Текст книги "The 38 Million Dollar Smile "
Автор книги: Richard Stevenson
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CHAPTER NINE
“Yes, I will talk to you,” Mango said, glancing quickly
around the pool area. “But not here. Private. We go to cubicle.”
Kawee had spotted Mango by the swimming pool soon
after we had arrived at Paradisio. Most of the men lying on sun-
splashed chaises trying to darken themselves were farangs. Most
of the Thais sat on chairs in the palmy shade, trying to keep
from getting any darker. Mango was among the Thais.
Kawee had approached Mango first and showed him my
letter of introduction from Ellen Griswold and my PI license,
which I had tucked into the towel I was wearing. Even as I
wielded this paraphernalia of farang kreng jai, Mango looked
skeptical, even a bit anxious. But I came over and assured him
that I had been sent to help Griswold if he needed any help.
Mango should have been further reassured by our meeting
under circumstances where he had to know he could maintain
masterly control.
I saw why Mango made some gay hearts skip a beat. Lean
and fit in a graceful and seemingly effortless way, and taller than most Thais, Mango was luminously caramel colored, like some
flavorsome Thai street-stall sweet, with aristocratic Asian
cheekbones under big dark peasant eyes and eyelashes the
length and elegance of the architectural details on a pagoda.
You could imagine how happy a tiny songbird might be
perched on one of Mango’s overhangs. His black hair was cut
short, almost monklike, though the tranquil confidence he
projected was outward– instead of inward-looking. When he
said “we can go to cubicle,” he gave a flash of smile with a hint of humor in it, despite the apprehension he had to be feeling.
We climbed a winding, Busby Berkeley-style staircase from
the pool and café area to the second-floor locker and cubicle
area, all of it decorated more like a Hyatt or Marriott than like the illegal-immigrant detention-center trappings commonly
found in gay saunas in the US. The message seemed to be that
80 Richard Stevenson
clients were here for pleasure, not punishment. The music
flowing out of the ceiling and through the mutely lighted spaces was not dance-club-throb but Fats Waller sweet-and-easy.
Along a long corridor, men lingered, conversed quietly with
one another, greeted friends and acquaintances, and cruised
unhurriedly. There was no rush, for it appeared there was sure
to be plenty of sanuk to go around. Most of the men were
Thais, their average age 28.3, I guessed. There were some young
farangs, too, but the foreigners’ average age I estimated at 58.3, a number that also described many of their waist sizes. I heard
British and German accents as we passed several dozen men,
some of them Americans, and what I guessed were Swedish
voices. Here was famed Southeast Asian sexual tourism, that
quaint term.
Mango led me into a raised cubicle, slid the door shut, and
latched it. Again, it was less like a flophouse cell than like a Thai countryside hut, with dark walls and a floor cushioned with
vinyl padding and penlight-sized illumination down low on one
end. There was no cot or bed, just as in Thai village houses,
where people generally ate, slept and socialized on the floor.
The top of the cubicle was open, and the ambient noise
included both low voices and the odd moan or happy yelp from
nearby cubicles.
Mango and I each flopped down and sat facing each other
with our backs against opposite walls, our towels unremoved in
a businesslike way. I told Mango how worried Gary Griswold’s
family and friends were, and I thanked him for agreeing to talk
to me, despite the falling-out that he and Griswold apparently
had had.
“Gary treat me very bad,” Mango said. “But I don’t want
him get hurt. I don’t want to get hurt, too,” he said, “and some men want me say where Gary. I tell them, I don’t know where Gary. They think I lying but I not. So I hide at my friend house.
But my friend go back to Germany. So I bored. Maybe I find
other friend. You have condo in Bangkok?”
“No, I live in Albany, New York.”
“America.”
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 81
“Yes.”
“I had American friend. Five. No, six.”
“Six years ago?”
“No, six American friend. California. Tennessee. Boston.
Harrisburg, P-A. Ohio. And…Mr. Mike come from Alaska.”
