The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 23

Pugh said, “And what if Mr. Gary is unwilling or, God

forbid, unable to underwrite our efforts and those of the

hardworking Royal Thai Police? What if we track him down and

he laughs in our faces and tells us all to go do what is

anatomically impossible for most people — not that there aren’t

exceptions to that rule at certain clubs I could mention in

Surawong? Or what if we locate Mr. Gary and he is penniless?

This could get complicated, I think.”

“If Griswold can’t produce whatever cash that’s needed,

then I’ll go down to the ATM on Rama IV Road near the

Topmost and stand there for half an hour with my MasterCard

pumping bahts into a bag. That won’t be a problem. Please go

ahead right now and make whatever sleazy arrangements are

appropriate with your sleazy police department’s sleazy higher-

ups.”

Pugh and Panu both squinted at me and nodded.

I remembered Timmy’s warnings to me about getting mixed

up in this case. Timothy, the grounded one. Timothy, the

sensible one. Timothy, the seer.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“So, Bob. What’s the deal with the Griswolds? What I’m

dealing with here seems to be not exactly what it seemed to be

when you sent Ellen Griswold to me to track down her

wayward ex-husband and wayward current brother in-law in

Thailand.” I explained what had transpired in the previous

twenty-four hours and asked the lawyer, “So, what I want to

know from you is, can the Griswolds be trusted, or what?”

I had reached Chicarelli on the golf course Sunday morning

in Clifton Park, near Albany. When I called his house, his wife

was reluctant to violate the sanctity of Chicarelli’s Sabbath golf game by blabbing his cell phone number for a business matter.

But when I said the urgent situation I was calling about had to

do with the Griswolds, a name of consequence in Albany, she

recited the number pronto.

“They’ve got Timmy? Christ, Strachey, have you notified the

US embassy? They’ve gotta bring in the FBI, would be my

thinking. Going at this on your own sounds very risky to me.”

“It may come to that, but my Thai sources say the cops here

are more effectively inspired by cash than by hectoring from

farangs in suits. There’s a big DEA station here, but I’d probably have to convince those guys that there’s a major heroin

shipment involved in order to get their attention.”

“You might want to consider saying just that.”

“I might, in the end. For all I know at this point, it could

even be true. But what about the Griswolds? What’s the story

with them? Ellen sends me flying over here and gives me pretty

much carte blanche to do anything I can to save her ex and his

thirty-eight mil. Then she e-mails me some lame crap about he’s

A-okay, it’s all a misunderstanding, and come on home. Plainly

the guy really is up to his ears in some stinking mess involving influential fortune-tellers and who knows what kind of criminal

weirdos. It seems like half the goons in Bangkok want to get

hold of Griswold and…I hate to think. Give him a shove. My

106 Richard Stevenson

question to you is, why would Ellen call me off? What’s her

game here? It’s possible that Gary lied to her about being safe, but why would she be so ready to believe the lie? Bob, I’m

confused.”

There was a long pause — was Chicarelli taking time out

from my call to pick some grass off his four iron? — and then

he said, “I shouldn’t be telling you this.” More silence.

“Yeah?”

“It could be financial.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Bill Griswold has serious money troubles, I’ve heard from

people who would know. It’s possible all of a sudden that

maybe the Griswolds think they cannot afford you.”

“That sounds unlikely. I’m a monetary tiny speck in their

scheme of things.”

“No, this is big and it’s significant. There’s a hostile takeover underway at Algonquin Steel. A holding company operating out

of the Caymans is busy rolling up shares in the Griswold’s

zillion-dollar family store. Bill Griswold is fighting it, and there’s a high probability that the family’s assets will be tied up in

litigation for years to come. Bill and Ellen may land on their feet eventually, but the family well is going to be shallow-borderingon-dry for the foreseeable future. All this just developed on Friday, so that could help account for Ellen’s change of plans.”

“I was somewhere over the Pacific on Friday. At least she

didn’t call the airline and demand that they turn the plane

around.”

Chicarelli laughed once. “She might have. That’s Ellen.”

“Anyway, what you’re suggesting doesn’t sound right. It’s

not like the Griswolds are suddenly penniless. And surely Ellen

would not cut her ex-husband off if she believed he was in real

danger. And again, if he contacted her and told her he was not

in any danger, why would she believe that? She thinks he’s

borderline bonkers these days. It’s possible, I suppose, that he’s got some scheme in mind to save himself, and my poking

around is screwing that up somehow. But if that’s the case, why

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 107

wouldn’t Griswold just explain that to me, and I’d have another

helping of fried crickets and then head home. No, there’s

something screwy about the way all the Griswolds are behaving.

Anyway, now I have no choice but to get to the bottom of the

entire bizarre mess and get Timmy out of Thailand. You know,

he didn’t really want to come here. He thought it would be dangerous. I talked him into it.”

“People by the thousands go there and have a wonderful

time,” Chicarelli said. “Isn’t Thailand called the Land of

Smiles?”

“That’s what I told Timmy. It’s true, too. But nobody, Thai

or otherwise, who has anything to do with the Griswolds is

smiling these days. What’s that about? That’s what I want to

know.”

“Jeez, Strachey. Now I’m sorry I ever sent Ellen to you. I

figured: Thailand. Gay. Free ride. Big bucks. I thought I was

doing you a favor. And I was helping out Ellen, too. She’s

somebody you don’t want to make unhappy if you can avoid

it.”

“She’s formidable. Though I kind of like her, even if I don’t

quite trust her.”

“This didn’t come from me, but did you ever hear the stuff

about Ellen and the demise of Bill’s first wife?”

“What stuff is that?”

“Sheila Griswold, Bill’s ex, was a vindictive lady who made a

career of making his life miserable after the divorce. Hounding

him endlessly for more, more, more. I knew Sheila’s attorney,

Hal Woolrich, a total scumbag who’s now in Waterbury for tax

evasion. Anyway, Sheila disappears on a Caribbean cruise and a

lot of people thought she went overboard with a little help from others on the boat. Among the merrymakers on the ship that

night were Ellen’s personal trainer, Duane Hubbard, and

Hubbard’s boyfriend, Matthew Mertz. They were pretty scuzzy

characters. Mertz had a history of coke dealing and at least one assault conviction. Word got back to Albany — probably by

way of Woolrich — that these two were on the ship when

108 Richard Stevenson

Sheila disappeared, and a number of people who knew the

situation wondered if maybe Bill and Ellen put those two up to

turning poor Sheila into shark bait. Anyway, there was never

any evidence and, because of jurisdictional confusion, no

investigation to speak of.”

“Ellen told me,” I said, “that her husband was a suspect in

people’s minds in his ex’s disappearance, but not that she was.