Текст книги "The 38 Million Dollar Smile "
Автор книги: Richard Stevenson
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I walked down to an ATM on Surawong and withdrew
another twenty-five thousand baht. I had nearly maxed out my
MasterCard, so I started in on my American Express account.
Pugh bundled the cash into a shopping bag and sent Ek over to
the police station on Sala Daeng Soi 1 with it.
Pugh phoned his own police sources to check on the
investigation into the death of the renowned seer, Khun
Khunathip. Miss Aroon had brought up the morning
newspapers, both Thai and English language, and while all the
papers had the soothsayer’s passing emblazoned across their
front pages, none speculated on the details or meaning of his
death. The great man had simply “died in a fall.”
Pugh’s police contacts told him that an actual investigation
was under way, as opposed to a fake investigation. Pugh said
this could mean that either important persons had nothing to
do with the apparent homicide and wanted justice done, or that
important persons had everything to do with the apparent
homicide and they wished to gauge how much was going to leak
out before they either declared the seer’s fall accidental or found a hapless scapegoat from the Thai lower social orders to take
the rap.
Ek drove Pugh and me inch by inch through the morning
traffic miasma over to the Topmost so that I could change
clothes and Pugh could fortify himself with the bacon at the
breakfast buffet. On the way, we tried to work up a story I
could tell the kidnappers so that we could buy time if we
needed it. Nothing we came up with sounded any more
convincing than the truth. Pugh said the kidnappers
undoubtedly had their own police sources – some of them
possibly the same as Pugh’s – and the kidnappers would know
that we had been unable to track down Griswold. They were
simply using us to accomplish what they had been unable to do,
128 Richard Stevenson
thinking that we had better information than theirs and more
resources. But we didn’t.
I repeated to Pugh what I had told him earlier during an
attempt to deconstruct Ellen Griswold’s phone call. “It had to
have been Thomsatai that tipped off Griswold that we were
looking for him. If so, Thomsatai has to have a phone number
or some other way of contacting Griswold. If we can get him to
talk, Thomsatai has to be our most reliable route to Griswold.”
“Possibly,” Pugh said. “Though Griswold may have a
friendly police contact who alerted him. As soon as I began
asking the cops about Griswold, word would have spread.
There’s a network of gay police officers, to cite one possible
mechanism for alarms being sent Griswold’s way.”
“There’s no stigma attached to being gay in the police
department?”
“There’s some, but not a lot. Once in a while you hear about
some prick senior officer who’s hard on gays. Some of them
picked up these bad attitudes from Christians or the Chinese or
the US military. But most cops couldn’t care less. When I was in the police, a bunch of us were at a drunken beach party where
all the guys ended up naked in a heap on the sand screwing and
getting screwed. It was like a kind of larky extension of that
day’s volleyball game, and everybody thought of it as just having a nice social occasion. Naughty but harmless. And nearly all
those guys were straight, I think. The tops outnumbered the
bottoms, as I recall, and I’m guessing that that’s significant.”
“I can see why Griswold emigrated here. Poor guy. He
thought he was coming to gay paradise and ended up in some
weird purgatory. What about Khun Khunathip? Do we know if
he was gay?”
“I’d say no. Word gets around about the hectic erotic lives
of Thailand’s mighty. Khunathip was not a monk, but if I had
to guess I’d make him for a celibate. He got off on celebrity and power, the ultimate getting-off devices even in our sanuk-loving society.”
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 129
“And Khun Anant, Griswold’s drinking companion on
Khun Khunathip’s balcony? Any chance he’s gay?”
As Ek pulled into the driveway of the Topmost, Pugh said,
“While I love the image of former finance minister and present-
day molder of the Thai economy Anant na Ayudhaya on his
back, heels to Jesus, while a senior vice president of the
Commercial Bank of Siam, say, proceeds to make a strenuous
deposit in his excellency’s person, again I would guess no, he’s not gay. The connections between Griswold and the soothsayer
and the financier appear to be other than sexual or purely social.
The confluence of Khunathip, Anant, and a mentally uncertain
farang with thirty-eight mil in his pocket strongly suggests a
financial occasion. And a major one, at that. That is why, Mr.
Don, knowing what I know about money and power in
Thailand and the lengths people will travel in order to get and
keep money and power, I am truly shakin’ in my boots.” As he
climbed out of the car and headed for the breakfast buffet,
Pugh smiled tightly and added, “And how’s it shakin’ with you,
Mr. Don?”
