The 38 Million Dollar Smile ds-10

by Richard Stevenson

  I said, “Timothy, at home you’re so careful to turn up only in the most fastidiously kept surroundings. Maybe in one of your past lives you learned to adapt to conditions like these.

  Say, in the Crimean war.”

  Would he laugh? Nope. He glanced over at me noncommittally, but that was all.

  After an hour or so, two guards returned. Were they going to release us? We had been on the cement floor, shifting about and trying to find comfortable positions without kicking one another in the face. The four men who were occupying the cell when we arrived, we had learned, were in on drug charges and facing long sentences or even death and had been inert in this cell for eight days. They hoped for a pretrial hearing within two or three months, they said. They knew better than to expect anything good from the guards when they came back, but the rest of us looked up expectantly.

  The guards, however, were only delivering supper. One held an automatic weapon while the other unlocked the cell door, and two kitchen workers came with a cart and passed out to each of us plastic plates of rice and bowls of dun-colored soup.

  “This food makes me ashamed to be Thai,” Pugh said. “It must be Burmese.”

  The rest of us weren’t crazy about it either. Most of us ate the rice but skipped the soup. The four tattooed drug dealers ate the rancid soup eagerly. They considered the extra food a treat.

  Timmy said, “Is it really possible we’ll be here overnight?”

  Pugh shrugged.

  I said, “But Rufus, nothing is permanent. All we have to do is wait for the transitory nature of all things to notice us here.

  Am I right?”

  Pugh chuckled, and he translated my joke to the non English-speaking Thais in the cell. Everyone laughed except the drug dealers.

  At ten o’clock, the guards came back and handed in a bucket of water with a single plastic cup floating in it. All the Thais looked grateful, but I guessed that the three farangs — Timmy, Griswold, me — were all thinking the same thing: Bangkok tap water. No San Pellegrino was going to be provided.

  Just after eleven, two new guards turned up. They opened the cell door, and one of them asked in English for Pugh, me, Timmy and Griswold to follow them.

  The second-floor captain’s office was more sanitary than our cell, but it also lacked the charm we had come to associate with Siamese furnishings and decor.

  The captain himself, the man who had arrested us at the safe house, was present but he had little to offer us beyond a few pleasantries. He said General Yodying would be along shortly.

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  The captain apologized for Bangkok’s steamy weather.

  Griswold asked if we would be permitted to phone the United States embassy. The captain said no, that we should just sit tight.

  General Yodying ambled in around eleven thirty carrying a sheaf of papers. The captain and Pugh wai-ed the general.

  Griswold, Timmy and I followed their lead. The general wai-ed us back and there were friendly exchanges of sa-wa-dee-cap.

  He was big for a Thai, light skinned, with a broad forehead and an immobile face. He was wearing a full dress uniform and looked as if he might have come from a formal occasion, possibly official. I doubted the general had dolled himself up for us. He seated himself at his raised desk, and we took seats across from and half a foot below him.

  The general looked at Timmy and me and said, “It is a pity your visit to Thailand has been disrupted by the taint of your association with this bad man.” He indicated Griswold with a curt nod. “And I certainly hope that neither of you shares Mr.

  Griswold’s unfortunate tendencies. If so, I would advise you to leave Thailand and take up residence instead in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.”

  I could see just enough of Griswold with my peripheral vision to catch the flinch. He knew what was coming, and he knew what had happened to him, and he knew he was finished.

  “And you, Khun Rufus. I am surprised and disappointed that you would allow yourself to be employed by such a depraved pervert. I know you well enough to know that your sexual appetites are entirely healthy. I suppose you are in it for the money — protecting a man like this — and I can appreciate that. We all have families to support and temples to which we must make appropriate offerings.”

  Pugh looked at the general evenly but said nothing.

