Anna’s was a one-story, white-pillared building of vaguely colonial design with a wide, red-tiled veranda running all the way across the front. Most people preferred to sit indoors since the large dining area was airy and spacious, but the weather was still unusually cool and the veranda looked inviting. I wasn’t particularly surprised when Jello walked to the end furthest from the front door and settled himself at a round teak table shaded by a white canvas umbrella. I pulled out a chair and joined him, folding my arms and leaning forward attentively against the table in hopes that my posture might encourage him to resume the conversation.
Jello sat slouched down, his body relaxed, but his dark eyes flicked around with the alertness of a pool shark cruising a game. “I like to sit out here when I’ve got some serious thinking to do,” he said.
“And is that why we’re here now? To do some serious thinking?”
A boy with an uncertain smile and fluttering hands brought us menus before Jello could answer.
“Not really,” he said as scanned one of the menus. “We’re here to have lunch. Okay if I order for us both?”
Without waiting for an answer, Jello ordered several Thai dishes and two bottles of Heineken and the waiter scurried away. That apparently marked the end of the pleasantries. After that Jello got straight to the point.
“What do you know about a man named Howard Kojinski?” he asked in his cop’s voice, the one that gave away nothing, but implied everything.
After being mentioned as far as I could recall exactly never, Howard the Roach was now popping up everywhere I went like crab grass after a wet winter.
“Couldn’t you have asked me that on the telephone?”
“You never know about telephones. Shouldn’t say anything on a telephone you’re not ready to read in the newspapers tomorrow morning.”
Jello’s reluctance to use the telephone for what seemed to me to be an innocent enough inquiry would have verged on the comic if Dollar’s recent obsession with Howard hadn’t already been worrying me. I was pretty sure now that nothing involving Howard the Roach was likely to turn out to be innocent, or for that matter, comic.
“For instance,” Jello went on, “what do you know about his background?”
The answer of course was little or nothing. Howard was Dollar’s client, not mine. I had always worked on the premise that I was advising whatever firm hired me, not any specific client of theirs. The clients were their problem, not mine.
“Not a lot,” I said truthfully. “He told me once that he was from Poland.” I thought about it some more. “Isn’t he an accountant?”
“What kind of work have you and Dollar been doing for Howard recently?”
“Whoa,” I said, and raised my right hand, palm out. “What does that mean?”
“It’s a simple question. Seems clear enough to me.”
“Then I’ll give you a simple answer. I won’t tell you. I’m not going to talk about anything that Dollar’s firm is doing for its clients, and you ought to know better than to ask me to.”
The young waiter returned and set sweating bottles of Heineken on cardboard coasters in front of each of us. Jello waved the proffered glass away, wrapped a big hand around the green bottle, and downed half of it in one hit. When the boy reached to put a glass in front of me, I shook my head as well, and he snatched it back and moved away.
“Don’t give me that lawyer crap, Jack. Just tell me the truth.”
God knows I wasn’t all that fond of being a lawyer, but every time somebody said that kind of thing to me it still rubbed me the wrong way.
“Look,” I said, giving my indignation free reign to strut its stuff, “why don’t you just ask Dollar if you want to know something about his firm and its clients? Leave me out of it.”
Jello nodded, looking off toward where a chubby blonde woman was getting out of a taxi. She had leathery skin and was wearing a red dress that was much too tight and far too short. Lugging two large Fendi shopping bags, she struggled up Anna’s driveway toward the front door, the bags slapping awkwardly against her heavy thighs.
“I’m going to tell you something I shouldn’t, Jack. I’m going to tell you because I think you’re entitled to know exactly what’s going on here, but you’re not going to be happy to hear it.” Jello sounded like a librarian who was about to describe the best way to burn books. “Are you okay with that?”
“Look, Jello, you’re buying lunch. You can tell me anything you want to, but I’m not going to talk to you about Dollar’s clients and nothing you can say is going to change that.”
The waiter reappeared, settled his tray on the empty table next to ours, and stilled his hands long enough to serve the food. Jello inspected each plate as it was placed on the table-somtam, a papaya salad with chilies; stir-fried morning glory in oyster sauce; prawn curry; lemongrass chicken; and spicy noodles. Apparently everything met with his approval because he began spooning bits of each dish onto his plate of rice even before the waiter had collected the tray and withdrawn.
Jello ate for a while, saying nothing while I served myself, and then as I started to eat, he cleared his throat lightly.
“Howard Kojinski isn’t an accountant from Poland.”
“Really?” I hoped my tone of voice reflected my general lack of interest in the subject.
“He was born in New Jersey, did ten years in the U.S. army, mostly in Germany, and then became an airline reservations agent. A few years later he somehow wound up working as a mid-level coke mule for the Colombians. He got busted making a run to Houston and did a few months in prison in Texas.”
“Gee,” I said. “That’s fascinating.”
Jello ignored me and went on.
“He must have used his time there making friends and learning new skills because he went to Hong Kong right after that and set himself up running a small-time money laundry. He turned out to be pretty good at it, and now he moves cash all over Asia for a lot of people you don’t want to know about. Recently we think he’s become the primary money launderer for a group of major Burmese heroin producers.”
I burst out laughing. I gathered that wasn’t exactly the reaction Jello had been expecting.
“You think that’s funny?” he snapped.
“Christ, I think it’s hysterical.”
I shook my head and finished off the Heineken.
“Look, Jello, unless you’re just generally full of crap, you’ve got the wrong man. Howard the Roach couldn’t launder money if you gave him a new Whirlpool with a sign on the door that says ‘In Here, Stupid.’ If the Burmese are using Howard to handle their cash, I can promise you it’s a giant step toward wiping out the drug trade in Asia.”
I was still shaking my head. How anyone who knew Howard could think he was equipped to handle anything more complex than taking a whiz without soaking his shoes was utterly beyond me.
“Howard doesn’t just move money around for these guys,” Jello continued, apparently unimpressed with my skepticism. “He invests it for them. Suddenly Howard Kojinski has started turning up in all kinds of strange places.”
“Such as?”
“I can’t tell you that, Jack.”
I snorted, and Jello looked annoyed.
“Have you told Dollar any of this?” I asked.
Jello sighed deeply and his expression softened. “Yeah, sort of.”
“What does that mean?”
Jello chugged the rest of his Heineken and stuffed a heaping spoonful of somtam into his mouth right behind it.
“I told him and he said it was bullshit, but he refused to tell me anything about Howard’s business. He said it would be a breach of ethics.”
“Yeah, well, there’s your answer.”
“But it’s not bullshit, Jack. That’s the point. It’s all absolutely true.” Jello tapped the empty Heineken bottle against the table with a crisp little rat-a-tat-tat. “That’s when I started wondering if Dollar might be involved, too.”