The 38 Million Dollar Smile

CHAPTER TWELVE

“So, Bob. What’s the deal with the Griswolds? What I’m dealing with here seems to be not exactly what it seemed to be when you sent Ellen Griswold to me to track down her wayward ex-husband and wayward current brother in-law in Thailand.” I explained what had transpired in the previous twenty-four hours and asked the lawyer, “So, what I want to know from you is, can the Griswolds be trusted, or what?”

I had reached Chicarelli on the golf course Sunday morning in Clifton Park, near Albany. When I called his house, his wife was reluctant to violate the sanctity of Chicarelli’s Sabbath golf game by blabbing his cell phone number for a business matter.

But when I said the urgent situation I was calling about had to do with the Griswolds, a name of consequence in Albany, she recited the number pronto.

“They’ve got Timmy? Christ, Strachey, have you notified the US embassy? They’ve gotta bring in the FBI, would be my thinking. Going at this on your own sounds very risky to me.”

“It may come to that, but my Thai sources say the cops here are more effectively inspired by cash than by hectoring from farangs in suits. There’s a big DEA station here, but I’d probably have to convince those guys that there’s a major heroin shipment involved in order to get their attention.”

“You might want to consider saying just that.”

“I might, in the end. For all I know at this point, it could even be true. But what about the Griswolds? What’s the story with them? Ellen sends me flying over here and gives me pretty much carte blanche to do anything I can to save her ex and his thirty-eight mil. Then she e-mails me some lame crap about he’s A-okay, it’s all a misunderstanding, and come on home. Plainly the guy really is up to his ears in some stinking mess involving influential fortune-tellers and who knows what kind of criminal weirdos. It seems like half the goons in Bangkok want to get hold of Griswold and…I hate to think. Give him a shove. My 106 Richard Stevenson question to you is, why would Ellen call me off? What’s her game here? It’s possible that Gary lied to her about being safe, but why would she be so ready to believe the lie? Bob, I’m confused.”

There was a long pause — was Chicarelli taking time out from my call to pick some grass off his four iron? — and then he said, “I shouldn’t be telling you this.” More silence.

“Yeah?”

“It could be financial.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Bill Griswold has serious money troubles, I’ve heard from people who would know. It’s possible all of a sudden that maybe the Griswolds think they cannot afford you.”

“That sounds unlikely. I’m a monetary tiny speck in their scheme of things.”

“No, this is big and it’s significant. There’s a hostile takeover underway at Algonquin Steel. A holding company operating out of the Caymans is busy rolling up shares in the Griswold’s zillion-dollar family store. Bill Griswold is fighting it, and there’s a high probability that the family’s assets will be tied up in litigation for years to come. Bill and Ellen may land on their feet eventually, but the family well is going to be shallow-borderingon-dry for the foreseeable future. All this just developed on Friday, so that could help account for Ellen’s change of plans.”

“I was somewhere over the Pacific on Friday. At least she didn’t call the airline and demand that they turn the plane around.”

Chicarelli laughed once. “She might have. That’s Ellen.”

“Anyway, what you’re suggesting doesn’t sound right. It’s not like the Griswolds are suddenly penniless. And surely Ellen would not cut her ex-husband off if she believed he was in real danger. And again, if he contacted her and told her he was not in any danger, why would she believe that? She thinks he’s borderline bonkers these days. It’s possible, I suppose, that he’s got some scheme in mind to save himself, and my poking around is screwing that up somehow. But if that’s the case, why wouldn’t Griswold just explain that to me, and I’d have another helping of fried crickets and then head home. No, there’s something screwy about the way all the Griswolds are behaving.

Anyway, now I have no choice but to get to the bottom of the entire bizarre mess and get Timmy out of Thailand. You know, he didn’t really want to come here. He thought it would be dangerous. I talked him into it.”

“People by the thousands go there and have a wonderful time,” Chicarelli said. “Isn’t Thailand called the Land of Smiles?”

“That’s what I told Timmy. It’s true, too. But nobody, Thai or otherwise, who has anything to do with the Griswolds is smiling these days. What’s that about? That’s what I want to know.”

