The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 11
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“Oh God. Maybe that’s it. This could be even worse than
we thought.”
“Well, worse or not worse. What had Gary spent large sums
of money on in the past?”
She screwed up her face to the extent she was able to. “Not
much. Art. Art books. Fancy European bicycles. His condo.
Gary lived comfortably and liked having money. But he was no
serious spender.”
“Did he give money away?”
“I’d say he was like his parents. Generous, but responsible. I
know he gave to arts groups and to human rights organizations.
But I would be very surprised if he ever went into capital for
charitable giving. Of course,” she said, “I’m talking about
before Gary started losing his marbles and babbling about past
and future lives and all that garbage. God knows what was
going on inside his brain six months ago when all this looniness apparently came to a head.”
“Gary’s friends in Key West have wondered if his falling off
his bike during a race and landing on his head brought about
some kind of personality change. Do you know about this?”
“What? No. How bizarre.”
“The timing could have been coincidental.”
“Gary never mentioned this to Bill or me. Was he
hospitalized?”
“Just briefly, with a concussion.”
“Wasn’t he wearing a helmet?”
“He was. But I guess the brain can still get badly rattled
around in a crack-up.”
“Well, this is a new one. So, somebody thinks Gary’s brain
was injured, and he suddenly started hallucinating about past
lives in Thailand, and maybe he gave his money away to the
poor people of Asia or some weird thing like that?”
“It’s far-fetched, I know.”
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 51
“Anyway,” she said, “if Gary was going to drop thirty-eight
million in a monk’s alms bowl, why would he have to disappear
in order to do it? No,” she went on, “I don’t think so. Weird
bump on the head or no weird bump on the head, I think
something bad happened to Gary in Thailand that he was not
expecting and which he had no control over. Something totally
external. And that’s what I am paying you a lot of money to
uncover and — if it’s what’s needed — do something about it.”
Her summary was a sound one, I thought, and her
continuing concerns about Griswold’s well-being justified.
Both our fears were only heightened when my cell phone
rang and it was Lou Horn with the news that the Key West
Citizen was reporting the death of Geoffrey Pringle in Bangkok.
The newspaper said the man Gary Griswold had visited on his
initial trip to Thailand — and later apparently had had some
major disagreement with — had died three days earlier in a fall
from his twelfth-story condominium in Bangkok’s Sathorn
district. The death appeared to have been a suicide, the
newspaper reported, although Thai officials had said that was
uncertain.
CHAPTER SIX
“You said it would be hot here in April,” Timmy said. “But
this is ridiculous. It’s like India.”
“This is a good sign,” I said. “You’re already getting
sentimental.”
“Anyway, I’m just happy to be off that plane.”
“Maybe we’ll be lucky and die here, and we won’t have to
get back on the plane and sit immobilized for another seventeen
hours.”
“Please don’t say that.”
We were waiting in the taxi queue outside Suvarnabhumi
Airport in Bangkok. The night I got home from Key West,
Timmy had left a note on my pillow. At first, I thought he had
forgotten to gather up an official document of the New York
State Assembly, an uncharacteristic untidiness on his part. Then I saw that it was a message for me, composed following our
Atlanta airport–Albany phone conversation of a few hours
earlier. The note read: “About you and me falling in love with
Asia again — sign me up!”
I had told Ellen Griswold that my aide and I preferred flying
business class, and she had replied, “Of course. Are you
kidding?” But even with Thai Airways orchid-garnished entrees
and comely cabin attendants of both sexes, we were glad to be
on the ground after the nonstop slog and standing out-of-doors
in the soaking heat.
“This doesn’t look like India at all,” Timmy said, once we
were in the taxi speeding down an eight-lane expressway.
“Bangkok looks more like Fort Lauderdale or San Diego.”
“What does India look like?”
“Oh, Schenectady.”
“Anyway, this is not the Bangkok I remember — all these
skyscrapers. This is the shiny all-new Asia. In the seventies,
54 Richard Stevenson
Bangkok was still mostly quaint, filthy canals and teak houses
on stilts.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“No,” I said, “I’m sure that just below the surface it’s still
very much Thailand,” and noted the Buddha figures on the
dashboard and the amulets and garlands of jasmine dangling
from the rearview mirror. Getting into the taxi, I had had a
back-and-forth with the driver, Korn Panpiemras, over whether
he would lawfully employ the meter or we would instead pay an
extortionate flat rate — we eventually settled on the meter —
and this ritual also was reassuringly Thai.
As we approached the city center, the late-afternoon traffic
was nearly as thick as the air, and we didn’t reach our hotel until almost seven o’clock. The Topmost-Lumpinee, described on a
gay-travel Web site as “gay friendly” and convenient to gay bars and clubs — and not far from Gary Griswold’s last known
address — was a pleasant tourist hotel with a spacious lobby
adorned with gold-leafed Siamese dancers and smiling
elephants. In the time it took to fly from JFK to Bangkok, the
dollar had declined even further against the Thai baht — and
most other currencies — but the Topmost still looked like a
bargain at under fifty dollars a night.
When the bellhop checked our room key, he exclaimed
happily, “Nine-oh-nine! A lucky number!”
When we got up to 909, however, the key didn’t fit. “Oh,”
the kid lugging our bags said with a dark look. “It is six-oh-six.”
Inside the unlucky room, Timmy headed for the shower and
I phoned Rufus Pugh. This was one of the Bangkok private
investigators my New York PI friend had suggested I try. I had
liked the look of Pugh’s Web site. It said he spoke fluent Thai
and employed Thai investigators. Other Web sites I looked at
made no such claims, even though they all seemed to be run by
foreigners. Also, most of the others specialized in “cheating
husbands” and “cheating girlfriends,” and Pugh Investigative
Services also listed background checks, surveillance, due
diligence and, significantly, missing persons. So I had e-mailed THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 55
Pugh, and he replied that I should phone him when I got to
Bangkok.
I reached Pugh on his mobile, and wherever he was, the
reception was poor. He said he was tied up on a stakeout with a
team, and we made a plan to meet for breakfast at eight at the
Topmost. Pugh had an accent of some kind that I couldn’t
place. I figured with a name like his it had to be Arkansas or
Louisiana.
Timmy and I had slept on the plane, thanks to Griswold
family business-class largesse. So we picked up a Bangkok city
map at the hotel front desk and set out to have a look at
Griswold’s apartment building on the way to dinner. It looked
like a twenty-minute walk. And I soon saw on the map that
Geoff Pringle had lived less than half a mile away from
Griswold before he died in the fall from his balcony a week
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