The 38 Million Dollar Smile

CHAPTER NINE

“Yes, I will talk to you,” Mango said, glancing quickly around the pool area. “But not here. Private. We go to cubicle.”

Kawee had spotted Mango by the swimming pool soon after we had arrived at Paradisio. Most of the men lying on sun-splashed chaises trying to darken themselves were farangs. Most of the Thais sat on chairs in the palmy shade, trying to keep from getting any darker. Mango was among the Thais.

Kawee had approached Mango first and showed him my letter of introduction from Ellen Griswold and my PI license, which I had tucked into the towel I was wearing. Even as I wielded this paraphernalia of farang kreng jai, Mango looked skeptical, even a bit anxious. But I came over and assured him that I had been sent to help Griswold if he needed any help.

Mango should have been further reassured by our meeting under circumstances where he had to know he could maintain masterly control.

I saw why Mango made some gay hearts skip a beat. Lean and fit in a graceful and seemingly effortless way, and taller than most Thais, Mango was luminously caramel colored, like some flavorsome Thai street-stall sweet, with aristocratic Asian cheekbones under big dark peasant eyes and eyelashes the length and elegance of the architectural details on a pagoda.

You could imagine how happy a tiny songbird might be perched on one of Mango’s overhangs. His black hair was cut short, almost monklike, though the tranquil confidence he projected was outwardinstead of inward-looking. When he said “we can go to cubicle,” he gave a flash of smile with a hint of humor in it, despite the apprehension he had to be feeling.

We climbed a winding, Busby Berkeley-style staircase from the pool and cafe area to the second-floor locker and cubicle area, all of it decorated more like a Hyatt or Marriott than like the illegal-immigrant detention-center trappings commonly found in gay saunas in the US. The message seemed to be that 80 Richard Stevenson clients were here for pleasure, not punishment. The music flowing out of the ceiling and through the mutely lighted spaces was not dance-club-throb but Fats Waller sweet-and-easy.

Along a long corridor, men lingered, conversed quietly with one another, greeted friends and acquaintances, and cruised unhurriedly. There was no rush, for it appeared there was sure to be plenty of sanuk to go around. Most of the men were Thais, their average age 28.3, I guessed. There were some young farangs, too, but the foreigners’ average age I estimated at 58.3, a number that also described many of their waist sizes. I heard British and German accents as we passed several dozen men, some of them Americans, and what I guessed were Swedish voices. Here was famed Southeast Asian sexual tourism, that quaint term.

Mango led me into a raised cubicle, slid the door shut, and latched it. Again, it was less like a flophouse cell than like a Thai countryside hut, with dark walls and a floor cushioned with vinyl padding and penlight-sized illumination down low on one end. There was no cot or bed, just as in Thai village houses, where people generally ate, slept and socialized on the floor.

The top of the cubicle was open, and the ambient noise included both low voices and the odd moan or happy yelp from nearby cubicles.

Mango and I each flopped down and sat facing each other with our backs against opposite walls, our towels unremoved in a businesslike way. I told Mango how worried Gary Griswold’s family and friends were, and I thanked him for agreeing to talk to me, despite the falling-out that he and Griswold apparently had had.

“Gary treat me very bad,” Mango said. “But I don’t want him get hurt. I don’t want to get hurt, too,” he said, “and some men want me say where Gary. I tell them, I don’t know where Gary. They think I lying but I not. So I hide at my friend house.

But my friend go back to Germany. So I bored. Maybe I find other friend. You have condo in Bangkok?”

“No, I live in Albany, New York.”

“America.”

“Yes.”

“I had American friend. Five. No, six.”

“Six years ago?”

“No, six American friend. California. Tennessee. Boston.

Harrisburg, P-A. Ohio. And…Mr. Mike come from Alaska.”

“You lived with each of these men? They were boyfriends?”

“I like foreign men. Yes. I don’t like Thai so much. No money, ha-ha.”

“Aren’t there Thai gay men with money?”

“Yes. But they just like other Thai gay men with money.”

“What about hooking up with a Thai gay man with no money? Just for friendship and for love?”

“Oh, I have Thai boyfriend. Donnutt. I love Donnutt. We build house in Chonburi. Live Chonburi later. Now Donnutt in Oslo with Knute.”

I said, “Did your falling out with Gary have anything to do with your many boyfriends, by chance? Donnutt, Mike, Tennessee, and so on? Were any of these fellows in your life during your time with Gary? If so, did he know about them?”

