Текст книги "The 38 Million Dollar Smile "
Автор книги: Richard Stevenson
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CHAPTER THREE
The photograph of her ex-husband that Ellen Griswold had
given me was about a year old, she said. In it, a lithe, well-
tanned, curly-haired man in his midforties stood in front of a
frangipani tree in splendid full bloom. Griswold wore khaki
shorts and a lime green polo shirt. While not striking in
appearance, he seemed a leaner, looser version of his older
brother Bill, a tense and weary business traveler with a five
o’clock shadow whom I met briefly at the Albany airport when
his flight from Washington unexpectedly arrived only twenty
minutes late.
In the picture, Griswold’s dark eyes shone brightly as he
peered confidently into the camera lens. His full-lipped smile,
while not beatific, looked natural and relaxed. Buddhists say we inhabit our bodies only temporarily, but in this picture, at least, Griswold’s soul appeared comfortable in its then-abode.
I looked at the picture and the other material on Griswold
on the first leg of my Key West flight, a two-hour ride down to
Atlanta. Ellen Griswold had provided regular-mail notes from
Gary and hard copies of e-mails sent from Thailand. Nearly all
were addressed to Ellen, not to Ellen and Bill. In his messages, Griswold spoke glowingly of his new home – he wrote, “the
Thais are a truly free people” – and of the contentment he had
found in Buddhist ethical systems and through daily meditation.
He also mentioned being pleased with a condo he had
purchased in Bangkok. This was about eighteen months earlier,
and Ellen had included the street address in her packet.
There were several references to what Griswold termed “the
romance department.” All the romances seemed to be with
Thai men. Early in his life in Bangkok, there was Keng, “a
sweetheart of a man,” and later “delightful” Sambul, and then
“quiet” Poom. No mention was made of any of these
relationships ending. It seemed as if when one halted or
dwindled out, Griswold just moved on to another. This left me
26 Richard Stevenson
wondering what the exact nature of these liaisons might have
been.
The last boyfriend mentioned, in an e-mail dated the
previous July 17, was Mango. Griswold called him “a beautiful
man and a fantastic human being.” He also said, “This one’s a
keeper, I hope.” This was a month before Griswold sold all his
holdings in the US for thirty-eight million dollars and two
months before he disappeared.
The other material Ellen provided me, at Bob Chicarelli’s
direction, was biographical and statistical data. I noted that
Griswold had been a business major at Cornell with an art
history minor. His résumé consisted mainly of marketing
positions with Algonquin Steel, the family company. He started
low at Albany headquarters then climbed steadily, with his
company career culminating in his becoming head of marketing
in the US Southern region when he was in his early thirties.
Then Griswold left the company and ran his Key West art
gallery before departing for Thailand.
On the smaller plane from Atlanta to Key West, I looked
through the Lonely Planet guide to Thailand I had picked up
that morning at Stuyvesant Books. In the “Dangers and
Annoyances” section that Lonely Planet quaintly and helpfully
includes in all its guidebooks, unscrupulous tuk-tuk drivers were listed, as well as fake-gem scams. No mention was made of
drive-by shootings or police-run massacres. The emphasis in
Lonely Planet’s Thailand was on the green landscape, the
golden temples, and the smiles.
§ § § § §
“I have to admit,” Lou Horn said, “that in retrospect we
should have seen it coming – Gary mentally and physically
sailing off into the blue. There were signs.”
Marcie Weems added, “Thailand, swell – nice people, nice
place. And Buddhism, that’s fine, too – the ethics of tolerance
and acceptance and nonviolence. And, of course, all those cute
monks with their shaved heads and gorgeous orange robes. But
astrology? Numerology? I don’t think so.”
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 27
“And before his transformation Gary was so even-keeled
most of the time,” Janice Romeo said. “And smart and fun to
be around. The four of us took trips together, and Gary was
always a delight. He was focused, yes, even obsessive about
some things, like his bike racing and his good causes. But he
was never really muddleheaded. And after he got out of the
Algonquin Steel power job sturm and drang and opened the gallery, he was pretty relaxed too. Of course, it was also around that time that he started getting into the weirdness.”
“He was weird, but still not weird,” Weems put in. “Gary
was Mister Moderate-and-Conventional with most things —
food, alcohol, dress. Key West is famous for its eccentrics, but Gary was hardly one of the seventeen thousand four hundred
and twelve local characters.”
