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“Smile is a rattling good read with the trademark intricacies
of plot and felicities of language, added to which this time are remarkably subtle sketches of the sights, politics, religion,
customs and pleasures of Thailand (the latter both gustatory
and sexual) and one unforgettable character: wily, intrepid,
unflappable Bangkok private eye, Rufus Pugh.”
Frank Kelly
poet and co-author of the beauty-pageant musical
Pageant and The Texas Chainsaw Musical
“Donald and Timmy are so real to me that I keep forgetting
I can’t phone or email them to check what’s up. No, I have to
wait until Richard Stevenson permits me access to these
gaychums of mine by giving up a new book. This time it’s The
38 Million Dollar Smile, and I got to go to Bangkok with my
buds for a heaping help of illicit gay sex, murder, Naked Thai
Boys Swimming, and Buddhist enlightenment from an angle
even the Kama Sutra couldn’t imagine.”
Mark Saltzman
screenwriter of Third Man Out
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A Donald Strachey Mystery
The 38 Million
Dollar Smile
RICHARD STEVENSON
mlrpress
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2009 by Richard Stevenson
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Published by
MLR Press, LLC
3052 Gaines Waterport Rd.
Albion, NY 14411
Visit ManLoveRomance Press, LLC on the Internet:
www.mlrpress.com
Cover Art by Deana C. Jamroz
Editing by Judith David
Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN# 978-1-60820-014-6
Issued 2009
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Two books have been especially helpful to me as I have
worked to understand Thailand. Thailand Confidential and Bangkok Babylon, both by Jerry Hopkins, are shrewd and
insightful guides to Thai life and culture. When I wrote this
book, Warren Olson’s Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye
provided an eye-opening and somewhat alarming picture of the
Thai criminal justice system.
Also helpful were numerous Thai and farang friends and
acquaintances in Bangkok – you know who you are – as well
as a forthcoming and mildly conscience-stricken Bangkok police
official who prefers not to be named.
OTHER NOVELS IN THE
DONALD STRACHEY MYSTERY SERIES
Death Trick
On the Other Hand, Death
Ice Blues
Third Man Out
Lambda Finalist
Shock to the System
Lambda Finalist
Chain of Fools
Strachey’s Folly
Lambda Finalist
Tongue Tied
Death Vows
The 38 Million Dollar Smile
CHAPTER ONE
“Mr. Strachey, do you believe in reincarnation?”
“I’ve never given it much thought.”
“So you won’t mind my telling you, I think the whole idea is
perfectly absurd.”
“Go ahead.”
It had been Ellen Griswold’s idea to meet in the bar at the
Albany airport at six thirty. She was picking her husband up
from the US Airways flight from Washington that theoretically
got in at seven forty but sometimes arrived around nine or ten.
So we had plenty of time for going over the mysteries of life.
“I know you’ve spent time in Southeast Asia,” she said. “So
I assume you know something about Buddhist philosophy.”
She was nicely turned out in a beige linen suit, the sea green
silk wrap she had been wearing against the early April chill now slung over the chair next to her. Still on the underside of fifty, I guessed, Mrs. Griswold was raven haired, with clear dark eyes, a handsome beak, and apparently had had some minimal
cantilevering and other structural work done on her chin and
cheeks, though nothing that would have overtaxed Le
Corbusier.
I said, “I was in the war there, so I know a little. But even in Army Intelligence, my thinking was focused and practical. The
larger questions relating to the Asian psyche were left to the
deep thinkers at the Pentagon. How did you know I was in
Vietnam?”
“Bob Chicarelli told me.”
A lawyer I knew. “I’ve done work for Bob.”
“And have played squash with him. He also says you’re gay.
That’s good, because so is my ex-husband, who is the problem
here, I think.”
“Ah, the problem.”
8 Richard Stevenson
I liked that she drank beer. She had a large bottle of Indian
Kingfisher she was working on, savoring each sip but without
making a spectacle of it, like Timmy’s and my lesbian friends
who drink beer while they inexplicably watch men play football
on television.
Mrs. Griswold said, “My ex-husband, Gary, believes that in a
previous life he was Thai. What do you make of that?”
“Thai, as in a person from Thailand?”
She sipped her Kingfisher, and I sipped my Sam Adams.
“Gary not only believes that he was Thai, but that he will be
Thai again in his next life. This is a man I was married to for six years.”
