LAUNDRY MAN (A Jack Shepherd crime thriller) by Jake Needham

went surprisingly well. The sugar and caffeine did an impressive job. I had just walked into my office after the class when my telephone rang.
    “Hello.”
    “Could you come to the office tomorrow afternoon to talk over a couple of things, Jack? About five or so would be good for me.”
    If Dollar could be brusque, I supposed I could, too, so I ignored his question.
    “I was going to call you later,” I said. “I heard you got knocked around last night.”
    There was a short silence.
    “Where did you hear that?” Dollar asked after a moment.
    “Jello told me. The way I hear it, Just John told him.”
    “Jello? The ECID guy?”
    “Yeah.”
    Dollar let that hang there for a moment, and then I heard an exasperated grunt.
    “Figures.”
    I waited a moment for him to offer some explanation, but he didn’t.
    “So is it true?” I finally asked him.
    “Well…” Dollar hesitated. “It was no big deal.”
    “No big deal.”
    “No.”
    “What happened?”
    “It’s not much of a story.”
    I waited Dollar out. Eventually he filled the silence.
    “We were coming out of the office and two kids jumped us while I was calling my driver. The little shits were probably just a couple of pill heads trying to grab our briefcases. It happens.”
    “Not really. Not in front of the United Center at that time of night.”
    “Sure it does.”
    “You hurt?”
    “A little, I guess. Bruises, and I’m sore as hell, but I’ll live.” I could almost hear Dollar thinking before he went on. “Look, just keep this under your hat, would you?”
    “If it’s such a big secret, why did you tell Just John about it?”
    Dollar paused for a long time and I sensed he was trying to decide how much he had to say to make me let it go.
    “It’s his job to look after firm security,” he finally said. Then he fell silent again.
    That was the first I had heard of that. I always thought Just John was just a glad-hander and a boozer. Dollar telling me that he did security work for the firm opened up several questions—most conspicuously, exactly what was John supposed to be securing Dollar’s law firm
from.
But before I could ask, Dollar started talking again.
    “Anyway, a couple of tourist police came along right after we ran the fuckers off. Eventually John would have found out even if I hadn’t told him myself. That would have pissed him off real good. This town is too goddamned small for me sometimes.”
    It seemed odd to me Dollar would care one way or the other if Just John was pissed off. Who worked for whom? But another question elbowed past that thought and went right up to the front of the line.
    “Who’s ‘we’?” I asked Dollar instead.
    “What?”
    “You said ‘we’ were coming out of the office and ‘we’ ran them off.”
    Dollar hesitated, and suddenly I knew exactly what he was about to say.
    “Howard the Roach,” he muttered just as I was thinking exactly that. “Look, Jack, I could have told you something else instead of admitting right off that it was Howard, but you’d probably—”
    “Was he hurt?” I interrupted.
    “Not really,” Dollar replied after a second’s hesitation. It seemed to surprise him that I hadn’t asked him something else and the relief in his voice was evident.
    “I’m glad to hear that,” I said.
    I thought about the conversation Dollar and I had about Howard a couple of days ago and I wondered again what Dollar wasn’t telling me.
    “Look, Jack, can you come around tomorrow like I asked?” Dollar asked when I said nothing else. “It’s important.”
    “I’m going to Hong Kong tomorrow.”
    “Hong Kong?” I could swear Dollar sounded startled. “Why Hong Kong?”
    “Board meeting. Southeast Asian Investments.”
    “Oh, yeah.” There was a tinge of relief in Dollar’s voice for some reason. I was certain of it. “How long you going to be there?”
    “A couple of days.”
    “Then how about Saturday morning? You free then?”
    Whatever Dollar had on his mind