The 38 Million Dollar Smile

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Griswold would not agree to see his brother and sister-inlaw until the day after their arrival late Thursday afternoon. He said this was for their own safety. On Friday, Griswold said, a change of government would remove General Yodying from power, and he would no longer be a threat to any of us. Friday would also, of course, be too late for Bill and Ellen to talk Gary into holding on to the controlling shares of Algonquin Steel instead of turning them over to the Thai group running the Sayadaw U project. I asked Griswold about that, and he said,

“Yep. Too bad.”

Griswold was kept under close watch at the safe house through the day, and then while Nitrate picked up Bill and Ellen at Suvarnabhumi. They were coming in on the same flight from New York that Timmy and I had arrived on six days earlier.

Kawee, Mango and Timmy splashed around in the swimming pool throughout the day. I had a brief swim too, and also managed to reach Bob Chicarelli in Albany just before he went to bed.

“Hey, Bob, somebody you were asking about Hubbard and Mertz blabbed to Bill and Ellen. They’re spitting nickels. It isn’t pretty.”

“I know. Sorry, Strachey. They’re trying to get me disbarred.”

“Can they?”

“Nah. I’m not representing them in anything.”

“Me either. I’m not sure I’m representing anybody. At this point, it’s all for the Enlightened One.”

“Don’t forget to send him a bill.”

“So, did you pick up anything on Hubbard and Mertz?”

“They’re in Albany and not doing all that great. Hubbard is back working as a personal trainer, and Mertz is supposedly dealing crystal meth. They got hold of a lot of money 248 Richard Stevenson somewhere last fall, but they lost it. Some guy from Miami conned them out of it with a scheme to open a Mexican fast-food chain where you could also work out. But then this dude disappeared with most of the dough. It was going to be called Taco Terrifico or something like that.”

I told Chicarelli that Ellen and Bill Griswold were at that moment high above the Pacific en route to Thailand to confront Gary. “Gary thinks Ellen and Bill had Sheila Griswold killed by Hubbard and Mertz, and he’s determined to ruin their lives. Their present lives anyway. Over here people make those distinctions. I’m not sure what Bill and Ellen know or think, but they absolutely deny any involvement in Sheila’s death. The only really sure thing is, we’ve got quite a face-off in the works over here.”

“It might interest you to know,” Chicarelli said, “that Hubbard and Mertz used to dabble in gay porn. They’re a little too mature for that by now. But a guy I know in the DA’s office said there was a gay porn video production operation in Schenectady for a while in the nineties, and those two were involved in both production work and performing.”

“So Schenectady was the Budapest of the Mohawk Valley? I never knew that.”

“It didn’t last, apparently.”

I said, “Was it just gay? Or did they do bi stuff, too?”

“That I can’t tell you.”

“Well, good luck keeping your license, Bob”

“You too, Strachey.”

The Oriental Hotel, where the Griswolds had chosen to stay despite their apparent precarious financial state, had retained its cachet but only a little of its former Victorian-era charm. The ghosts of Conrad and Maugham did not greet us as Pugh and I strode past the doorman toward the elevators. But even the rooms in the modern tower section of the hotel were spiffy and THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 249 spacious and had a nice view of the hotel’s riverside gardens and the dragon-tail boats on the Chao Phraya beyond.

The rooms also had TV sets with built-in DVD players, and that was useful for taking a gander at the video Pugh and I were about to watch along with Ellen and Bill.

“I’m really hurt,” Ellen said to me, “that Gary would think I could kill another person. I thought he knew me better than that, and this really all just breaks my heart.”

“Gary and I were never close,” Bill said, “and I know he rejects many of my values. But same as Ellen, I’m really just terribly, terribly disappointed that my brother would see me as a person who would take a human life.”

“Even Sheila’s,” Ellen added and threw me a look.

The Griswolds were not their freshest. Both had showered and changed clothes before Pugh and I arrived just after eight Thursday night. But the seventeen-hour slog across the Pacific and the twelve-hour time difference had beaten them down, and they looked as if they could have used a week on the beach at Phuket instead of a confrontation with a man bent on making them pay for committing a murder they denied having anything to do with.

Ellen had flopped onto an easy chair in her aubergine pantsuit and tangerine headband, and Bill was seated at the desk in fresh khakis and a white polo shirt. Here was the man I remembered from the Albany airport ten days earlier, a beefier version of Gary, with thinning hair and puffy dark eyes. He had popped a piece of Nicorette gum soon after Pugh and I arrived, and I felt for the guy. Having your wealth and your life’s work crumbling while you were in nicotine withdrawal was a lot of people’s idea of hell. I wondered if he would make it through the next few days without bolting down the street to pick up a pack of Marlboros, which in Thailand were required by law to display hideous pictures of rotting gums on the front of each package.

The Griswolds did not appear pleased to have Pugh in the room — their handshakes with him were brief and perfunctory 250 Richard Stevenson

— but they apparently accepted my explanation that he was the man who would keep us all safe while these complex Griswold family matters got sorted out.

I laid out Gary Griswold’s story that he had let himself be blackmailed by Hubbard and Mertz in order to keep Bill and Ellen from going to prison and to protect the memories of Bill and Gary’s parents. They both shook their heads and threw up their hands.

“That’s idiotic,” Ellen said.

“Pure bullshit,” said Bill.

“And what proof did Duane and Matthew offer of this heinous crime supposedly sponsored by Bill and me?”

“They said they had an incriminating recording and you had a copy of it too.”

