The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 30

Maybe we’ll all go.”

“I’m sure General Yodying will be happy to include Mr.

Timothy once he is safe and sound.”

“Timmy told me a story about Noel Coward at the Oriental.

The manager phoned him and asked if it was true that there was

a gentleman in his room. Coward replied, ‘Just a moment and

I’ll ask him.’”

Pugh laughed and said, “There is much entertaining farang

lore in Bangkok. We Thais know it too. We are as amused by

visiting farangs as you are by one another.”

“I know that Thailand was never colonized, thanks largely to

the cleverness of King Chulalongkorn. Maybe that’s why

foreigners here are seen mainly as sources of amusement, in

addition of course to serving as reliable sources of hard

currency.”

“Yes, and more importantly the latter. We are good at

providing our own laughs. But hard currency from the West is

needed to keep our upper classes roaming about in automobiles

built in Bavaria and sipping satiny fluids distilled in Scotland.”

“If you were a wealthy foreigner, Rufus, and showed up in

Thailand with thirty-eight million US dollars and were going to

134 Richard Stevenson

invest it in a sure thing that was legal — no heroin, no arms

smuggling, no adult or pedophile international sex trafficking —

what would that investment be?”

“A legal investment? Hmm. Tourism infrastructure?

Computer technology? Transportation? Perhaps entertainment

— such as Hollywood movie palaces the likes of which L.B.

Mayer is surely swooning over, if somehow his soul is extant in

Bangkok today in some sentient form. Or grandiose retail

outlets would perhaps be the smartest investment of all. An

American journalist once told me he had been in Thailand for

several weeks but had not yet been able to figure out what was

percolating inside the minds of the Thai people. I told him, oh, that’s easy. Going to the mall. That’s what modern Thais spend

much of their spare time thinking about or doing. Going

shopping. The writer was disappointed, I think.”

“And which of these investments that you have listed would

provide the quickest return?”

Pugh looked doubtful. “None of the above, Mr. Don. Sorry.

If you’re talking getting your money back in months or even a

few years, no such investments are likely to pay off that fast.

Land deals, of course, can be ways of making a quick killing in

Thailand, as in most places, if you are privy to inside

information on some government project — a highway, an

airport, a SkyTrain extension, say. But you said legal investment, and using insider information, while common here, is against

the law. And it sounds as if Mr. Gary Griswold is a far better

Buddhist than are some of Thailand’s leading lights who were

raised in clouds of incense with garlands of marigolds dangling

from every orifice. You believe him to be a truly moral man,

and perhaps he is that. Of course, there are legal gray areas

available to investors here, also. And perhaps Mr. Gary was not

too pious to eschew one of the murkier financial pursuits to be

found here in the kingdom.”

“Like what?”

“For instance, real estate development that’s not meant to

result in actual finished construction. Investors are lined up for, say, a large condominium project. A construction company is

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 135

formed that embarks on the project and inflates its start-up

costs by a thousand percent. All the condo units are sold for

tidy sums, many of them to unsuspecting foreign retirees.

Escrow laws here are weak, so the organizers of the project put

up part of the building, then abandon the skeletal structure and walk away with millions. You see these half-finished concrete

towers throughout Bangkok. Attempts have been made to

tighten the escrow laws, but powerful people who profit from

these corrupt but barely legal schemes have so far prevented the laws from being updated. It’s a way of raking in big money fast, and perhaps someone talked Mr. Gary into investing in one of

these cunningly conceived scams.”

“Maybe. Though with his family history, Griswold would

likely know the difference between ethical and nonethical

business practices. And surely he’s been around Thailand long

enough to grasp what’s a sleazy con job and what isn’t a con job within the local context. No, I’m inclined to think that whatever he was planning to invest in was on the up-and-up, or at least

was presented to him in a way that allowed him to think it was.”

“Mr. Gary is apparently a far better Buddhist than many of

us whose Buddhism one would reasonably expect to be more

organic to our daily lives.”

“Yes, unless he’s fooling us all. That’s a possibility, too.”

“This has occurred to me also. I hope you won’t be too

disappointed if we track down Mr. Gary and he turns out to be

a cad. Or at least a bit of a pill.”

“If Griswold was a scheming big jerk, it would certainly

make it easier to exchange him for Timmy and Kawee. There is

that.”

“This is a very Thai way of looking at it, Mr. Don. Now

you’re talkin’ turkey.”

Suddenly I saw Timmy’s face, his eyes narrowing with

disapproval over my brazen moral relativism, and I wanted to

hold him and beg him not to judge me so harshly. And I

wanted to beg his forgiveness for bringing him to this

benighted land of violence and superstition. Then I heard him

136 Richard Stevenson

say, “Violence and superstition? You’d better be careful not to

compare Thailand to the land of the NRA, Pat Robertson,

slavery, Jim Crow and Rush Limbaugh.” It was at that point

that I asked him to please just shut up for one minute so that I could simply luxuriate in my profound relief over his being safe and well and once again by my side.

§ § § § §

Pugh and I joined his team for the stakeout at the On Nut

Internet cafe from which Griswold made his phone calls. Pugh

had an illegally parked van with tinted windows situated half on the sidewalk directly in front of the cafe. A uniformed cop

stopped by for a handout and was soon on his way. The place

was in the shadow of the towering concrete On Nut SkyTrain

station. This was the terminus of the Sukhumvit Road line, and

whenever a train pulled in crowds came down the steps and

dispersed up and down the street, many of them passing within

inches of where we waited and watched. A few people went

into the Internet cafe and sat down at computers. Nearly all

were Thais. One was a male Westerner in sandals, cargo shorts,

and a Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival T-shirt, but he wasn’t Gary

Griswold.

Pugh had the air-conditioning humming and sent out for

eats from a nearby food stall. We had some nice pork larb and

green papaya salad. I was so comfortable that I drifted off into semiconsciousness for an hour or so. To the extent that I was

conscious, I tried to come up with another way of locating

Griswold — or Timmy and Kawee — but I could not. There

was one other avenue of hope. It was Monday, so I knew there

was a fifty-fifty chance that the moto messenger that Griswold

sent every Monday or Tuesday evening with cash for Kawee’s

housekeeping and other expenses would likely show up within a

few hours at Kawee’s room or at the whiskey seller’s stall down

the soi from his place. Pugh had additional crews covering both

locations.

I gave some thought as to how I might be able to pay Pugh

for his extensive services in the event I never saw another dime from any of the Griswolds. That was going to be a sizable