“And men,” Romeo said. “Don’t forget men – another
area where Gary was Mister Middle-of-the-Road. No Mangos
or Pomegranates or Pomolos for the Gary we knew. He went
for Lou, to cite a nearby example. An excellent, levelheaded
choice. Lou, are you hurt that we all think of you as a merely
reasonable object of desire?”
They all laughed as Horn digested the ambiguous
compliment. We were seated at a table at Saluté, an open-air
mainly Italian place along the Atlantic Avenue beach on the nocruise-ships quiet side of Key West. A half-moon hung in the evening sky behind palm fronds rustling in a warm breeze. I had
my Sam Adams and the others their Ketel One vodka with a
side of ice, apparently the national beverage of the Conch
Republic.
Horn was a broad-faced man in his late forties with a salt-
and-pepper beard, a few skin-cancer scars scattered about, a
one-time middleweight wrestler’s build now starting to respond
to the tug of gravity, and a twinkle in both his eyes and his step.
He had brought along Griswold’s two other closest friends in
the keys. Both Weems and Romeo had moved to Key West
twelve years earlier when the New York publishing house where
Weems had been a senior editor was bought by Argentinean
beef producers and most of the house’s functions were moved
28 Richard Stevenson
to Buenos Aires. Now they ran a small B and B, Romeo said,
and only served pork products for breakfast.
Easy to look at in their pale cottons and silks, the two
women seated across from me, one olive-skinned and ample,
one creamy and svelte, were also merrily festooned with skin
cancer Band-Aids, apparently a small price to pay for life in
what was still a pretty good place for getting away from it all.
Key West still had allure, despite cruise ships the size of the
Pentagon lumbering in daily, and the influx of millionaires who
had left the island unaffordable for lesser new arrivals. Gary
Griswold had seemed more or less at home there, and his three
friends said they were stunned when Griswold suddenly
announced, after a vacation trip to Thailand, that he was
abandoning them and his life there for a country on the other
side of the world.
Horn said, “Gary and I were no longer partners in the
personal sense by the time he left. So, emotionally it was more
or less okay. That part of our relationship had petered out more than a year earlier, and we both had been seeing other people.”
“Seeing, ” Weems said. “Such a darling way of putting it.”
“Anyway, I had always been the one to play around,” Horn
said. “Gary, being more serious and focused about everything
he undertook, was more of a serial monogamist.”
“This is true,” Romeo said. “Marcie and I once certified
Gary as an honorary lesbian.”
“I sometimes wonder,” Horn said, “what would have
happened if Geoffrey Pringle had never invited Gary over to
Bangkok. Though, of course, Gary had begun to change almost
a year before that. At the time, we thought maybe it had
something to do with Gary falling off his bike, screwy as that might sound. Another biker ran into him in a race up near
Ocala, and Gary wiped out and landed on his head. He was
wearing a helmet, but he had a bad concussion, and the whole
thing seemed to throw him for a loop like nothing else we’d
ever seen. He went around in a daze for a week after he got out
of the hospital. And it was not too long after that that he got
the astrology bug, and he started seeing a woman on Stock
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 29
Island who claims to help people get in touch with their past
lives. I’ve read that head injuries can sometimes cause
personality changes, temporary or even permanent, and we all
wondered at the time if Gary hitting his head had somehow
jarred loose his bullshit detector.”
I asked, “Who is Geoffrey Pringle?”
“A longtime Key West full-timer who moved to Thailand
four or five years ago,” Horn said. “It was Geoff who invited
Gary over for a two-week visit.”
“What does Geoff do in Thailand?”
“He’s retired,” Romeo said. “His family in Chicago made a
fortune in grain futures years ago. A while back, Geoff inherited forty or fifty mil, and bingo, off he flew.”
I asked if anybody had checked with Pringle about
Griswold’s current situation. Wasn’t this guy likely to know
something?
“We tried,” Horn said. “But Geoffrey won’t really talk to us.
Apparently he and Gary had some kind of falling-out. I got
Geoff on the phone in Bangkok about a month ago. He said he
didn’t know where Gary was, and he ‘couldn’t care less,’ his
words. Geoff also told me in no uncertain terms that the day I
phoned him was not an auspicious date for him to be taking a
transoceanic telephone call, and he just hoped that I had not
fucked up his entire month.”
Romeo laughed and said, “And Geoff didn’t even land on
his head, as far as we know.”
Some food arrived, an aromatic bounteous antipasti for the
table.
