The 38 Million Dollar Smile ds-10

by Richard Stevenson

  CHAPTER SIX

  “You said it would be hot here in April,” Timmy said. “But this is ridiculous. It’s like India.”

  “This is a good sign,” I said. “You’re already getting sentimental.”

  “Anyway, I’m just happy to be off that plane.”

  “Maybe we’ll be lucky and die here, and we won’t have to get back on the plane and sit immobilized for another seventeen hours.”

  “Please don’t say that.”

  We were waiting in the taxi queue outside Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok. The night I got home from Key West, Timmy had left a note on my pillow. At first, I thought he had forgotten to gather up an official document of the New York State Assembly, an uncharacteristic untidiness on his part. Then I saw that it was a message for me, composed following our Atlanta airport-Albany phone conversation of a few hours earlier. The note read: “About you and me falling in love with Asia again — sign me up!”

  I had told Ellen Griswold that my aide and I preferred flying business class, and she had replied, “Of course. Are you kidding?” But even with Thai Airways orchid-garnished entrees and comely cabin attendants of both sexes, we were glad to be on the ground after the nonstop slog and standing out-of-doors in the soaking heat.

  “This doesn’t look like India at all,” Timmy said, once we were in the taxi speeding down an eight-lane expressway.

  “Bangkok looks more like Fort Lauderdale or San Diego.”

  “What does India look like?”

  “Oh, Schenectady.”

  “Anyway, this is not the Bangkok I remember — all these skyscrapers. This is the shiny all-new Asia. In the seventies, 54 Richard Stevenson

  Bangkok was still mostly quaint, filthy canals and teak houses on stilts.”

  “Are you disappointed?”

  “No,” I said, “I’m sure that just below the surface it’s still very much Thailand,” and noted the Buddha figures on the dashboard and the amulets and garlands of jasmine dangling from the rearview mirror. Getting into the taxi, I had had a back-and-forth with the driver, Korn Panpiemras, over whether he would lawfully employ the meter or we would instead pay an extortionate flat rate — we eventually settled on the meter — and this ritual also was reassuringly Thai.

  As we approached the city center, the late-afternoon traffic was nearly as thick as the air, and we didn’t reach our hotel until almost seven o’clock. The Topmost-Lumpinee, described on a gay-travel Web site as “gay friendly” and convenient to gay bars and clubs — and not far from Gary Griswold’s last known address — was a pleasant tourist hotel with a spacious lobby adorned with gold-leafed Siamese dancers and smiling elephants. In the time it took to fly from JFK to Bangkok, the dollar had declined even further against the Thai baht — and most other currencies — but the Topmost still looked like a bargain at under fifty dollars a night.

  When the bellhop checked our room key, he exclaimed happily, “Nine-oh-nine! A lucky number!”

  When we got up to 909, however, the key didn’t fit. “Oh,” the kid lugging our bags said with a dark look. “It is six-oh-six.”

  Inside the unlucky room, Timmy headed for the shower and I phoned Rufus Pugh. This was one of the Bangkok private investigators my New York PI friend had suggested I try. I had liked the look of Pugh’s Web site. It said he spoke fluent Thai and employed Thai investigators. Other Web sites I looked at made no such claims, even though they all seemed to be run by foreigners. Also, most of the others specialized in “cheating husbands” and “cheating girlfriends,” and Pugh Investigative Services also listed background checks, surveillance, due diligence and, significantly, missing persons. So I had e-mailed

  Pugh, and he replied that I should phone him when I got to Bangkok.

  I reached Pugh on his mobile, and wherever he was, the reception was poor. He said he was tied up on a stakeout with a team, and we made a plan to meet for breakfast at eight at the Topmost. Pugh had an accent of some kind that I couldn’t place. I figured with a name like his it had to be Arkansas or Louisiana.

  Timmy and I had slept on the plane, thanks to Griswold family business-class largesse. So we picked up a Bangkok city map at the hotel front desk and set out to have a look at Griswold’s apartment building on the way to dinner. It looked like a twenty-minute walk. And I soon saw on the map that Geoff Pringle had lived less than half a mile away from Griswold before he died in the fall from his balcony a week earlier.

