“No. Not for us it isn’t. Not exactly.”
I let that go and followed Pugh out of the van onto the baking sidewalk. We climbed the steps of the SkyTrain station, and Pugh changed enough baht notes into coins to extract from the ticket machine two passes to the Sukhumvit station a couple of miles away. At the end of the workday, there weren’t many passengers on our car riding toward central Bangkok. Most people were heading the other way. The car was pleasantly frigid. One elderly woman was speaking Thai into a cell phone while everyone else sat mute. The view out the windows was more Miami Beach-modern, except for the occasional temples with their whitewashed stupas and golden spires.
When the train stopped briefly at Ekamai station, I asked Pugh about the big bus station we could see down below on our left.
“That’s the Eastern Bangkok bus station. If you’re going to Pattaya or on to Cambodia, that’s where you go to get the bus.”
138 Richard Stevenson
I imagined Elise Flanagan with her Antioch alumna group down below us climbing onto a coach three weeks earlier and then spotting Gary Griswold at the Thai-Cambodian border.
That is, spotting either Gary Griswold or Raul Castro.
We sped across one of the city’s few remaining canals, and I caught a quick glimpse of houseboats lining the dark waterway.
Might Gary Griswold be hiding out on one of them, I wondered? Or might Raul Castro?
We arrived at Sukhumvit station and were headed down the long flight of steps to the busy commercial neighborhood below when my cell phone rang. I wanted to believe it was going to be Ellen Griswold calling me back with news of her ex-husband’s location and his eagerness to help us free Timmy and Kawee and his profuse apologies for getting us into this goddamn mess in the first place.
We halted on the midlevel platform, and I stood out of the way of the surging crowds as best I could.
“Hello?”
“Donald, it’s Timothy.”
“Oh God.”
“They told me to call you again.”
“Yes. Good. Are you all right?”
“So far. But I’m supposed to remind you that now you have just twenty-four hours. You have until just after the sun sets tomorrow. They said they will not do what they have to do with us in the daylight. Do you understand what I’m saying? We’re on the fourteenth floor.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“They will phone you this time tomorrow. And you will tell them that you have Griswold and are ready to hand him over.”
“What is it they want with Griswold?”
“I don’t know. Anyway, I am not allowed to tell you anything else.”
“Okay.”
“Just get us out of this Millpond hell, will you?”
“We’re trying. Do they know we’re having trouble finding Griswold?”
“They seem to know that. And they said you should try harder.”
“Oh.”
“I have to hang up now.”
“Okay. Good-bye, Timothy. I heard what you said.”
“Good. Bye, Don.”
I looked at Pugh and said, “I know where they are. Timmy told me where they are.”
I repeated the conversation to Pugh and added, “Timmy said he was in Millpond hell. Millpond is the name of an Albany, New York development company that tried to put up a mall on some suburban farmland a number of years ago. That project fell through, but eventually the company got hold of the farmland when the elderly owners moved into Albany, and then Millpond started building a group of luxury condos on the land.
But the company was way overextended, and it went bust in the Poppy Bush recession. The unfinished condos stood vacant for years — an eyesore and an attractive nuisance for kids liable to break their necks climbing around on the tall concrete shells.
These buildings were just like the unfinished condos you described to me here in Bangkok. I believe that Timothy and Kawee are being held on the fourteenth floor of one of them.”
“This is possible,” Pugh said. “These structures have security services meant to look after them. But security services perhaps can be bought — or simply replaced by the building’s owner. Or the owner may not even know what’s going on in his building. Or it may not even be known who the owner is.”
“How many of these unfinished tall buildings are there in Bangkok? You told me earlier that they’re all over the place. But I’ve only seen a few.”
“You’re right, Mr. Don. More than a few is more than enough, but I’m guessing there aren’t more than a dozen. And 140 Richard Stevenson not all of them will have fourteenth floors. So that will narrow it down somewhat. I can readily find out from people I know in the city building inspector’s office how many such abandoned buildings are out there and exactly where they are.”
“Can you get this information fast? Won’t those offices be closed for the day?”