“It sounds as though he may have been problematical for
you on multiple fronts.”
This got a little half smile. “Well, yes. We were married on
January seventeenth nineteen eighty-one. I should have known.
It was three days before Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.”
“An auspicious week, as a sometime-Thai like your former
husband might say.”
A curt nod. “I think he would say that, yes. Not back then
necessarily. But now Gary would think of it in exactly those
terms. Astrology, numerology, karma, reincarnation, the whole
nine yards. All that new age hooey. It’s really disappointing.
When I married Gary, he had his obsessions, which were
generally harmless – bicycle racing, and so on. But he was also
one of the most rational people I knew.”
I said, “East Asians don’t think of karma and reincarnation
as new age hooey. They think of them as the way the universe is
ordered.”
I meant this as a point of information, not a lecture, and she
seemed to take it that way, unperturbed. “That’s fine if it works for the Asians. I’ve lived and worked abroad, and cultural
relativism is fine with me. But for Gary, Eastern ideas turned
into a kind of trap, I think.”
“How so?”
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 9
“As a way of avoiding responsibility.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t think of myself as an overly materialistic person,”
she said. “But I do believe in managing the assets you have like a grown-up. Whether you earn it or you inherited much of it, as
Gary and Bill did, flushing your money down the toilet I find
totally incomprehensible.”
“Who is Bill?” I asked.
“My husband, Bill Griswold. Gary’s older brother.”
This was getting complex. I said, “What did the Reagans
make of all this?’
She smiled rather sweetly. “Around the time Gary’s and my
marriage was unraveling – largely because of his coming to
terms with his being gay – Bill’s fell apart, too. He had married a Long Island JAP of a certain type when he was nineteen – a
looker, a serious shopper, and not much else – and Bill needed
somebody more stimulating. We had always liked each other,
and we both liked to read and travel. For fun, we took a trip to Budapest together, and that was it. It’s been as good a marriage as anybody could hope for, overall.”
“And your husband’s first wife was not Japanese?”
“Jewish American Princess. You’ve heard the term, I’m
sure.”
“It could have been another Asian in the picture.”
“I would not have used Jap that way.”
Her cell phone played what Timothy Callahan might have
identified as the opening strains of Gluck’s overture to Orpheus and Eurydice, but for all I knew could have been Andrew Lloyd Webber. She flipped it out of her handbag and told me with an
apologetic shrug, “It’s either one or the other.”
Ellen Griswold’s end of a brief conversation included the
words please don’t more often than I normally use them on the phone.
“That was Amanda,” she said, putting her phone away. I
noted a diamond on one finger that, while not quite
10 Richard Stevenson
ostentatious, did not hide its light under a bushel, as well as a demure ruby on a nearby digit.
“Amanda is thirteen,” Mrs. Griswold said. “Mark is fifteen.
They’re both good kids, but they are kids. They pretty much
have their feet on the ground, but there are times when I have
to try hard not to scream.”
“These are Bill’s children, not Gary’s?”
“That’s right. Do the math.”
“Gotcha. But we’re not here to talk about Amanda and
Mark, apparently.”
“No.”
“On the phone, you said you believed that a family member
was in trouble, and you wanted my help in getting him out of it.
So we’re talking about your former husband and current
brother-in-law?”
This was the moment when, in the olden days, Mrs.
Griswold would rummage in her handbag for a cigarette, and I
would light it for her and then fire up one of my own. Now we
both had to make do with a barely perceptible tightening of her
facial restructuring and a swig of beer for me.
Watching me with no particular expression, she said, “Gary
has vanished in Thailand with thirty-eight million dollars. I’d
like you to find him, check to see if he is all right, and help him out if he isn’t. And if Gary is alive and hasn’t gone completely around the bend, help us talk some sense into him.”
I said, “That sounds simple enough.”
“Look, don’t laugh. I know it’s a big job. Bob Chicarelli said
you could do it.”
“Okay.”
“I could hire an international private investigations agency. I
know that.”
“You could. It’s what most people would do.”
“Or, Bob told me he could locate some reputable private
detective in Bangkok, if such a thing exists.”
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 11
“I’ll bet such a thing does.”
She thought for a moment and said, “You could farm out
some of the work to people there. That would be up to you.
But I’m more comfortable paying someone who is known and
trusted by someone Bill and I know and trust. And since you’re
familiar with that part of the world, it’s a huge advantage, no?