“You lived with each of these men? They were boyfriends?”
“I like foreign men. Yes. I don’t like Thai so much. No
money, ha-ha.”
“Aren’t there Thai gay men with money?”
“Yes. But they just like other Thai gay men with money.”
“What about hooking up with a Thai gay man with no
money? Just for friendship and for love?”
“Oh, I have Thai boyfriend. Donnutt. I love Donnutt. We
build house in Chonburi. Live Chonburi later. Now Donnutt in
Oslo with Knute.”
I said, “Did your falling out with Gary have anything to do
with your many boyfriends, by chance? Donnutt, Mike,
Tennessee, and so on? Were any of these fellows in your life
during your time with Gary? If so, did he know about them?”
Mango looked down at his lap. I noticed for the first time
that a few lines of age were beginning to show around his neck.
Was he pushing thirty? Would he accumulate enough of a nest
egg for him and Donnutt to finish their house in Chonburi
before all the foreign “friends” moved on to fresher pickings?
Mango said quietly, “Gary not understand Thai man.”
“He thought your relationship would be monogamous? No
sex or relationships with other men?”
“I thought he know. He like Thai, so I thought he know
Thai. He don’t know. He find out about Werner and ask me if
other ones. I tell him. Big argument. I leave.”
“Who was Werner?”
“From Cologne. I have sex with him two time. Two! Too
sad. Gary make me too sad.”
82 Richard Stevenson
“So you had been living with Gary in his condo?”
“Sometime. I keep my place in Sukhumvit. It good I keep. It
okay. It cheap.”
I asked Mango if Gary was having any money problems that
he knew of.
“No money problems. Gary rich. He good to me. Generous.
Kind. I put money in bank in Chonburi for house build with
Donnutt.”
“Did Gary know about Donnutt?”
“He know Donnutt my friend.”
“Some Thai men,” I said, “have longtime, sometimes
lifelong, relationships with foreign men. It sounds as if you
never wanted that.”
A wilted smile. “Not without Donnutt.”
“How long have you and Donnutt been boyfriends? How
old were you when the relationship began?”
“Eleven.”
“You were eleven years old?”
“Yes. In our village. Now we both thirty-two.”
“Didn’t Gary understand that history when you explained it
to him?”
“No, he jealous. He want I want him only. I love Gary. He
Buddhist. He love the Buddha. I teach him. I teach him pray. I
teach him meditate. I teach him make merit. I love Gary, but
Gary no understand Thai.”
“Thais are not so sexually possessive, I guess, as farangs
tend to be.”
“Possess? Possess just house, motorbike. No possess for
sex. Sex for pleasure. Sex for fun. Like food. Like air.”
“Sanuk.”
“Yes, sanuk. But I love Gary. I am sad.”
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 83
“Is it possible,” I said, “that Gary was upset about
something else, and that affected how he reacted to Werner and
your other somewhat-numerous revelations?”
“I don’t think so,” Mango said.
As he spoke, I was working hard now to concentrate on
what he was saying, as the two men in the next cubicle were
getting up a nice head of steam. It was plainly a Thai and a
farang, because one of them was making little cries of oh-oh-oh
– the farang – and the other one was uttering little squeals of
oi-oi-oi – the Thai.
Mango seemed unaware of any of this. It was just another
feature of the Bangkok atmosphere, like the aroma of jasmine.
He went on. “Gary not angry at other people, just me. Gary
happy then. He rich, he say, and he get more rich, and then he
make big merit. Gary so happy. But after I go, something
happen. He not happy. I hear this from Kawee. Gary leave, he
hide.”
“He was going to become more rich?”
Mango thought about this. His towel had shifted a bit, and
now another of his numerous excellent attributes was dimly
visible. That and the oh-oh-oh-oi-oi-oi racket next door weren’t making my job any easier at what plainly was about to become a
critical juncture in the investigation.
Mango said, “Big investment.”
“Investment in what?’
“I don’t know.”
“He didn’t talk about it at all?”
“No.”