“Well, they did bring Ellen and me a DVD and try to extort money from us,” Bill said. “But it was no proof of murder, for God’s sake. It’s the DVD you are about to see. They said we should pay up, or the family would be embarrassed by Sheila’s history. Apparently they were bluffing with Gary about proof of a murder having been committed, and their outrageous bluff paid off. How much did Gary give them?”

“A lot. Two million dollars.”

“Oh no!”

“He did it for you two supposedly. And for the future wellbeing of your souls.”

“Oh, please,” Ellen said.

Now Pugh spoke up. “Mr. Gary plans on building a Buddhist study and meditation center here in Bangkok, also with an aim of easing your way along the bumpy paths of time.

It is a gesture of great magnanimity, and you will be among its primary beneficiaries. You may not wish to thank him in this life, but I am guessing that on down the road your gratitude and appreciation will be immense.”

“Mr. Pugh,” Ellen said, “when I die, I plan on staying dead.

So if Gary wants to ease Bill’s and my burdens, he might start by dropping this insane plan to rob us of the great company that Bill’s father built out of literally nothing. And he might fucking apologize to Bill and me for going around calling us goddamn murderers!”

Pugh shrugged. “You two are of course free to aim your souls in any direction you wish, including anybody’s idea of heaven, hell, purgatory or Venezuela. But it is your actions that will decide things, not your intentions.”

The Griswolds shot each other a Who-is-this-guy? look.

Ellen said, “Thanks for clearing that up. Now I can just close my eyes anytime I feel like it and drift toward the white light.”

I said, “How did Hubbard and Mertz know that Gary was in Thailand with a lot of cash in the bank? They told Gary that you sent them his way.”

Bill said, “They knew about Gary from another one of Duane’s clients, a man Gary had dated when he was still in Albany and who had tried to contact Gary on a visit to Key West. Gary’s friends there told this guy what Gary had done — left the company and moved to Thailand. Duane and Matthew told us if we didn’t pay them — they wanted something laughable, like half a million dollars — they would go to Gary and show him the DVD and tell him what a slut Sheila was, and did he want this gross family stuff turning up at six and eleven on Channel Thirteen?”

“As if Gary would give a crap,” Ellen said.

“As if we would,” her husband added.

“Well,” Ellen said. “Of course we would care if Bill’s ex turned up on the news in the altogether with those two dorks, her face and tits all blurred out to save the Hudson Valley grannies and kiddies who were watching from wondering what that was all about. Yes, we would care. But not to the tune of half a million dollars. Or even half a million — what’s the currency here?”

“Baht,” Pugh said.

“Yes, or even half a million of those. Bill told Duane and Matthew to get lost. We never heard another word, and 252 Richard Stevenson naturally it never occurred to us that they actually followed through and went after Gary for money. It all just seemed too preposterous.”

Pugh said, “It is my duty to inform you that pornography is illegal in Thailand. That does not mean that it is not ubiquitous.

Nonetheless you are breaking the law by possessing the DVD you have brought into the country, and I hope you do not end up in one of our notorious, squalid, soul-destroying prisons for eight or ten years. But anyway here we all are, so let’s have a look.”

The Sheila Griswold who soon appeared on the hotel room’s TV screen was quite a specimen: rangy, taut, bright-eyed, nicely coiffed and made-up, and above all, eager and versatile. On the fifty-minute video — much of which Bill Griswold fast-forwarded through — the notorious JAP did everything but shop. Hubbard and Mertz were also physically well put together: muscular, fine skinned, with better-thanaverage endowments. And while equally busy, the two men seemed perceptibly more keen on each other’s parts than on the ex-Mrs. Griswold’s. Though they did do what the DVD’s producers apparently had required of them, and at every opportunity Sheila Griswold was ready to help out.

Ellen had only just glanced at the video from time to time while Bill, Pugh, and I sat paying attention.

“Jesus,” Ellen said when The End came on. “If any of you fellows need to go take a shower, feel free. Me, I could use a beer.” She was seated near the minibar and got up and extracted a Singha.

I said, “So this is why Hubbard and Mertz were on the cruise ship with Sheila when she disappeared? What was it?

They were blackmailing her too? Making her pay for their Caribbean vacations?”

Ellen laughed. “If only.”

“Sheila was paying those two to travel with her and service her,” Bill said evenly. “It was one of the expenses I was expected to pick up after the divorce.”

“Too sad,” Pugh said. “It sounds like a Thai soap opera.

Except, in Thai soap operas of this kind, murder often is the result.”

“What I still don’t get,” I said, “is why Gary ever believed that Hubbard and Mertz had proof of the murder accusation.

This DVD certainly would not serve that purpose.”

“In Thailand it might,” Pugh said. “And Khun Gary had been living here and could conceivably have picked up some of the local attitudes.”

“But he never even saw the DVD.”

“Perhaps,” Pugh said, “he wished to believe the worst of his brother. Is that a possibility, Mr. Bill?”

Again, Ellen and Bill glanced at each other. He nodded and said, “It could have happened that way.”

“That may make it harder,” Pugh said, “to talk your younger brother out of the transaction he is determined to conclude in a matter of hours — a transaction that will be detrimental not only to your financial well-being but to your reputation in the larger society. I know face is less important among farangs than among Thais. But may I please be the first to offer you my deepest sympathies for your coming out of all this with an awful lot of egg on your face.”

It was then that Bill Griswold said he needed to have a look in the minibar too.