Текст книги "The 38 Million Dollar Smile "
Автор книги: Richard Stevenson
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CHAPTER FIVE
I phoned Timmy from Atlanta and told him my connecting
flight to Albany would be over an hour late, getting in close to midnight, and I would not leave for Thailand until Friday. I said I had some things I needed to check with the Griswolds – and
about the Griswolds.
I gave Timmy a quick summary of my Key West visit with
Horn, Weems and Romeo, my informative session with Sandy
Tessig, and my brief visit early that afternoon with Elise
Flanagan. Lou Horn had driven me over to her house so that
we might get a firsthand account of her sighting of Griswold on
the Thai–Cambodian border. Wan and sinewy in a gauzy dun-
colored sack of some kind, Mrs. Flanagan at first insisted that
the man she saw had to have been Gary Griswold. He had been
her dear friend for years. But then, she said, the man she saw
did look a lot like Raul Castro, and that was confusing. As she
went on, I could see Horn’s now-faint hopes fade even further.
I told Timmy I had booked just one seat on the JFK–
Bangkok flight a day and a half later, but that it probably wasn’t too late for him to join me.
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Timothy,” I said, “when did you become such a travel
wuss? You’re Mister Peace Corps. This isn’t India, I know, but
you loved India way back when. And, like me with Southeast
Asia, you’ve talked about going back someday. We could wrap
up this strange Griswold business in Bangkok and then stop
over in your old village in Andhra Pradesh on the way home.
Most of it would be on Ellen Griswold’s dime. It’s the travel
opportunity of a lifetime.”
He laughed. “Mo Driscoll, one of the guys in my India
group, went back to his village in Maharashtra last year. Some
people actually remembered him. He said word spread all
around that the guy who wiped his ass with paper was back.”
“Sargent Shriver would be touched.”
44 Richard Stevenson
“It’s actually a telling Peace Corps story. Yes, we made some
nice connections while we were there, and may even have done
some useful work in India. But we were always convinced that
basically the villagers thought of us as Martians.”
“Were any of Driscoll’s chickens still flapping around when
he went back?”
“He wasn’t in poultry development,” Timmy said. “Mo was
in the family-planning program.”
“Apparently it didn’t work.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure.”
“Yeah, if it hadn’t been for the Peace Corps, India’s
population today might be one-point-three billion people
instead of one-point-two.”
He laughed, but not heartily. Timmy and his Peace Corps
pals could themselves be cavalier when discussing their youthful development work. But when others cast doubt, they often
became stern. I deeply envied him his Asia experience, though.
Peace beats war any day.
“Of course, I want to go back to India,” he said. “I just
don’t want to be a nervous wreck when I get there. Or show up
with a bloody hole in my head. Or a boyfriend with a hole in
his.”
“I don’t know why you’re fixating on the Bangkok drive-by
shooting statistics. We don’t know that anything remotely like
that has happened to Griswold, or is likely to. Sure, there’s
reason to worry about the guy. But let’s not leap to any
conclusions. My own plan is to take it one cautious step at a
time.”
“Is it possible,” he said, “that one reason you want so badly
for me to come with you is that you don’t quite trust yourself
over there alone? That you’re a little afraid that you’ll fall in love with the place the way Gary Griswold did? The place, and of
course all those happy-go-lucky, silky-skinned, sanuk-loving
Mangos? And if I go along, then you’re much more likely to
retain some grip on reality and come back to where you belong
in a timely manner? Since I don’t know Bangkok at all, I
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 45
wouldn’t be all that useful over there. Surely you know that. So I’m just trying to figure out what it is that’s actually going on here.”
After a long moment, I said, “Well. So you think maybe I
want you to come along so that you can be my mother?”
“No, not your mother. Just your boyfriend of many years
gone by, as well as many years to come. Anyway, that’s certainly what it sounds like to me.”