“How do you know it was an investment?”
“He say he go bank, get money for big investment. Make
rich, make merit.”
“What was the merit he was going to make?”
“No say. But for the Buddha. For the Dharma. For the
Sangha.”
84 Richard Stevenson
“The Sangha. That’s the monkhood? Was he going to give
money to the monks? To a monk?”
“No monk, maybe. Maybe seer. Gary go to seer. Gary like
seer. Seer tell Gary many things. He say Gary see blood. Gary
people hurt. Then he say Gary make big merit, no blood, no
hurt. Make bad luck good luck.”
“Do you know who the seer was, Mango? Do you know his
name and where he is?”
“Yes, he is soothsayer Khunathip Chantanapim, and he here
in Bangkok.”
I said, “Now we’re getting somewhere,” just as one of the
chaps in the next cubicle got somewhere too.
§ § § § §
Timmy and Sawee were not by the pool when I came
downstairs, so Mango and I stepped into the nearby multi-
tenanted labyrinthine steam room for a refreshing bout of
heatstroke. Both of us had been feeling a certain amount of
tension following our conversation about Griswold, though
when we emerged from the busy steam room and headed for
the cold showers some minutes later, much of that tension had
been dissipated.
Mango told me how to reach him if I needed to talk to him
again, and he gave a fairly detailed description of the two men
who had threatened him two months earlier and roughed him
up when he insisted that he had no idea where Griswold was.
One of the two goons sounded like Yai, the motorcycle assault
artist. Mango said he wished I – or somebody – could do
something about these two. He needed some more foreign
“friends” to keep his Chonburi house fund going, and keeping
such a low profile was crimping his style in that regard.
Timmy reappeared a while later at poolside. “Where’s
Kawee?” I asked. “Is he okay?”
“Oh sure. He’s in the shower, I think.”
I told Timmy about my productive talk with Mango and
about the news of the soothsayer who apparently talked
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 85
Griswold into some major Buddhist merit-making venture,
probably involving a large amount of cash.
“Wow, this is the breakthrough you needed.”
“I think so.”
“Great,” Timmy said, looking pleased but a little distracted.
“So. Are you having fun? No drive-by shootings? Plenty of
smiles.”
“You got it.”
“But nothing worth mentioning?”
“Well. I guess I should tell you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well. It’s this. I just spent a lovely hour and a half in a
cubicle with Kawee.” He actually smirked, something I wasn’t
sure I had ever seen him do.
“Kawee? ”
More smirk, though faintly cracked this time.
“You and little katoey Kawee?”
“It was his idea. But it didn’t take much coaxing, and I’m
happy I did it because he’s really quite delightful.”
“Timothy. Don’t your tastes generally run to – how shall I
put it? – men a bit more butch?”
“Yes, obviously. But in the semidarkness that sweet lad is
plenty butch enough, believe you me. Anyway, he’s just so…so
nice.”
“I’m…I’m be-dazed.”
“Anyway, while he’s a katoey, he’s not transgendered in the
full, clinical sense. He plans, for example, on keeping his dick.
He’s totally happy with it. As well he might be. Anyway, we
didn’t do much. Basically we just cuddled and chatted and then
enjoyed some pleasant mutual slow self-abuse. He wanted to
fuck me. He had four condoms – four, mind you! – stuffed inside his towel. But even with the condoms, that seemed to go
well beyond our ground rules on these matters.”
86 Richard Stevenson
“I would say, yes, getting pounded up the butt by a well-
hung Thai lady-boy is well outside our agreed-upon
parameters.”
“I didn’t think you’d mind. I just assumed that once you and
Mango got into a cubicle, nature would run its merry course.”
“Timothy, why would you assume such a thing? On those
exceedingly rare occasions when I do anything like that at all I never mix work in with it. Well, once I did and regretted it, as you well know. Really. I’m…I don’t know quite what to say.”
“So you and Mango didn’t do it?”
“Of course not!”
“Weren’t you in the steam room just now? I thought I saw
you both come out.”