Plus, of course, you presumably would have easier entrée to the
Thai gay scene, a good place to start looking for Gary. He went
over there on vacation two years ago, and in addition to
reincarnation, apparently discovered some gay Shangri-La. He
never really came home, except to sell his condo in Key West
and then fly straight back to Bangkok. But Thailand has not
turned out to be a paradise for Gary. At least not from where
I’m sitting, it hasn’t.”
Where she seemed to be sitting was pretty. A second portion
of a sizable family fortune remained intact if I was hearing her correctly. I said, “Please tell me (a) about the rather large sum of money Gary took along – can I assume he didn’t earn it over
there? – and (b) about his vanishing, as you put it.”
This got a look of mild surprise. “So you’re interested in
taking this on?”
“Maybe.”
“I was beginning to think you wouldn’t. You seem so
skeptical about everything.”
“Not everything. My, no.”
“But,” she said, “I think you’re skeptical about me.”
“A little.”
“Why would you be?”
I noticed that the flat-screen television set over the bar was
tuned to CNBC, where a reporter who looked something like
Mrs. Griswold was mouthing words that I supposed concerned
the day’s main news topic, the crashing dollar. If I had been
able to read lips I might have phoned my bank immediately and
converted everything into Burmese kyat.
I said, “Mrs. Griswold —”
12 Richard Stevenson
“Please call me Ellen. I think we’re more or less
contemporaries.”
“Yeah, more or less. Ellen, this thirty-eight million dollars
– which, by the way, might now be worth somewhat less than
it was worth ten minutes ago – this thirty-eight million your
ex-husband has or had in his possession – to whom does it
belong?”
“To Gary, of course. But the point is, there are indications
– and I’ll get to those – that Gary is throwing his money
away. That’s the issue.”
“Well, it is and it isn’t. That’s where a lot of my skepticism
– you’re right about that – comes in. Your gay ex-husbandbrother-in-law may well be over in the Land of Smiles, as the brochures call it, spending thirty-eight million dollars on things you would not necessarily spend thirty-eight million dollars on.
Beach houses, money boys, dried squid on a stick, who knows
what. But spending money foolishly is what some people do.
And while the spectacle can be upsetting to others, nauseating
even, especially to the spendthrift’s loved ones, there’s rarely anything anybody can do about it. Or needs to. Hiring a private
investigator is seldom called for – even when it’s a family
member who appears to have gone off the rails, fiscally
speaking.”
She was looking increasingly unhappy. “So Bill and I should
just – sit back?”
I said, “When you say your ex-husband has vanished, what
do you mean by that?”
“It means what it sounds like. No one has heard from Gary
for nearly six months. He doesn’t respond to e-mails. His snail
mail letters don’t get answered. His home phone and Thai cell
phone accounts have both been shut down. He just seems to
have – you know.”
“I know.” Fallen off the face of the earth. She heard herself thinking the cliché and decided she was not someone who
would use it.
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 13
“Gary was never much for staying in touch,” she said.
“Even during his Key West years, he rarely e-mailed or phoned.
Business matters with Bill, but little else. And after his and Bill’s parents died, we saw very little of Gary. Even though I think he was basically happy that Bill and I had gotten together – at
some level, relieved even – he seemed to feel awkward around
us. He had a couple of boyfriends in Key West – one of them
fairly long-term – but we never met them or knew exactly who
they were. Whether it was internalized homophobia or
something else, I don’t know. What I do know is, Gary didn’t
seem to fully come out and grow up as a gay person until he
went to Thailand.”
She blinked a couple of times, realizing she may have
blundered.
“So your ex-husband is not a grown-up, and at the same
time he is a grown-up?”
“What I meant,” she said, recovering handily, “was that on
the one hand Gary seems finally to have found a way of being
comfortably gay. While on the other hand, his long-term
happiness and well-being have been seriously jeopardized by his
fiscal irresponsibility, his susceptibility to Eastern religions —
there was at least one sizable investment decision Bill and I
learned was suggested by his astrologer – and by his choice of
boyfriends over there. The last one he mentioned to me – in a
short note about some estate business before we stopped
hearing from him – was a Thai man named Mango.”
“That’s vivid.”
“You’ve been there, and you may know better. But I would
find it very difficult to take seriously a man named Mango.”
I said, “On some Bangkok R and R from Saigon, I once
spent a pleasant weekend with a Thai man named Bank. He had
a brother named Book. Thais sometimes give their children
English nicknames of objects they value. So I wouldn’t make
too much of that.”
