The 38 Million Dollar Smile ds-10

by Richard Stevenson

  “I was somewhere over the Pacific on Friday. At least she didn’t call the airline and demand that they turn the plane around.”

  Chicarelli laughed once. “She might have. That’s Ellen.”

  “Anyway, what you’re suggesting doesn’t sound right. It’s not like the Griswolds are suddenly penniless. And surely Ellen would not cut her ex-husband off if she believed he was in real danger. And again, if he contacted her and told her he was not in any danger, why would she believe that? She thinks he’s borderline bonkers these days. It’s possible, I suppose, that he’s got some scheme in mind to save himself, and my poking around is screwing that up somehow. But if that’s the case, why wouldn’t Griswold just explain that to me, and I’d have another helping of fried crickets and then head home. No, there’s something screwy about the way all the Griswolds are behaving.

  Anyway, now I have no choice but to get to the bottom of the entire bizarre mess and get Timmy out of Thailand. You know, he didn’t really want to come here. He thought it would be dangerous. I talked him into it.”

  “People by the thousands go there and have a wonderful time,” Chicarelli said. “Isn’t Thailand called the Land of Smiles?”

  “That’s what I told Timmy. It’s true, too. But nobody, Thai or otherwise, who has anything to do with the Griswolds is smiling these days. What’s that about? That’s what I want to know.”

  “Jeez, Strachey. Now I’m sorry I ever sent Ellen to you. I figured: Thailand. Gay. Free ride. Big bucks. I thought I was doing you a favor. And I was helping out Ellen, too. She’s somebody you don’t want to make unhappy if you can avoid it.”

  “She’s formidable. Though I kind of like her, even if I don’t quite trust her.”

  “This didn’t come from me, but did you ever hear the stuff about Ellen and the demise of Bill’s first wife?”

  “What stuff is that?”

  “Sheila Griswold, Bill’s ex, was a vindictive lady who made a career of making his life miserable after the divorce. Hounding him endlessly for more, more, more. I knew Sheila’s attorney, Hal Woolrich, a total scumbag who’s now in Waterbury for tax evasion. Anyway, Sheila disappears on a Caribbean cruise and a lot of people thought she went overboard with a little help from others on the boat. Among the merrymakers on the ship that night were Ellen’s personal trainer, Duane Hubbard, and Hubbard’s boyfriend, Matthew Mertz. They were pretty scuzzy characters. Mertz had a history of coke dealing and at least one assault conviction. Word got back to Albany — probably by way of Woolrich — that these two were on the ship when Sheila disappeared, and a number of people who knew the situation wondered if maybe Bill and Ellen put those two up to turning poor Sheila into shark bait. Anyway, there was never any evidence and, because of jurisdictional confusion, no investigation to speak of.”

  “Ellen told me,” I said, “that her husband was a suspect in people’s minds in his ex’s disappearance, but not that she was.

  This is quite a fascinating family you’ve gotten me involved with, Bob.”

  “Yeah, well, Strachey, you send them a billable-hours statement the first of the month and payment arrives by the end of the month. Or has so far. Just how fucked-up the Griswolds may be, I don’t really know. But Christ, if I’d ever thought Timmy was going to get hurt on account of the Griswolds, I would never have sent Ellen to you. This just stinks to high heaven, and I am so, so sorry.”

  “Timmy hasn’t gotten hurt on account of the Griswolds.

  He’s gotten hurt because of me. So, what became of these two characters, the personal trainer and his beau, Hubbard and Mertz?”

  “I have no idea. Would you like me to find out?”

  “Nah. There’s no real need to know. This all happened — what? Fourteen or fifteen years ago?”

  “Something like that.”

  “If you can easily track these guys down, do. Otherwise, I’ve got plenty of other unsavory characters to keep my mind occupied. What you might do, though, is try to get an explanation from Ellen as to what’s going on here. What did Gary actually tell her yesterday that made her fire me from the case? I’ve tried phoning her and will try again, and I’ll e-mail her too. Maybe she’ll open up to you.”

  “Possibly. Though in my dealings with Ellen over the years I’ve sometimes wondered if she wasn’t holding back on a few important details of whatever it was.”

  “Now you tell me.”