“Jeez, Strachey. Now I’m sorry I ever sent Ellen to you. I figured: Thailand. Gay. Free ride. Big bucks. I thought I was doing you a favor. And I was helping out Ellen, too. She’s somebody you don’t want to make unhappy if you can avoid it.”

“She’s formidable. Though I kind of like her, even if I don’t quite trust her.”

“This didn’t come from me, but did you ever hear the stuff about Ellen and the demise of Bill’s first wife?”

“What stuff is that?”

“Sheila Griswold, Bill’s ex, was a vindictive lady who made a career of making his life miserable after the divorce. Hounding him endlessly for more, more, more. I knew Sheila’s attorney, Hal Woolrich, a total scumbag who’s now in Waterbury for tax evasion. Anyway, Sheila disappears on a Caribbean cruise and a lot of people thought she went overboard with a little help from others on the boat. Among the merrymakers on the ship that night were Ellen’s personal trainer, Duane Hubbard, and Hubbard’s boyfriend, Matthew Mertz. They were pretty scuzzy characters. Mertz had a history of coke dealing and at least one assault conviction. Word got back to Albany — probably by way of Woolrich — that these two were on the ship when Sheila disappeared, and a number of people who knew the situation wondered if maybe Bill and Ellen put those two up to turning poor Sheila into shark bait. Anyway, there was never any evidence and, because of jurisdictional confusion, no investigation to speak of.”

“Ellen told me,” I said, “that her husband was a suspect in people’s minds in his ex’s disappearance, but not that she was.

This is quite a fascinating family you’ve gotten me involved with, Bob.”

“Yeah, well, Strachey, you send them a billable-hours statement the first of the month and payment arrives by the end of the month. Or has so far. Just how fucked-up the Griswolds may be, I don’t really know. But Christ, if I’d ever thought Timmy was going to get hurt on account of the Griswolds, I would never have sent Ellen to you. This just stinks to high heaven, and I am so, so sorry.”

“Timmy hasn’t gotten hurt on account of the Griswolds.

He’s gotten hurt because of me. So, what became of these two characters, the personal trainer and his beau, Hubbard and Mertz?”

“I have no idea. Would you like me to find out?”

“Nah. There’s no real need to know. This all happened — what? Fourteen or fifteen years ago?”

“Something like that.”

“If you can easily track these guys down, do. Otherwise, I’ve got plenty of other unsavory characters to keep my mind occupied. What you might do, though, is try to get an explanation from Ellen as to what’s going on here. What did Gary actually tell her yesterday that made her fire me from the case? I’ve tried phoning her and will try again, and I’ll e-mail her too. Maybe she’ll open up to you.”

“Possibly. Though in my dealings with Ellen over the years I’ve sometimes wondered if she wasn’t holding back on a few important details of whatever it was.”

“Now you tell me.”

“Yeah, well. Have you ever had the perfect client? What you’re always dealing with are human beings. It’s a hazard of the workplace OSHA can’t seem to do anything about.”

I gave Chicarelli my Thailand cell phone number and asked him to call me anytime he developed any clue at all as to what the Griswolds were up to. He wished me luck springing Timmy and Kawee. I said, “Do you believe in lucky numbers?”

“No. Can’t say that I do.”

“Me neither. I’ve always believed that when good things happen in circumstances that are beyond our control, that’s what we call luck. Likewise with bad things. The Thais believe that events can be manipulated through managing the symbols of luck — rituals, amulets, wielding the right numbers, prayer. I would try any of that if I thought it would help keep Timothy safe. But now I look around me here — at the shrines, the temples, the stupas, the spirit houses — and none of it seems like anything that will help bring Timmy back. In fact, it all feels like it’s part of what took Timmy away from me and put his life in danger. And I feel as if I’m not only in danger of losing Timmy, but that I’m losing Thailand, a place I love. It’s awful.”

“Get Timmy back,” Chicarelli said, “and I’m guessing your love of Thailand will follow.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “First things first.”