“Okay,” I said, “what if I do maybe want to re-fall in love
with Thailand – Thailand in peacetime – and maybe I want
you to come along so that you can fall in love with Thailand
too? We can re-fall in love with the Land of Smiles – yes, drive-by shootings too, but mainly the Land of Smiles —
together. Doesn’t that sound just as plausible as what you just
said? Whatever the hell it was you just said.”
Now Timmy was quiet. Then he said, “That I would have to
think about.”
§ § § § §
When I got home just after one in the morning, Timmy was
snoring exuberantly – “calling the hogs,” as his Aunt Moira
called it – and I went online to see if I could get Google to
cough up some answers.
The deaths of Max and Bertha Griswold got considerable
play in the Albany Times Union in early June of 1993. He had been a business leader, and both were benefactors of the arts
and numerous Jewish and other charities. So it was shocking to
many when the couple, who were in their early sixties, died in
the crash of a Piper Comanche piloted by the aircraft’s owner,
Dave Kane, who was also killed. The plane had gone down in a
pasture as it flew from the Albany County Airport to Rochester,
where the Griswolds were to have received an award in
recognition of Algonquin Steel’s in-kind contributions to a
concert hall restoration project.
Follow-up stories said FAA investigators had found no
mechanical problems with the aircraft, but that an autopsy
showed the pilot, sixty-eight years old, had died of a heart
46 Richard Stevenson
attack, probably before the plane went down, causing it to
crash.
Somewhat less prominently reported was the disappearance
just under a year later, in May 1994, of Sheila Griswold of
Clifton Park, former wife of Algonquin Steel president and CEO
William Griswold. The initial story made page one below the
fold, but follow-ups soon fell into the B section before
vanishing altogether.
Mrs. Griswold, who had no children and had not remarried,
apparently fell overboard from the Norwegian cruise liner Oslo Comfort on the night of May 21, somewhere off St. Kitts.
Shipmates had seen Mrs. Griswold in the dining room earlier.
She was reported missing the next morning when she failed to
meet dining room companions for a book signing with mystery
author Deidre McCubbertson and crew members discovered
that her bed had not been slept in. Family members speculated,
the paper said, that “alcohol could have been a factor in the
tragedy,” though the speculating family members were not
identified.
There were three daily English-language newspapers in
Bangkok, the Post, the Nation, and the Daily Express, and I scanned their archives for mention of a Gary Griswold. None
turned up.
Ellen Griswold had given me the name of the Bangkok bank
Griswold had had his thirty-eight million wired to. It was just
after noon Thursday in Thailand, and I got the Commercial
Bank of Siam on the phone. I said I was Gary Griswold and
needed an account balance. Mrs. Griswold had told me the
account number, and I recited it. After some minutes, a man
came on the line and told me in English that was a little hard
for me to follow that the account had been closed. I said, oh,
that’s right, I had the money moved to an interest-bearing
account but I had forgotten the number, and may I please have
it along with the balance? No, the man said, sounding a bit wary now, there was no other account in the name of Griswold at the
Commercial Bank of Siam.
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 47
It didn’t seem as if it would help if I screamed, “Then,
where the bloody hell is my thirty-eight million?” So I said,
“Oh, God, where did I transfer that cash to? Was it Bangkok
Bank?”
This was taking a chance – was there such a thing? – but
the man said, yes, I had done exactly that.
“When?”
“You no remember?”
“Please pardon me. I’m so disorganized.”
A long silence. It wasn’t even staticky. Modern
telecommunications are such a marvel.
“I can no help you, sir. You must phone Bangkok Bank.
Okay?”
“Oh, jeez, what’s my account number there? You must have
had it for the transfer.”
What he gave me instead, and then quickly rang off, was a
telephone number for Bangkok Bank. I called them, but they
required an account number in order for our conversation to
proceed. All this would have to wait until Saturday, when I
would arrive in the Thai capital to work my magic in the flesh.
§ § § § §
Lunch on Thursday with Ellen Griswold at her house in
Loudonville got off to a bad start when I suggested why her
former husband might be susceptible to dire forecasts by
fortune-tellers. I said it could have something to do with the
Griswold family history of people dying violently.