  “Yeah, well. Have you ever had the perfect client? What you’re always dealing with are human beings. It’s a hazard of the workplace OSHA can’t seem to do anything about.”

  I gave Chicarelli my Thailand cell phone number and asked him to call me anytime he developed any clue at all as to what the Griswolds were up to. He wished me luck springing Timmy and Kawee. I said, “Do you believe in lucky numbers?”

  “No. Can’t say that I do.”

  “Me neither. I’ve always believed that when good things happen in circumstances that are beyond our control, that’s what we call luck. Likewise with bad things. The Thais believe that events can be manipulated through managing the symbols of luck — rituals, amulets, wielding the right numbers, prayer. I would try any of that if I thought it would help keep Timothy safe. But now I look around me here — at the shrines, the temples, the stupas, the spirit houses — and none of it seems like anything that will help bring Timmy back. In fact, it all feels like it’s part of what took Timmy away from me and put his life in danger. And I feel as if I’m not only in danger of losing Timmy, but that I’m losing Thailand, a place I love. It’s awful.”

  “Get Timmy back,” Chicarelli said, “and I’m guessing your love of Thailand will follow.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “First things first.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  When General Yodying Supanant of the Royal Thai Police declined to order all of the fourteenth floors in Bangkok searched without payment in advance of the fifty-thousand-baht fee he charged for this service — he called it a “gift” that would go toward a new wing for a Buddhist monastery in Ubon Ratchathani — I rode with Pugh over to the ATM around the corner from the Topmost with a Robinson’s Department Store shopping bag Pugh had in his car. It took awhile for me to repeatedly insert my MasterCard and extract a total of fifty thousand baht from the machine, including time-outs to stand aside politely and allow others who wished to use the ATM to withdraw their more modest amounts.

  Pugh sat nearby on a stool at an espresso stand and sipped coffee from a tiny paper cup. Two young woman had set up their own miniature Starbucks-like operation, about four feet by four feet, the electric coffeemaker powered by a cable that ran up the side of a building and vanished into the fat spaghetti maze of black wires strung just above the sidewalk along Rama IV Road. I remembered Timmy’s story of one of the earliest Peace Corps deaths. A volunteer was killed not by a wild animal or an obscure tropical disease but by electrocution while playing poker with four Thais during a thunderstorm. I recalled this as a characteristically Thai way of dying prematurely, and now I could add defenestration to any such list.

  As Pugh sat watching me extract currency from a humming and blinking machine on the side of a building, it occurred to me that he might be wondering if he would be left in the lurch, now that Ellen Griswold was about to sever my expense account bounty. I assured Pugh that he would be paid, no matter what. He said, “I only doubted that for a nanosecond.”

  Detective Panu refused to participate in the delivery of the

  “gift” to General Yodying — having made the initial setup calls, Panu then pointed out to me in a dignified tone that bribery 112 Richard Stevenson was illegal in Thailand, and he had no intention of physically handling the tainted bahts — so Pugh said he would make the delivery. We swung by a police station on Sala Daeng Soi 1 and Pugh pranced in with the shopping bag and out again in less than a minute.

  I said, “Will this guy follow through?”

  “I believe so.”

  “It’s a lot of money.”

&nb
sp; “Is Yodying a crook? Without doubt. But for the moment he is our crook, Khun Don. He’s what we’ve got.”

  “Rufus, you’re so reassuring.”

  We had used the scanner at the Internet cafe/seamstress shop and e-mailed Timmy’s passport photo to the general.

  Within a matter of hours, supposedly, a police sweep of all the fourteenth floors in greater Bangkok would be undertaken.

  Each cop would be armed with a picture of Timmy and a description of Kawee down to the fuchsia toenails.

  I said, “So, are there also six hundred judges issuing several thousand search warrants for all those fourteenth-floor apartments and offices?”

  “No,” Pugh said. “You would have to pay extra for that. But don’t sweat it.”

  Pugh took a call from Jampen Noo, his field supervisor. She told him the surveillance team was in place inside and outside the Internet cafe in On Nut from which Griswold placed his phone calls to Kawee. If Griswold showed up, they would snatch him and hold him as unostentatiously as possible in a van parked nearby until Pugh and I could get there.