14 Richard Stevenson
Mrs. Griswold took a good swallow of beer and said, “Well,
then, Don, let me run a very different name by you, and let’s see if this gets your attention.” She waited.
“Ready when you are.”
She said, “Algonquin Steel.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Max J. Griswold.”
“Oh, so you all are those Griswolds. If you were Thai, you might have named your son Blast Furnace. Or your daughter.”
“The company Gary and Bill’s grandfather founded is
publicly traded now,” she went on. “But Gary and Bill both
retained substantial holdings. Last August, Gary sold his shares for thirty million dollars and change. Bill learned this from Alan Rainey, the company treasurer. Alan also told Bill that when
Alan questioned him, Gary said he had been offered an
investment opportunity that was too good to pass up and would
lead to his recouping his investment many times over in a short
period of time. It was easy enough, also, for Bill to learn from Angie Hogencamp at Hughes-Weinstock, our brokerage, that
Gary had liquidated all of his remaining eight million in assets and had all of it – thirty-eight million in toto – wired to a
bank in Bangkok.” She eyed me coolly and waited for my
reaction.
I said, “Remind me never to do business with Hughes-
Weinstock if I want my portfolio activity kept confidential.”
She ignored this and added, “All of this bizarre and
potentially disastrous financial activity coincided with the arrival of Mango on the scene and came a little less than a month
before Gary…”
She waited and I said it. “Seemed to fall off the face of the
earth.”
“And by the way,” Mrs. Griswold said. “Blast Furnace
would not be an appropriate Griswold name. The company has
steel wholesale and fabricating facilities in eleven states – plus, of course, the nationwide Econo-Build home and building
supply chain of stores – but no actual steel mills. Anyway,
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 15
most of the steel sold and used in the United States these days
comes from Japan, Korea, Russia and Brazil. I think it’s safe to say few Griswolds have ever laid eyes on a blast furnace.”
I did not reply that Bill and Ellen Griswold might then have
considered naming their only son Middleman. I thought about
it quickly and said, “I guess I have to agree, Ellen, that the
situation you have described to me does sound worrisome.”
CHAPTER TWO
“Thirty-eight mil?” Timothy Callahan was impressed.
“That’s getting close to being real money these days. Not for
some major CEO, who might find thirty-eight million stuffed
into his Dick Cheney’s-birthday-bonus envelope. But for the
family screwup, it sounds like a perfectly respectable sum to
fritter away in the tropics.”
We were dining late at a Thai place on Wolf Road after my
meeting with Ellen Griswold and were enjoying some decent
tom yam kung and steamed rice. I was eating around the
flavorsome but inedible debris in my soup bowl – the
lemongrass, galangal root and kaffir lime leaves – and Timmy
was picking his out of the bowl, bit by bit, and arranging them
on a separate small plate he had requested.
I said, “Gary Griswold wasn’t always a screwup, and that’s
partly why his family is concerned. He did the marketing for
their Econo-Build stores in Florida for six years and turned
them into serious competitors with Home Depot. Then he ran
an art gallery in Key West that wasn’t a big moneymaker, Ellen
Griswold said, but apparently succeeded well enough. It wasn’t
until he discovered the quirky charms of Bangkok that he
apparently flipped out money-managementwise. If, in fact, he
did. Griswold claimed he was investing the thirty-eight million
in a sure bet with a quick payoff.”
Timmy transferred another reed of tough lemongrass out of
his soup bowl and said, “My Aunt Moira once lost five
thousand dollars in a Ponzi scheme.”
“I’ll bet a priest told her it was okay.”
“He was probably running it.”
“Another reason to worry,” I said, “is this business of the
astrologer Griswold once accepted investment advice from.”
“Griswold bought Enron?”
18 Richard Stevenson
“No, Ellen said it actually worked out. Some land deal in
Bangkok. But all the Griswolds were fit to be tied at the time.”
“There you go. You’re always so skeptical about the relative
positions of the planets and stars on erroneous charts drawn up
centuries ago affecting people’s personalities and events in their present-day lives. Let this be a lesson.”
“Anyway, in the go-go Southeast Asian economy, most land
deals probably work out these days. Also, that investment was
about three hundred K, and now we’re talking thirty-eight
million, Griswold’s entire net worth. And the fact that he seems to have broken off all contact with his family sounds bad. He
never said a word to them about moving or dropping out of
sight or that anything had gone wrong. All he said in his last email was that something had come up that would keep him
busy for a while and he might be out of touch, but not to worry.
