The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 19

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. Lese majeste. 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