  Meanwhile, Pugh and I headed back over to Griswold’s condo to look for the laptop computer Timmy said he and Kawee had found in Griswold’s ground-floor storage bin. Mr.

  Thomsatai greeted us with a deep and respectful wai and the phoniest Thai smile I had ever witnessed. Why was this guy not behind bars? That was going to have to wait, along with a number of this case’s other nagging deferred matters.

  We looked through the storage bin and found nothing there of use. More art books. A couple of empty canvas travel bags with Miami-Bangkok airline baggage tags still affixed. There was also what looked like a bike-riding helmet.

  I asked Thomsatai, “Does Griswold have a bicycle?”

  “Mr. Gary have bike. Good bike. Italian. But it is not here. I think he took it to where he go.”

  Pugh said, “I’ll tell my crew to watch for a possible arrival at the Internet cafe by bicycle.” He made a quick call and did so.

  Up in the apartment, the rooms looked surprisingly undisturbed, given that a forced abduction had taken place there several hours earlier. Apparently Timmy and Kawee had not put up a struggle. If the goons had guns — which they did, according to both Thomsatai and the pistol-whipped security guard — resistance would have made no sense. I didn’t know about Kawee, but Timmy was nothing if not sensible.

  To our amazement, a laptop computer lay on Griswold’s desk. Presumably, this was the one Timmy and Kawee had retrieved from the downstairs storage area. So, the kidnappers seemed to want Griswold himself and not necessarily the kind of information he stored in his computer. What did this mean?

  Or, did the boneheads simply forget to bring the device along?

  Pugh and I messed around with the MacBook Pro but couldn’t come up with a password that would get the thing up and running. We tried all the obvious stuff: Mango, and the earlier Thai boyfriends; plus Buddha; Dharma; Sangha; Griswold’s birth date; Toot Toot, Lou Horn’s art gallery; Algonquin; and a lot of other details from Griswold’s daily existence. We even tried bicycle and cruising speed and past lives. Nothing worked.

  Pugh said, “I know a guy who can get into this. I’ll call him.”

  “How soon can he do it?”

  “Soon.”

  Pugh had the computer whiz on his speed dial and spoke to him in rapid Thai.

  114 Richard Stevenson

  “How come the cops didn’t take the computer with them?”

  I said. “This place isn’t even being treated as a crime scene.”

  “Like I said, it’s a low-priority matter. A lady-boy and a tourist.”

  “Timmy warned me about this aspect of Thailand.”

  Pugh said nothing, just indicated that I should take a seat while he took care of something. I remained standing, though, while he went over to Griswold’s shrine. A box of matches lay nearby on a table, and Pugh used one to light several candles and a couple of joss sticks in front of the shrine. He had one of the photos of Timmy that we had e-mailed to the police, and Pugh leaned this picture against the shrine next to the candles and the incense. He sat himself down on the straw mat in front of the shrine, his legs crossed and back straight. He bowed his head. The serene Buddha figure looked out at Pugh, its left palm raised in the “do not be afraid” mudra.

  I stood awkwardly for a few minutes, then walked over and slid open the door to the terrace. The night heat slammed into me, dulling my senses. I held on to the railing and looked down at the parking lot and gardens far below. When I turned away from this abyss, I noticed that a few leaves had fallen off the orchid and azalea plants on the terrace, and I picked up the leaves and dropped them into the crocks holding the flowers.

  The watering can nearby was about half full, and I watered the flowers and the bamboo plants.

  When I reentered the apartment, Pugh was still seated silently in front of the Buddha, the candles flickering and the incense smoking up the room. I went over and sat down next to Pugh, also in the lotus position. I felt a twinge of something in my back, so my position turned into something a little more nasturtium-like. I sat there with Pugh for some minutes trying to lose my fear, as Pugh apparently had done in the presence of the Buddha. I envied Pugh and loved the way his connection to a world far beyond the mundane gave him courage and clarity of mind. Sitting there with him, I myself was much calmer now than I had been earlier. But I was still scared to death.

