The 38 Million Dollar Smile ds-10

by Richard Stevenson

  As we neared Bangkok, cell phone service came back and Pugh made some calls. He told Timmy and me after he hung up that it might be a good idea if we delayed our arrival in Bangkok until after dark. He had no reason to think that Yodying knew where we were, but that the general was definitely in a major snit, according to one of Pugh’s cop friends, and precautions were called for. Pugh spoke with the captain of our boat, an elderly Isaan man with a formal manner and a high smooth forehead and tattoos all over his face that looked like a bead curtain in a Berkeley bar in 1968. The boat soon slowed and headed east as we began to cruise around near the mouth of the Chao Phraya for the rest of the afternoon.

  Pugh summoned me belowdecks again and said, “The number Mr. Gary attempted to call in Bangkok was that of Seer Pongsak Sutiwipakorn. I am going to go out on a short limb and predict that Seer Pongsak has replaced the late Khun Khunathip as the soothsayer for former Minister Anant and for 228 Richard Stevenson the Sayadaw U project. This is good. It may open up opportunities for us.”

  “Isn’t that the seer who predicted a coup by the end of April?”

  “That is he. Khun Pongsak failed to predict the last coup, the one that sent Prime Minister Thaksin fleeing with his billions of baht to the UK. But now the wizard is wielding his zodiacal instrument like a cudgel or perhaps a threat or possibly a warning. Or, maybe he is just a vain, oafish fellow who likes to get his name in the papers. I don’t know which it is. In any case, maybe he would like to make a splash again by moving his prediction up a week. From April twenty-seventh to April eighteenth, another lucky number. The advantage of the earlier date is, it’s the day after tomorrow. And if these momentous events could be accelerated, we would have a better chance of staring into the abyss and not having the abyss stare back for a very long eleven days.”

  “How would we get him to do that? Griswold is wedded to April twenty-seventh. The date plainly has magical properties for him. It’s even when the Algonquin Steel annual meeting will happen.”

  “Ah, but these events are far larger than any mere corporation and its machinations.”

  “Tell Griswold that.”

  Pugh said, “I have obtained additional information that is likely to be helpful, though I am not yet certain exactly how. I found out that Griswold carried out a very large money transfer from the Commercial Bank of Siam to an account in Albany, New York last October fifteenth.”

  “One and five. That unlucky day when the two Americans showed up in Bangkok and made Griswold angry and sad.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have the name of the account holder?”

  “I do. It is Mr. Duane Hubbard.”

  “No shit?”

  “Who is Duane Hubbard?”

  “He is the former personal trainer of Ellen Griswold, Mr.

  Gary’s ex-wife and current sister-in-law.”

  “What is his connection to Khun Gary?”

  “Good question. What’s interesting about Hubbard is, he and his boyfriend, a sometime-criminal goon named Matthew Mertz, were present on a Caribbean cruise ship fourteen years ago when Bill Griswold’s first wife, Sheila, disappeared at sea.

  Sheila Griswold was a huge pain in the neck and a financial drain on Bill. There were people in Albany who believed at the time that Bill — or even Bill and Ellen — paid Hubbard and Mertz to toss the endlessly annoying ex-Mrs. Griswold into the sea. There was no evidence, and nothing ever came of it. And Ellen turns indignant over any insinuation that Sheila’s apparent drowning was anything but a stupid accident caused perhaps by Sheila’s tippling habits.”

  Pugh said, “Rounding.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When Khun Gary was moaning in his semi-delirium, he kept going on about rounding, Ek said. But perhaps Mr. Gary was experiencing nightmares not about rounding but about drowning.”

  “Drowning doesn’t have two Ds in it.”

  “I know that. I attended college in New Jersey, just like you.

  But the guy was slurring his words, and Ek may have been slurring his hearing. Not having gone to Rutgers.”

  I said, “This is fascinating stuff, but my mind is a little dizzy over what it might actually mean.”

  “Well, Khun Don, hang on to your hat. Would you like to know how much money Khun Gary had transferred into Duane Hubbard’s Albany account on October fifteenth?”

  “How much?”