After I cleaned up and Pugh had his bacon, we drove over
to Griswold’s condo and again threatened Mr. Thomsatai with a
telephone book. I wouldn’t actually have hit him, and I guessed
that neither would Pugh. Ek was stationed nearby, within sight
of Thomsatai, and with his Buick Roadmaster chest and
enormous upper arms adorned with inky images of hissing
serpents, Ek made an impression. So the condo manager was
forthcoming, bordering on chatty.
“Ah, Mr. Don, Khun Rufus. Have you been able to find Mr.
Gary? I am so worried about him.”
“We thought you might know where he is, actually,” I said.
“Or at least how to reach him by telephone. Or wasn’t it you
who tipped Griswold off that I was in Bangkok searching for
him? You’re the most likely candidate, what with hardly
anybody else even knowing I was in town.”
Thomsatai got on his might-have-a-stroke look and began to
gush sweat. It was unclear, though, whether this was because he
was about to tell a huge lie or because he thought we thought
130 Richard Stevenson
he knew something he didn’t actually know and somebody
might go after him again with a phone book.
He looked at us and said evenly, “The kidnappers offered
me ten thousand baht if I told them how to find Mr. Gary.”
Pugh said, “And you’ll tell us for eight? Khun Thomsatai,
keep this up and I may have to ask my assistant Ek to bring in
the telephone company.”
“No, no, that is not necessary. What I am saying is this: I
was unable to sell them this information because I do not have
it. I have no way of contacting Mr. Gary, and I have no idea
where he is. What I am telling you is too, too true, of course.”
I said, “How did the moto-bike man know that Timmy and
Kawee were up in Griswold’s apartment yesterday? That
apartment is nearly always empty except when Kawee waters
the plants and leaves offerings. But yesterday the kidnappers
knew exactly when to arrive with Timothy Callahan and Kawee
in the apartment but not Khun Rufus or me. Can you explain
how they knew that?”
Now he started eyeing the doorway again, but Ek was
standing in it. Thomsatai avoided looking at me, but he looked
at Pugh, suddenly shook his head violently, and cried out, “I am sorry!” He began to weep quietly. Snuffling, he said, “My
mother’s water buffalo died. I needed money to send to my
mother in Chiang Rai for a new buffalo. You understand this,
Khun Rufus. I know you do.” He snuffled some more.
Pugh gazed at him for a moment. Then he said to me,
“That’s a bar girl’s story. When she has spent the rent money on clothes or she feels like she needs a flat-screen television, a bar girl whose imagination is limited tells her john that her mother’s water buffalo has died and the poor old lady is going to starve
without one.”
I said, “Don’t water buffalos actually die? It does sound like
a serious matter in Thailand.”
Now Thomsatai looked eagerly at me for the first time,
apparently under the mistaken impression that I might rescue
him.
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 131
Pugh said, “Being a farang, you wouldn’t be expected to
know this. But Thai water buffalo are immortal. And when they
start breeding like maniacs after water buffalo rutting season,
soon we have way too many of them and they begin to crowd
us out of our villages. So we send the buffalo overflow to Laos.
In Luang Prabang, they are trained to perform dressage for the
tourists. Check out UNESCO’s Web site. People come from all
over the world for Luang Prabang’s famous water buffalo
dressage shows. It is plain, Mr. Don, that this man with his
water buffalo sob story is lying.”
Thomsatai got on a doomed look. He knew he was in the
hands of madmen, and what was he going to do, call the police?
He took a deep breath and said, “They phoned and asked me if
anybody was in Mr. Gary’s apartment. They said if I didn’t tell
them, they would drive a motorcycle over my face.”
We waited for more, but that was it. After a moment, Pugh
said, “Who phoned you?”
“The moto-bike man.” Thomsatai was trembling lightly
now.
“How did he know to phone you yesterday evening?”
“I don’t know. He did not tell me.”
“And you told him what?”
“That two men were in Mr. Gary’s apartment. Kawee and
Mr. Don’s friend.”
I said, “Why didn’t you tell this to the police when they
came here after the abduction?”
He looked at me stonily. “Because the man who called did
not want me to tell the police, I think. He would hurt me if I
told them.”
“How would the moto-bike man know it was you who told
the police what you had told them?”
Thomsatai looked over at Pugh as if to say, this farang is an
awfully naive fellow. Pugh caught Thomsatai’s meaning and
looked at me and shrugged.
Pugh said to me, “We’ll work this out ourselves. Mai pen rai. ”
132 Richard Stevenson
“What’s mai pen rai?”
