He looked at me balefully out of his battered face. “I was handling this myself until you showed up, Strachey. You are the reason I’m lying in this bed with a headache to end all headaches. You and my clueless ex-wife and my evil brother.
Everything was proceeding more or less smoothly until you were air-dropped into Thailand like some kind of sheriff’s SWAT team with the wrong address.”
“What would the right address be?”
Ignoring that, Griswold said, “All I need at this point is to be left alone to oversee a series of financial transactions that are of the utmost urgency. I need a computer and a phone, and above all I need privacy. And now here I am stuck in this medical Grand Central Station with even less opportunity to concentrate and control what I need to control than I had back when I was hiding out in Bangkok. I can only begin to tell you just how much you two are fucking up my project and…and… my entire life!”
I said, “Griswold, you and a group of Thai investors are trying to take over Algonquin Steel. Why is that?”
Griswold was hooked up to a machine monitoring his pulse, brain waves, and who knew what else, and when I said this the machine practically projectile vomited. It began to flash and beep something awful, though Griswold himself just stared at me with a small round O formed by his lips. He apparently wanted to say something, but his vocal apparatus had gone numb.
I said, “Several years ago, you wanted out of the steel business, and you got out, and you had a nice art gallery in Key West. Then you came over to Thailand presumably without giving steel fabricating and the home- and building-supply business a backward glance. Now you not only want to get back into the family business in a big way, but you want to force your brother out of it and replace him with yourself and a group of Thai investors that perhaps includes former finance minister Anant na Ayudhaya. Griswold, what’s going on?”
Now the machine wasn’t beeping and flashing so much, and the drooping line on one of its electronic graphs looked like the Dow Jones was having a bad day. Still Griswold said nothing.
I said, “It looks like you’re taking over Algonquin Steel to finance the Sayadaw U project. Algonquin’s earnings will make a nice endowment for the Buddhism center. If this is the case, why not just say so? It’s no skin off my nose.”
After a moment, Griswold croaked out, “Who told you this crazy shit?”
“Nobody, but it makes sense. I heard from Albany that there’s a hostile takeover of Algonquin Steel under way.”
216 Richard Stevenson
“And people in Albany think I’m behind it?”
“Not as far as I know. My source — who is not one of your family members — just alerted me to the takeover but said nothing about opinions in Albany on who the buyers might be.”
“Do you have any idea if my brother thinks that’s what I’m doing — grabbing the company out from under him?”
“I don’t know. Should I feel him out? I could talk to your ex-wife and see what she and Bill know or don’t know. I’m working for you now, not them. I think.”
Griswold shook his head and then grimaced from the pain of moving it. “What a goddamn screwup. And it’s your fault.
Though why am I surprised? You may not be aware of it, Strachey, but I had trouble with you in Thailand once before.”
“You were here in the seventies? I don’t remember you.
What were you? Army? State Department? Viet Cong?”
“No, it was the eighteen fifties. Apparently you have not taken the trouble to examine your past lives. But I have examined mine and I remember you distinctly. You came from London ostensibly on a trade mission but basically you wanted to get your hands on a number of Siamese antiquities, including an emerald Buddha you were planning on grabbing for a private collector in East Kent.”
Pugh was just inside my peripheral vision and I thought I picked up his suppressing a smile.
I said, “Well, Griswold, this is your second concussion from flying off a bicycle and whacking your head. But apparently this concussion did not reverse the effects of the last one.”
Now Pugh actually chuckled. Griswold just looked at me hard and said, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
I said, “I heard that one of your aims with the Sayadaw U project is to atone for a great sin that was committed by one of your family members. It must have been a pretty spectacular sin if it’s going to take a project costing tens of millions of dollars to set things right in your family, karma-wise. Would you like to shed some light on all that? I’m a skeptic on these matters, but Khun Rufus is likely to be impressed.”
Pugh said, “Well put. I’m all ears.”
“No,” Griswold said and shut his eyes again.