“Yes, but we didn’t do anything together. Give me some
credit.”
“Anyway, I’m just doing what you always say. It’s the Henry
James dictum. When in Venice, one must always try the squid in
its own ink.”
“Oh, that. I forgot. I hope Kawee wasn’t too squidlike.”
“Not too. Just enough.”
“Well, you do seem to be adjusting to Thai customs and
mores nicely. I suppose I should be grateful after all your
ambivalence and fretting about coming here.”
“The only question in my mind is, why didn’t we come to Thailand sooner? Don, I have to say, now I do see what the
attraction is. The Thais are just so comfortable being who and
what they are, and so totally laid-back about life’s simplest
pleasures – tasty food, sunshine, flowers and trees, affectionate and playful sex. I see why people come here and…well, fall in
love with this gosh-darn place!”
So. What was this going to mean? And he hadn’t even seen
the reclining Buddhas yet.
“Look,” I said, “I’m glad you’ve come around. Both the
Thai Ministry of Tourism and I are pleased. But I’ve got work
to do. For one thing, I have to go get my phone and call Rufus
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 87
and tell him he doesn’t need to follow Mango when he comes
out. Mango, I’m pretty much convinced, had a falling out with
Griswold over the particulars of their relationship, nothing
more, and is in no way part of whatever trouble Griswold is in.
Maybe,” I added, “I should tell Rufus he should consider
following you around for a few days. Who knows what you’ll be up to next?”
He did not smirk this time, but he did chuckle peculiarly.
When I retrieved my phone from my locker and told Pugh
he could call off the stakeout, he said he was glad I had called and that he had been trying to reach me. He said a famous Thai
soothsayer had died early that morning in a fall from a Bangkok
apartment building, and there was reason to believe that the
seer had had some connection to Gary Griswold.
CHAPTER TEN
“Khun Khunathip’s,” Pugh said, “is a death that will
reverberate. Thai television will be all over it an hour from now, and tomorrow the Bangkok newspapers will be draped in
jasmine and marigolds. This is a man whose counsel was sought
by ministers of state, by generals of the army, by girl groups in hot pants. It’s been rumored that even Jack has had his
astrological chart blessed by Khun Khunathip.”
We were seated in the front seat of Pugh’s Toyota, parked in
the soi outside Paradisio with the air-conditioning blasting.
Timmy and Kawee had slogged through the heat over to
Griswold’s apartment to wait for me while I tried to figure out
where they – and I – would be safest from whoever it was in
Griswold’s life who now seemed to be going around causing
people to fall over railings and die.
I said, “Who is Jack?”
Pugh winked at me. “I hope you won’t think less of me.”
“Why would I not continue to hold you in high esteem?”
“Jack is how His Majesty the King is referred to by people I
know who wish to discuss him in less-than-reverential tones
and not pay a price for their insolence.”
“I wasn’t aware such people existed in Thailand.”
“They do. But it’s a crime to insult the king. People have
gone to prison for it. Lèse majesté. You no longer run into this concept all that often in the twenty-first century. Not outside of Thailand.”
“But flippantly calling King Bhumibol ‘Jack’ would seem to
qualify as a slur, wouldn’t it?”
“The queen,” Pugh said, snickering now, “is Jackie. And the
crown prince is Jack Junior.”
“And the royal family has consulted this now-deceased
famous soothsayer?”
90 Richard Stevenson
“I have heard that this is so. I realize it sounds eerily like
Macbeth. Or Lear. Or Duck Soup. ”
“Rufus, what did you major in at Chulalongkorn University?
And Monmouth College? And let’s not leave out Duke.”
“I majored in English, minored in criminology. Does that
explain a few things, Mr. Don?”
“It’s a start.”
