The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 38

password on a piece of paper Pugh provided.

“If you think you might help yourself to a million or two

I’ve got sitting around in that account,” Griswold said, “you can forget it. That account holds no more than US seventy

thousand dollars.”

“And your withdrawal limit is?”

“There is no limit.”

166 Richard Stevenson

“Khun Gary, you are a god.”

“No, just a good businessman.”

I said, “And the son of Max and Bertha Griswold. That

helped.”

At the mention of family and money, Griswold grew

solemn. “Yes, my parents worked hard and became wealthy,

and I was the beneficiary of nearly half their wealth. I have

never felt anything but grateful for, and unworthy of, my

inheritance. And I’ve always tried to share that wealth in a

responsible way. And I intend on continuing to do so if I possibly can.”

“This is where our interests intersect,” I said. “Keeping you

alive to perform more good works, and keeping Timothy and

Kawee alive so they can scratch around in the dust in their far

humbler ways.”

“You’re a somewhat bitter man,” Griswold said. “If you

remain in Thailand, I could direct you to people who would

help you do something about that.”

“My bitterness is temporary, and my bitterness is rational. It

has to do with the possibility of the sweet man I have made my

adult life with ending up as a pile of broken bones and useless

bloody tissue on a Thai sidewalk or roadway.”

Griswold looked momentarily stricken and said, “You know,

my parents died in a fall. In an airplane that crashed.”

“I heard about that. From Lou Horn.”

“Oh. Lou. How is he? Is Lou all right?”

“Yes, except for wondering why you totally cut him off and

acted like you had just…”

I let the words hang, and Pugh said it. “Fallen off the face of

the earth.”

“All that will be cleared up soon enough,” Griswold said. “I

do feel very, very bad about the way I treated my old friends.”

“You should.”

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 167

“I really need to get a competent reading soon. All this

falling. It’s hard to believe. My parents. Khun Khunathip.

Geoff. And now these threats against Kawee and your

boyfriend. It’s just too much falling to write off as what most

people might call coincidence.”

“You’re a faller too, Griswold. A couple of years ago you fell

off your bike. And got a good whack to your noggin. Don’t

leave that one out.”

“Funny,” Griswold said. “Lou and my friends Marcie and

Janice in Key West talked about that. A bike accident. But I

really have no memory of it happening.”

By now, Pugh had one of his crew in the office and was

instructing her on how and where to extract the fifty thousand

dollars worth of baht from an ATM. Griswold began to make a

move toward the outer office and the bathroom when Pugh

asked him to wait just one moment.

Before Griswold left the room with Egg at his side, Pugh

said, “In addition to the funds, I need one other thing from

you, Khun Gary, if we’re going to fish your butt out of the

soup. I need to know who exactly we are dealing with here. I

have reason to believe that Police General Yodying Supanant is

the head of the investors who got screwed and who want you to

make good on their lost investments. Am I correct?”

Shaking his head, Griswold said, “Oh God. I should never

have mentioned that part of it. You know about Paveena and

her birthday celebration, don’t you?”

“I read the Post, just like you.”

“Yes. Damn. But it’s just as well. I suppose you do have to

know everything if you’re going to get all of us out of this fuckall with no more falling from high places.”

“Precisely. And no more of this falling-off-the-face-of-theearth hugger-mugger.”

Griswold was led out of the room, looking dazed.

As soon as Griswold was gone, Pugh got on the phone with

Khun Thunska. He asked him to do a quick check of

computerized city records of who in Bangkok besides Paveena

168 Richard Stevenson

Hanwilai would have a sixtieth birthday on April 27 and had a

powerful husband.

Next, Pugh called Ek and they had a quick exchange in Thai.

Pugh explained to me that he had instructed Ek to locate the

abandoned building in which Timmy and Kawee were being

held. A helpful employee in the Bangkok building inspector’s

office had come up with a list of nine buildings that fit Timmy’s

“Millpond” description. Ek would narrow the list down through

surveillance and trustworthy contacts at security firms, but he

would not act until told to do so by Pugh. Pugh told me he now

had a plan for rescuing Timmy and Kawee that involved some

risk for them and for us, and would have repercussions we

would all have to cope with.

I said, “So, you don’t like my idea of having Griswold turn

himself over to the kidnappers and leaving it up to him to talk

his way out of this? I thought you might see a kind of karmic

logic to that one.”

Pugh shot me a quick, tight smile. “It wouldn’t work. They

would likely grab Griswold and renege on their promise to

release their captives. As Khun Gary predicted, they would

torture him and extract as much cash from him as they could in

a short time. Then they would throw all of them off a building

— Griswold, Timmy and Kawee — as a kind of fuck-you

gesture to all of us. Then the police would miraculously appear

on the scene and arrest you for some type of visa violation and

me for trout fishing without a license. A financial settlement of perhaps fifty K or so would soon be agreed to, and we would

both be released. Life would go on for me, and you would be

placed on a Lufthansa flight for Frankfurt in the middle of the

night, coach class. So, Khun Don, commonsensical as your

ostensibly hardheaded formulation might be on its face, you’d

better forget it. Here in the Land of Smiles, it just ain’t gonna fly.”

I said to Pugh that if my desperate, fatalistic and admittedly

selfish solution was not the answer, then what was? The

scenario he laid out for me over the next three minutes sounded

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 169

outlandish, although it occurred to me that it would not have

surprised Timmy.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Time was running out for Timmy and Kawee, and my fear

kept me awake as I lay on a mat through much of the night in

Pugh’s office. He slept nearby, as did Griswold. A large man

named Sek had been brought in to watch over Griswold, who,

as I lay trying not to tremble, snored grotesquely. I could hear snoring from the outer office, too. It was late Monday night

now, but even with the air-conditioners whirring I could hear

the fuck-show and pussy-show crowds exiting the nearby clubs

and moving noisily about in the street below. Eventually I sank

just below the surface of consciousness for a few hours. I might have sunk even deeper had Pugh not jostled me just after six in

the morning with a cheery, “Rise and shine, Khun Don, rise

and shine. Time to head on out and find the bad guys and put

up your dukes.”

Somebody went over to Silom for coffee, and Griswold was

led into the outer office where he was to wait for further

developments under Sek’s supervision.

Coffee, pineapple chunks and rice gruel arrived, and Ek

soon called and told Pugh that he had located the building

where Timmy and Kawee were most likely being held. It was

one of two unfinished and abandoned fifteen-story condos in a