  We waited for word of the police sweep of fourteenth floors all over Bangkok in Pugh’s office on Surawong. At midnight, the Sunday night traffic down below was still bumper-tobumper, though not so noisy as it might have been. I remembered how in the ’70s Bangkok streets were always impossibly clogged and endlessly frustrating and how the Thais nonetheless rarely honked their horns. To blare one’s horn merely out of impatience was to demonstrate jai rawn, a hot temper — literally hot heart — and what every Thai aspired to and valued above all was jai yen, a self-possessed inner being and a cool demeanor.

  This was in contrast to the Vietnamese in Saigon who leaned on their car and motorbike horns nonstop and seemed always intent on trying to run one another off the road and smashing to bits a few pedestrians while they were at it. Later, when I thought back about Vietnamese driving styles — rude, cunning, tenacious — it did not surprise me at all that these people had won the war.

  Pugh had had some rice and duck red curry with pineapple sent up, so I ate that wondering if Timmy and Kawee were eating as well. I supposed they were. Even the most sadistic Thai kidnappers, I guessed, would value good food and not think of depriving their captives of some flavorsome tom kha gai before throwing them over the railing of an upper-floor balcony.

  Pugh’s third-floor office was not far from Patpong, home to many of Bangkok’s famous pussy shows, and it was across Tha Surawong from the entrance to Soi Pratuchai, a street of gay bars and fuck shows. Pugh said that when Timmy was free, he and I could drop by the Dream Boys Club and watch a show that was nearly identical to the Ziegfeld Follies of 1928, except the cast was all male and the performances involved the use of much more lubricant than was probably common in the Ziegfeld era.

  Just after midnight, Pugh checked with his contact in General Yodying’s office and learned that the sweep had been ongoing for over three hours but so far no trace of Timmy or 116 Richard Stevenson

  Kawee had been found. Residential buildings had been checked first; banging on the doors of residents after bedtime would not go over well and, Pugh said, might have cost me twice the fifty thousand baht I and the taxpayers of Thailand were expending on the operation. Fourteenth floors in hotels had also been checked, to no avail. Now office buildings were being combed with the help of the security services that watched over them.

  I said to Pugh, “But what if some of these private security guys are working with the kidnappers? They’ll alert the captors, or even cover up their locations. Then what?”

  “It’s a risk we run,” Pugh said.
“No dragnet is ever perfect.

  Yodying is relying on the surprise element, but it’s not foolproof. Another possible loophole is this: many Thais of the upper social strata are likely to tell the cops doing the searching to sod off. There are many homes the police simply will not get inside of. We have to assume, however, that Timmy and Kawee are not being held captive in the apartments of Jack and Jackie, or of any real estate magnates or media tycoons.”

  “Really? Why should we assume that? Do Thai rich people have more delicate sensibilities than the American rich or the Estonian rich? I’ll bet not.”

  “More refined, no. But careful, yes. Many layers of personnel separate Thai criminals in high places from Thai criminals at the operational level. I think, perhaps, that this type of arrangement is not all that unusual in much of the USA, is it, Mr. Don? New Jersey may be a little cruder and more direct than that. But even in Atlantic City the concept of plausible deniability is probably not unknown.”

  “Rufus, now you’re making me nervous. Maybe this whole search is a waste of time. And a very expensive waste of time, at that. Jesus.”

  Pugh was behind his desk surrounded by rack after rack of computer discs. He had a couple of racks of music CDs, too, much of it Thai pop, a bit of Schubert lieder, some American C amp;W — Roy Orbison, Waylon Jennings, Patsy Cline. He said,

  “We have to explore every avenue open to us, Mr. Don. Do we not? We’re covering the Internet cafe that Griswold uses. And tomorrow we can cover Kawee’s apartment and the whiskey seller where Griswold’s cash delivery moto-man makes his normal early-in-the-week drop-off for Kawee. Griswold’s desktop may also yield up some answers, and we should hear from Khun Thunska, my computer guy, soon after sunrise on that particular front. There is also this to consider: the kidnappers will undoubtedly contact you again to arrange for the swap of Griswold for Timothy and Kawee. At that point, you might be able to convince them that we have been unable to locate Griswold but that we are busting our asses to do so, and can we have a little more time? So while uncertainty remains a constant, we know what we know. I do, of course, understand why you are fearful, but I want to tell you, Mr. Don, that hope springs eternal in this particular human breast, and we are a long way from being totally fucked.”