“The thing about Khun Khunathip,” Pugh went on, “is that
the guy was good. His track record as a prophet was far better
than most. This was partly a consequence, I believe, of his
intuitive grasp of the way human lives are intertwined with
astral forces most of us lack the subtlety of mind to discern. But it’s long experience, too. Khun Khunathip had been a
successful seer in third-century BC Nepal – what is now the
Kingdom of Nepal – as well as in Mayan Mexico a millennium
or so later. So the guy has simply had the time and opportunity
to really get his shit together.”
I looked over at Pugh, who remained poker-faced. His
Toyota had a seated Buddha figure behind the steering wheel
obscuring the speedometer, and some kind of stony doodad
dangling by a pink string from the rearview mirror.
I said, “So I guess Mr. Khunathip will be sorely missed by
many.”
“He will.”
“But only until he turns up elsewhere in time and geography
to resume his career as a seer?”
“That depends. Khun Khunathip’s karma could include
some slippage, if I read this guy correctly. His returning as a
moody bacterium on a monkey’s hangnail cannot be ruled out.”
Pugh went on to explain that his police sources had phoned
him about the seer because they knew Pugh had been making
inquiries about Gary Griswold. His sources had told him that
Griswold’s name had not turned up in any other context but
that he figured in the fortune-teller’s financial records. A
Bangkok Bank check for the baht equivalent of six hundred
fifty thousand US dollars had been made out to Khunathip and
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 91
drawn on Griswold’s account. The notation in the seer’s
records said the amount was a “fee.”
I said, “How come the cops are so interested in Khunathip’s
financial records? In your mind, does this confirm that they
suspect foul play?”
“Naturally they suspect foul play. That’s what the police are
in the business of suspecting. It must be said that the lives of the Royal Police of Thailand bustle with far more compelling
pastimes, such as entrepreneurial activity. But foul play is still a thing that interests them in an offhand way, and this death
looks funny. Khun Khunathip was not an imbiber, so an
accidental tumble eighteen stories from his apartment balcony
at three twenty a.m. is not a likely scenario. Was he watering his plants and slipped? The police think not. Suicide also appears
unlikely. Khun Khunathip was a confident and contented man,
according to his soothsayer colleagues. He was not at all
displeased with his being afforded the opportunity to live out
his present-day putrid corporeal existence consorting with the
likes of generals and rock stars, not to mention Jack and Jackie.
He showed no indication of wishing to take premature leave of
any of that. That pretty much leaves getting tossed.”
“So,” I said, “will tomorrow’s newspapers be burning up
with speculation as to who might have done the tossing?”
Pugh snorted with amusement. “Oh no. First, it must be
determined who the likeliest suspects are. Then, depending on
who they are and on their exact position in Thai society – and
depending on no other thing, really – speculation will or will
not be permitted. Stay tuned, Mr. Don. Just you stay tuned.”
I said I would do that, but meanwhile it seemed more urgent
than ever that we locate Gary Griswold and help him extricate
himself from whatever terrible trap he apparently had been
caught in. That is, find Griswold plus his thirty-eight million, or whatever was left of it.
I told Pugh that Griswold had been sending Kawee money
each week via motorbike messenger. I suggested that the next
time the messenger showed up, we intercept him and use
whatever means practicable to get him to lead us to Griswold.
92 Richard Stevenson
Pugh liked that idea and told me again he thought I was much
more competent than the other drunken-stumblebum farang
PIs he knew in Bangkok. I thanked him for the compliment.
I phoned Kawee on his mobile and learned that the
messenger’s visits were not entirely predictable, but he usually turned up on a Monday or Tuesday in the early evening. And if
Kawee wasn’t home, the messenger would leave the envelope
with the whiskey seller who had a stall at the end of the soi.
Kawee said Timmy wanted to speak with me and put him
on the phone.
“I don’t know what this might be worth,” Timmy said, “but
Kawee showed me the crate in a ground-floor storage room
where Griswold kept some of his excess belongings. There was
a laptop computer inside its carrying case inside the box. I
brought it upstairs for you to have a look at.”
“Excellent. Great. Was there anything else of interest?”
“Not so far as I could tell. It was mostly books and empty
suitcases.”