  Moving through the premonsoon Bangkok night heat felt more like swimming in swamp water than walking through air, and our polo shirts were soon drenched. The part of Sathorn we passed through was a mix of city office towers and apartment buildings on the main streets, and smaller shops, restaurants, and food stalls on the sois that ran off them. The street food was as aromatic as I remembered it, and we paused for some noodles in a pork broth with herbs. We sat on tiny stools at a tiny table on a sliver of sidewalk and were served from a tiny cart with a full kitchen inside it that was operated by a small nuclear family. Timmy said it was the best food he ever ate. It cost a dollar, not that Ellen Griswold wouldn’t have sprung for two.

  Among the vehicles zooming by in the soi a few feet from us as we ate were motorcycles, some with single male riders.

  Timmy glanced up at these apprehensively from time to time, as well as at the motorcycles upon which entire families were lined up one behind the other, the small children in front as if they were air bags.

  Lou Horn had obtained Geoff Pringle’s address from a mutual friend and passed it on to me, and Timmy and I paused 56 Richard Stevenson in front of the building. It stood along narrow but heavily traveled Sathorn Soi 1. Cars, taxis and motorcycle taxis cruised quietly up and down the street — with an occasional three-wheeled tuk-tuk as a reminder of old Bangkok — with pedestrians treading carefully along the narrow walkways on either side.

  Bougainvillea and yellow and scarlet flamboyant tree branches spilled over white stucco walls along the route, including one in front of Pringle’s building. An enormous portrait in an elaborate gold frame of a gravely contemplative King Bhumibol stood among the decorative plantings, along with brushed stainless steel lettering identifying Pringle’s building as the Royal Palm Personal Deluxe Executive Suites.

  Many of the building’s balconies had potted trees and flowering plants on them as well, talismanic reminders of the Thais’ origins as agricultural villagers, or in the case of most of the farangs, probably, pretty tropical ornaments.

  A uniformed security guard in an orange vest stood under a streetlight at the entrance to the building’s small driveway. I said sa-wa-dee-cap. He sa-wa-deed me back, and I said I was sorry to hear about Mr. Geoff.

  “Oh, very bad. Mr. Geoff. Oh, Mr. Geoff. Bad. He your friend?”

  “He was my friend’s friend,” I said quickly. “Did he live up there?” I pointed.

  “Yes, fall down,” the guard said, indicating an area of low foliage where some branches looked newly broken.

  “Bad,” I said.

  “Oh, bad.”

  “Did you see?”

  “No, no. No see. I hear.”

  “You heard Mr. Geoff fall?”

  “Yes, yes. Very bad for me. I hear him say.”

  “He said something? After he fell?”

  “No after. Before. I hear ‘oh-oh-no!’ He just say like that.

  ‘Oh-oh-no!’ I am in hut,” he said, indicating the small sentry box a few feet from us. “I hear big sound. He fall down.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Very bad for me.”

  “What time was it? Late?”

  “Very late. People sleeping.”

  “Did anyone else see or hear it happen?”

  “El-suh?”

  “Was it only you who heard him fall?”

  “Only me. Bad luck for me.”

  “Did you phone the police?”

  “Later. Police come later.”

  “You phoned the police. But they came later?”

 
“Police? Ha!” He made some gesture with his head, but I wasn’t sure what it meant. It seemed to be a negative opinion.

  I said, “Do you think Mr. Geoff fell accidentally or jumped from his balcony?”

  The guard may not have known all the English words, but he seemed to understand the question. It was a question he must have given a good deal of thought to over the previous week.

  The guard said, “Maybe fall. No jump, I don’t think. Maybe

  — bee-ah,” he said, making a guzzle-with-a-bottle motion.

  “Maybe he fall. Maybe bee-ah. Maybe” — he got a hard look now — “maybe I don’t know.”

  I tried to learn from the guard whether any of Pringle’s friends had visited him that night, or in recent days, but I had reached the limits of the guard’s English and didn’t make any headway. I thought maybe Rufus Pugh could learn more. I wished the guard good luck, and Timmy and I walked on.