  Flipping open his packet, the general pulled out a wad of eight-by-ten color photos. He said, “Mr. Griswold, investigators under my command have compiled incontrovertible proof that you have been molesting helpless little boys in and around Bangkok. People like you have been coming to Southeast Asia for years to prey on poor and vulnerable urchins like the ones in these photographs. But I have to tell you that those days are over. Finished. Monsters such as yourself now serve long prison terms for these despicable acts, and I want you to know that you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Would you like to make a statement?”

  Griswold was entirely calm. His months of meditation were paying off. He said, “I’ll make a statement. Aren’t you going to record it?”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “May I see the photos?”

  “Of course.”

  The general spread them out on his desk facing us. They were bad. Boys no more than eight or ten grimacing and crying as they were being penetrated by a foreigner who plainly was not Griswold — although Griswold’s face had been ineptly Photoshopped atop the face of the actual perpetrator.

  Griswold said, “Where did you get these? That’s not me, despite the crude attempts to make it look as if it is.”

  “These photos were on your computer.”

  Pugh said, “A mistake has obviously been made. I am in possession of Khun Gary’s computer.”

  “Perhaps you have one of his computers,” the general said.

  “But this one was found in a hidden vault beneath the spirit house in Mr. Griswold’s condo here in Bangkok. And of course, the photos speak for themselves.”

  Griswold said, “How much do you want? I have very little left. Basically just what’s left in the vault under the spirit house.”

  “No money was found in your vault, Mr. Griswold. Just your laptop with these despicable pictures of your despicable acts.”

  “So what do you want from me? What can I possibly offer you to secure my freedom, General?”

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  “You can offer me nothing, Mr. Griswold. However, I am a man of mercy. The only thing I require of you is your absence from Thailand. Your visa to remain in Thailand was revoked half an hour ago. Members of my department will personally escort you to the airport at nine tomorrow morning. You will be placed on a flight to Frankfurt and you will never be admitted to Thailand again. We don’t want your ilk in our country. We simply will not stand for it.”

  Griswold said, “What about the Sayadaw U center? Will it be built?”

  The general smiled. “Of course, of course it will be built. If that’s what you’re worried about, have no fear. Your name will not be associated with the shrine, however, now that you have the taint of moral corruption on you. And I should mention perhaps that the center will be completed on a scale somewhat reduced from what you had in mind. Your idea of it was far too grandiose for Thai tastes. We are a humble people.”

  Griswold sat quietly gazing at the general. After a moment, he said, “I still love Thailand.”

  “Oh, even though it has disappointed you! I am relieved to hear that, Mr. Griswold. You are in many ways a good man — despite your proclivities. You are a man of spiritual depth and perspective. Perhaps after your soul has been purified by chaste behavior and generous offerings over a series of lives, you will return to Thailand under another, better guise. I am certain our immigration department would have no objection to that.”

  Griswold said, “What about my friends here? They have done nothing wrong. Of course, neither have I. But it seems as if there is no point in discussing that.”

  “No
. You are correct. There is no point in discussing that.

  But your friends will be released in the morning. Khun Rufus can resume his colorful career as Bangkok’s Mickey Spillane.

  And Mr. Donald and Mr. Timothy will, I hope, enjoy some of the splendors of Siamese culture and civilization, and perhaps have a pleasant visit at one of our hundreds of excellent beaches. I don’t want them to return to America with a poor impression of my country.”

  Timmy said, “I like your beaches, General. We’ve been to Hua Hin. But your criminal justice system leaves a lot to be desired.”

  Had Timmy fallen off his bicycle and landed on his head? I had been determined to keep my mouth shut and leave for the airport at the first opportunity. I thought, My God, he’s turning into me.

  But General Yodying nodded sympathetically. “I do apologize for detaining you, Mr. Timothy, and for doing so in our admittedly fetid accommodations. Do understand, however, that I could have left you all to rot over the weekend in that cell.

  But I did not. In fact, I drove over here following my own sixtieth birthday celebration at the Dusit Thani to deal with Khun Gary and to assure the rest of your group that in the morning I will be totally out of your hair. I could have gone straight home with my wife or to my delightful girlfriend’s house. So don’t complain too much.”

