The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 38
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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
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