guy,” Nata put in. “I think he just watched too many Bob Hoskins movies when he was young and never got over it.”
There was a little silence then and Darcy and Nata both watched me expressionlessly. In the quiet, I thought I could feel something stirring around me. I didn’t know what it was, but it felt large and unpleasant.
“What do you think I should do, Darcy?” I finally asked.
Darcy placed one hand gently on my back. She had the sort of look on her face I imagined a mother might give a son who was going off to war, a look that said there wasn’t a thing she could do but wish him luck and hope for the best.
“Be careful, Jack. Be very, very careful.”
The book that introduced Jack Shepherd