  Pugh said, “Today is your sixtieth birthday, general? Please let me offer my heartiest congratulations.”

  “My birthday is actually tomorrow, the nineteenth,” the general said. “Ah, it’s after midnight now. If I may say so, happy birthday to me!”

  Pugh sang out, “How wonderful!”

  Pugh’s enthusiasm seemed weirdly misplaced, until we got back to our cell and he explained to me that the confluence of events he had just learned of was heavy with auspiciousness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  True to his soiled word, the deeply corrupt General Yodying had Griswold escorted out of our cell at nine Saturday morning.

  Griswold’s passport had been retrieved from his apartment in Sukhumvit, and the police had picked up clean clothes for him too. He was also handed ten twenty-dollar bills for his immediate expenses once he arrived in Frankfurt. After that, he was on his own. The general said he would not notify Interpol that Griswold was a notorious sex offender, so long as Griswold left Thailand forever and didn’t raise a fuss about his having been bilked out of thirty-eight million dollars.

  We all said good-bye to Griswold, and I told him how sorry I was that it had all turned out so badly for him. I asked him what I should tell Ellen and Bill.

  He thought about this, and said, “Just tell them I said mai pen rai. And that I hope they enjoy the rest of their stay in Thailand. It’s really a lovely country.”

  Griswold was led away, and we thought we would be leaving at the same time and stood ready to go. But a guard said, “You wait.”

  Around nine thirty, a whole squad of corrections officers arrived at our cell. The sergeant in charge told us to take off all our clothes and hand them out. What was this? Were we going to be deloused? Hosed down? Gang-raped?

  Anxiously, we disrobed and handed out our garments, including — as we were ordered to do — our underwear. One of the guards then passed out large plastic garbage bags, one to each of us. Holes had been cut for our arms to protrude, and when instructed to do so, we donned the garbage bags. Our money, wallets and keys, confiscated the day before, were returned to us.

  We were then led out to a convoy of police vans and driven to Wat Pho, the magnificent temple that housed the largest reclining Buddha in Thailand. Hundreds of tourists were 270 Richard Stevenson queued up outside in the sunshine waiting their turn to enter the sacred shrine. They pointed and laughed as we were dropped off and the police vans drove away, and the tourists all got some great snapshots.

  We had enough money among us to take taxis back to the safe house, where we had all left a few belongings. Timmy’s and my plan was to return to the Topmost, clean up, and then track down Ellen and Bill Griswold and try to explain how and why they had lost control of the family company despite their not being murderers, and why Gary Griswold was en route, or soon to be en route, to Germany.

  My cell phone was at the safe house, and it had one message, from Ellen: “Call me at the hotel immediately.” I did call and when the Griswolds didn’t answer the phone in their room, I left a message at the Oriental for them to try me again. Maybe, I thought, they were among the throngs at Wat Pho waiting for a glimpse of the giant reclining Buddha and they didn’t recognize Pugh, Timmy and me dressed in garbage bags.

  Pugh got on his own phone, made a call to people close to Seer Thammarak Visetchote, the soothsayer working with the younger, anticorruption army officers. Then he hung up and gave me thumbs-up. “Four nineteen!” he shouted and gave a little hop.

  Kawee, Mango and Miss Nongnat shared a cab back to Sukhumvit, though Kawee said he wanted to drop by Griswold’s condo on the way and water the plants and light some candles.

  Just after noon, as Timmy and I were walking back to the Topmost, we noticed military vehicles moving in convoys up ahead on Rama IV Road. We walked on past the hotel and watched as the trucks soon pulled over on the main thoroughfare and soldiers poured out of the trucks across the road near the kickboxing arena and the night market. We could make out other groups of soldiers down the road toward the Silom metro station, as well as four tanks.

  Timmy said, “Tanks. There’s something we don’t see on Central Avenue in Albany.”

