The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 22

recognized any of them. Not the security guard, not Mr.

Thomsatai.”

I said to Thomsatai, “Could one of them possibly have been

the unfriendly man on the motorcycle who paid you to phone

him when Mr. Gary came around? He sounds like a good bet to

me — the sort of man who, if there was a good kidnapping in

100 Richard Stevenson

the works, wouldn’t dream of being left out. Wasn’t Mr.

Unfriendly Motorbike perhaps one of the four?”

Thomsatai looked up and lied so unconvincingly that beads

of sweat popped out on his forehead. He was his own human

polygraph. “No, no. I would recognize that bad man. These

men were others. No motorbike man, no, no.”

Pugh motioned for Panu to step aside and spoke to him

quietly. I couldn’t hear what was said, but the detective nodded at the uniformed officer. The cop then walked over and picked

up a fat Bangkok telephone book from a desk and smashed it

against the side of Mr. Thomsatai’s head.

Timmy wasn’t there to object, so I had to do it. “Rufus,

don’t, please. What happened to the elephant and the

grasshopper?”

“Who were they?” Panu demanded of Mr. Thomsatai, who

sat looking stunned and close to tears. Panu then switched to

Thai and barked a string of orders I could not understand. The

cop picked up the phone book again, and when I stepped in his

direction, Panu snapped something to Pugh in Thai that from

his body language plainly meant, “Get this farang dickhead out

of here.”

Pugh, not looking as embarrassed as I wanted him to,

indicated that I should follow him out of the cubicle.

That’s when Mr. Thomsatai said, “Yes, now I remember!

Yes, yes, one of them was the man on the motorbike who was

looking for Mr. Gary.”

I looked at Pugh in a funny way whose meaning he correctly

understood to be, “Can we trust any of this?”

Then my cell phone rang. I checked the number but the

caller’s ID was blocked. They all watched me — they knew it

wasn’t going to be a lovely invitation for Sunday brunch, and I

knew it too. As Panu pointed and the uniformed cop quickly

led Mr. Thomsatai out of the cubicle, I flipped open the phone.

“Hello.”

“Don?”

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 101

“Yes, yes.”

“It’s Timothy.”

“Timmy, can you talk?”

“Well, yes. That’s why I’m calling.”

“Of course. So what’s the deal?”

“The deal is, they want Griswold. They will trade Kawee and

me for Griswold.”

“I see.”

“That’s about it. I’m not supposed to say any more. Oh,

except for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“They said I should tell you that we are on the fourteenth

floor.”

“Uh-huh. Okay.”

“So that’s about it, I guess. God, it’s good to hear your

voice.”

“It’s so good to hear yours.”

“Just…please get Kawee and me out of this, if you can.

Okay?”

“We will, we will. Can you tell me anything more about

where you are?”

“No.”

“Is Kawee okay? Are they treating you well enough?”

“Yes. We’re both all right. So far. But one of the gentlemen

hosting us just handed me a note asking me to tell you this. You have forty-eight hours to hand over Griswold.”

“I understand.”

“The note also has a big ‘fourteen’ on it. As in fourteenth

floor. Get it?”

“I sure do.”

“I’m supposed to hang up now. Bye.”

“Good-bye, Timothy.”

102 Richard Stevenson

And then he was gone.

I repeated the conversation to Pugh and Detective Panu.

“They’re on the fourteenth floor somewhere. We’re supposed

to believe, apparently, that if we don’t hand over Griswold

within forty-eight hours, Timothy and Kawee will be shoved off

a high balcony.”

Pugh and Panu looked grim. “So sorry,” Panu said.

“How many buildings are there in Bangkok fourteen or

more stories high? Any idea?”

Pugh and Panu looked at each other. “Many hundreds,”

Pugh said. “Twenty-five years ago this would have been easy.

Today Bangkok is Houston or Miami in that regard.”

“Yes, but all you have to do is check all the fourteenth floors

in Bangkok. That limits it, right? Even if there are, say, thirty-five hundred buildings with fourteenth floors, you’d need only

thirty-five hundred or, even better, sixty-five hundred officers to do a sweep. That doesn’t seem insurmountable, does it? How

many cops are there in Bangkok?”

Again, both Pugh and Detective Panu looked at each other

gravely, and then at me. Panu said, “It’s a matter of priorities.”

He gave a wan apologetic shrug.

“What we’re talking about here,” Pugh said, “is a declasse

Thai lady-boy, a nobody. And Mr. Timothy is a mere tourist,

less than a nobody in Thailand. While it is true that tourists are gods in Thailand collectively speaking, individually they do not merit a tremendous amount of interest, particularly by the

police. Am I putting that too harshly, Khun Panu?”

“A little, perhaps.”

I said, “What if we paid for the services of the police?

Would that help? Perhaps some senior officer, a captain or even

general.”

“It wouldn’t hurt,” Pugh said and glanced at Detective Panu,

who shrugged mildly.

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 103

“Okay, you locate that official and I’ll come up with the

payoff. How much are we talking here? Twenty cases of Johnny

Walker? Sixty? Or is it cash — US dollars? Euros?”

Panu said, “Bahts make a nice gift.”

“How many bahts?”

“I’ve heard that fifty thousand can be helpful. That’s about

sixteen thousand dollars, I believe. Unless the US dollar has

grown even weaker in the past hour.”

“It’s not just a question of national pride,” Pugh said. “The

baht is currently a sounder currency than the dollar. So your

client, Mrs. Griswold, will provide the funding for this

additional expense?”

I told them about the e-mail from Ellen Griswold calling me

off the case because, she claimed, she had heard from her ex-

husband, and he insisted he was in no danger and was merely

embarrassed over some personal matter.

“Therefore,” I said, “any further expenses will have to be

met by Gary Griswold himself, who plainly is in big trouble.

What this means is, we have to find Griswold fast. Then, (a)

extract cash from him to pay off your for-profit police

department to prod it to do its job, (b) find out from him what

the hell is going on here so that we can help get him out of the rotten situation he’s in, and (c) — if those two approaches fail

— have Griswold in hand so that we can trade him for Timmy

and Kawee and hope that he can hand over to these people,

whoever they are, whatever it is they want from him, thus keeping Griswold from being shoved off a balcony.”

Pugh said, “I like your tour d’horizon, Mr. Don. It’s dead-on.

And your willingness to sacrifice poor Mr. Gary, if necessary, in order to save your boyfriend and the katoey is admirable. There

are degrees of innocence in this complex situation. And Mr.

Gary, should he perish, would be fulfilling a karma plainly

nudged into existence by his own klutziness. Not that we

shouldn’t do everything we can to save this wayward farang’s

sorry ass from whatever mishigas he has waded into of his own volition.”

104 Richard Stevenson

“Timmy, of course, would have a few choice words for me

if he were here,” I said. “He’s a bit of a moral absolutist. He

would allow for no cold-blooded choices of the type I have

described. But let’s just get him back, and then he can lecture all of us to his heart’s content.”