“Where did you get that information?” she demanded to
know. “What exactly are you referring to, and what’s that got to do with anything?”
I told her Gary’s friends in Key West had brought it up —
the plane crash and the Caribbean cruise disappearance – only
in the context of Gary’s heightened sense of foreboding and
karmic doom, nothing more than that.
48 Richard Stevenson
“Oh God. Well, you know, there were people at the time
who thought Bill had something to do with Sheila’s death —
had her shoved overboard or God knows what. She had been
squeezing him really hard financially. This was when Max and
Bertha’s estate was tied up in probate. When Sheila died – or
presumably died – it did take a lot of the pressure off Bill.
There were people, I know, who saw that as a little too
convenient. In a way it’s funny, and yet it’s kind of pathetic.”
“So Sheila was eventually declared legally dead?”
“It took four or five years. For-bleeping-ever. Bill got
nothing back. Sheila’s maid and her cats got some, and the state got the rest. But at least she wasn’t constantly dragging him into court anymore. Sheila was so aggressive for so many years,
though, it wouldn’t surprise me if she strolled up through the
herb garden right now and rapped on the window and waved a
summons in our faces.”
We were seated at a nicely designed table with a sculpted
aluminum base and a white polypropylene top in the Griswold’s
sunporch. The bright room overlooked an herb garden and a
broad expanse of trees and lawn stretching for some distance
beyond. Most of the herbs were still covered, but some
daffodils had sprung up and looked about to bloom in their
cheerful, ephemeral way.
I had dug right into the crab salad and crusty baguette Ellen
had brought out, and so had she. She had her worries, but they
hadn’t hurt her appetite. She was drinking tap water with lemon, as was I, another healthful choice for midday. I rather liked Mrs.
Griswold – her confidence, her direct approach, her draping
only mild refinement over peasant appetites – and I wasn’t
sure why I didn’t quite trust her.
I said, “You know, the Thais believe in ghosts. It’s good that
your husband isn’t the Griswold who’s over there now, or he
might run into his first wife’s restless spirit. Has he ever been to Southeast Asia? Have you?”
“No, never had the pleasure.”
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 49
“You mentioned you had lived and worked abroad. Where
was that?”
“I spent a month on a kibbutz when I was in college and
lived in Geneva for a year doing marketing for Pepsico’s new
Buzz Saw line of power drinks. I enjoyed both experiences in
their entirely different ways. Though I have to admit my French
became somewhat more fluent than my Hebrew.”
“It’s hard to imagine the Swiss on all that caffeine,” I said.
“Oh, they were scarfing it up by the time I was done with
them.”
I didn’t doubt it. I summarized my Key West findings for
Mrs. Griswold and told her they basically squared with what she
had told me about her ex-husband-slash-current-brother-in-law:
his unsettling passionate interest in past lives, numerology, and astrological forecasts; his involvement with the wonderful and
then less-than-wonderful Mango; his large-scale financial
transfers followed by his apparent disappearance.
“In fact,” I said, “Gary did not tell his Key West friends
about converting his assets and wiring cash to Thailand, nor
about the so-called surefire investment. When I mentioned it,
that was news to them.”
“If they’re sane – which it sounds to me like they could be
– I’m sure they would have thought Gary was nuts, and
possibly said so. Which Gary no doubt would not wish to hear.
Bill and I only know about it because Alan Rainey was involved
in selling the company shares, and he asked Gary what was
going on. Gary apparently thought he had to tell us all
something.”
“Perhaps,” I said, having a thought, “Gary told Rainey he
wanted the money for an investment because he thought Rainey
would find that reassuring. And he really wanted the thirty-eight million for some other purpose.”
She mulled this over. “Possibly.”
“And if the actual reason for the transfer was known to your
family, you might have waged an all-out campaign to keep Gary
from doing whatever it was he was actually going to do.”