  “It doesn’t sound as if there was any serious police…anything,” Timmy said.

  58 Richard Stevenson

  “No. I’ll try to find out.”

  We turned up a quieter, less-traveled soi toward Griswold’s condo. Bangkok’s Miami-like skyline glowed in the near distance, but the prettily walled-off places along this tranquil lane were individual homes of the well-off — a lighted swimming pool was visible behind one low wall hung with flowers — and the back entrances to a couple of the smaller European embassies.

  When we passed the discreetly appointed entrance to Paradisio, Bangkok’s best-known gay bathhouse, Timmy said,

  “Oh, I’ve heard of this.”

  “We may have to check it out in our search for Mango. Or I may have to.”

  “Me get left out? I don’t think so.”

  “Bangkok is full of ghosts, the Thais believe. Maybe Cardinal Spellman’s is over here keeping an eye on you.”

  “An eye and a roving hand. His spirit is probably in there right now frolicking. The Holy See is way over on the other side of the world.”

  “What with such things being unheard-of in Rome.”

  A taxi cruised down the soi and turned into Paradisio’s palm-adorned driveway. Two farangs got out, paid the driver and went inside. Timmy said, “This could be where Griswold met some of his multiple Thai boyfriends.”

  “This or any one of hundreds of other gay bars, clubs, bathhouses, and massage parlors. But since Griswold lived nearby, Paradisio is a good place for us to sniff around when we get the chance.”

  Griswold’s apartment building was about a hundred yards beyond Paradisio. It was one of the tonier in a tony neighborhood, with meticulously tended gardens below and balconies above, and an easy-on-the-eye white-with-silver-trim art deco design.

  The security guard standing in the driveway — apparently building guards in Bangkok were not allowed to sit and risk dozing off — returned my sa-wa-dee and smiled politely. I told him I was Gary Griswold’s brother and was looking for Gary, not having heard from him for some time. Did Griswold still live at the same address?

  “Yes, but he not here now.”

  “When was he last here?”

  “Mr. Gary come two weeks before. Then go. No stay.”

  So Griswold was alive, at least. Or had been two weeks earlier. “Are you sure it was two weeks? Not three?”

  “Two weeks. Today Saturday. I no work last Saturday. Mr.

  Gary too much no here. He go ’way.”

  By establishing that I was Griswold’s brother, a term that in Thailand can mean sibling, cousin, second or third cousin, or close friend, I was able to engage the guard long enough to learn that Griswold had visited his home only a few times in the past half year. And those visits had been brief and late at night.

  Griswold had arrived and departed by taxi and had been unaccompanied. If he had carried anything in or out of the apartment, the guard was unaware of it.

  I asked if I might look inside Griswold’s apartment to see if he had received mail from me, but now I was pushing it. The guard was a slight, dark-skinned Thai, probably from impoverished Isaan in the Northeast, supplier of cheap labor for greater Bangkok. Kreng jai, the Thai highly refined attunement to social status and its rituals of deference to be shown or received, meant that as an older white foreigner I had to be catered to. But only up to a point. The security company had its own kreng jai, and this man no doubt needed his job. So he played it safe and passed me off to the building manager, Mr.

  Thomsatai, who soon appeared from around the back of the building.

  In black slacks and a blue polo shirt similar to mine, minus the sweat stains, the super was an older Thai who didn’t smile so readily. Here the kreng jai was also complex. Out of earshot of the guard, I told Mr. Thomsatai the truth, that I was a PI working for Griswold’s family and needed to get into his 60 Richard Stevenson apartment to check on his welfare. I thought honesty might pay off, and also it couldn’t hurt if word got back to Griswold that somebody unthreatening was searching for him. The manager sized me up, and something in his coolly noncommittal manner suggested that another Thai custom might be brought into play.

  I thanked Mr. Thomsatai for the time he spent talking with me and said I wished to give him a present. I palmed him a thousand-baht note, thirty bucks, and he quickly led Timmy and me into the building and up to Griswold’s condo on the ninth floor. The man opened the door with his master key, showed us the light switches, then went out and left us.

