The 38 Million Dollar Smile ds-10

by Richard Stevenson

  I repeated to Pugh what I had told him earlier during an attempt to deconstruct Ellen Griswold’s phone call. “It had to have been Thomsatai that tipped off Griswold that we were looking for him. If so, Thomsatai has to have a phone number or some other way of contacting Griswold. If we can get him to talk, Thomsatai has to be our most reliable route to Griswold.”

  “Possibly,” Pugh said. “Though Griswold may have a friendly police contact who alerted him. As soon as I began asking the cops about Griswold, word would have spread.

  There’s a network of gay police officers, to cite one possible mechanism for alarms being sent Griswold’s way.”

  “There’s no stigma attached to being gay in the police department?”

  “There’s some, but not a lot. Once in a while you hear about some prick senior officer who’s hard on gays. Some of them picked up these bad attitudes from Christians or the Chinese or the US military. But most cops couldn’t care less. When I was in the police, a bunch of us were at a drunken beach party where all the guys ended up naked in a heap on the sand screwing and getting screwed. It was like a kind of larky extension of that day’s volleyball game, and everybody thought of it as just having a nice social occasion. Naughty but harmless. And nearly all those guys were straight, I think. The tops outnumbered the bottoms, as I recall, and I’m guessing that that’s significant.”

  “I can see why Griswold emigrated here. Poor guy. He thought he was coming to gay paradise and ended up in some weird purgatory. What about Khun Khunathip? Do we know if he was gay?”

  “I’d say no. Word gets around about the hectic erotic lives of Thailand’s mighty. Khunathip was not a monk, but if I had to guess I’d make him for a celibate. He got off on celebrity and power, the ultimate getting-off devices even in our sanuk-loving society.”

  “And Khun Anant, Griswold’s drinking companion on Khun Khunathip’s balcony? Any chance he’s gay?”

  As Ek pulled into the driveway of the Topmost, Pugh said,

  “While I love the image of former finance minister and present-day molder of the Thai economy Anant na Ayudhaya on his back, heels to Jesus, while a senior vice president of the Commercial Bank of Siam, say, proceeds to make a strenuous deposit in his excellency’s person, again I would guess no, he’s not gay. The connections between Griswold and the soothsayer and the financier appear to be other than sexual or purely social.

  The confluence of Khunathip, Anant, and a mentally uncertain farang with thirty-eight mil in his pocket strongly suggests a financial occasion. And a major one, at that. That is why, Mr.

  Don, knowing what I know about money and power in Thailand and the lengths people will travel in order to get and keep money and power, I am truly shakin’ in my boots.” As he climbed out of the car and headed for the breakfast buffet, Pugh smiled tightly and added, “And how’s it shakin’ with you, Mr. Don?”

  After I cleaned up and Pugh had his bacon, we drove over to Griswold’s condo and again threatened Mr. Thomsatai with a telephone book. I wouldn’t actually have hit him, and I guessed that neither would Pugh. Ek was stationed nearby, within sight of Thomsatai, and with his Buick Roadmaster chest and enormous upper arms adorned with inky images of hissing serpents, Ek made an impression. So the condo manager was forthcoming, bordering on chatty.

  “Ah, Mr. Don, Khun Rufus. Have you been able to find Mr.

  Gary? I am so worried about him.”

  “We thought you might know where he is, actually,” I said.

  “Or at least how to reach him by telephone. Or wasn’t it you who tipped Griswold off that I was in Bangkok searching for him? You’re the most likely candidate, what with hardly anybody else even knowing I was in town.”

  Thomsatai got on his might-have-a-stroke look and began to gush sweat. It was unclear, though, whether this was because he was about to tell a huge lie or because he thought we thought 130 Richard Stevenson he knew something he didn’t actually know and somebody might go after him again with a phone book.

  He looked at us and said evenly, “The kidnappers offered me ten thousand baht if I told them how to find Mr. Gary.”

