The 38 Million Dollar Smile

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Griswold phoned somebody he refused to identify to us and tried to make a deal. First he offered 20 percent of the new project, then 30, then 40, then 50. He told whoever was on the other end of the line that that was as high as he could go. He had told us before placing the call that offering 90 percent would have been fine with him — after all, he’d be in the clear with these people as of April 27 — but that doing so would arouse suspicions about his sincerity. Also, he was unwilling to describe to the kidnappers the exact nature of the new can’t-gowrong project, and that probably did not inspire confidence.

Griswold hung up after a few minutes looking pale and exhausted. “I’m sorry. They said no deal. They want me. I suppose they think they can torture me and make me pay them back the money they lost, and then they’ll kill me as a lesson to others not to fuck with them.”

I said, “Why not just give them the money? Three lives are at risk here. How much did they lose?”

“Forty-three million US. I haven’t got that much. And what I do have I will need for the Sayadaw U project. And also to right a wrong that has festered for far too many years.”

He sat there beside Pugh’s desk in his shiny biking outfit, reeking of stale sweat, and suddenly I wanted to pick him up and toss him out a window myself. Here was a man who had employed six month’s worth of meditation to empty his mind of impurities and locate the peaceful core within, and yet he was going around wreaking bloody havoc wherever he turned. His wheel of life was like some kind of rampaging buzz saw.

Surprising both Pugh and myself, I said, “Griswold, you really have to consider giving yourself up to these people.

Maybe your present life just isn’t going to work out for you.

Plainly, your heart is generally in the right place, and if I understand the rules of reincarnation correctly, you’ve earned a pretty good karmic report card overall. You’ve donated to lots 164 Richard Stevenson of good causes over the years — Amnesty International and so forth, and I’ll bet the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Fund.

And your Buddhist study center and theme park, even if it never gets built, will surely earn you about a zillion points for good intentions. Your next life is bound to be both noble and cushy. So maybe the right thing for you to do is to just call it quits for this particular incarnation and let Kawee live out his current putrid existence as he sees fit, and the same goes for Timothy Callahan. Just give yourself up and let the karmic chips fall where they may. What do you think?”

Griswold sat glowering at me — he really would have to speak to his ex-wife about the hired help — but Pugh looked bemused.

Pugh said, “Khun Don, there is a certain Buddhist common sense to what you say. But I am thinking that it really need not come to that.”

“So what do you have in mind, Rufus?”

“We can talk some more about that. Meanwhile, let’s get Khun Gary spruced up a bit and into some fresh duds. Egg has some clothes in the outer office that should fit you, Khun Gary.

There’s a shower, and if you like we can call in a masseur and send out for a sack of grasshoppers in fish sauce for you to nibble on. Be assured you shall have whatever your heart desires, short of absconding. Egg will be following you wherever you go and he will not hesitate to crack a few ribs to sustain your cooperation. You are an extremely valuable property for us, so there’s no chance we can allow you to slip away. For now, Egg, please remove Khun Gary’s handcuffs.”

Griswold’s look softened, and he said, “This has turned into quite a mess, I know. I do apologize for that. It’s not at all what I had in mind.”

“Apology accepted,” Pugh said. “Think nothing of it. Oh, there is one thing you can do to express your regrets in a more tangible way, and your doing so will be appreciated all around.

Your former wife has discharged Investigator Strachey and will shortly cease paying his fees and underwriting his expenses. He has already spent many thousands of dollars trying to save you from a particularly unattractive form of dying fairly young.

Acting as Khun Don’s subcontractor, I also have incurred expenses. If you could kindly cough up about fifty K, this would go a long way toward easing any remaining bad feelings in this room. We know you’re worth about thirty-eight mil, so fifty thousand would be no skin off your back. How about it?

Good form is always appreciated in Thailand, as I’m sure you know. Economic justice is farther down on our list of social graces, but we here in this room like it, and we happen to own your sorry ass.”

All serene again, Griswold said, “I can help you out, yes.”

He was back in Lady Bountiful mode.

“It would not be a charitable contribution, Khun Gary. It would be a fee for a service rendered. That service being: preventing three people, one of whom would be you, from meeting the same sad fate as Khun Khunathip and your old friend Geoff Pringle. Though please do understand. While we are professionals at bailing out the hapless, we can only do what we can do. Your coughing up the fifty K in the next half hour, if you please, does not guarantee success. We will, however, do our darnedest.”

“The next half hour?”

“There are banks nearby. Or if you have a cash stash — which surely you must — you can direct us to it.”

Griswold said, “Get me my bag.”

Pugh had already been through Griswold’s shoulder bag. It contained a bottle of water, some vile PowerBar sort of thing with a Malaysian label, and Griswold’s wallet. Griswold selected an ATM card from the six or seven in his wallet and wrote the password on a piece of paper Pugh provided.

“If you think you might help yourself to a million or two I’ve got sitting around in that account,” Griswold said, “you can forget it. That account holds no more than US seventy thousand dollars.”