“No, what?”
“No, I will not shed some light on something there is no need for you to know about, and if you did know you would just go charging around standing in the way of justice.”
“Charging around and standing. Weird.”
“I have a headache. Please go away.”
“What do you mean by justice? Karmic? Legal?”
“Karmic and Hebrew. They are sometimes similar. It would be hard to say, in fact, which one can be the more interestingly lurid.”
“You referred to your brother Bill as evil. How come?”
Griswold looked at me directly. “Don’t mess with my brother. Believe me, you’ll regret it. You aren’t planning to tell him any of this, are you?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not. Were the two seedy Americans who visited you six months ago your brother’s pals or representatives? The bleach blonde and the other guy who were staying at the Malaysia Hotel and then moved to the Grand Hyatt? Did they come to Thailand with some kind of information or threat from Bill?”
Griswold’s machine got excited again — bleep bleep bleep bleep
— and his Dow Jones graph jumped around some more.
“April twenty-seventh,” Griswold said. “That’s all you need to know. Now please let me rest. I am so, so exhausted.” He closed his eyes and turned his head away.
Out in the corridor, I described the encounter to Timmy. He said, “You’ve nailed it. Jeez, Don, you’ve figured it out.”
“Maybe. But even if I have, what is it that I’ve figured out?”
218 Richard Stevenson
Pugh said, “Khun Don, perhaps it would all be clearer if you understood the dynamics of your last troubled encounter with Mr. Gary. Back in the court of King Mongkut.”
“I’ll work on that. I may have to fly back to Key West and talk to a woman named Sandy. Though I suppose you have people here in Thailand, Rufus, who could help me out in that regard.”
Pugh laughed. “Mr. Don, I do believe that you think all of us Thais have fallen off our bicycles and landed on our heads.”
“Not at all. Buddhism is in your DNA, Rufus. It’s not in Griswold’s.”
“How can you be so sure? In our belief system, a man can as easily return to earth as an Upstate New York American steel magnate as a Thai rice farmer or a rat in the sewers of Vientiane. It all depends on the man’s karma, which is dictated by his behavior in present or past lives. A man could even return to earth as a silly farang dilettante dabbling in Buddhism in a shallow way that’s embarrassing both to true Buddhists and to skeptics such as yourself. Which is the case with Mr. Gary? I am undecided about that.
“I must say,” Pugh went on, “that it is unusual for Thais such as former Minister Anant to accept unquestioningly the Buddhism of any foreigner. Most Thais are skeptical themselves of the genuineness of farang Buddhism beyond the proven benefits of meditation and of course the adoption of decent ethical practices. And many traditional Thais are skeptical of — even hostile to — grandiose semicommercial schemes such as the one Mr. Gary is planning out by the new airport. I’m a bit surprised, actually, that Khun Anant, an old-fashioned man in many ways, is up to his eyebrows with a foreigner in this supposedly deeply spiritual project. It has occurred
to me, in fact, that somehow Khun Anant is not out to assist Mr. Gary but perhaps to fleece him.”
Ek had been on his cell phone, and now he interrupted Pugh and me and spoke in an urgent tone to Pugh in Thai.
Pugh said to me, “We have to get Mr. Gary out of here.
Fast.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
One of Ek’s cop friends had tipped him off that a Hua Hin senior officer with personal loyalties to General Yodying had noted Griswold’s name on the police blotter and had been asking questions about him. It was reasonable to assume that this officer had heard that Yodying was searching for Griswold
— and for us — and that word would soon come crackling back from Bangkok to have us all rounded up.
Pugh had a doctor friend who ran a private clinic off the main southern road only a mile or so from Monkey Mountain.
Griswold could be treated and well cared for there. The trick was going to be insinuating Griswold out of the hospital and into the back of one of Pugh’s vans without further injuring Griswold or spooking the hospital staff into calling the police.
Pugh found the supervising physician and talked to him for a few minutes in Thai, and then told Timmy and me, “It’s cool.