“Literally, it means ‘It is not a problem.’ The larger meaning
in Thai thinking and culture is – if I may employ a
New Jerseyism you will readily comprehend —
whatthefuckyagonnadoaboutit. It’s what is is. Don’t sweat what
you cannot control. In this case, what is, is we cannot trust the police. Mr. Thomsatai doesn’t trust them, and neither should
we.”
“Even for seventy-five thousand bahts?”
“Oh, that’s another story. Clearly we have outbid the
opposition with that one. But that’s for the performance of one
particular service, a double sweep of fourteenth floors. Beyond
that, we’re not only on our own but moving into uncharted
territory, what with a certain personage – the gentleman in the
photo on the balcony – now very much in the picture. He also
is a man who undoubtedly goes around singing ‘The policeman
is my friend.’”
Thomsatai jumped when Pugh’s cell phone rang, and Pugh
glanced at the phone to see who was calling. He said to me,
“Speak of the devil.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The second sweep of fourteenth floors had been completed
and no trace of Timmy or Kawee had been found.
Pugh said, “Sorry, Mr. Don. It was worth a try. Truly.”
“Yeah, it seemed to make sense. I guess there are going to
be just too many holes in a dragnet of this amorphous type.”
“General Yodying is himself disappointed. He wants to take
you to dinner at the Oriental Hotel when you have the time.
Perhaps you view this as a mordant touch, bordering on the
macabre. But the general’s intentions are good.”
“I’ve never been to the Oriental. Timmy wants to go there.
Maybe we’ll all go.”
“I’m sure General Yodying will be happy to include Mr.
Timothy once he is safe and sound.”
“Timmy told me a story about Noel Coward at the Oriental.
The manager phoned him and asked if it was true that there was
a gentleman in his room. Coward replied, ‘Just a moment and
I’ll ask him.’”
Pugh laughed and said, “There is much entertaining farang
lore in Bangkok. We Thais know it too. We are as amused by
visiting farangs as you are by one another.”
“I know that Thailand was never colonized, thanks largely to
the cleverness of King Chulalongkorn. Maybe that’s why
foreigners here are seen mainly as sources of amusement, in
addition of course to serving as reliable sources of hard
currency.”
“Yes, and more importantly the latter. We are good at
providing our own laughs. But hard currency from the West is
needed to keep our upper classes roaming about in automobiles
built in Bavaria and sipping satiny fluids distilled in Scotland.”
“If you were a wealthy foreigner, Rufus, and showed up in
Thailand with thirty-eight million US dollars and were going to
134 Richard Stevenson
invest it in a sure thing that was legal – no heroin, no arms
smuggling, no adult or pedophile international sex trafficking —
what would that investment be?”
“A legal investment? Hmm. Tourism infrastructure?
Computer technology? Transportation? Perhaps entertainment
– such as Hollywood movie palaces the likes of which L.B.
Mayer is surely swooning over, if somehow his soul is extant in
Bangkok today in some sentient form. Or grandiose retail
outlets would perhaps be the smartest investment of all. An
American journalist once told me he had been in Thailand for
several weeks but had not yet been able to figure out what was
percolating inside the minds of the Thai people. I told him, oh, that’s easy. Going to the mall. That’s what modern Thais spend
much of their spare time thinking about or doing. Going
shopping. The writer was disappointed, I think.”
“And which of these investments that you have listed would
provide the quickest return?”
Pugh looked doubtful. “None of the above, Mr. Don. Sorry.
If you’re talking getting your money back in months or even a
few years, no such investments are likely to pay off that fast.
Land deals, of course, can be ways of making a quick killing in
Thailand, as in most places, if you are privy to inside
information on some government project – a highway, an
airport, a SkyTrain extension, say. But you said legal investment, and using insider information, while common here, is against
the law. And it sounds as if Mr. Gary Griswold is a far better
Buddhist than are some of Thailand’s leading lights who were
raised in clouds of incense with garlands of marigolds dangling
from every orifice. You believe him to be a truly moral man,
and perhaps he is that. Of course, there are legal gray areas
available to investors here, also. And perhaps Mr. Gary was not
too pious to eschew one of the murkier financial pursuits to be
found here in the kingdom.”
“Like what?”
“For instance, real estate development that’s not meant to
result in actual finished construction. Investors are lined up for, say, a large condominium project. A construction company is
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 135
formed that embarks on the project and inflates its start-up
costs by a thousand percent. All the condo units are sold for
tidy sums, many of them to unsuspecting foreign retirees.
