The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 4

“A guy with thirty-eight mil is bound to stand out among

the rice paddies.”

“Why don’t you come along?” I said. “You’ve got some

leave time built up. You could do legwork for me. Brain work,

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 19

too, as is your habit. It would be a legitimate expense. And it’s a fascinating part of the world, as I have gone on and on and on

about on countless occasions.”

“What on earth could you possibly be referring to?” he said

and transferred another kaffir lime leaf onto his mulch pile.

“Also, the war’s over. I’d like to see Bangkok without it

being overrun by drunken, drug-addled, horny American GIs

such as myself. I’m sure the place is very different now, and we could check it out together.”

“But what if,” Timmy wondered, “we got over there and

Griswold’s situation turned out to be something really

complicated and dangerous and ugly? That certainly seems

possible with somebody vanishing with that amount of money.”

“It’s true,” I said, “that the Bangkok I knew in the seventies

had a harsh underside. You could, for instance, have somebody

bumped off for a few hundred dollars. That would be for killing

a Thai. A farang might be double that. It’s also a fact — I suppose I should mention — that the Land of Smiles, home to

some of the sweetest people in the world, has one of the most

corrupt police forces in Asia — which is saying a lot — and

some of the most nightmarish prisons anywhere. Few people

emerge from Thai prisons sane, or even alive. It’s also a sad

reality that in legal disputes between Thais and foreigners, the foreigner is always wrong and may have to lay out big bucks —

backhanders, they call them — just to save his own neck. There

is a lot about the Thai paradise that’s not so heavenly, I know.

And it’s entirely possible that Gary Griswold has fallen victim

to some aspect of that not-so-delectable Thailand.”

Now Timmy had set down his soupspoon and was giving

me one of his looks. “You’re not making any of that up, are

you?”

“No. But otherwise it’s a lovely country. The Thais have

their rice, their Buddha, their beloved king, and their well-

developed sense of fun. That’s the Thailand I’ll bet Griswold

fell in love with — until something somehow went awry.”

“Oh, awry,” Timmy said.

20 Richard Stevenson

“Look, if it turns out that Griswold has fallen into

something grisly and there’s real danger, then you’ll get back on the plane and fly home. That would be simple enough.”

“I understand. And you?”

“Well, we’d have to see. It would depend on if I could be helpful or not, or what I might have to do to earn my fee.”

Timmy looked down at his tom yam kung and said to it,

“Here we go again,” and my heart went out.

§ § § § §

Back at the house on Crow Street, it took me under ten

minutes to come up with the name of Gary Griswold’s most

recent boyfriend in Key West. Ellen Griswold thought the

man’s name might be Horn, and she was right. When I called an

old friend of Timmy’s living in Key West — one of the former

Peace Corps mafia whose humanistic tentacles are everywhere

— she confirmed that Griswold had been a well-known

presence in Key West over a period of about a decade and had

had a boyfriend named Lou Horn. Horn now owned and

managed the art gallery the two had founded together, which

now was named Toot Toot.

I got Horn on the phone with no trouble. He not only didn’t

mind being called at ten forty at night, but said he was very

worried about Griswold and fearful about what might have

happened to him. Horn was relieved, he said, that I would be

searching for Griswold. He said he and two other Key West

friends had been in occasional contact with Griswold until

about six months earlier, when all communication from

Griswold’s end had inexplicably ceased.

I asked Horn if, before his disappearance, Griswold had said

anything to anybody in Key West that seemed out of character

or otherwise odd or set off alarm bells. Horn said, “Well,

maybe.” When he assured me that he and other of Griswold’s

Key West friends would willingly tell me what little they knew, I thanked him, called Delta, and booked a flight for the next day.

I also phoned a PI friend in New York City who I’d done

work for and obtained a list of reputable investigative firms and THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 21

individuals operating in Bangkok. I had just begun checking

these agencies out online when I became aware of an eerie

silence above me. Normally, at this time of night, Timmy was

upstairs in the bedroom guffawing at The Daily Show, and frequently so was I. Instead, when I went up, I found the

television off and Timmy with his wireless laptop open on the

bed.

“Working late for the people of New York State?” I said. “If

so, we thank you.”

His look was grave. “I Googled Bangkok crime statistics.

Holy Mother!”

“Timothy, this is not going to help.”

“Oh yes, it is. I’m not going, and I’m not sure you should,

either.”

This was my fault. I should only have told him about the

golden reclining Buddhas. I said, “You’re getting a distorted

picture. New York City looks sinister and forbidding on a police blotter, too. I sometimes do work there. So do you. We like New York.”

“It’s true,” he said, “that there’s very little street crime in

Bangkok. It’s peaceful in that respect. But if you’re doing business there — as Griswold may have been doing — look

out. A favorite way of settling money disputes is for one party

to hire a guy on a motorcycle to drive by and shoot the other

party in the head. Extrajudicial killings by the police are routine.

Get this: in July two thousand one, a Bangkok newspaper ran a

front-page story with the headline, ‘Police Death Squads Run

Riot.’ In one region, the police general dealt with drug dealers by sending cops out to shoot them. ‘Our target,’ this police

official said, ‘is to send one thousand traffickers to hell this year, to join some three hundred fifty before them.’ Could Griswold

have gotten enmeshed in some gigantic drug deal? That could

explain the so-called quick return on investment. If so, he could be six feet under in the backyard of a police station. Land of

Smiles, my ass, Donald. The Thailand I am seeing in front of

me here is bloody treacherous.”

22 Richard Stevenson

I leaned over his shoulder. “Timothy, this is great stuff.

Really helpful. Would you mind printing this for me? I’ll read it on the plane to Key West tomorrow. I’m going down to talk to

Griswold’s friends there. It turns out they’re quite worried

about him, too.”

“And then” — Timmy went right on — “I came across a

book I think you should read. I’m ordering it tomorrow from

Stuyvesant Books. It’s My Eight Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison.

It’s by some American bozo who got on the wrong side of

somebody over there, and he landed in some nightmare

Midnight Express situation he didn’t have enough ready cash to buy his way out of, the way the rich Thais do.”

“Well,” I said. “All this stuff is frightening, sure. It makes

me apprehensive too. But it’s also all the more reason to worry

about Gary Griswold. He sounds like a basically good guy —

adventurous in a harmless way, a spiritual searcher. Maybe too

naive and susceptible, but that’s hardly a moral crime. And he

may have been victimized by the Thai subculture displayed so