  Pugh said, “And you’ll tell us for eight? Khun Thomsatai, keep this up and I may have to ask my assistant Ek to bring in the telephone company.”

  “No, no, that is not necessary. What I am saying is this: I was unable to sell them this information because I do not have it. I have no way of contacting Mr. Gary, and I have no idea where he is. What I am telling you is too, too true, of course.”

  I said, “How did the moto-bike man know that Timmy and Kawee were up in Griswold’s apartment yesterday? That apartment is nearly always empty except when Kawee waters the plants and leaves offerings. But yesterday the kidnappers knew exactly when to arrive with Timothy Callahan and Kawee in the apartment but not Khun Rufus or me. Can you explain how they knew that?”

  Now he started eyeing the doorway again, but Ek was standing in it. Thomsatai avoided looking at me, but he looked at Pugh, suddenly shook his head violently, and cried out, “I am sorry!” He began to weep quietly. Snuffling, he said, “My mother’s water buffalo died. I needed money to send to my mother in Chiang Rai for a new buffalo. You understand this, Khun Rufus. I know you do.” He snuffled some more.

  Pugh gazed at him for a moment. Then he said to me,

  “That’s a bar girl’s story. When she has spent the rent money on clothes or she feels like she needs a flat-screen television, a bar girl whose imagination is limited tells her john that her mother’s water buffalo has died and the poor old lady is going to starve without one.”

  I said, “Don’t water buffalos actually die? It does sound like a serious matter in Thailand.”

  Now Thomsatai looked eagerly at me for the first time, apparently under the mistaken impression that I might rescue him.

  Pugh said, “Being a farang, you wouldn’t be expected to know this. But Thai water buffalo are immortal. And when they start breeding like maniacs after water buffalo rutting season, soon we have way too many of them and they begin to crowd us out of our villages. So we send the buffalo overflow to Laos.

  In Luang Prabang, they are trained to perform dressage for the tourists. Check out UNESCO’s Web site. People come from all over the world for Luang Prabang’s famous water buffalo dressage shows. It is plain, Mr. Don, that this man with his water buffalo sob story is lying.”

  Thomsatai got on a doomed look. He knew he was in the hands of madmen, and what was he going to do, call the police?

  He took a deep breath and said, “They phoned and asked me if anybody was in Mr. Gary’s apartment. They said if I didn’t tell them, they would drive a motorcycle over my face.”

  We waited for more, but that was it. After a moment, Pugh said, “Who phoned you?”

  “The moto-bike man.” Thomsatai was trembling lightly now.

  “How did he know to phone you yesterday evening?”

  “I don’t know. He did not tell me.”

  “And you told him what?”

  “That two men were in Mr. Gary’s apartment. Kawee and Mr. Don’s friend.”

  I said, “Why didn’t you tell this to the police when they came here after the abduction?”

  He looked at me stonily. “Because the man who called did not want me to tell the police, I think. He would hurt me if I told them.”

  “How would the moto-bike man know it was you who told the police what you had told them?”

  Thomsatai looked over at Pugh as if to say, this farang is an awfully naive fellow. Pugh caught Thomsatai’s meaning and looked at me and shrugged.

  Pugh said to me, “We’ll work this out ourselves. Mai pen rai. ”

  132 Richard Stevenson

  “What’s mai pen rai?”

  “Literally, it means ‘It is not a problem.’ The larger meaning in Thai thinking and culture is — if I may employ a New Jerseyism you will readily comprehend — whatthefuckyagonnadoaboutit. It’s what is is. Don’t sweat what you cannot control. In this case, w
hat is, is we cannot trust the police. Mr. Thomsatai doesn’t trust them, and neither should we.”

  “Even for seventy-five thousand bahts?”

  “Oh, that’s another story. Clearly we have outbid the opposition with that one. But that’s for the performance of one particular service, a double sweep of fourteenth floors. Beyond that, we’re not only on our own but moving into uncharted territory, what with a certain personage — the gentleman in the photo on the balcony — now very much in the picture. He also is a man who undoubtedly goes around singing ‘The policeman is my friend.’”

