Read Online THE KING OF MACAU (The Jack Shepherd International Crime Novels) by Jake Needham - Free Book Online Page B

alike, but I wouldn’t be caught dead uttering that old racist-sounding canard. It was just that I simply couldn’t tell them apart. There’s a difference there, but it’s hard to explain.
    The man marched straight up to me and held out his hand. His clothes smelled like a damp wood fire. It was the smell of the clouds of incense drifting around the temple. I probably smelled the same way to him.
    “You are Mr. Shepherd, are you not?”
    Thank Christ the guy spoke English. I had forgotten to ask Raymond about the language thing. If the guy hadn’t spoken English, this would have turned into the shortest conference with a prospective client I had ever had.
    I pushed myself off the rock and we shook hands.
    “Yes, I’m Jack Shepherd,” I said. “Do you really want me to call you Freddy?”
    “Yes.”
    “Okay,” I shrugged. “It’s your dime.”
    A puzzled expression slid over Freddy’s round face. “My dime? What is a dime?”
    “It’s…an American expression. Has to do with pay telephones.”
    “You want me to talk to you on a pay telephone?”
    “No, that’s not what I meant.”
    “Then what do pay telephones have to do with this meeting?”
    “Nothing.”
    Freddy seemed to consider that for a moment, but he nodded his head very slowly without saying anything.
    “Forget the pay telephone thing,” I said, “but let’s get something straight right now. I’m only here as a favor to Raymond. I don’t normally meet prospective clients like this. Usually they’re happy to come to my office.”
    That wasn’t exactly true, I had to admit to myself. Not many of my clients called meetings at temples, that part was true enough, but damn few of them wanted to be seen going in or out of my office either.
    “I’ve got a lot to do,” I said, cutting off that particular course of introspection before it went too far. “So let’s get to it. Why are we here?”
    “I wish to apply for political asylum in America.”
    “Then you’re talking to the wrong guy. I’m only a lawyer. I can give you the name of a Foreign Service officer at the American consulate in Hong Kong. You should be talking to him.”
    “I do not wish to sound arrogant, but I have something very big to offer in return for asylum. You do not offer something this big to a clerk at a consulate.”
    I chewed at my lip and studied the guy. He didn’t seem like a nutcase, and anyway I doubted Raymond would have sicked an out-and-out screwball on me. My gut told me Freddy was sincere, but…well, it didn’t really matter, did it?
    “I don’t know anything about immigration law,” I said. “I don’t know anything about political asylum cases. I’m the wrong man for you to talk to.”
    “You were the right man for Plato Karsarkis.”
    Christ, was there anyone on the whole planet who didn’t know about that?
    Plato Karsarkis had for a while been the world’s most famous fugitive. He even became a cause for some people, a sort of international version of O.J. Simpson. Karsarkis had hired me to cut a deal for a presidential pardon. He had something to trade, too, something big enough to be worth the deal, and I tried to help him make it.
    Things hadn’t worked out particularly well. Not for Karsarkis, not for some of the other people who got involved, and certainly not for me. Johnnie Cochran walked O.J. out of the courthouse and Cochran became a hero for a whole lot of people. My association with Plato Karsarkis was less successful. All it got me was sacked from the university where I was teaching.
    The outcome may not have been my finest hour, but dealing with Karsarkis forever changed the way I saw the world. I had never trusted governments, but I had always believed there were limits to how far they would go to protect themselves. Now I knew differently. Now I knew there were no limits at all to how far they would go.
    “Plato Karsarkis isn’t a reference I use very often. Never, actually.”
    “He needed you because you could