  Timmy said, “That was sleazy. Jeez.”

  “Yes and no. People need to get by.”

  “Oh. Okay.” For such a Peace Corps old boy, he was not big on cultural relativism.

  The view from Griswold’s capacious living room was splendid, with an oasis of red tile roofs and green foliage below, along with a few turquoise-lighted swimming pools, and the office- and hotel-tower skyline beyond. The furnishings were a nice mixture of Scandinavian modernity and traditional Siamese wood and stone carvings of dancers, guardian spirits, and Buddha images. One wall was all shelves full of art and art history books. The graphic art on the wall was astrology related, signs of the zodiac and various astral and planetary configurations. One entire interior wall was covered with numbers in interlocking circular patterns. The numerical sequences seemed random, but this was not my area of expertise.

  “What do you make of that?” I asked Timmy about the wall of numbers.

  “I don’t know. I think there might be more nines than anything else.”

  “Maybe they’re upside-down sixes.”

  “Why would the sixes be upside down and not the other numbers?”

  “You tell me.”

  I took a picture of the wall with my cell phone. Griswold’s landline phone was dead when I lifted the receiver. He — or someone — was paying the condo fees and the electric bill, but not for a telephone. A desk in an alcove looked as if it had been where Griswold had set up a computer; a space that was now empty was just right for a laptop. There were no personal papers on the desk or in any of the drawers, just some art exhibition announcements and catalogs, none dated during the previous six months. Nothing in, on, or around the desk looked like an “investment” guide. I looked for a calendar, date book, or address book and found none. Nor was there any reference anywhere to Griswold’s bloodshed-forecasting seer.

  I unlatched the sliding glass door to the terrace, and we stepped out of the fiercely air-conditioned room into the Bangkok night oven. Next to the rattan porch chairs was an array of elegantly glazed ceramic pots, some holding feathery young bamboo plants and some white azaleas. One pot overflowed with purple and white orchids. Only a few dead leaves lay around the plants — apparently sweeping up dead leaves was still a Thai national pastime — and a watering can sat in a corner.

  I said, “Somebody’s been looking after the plants.”

  “Who?”

  “We should find out.”

  Timmy peered down at the shadowy driveway far below.

  “I’d hate to fall off one of thes
e things. Like Geoff Pringle.”

  “It’s not how anybody wants to die.”

  Griswold’s dining room had a well-crafted teak dining table in the center and eight semicomfortable-looking teak chairs around it. The most interesting object in this room was not the dining table, however, but a carpeted two-foot-high platform off to the side, upon which rested an elaborate shrine. It was a Hindu temple-style spirit house like the ones found outside many Thai buildings, including modern office towers, where offerings were left to appease the natural spirits displaced by the 62 Richard Stevenson structures. Griswold’s building had one near the main entrance, as did Pringle’s, and our hotel.

  Griswold’s personal spirit house had a seated Buddha statuette inside it, about a foot high, in the raised left palm mudra. This is the attitude of the Buddha’s hand that means you are in the presence of the Buddha; do not be afraid. Freshly burned incense lay in a dish in front of the spirit house and its pleasantly scratchy aroma still hung in the air. The garlands of marigolds, jasmine, and rose blossoms that lay in front of the shrine, brownish and wilting, appeared a day or two old.

  I said, “Griswold is really into it. He’s sincere.”

  “So is somebody else with a key to this apartment.”

  “We need to talk to the super again.”

  In the bedroom, a king-size bed with cream covers was pristinely un-slept-in. In the closet, there were plenty of designer label, warm-weather clothes, but empty spaces too, and no luggage. The bedroom art and decoration continued the astrological motif, with more stars, planets, and numbers flying around. There were no rich-gay-guy paintings or prints with muscular male nudes striking I’ve-been-waiting-for-YOU poses or clutching a rope.

  Timmy and I did not have to seek out Mr. Thomsatai to find out who had been entering Griswold’s apartment, for now the manager reappeared. He had quietly let himself in, found us in the bedroom, and asked if we were finished with our visit.