The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 41

in place by four of Pugh’s men, Nitrate, Ek and two others.

One of the dangling people was Khun Surapol Sutharat, the

seer who had been providing ace astrological advice to the

kidnappers. The other dangling person was a middle-aged

woman in a fashionable Siamese gold-colored blouse and long

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 179

green skirt, the skirt now semicomically bunched up above her

waist, exposing the woman’s black panties. Someone had

lowered a cell phone on a wire to Khun Surapol and we could

see him frantically trying to hold it up — down, really — to his ear.

Pugh took out his own phone and hit a speed-dial number.

After a moment, he handed the phone to Yai and gestured

toward the dangling soothsayer. “Somebody wants to palaver

with you,” he said.

Yai spoke some Thai into the phone and then listened. He

looked confused, bordering on panicky. It didn’t help his frame

of mind when the men holding the bamboo pole across the way

began to bob it up and down, as the seer and the woman next

to him gesticulated and clawed at the side of the building.

Yai took out his own phone now and frantically dialed.

Pugh said, “Tell the general that that is his wife Paveena

Hanwilai over there, the birthday girl herself. If you and the

general don’t do as we say, we’ll drop her skinny ass fourteen

floors to the pavement below. And Khun Surapol will

accompany her soul to paradise or to purgatory or to Newark

Liberty International Airport — wherever. In any event, both of

their corporeal worldly remains will leave an impression, for the general and for many others in the vicinity of Rangnam Road.”

Now Yai spoke into his phone in rapid Thai. He scowled

furiously then said in English, looking at Griswold and me,

“Wait.”

The general was no doubt phoning his wife to see if she had

actually been abducted. She had in fact been snatched, Pugh

had told me, from Wat Mahathat, where she prayed each

morning with her soothsayer. She was not, however, hanging

from a pole across the way. She was locked in a janitor’s closet in a disused primary school next to the temple, minus her cell

phone, her skirt and blouse and — just to play it safe — her

black underwear. To preserve her modesty, Mrs. Paveena had

been provided a large plastic garbage bag with a hole on top for her head to stick out and holes on the sides for her arms. The

woman dangling next to Khun Surapol in Paveena Hanwilai’s

180 Richard Stevenson

garments was Miss Aroon — who had never been an acrobat

exactly, but had for a time some years earlier fired ping-pong

balls from her vagina to the cheers of drunken tourists at a club in Patpong.

Suddenly Yai was listening closely on his phone and

nodding. He soon said something to Pugh in Thai. Pugh smiled

amiably and said — I knew this much Thai — “Capkun kap,

Khun Yai.” Thank you so much, Mr. Yai.

Then Yai narrowed his eyes and hissed out two or three

more brief sentences. Pugh shrugged and said something that

from his look could have been “I’ll take note of that.”

Pugh said to me, “Mr. Yai has informed me that today the

general is going to release all of us. But by the end of the month he will have killed every last one of us. What do you think of

that?”

“I find that pronouncement unsettling, Rufus. What do you

think of it?”

“Well, I think the general has another think coming.”

Griswold had followed all this with a look of bemused

fascination. Kawee looked more or less relaxed by now, too.

Timmy just looked queasy.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The first shots were fired at our minivan no more than

fifteen minutes later as we drove south on Ratchaprasong Road.

Nitrate sensed what was about to happen when motorcyclists

pulled up on either side of us simultaneously. As he gunned the

engine, I caught just a millisecond’s glimpse of the raised long-barreled revolver pointed at my side of the van. Nitrate did an

instant U-turn — southbound traffic was heavy, northbound

lighter — and shot northward. The second van in our convoy

followed, and I could hear shots fired behind us.

Ek, in the seat behind me, had shoved open his window and

was ready to fire at anybody within sight who was firing at us,

but Pugh said something in Thai and Ek held his fire. Pugh told

me, “We’re not gonna kill anybody on the street. We’ll get on

the expressway. No motos are allowed on the expressway.”

Pugh was on his cell phone now, consulting the second

minivan, driven by Egg. Griswold was in the second van,

Timmy and Kawee were in ours. Kawee was taking all this in

with a look of intense curiosity. Timmy just looked numb.

Still on his phone, Pugh said to us, “Egg’s van took fire, but

no one was hit.”

Timmy was next to me, clutching my thigh. Kawee, on the

other side of Timmy, was hanging onto an armrest and looking

this way and that.

One of the motos came at us again from the left. As the

driver raised his arm, Ek veered into him hard, and the

attacking moto went over on its side and slid at high speed into the oncoming southbound traffic. There was a lot of crashing

and banging behind us, but Ek straightened out the minivan

and sped ahead. The other minivan was close on our tail, with

the expressway entrance just ahead.

At the last second, Nitrate swerved onto the freeway, where

motorcycles were not permitted. The second van was keeping

pace with us, and so was the second moto guy, not a law

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abiding citizen. As we shot down the ramp and onto the

expressway, the gun-wielding cyclist was making a pass at the

van Egg was driving. I turned around and watched as Egg

slowed briefly, and an object shot out the side window of the

second minivan and hit the moto gunman hard on the side of

the head. The object splattered and the motorcycle flipped end

over end, its driver doing cartwheels parallel to the vehicle, a horrifying choreography of metal and flesh dancing in tandem

along a long ribbon of concrete.

Kawee exclaimed, “Oi, oi, oi. He in hell now.”

Timmy had been looking more traumatized by the minute,

though I knew he would survive all this when he peered over

and said to me, “I feel as if I’ve gone to the movies for a picture I really wanted to see, and first I had to sit through an entire day and a half of noisy, stupid trailers for movies I would not dream of paying money to look at.”

“It’s the story of your life with me, Timothy. You moved in

with Marcello Mastroianni and woke up with Bruce Willis.”

He laughed lightly.

I asked Pugh, “What was it that hit that guy on the bike?”

“Miss Aroon’s durian. Normally I discourage my employees

from carrying this large, spiky, melonlike fruit along on

operations. Some Thais find its pungent smell enchanting, and

some Thais — like most farangs — consider its stench

revolting. But Miss Aroon needs her durian and usually has one

stowed under the seat of the vehicle she’s in. She had one along today, and of course, she has a strong right arm and impeccable

aim.”

One of the Thais in the car said something in Thai that

made the others guffaw. Pugh said, “He asked, ‘How do we

know she used her arm?’”

We had slowed to a normal speed now and the other

minivan was close behind as we moved steadily eastward and

then, I noted on the overhead signs, southward. Pugh’s phone

sounded and he spoke briefly and then instructed Ek to pull