The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 14

“Yes, it helps to be Thai if you’re operating in Thailand.

You’ll see.”

Pugh, Timmy, and I were in the Topmost dining room for

the breakfast buffet. Timmy had his papaya and yogurt, I my

omelet, and Pugh four slices of pineapple and a side of bacon.

“So, is Rufus your real name?” Timmy asked. “It sounds

so…I guess American.”

“No, the name my parents gave me was Panchalee

Siripasaraporn.” Pugh spelled it out, letter by letter. “But we

Thais are not so rigid about names as you foreigners are. It can be confusing, I know. Sometimes Thais change their names.

And we have different nicknames for different situations and

relationships. Am I making myself unclear?” He laughed.

Pugh was a wiry little man who looked tough as old

lemongrass. I could imagine somebody trying to fish bits of him

out of their tom yam kung. He had the dark-faced, flat-nosed

look of the North, meaning he was a man who got what he

needed in Thai society with his wits and industry and not with

his looks or his family history. What he had that was almost

universally Thai was his humor.

“But why ‘Rufus Pugh’?” Timmy asked. “It doesn’t sound

anything like your real name.”

“I picked the name up when I went to Duke,” Pugh said.

“Oh, you went to Duke? I went to Georgetown.”

“How long were you there?” Pugh asked.

“How long? Four years.”

66 Richard Stevenson

“Well, I was only at Duke for a week. I was visiting my

friend Supoj. He had a roommate named Rufus Pugh. I liked

the sound of it. Oh, have I confused you gentlemen again?

When I say I went to Duke, I mean I went to Duke on a

Greyhound bus.” He chuckled.

I said, “Where did you take the bus from, Rufus? Not

Bangkok.”

“From Monmouth College, in West Long Branch, New

Jersey. I was there for one semester. Then I came home and

completed university at Chulalongkorn in Bangkok. It was

cheaper. That way, my three sisters had to fuck only three

thousand seven hundred and twelve overweight Australians to

put me through college instead of five thousand two hundred

and eleven.”

Timmy said, “I’m sorry. God.”

“No need. This was twenty years ago. Now two of them are

back in Chiang Rai with their lazy husbands, and the other

married one of the large mates and lives in Sydney. I help them

out — I look forward to getting my hands on some of the

Griswold megabucks — and my wife and children are not big

spenders. Neither is my girlfriend. But I do need to hustle.

That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

“How did you turn into a PI?” I asked.

“I was in the police, but eventually I started feeling guilty

about being on the wrong side of the law. How about you,

Mister Don?”

“Army Intelligence originally. I also had ethical issues.”

“I’ll bet. That must have been the US Army.”

“In the seventies. I was here a few times.”

“In Bangkok?”

“Bangkok and Pattaya.”

“I was a child at the time. But maybe you fucked one of my

sisters. Or me. I picked up some spare change on a few

occasions.”

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 67

“No, no youngsters for me. Anyway, I’d remember you.

You make an impression, Rufus.”

He smiled again, briefly, then said, “If you were in the

American military, then you must know that the Thai military

has its corrupt elements.”

“I do know that.”

“Parts of it are busy ruthlessly stamping out the drug trade,

and parts of it are busy buying and selling drugs. Some elements do both. The police are often involved, and also our

authoritarian neighbors, the Burmese generals, as well as the

Burmese generals’ authoritarian friends, the Chinese.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“I bring this up,” Pugh said, “because you told me that your

Mr. Gary Griswold planned on investing thirty-eight million US

dollars and making a quick killing.”

“That’s what he told someone. It may not be true.”

“With that kind of money, we may be talking drug deal.

Heroin, yaa-baa, who knows? If that is the case, his family is correct to fear for his well-being. So let’s hope he was up to

something else.”

“A drug deal,” I said, “would be seriously out of character

for this guy.” I told Pugh about Griswold’s discovery of

Buddhist philosophy and meditation, his deepening interest in

past lives, astrology and numerology, and on top of all that his infatuation and then de-infatuation with the mysterious Mango.

“I think,” I said, “that Griswold would consider heroin dealing, what with all the social harm involved, unethical if not

downright evil. Unless, of course, it’s Mr. Mango who’s the

gangster here, and it was Griswold’s discovery of that that led to his disillusionment with Mango. And he actually believed he

was investing in something else.”

Pugh chewed on a slice of bacon. I had some too, with my

omelet. It was the most flavorsome bacon I had ever eaten. I

had once seen listed on a Thai menu “deep-fried pig vermiform

appendix.” Bacon seemed like a classically American food, yet it was plainly the Thais who knew exactly what to do with a pig.

68 Richard Stevenson

“Yeah,” Pugh said, “I think you’re right that Mango’s

involvement means something here. Or nothing. Well, not

nothing. A warm smile, a pretty dick, and a shapely butt, it

could be. Or maybe more; we’ll have to see. As for ethical

considerations, it sounds like you know your man. But with

your permission, may I please point out that when our own

esteemed Prime Minster Samak was asked how Thailand could

do so much business with the Burmese generals — who run

what might be the nastiest police state in the world — the PM

said, oh, the generals are praying Buddhists, after all, so how

bad can they be?”

“Point taken,” I said. “But Griswold has no history of being

a hypocrite.”

“The Buddha never specifically listed hypocrisy as a sin,”

Pugh said. “Though I think we have to consider it within the

penumbra of Dharma teachings. See, I’m not at all a spiritual

strict constructionist.” He grinned at us and chortled.

I told Pugh about Griswold’s consulting a Thai fortune-teller

— renowned, supposedly — and the seer’s dire predictions of

“bloodshed” and “great sorrow” in Griswold’s life.

“You have no name of this man?”

“No, unfortunately.”

“He could be a charlatan. Or perhaps not. It would be good

to know which one it is. If Mr. Gary consulted him previously

and is now in distress, he will almost certainly consult him

again.”

I said, “So, some Thai fortune-tellers are frauds and some

are not?”

“Are some American corporate CEOs frauds, and some are

not?” Pugh asked. I had no clue from his look what he was

thinking.

“Then let me ask you this. Do fortune-tellers ever give

financial advice?”

“If it’s requested. Generally on small matters. When to buy a

lottery ticket. What’s a lucky number for a lottery ticket.

Perhaps on larger financial matters on some occasions. The

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 69

scale of the question and the scale of the answer could both

conceivably flow from the depth of the seer’s client’s pockets.”

Timmy said, “Thailand looks like it’s awash in money — all

this urban building and development. Couldn’t Griswold have

been involved in something completely legitimate that then fell

apart? And he’d gotten other investors involved, and now they

want their money back or something, and Griswold is afraid of

them? I read that sometimes in Thailand business disputes turn