50 Richard Stevenson
“Oh God. Maybe that’s it. This could be even worse than
we thought.”
“Well, worse or not worse. What had Gary spent large sums
of money on in the past?”
She screwed up her face to the extent she was able to. “Not
much. Art. Art books. Fancy European bicycles. His condo.
Gary lived comfortably and liked having money. But he was no
serious spender.”
“Did he give money away?”
“I’d say he was like his parents. Generous, but responsible. I
know he gave to arts groups and to human rights organizations.
But I would be very surprised if he ever went into capital for
charitable giving. Of course,” she said, “I’m talking about
before Gary started losing his marbles and babbling about past
and future lives and all that garbage. God knows what was
going on inside his brain six months ago when all this looniness apparently came to a head.”
“Gary’s friends in Key West have wondered if his falling off
his bike during a race and landing on his head brought about
some kind of personality change. Do you know about this?”
“What? No. How bizarre.”
“The timing could have been coincidental.”
“Gary never mentioned this to Bill or me. Was he
hospitalized?”
“Just briefly, with a concussion.”
“Wasn’t he wearing a helmet?”
“He was. But I guess the brain can still get badly rattled
around in a crack-up.”
“Well, this is a new one. So, somebody thinks Gary’s brain
was injured, and he suddenly started hallucinating about past
lives in Thailand, and maybe he gave his money away to the
poor people of Asia or some weird thing like that?”
“It’s far-fetched, I know.”
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 51
“Anyway,” she said, “if Gary was going to drop thirty-eight
million in a monk’s alms bowl, why would he have to disappear
in order to do it? No,” she went on, “I don’t think so. Weird
bump on the head or no weird bump on the head, I think
something bad happened to Gary in Thailand that he was not
expecting and which he had no control over. Something totally
external. And that’s what I am paying you a lot of money to
uncover and – if it’s what’s needed – do something about it.”
Her summary was a sound one, I thought, and her
continuing concerns about Griswold’s well-being justified.
Both our fears were only heightened when my cell phone
rang and it was Lou Horn with the news that the Key West
Citizen was reporting the death of Geoffrey Pringle in Bangkok.
The newspaper said the man Gary Griswold had visited on his
initial trip to Thailand – and later apparently had had some
major disagreement with – had died three days earlier in a fall
from his twelfth-story condominium in Bangkok’s Sathorn
district. The death appeared to have been a suicide, the
newspaper reported, although Thai officials had said that was
uncertain.
CHAPTER SIX
“You said it would be hot here in April,” Timmy said. “But
this is ridiculous. It’s like India.”
“This is a good sign,” I said. “You’re already getting
sentimental.”
“Anyway, I’m just happy to be off that plane.”
“Maybe we’ll be lucky and die here, and we won’t have to
get back on the plane and sit immobilized for another seventeen
hours.”
“Please don’t say that.”
We were waiting in the taxi queue outside Suvarnabhumi
Airport in Bangkok. The night I got home from Key West,
Timmy had left a note on my pillow. At first, I thought he had
forgotten to gather up an official document of the New York
State Assembly, an uncharacteristic untidiness on his part. Then I saw that it was a message for me, composed following our
Atlanta airport–Albany phone conversation of a few hours
earlier. The note read: “About you and me falling in love with
Asia again – sign me up!”
I had told Ellen Griswold that my aide and I preferred flying
business class, and she had replied, “Of course. Are you
kidding?” But even with Thai Airways orchid-garnished entrées
and comely cabin attendants of both sexes, we were glad to be
on the ground after the nonstop slog and standing out-of-doors
in the soaking heat.
“This doesn’t look like India at all,” Timmy said, once we
were in the taxi speeding down an eight-lane expressway.
“Bangkok looks more like Fort Lauderdale or San Diego.”
“What does India look like?”
“Oh, Schenectady.”