“And your withdrawal limit is?”

“There is no limit.”

166 Richard Stevenson

“Khun Gary, you are a god.”

“No, just a good businessman.”

I said, “And the son of Max and Bertha Griswold. That helped.”

At the mention of family and money, Griswold grew solemn. “Yes, my parents worked hard and became wealthy, and I was the beneficiary of nearly half their wealth. I have never felt anything but grateful for, and unworthy of, my inheritance. And I’ve always tried to share that wealth in a responsible way. And I intend on continuing to do so if I possibly can.”

“This is where our interests intersect,” I said. “Keeping you alive to perform more good works, and keeping Timothy and Kawee alive so they can scratch around in the dust in their far humbler ways.”

“You’re a somewhat bitter man,” Griswold said. “If you remain in Thailand, I could direct you to people who would help you do something about that.”

“My bitterness is temporary, and my bitterness is rational. It has to do with the possibility of the sweet man I have made my adult life with ending up as a pile of broken bones and useless bloody tissue on a Thai sidewalk or roadway.”

Griswold looked momentarily stricken and said, “You know, my parents died in a fall. In an airplane that crashed.”

“I heard about that. From Lou Horn.”

“Oh. Lou. How is he? Is Lou all right?”

“Yes, except for wondering why you totally cut him off and acted like you had just…”

I let the words hang, and Pugh said it. “Fallen off the face of the earth.”

“All that will be cleared up soon enough,” Griswold said. “I do feel very, very bad about the way I treated my old friends.”

“You should.”

“I really need to get a competent reading soon. All this falling. It’s hard to believe. My parents. Khun Khunathip.

Geoff. And now these threats against Kawee and your boyfriend. It’s just too much falling to write off as what most people might call coincidence.”

“You’re a faller too, Griswold. A couple of years ago you fell off your bike. And got a good whack to your noggin. Don’t leave that one out.”

“Funny,” Griswold said. “Lou and my friends Marcie and Janice in Key West talked about that. A bike accident. But I really have no memory of it happening.”

By now, Pugh had one of his crew in the office and was instructing her on how and where to extract the fifty thousand dollars worth of baht from an ATM. Griswold began to make a move toward the outer office and the bathroom when Pugh asked him to wait just one moment.

Before Griswold left the room with Egg at his side, Pugh said, “In addition to the funds, I need one other thing from you, Khun Gary, if we’re going to fish your butt out of the soup. I need to know who exactly we are dealing with here. I have reason to believe that Police General Yodying Supanant is the head of the investors who got screwed and who want you to make good on their lost investments. Am I correct?”

Shaking his head, Griswold said, “Oh God. I should never have mentioned that part of it. You know about Paveena and her birthday celebration, don’t you?”

“I read the Post, just like you.”

“Yes. Damn. But it’s just as well. I suppose you do have to know everything if you’re going to get all of us out of this fuckall with no more falling from high places.”

“Precisely. And no more of this falling-off-the-face-of-theearth hugger-mugger.”

Griswold was led out of the room, looking dazed.

As soon as Griswold was gone, Pugh got on the phone with Khun Thunska. He asked him to do a quick check of computerized city records of who in Bangkok besides Paveena 168 Richard Stevenson

Hanwilai would have a sixtieth birthday on April 27 and had a powerful husband.

Next, Pugh called Ek and they had a quick exchange in Thai.

Pugh explained to me that he had instructed Ek to locate the abandoned building in which Timmy and Kawee were being held. A helpful employee in the Bangkok building inspector’s office had come up with a list of nine buildings that fit Timmy’s

“Millpond” description. Ek would narrow the list down through surveillance and trustworthy contacts at security firms, but he would not act until told to do so by Pugh. Pugh told me he now had a plan for rescuing Timmy and Kawee that involved some risk for them and for us, and would have repercussions we would all have to cope with.

I said, “So, you don’t like my idea of having Griswold turn himself over to the kidnappers and leaving it up to him to talk his way out of this? I thought you might see a kind of karmic logic to that one.”

Pugh shot me a quick, tight smile. “It wouldn’t work. They would likely grab Griswold and renege on their promise to release their captives. As Khun Gary predicted, they would torture him and extract as much cash from him as they could in a short time. Then they would throw all of them off a building

— Griswold, Timmy and Kawee — as a kind of fuck-you gesture to all of us. Then the police would miraculously appear on the scene and arrest you for some type of visa violation and me for trout fishing without a license. A financial settlement of perhaps fifty K or so would soon be agreed to, and we would both be released. Life would go on for me, and you would be placed on a Lufthansa flight for Frankfurt in the middle of the night, coach class. So, Khun Don, commonsensical as your ostensibly hardheaded formulation might be on its face, you’d better forget it. Here in the Land of Smiles, it just ain’t gonna fly.”

I said to Pugh that if my desperate, fatalistic and admittedly selfish solution was not the answer, then what was? The scenario he laid out for me over the next three minutes sounded outlandish, although it occurred to me that it would not have surprised Timmy.