  “Two million US dollars.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The first thing Timmy said was, “It sounds like the family member who committed the terrible sin that had to be atoned for was Gary Griswold himself.”

  “You mean Gary had his former sister-in-law murdered?”

  “Possibly. And then maybe he paid off these two lowlifes to keep them from talking? The original fee was insufficient and they were broke, and they knew just where go for an infusion of cash.”

  “Why would Griswold do that?” I said. “He says he’s interested in justice. Karmic and Old Testament.”

  “There is that. And he does seem sincere. Also, why would he want to get rid of his brother’s ex-wife in the first place? He didn’t even like Bill Griswold. He and Ellen remained friends, but Bill was just some annoying Bushophile Gary put up with for business and peace-in-the-family reasons.”

  “Plus,” I said, “the appeal of Buddhism for Griswold is its adherence to nonviolence. He hates militarism and talks up peaceful solutions. Is that a guy who arranges to have his former sister-in-law fed to the sharks?”

  “It’s not a particularly Buddhist type of offering.”

  We were approaching Khlong Toei, the Bangkok waterfront area with its docks and warehouses and light industry. The sun was setting and the light was splashing flame all over everything: ships, fishing boats, docks, cranes, us. Everyone was on deck now and alert. Pugh had arranged for us to be picked up in three cars and driven to a house not far from Griswold’s condo owned by a sometime client of Pugh’s in Sathorn. Timmy and I were about to come full circle in our five-day Gulf of Thailand odyssey.

  Griswold was feeling better now, and he was sitting on a bamboo mat under a canopy with Mango, Egg and Nitrate watching Khlong Toei glide by. Griswold didn’t seem to be 232 Richard Stevenson mad at Mango anymore, maybe because these days he had so much else on his mind.

  Pugh and I had decided not to confront Griswold with the Duane Hubbard revelation until we had him safely locked away.

  In case my knowing more about them could turn out to be useful, I had phoned Bob Chicarelli in Albany — it was six a.m. there — and left a message asking him to track down Duane Hubbard and Matthew Mertz, who presumably were living in the Albany area. Or at least had been living there six months earlier when Griswold wired two million dollars to Hubbard’s Albany account. I asked Bob not to spook the two in any way but to find out what they were up to lately, and did they appear to be living off the fat of the land? I was beginning to wonder, in fact, if bozos such as these two might not be acting as agents for someone else, and Hubbard’s bank account was merely a conduit.

  Pugh had been on the phone up in the wheelhouse, and when we pulled up to a dock just as the last flecks of gold faded from the soot black Bangkok night, he said, “Mr. Don, we’re going to dine this evening with a celebrity. Do you have a streak of star-fuckery in you, or will you be unimpressed if I tell you that soothsayer Pongsak has agreed to grant us an audience?”

  “Audience? I thought these Bangkok seer guys were humble Buddhists.”

  Pugh laughed. “Sure. Like Jimmy Swaggart was a humble Christian.”

  The three cars carrying our group of renegades each took different routes to Sathorn. I rode with Pugh, Egg, Ek, Griswold and a physician, a woman named Sukchaiboworn, who had examined Griswold on the boat when we landed and pronounced him fit enough not to be rehospitalized. Griswold said, in fact, that his headache was gone and he was eager to get to a phone and a computer to work on his business transaction

  — i.e., the takeover of A
lgonquin Steel.

  The safe house Pugh had arranged for was on Soi Nantha, not far from Griswold’s condo and only a few hundred yards from Paradisio. The place had a high wall around it draped with pink bougainvillea and a lighted pool in the back. We got Griswold inside the house and locked into an upstairs room with Ek on the small balcony outside it and Egg guarding the door. Griswold had his computer and phones now, and he at least feigned being satisfied. He promised us he would not try to bolt.

  Miss Nongnat went to her room to redo her toenails, while Kawee and Mango decided to drop in at Paradisio and relax there for a few hours. Mango said there was a Bulgarian diplomat who often showed up on Wednesdays, and he hoped to run into him and perhaps add to the Chonburi house fund.

