Tommy and I took the elevator downstairs. Neither one of us spoke.
When we got back into the Mercedes, the driver headed south, winding through the neighborhood’s backstreets until he reached Sukhumvit Road, where he turned west. Sukhumvit was like a long neon tunnel. Streaks of colored light danced on the night and the roadway shimmered with rainbows of grease and gasoline. I felt like I could have been anywhere, but I wasn’t anywhere. I was in Bangkok, in the back of a darkened Mercedes, with a slightly tubby Thai spy, having just met secretly with the world’s most notorious fugitive who had offered me millions of dollars to seek a pardon for him from the President of the United States.
Damn. Looking at it that way, even I was impressed.
Traffic was heavy past Queen’s Park and the car crawled along until we reached Soi Asoke. I passed the time watching the lights rolling down the lenses of Tommy’s glasses and it wasn’t until we were abreast of the Sheraton that I finally posed the question I’d been silently turning over in my mind ever since we had left Karsarkis’ apartment.
“What’s your angle in all this, Tommy?” I asked. “Exactly why are you here?”
Tommy turned his head and looked at me, and when he did I saw he had been waiting for me to ask.
“I’m here because we need your help, Jack.”
“We? Is that the royal we, Tommy? Or are you trying to tell me this is something official?”
“I guess,” he said after a pause, “that depends on what you think of as official.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I have instructions to tell you there are people in the Thai government who would consider it a great service to our country if you would render Mr. Karsarkis whatever assistance he may require while he is our guest here.”
“Those sound like very cautiously chosen words, my little friend. Very cautiously chosen indeed.”
“Look, Jack, stop giving me shit, will you? I’m only the messenger here. I’m just doing my job.”
“I’m not giving you shit, Tommy,” I said. “I’m just listening to you carefully, and I was particularly interested in prdrsti one word you used.”
“What word?”
“Guest. You called Karsarkis a guest.”
“Ah, Jack, drop the cutesy crap, would you?”
“No, wait a minute here, Tommy. I think that’s important. I’d like to know exactly how you draw the distinction between a fugitive and a guest. It wouldn’t have anything to do with being stinking rich and selling Thailand cut-rate oil while kicking back part of the deal to some heavy-hitting politicians, would it?”
“Look, Jack, I don’t need one of your wiseass lectures on honesty in government tonight. I really don’t.” Tommy twisted toward me and folded his arms. “Just tell me what I have to do to get you to help Plato Karsarkis get his fucking pardon and I’m out of here.”
“I want to be absolutely clear I’m hearing you right here, Tommy. Absolutely and completely clear.”
I pinned him with my best tough guy stare. I thought he flinched slightly, but perhaps I was only being hopeful.
“You are telling me the Thai government wants me to help Plato Karsarkis obtain a pardon from the President of the United States. That’s what I hear you saying here. Have I got that right?”
“Not the entire government,” Tommy said, turning away. “Don’t be a goddamned idiot.”
“Then I guess I don’t understand,” I said.
“Jack, do I have to fucking spell it out for you?”
“Yeah, fucking spell it out for me.”
Tommy looked completely exasperated and for a moment I didn’t know if he was going to say any more or not, but then he started talking again.
“Everybody in the government here isn’t on the take, Jack, regardless of what you might think.”
“Jesus, you mean a few people have eaten so much already they’ve left the table?”
Tommy ignored me, as he probably should have.
“There are some very senior people in the Thai government who think Plato Karsarkis is a danger to us,” he said. “They want him to go away. But they want that to happen without Thailand’s direct involvement.”
“Ah, I get it now,” I said. “The famously neutral Thais who, lest we forget, somehow managed to finesse World War II.”
Tommy made a sound like air rushing out of a tire. Then he sat back and folded his arms. I looked out at the street as the big Mercedes kept right on plowing through traffic like the Queen Elizabeth through a fleet of dinghies.
“These people I am referring to would owe you if you help Karsarkis, Jack, and take it from me these are people who you would like to owe you. You do this and you can just about write your own ticket around here.”
I didn’t say anything, although Tommy’s announcement certainly put a different light on all this, didn’t it? If at least part of the Thai government was pulling for Karsarkis to get his pardon, that gave the undertaking a certain sense of legitimacy it had lacked before. And then, too, some pretty impressive compensation had been laid on the table here. First Karsarkis counted out five million bucks and then Tommy made it sound like the Thai government would give me Phuket or something.
Karsarkis is going to pais nted outy somebody a shit load of money to represent him, I told myself. It wasn’t as if I would be serving truth and justice by refusing. If I said no, he’d just get someone else. So why not me? Why throw all that money and the everlasting gratitude of the Thai government away for…well, what? Besides, it might even be fun to show up at the White House as Plato Karsarkis’ lawyer. Billy Redwine would get a real hoot out of that, and everyone’s entitled to a lawyer, right?
After I had completed my personal orgy of self-justification, I flipped my bad-boy stare back on and gave Tommy a long look.
“Before I decide anything, I need to see all your intelligence files on Karsarkis. The raw files, Tommy. Not the edited crap.”
“I don’t see what good that would do you. Most of the stuff is from local sources so it’s in Thai anyway. You don’t read Thai as I recall, do you, Jack?”
“Not too well.”
“Well, there you go.”
“You got wiretaps on Karsarkis, don’t you?”
Tommy coughed and looked out the window.
“Yeah, I figured,” I said. “As far as I know Karsarkis doesn’t speak a word of Thai so whatever you’ve got has to be in English.”
Tommy cleared his throat and tried for a pacifying tone. “Look, Jack, I’d like to help you out, but-”
“You’re not helping me out. You’re helping yourself out. No files, no Jack Shepherd doing a single goddamned thing for Plato Karsarkis. That’s my deal.”
“Ah, man, I just can’t do it, Jack.”
Tommy sighed heavily and rubbed at his face. I said nothing. I figured if I kept quiet for a while, Tommy was bound to fold. I figured right.
“Look, Jack, I’ll talk to my boss,” he said, breaking the silence. “But that’s the best I can do.”
“Who’s your boss?”
Tommy suddenly grinned and winked at me. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Well, fuck, Tommy…”
“That’s all you’re getting from me, Jack. I’ll ask my boss about the files.”
“Okay, you do that.”
“But if we do give the files to you, does that mean you’ll represent Karsarkis? That you’ll try to get a pardon for him?”
I twisted around until I was facing Tommy full on. He looked alarmed and tilted his head back as if he thought I might be about to haul off and smack the crap out of him.
I leaned in close, my face right up against his, and I held it there until he flinched.
Then I winked.
“I can’t tell you that,” I said.