“Guard that computer with your life,” I said, “until I can get
over there. I’m going to check e-mails at the Internet café by
the Topmost, and then I’ll be right over.”
I told Pugh what Timmy had found, and he said, “Now you
guys are cookin’ with gas.”
Pugh drove me the few blocks over to the Topmost. While
he drove, he took a call from a friend at AIS, Kawee’s mobile
phone service. Pugh learned that the digital Skype phone
through which Griswold communicated with Kawee was on an
account at an Internet café in On Nut, in eastern Bangkok, on
the way to Suvarnabhumi Airport. Pugh said that within three
hours he would have a surveillance team in place inside and
outside the café, with each team member carrying a copy of the
photo of Griswold that Ellen Griswold had provided for me.
“We’re on our way,” I said to Pugh.
“Ih.” This was the common Thai word, or just sound, that
was somewhere between an exhalation and a grunt, and whose
meaning seemed to land somewhere between “yes” and “I
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 93
acknowledge that at this moment you physically exist in my
presence.”
I said, “Your team will tail Griswold if he shows up at the
café, but they won’t spook him, right?”
“Ih.”
Pugh said he needed an hour or two in his office, about a
mile away on Surawong, to bring his team together and get
photos of Griswold copied and distributed. I said I would stay
at the Internet café until he picked me up, that I needed to
check my mail. And anyway I wanted to do some online
digging.
The Internet café was a small storefront family operation,
with eight or nine computers and farang tourists and Thai
teenagers seated at several of them. Two of the owners’ kids
were snoozing on straw mats in the middle of the floor, and a
middle-aged Thai woman sat operating a sewing machine just
inside the front door. Here was an Internet café where you
could check your MySpace or Facebook accounts and have your
hemline lowered at the same time.
My Hotmail account was up to here with the usual crap, but
my eye snagged on EllenG1958, and I clicked open the
message. It read:
Dear Don,
This is to thank you in advance for everything I am assuming
you have done to locate Gary, but it turns out that all your good exertions have been unnecessary. We have heard from Gary, and
he is perfectly okay! Isn’t that terrific news?
Gary is fine, his assets are intact, and he is just incredibly
embarrassed over his being out of touch and with all the fuss that’s been raised. You must have been closing in on him, because he
heard about your being in Bangkok and your searching for him on
Bill’s and my behalf. Gary is feeling like such a dope at this point, in fact, that he would rather not see you personally and urges that you settle up with any expenses incurred in the course of your
investigation and just come on home to Albany – where spring is
finally showing signs of breaking out!
94 Richard Stevenson
Look, I know. You’re saying, what kind of BS is this? So let’s
just cut to the chase. What I’m saying to you is, I accept Gary’s explanation for his freak-out – it had to do with a personal rather than financial crisis – and Bill and I are choosing to wrap this up.
It’s my money, so it’s my cal . Enjoy a few more days in the Land of Smiles, if you like, on my nickel. And be assured that the terms of your contract with me will be honored in all respects.
Let me know, please, that you have received this message, and
reply with an Albany ETA when you have one.
Thanks again for your professionalism and for your keen interest in my incorrigible ex-husband’s continued well-being.
Fondly,
Ellen Griswold
I closed and saved the message, logged off, and then sat
there, the meter running at sixty baht an hour, about a buck
seventy-five. One of the kids asleep on the floor behind me
moaned, in the grip of a nightmare, I guessed. I sat for a while longer. The air-conditioning was far preferable to the pounding
heat outside, though the café smelled of German underarm
deodorant and Thai fish sauce.
I got up, paid my fee, and went outside. Now Bangkok felt
not so much molten as molting, as if, in the heat, the city was
shedding its skin or other outer layer in my presence, and what
was now exposed was formless and incomprehensible to a
wandering and lost farang like me. I loved Bangkok, but it
seemed to be making a fool of me. I wished I knew why. What
had I done to it?