  Thomsatai jumped when Pugh’s cell phone rang, and Pugh glanced at the phone to see who was calling. He said to me,

  “Speak of the devil.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The second sweep of fourteenth floors had been completed and no trace of Timmy or Kawee had been found.

  Pugh said, “Sorry, Mr. Don. It was worth a try. Truly.”

  “Yeah, it seemed to make sense. I guess there are going to be just too many holes in a dragnet of this amorphous type.”

  “General Yodying is himself disappointed. He wants to take you to dinner at the Oriental Hotel when you have the time.

  Perhaps you view this as a mordant touch, bordering on the macabre. But the general’s intentions are good.”

  “I’ve never been to the Oriental. Timmy wants to go there.

  Maybe we’ll all go.”

  “I’m sure General Yodying will be happy to include Mr.

  Timothy once he is safe and sound.”

  “Timmy told me a story about Noel Coward at the Oriental.

  The manager phoned him and asked if it was true that there was a gentleman in his room. Coward replied, ‘Just a moment and I’ll ask him.’”

  Pugh laughed and said, “There is much entertaining farang lore in Bangkok. We Thais know it too. We are as amused by visiting farangs as you are by one another.”

  “I know that Thailand was never colonized, thanks largely to the cleverness of King Chulalongkorn. Maybe that’s why foreigners here are seen mainly as sources of amusement, in addition of course to serving as reliable sources of hard currency.”

  “Yes, and more importantly the latter. We are good at providing our own laughs. But hard currency from the West is needed to keep our upper classes roaming about in automobiles built in Bavaria and sipping satiny fluids distilled in Scotland.”

  “If you were a wealthy foreigner, Rufus, and showed up in Thailand with thirty-eight million US dollars and were going to 134 Richard Stevenson invest it in a sure thing that was legal — no heroin, no arms smuggling, no adult or pedophile international sex trafficking — what would that investment be?”

  “A legal investment? Hmm. Tourism infrastructure?

  Computer technology? Transportation? Perhaps entertainment

  — such as Hollywood movie palaces the likes of which L.B.

  Mayer is surely swooning over, if somehow his soul is extant in Bangkok today in some sentient form. Or grandiose retail outlets would perhaps be the smartest investment of all. An American journalist once told me he had been in Thailand for several weeks but had not yet been able to figure out what was percolating inside the minds of the Thai people. I told him, oh, that’s easy. Going to the mall. That’s what modern Thais spend much of their spare time thinking about or doing. Going shopping. The writer was disappointed, I think.”

  “And which of these investments that you have listed would provide the quickest return?”

  Pugh looked doubtful. “None of the above, Mr. Don. Sorry.

  If you’re talking getting your money back in months or even a few years, no such investments are likely to pay off that fast.

  Land deals, of course, can be ways of making a quick killing in Thailand, as in most places, if you are privy to inside information on some government project — a highway, an airport, a SkyTrain extension, say. But you said legal investment, and using insider information, while common here, is against the law. And it sounds as if Mr. Gary Griswold is a far better Buddhist than are some of Thailand’s leading lights who were raised in clouds of incense with garlands of marigolds dangling from every orifice. You believe him to be a truly moral man, and perhaps he is that. Of course, there are legal gray areas available to investors here, also. And perhaps Mr. Gary was not too pious to eschew one of the murkier financial pursuits to be found here in the kingdom.”

  “Like what?”

  “For instance, real estate development that’s not meant to result in actual finished construction. Investors are lined up for, say, a large condominium project. A construction company is formed that embarks on the project and inflates its start-up costs by a thousand percent. All the condo units are sold for tidy sums, many of them to unsuspecting foreign retirees.

  Escrow laws here are weak, so the organizers of the project put up part of the building, then abandon the skeletal structure and walk away with millions. You see these half-finished concrete towers throughout Bangkok. Attempts have been made to tighten the escrow laws, but powerful people who profit from these corrupt but barely legal schemes have so far prevented the laws from being updated. It’s a way of raking in big money fast, and perhaps someone talked Mr. Gary into investing in one of these cunningly conceived scams.”