  Two of Pugh’s crew had gone out to bring food back for the household, and while they were gone, Pugh and I went up to Griswold’s room to lay out a plan we had come up with during a confab out by the pool.

  Pugh was seated at a teak desk with a PC in the middle of it, and he had phones on either side of him. A Buddha figure rested on a nearby shelf, and Griswold had lit nine candles just below it.

  “Khun Gary,” Pugh said to him, “we are attempting to sketch out a program for keeping you alive until General Yodying has been relieved of his duties or even his present life

  — we’re not sure what your associates have in mind for him. At the rate events are hurtling forward, however, we fear we might not be able to last another eleven days, short of getting you out of Thailand. Maybe to Sihanoukville or even darkest Rangoon.

  Would you be able to conduct your business from either of those two locations?”

  “Of course not. I absolutely must be on top of things here.”

  “Why is that? You can operate by computer or phone from just about anywhere nowadays.”

  “I must have access to funds. Not all of my funds are in banks.”

  “Oh?”

  Griswold shrugged. “I have twelve million dollars in sacks under the spirit house platform in my condo. There are people I 234 Richard Stevenson am dealing with who — for reasons that will be obvious to any Thai — will conduct transactions only in cash. Former Prime Minister Thaksin is believed to have left the country with tens of millions of dollars and euros stuffed into a dozen pieces of luggage. I appreciate that all the untaxed money floating around Thailand represents an economic injustice for the ordinary Thai.

  But as I have pointed out, there are larger and more profound issues involved here.”

  I said, “Griswold, you are so full of it.”

  “Am I? That’s a rather sweeping statement about a situation that is financially, socially and morally quite complex.”

  “You’re in bed with crooks. There’s nothing overly complicated about that.”

  “Oh, is former Finance Minister Anant na Ayudhaya a crook?”

  Pugh said, “Khun Gary, being a crook is in the finance minister’s job description in Thailand. For goodness’ sake, haven’t you read it?”

  Griswold sighed and said, “Look, I have already admitted that this deal is morally complicated.”

  “Anyway,” I said, “if this guy Anant is dealing in cash, how do you know you can trust him? If he’s the chief Thai backer for the Sayadaw U Buddhism center, what makes you think he won’t pocket your cash for the project and have it shipped to Singapore? Or to his old pal Thaksin in the UK?”

  This got Griswold’s attention. “I can’t imagine that a genuine Buddhist would do such a thing.”

  Pugh looked at him sadly and said, “Oh, Mr. Gary.”

  “Here’s the test,” I said. “You get Anant to speed up preparations for the coup or whatever it is that’s supposed to happen on April twenty-seventh. Instead of the end of the month, they do it the day after tomorrow, the eighteenth, another auspicious date. And you tell Anant, too, that the money for the project — and the controlling shares in Algonquin Steel — will be turned over to his group only after General Yodying is out of commission and all the transactions go through the Bangkok Bank, with you as one of two signatories on any disbursements on the Sayadaw U project.”

  Griswold shook his head. “No chance. Khun Anant would never agree to any of that. He is a proud man, I can assure you.

  And a bit of an egomaniac, I think.”

  Pugh said, “What if Khun Anant’s very own soothsayer, Khun Pongsak, read Khun Anant’s chart and discovered that it is essential that events transpire in the manner Khun Don and I have just described? Wouldn’t that make a difference?”

  “Of course it would. But Seer Pongsak would never do such a thing. He is a man of integrity.”

  “What if you paid him half a million dollars to do it? You could write it off as overhead.”

  “Bribe a seer? Has that ever been done in Thailand?”

  Pugh said, “Uh-huh.”

  Griswold screwed up his banged-up face and said after a moment, “I’ll have to think about that.”

  “Think fast,” Pugh said. “Khun Pongsak will be here in twenty minutes.”

  The great seer arrived in a gold Mercedes with two young monks in tow. He was a slight, bony fellow with gold-rimmed specs who wore a formal black dinner jacket over a Brooks Brothers button-down striped shirt. He had on a Burmese sarong instead of pants and on his feet he wore dollar-store flip-flops. His fingers bore a number of gold rings. Around his neck hung a gold amulet with a picture of a wizened monk on it. The seer’s overall presentation of himself was that of a dubious character who had gotten away with some casual shoplifting at Harry Winston’s.