Then, for six months, nothing. He just seemed to…you know.”
“Fall off the face of the earth?”
“Exactly.”
Timmy said, “And then there’s Mango, the refreshing
tropical fruit drink.”
“The Griswolds know nothing about him, just that
apparently Gary Griswold was seriously smitten. Mango may
have nothing to do with either the investment, so-called, or the seeming disappearance. It is true, of course, that Thailand
harbors more than its share of sexually alluring flimflam artists.
Somebody once rudely called the country a brothel with
temples.”
“So,” Timmy said, “are you flying over? You’ve talked for
years about going back to the region for a visit.”
“Ellen Griswold’s retainer is ample and her expense limit
high. So, sure, it makes sense. Once I’m there, it shouldn’t take long. Griswold probably cut a swath.”
“A guy with thirty-eight mil is bound to stand out among
the rice paddies.”
“Why don’t you come along?” I said. “You’ve got some
leave time built up. You could do legwork for me. Brain work,
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 19
too, as is your habit. It would be a legitimate expense. And it’s a fascinating part of the world, as I have gone on and on and on
about on countless occasions.”
“What on earth could you possibly be referring to?” he said
and transferred another kaffir lime leaf onto his mulch pile.
“Also, the war’s over. I’d like to see Bangkok without it
being overrun by drunken, drug-addled, horny American GIs
such as myself. I’m sure the place is very different now, and we could check it out together.”
“But what if,” Timmy wondered, “we got over there and
Griswold’s situation turned out to be something really
complicated and dangerous and ugly? That certainly seems
possible with somebody vanishing with that amount of money.”
“It’s true,” I said, “that the Bangkok I knew in the seventies
had a harsh underside. You could, for instance, have somebody
bumped off for a few hundred dollars. That would be for killing
a Thai. A farang might be double that. It’s also a fact – I suppose I should mention – that the Land of Smiles, home to
some of the sweetest people in the world, has one of the most
corrupt police forces in Asia – which is saying a lot – and
some of the most nightmarish prisons anywhere. Few people
emerge from Thai prisons sane, or even alive. It’s also a sad
reality that in legal disputes between Thais and foreigners, the foreigner is always wrong and may have to lay out big bucks —
backhanders, they call them – just to save his own neck. There
is a lot about the Thai paradise that’s not so heavenly, I know.
And it’s entirely possible that Gary Griswold has fallen victim
to some aspect of that not-so-delectable Thailand.”
Now Timmy had set down his soupspoon and was giving
me one of his looks. “You’re not making any of that up, are
you?”
“No. But otherwise it’s a lovely country. The Thais have
their rice, their Buddha, their beloved king, and their well-
developed sense of fun. That’s the Thailand I’ll bet Griswold
fell in love with – until something somehow went awry.”
“Oh, awry,” Timmy said.
20 Richard Stevenson
“Look, if it turns out that Griswold has fallen into
something grisly and there’s real danger, then you’ll get back on the plane and fly home. That would be simple enough.”
“I understand. And you?”
“Well, we’d have to see. It would depend on if I could be helpful or not, or what I might have to do to earn my fee.”
Timmy looked down at his tom yam kung and said to it,
“Here we go again,” and my heart went out.
§ § § § §
Back at the house on Crow Street, it took me under ten
minutes to come up with the name of Gary Griswold’s most
recent boyfriend in Key West. Ellen Griswold thought the
man’s name might be Horn, and she was right. When I called an
old friend of Timmy’s living in Key West – one of the former
Peace Corps mafia whose humanistic tentacles are everywhere
– she confirmed that Griswold had been a well-known
presence in Key West over a period of about a decade and had
had a boyfriend named Lou Horn. Horn now owned and
managed the art gallery the two had founded together, which
now was named Toot Toot.
I got Horn on the phone with no trouble. He not only didn’t
mind being called at ten forty at night, but said he was very
worried about Griswold and fearful about what might have
happened to him. Horn was relieved, he said, that I would be
searching for Griswold. He said he and two other Key West
friends had been in occasional contact with Griswold until
about six months earlier, when all communication from
Griswold’s end had inexplicably ceased.