“Don’t be dainty,” Romeo said. “Shovel it down. There’s
more where that came from. Plus, the pasta dishes.”
As we dug in, Horn said, “The numerology thing with Gary
was especially uncomfortable for all of us whenever nine-eleven
came up. Gary had bought into a theory bouncing around the
Internet about the date, eleven, and the shape of the two New
York towers, and some supposed prediction by Nostradamus
made in the fourteenth century that historians say was fake.
30 Richard Stevenson
There was even more to it – something about the flight
numbers of the crashed planes adding up to something
significant – and Gary took it all very seriously.”
“After a while, of course, Gary didn’t really talk to us about
any of that,” Romeo said. “When we were casually dismissive,
or just unresponsive, he tended to drop the subject for a while.
We didn’t want to insult him or hurt him. But we weren’t about
to indulge this looniness, either. What do you do? What do you
say? We loved Gary, but we were just flabbergasted. Some
people are susceptible to these notions and some aren’t, and we
happen to fall into the latter category. It just got terribly
awkward.”
“He obviously cared what you thought of him,” I said. “And
after he moved to Thailand, he stayed in touch. But you said,
Lou, that Gary gave indications that things were starting to go
wrong. What were those indications?”
They looked at each other. Horn said, “You know about
Mango, right? From Ellen Griswold.”
“I do. Apparently Gary was head over heels for the guy.”
“He was,” Janice said, “and then later he wasn’t. In one e-
mail he sent me late last summer – I’ve got a hard copy for
you to take with you – Gary said Mango might not be who he
said he was. This was extremely distressing for Gary. He had
trusted this guy, he said. Gary had also been to a seer – that’s the word he used. And what the seer predicted was ‘bloodshed’
in Gary’s life, and ‘great sorrow for people close to him.’ Again, the seer’s words.”
That’s all? No specifics?”
“No.”
“Did Gary tell anybody the seer’s name?”
“No.”
“Not death, just bloodshed? That was the word? And
sorrow?”
“It is tantalizingly and unhelpfully vague,” Horn said.
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 31
I asked Janice how she had replied to Griswold’s unnerving
e-mail, and she looked sheepish. “I never really responded,
really. What I thought was, this is supermarket tabloid stuff.
Gary didn’t have to go all the way to Thailand for this. He could have picked up forecasts like that for a couple of bucks at the
Winn-Dixie checkout. He said the seer was some kind of
renowned figure in Thailand, but it sounded like a racket to me.
I wasn’t about to say that, though, so I just let it go. About a week later, I sent him some chirpy message about nothing at all.
I stupidly just ignored this thing that obviously was terribly
important to Gary.”
“Well, if it was a scam,” Weems said, “Gary could afford it.
He had more money than God and Buddha put together.
Anyway, what could you possibly have said? Sometimes when
people are acting screwy, silence from friends is the only kind
and useful response.”
I asked if Griswold had informed any of the three that he
had transferred his entire fortune to a Bangkok bank and that
he planned on a large investment with an early big payoff. No,
they said, they had not known about this until I had told Horn
on the phone. “You scared the bejesus out us of with that one,”
Weems said.
“We’re just hoping that something really horrible hasn’t
happened,” Horn said. “Gary has all that money over there in a
part of the world that I assume can be dangerous. And then
there’s the Griswold family history of violent death. It almost
makes you believe in fate or karma or people being doomed by
forces beyond their control or understanding. Notice I said
‘almost.’”
I said, “What Griswold family history of violent death? I
don’t know about that.”
“I suppose there’s no reason Ellen would have mentioned
it,” Horn said. “But Gary’s parents died in a small-plane crash
fifteen or so years ago. This was just a year or two before Bill’s ex-wife, Sheila, sailed off on a Caribbean cruise and disappeared at sea. Presumably, she fell overboard, though nobody knows
for sure.”
32 Richard Stevenson
So the JAP was actually the late JAP. “This is news.”
“It does help show,” Horn said, “why Gary might take
predictions of bloodshed by a fortune-teller more seriously than a lot of us would.”
“It seems,” I said, “as though Gary was closer to his former
wife than to his brother Bill. Why might that be true? Or am I
wrong?”
“There was never any love lost between Gary and Bill,”
Horn said. “They were just two different types of animal. It was partly the gay thing. The Griswolds only accepted that
grudgingly, and it just wasn’t discussed. But there were other big differences. The steel and building supply businesses never
really interested Gary. He was in it for fifteen years to prove
something to his family and to himself, I guess. And then he
walked away from the company without giving it a second
thought.”