“For a fee, someone can speed back to the office and look up this data. Though then, of course, we run into our next set of difficulties.”
“Which are?”
“Arriving at the correct building to effectuate a rescue and having either Timmy or Kawee shoved off the balcony, and then the captors threatening to kill the remaining one unless we produce Griswold and let them all go on their way.”
“You think they would do that?”
“Of course. Why not? I think these people are not such good Buddhists.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The first thing I realized was, they will kill Kawee first. He was a mere Thai lady-boy, and under the present circumstances, Timothy had greater bargaining value. I was ashamed that this realization came to me with a certain amount of relief.
Pugh got on his cell and called somebody who gave him a number, and then he called somebody else. After hanging up, he told me he would have a list of unfinished and abandoned tall buildings in Bangkok within two hours. He made another call and asked Ek to assemble a team of men and woman with, as he put it, “military skills and experience.” I thought of my American Express account limit, and I wondered if maybe I could simply borrow the money for a sizable military operation from China, like Bush.
The last dull orange light of day faded out as Pugh led me away from Sukhumvit Road and down a mixed commercial and residential soi. The air was still ferociously hot, and within minutes my shirt was soaked through again. Pugh’s dark face shone with a light sheen, but below the neck he didn’t seem to be sweating at all. How did the Thais do that?
We passed Indian tailor shops, gold and gem emporiums, restaurants, flower stalls, bars and massage parlors. A number of the masseuses who were camped on stools outside their storefronts gabbing with one another or watering their plants grinned at Pugh and me and chimed, “ Hallo, massaagge? ” The curbside food stall aromas of chicken sizzling on grills with lime juice and herbs would have been pleasing under better circumstances, but now the smells were just cloying. How could Thai normal life dare to go on so cheerfully, so deliciously, when elements of Thai society that were completely rotten were threatening to kill two gentle and decent souls?
We entered a lower-rent district of three- and four-story concrete apartment buildings with drying laundry hanging over the balcony railings next to the flowering plants. Pugh stopped 142 Richard Stevenson at a van parked on the street and the waiting driver opened the window. Seeing me, the driver told Pugh in English that one of Kawee’s roommates said the moto man who delivers money to Kawee had not yet turned up, and if he arrived and Pugh’s crew somehow missed him the roommate would notify the van on his cell phone. The roommate, an older katoey named Nongnat, had said she was worried about Kawee. Sometimes Kawee stayed out overnight with a new boyfriend, Nongnat had said, but not without phoning first. Pugh’s people did not tell Nongnat that Kawee was being held hostage, thus avoiding any off chance that certain elements of the police might learn of the abduction and decide to meddle unhelpfully.
Pugh led me down the soi to where it ended at a chain
-link fence along an expressway. Propped up next to the last apartment building on the block was a tin-roofed bamboo shanty that had a big open-front window and a counter. The place apparently served as a neighborhood convenience store.
You could get Colgate, condoms, a variety of beverages — including one made of bird saliva, according to the colorful sign next to it — as well as under-the-counter whiskey that Pugh said was distilled nearby in somebody’s flat.
Another of Pugh’s fleet of vans was parked nearby, and he checked in with the driver. The moto money man had not turned up at this location either, and the whiskey seller had been put on a retainer to make sure he pointed out the man if and when he appeared.
We were headed back toward Kawee’s apartment when Pugh’s cell phone rang, and after a brief exchange in Thai he indicated that we should pick up the pace and trot.
“The moto man has arrived at Kawee’s room with Kawee’s money from Mr. Gary.”
“Oh, terrific. Does he know where Griswold is?”
“Not exactly.”
“Thailand seems to be the land of not exactly.”
“Exactly.”
“So if Griswold is sending Kawee’s weekly payment, apparently he knows nothing of the kidnapping.”
“Yes, unless he is simply — what’s the term? — keeping up appearances.”
“We can ask him about that.”
Now even Pugh was sweating a bit. The moto man was standing next to his bike in front of the entrance to Kawee’s building. He had on a dark jacket, impractical in the heat, it seemed, but apparently a fixture of every Bangkok motorcycle-taxi driver’s getup. He had the serene look of a man who lived in chaos but had mastered the ability to float though it. The katoey Nongnat had come downstairs and was also calm but worried looking. She had the sloe-eyed, elegantly honed good looks of a honey-colored Vogue model who happened to have a prominent Adam’s apple.