“Anyway, this is not the Bangkok I remember – all these
skyscrapers. This is the shiny all-new Asia. In the seventies,
54 Richard Stevenson
Bangkok was still mostly quaint, filthy canals and teak houses
on stilts.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“No,” I said, “I’m sure that just below the surface it’s still
very much Thailand,” and noted the Buddha figures on the
dashboard and the amulets and garlands of jasmine dangling
from the rearview mirror. Getting into the taxi, I had had a
back-and-forth with the driver, Korn Panpiemras, over whether
he would lawfully employ the meter or we would instead pay an
extortionate flat rate – we eventually settled on the meter —
and this ritual also was reassuringly Thai.
As we approached the city center, the late-afternoon traffic
was nearly as thick as the air, and we didn’t reach our hotel until almost seven o’clock. The Topmost-Lumpinee, described on a
gay-travel Web site as “gay friendly” and convenient to gay bars and clubs – and not far from Gary Griswold’s last known
address – was a pleasant tourist hotel with a spacious lobby
adorned with gold-leafed Siamese dancers and smiling
elephants. In the time it took to fly from JFK to Bangkok, the
dollar had declined even further against the Thai baht – and
most other currencies – but the Topmost still looked like a
bargain at under fifty dollars a night.
When the bellhop checked our room key, he exclaimed
happily, “Nine-oh-nine! A lucky number!”
When we got up to 909, however, the key didn’t fit. “Oh,”
the kid lugging our bags said with a dark look. “It is six-oh-six.”
Inside the unlucky room, Timmy headed for the shower and
I phoned Rufus Pugh. This was one of the Bangkok private
investigators my New York PI friend had suggested I try. I had
liked the look of Pugh’s Web site. It said he spoke fluent Thai
and employed Thai investigators. Other Web sites I looked at
made no such claims, even though they all seemed to be run by
foreigners. Also, most of the others specialized in “cheating
husbands” and “cheating girlfriends,” and Pugh Investigative
Services also listed background checks, surveillance, due
diligence and, significantly, missing persons. So I had e-mailed THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 55
Pugh, and he replied that I should phone him when I got to
Bangkok.
I reached Pugh on his mobile, and wherever he was, the
reception was poor. He said he was tied up on a stakeout with a
team, and we made a plan to meet for breakfast at eight at the
Topmost. Pugh had an accent of some kind that I couldn’t
place. I figured with a name like his it had to be Arkansas or
Louisiana.
Timmy and I had slept on the plane, thanks to Griswold
family business-class largesse. So we picked up a Bangkok city
map at the hotel front desk and set out to have a look at
Griswold’s apartment building on the way to dinner. It looked
like a twenty-minute walk. And I soon saw on the map that
Geoff Pringle had lived less than half a mile away from
Griswold before he died in the fall from his balcony a week
earlier.
Moving through the premonsoon Bangkok night heat felt
more like swimming in swamp water than walking through air,
and our polo shirts were soon drenched. The part of Sathorn
we passed through was a mix of city office towers and
apartment buildings on the main streets, and smaller shops,
restaurants, and food stalls on the sois that ran off them. The street food was as aromatic as I remembered it, and we paused
for some noodles in a pork broth with herbs. We sat on tiny
stools at a tiny table on a sliver of sidewalk and were served
from a tiny cart with a full kitchen inside it that was operated by a small nuclear family. Timmy said it was the best food he ever
ate. It cost a dollar, not that Ellen Griswold wouldn’t have
sprung for two.
Among the vehicles zooming by in the soi a few feet from
us as we ate were motorcycles, some with single male riders.
Timmy glanced up at these apprehensively from time to time, as
well as at the motorcycles upon which entire families were lined up one behind the other, the small children in front as if they
were air bags.
Lou Horn had obtained Geoff Pringle’s address from a
mutual friend and passed it on to me, and Timmy and I paused
56 Richard Stevenson
in front of the building. It stood along narrow but heavily
traveled Sathorn Soi 1. Cars, taxis and motorcycle taxis cruised quietly up and down the street – with an occasional three-wheeled tuk-tuk as a reminder of old Bangkok – with
pedestrians treading carefully along the narrow walkways on
either side.