Mango looked down at his lap. I noticed for the first time that a few lines of age were beginning to show around his neck.

Was he pushing thirty? Would he accumulate enough of a nest egg for him and Donnutt to finish their house in Chonburi before all the foreign “friends” moved on to fresher pickings?

Mango said quietly, “Gary not understand Thai man.”

“He thought your relationship would be monogamous? No sex or relationships with other men?”

“I thought he know. He like Thai, so I thought he know Thai. He don’t know. He find out about Werner and ask me if other ones. I tell him. Big argument. I leave.”

“Who was Werner?”

“From Cologne. I have sex with him two time. Two! Too sad. Gary make me too sad.”

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“So you had been living with Gary in his condo?”

“Sometime. I keep my place in Sukhumvit. It good I keep. It okay. It cheap.”

I asked Mango if Gary was having any money problems that he knew of.

“No money problems. Gary rich. He good to me. Generous.

Kind. I put money in bank in Chonburi for house build with Donnutt.”

“Did Gary know about Donnutt?”

“He know Donnutt my friend.”

“Some Thai men,” I said, “have longtime, sometimes lifelong, relationships with foreign men. It sounds as if you never wanted that.”

A wilted smile. “Not without Donnutt.”

“How long have you and Donnutt been boyfriends? How old were you when the relationship began?”

“Eleven.”

“You were eleven years old?”

“Yes. In our village. Now we both thirty-two.”

“Didn’t Gary understand that history when you explained it to him?”

“No, he jealous. He want I want him only. I love Gary. He Buddhist. He love the Buddha. I teach him. I teach him pray. I teach him meditate. I teach him make merit. I love Gary, but Gary no understand Thai.”

“Thais are not so sexually possessive, I guess, as farangs tend to be.”

“Possess? Possess just house, motorbike. No possess for sex. Sex for pleasure. Sex for fun. Like food. Like air.”

“Sanuk.”

“Yes, sanuk. But I love Gary. I am sad.”

“Is it possible,” I said, “that Gary was upset about something else, and that affected how he reacted to Werner and your other somewhat-numerous revelations?”

“I don’t think so,” Mango said.

As he spoke, I was working hard now to concentrate on what he was saying, as the two men in the next cubicle were getting up a nice head of steam. It was plainly a Thai and a farang, because one of them was making little cries of oh-oh-oh

— the farang — and the other one was uttering little squeals of oi-oi-oi — the Thai.

Mango seemed unaware of any of this. It was just another feature of the Bangkok atmosphere, like the aroma of jasmine.

He went on. “Gary not angry at other people, just me. Gary happy then. He rich, he say, and he get more rich, and then he make big merit. Gary so happy. But after I go, something happen. He not happy. I hear this from Kawee. Gary leave, he hide.”

“He was going to become more rich?”

Mango thought about this. His towel had shifted a bit, and now another of his numerous excellent attributes was dimly visible. That and the oh-oh-oh-oi-oi-oi racket next door weren’t making my job any easier at what plainly was about to become a critical juncture in the investigation.

Mango said, “Big investment.”

“Investment in what?’

“I don’t know.”

“He didn’t talk about it at all?”

“No.”

“How do you know it was an investment?”

“He say he go bank, get money for big investment. Make rich, make merit.”

“What was the merit he was going to make?”

“No say. But for the Buddha. For the Dharma. For the Sangha.”

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“The Sangha. That’s the monkhood? Was he going to give money to the monks? To a monk?”

“No monk, maybe. Maybe seer. Gary go to seer. Gary like seer. Seer tell Gary many things. He say Gary see blood. Gary people hurt. Then he say Gary make big merit, no blood, no hurt. Make bad luck good luck.”

“Do you know who the seer was, Mango? Do you know his name and where he is?”

“Yes, he is soothsayer Khunathip Chantanapim, and he here in Bangkok.”

I said, “Now we’re getting somewhere,” just as one of the chaps in the next cubicle got somewhere too.

Timmy and Sawee were not by the pool when I came downstairs, so Mango and I stepped into the nearby multi-tenanted labyrinthine steam room for a refreshing bout of heatstroke. Both of us had been feeling a certain amount of tension following our conversation about Griswold, though when we emerged from the busy steam room and headed for the cold showers some minutes later, much of that tension had been dissipated.