Pugh spoke with both of them in Thai and then told me that the moto man, Pichet Suthat, had indeed seen Gary Griswold just an hour earlier. Griswold had phoned him to arrange for the weekly pickup of an envelope — Pichet apparently did not know that it contained cash — and he had met Griswold at the corner of Sukhumvit Road and Ekamai Soi 63 near the Ekamai bus station. It seemed possible that this transaction had been taking place even as Pugh and I paused overhead at the Ekamai SkyTrain stop.
Pichet said he did not know exactly where Griswold lived, but he thought he had seen him a few times coming out of an apartment block just a short way up Soi 63 from Sukhumvit Road. We hired Pichet on the spot to take Pugh there, and we flagged down another moto taxi for me to ride. Nongnat asked in English where Kawee was and why we were looking for him.
Pugh told her that Kawee was in some trouble and might need help, and we were friends of Gary Griswold prepared to do what we could. Pugh asked Nongnat if she knew where Griswold lived. She said no, and now she was even more worried about Kawee, she told us, and insisted on climbing on the second bike behind me.
144 Richard Stevenson
Nongnat had on pink shorts — avoiding the need for womanly sidesaddle on the motorcycle — and pressed herself up against me as we took off. Her floral aroma as she nuzzled the nape of my neck was distinctly feminine, though as the motorcycle bounced and swayed and stopped short a couple of times it soon became apparent lower down that Nongnat was biologically still male. Once when I shifted in my seat a bit — I was also concerned that I might alarm or embarrass the moto driver I myself was wedged up against — Nongnat gave me a playful poke at the base of my spine and chuckled sweetly.
Pugh had arranged for his two surveillance vans in the neighborhood to follow us to Griswold’s supposed residential block, even as his team at the On Nut Internet cafe maintained its vigil, and a separate flying squad was assembling under Ek’s direction for an assault on abandoned tall buildings across Bangkok.
Traffic along Sukhumvit Road was heavy under the elevated SkyTrain line, and we bobbed and weaved among the cars and tuk-tuks, pausing only briefly for traffic signals and once detouring around a jam-up by jouncing over the curb and pinballing among the pedestrians, narrowly missing several. I thought of big Yai, who had run down a complaining Austrian tourist on the sidewalk and then turned around and driven over the prostrate and injured Viennese a second time. I wondered if soon I would meet sociopathic Yai face-to-face.
Pichet led us to the apartment building he thought Griswold might be living in. It was one of the posher ones in the neighborhood, not far from a cineplex and a couple of big international chain hotels. The lobby had a security door, but Pugh bounded off Pichet’s bike and followed a man who looked like Wayne Newton into the lobby and then held the door open for the rest of us. The two vans pulled up out front, and one of Pugh’s drivers joined Pugh, me and Nongnat as we approached a uniformed security man who appeared around a corner looking alert. Pugh spoke to the guard in rapid Thai and I heard him mention Gary Griswold.
Pugh said to me, “No Griswold here, he says, but let’s try this.” Pugh pulled a photo of Griswold out of his pocket and showed it to the guard.
The guard’s face showed instant recognition, and he said,
“Ah, Mr. Gray.”
“Mr. Gray?” Pugh said.
“Mr. Gray Winsocki. Fifth floor. You want me call up to him? But I think he not here.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“Bicycle. Mr. Gray go out on bicycle. His bike not here.”
I said to Pugh, “So he’s likely to be back, right? He won’t be biking to Cambodia or anything like that, it looks like.”
The guard said, “Bangkok not so good for bicycle. Too much car. Too much motorbike. But Mr. Gray, he like bicycle.
He go fast around cars. I think he come back later.”
Pugh indicated to the guard that he’d like to speak with him privately, and they walked over to an alcove.
Nongnat said to me, “Kawee okay? I worry Kawee. Kawee say Mr. Gary good man, but why he hide? Why he change name? Farang not change name, just Thai.”