Oh, but wait a minute. Now I had a rational thought. The
thought was this: No, it’s not Bangkok that’s jerking me around in some cruel and unusual way. Nuh-uh. It wasn’t the place. Bangkok itself was just a large, traffic-choked Asian city full of basically nice Thai people – drive-by shooters notwithstanding – who
loved to laugh and believed in ghosts and ate great food. No, it was not Bangkok making an ass of me. Of course it wasn’t.
What a silly thought. It was the Griswolds.
I looked around and then ducked into an alleyway leading to
a couple of laundry service holes-in-the-wall. They were closed
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 95
on Sunday and the area was relatively quiet. I had Ellen
Griswold’s cell number and dialed it, 001 for the US, then the
area code and number. It was six fifteen p.m. in Bangkok and
– swiftly doing the math – seven fifteen a.m. the same day in
Loudonville, New York.
“This is Ellen. Please leave a message.”
Beep.
I cut the connection and put my phone away. I walked out
and stood on the sidewalk for a few minutes – or was it
fifteen? – and then walked over to the Topmost. I retrieved
the room key, took the elevator to the unlucky sixth floor, went into 606, and lay down on the bed with a mild headache. I lay
there for half an hour or so. Then I took an aspirin and walked
back over to the Internet café.
When I Googled Khun Khunathip, the Thai soothsayer, I
got over a thousand hits. The man was indeed a big deal. There
were news photos of him at Buddhist New Year outdoor
gatherings bestowing tidings of good luck on the throngs. In his company on other occasions were ministers of state, princesses,
movie stars, industrial magnates. Several news stories reported
Khun Khunathip’s acumen in forecasting the military coup of a
few years earlier that sent the thought-to-be-corrupt but still
democratically elected prime minister into exile and installed the junta that had run the country until recently. You had to
wonder if the seer’s prescience about the coup came from
charting the heavens or from a discreet phone call.
Although Khun Khunathip seemed to be the foremost
figure in the pantheon of Thai soothsayers, his was a crowded
field of practitioners. One survey said about a quarter of Thais regularly sought life guidance from a mo duu, or “seeing doctor,”
on matters ranging from family to love relationships to money
to auspicious dates for marrying or having children. Some of
the seers were neighborhood men and women, often with
humble stalls outside Buddhist temples, who charged several
dollars for a consultation. Others were big-time operators who
advised the high-and-mighty and collected substantial fees for
96 Richard Stevenson
themselves or for temples whose abbots were in a position to
dispense next-life merit points to present-life sinners.
Among the other celeb seers was one Pongsak
Sutiwipakorn, who had failed to predict the last military coup
but had made headlines much more recently when he had
publicly forecast yet another – upcoming – coup by the end
of April. A third popular seer, Khun Surapol Sutharat, got the
press’s attention by insisting that his charts offered
incontrovertible proof that there would not be a military coup anytime soon. A fourth seer, Thammarak Visetchote, had
recently been making a name for himself by advising a group of
younger army officers who were known to be fed up with their
older commanding officers and with the old guard’s corrupt
ways. Seer Thammarak’s specialty was numerological forecasts.
Again, I wondered how much these guys had in common with
Nostradamus and how much with Karl Rove.
I printed out some of the data on the seers and stuffed the
pages into my pocket before venturing outside and walking
around the corner to the food stalls on hectic Rama IV Road.
The sun was setting, but the traffic-fouled air was still
suffocating. I thought Timmy and Kawee might appreciate
some eats, so I picked up some cold diced pork salad with lime
juice and galangal, a bag of cooked jasmine rice, and a half liter of fish soup in a plastic sack. For a snack, I had some pineapple chunks on a stick, passing up the deep-fried cicadas.
When I walked back to the Internet shop, I saw Pugh there
looking up and down the street. His car was illegally parked,
half on the narrow strip of sidewalk and half sticking out in the soi, and plainly he was looking for me. When he spotted me, he
urgently beckoned. As I walked up to Pugh, I could not tell
what the look on his face meant, only that his news, if any, was going to be bad.