They’re going to load Khun Gary into the van in a few minutes.
They’ll even provide a mattress and sheets.”
“What did you tell the doctor?”
“That Nitrate is a seer who did Mr. Gary’s chart and discovered that if he is to recover from his injuries expeditiously he must do so in Bangkok. It’s best that everyone here believe that that is where we are heading. Also, I mentioned to the doc that the phee of a man who has it in for Mr. Gary was spotted at the site of tonight’s car-bicycle accident, and he was also observed outside this hospital a little while ago. So we must move the patient for his own protection.”
“And the doctor believed that story?”
“Not necessarily. But he thinks I believe it, and he is acquiescing in my wishes.”
“But won’t he ask Griswold what he wants to do?”
“Ek is at this moment informing Mr. Gary that General Yodying is hot on his trail. And if he wants to complete his 222 Richard Stevenson project instead of being flung into an abyss, he must come along with us and recover from his injuries elsewhere. Ek is also telling him that he will be provided with the phone and computer he wishes to have, and the privacy.”
“Rufus, this is getting dicey. Are we going to make it to April twenty-seventh? I have a bad feeling that guys on motorcycles wielding Chinese revolvers are going to turn up well before then.”
“That, Khun Don, is why it may become necessary quite soon to go on the offensive.”
“And how do we do that?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
The clinic was a small but well-appointed place the size of an American branch bank with a couple of tile-roofed bungalows out back surrounded by flowers and fruit trees. Pugh explained that Thailand had a two-tiered health care system, one public and one private, and as in the US, private was better, though the public system wasn’t bad either.
It was after midnight when we got Griswold into his bungalow. The hospital staff had doped him up for the ride. So he was only half conscious when we laid him in his bed and Pugh’s doctor pal, a woman named Nual Winarungruang, went over Griswold’s charts, checked him out, put him on an IV drip, and hooked him up to her own monitors. A nurse had been called in to keep an eye on Griswold through the night. It did not appear that we had been followed by anyone from outside the hospital, so Pugh left Nitrate and the two part-time Dream Boys to watch over Griswold while the rest of us rode back to the guesthouses.
Everyone had gone to bed except Kawee, Mango and Miss Nongnat, who were still out by the pool drinking beer. Mango was giving Miss Nongnat a massage on the chaise. For the sake of efficiency, Pugh spoke to them in Thai and explained that Griswold was recovering from his injuries, which were not THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 223 severe, and he had been deposited in a safe house outside the hospital.
We were all hot and worn-out, and Pugh said there were extra bathing suits in the pool house if we wanted to have a swim. We did want to, and we floated around under the stars for an hour or so. Pugh excused himself and said he wanted to pop in where Furnace and Miss Aroon were staying up the road and would be back soon.
After Pugh left, Miss Nongnat asked Timmy and me if either of us would like a smoke.
I wasn’t sure if she meant cigarettes or weed. Anyway, I said no thanks, that I had quit years ago. Timmy mentioned that he had never smoked at all, and Nongnat, Mango and Kawee all had a good laugh over that.
Miss Nongnat said to Timmy, “No, honey, a smoke is a blowjob.”
Timmy and I politely demurred, saying we had already had a full day. Though after we excused ourselves and were heading inside, we glanced back to see the three Thais strip off their bathing attire and slide naked into the pool together in a kind of eroticized NFL-style huddle.
Up in our room, Timmy and I talked it over and concluded that it was possible before we left Thailand we might join in one of those friendly huddles. But for the moment we just wanted very much to be next to each other, relieved to be reunited, and happy to be alive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The unexpected flight from Hua Hin began just after dawn.
Pugh banged on our door and said we were leaving town immediately. Police roadblocks had been set up on all the main routes, and we would be departing Hua Hin by boat in twenty minutes. His police sources had confirmed that General Yodying had learned that we — and Griswold — were in Hua Hin, so there was no way we could safely move about. And anyway the general might dig up information on who Pugh’s friends and acquaintances were in Hua Hin and launch a raid on the compound. Pugh’s wife and children were moving into a beach hotel under assumed names, and Miss Aroon and Furnace would drive the two vans back to Bangkok.