  People were coming out of all the restaurants now, and the shops and 7-Elevens, and traffic was starting to clog up. Small groups were forming, and some of the people in them had radios and every few minutes a cheer went up. There were occasional bursts of laughter. We overheard somebody say in English that in just a few minutes His Majesty King Bhumibol would be making a statement to the nation about the change in government.

  Timmy said, “It’s a Land of Smiles coup d’etat. It’s the best kind, if you’re going to have one.”

  Soon there were sirens, and traffic parted for an army convoy of SUVs with flashing lights coming from the north. In the mess of traffic, the convoy had to slow briefly to a crawl as it went by us, and we caught a glimpse of a big man in a police uniform inside the middle vehicle seated between two smaller army commandos. No other police were visible anywhere. The senior police officer in the SUV appeared to be in army custody, and Timmy said, “Could that be who I think it is?”

  “It does appear to be who you think it is.”

  “It looks like he’s under arrest.”

  “Yeah, unless this is yet another feint.”

  “The politics here do resemble Albany politics in the mid twentieth century when the O’Connell machine ran it.”

  “But the O’Connells didn’t smile so much.”

  “I guess we’d better wait and see how all this shakes out,”

  Timmy said. “But have our bags packed just in case.”

  “You really like this place, don’t you? And these sweet, formal, spiritual, humorous people.”

  “I do like Thailand. A lot. If we had come here under any other circumstances, I can imagine being totally smitten with the place.”

  “You predicted back home that we might get hurt by the culture’s nasty underside. And we did. You especially. Will you ever forgive me for almost getting you tossed off a balcony?”

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  “I think I will. Not quite yet, Donald. But soon enough.

  Anyway, I’ve become much more philosophical about dying since I’ve been here. I can’t say I’ll ever believe in reincarnation, but being around people who do believe in it and who accept death as a natural part of being human has been good for my perspective. I feel more at peace here than anywhere I’ve ever been.”

  “And the undercurrent of violence and corruption doesn’t just make you want to scream? Or run away?”

  Timmy thought about this. Crowds were moving now toward the soldi
ers gathered in front of the kickboxing arena.

  From where we stood, we could make out people starting to throw things at the soldiers. At first it seemed as if something was wrong and we had misunderstood the situation, and perhaps violence would suddenly break out. Then we realized it was flowers that people were tossing through the air, and some of the soldiers had wrapped garlands of marigolds and jasmine around their helmets.

  Timmy said, “I hate the corruption in Thailand. I really do.

  And I’m not prepared to mutter, ‘It’s Chinatown, Jake,’ and just gloomily move on. If I were Thai, I would definitely be up to my receding hairline working with the good-government groups, just like I did in Albany in the eighties. But the corruption here isn’t what’s most profoundly Thai. What’s most deeply Thai, I think, is Buddhist perspective and ethics and sane-heartedness.”

  “Don’t forget sanuk.”

  “Maybe that especially.”

  “And of course, lying down in the early evening with some satiny-skinned butch lady-boy for a few kisses and a relaxing mutual wank before enjoying a splendid green curry under a full moon.”

  “Those are definitely among the most enchanting forms of Thai sanuk.”

  I said, “It’s a shame about the Griswolds. Especially Gary — the guy’s instincts were as pure as they could possibly be. He was oh so naive, but his heart was good. We have to track him down when we get home and see if we can be of any help. It’s the least we can do, since I was hired to get the guy out of any scrape he was in and I didn’t exactly succeed at that. Anyway, without Griswold, it’s unlikely we would have come here and rediscovered — discovered for the first time in your case — this magical kingdom.”

  “I wonder,” Timmy said, “what really happened with Sheila Griswold? It was her disappearance that set all this craziness in motion in the first place.”

  “Sometimes,” I said, “‘It’s Chinatown, Jake’ isn’t about a strange and unknowable place. It’s about a strange and unknowable family. The Griswolds may be one of those families.”