  “Maybe. Though with his family history, Griswold would likely know the difference between ethical and nonethical business practices. And surely he’s been around Thailand long enough to grasp what’s a sleazy con job and what isn’t a con job within the local context. No, I’m inclined to think that whatever he was planning to invest in was on the up-and-up, or at least was presented to him in a way that allowed him to think it was.”

  “Mr. Gary is apparently a far better Buddhist than many of us whose Buddhism one would reasonably expect to be more organic to our daily lives.”

  “Yes, unless he’s fooling us all. That’s a possibility, too.”

  “This has occurred to me also. I hope you won’t be too disappointed if we track down Mr. Gary and he turns out to be a cad. Or at least a bit of a pill.”

  “If Griswold was a scheming big jerk, it would certainly make it easier to exchange him for Timmy and Kawee. There is that.”

  “This is a very Thai way of looking at it, Mr. Don. Now you’re talkin’ turkey.”

  Suddenly I saw Timmy’s face, his eyes narrowing with disapproval over my brazen moral relativism, and I wanted to hold him and beg him not to judge me so harshly. And I wanted to beg his forgiveness for bringing him to this benighted land of violence and superstition. Then I heard him 136 Richard Stevenson say, “Violence and superstition? You’d better be careful not to compare Thailand to the land of the NRA, Pat Robertson, slavery, Jim Crow and Rush Limbaugh.” It was at that point that I asked him to please just shut up for one minute so that I could simply luxuriate in my profound relief over his being safe and well and once again by my side.

  Pugh and I joined his team for the stakeout at the On Nut Internet cafe from which Griswold made his phone calls. Pugh had an illegally parked van with tinted windows situated half on the sidewalk directly in front of the cafe. A uniformed cop stopped by for a handout and was soon on his way. The place was in the shadow of the towering concrete On Nut SkyTrain station. This was the terminus of the Sukhumvit Road line, and whenever a train pulled in crowds came down the steps and dispersed up and down the street, many of them passing within inches of where we waited and watched. A few people went into the Internet cafe and sat down at computers. Nearly all were Thais. One was a male Westerner in sandals, cargo shorts, and a Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival T-shirt, but he wasn’t Gary Griswold.

  Pugh had the air-conditioning humming and sent out for eats from a nearby food stall. We had some nice pork larb and green papaya salad. I was so comfortable that I drifted off into semiconsciousness for an hour or so. To the extent that I was conscious, I tried to come up with another way of locating Griswold — or Timmy and Kawee — but I could not. There was one other avenue o
f hope. It was Monday, so I knew there was a fifty-fifty chance that the moto messenger that Griswold sent every Monday or Tuesday evening with cash for Kawee’s housekeeping and other expenses would likely show up within a few hours at Kawee’s room or at the whiskey seller’s stall down the soi from his place. Pugh had additional crews covering both locations.

  I gave some thought as to how I might be able to pay Pugh for his extensive services in the event I never saw another dime from any of the Griswolds. That was going to be a sizable

  dilemma. I did recall that I was in Timothy’s will, but that thought didn’t help.

  By early evening there was no sign of Griswold, and Pugh said, “Let’s you and I head over to Kawee’s place. That looks like a better bet at this point. The moto messenger with Kawee’s stipend may well know where Griswold lives, or at least where he is likely to turn up. Ek and Noo can keep an eye out here.”

  “What if,” I said, “Griswold only shows up at a particular place once a week to hand over the cash delivery? The moto guy may know when and where that is, but what if Griswold won’t show himself there again until next week?”

  Pugh shrugged. “Then we go to Plan B.”

  “Which is?”

  “We kidnap former Minister of Finance Anant na Ayudhaya, and in order to find out what he knows, Ek goes after him with a telephone book.”

  “Is that really feasible?”