Escrow laws here are weak, so the organizers of the project put
up part of the building, then abandon the skeletal structure and walk away with millions. You see these half-finished concrete
towers throughout Bangkok. Attempts have been made to
tighten the escrow laws, but powerful people who profit from
these corrupt but barely legal schemes have so far prevented the laws from being updated. It’s a way of raking in big money fast, and perhaps someone talked Mr. Gary into investing in one of
these cunningly conceived scams.”
“Maybe. Though with his family history, Griswold would
likely know the difference between ethical and nonethical
business practices. And surely he’s been around Thailand long
enough to grasp what’s a sleazy con job and what isn’t a con job within the local context. No, I’m inclined to think that whatever he was planning to invest in was on the up-and-up, or at least
was presented to him in a way that allowed him to think it was.”
“Mr. Gary is apparently a far better Buddhist than many of
us whose Buddhism one would reasonably expect to be more
organic to our daily lives.”
“Yes, unless he’s fooling us all. That’s a possibility, too.”
“This has occurred to me also. I hope you won’t be too
disappointed if we track down Mr. Gary and he turns out to be
a cad. Or at least a bit of a pill.”
“If Griswold was a scheming big jerk, it would certainly
make it easier to exchange him for Timmy and Kawee. There is
that.”
“This is a very Thai way of looking at it, Mr. Don. Now
you’re talkin’ turkey.”
Suddenly I saw Timmy’s face, his eyes narrowing with
disapproval over my brazen moral relativism, and I wanted to
hold him and beg him not to judge me so harshly. And I
wanted to beg his forgiveness for bringing him to this
benighted land of violence and superstition. Then I heard him
136 Richard Stevenson
say, “Violence and superstition? You’d better be careful not to
compare Thailand to the land of the NRA, Pat Robertson,
slavery, Jim Crow and Rush Limbaugh.” It was at that point
that I asked him to please just shut up for one minute so that I could simply luxuriate in my profound relief over his being safe and well and once again by my side.
§ § § § §
Pugh and I joined his team for the stakeout at the On Nut
Internet café from which Griswold made his phone calls. Pugh
had an illegally parked van with tinted windows situated half on the sidewalk directly in front of the café. A uniformed cop
stopped by for a handout and was soon on his way. The place
was in the shadow of the towering concrete On Nut SkyTrain
station. This was the terminus of the Sukhumvit Road line, and
whenever a train pulled in crowds came down the steps and
dispersed up and down the street, many of them passing within
inches of where we waited and watched. A few people went
into the Internet café and sat down at computers. Nearly all
were Thais. One was a male Westerner in sandals, cargo shorts,
and a Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival T-shirt, but he wasn’t Gary
Griswold.
Pugh had the air-conditioning humming and sent out for
eats from a nearby food stall. We had some nice pork larb and
green papaya salad. I was so comfortable that I drifted off into semiconsciousness for an hour or so. To the extent that I was
conscious, I tried to come up with another way of locating
Griswold – or Timmy and Kawee – but I could not. There
was one other avenue of hope. It was Monday, so I knew there
was a fifty-fifty chance that the moto messenger that Griswold
sent every Monday or Tuesday evening with cash for Kawee’s
housekeeping and other expenses would likely show up within a
few hours at Kawee’s room or at the whiskey seller’s stall down
the soi from his place. Pugh had additional crews covering both
locations.
I gave some thought as to how I might be able to pay Pugh
for his extensive services in the event I never saw another dime from any of the Griswolds. That was going to be a sizable
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 137
dilemma. I did recall that I was in Timothy’s will, but that
thought didn’t help.
By early evening there was no sign of Griswold, and Pugh
said, “Let’s you and I head over to Kawee’s place. That looks
like a better bet at this point. The moto messenger with
Kawee’s stipend may well know where Griswold lives, or at
least where he is likely to turn up. Ek and Noo can keep an eye
out here.”
“What if,” I said, “Griswold only shows up at a particular
place once a week to hand over the cash delivery? The moto
guy may know when and where that is, but what if Griswold
won’t show himself there again until next week?”
Pugh shrugged. “Then we go to Plan B.”
“Which is?”
“We kidnap former Minister of Finance Anant na Ayudhaya,
and in order to find out what he knows, Ek goes after him with
a telephone book.”
“Is that really feasible?”
“No. Not for us it isn’t. Not exactly.”
