The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 24

This is quite a fascinating family you’ve gotten me involved

with, Bob.”

“Yeah, well, Strachey, you send them a billable-hours

statement the first of the month and payment arrives by the end

of the month. Or has so far. Just how fucked-up the Griswolds

may be, I don’t really know. But Christ, if I’d ever thought

Timmy was going to get hurt on account of the Griswolds, I

would never have sent Ellen to you. This just stinks to high

heaven, and I am so, so sorry.”

“Timmy hasn’t gotten hurt on account of the Griswolds.

He’s gotten hurt because of me. So, what became of these two

characters, the personal trainer and his beau, Hubbard and

Mertz?”

“I have no idea. Would you like me to find out?”

“Nah. There’s no real need to know. This all happened —

what? Fourteen or fifteen years ago?”

“Something like that.”

“If you can easily track these guys down, do. Otherwise, I’ve

got plenty of other unsavory characters to keep my mind

occupied. What you might do, though, is try to get an

explanation from Ellen as to what’s going on here. What did

Gary actually tell her yesterday that made her fire me from the

case? I’ve tried phoning her and will try again, and I’ll e-mail her too. Maybe she’ll open up to you.”

“Possibly. Though in my dealings with Ellen over the years

I’ve sometimes wondered if she wasn’t holding back on a few

important details of whatever it was.”

“Now you tell me.”

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 109

“Yeah, well. Have you ever had the perfect client? What

you’re always dealing with are human beings. It’s a hazard of the workplace OSHA can’t seem to do anything about.”

I gave Chicarelli my Thailand cell phone number and asked

him to call me anytime he developed any clue at all as to what

the Griswolds were up to. He wished me luck springing Timmy

and Kawee. I said, “Do you believe in lucky numbers?”

“No. Can’t say that I do.”

“Me neither. I’ve always believed that when good things

happen in circumstances that are beyond our control, that’s

what we call luck. Likewise with bad things. The Thais believe

that events can be manipulated through managing the symbols

of luck — rituals, amulets, wielding the right numbers, prayer. I would try any of that if I thought it would help keep Timothy

safe. But now I look around me here — at the shrines, the

temples, the stupas, the spirit houses — and none of it seems

like anything that will help bring Timmy back. In fact, it all feels like it’s part of what took Timmy away from me and put his life

in danger. And I feel as if I’m not only in danger of losing

Timmy, but that I’m losing Thailand, a place I love. It’s awful.”

“Get Timmy back,” Chicarelli said, “and I’m guessing your

love of Thailand will follow.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “First things first.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

When General Yodying Supanant of the Royal Thai Police

declined to order all of the fourteenth floors in Bangkok

searched without payment in advance of the fifty-thousand-baht

fee he charged for this service — he called it a “gift” that would go toward a new wing for a Buddhist monastery in Ubon

Ratchathani — I rode with Pugh over to the ATM around the

corner from the Topmost with a Robinson’s Department Store

shopping bag Pugh had in his car. It took awhile for me to

repeatedly insert my MasterCard and extract a total of fifty

thousand baht from the machine, including time-outs to stand

aside politely and allow others who wished to use the ATM to

withdraw their more modest amounts.

Pugh sat nearby on a stool at an espresso stand and sipped

coffee from a tiny paper cup. Two young woman had set up

their own miniature Starbucks-like operation, about four feet by four feet, the electric coffeemaker powered by a cable that ran

up the side of a building and vanished into the fat spaghetti

maze of black wires strung just above the sidewalk along Rama

IV Road. I remembered Timmy’s story of one of the earliest

Peace Corps deaths. A volunteer was killed not by a wild animal

or an obscure tropical disease but by electrocution while playing poker with four Thais during a thunderstorm. I recalled this as a characteristically Thai way of dying prematurely, and now I

could add defenestration to any such list.

As Pugh sat watching me extract currency from a humming

and blinking machine on the side of a building, it occurred to

me that he might be wondering if he would be left in the lurch,

now that Ellen Griswold was about to sever my expense

account bounty. I assured Pugh that he would be paid, no

matter what. He said, “I only doubted that for a nanosecond.”

Detective Panu refused to participate in the delivery of the

“gift” to General Yodying — having made the initial setup calls, Panu then pointed out to me in a dignified tone that bribery

112 Richard Stevenson

was illegal in Thailand, and he had no intention of physically

handling the tainted bahts — so Pugh said he would make the

delivery. We swung by a police station on Sala Daeng Soi 1 and

Pugh pranced in with the shopping bag and out again in less

than a minute.

I said, “Will this guy follow through?”

“I believe so.”

“It’s a lot of money.”

“Is Yodying a crook? Without doubt. But for the moment

he is our crook, Khun Don. He’s what we’ve got.”

“Rufus, you’re so reassuring.”

We had used the scanner at the Internet cafe/seamstress

shop and e-mailed Timmy’s passport photo to the general.

Within a matter of hours, supposedly, a police sweep of all the

fourteenth floors in greater Bangkok would be undertaken.

Each cop would be armed with a picture of Timmy and a

description of Kawee down to the fuchsia toenails.

I said, “So, are there also six hundred judges issuing several

thousand search warrants for all those fourteenth-floor

apartments and offices?”

“No,” Pugh said. “You would have to pay extra for that. But

don’t sweat it.”

Pugh took a call from Jampen Noo, his field supervisor. She

told him the surveillance team was in place inside and outside

the Internet cafe in On Nut from which Griswold placed his

phone calls to Kawee. If Griswold showed up, they would

snatch him and hold him as unostentatiously as possible in a

van parked nearby until Pugh and I could get there.

Meanwhile, Pugh and I headed back over to Griswold’s

condo to look for the laptop computer Timmy said he and

Kawee had found in Griswold’s ground-floor storage bin. Mr.

Thomsatai greeted us with a deep and respectful wai and the

phoniest Thai smile I had ever witnessed. Why was this guy not

behind bars? That was going to have to wait, along with a

number of this case’s other nagging deferred matters.

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 113

We looked through the storage bin and found nothing there

of use. More art books. A couple of empty canvas travel bags

with Miami-Bangkok airline baggage tags still affixed. There was also what looked like a bike-riding helmet.

I asked Thomsatai, “Does Griswold have a bicycle?”

“Mr. Gary have bike. Good bike. Italian. But it is not here. I

think he took it to where he go.”

Pugh said, “I’ll tell my crew to watch for a possible arrival at the Internet cafe by bicycle.” He made a quick call and did so.

Up in the apartment, the rooms looked surprisingly

undisturbed, given that a forced abduction had taken place

there several hours earlier. Apparently Timmy and Kawee had