“These are exactly the questions Khun Rufus and I hope to have answers to soon. Within minutes, with luck.”
Nongnat wrinkled her elegant nose. “Mr. Gary he trouble. I tell Kawee he big trouble.”
“Why did you think Mr. Gary was trouble?”
“No fuck, just pray. I tell Kawee be careful this type.”
“Yes, that is a universal basis for caution.”
Pugh and the guard came back and Pugh said, “This gentleman has refused us admittance to Mr. Gary’s flat. It seems that one of life’s most challenging quests is finished for us, Mr.
Don. We have found an honest man. This dude won’t let us into Griswold’s place even in exchange for a substantial consideration. Well, fuck ’im if he can’t take a bribe. Meanwhile, however, he is granting us permission to hang around here and 146 Richard Stevenson nab Mr. Gary when he turns up again. Which my disappointingly ethical friend here expects to be soon. Mr. Gary normally takes his bike out for no more than a few hours. So I suggest that we position ourselves discreetly and wait.”
It was mid-evening now, with daylight gone and less than twenty-four hours left before the kidnappers’ deadline. Pugh’s driver stayed behind in the lobby, and the rest of us went out front, and Pugh and I got into the air-conditioned van. Nongnat went down the street for some food and came back with jasmine rice and yellow curry with fish and bamboo shoots. We ate it eagerly — I was hungry by now and so no longer found the local food smells off-puttingly indifferent to our plight — and Pugh spelled his man in the lobby while he came out and also ate with steady concentration. This man observed his food admiringly as he ate it. It seemed as though any second he might actually speak to the rice and curry approvingly, even tenderly. The food was Thai all the way, and so was he.
At ten thirty Griswold still had not returned, and we were all wondering about that. What was he doing out riding his bike around Bangkok this late at night? But a call came in
from one of Pugh’s operatives, reporting that the list of abandoned partially constructed buildings at least fourteen stories high was on its way to where we were stationed. The list was expected within fifteen minutes, so Ek was summoned and told to wait up the street with his SWAT teams.
When the list arrived in a shoulder bag carried by a tiny young woman on a motorbike, Pugh and I got out and carried the bag up the soi to meet Ek. He had a convoy of three large four-by-fours, the type of swaggering road hogs Timmy would have immediately labeled socially irresponsible. Timmy, however, was not there to complain.
Some of Ek’s small army of muscular guys in T-shirts and cargo pants got out of the SUVs and stood on the sidewalk looking formidable, even menacing, just as a male farang on a bicycle rounded the corner from Sukhumvit Road, approached our assemblage, seemed to take in the scene at a glance, and quickly swooped around and began peddling furiously back up the soi. Pugh saw this and yelled something in Thai to the girl on the motorbike who had brought the bag. She was off like a shot after the man on the bicycle, and we jumped into the van and took off after both of them.
Pugh’s driver was so reckless that a couple of the taxi drivers we cut off actually honked their horns at us hot-heartedly and glared as we lurched down Sukhumvit Road. Within a block, we spotted Pugh’s little moto woman, who had knocked Griswold off his bicycle and was wrestling with him on the sidewalk in front of a 7-Eleven. We pulled up, hopped out, elbowed aside a dozen or so alarmed bystanders, and hauled both Griswold and his bike into the back of the van. We required privacy for what was about to transpire, so we sent Nongnat back to her place with Supornthip, the moto driver who had chased down Griswold. They climbed on Supornthip’s bike and sped away, and we took off close behind.
Griswold, who I recognized from his photographs, was in spandex biking shorts and a tank top, and he carried a shoulder bag, which Pugh wrenched away from him as one of Pugh’s muscle guys, who had the word Egg stenciled on his T-shirt, wrapped plastic handcuffs around Griswold’s wrists. Sweaty and decidedly nonaromatic, Griswold said nothing but was breathing fast. His bike helmet had slipped down low over his forehead, and Pugh carefully removed it and set it aside. Under his gleaming mess of helmet hair Griswold’s eyes were wide open, and he kept glancing at me.
The 38 Million Dollar Smile ds-10 Page 13