“Plus,” Romeo said, “Gary’s brother was some kind of big
Bushophile. That was certainly an issue. It was another topic
that could never be mentioned among the Griswolds.”
“Gary hated the militarism of the Bush people,” Horn said.
“He was constantly giving money to peace groups and to
human rights organizations like Amnesty International and
Human Rights Watch. A big part of Thailand’s draw for him
was the Buddhism and the philosophy of nonviolence.”
I told them I wasn’t surprised that the reality of Thailand for
Griswold may have turned out to be something other than a
travel-poster Buddhist paradise. “I am also fond of the place,” I said. “But if you don’t like militarism, it’s hardly the place to go.
Thailand has had a dozen or more military coups since it started electing governments in the nineteen thirties. The generals, of
course, always go to the country’s beloved King Bhumibol to
ask his permission to overthrow the elected government. If he
ever said, ‘No, sorry, you can’t do that,’ I’m not aware of it. The place also has a thoroughly corrupt police force that’s been
known to simply execute suspected drug dealers, as I recall.
And drive-by shootings are sometimes used to resolve business
disputes, I’ve heard.”
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 33
The three were now looking at me queasily. I guessed I
should have told them, as with Timothy, only about the
reclining Buddhas. I said, “But the Thai people generally are
gentle and humor-filled. And deeply spiritual. And they have a
highly developed sense of fun – sanuk, they call it. Sanuk infects just about everything the Thais do.”
“Like their drive-by shootings?” Romeo asked.
The waitress arrived to clear away the antipasti platter, which
we had picked clean. Griswold’s three friends, subdued now
and a bit shaken, decided this would be a good time to order
another round of drinks.
“Look,” I said, “I think you’re right to worry about
Griswold. It’s reasonable to think that anybody vanishing in
Southeast Asia with thirty-eight million dollars at his disposal has either met foul play or is in hiding in order to avoid foul
play. Or – and I know you’d much rather not think about this
– Griswold has himself done something illegal, and he is in
hiding not from criminal bad guys but from Thai-cop bad guys.
Which are sometimes one and the same thing, I’m sorry to say.”
They all set down their glasses of Ketel One and looked at
me soberly.
After a moment, Horn said, “I guess we were hoping you
would tell us things about Thailand that were more reassuring.”
“I wish I could.”
“Well, then,” Weems said. “It’s good you’re going over.
When do you leave?”
“In a couple of days, I think. I’ve booked space on both
Thursday and Friday.”
“Are you going alone? Or do you have a staff?”
“I may have help. That’s unclear.”
“Poor Gary,” Horn said. “I can’t believe, really, that he’s
done anything wrong himself. The guy is just so decent. So, something really bad must have happened to him. Oh, God.”
Our pasta dishes arrived, and we talked quietly about what
Horn, Weems and Romeo all saw as the good life in Key West.
34 Richard Stevenson
There were rising costs and overpopulation and the threat of
catastrophic hurricanes. But low-pressure island life was still the best, they all agreed and wished that Gary Griswold had not lost his capacity to be happy in this place that his friends all loved.
We were well into our lasagna and fettuccine when an
acquaintance the three hadn’t seen for a while stopped by the
table to greet them. Nadine Bisbee, an angular, middle-aged
woman in a sarong and fourteen pounds of turquoise and silver
jewelry, was introduced to me as another friend of Griswold
who was quite concerned about him. Horn told her I was a
private investigator preparing to fly to Thailand to search for
Griswold.
“Oh,” Bisbee said, “I don’t think we need to worry about
Gary anymore. Elise Flanagan saw him two weeks ago in
Cambodia.”
Horn and Romeo said it at the same time. “She did?”
“It was at a border crossing. Elise was on a tour bus on her
way from Bangkok to Angkor Wat with her Antioch-alum
architecture history group, and there was Gary at Thai passport
control heading back into Thailand from Cambodia. She yelled
at him, she said, but he either didn’t hear Elise or for some
reason he didn’t want to run into anybody he knew. Elise said
she thought maybe he had some underage youth in tow and was
embarrassed by it.”
I said, “Does Gary have a history of underage youths as a
sexual interest?”
Romeo said, “Just Lou.”
“Thank you, dear.”
“No,” Weems said. “It had to be something else. Was Elise
sure it was Gary she saw?”