I let that go and followed Pugh out of the van onto the
baking sidewalk. We climbed the steps of the SkyTrain station,
and Pugh changed enough baht notes into coins to extract from
the ticket machine two passes to the Sukhumvit station a couple
of miles away. At the end of the workday, there weren’t many
passengers on our car riding toward central Bangkok. Most
people were heading the other way. The car was pleasantly
frigid. One elderly woman was speaking Thai into a cell phone
while everyone else sat mute. The view out the windows was
more Miami Beach–modern, except for the occasional temples
with their whitewashed stupas and golden spires.
When the train stopped briefly at Ekamai station, I asked
Pugh about the big bus station we could see down below on
our left.
“That’s the Eastern Bangkok bus station. If you’re going to
Pattaya or on to Cambodia, that’s where you go to get the bus.”
138 Richard Stevenson
I imagined Elise Flanagan with her Antioch alumna group
down below us climbing onto a coach three weeks earlier and
then spotting Gary Griswold at the Thai-Cambodian border.
That is, spotting either Gary Griswold or Raul Castro.
We sped across one of the city’s few remaining canals, and I
caught a quick glimpse of houseboats lining the dark waterway.
Might Gary Griswold be hiding out on one of them, I
wondered? Or might Raul Castro?
We arrived at Sukhumvit station and were headed down the
long flight of steps to the busy commercial neighborhood
below when my cell phone rang. I wanted to believe it was
going to be Ellen Griswold calling me back with news of her
ex-husband’s location and his eagerness to help us free Timmy
and Kawee and his profuse apologies for getting us into this
goddamn mess in the first place.
We halted on the midlevel platform, and I stood out of the
way of the surging crowds as best I could.
“Hello?”
“Donald, it’s Timothy.”
“Oh God.”
“They told me to call you again.”
“Yes. Good. Are you all right?”
“So far. But I’m supposed to remind you that now you have
just twenty-four hours. You have until just after the sun sets
tomorrow. They said they will not do what they have to do with
us in the daylight. Do you understand what I’m saying? We’re
on the fourteenth floor.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“They will phone you this time tomorrow. And you will tell
them that you have Griswold and are ready to hand him over.”
“What is it they want with Griswold?”
“I don’t know. Anyway, I am not allowed to tell you
anything else.”
“Okay.”
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 139
“Just get us out of this Millpond hell, will you?”
“We’re trying. Do they know we’re having trouble finding
Griswold?”
“They seem to know that. And they said you should try
harder.”
“Oh.”
“I have to hang up now.”
“Okay. Good-bye, Timothy. I heard what you said.”
“Good. Bye, Don.”
I looked at Pugh and said, “I know where they are. Timmy
told me where they are.”
I repeated the conversation to Pugh and added, “Timmy
said he was in Millpond hell. Millpond is the name of an
Albany, New York development company that tried to put up a
mall on some suburban farmland a number of years ago. That
project fell through, but eventually the company got hold of the farmland when the elderly owners moved into Albany, and then
Millpond started building a group of luxury condos on the land.
But the company was way overextended, and it went bust in the
Poppy Bush recession. The unfinished condos stood vacant for
years – an eyesore and an attractive nuisance for kids liable to break their necks climbing around on the tall concrete shells.
These buildings were just like the unfinished condos you
described to me here in Bangkok. I believe that Timothy and
Kawee are being held on the fourteenth floor of one of them.”
“This is possible,” Pugh said. “These structures have
security services meant to look after them. But security services perhaps can be bought – or simply replaced by the building’s
owner. Or the owner may not even know what’s going on in his
building. Or it may not even be known who the owner is.”
“How many of these unfinished tall buildings are there in
Bangkok? You told me earlier that they’re all over the place. But I’ve only seen a few.”
“You’re right, Mr. Don. More than a few is more than
enough, but I’m guessing there aren’t more than a dozen. And
140 Richard Stevenson
not all of them will have fourteenth floors. So that will narrow it down somewhat. I can readily find out from people I know in
the city building inspector’s office how many such abandoned
buildings are out there and exactly where they are.”
“Can you get this information fast? Won’t those offices be
closed for the day?”
“For a fee, someone can speed back to the office and look
up this data. Though then, of course, we run into our next set
of difficulties.”
“Which are?”
“Arriving at the correct building to effectuate a rescue and
having either Timmy or Kawee shoved off the balcony, and
then the captors threatening to kill the remaining one unless we produce Griswold and let them all go on their way.”
“You think they would do that?”
“Of course. Why not? I think these people are not such
good Buddhists.”