Bougainvillea and yellow and scarlet flamboyant tree
branches spilled over white stucco walls along the route,
including one in front of Pringle’s building. An enormous
portrait in an elaborate gold frame of a gravely contemplative
King Bhumibol stood among the decorative plantings, along
with brushed stainless steel lettering identifying Pringle’s
building as the Royal Palm Personal Deluxe Executive Suites.
Many of the building’s balconies had potted trees and flowering
plants on them as well, talismanic reminders of the Thais’
origins as agricultural villagers, or in the case of most of the farangs, probably, pretty tropical ornaments.
A uniformed security guard in an orange vest stood under a
streetlight at the entrance to the building’s small driveway. I said sa-wa-dee-cap. He sa-wa-deed me back, and I said I was sorry to hear about Mr. Geoff.
“Oh, very bad. Mr. Geoff. Oh, Mr. Geoff. Bad. He your
friend?”
“He was my friend’s friend,” I said quickly. “Did he live up
there?” I pointed.
“Yes, fall down,” the guard said, indicating an area of low
foliage where some branches looked newly broken.
“Bad,” I said.
“Oh, bad.”
“Did you see?”
“No, no. No see. I hear.”
“You heard Mr. Geoff fall?”
“Yes, yes. Very bad for me. I hear him say.”
“He said something? After he fell?”
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 57
“No after. Before. I hear ‘oh-oh-no!’ He just say like that.
‘Oh-oh-no!’ I am in hut,” he said, indicating the small sentry
box a few feet from us. “I hear big sound. He fall down.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Very bad for me.”
“What time was it? Late?”
“Very late. People sleeping.”
“Did anyone else see or hear it happen?”
“El-suh?”
“Was it only you who heard him fall?”
“Only me. Bad luck for me.”
“Did you phone the police?”
“Later. Police come later.”
“You phoned the police. But they came later?”
“Police? Ha!” He made some gesture with his head, but I wasn’t sure what it meant. It seemed to be a negative opinion.
I said, “Do you think Mr. Geoff fell accidentally or jumped
from his balcony?”
The guard may not have known all the English words, but
he seemed to understand the question. It was a question he
must have given a good deal of thought to over the previous
week.
The guard said, “Maybe fall. No jump, I don’t think. Maybe
– bee-ah,” he said, making a guzzle-with-a-bottle motion.
“Maybe he fall. Maybe bee-ah. Maybe” – he got a hard look
now – “maybe I don’t know.”
I tried to learn from the guard whether any of Pringle’s
friends had visited him that night, or in recent days, but I had reached the limits of the guard’s English and didn’t make any
headway. I thought maybe Rufus Pugh could learn more. I
wished the guard good luck, and Timmy and I walked on.
“It doesn’t sound as if there was any serious
police…anything,” Timmy said.
58 Richard Stevenson
“No. I’ll try to find out.”
We turned up a quieter, less-traveled soi toward Griswold’s
condo. Bangkok’s Miami-like skyline glowed in the near
distance, but the prettily walled-off places along this tranquil lane were individual homes of the well-off – a lighted
swimming pool was visible behind one low wall hung with
flowers – and the back entrances to a couple of the smaller
European embassies.
When we passed the discreetly appointed entrance to
Paradisio, Bangkok’s best-known gay bathhouse, Timmy said,
“Oh, I’ve heard of this.”
“We may have to check it out in our search for Mango. Or I
may have to.”
“Me get left out? I don’t think so.”
“Bangkok is full of ghosts, the Thais believe. Maybe
Cardinal Spellman’s is over here keeping an eye on you.”
“An eye and a roving hand. His spirit is probably in there
right now frolicking. The Holy See is way over on the other side of the world.”
“What with such things being unheard-of in Rome.”
A taxi cruised down the soi and turned into Paradisio’s
palm-adorned driveway. Two farangs got out, paid the driver
and went inside. Timmy said, “This could be where Griswold
met some of his multiple Thai boyfriends.”