“Elise said it was definitely Gary. Elise has been getting
forgetful in recent years, but she certainly knows Gary as well as any of us. I mean, she bought art from Gary and Lou for years
and was in the gallery at least once a month, wasn’t she, Lou?”
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 35
“Elise would certainly know Gary,” Horn said somberly.
“Maybe this means he’s been in Cambodia for six months, and
that’s why nobody has heard from him.”
Romeo said, “For chrissakes, Cambodia surely has
telephones and post offices. Even the Internet, I’ll bet. Am I
right, Don?”
“In the Khmer Rouge era, it didn’t. But now Cambodia is
not so cut off, no.”
“So, what’s going on with Gary?” Weems said, and they all
looked at me.
CHAPTER FOUR
Despite creeping gentrification, Stock Island, just east of
Key West, had one of the few remaining low-rent districts in
the lower keys. It had dockage for fishing and pleasure boats,
some warehouses, and a few good seafood restaurants. But it
wasn’t yet, Horn told me, one of the fashionable, high-cost
addresses for habitation.
Sandy Tessig lived in one of the island’s two-story plain-
concrete multiunit townhouses built on stilts to be safe from
storm surges. So far, the design had worked; the place had not
been swept away by rampaging seas. Tessig had no big sign up,
just a discreet notice next to her door buzzer that read Sandy —
Past, Present, and Future Knowledge – The Freedom to Know and to Be.
Tessig had agreed on the phone to talk to me, and Lou
Horn dropped me off at ten in the morning, planning to pick
me up in an hour. Tessig had said she was worried about
Griswold too, and was willing to help if she could. And, she
said, maybe while I was there I would like a reading.
Sandy’s apartment didn’t give me the kind of willies I was
expecting, and neither did she. There were a couple of
astrological charts on the living room wall over the couch, but
no rooms painted black and no sinister aromatherapy. I could
see Disney-character decals on the side of the refrigerator in the kitchen and the only smell was of the orange Doritos in a dish
on the coffee table. The CD box on the player next to the
goldfish bowl was an early Barbra Streisand collection.
I relaxed on the couch and Sandy brought me a cup of
Nescafé. She was pleasantly beefy in tight jeans and a Conch
Nation T-shirt. She had clear skin, a big expressive face, and
streaked hair cut short.
She perched on a hassock across the coffee table from me
and told me she was excited to have me in the same room with
her.
38 Richard Stevenson
“Why?” I asked.
“You’ve been everywhere. You’ve done everything. Oh, my
God!”
I knew what was coming, but I said, “I was in the army, and
I’ve always enjoyed travel.”
“Wait. Don’t tell me. Lithuania?”
“Nope. Never Lithuania.”
“No, no. Fifteenth century. The royal court.”
“I’m not aware of this.”
“No, but I am. I have the gift. That’s why Gary came to me.
It’s why you’re here, Donnie.”
“Nobody has called me Donnie for a number of years. You
must have me mixed up with someone else,” I said in a kidding
way, trying to get her off this track.
“Are you saying you are not that person anymore? You will
always be little Donnie. Always were, always will be. And many other little Donnies in time and space too.”
“You’re sounding a little too much like my mother, Sandy,”
I said, trying again for a jocularity that did not come across as too disrespectful. “Can we talk about Gary Griswold? You said
you were as worried about him as so many of his other friends
have been.” I told her that a Key West woman apparently had
seen Griswold alive at the Thai–Cambodian border two weeks
earlier, but that his noncommunicativeness and apparent
secretiveness were still a serious cause for concern.
“Gary is home where he belongs. Home is where the heart
is.”
“True enough.”
“He told me after he got back from his first trip to Thailand
that I had been right to urge him to go there, and that he had
found his spiritual and ancestral true home. Here he suffered
from dislocation. I’m not knocking Key West; don’t get me
wrong. I grew up a quarter of a mile from where we’re sitting,
and it’s fine that I’m here now, because I’ve been in Monroe
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 39
County for most of my past lives. This place has been good to
me, except for once in the thirteen forties.”
“That’s pre-Columbian,” I said.
“What? You think there were no people in Monroe County
before Columbus got here?”
“No, in fact I’m impressed. And who can argue with
firsthand experience?”
She gave me a smile that appeared genuine. “You’re a
doubter, I can see. But that’s okay. Your skepticism in no way
alters reality.”
“That’s been my experience.”