Mango told me how to reach him if I needed to talk to him again, and he gave a fairly detailed description of the two men who had threatened him two months earlier and roughed him up when he insisted that he had no idea where Griswold was.

One of the two goons sounded like Yai, the motorcycle assault artist. Mango said he wished I — or somebody — could do something about these two. He needed some more foreign

“friends” to keep his Chonburi house fund going, and keeping such a low profile was crimping his style in that regard.

Timmy reappeared a while later at poolside. “Where’s Kawee?” I asked. “Is he okay?”

“Oh sure. He’s in the shower, I think.”

I told Timmy about my productive talk with Mango and about the news of the soothsayer who apparently talked Griswold into some major Buddhist merit-making venture, probably involving a large amount of cash.

“Wow, this is the breakthrough you needed.”

“I think so.”

“Great,” Timmy said, looking pleased but a little distracted.

“So. Are you having fun? No drive-by shootings? Plenty of smiles.”

“You got it.”

“But nothing worth mentioning?”

“Well. I guess I should tell you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well. It’s this. I just spent a lovely hour and a half in a cubicle with Kawee.” He actually smirked, something I wasn’t sure I had ever seen him do.

“ Kawee? ”

More smirk, though faintly cracked this time.

“You and little katoey Kawee?”

“It was his idea. But it didn’t take much coaxing, and I’m happy I did it because he’s really quite delightful.”

“Timothy. Don’t your tastes generally run to — how shall I put it? — men a bit more butch?”

“Yes, obviously. But in the semidarkness that sweet lad is plenty butch enough, believe you me. Anyway, he’s just so…so nice.”

“I’m…I’m be-dazed.”

“Anyway, while he’s a katoey, he’s not transgendered in the full, clinical sense. He plans, for example, on keeping his dick.

He’s totally happy with it. As well he might be. Anyway, we didn’t do much. Basically we just cuddled and chatted and then enjoyed some pleasant mutual slow self-abuse. He wanted to fuck me. He had four condoms — four, mind you! — stuffed inside his towel. But even with the condoms, that seemed to go well beyond our ground rules on these matters.”

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“I would say, yes, getting pounded up the butt by a well-hung Thai lady-boy is well outside our agreed-upon parameters.”

“I didn’t think you’d mind. I just assumed that once you and Mango got into a cubicle, nature would run its merry course.”

“Timothy, why would you assume such a thing? On those exceedingly rare occasions when I do anything like that at all I never mix work in with it. Well, once I did and regretted it, as you well know. Really. I’m…I don’t know quite what to say.”

“So you and Mango didn’t do it?”

“Of course not!”

“Weren’t you in the steam room just now? I thought I saw you both come out.”

“Yes, but we didn’t do anything together. Give me some credit.”

“Anyway, I’m just doing what you always say. It’s the Henry James dictum. When in Venice, one must always try the squid in its own ink.”

“Oh, that. I forgot. I hope Kawee wasn’t too squidlike.”

“Not too. Just enough.”

“Well, you do seem to be adjusting to Thai customs and mores nicely. I suppose I should be grateful after all your ambivalence and fretting about coming here.”

“The only question in my mind is, why didn’t we come to Thailand sooner? Don, I have to say, now I do see what the attraction is. The Thais are just so comfortable being who and what they are, and so totally laid-back about life’s simplest pleasures — tasty food, sunshine, flowers and trees, affectionate and playful sex. I see why people come here and…well, fall in love with this gosh-darn place!”

So. What was this going to mean? And he hadn’t even seen the reclining Buddhas yet.

“Look,” I said, “I’m glad you’ve come around. Both the Thai Ministry of Tourism and I are pleased. But I’ve got work to do. For one thing, I have to go get my phone and call Rufus and tell him he doesn’t need to follow Mango when he comes out. Mango, I’m pretty much convinced, had a falling out with Griswold over the particulars of their relationship, nothing more, and is in no way part of whatever trouble Griswold is in.

Maybe,” I added, “I should tell Rufus he should consider following you around for a few days. Who knows what you’ll be up to next?”

He did not smirk this time, but he did chuckle peculiarly.

When I retrieved my phone from my locker and told Pugh he could call off the stakeout, he said he was glad I had called and that he had been trying to reach me. He said a famous Thai soothsayer had died early that morning in a fall from a Bangkok apartment building, and there was reason to believe that the seer had had some connection to Gary Griswold.