I asked Horn if, before his disappearance, Griswold had said
anything to anybody in Key West that seemed out of character
or otherwise odd or set off alarm bells. Horn said, “Well,
maybe.” When he assured me that he and other of Griswold’s
Key West friends would willingly tell me what little they knew, I thanked him, called Delta, and booked a flight for the next day.
I also phoned a PI friend in New York City who I’d done
work for and obtained a list of reputable investigative firms and THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 21
individuals operating in Bangkok. I had just begun checking
these agencies out online when I became aware of an eerie
silence above me. Normally, at this time of night, Timmy was
upstairs in the bedroom guffawing at The Daily Show, and frequently so was I. Instead, when I went up, I found the
television off and Timmy with his wireless laptop open on the
bed.
“Working late for the people of New York State?” I said. “If
so, we thank you.”
His look was grave. “I Googled Bangkok crime statistics.
Holy Mother!”
“Timothy, this is not going to help.”
“Oh yes, it is. I’m not going, and I’m not sure you should,
either.”
This was my fault. I should only have told him about the
golden reclining Buddhas. I said, “You’re getting a distorted
picture. New York City looks sinister and forbidding on a police blotter, too. I sometimes do work there. So do you. We like New York.”
“It’s true,” he said, “that there’s very little street crime in
Bangkok. It’s peaceful in that respect. But if you’re doing business there – as Griswold may have been doing – look
out. A favorite way of settling money disputes is for one party
to hire a guy on a motorcycle to drive by and shoot the other
party in the head. Extrajudicial killings by the police are routine.
Get this: in July two thousand one, a Bangkok newspaper ran a
front-page story with the headline, ‘Police Death Squads Run
Riot.’ In one region, the police general dealt with drug dealers by sending cops out to shoot them. ‘Our target,’ this police
official said, ‘is to send one thousand traffickers to hell this year, to join some three hundred fifty before them.’ Could Griswold
have gotten enmeshed in some gigantic drug deal? That could
explain the so-called quick return on investment. If so, he could be six feet under in the backyard of a police station. Land of
Smiles, my ass, Donald. The Thailand I am seeing in front of
me here is bloody treacherous.”
22 Richard Stevenson
I leaned over his shoulder. “Timothy, this is great stuff.
Really helpful. Would you mind printing this for me? I’ll read it on the plane to Key West tomorrow. I’m going down to talk to
Griswold’s friends there. It turns out they’re quite worried
about him, too.”
“And then” – Timmy went right on – “I came across a
book I think you should read. I’m ordering it tomorrow from
Stuyvesant Books. It’s My Eight Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison.
It’s by some American bozo who got on the wrong side of
somebody over there, and he landed in some nightmare
Midnight Express situation he didn’t have enough ready cash to buy his way out of, the way the rich Thais do.”
“Well,” I said. “All this stuff is frightening, sure. It makes
me apprehensive too. But it’s also all the more reason to worry
about Gary Griswold. He sounds like a basically good guy —
adventurous in a harmless way, a spiritual searcher. Maybe too
naive and susceptible, but that’s hardly a moral crime. And he
may have been victimized by the Thai subculture displayed so
garishly on your screen there. Griswold may be in trouble, and
he needs help. I’ve been hired to help him, but of course, you
don’t need to be involved.”
“I intend not to be.”
“That’s up to you.”
He said, “It’s not that I don’t get it. I agree that Griswold
could well be up to his ears in some hideous mire – a swamp
of his own making or not – and he needs somebody to come
along and drag him out. All I’m saying is, Bangkok sounds as if
it can be a very dangerous place, and I’m frightened for myself
and for you.”
“I know.”
“And the other thing is, how objective are you being about
this? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the Griswolds to hire
somebody on the scene there instead of somebody who hasn’t
set foot in Bangkok for years? Maybe,” he said, “your judgment
is a bit off because you mainly want to get back to this part of the world you once found so compelling and do it at somebody
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 23
else’s expense. And maybe reconnect with Bank or Book or
Mango or Dragonfruit or like that. Is what I have just described a distinct possibility, or isn’t it?”
A relentlessly keen-minded piece of work was my beloved. I
said, “Yes, all that is a distinct possibility. And I want you to know that I am resolving at this moment – thanks to you —
to turn into a perfectly rational human being and to behave
accordingly.”
“Uh-huh.”
I added, “In my next life.”
He seemed unamused by me, gave up and tried Jon Stewart.
