The 38 Million Dollar Smile

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I walked down to an ATM on Surawong and withdrew another twenty-five thousand baht. I had nearly maxed out my MasterCard, so I started in on my American Express account.

Pugh bundled the cash into a shopping bag and sent Ek over to the police station on Sala Daeng Soi 1 with it.

Pugh phoned his own police sources to check on the investigation into the death of the renowned seer, Khun Khunathip. Miss Aroon had brought up the morning newspapers, both Thai and English language, and while all the papers had the soothsayer’s passing emblazoned across their front pages, none speculated on the details or meaning of his death. The great man had simply “died in a fall.”

Pugh’s police contacts told him that an actual investigation was under way, as opposed to a fake investigation. Pugh said this could mean that either important persons had nothing to do with the apparent homicide and wanted justice done, or that important persons had everything to do with the apparent homicide and they wished to gauge how much was going to leak out before they either declared the seer’s fall accidental or found a hapless scapegoat from the Thai lower social orders to take the rap.

Ek drove Pugh and me inch by inch through the morning traffic miasma over to the Topmost so that I could change clothes and Pugh could fortify himself with the bacon at the breakfast buffet. On the way, we tried to work up a story I could tell the kidnappers so that we could buy time if we needed it. Nothing we came up with sounded any more convincing than the truth. Pugh said the kidnappers undoubtedly had their own police sources — some of them possibly the same as Pugh’s — and the kidnappers would know that we had been unable to track down Griswold. They were simply using us to accomplish what they had been unable to do, 128 Richard Stevenson thinking that we had better information than theirs and more resources. But we didn’t.

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, what 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.”