  The Thais all wai — ed the soothsayer. Timmy and I picked up on the cue and performed a show of respect, too. Griswold shook his hand, and the two had a brief, chatty back-and-forth like a couple of old Cornell alums. Pugh informed Khun Pongsak that rice was on the way, and we adjourned to the 236 Richard Stevenson spacious living room for some small talk next to an enormous stone Buddha figure before which candles had been lined up.

  Each of us lit one.

  Khun Pongsak said to Timmy and me, “So, how do you like Thailand?”

  I told him that we had not had much time to enjoy its many pleasures but we hoped to do so as soon as our work was completed.

  The seer did not ask about the nature of our work, but he did ask, “Have you ever been to the Trump Tower?”

  Timmy and I both said we had walked by it.

  “I hope one day to see the Trump Tower with my own eyes.”

  Pugh said, “You should go there, Khun Pongsak. You will be amazed. The Trump Tower is made of solid gold.”

  “So I have heard.”

  There were some more pleasantries exchanged and then the food arrived. We sat around a teak table while Pugh’s crew served up rice, fish red curry and morning glory vines in a spicy sauce. Pugh and I had a beer, and the seer requested green tea.

  Griswold asked if any chardonnay was available, and somehow a chilled bottle was soon produced.

  Pugh’s staff and the seer’s monk posse were then asked to step outside the room, and Pugh got to the point.

  “Khun Pongsak,” Pugh said, “as security agents for Mr.

  Gary, we wish to make a request of you. General Yodying, as you may know, wants Mr. Gary taught a lesson following the unfortunate currency speculation scheme that went amiss when Mr. Gary pulled out of it. General Yodying passionately desires that Mr. Gary be thrown down from a high place and smashed to pieces. And the general’s wishes for us, Mr. Gary’s protectors, are now, we have every reason to believe, nearly identical. Mr. Gary needs to remain alive, however, because for one, he so much enjoys living and breathing, and secondly, to complete the Sayadaw U project that you yourself have invested in and which we all believe has earned the blessings of the spirit of the Enlightened One.”

  “Ah,” said the seer.

  “Now, we have been led to understand that General Yodying is scheduled for early retirement, so to speak, following a government shake-up which perusal of the heavens has determined
should take place on April twenty-seventh. But sooner than April twenty-seventh would be so much safer and more convenient for Mr. Gary and for all of us. What if a reconsideration of the comings and goings of the planets and stars were to reveal that April eighteenth is the more auspicious date?”

  We all watched the soothsayer, who was peering over at Pugh with fierce concentration.

  “It is not just the charts that must be taken into consideration,” the soothsayer said finally. “It is practical considerations also.”

  “But surely,” Pugh said, “if these events are fated to occur on April eighteenth, how could reality not fail to keep up?

  Would the army — or whoever it is that’s prepared to move — dare to defy the karma of the occasion as it has been revealed in your latest examinations of the heavens?”

  Khun Pongsak continued to stare at Pugh, and we could all but hear the whirring sounds of his brain cells attempting to rearrange themselves lucratively.

  It was Griswold who spoke up. He said, “How much do you want?”

  “Oh, dear me.” the seer said. “I can reveal but I cannot control what is fated.”

  “Let’s say a hundred thousand US.”

  “No, a million. You are asking me to alter history.”

  “Two hundred thousand. That’s final.”

  “I don’t think that’s final at all. You are over a barrel.”

  “Two fifty.”

  238 Richard Stevenson

  “Eight hundred thousand.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “No deal.”

  “Half a million. Cash.”

  “All right. Five hundred thousand. Half of it in advance.

  Tonight.”

  Griswold said, “Well, it is all for the spirit of the Buddha, isn’t it? And for the memory of Sayadaw U.”

  “This moment will live in Thai history,” Pugh said. “I congratulate each and every one of you.” He raised his bottle of Singha beer in a toast, and the soothsayer solemnly lifted his cup of green tea.

  CHAPTER THIRTY