“This or any one of hundreds of other gay bars, clubs,
bathhouses, and massage parlors. But since Griswold lived
nearby, Paradisio is a good place for us to sniff around when we get the chance.”
Griswold’s apartment building was about a hundred yards
beyond Paradisio. It was one of the tonier in a tony
neighborhood, with meticulously tended gardens below and
balconies above, and an easy-on-the-eye white-with-silver-trim
art deco design.
The security guard standing in the driveway – apparently
building guards in Bangkok were not allowed to sit and risk
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 59
dozing off – returned my sa-wa-dee and smiled politely. I told
him I was Gary Griswold’s brother and was looking for Gary,
not having heard from him for some time. Did Griswold still
live at the same address?
“Yes, but he not here now.”
“When was he last here?”
“Mr. Gary come two weeks before. Then go. No stay.”
So Griswold was alive, at least. Or had been two weeks
earlier. “Are you sure it was two weeks? Not three?”
“Two weeks. Today Saturday. I no work last Saturday. Mr.
Gary too much no here. He go ’way.”
By establishing that I was Griswold’s brother, a term that in
Thailand can mean sibling, cousin, second or third cousin, or
close friend, I was able to engage the guard long enough to
learn that Griswold had visited his home only a few times in the past half year. And those visits had been brief and late at night.
Griswold had arrived and departed by taxi and had been
unaccompanied. If he had carried anything in or out of the
apartment, the guard was unaware of it.
I asked if I might look inside Griswold’s apartment to see if
he had received mail from me, but now I was pushing it. The
guard was a slight, dark-skinned Thai, probably from
impoverished Isaan in the Northeast, supplier of cheap labor
for greater Bangkok. Kreng jai, the Thai highly refined
attunement to social status and its rituals of deference to be
shown or received, meant that as an older white foreigner I had
to be catered to. But only up to a point. The security company
had its own kreng jai, and this man no doubt needed his job. So
he played it safe and passed me off to the building manager, Mr.
Thomsatai, who soon appeared from around the back of the
building.
In black slacks and a blue polo shirt similar to mine, minus
the sweat stains, the super was an older Thai who didn’t smile
so readily. Here the kreng jai was also complex. Out of earshot
of the guard, I told Mr. Thomsatai the truth, that I was a PI
working for Griswold’s family and needed to get into his
60 Richard Stevenson
apartment to check on his welfare. I thought honesty might pay
off, and also it couldn’t hurt if word got back to Griswold that somebody unthreatening was searching for him. The manager
sized me up, and something in his coolly noncommittal manner
suggested that another Thai custom might be brought into play.
I thanked Mr. Thomsatai for the time he spent talking with
me and said I wished to give him a present. I palmed him a
thousand-baht note, thirty bucks, and he quickly led Timmy and
me into the building and up to Griswold’s condo on the ninth
floor. The man opened the door with his master key, showed us
the light switches, then went out and left us.
Timmy said, “That was sleazy. Jeez.”
“Yes and no. People need to get by.”
“Oh. Okay.” For such a Peace Corps old boy, he was not
big on cultural relativism.
The view from Griswold’s capacious living room was
splendid, with an oasis of red tile roofs and green foliage below, along with a few turquoise-lighted swimming pools, and the
office– and hotel-tower skyline beyond. The furnishings were a
nice mixture of Scandinavian modernity and traditional Siamese
wood and stone carvings of dancers, guardian spirits, and
Buddha images. One wall was all shelves full of art and art
history books. The graphic art on the wall was astrology related, signs of the zodiac and various astral and planetary
configurations. One entire interior wall was covered with
numbers in interlocking circular patterns. The numerical
sequences seemed random, but this was not my area of
expertise.
“What do you make of that?” I asked Timmy about the wall
of numbers.
“I don’t know. I think there might be more nines than
anything else.”
“Maybe they’re upside-down sixes.”