Griswold was already at the compound, accompanied by Dr.
Nual and a nurse. He would be carried down to the nearby beach on a stretcher, and we would have to get him into a small boat and then out to a waiting cabin cruiser.
The skies had clouded over during the night, and just as we began the hike down a sandy track to the beach, the clouds broke loose and rain came crashing down in drops the size of melon balls. Ever efficient, Pugh had anticipated the bad weather and two of his crew had gotten hold of broad-brimmed straw hats that they passed out to each of us. There were a number of extra hats, and the Dream Boys wore those stacked up on their heads one atop another. Occasionally a gust of wind blew the extra hats off and all the Thais went chasing after them, joshing one another and laughing. We were all soaked in under a minute, although the air was so warm that nobody was all that distracted or uncomfortable. Thunder rumbled and I asked Pugh if people were ever struck by lightning on or near this beach. He said sometimes but that on this day he was feeling lucky.
A local guy Pugh knew had dragged his small boat with its outboard motor up onto the beach. The surf was light, even in 226 Richard Stevenson the rainstorm. Griswold was wide-awake and complaining about being pummeled and shoved this way and that, and who could blame him? He still had a headache, he said, and he was sore all over. He agreed, though, that Yodying and his agents were to be avoided at all costs, and it would actually be easier to hide in Bangkok than in Hua Hin, now that Yodying had their number locally.
Kawee, Mango and Miss Nongnat were hungover and not happy about being yanked out of bed to go to sea in a rainstorm, but once they were on the beach, they began to play in the waves. The rest of Pugh’s crew were helpful and attentive, but not without a lot of kidding around in between tasks.
The forty- or fifty-foot cabin cruiser Pugh had arranged for was anchored a hundred yards or more out in the surf, and we were ferried out to it four at a time. There were twelve of us altogether, and it took close to half an hour to get everybody on board. This included Griswold and his nurse
, a young woman named Lemon. Dr. Nual said she was no longer needed — another physician would meet the boat in Bangkok — and she walked back up the trail. Meanwhile, the rain had let up and we could see bright blue sky to the north, the direction we were heading.
By the time we had passed the northernmost reaches of Hua Hin, the sun was streaming down and all the men took off their shirts and laid them out to dry. The two-man crew of the cruiser served us tea, pineapple and sticky rice with sliced mango in coconut milk.
Griswold lay on a chaise on the front deck and gradually his headache lessened and his mood improved. He tried to place a call on Pugh’s cell phone, but by then we were too far from shore. And the ship-to-shore radio was not acceptable, he said, because he required privacy. When Griswold returned Pugh’s cell phone to him, Pugh went belowdecks and I followed him.
We both wanted to see what number Griswold had dialed. Pugh did not recognize the number, but he said it was in Bangkok.
He wrote it down.
Pugh had said the journey to Bangkok would take about six hours. Back on deck, Timmy and I stretched out in the sun.
Mango, Kawee and Miss Nongnat lay on mats in the shade of a canopy and snoozed as we plowed over the friendly swells of the gulf.
We overtook a Thai Royal Navy patrol boat and watched it a little anxiously as we passed. But its crew showed no interest in us. A garland of marigolds had been draped over the Navy boat’s gun turret. Similarly protected against bad spirits was our boat, which had a sizable Buddha figure on a shelf in the wheelhouse just above us. Fresh jasmine hung nearby next to a wooden carving of an erect penis, which I remembered from my first visit to Thailand was a good-luck charm. Betty Friedan might have had something to say about that practice, but we were a long way from her aura.
Everybody on board gathered for lunch around noon. We had rice, tom yam kung and spicy pig colon salad, plus bottled water, fruit juices, and bird-spit drink for anybody who cared for some.
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