“But you’re missing out on something fantastic, Donnie.
Full self-knowledge. It’s liberating. Knowing not just who you
are but who you were enables you to see yourself in your
natural place in the cosmos. Once you grasp this, you’ll never
feel dislocated again. Or alone.”
I said, “How come people in your line of endeavor, Sandy,
tend to locate clients in a cozy royal court? Couldn’t I have been a rural Lithuanian Jew getting speared in the neck by marauding
Cossacks?”
“Of course,” she said. “That’s what happened to me in
1343, until forty-six. Not in Lithuania but here in Florida. It
wasn’t Cossacks, it was Seminoles. It accounts for a good deal
of my present back pain. But I sense strongly that you were
either royalty or were close to royalty. You have also lived many other lives, of course, some of them perhaps replete with rage
and physical agony. But rediscovering those lives would require
time and effort.”
“I’m afraid my immediate concern has to be Gary
Griswold.”
“I couldn’t agree more. It would be so, so sad if Gary’s bliss
had gone by.”
I said, “So it was you who suggested that Gary vacation in
Thailand? I was under the impression that former Key West
resident Geoff Pringle had invited him for a visit.”
40 Richard Stevenson
She adjusted her back – were the Seminoles the problem,
or the hassock? – and let loose a grin of pure satisfaction. “I
knew Geoff was over there. He, too, is a client of mine. But it
was Gary’s journey back to his young life at the nineteenth-
century court of King Mongkut that made him realize his bliss
awaited him in Siam.”
“So, Gary was royalty too?”
“Gary himself was not of the Chakra dynasty. He was the
child of a minor court official. But one of his classmates in the court school run by the incredible Anna Leonowens was the
future King Chulalongkorn, and Gary later became King
Chulalongkorn’s palace art curator. So, you see? Running an art
gallery in Key West was really nothing new for Gary.”
“You know,” I said, “most of that Anna and the King of Siam
and The King and I saga was hooey. Leonowens made nearly all of it up, and later Rodgers and Hammerstein ran with it.
Tunefully, to be sure. But I know that the Thais think it’s a
crock.”
Tessig was unruffled by this additional evidence that I was
just another doubter. She said, “Gary remembers Anna as being
a wonderful woman. If she embellished, that’s only natural.
After all, she loved a king and was loved in return by His
Majesty.”
“Thai scholars say the woman was demented. There was no
romance. And Mongkut never hopped around blurting ‘Is a
puzzlement!’”
She smiled even more serenely, impervious. “Talk to Gary.
He can tell you.”
“I’d like to. I’m flying to Thailand later this week.” I
reiterated the fears Griswold’s family in Albany and friends in
Key West had for him, not having heard from Griswold for six
months.
“Yes, Gary stopped e-mailing me too,” Tessig said. “It was
perplexing, and then I began to worry. His last few messages
had been replete with foreboding. A Thai soothsayer had given
him a bad reading, and his sign of Jupiter had entered the
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 41
seventh house. Gary was also disappointed in a man he had
been involved with named Mango. Apparently the guy had
turned out to be dishonest, and a flaming A-hole to boot.”
“Did he mention what Mango had done to upset him?”
“No, just that Mango apparently had misrepresented himself
in some serious way. So, who saw Gary in Cambodia? At least
that’s promising news.”
“Elise Flanagan,” I said. “She’s here in Key West. Do you
know her?”
Now Tessig really lit up. “Elise! She’s a client of mine! But
she didn’t speak to Gary?”
“He seemed not to want to interact with her or even to be
recognized. So, does Elise Flanagan also have past-life
connections with Southeast Asia? Or was she just a tourist?”
“I don’t know, but I sure plan on finding out. Elise will be
here Friday morning. I know she was Mongolian. Sometimes
it’s hard to tell with Elise, though. She sometimes gets
confused, since her diagnosis.”
“Diagnosis for what?” I asked, wary.
“Early Alzheimer’s. She does sometimes confuse people she
knows with other people she knows. So it’s probably best not to
make too much of her spotting Gary, supposedly. Oh, that’s
really too bad it was Elise and not somebody more reliable. Her
long-term memory is still sharp, though. She’s especially
clearheaded on the great migration across the Bering Straits
from East Asia to the Americas.”
I glanced out Tessig’s living room window to see if perhaps
Lou Horn had parked outside and was waiting to drive me back
into Key West. I recognized his old red Camry, and as soon as I
politely could, made a beeline.
