The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 47
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phoned someone in Bangkok for assistance, it will take two or
three hours for them to get somebody down here. Word is out
around Hua Hin that we are looking for Griswold. This could
speed locating him, but it also runs the risk of one of Yodying’s local admirers being tipped off as to our presence and also to
Griswold’s being on the loose.”
I said, “If Griswold has friends in Bangkok who can protect
him in these circumstances, why couldn’t the same people have
protected him while he was hiding out over the past six
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 207
months? There seems to be a piece of all this that we don’t yet
know about.”
“A single piece? Khun Don, you are such an optimist.”
While we all ate, the Thais who had known him talked about
Griswold and what a bundle of contradictions he was to them.
Pugh said, “He was a man of the mysterious Occident.”
Kawee told about how he had met Griswold at Paradisio
and how Griswold had been forthright in telling him that he
was attracted to very butch men and Kawee was too feminine
for them to have any kind of sexual relationship. Kawee said
this even as he stood up to reach for more rice and his
enormous bulge all but brushed my nose. He went on to tell in
his breathy voice how he and Griswold had become friends,
based on their spiritual quests and yearnings, and that each had learned from the other’s stories of suffering in life and how
each had come to understand how suffering is the beginning of
wisdom. Kawee told of losing his friend Nonkie to malaria, and
he said Griswold told of losing his first Thai lover to a disease with similar symptoms: fever, chills and weakness. They
commiserated with each other, and they learned to fully
appreciate what they had when they had it but also to accept the transitory nature of all things.
I said, “Griswold had a Thai boyfriend who died? I didn’t
know that.”
“It was long time past,” Kawee said. “Maybe eighteen fifty-
eight.”
“Back when he was Thai himself?”
“Of course.”
Mango recounted the sad tale of his time together with
Griswold, whom he admired for his spiritual depth and
searching, and told of the breakup over the question of sexual
fidelity. “I was too sorry for the bust-up,” Mango said. “Mr.
Gary was nice man and good lover. Also, he very rich. Lot of
money is big plus.”
208 Richard Stevenson
I said, “Apparently something else very bad happened soon
after you two broke up, Mango. Something that actually
changed the way Griswold saw his life.”
“Yes, and that was when bad men find me and ask me
where Mr. Gary go. Bad luck for me. Bad luck for Mr. Gary.
Khun Khunathip saw it in chart. Sadness and blood coming.
Soon they come.”
Kawee said, “Mr. Gary too sad for Mango, too sad for other
things. Then also everything be worse. That when two farangs
come.”
“Two Westerners?”
“Two farangs come and Mr. Gary crying. Too, too sad when
farangs come from America.”
“Two Americans made him cry? What was that about?”
“I don’t know,” Kawee said. “He no tell me. But two men
come. Then Mr. Gary change big investment plan. He go bank
every day. He meditate at wat. Soon he leave condo and hide.
He change. He angry. He sad. I make offerings and I water
plants.”
“Did you ever meet these two men?”
“One time.”
“What were their names?”
“They no say. They not nice. They say, where good gay
massage? I say where and they go. My friend Tree say they try
fuck him no condom. He say no, and they no tip.”
Pugh asked, “Were these men living in Thailand or visiting?”
“Just come from America,” Kawee said. “Then go back
America. They no stay long. Two days, maybe three.”
I asked Kawee to describe the two. Doing so was beyond
the limits of his English, so he did it in Thai and then Pugh
translated. “The men seemed to be in their early forties,” Pugh
said. “Definitely American — Kawee knows the accents of the
Westerners who sojourn in Thailand — and a bit rough around
the edges. Not the sort of international business types you
might expect to come calling at Griswold’s condo. One was a
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 209
dark-haired man who had bleached his hair blond. They looked
like they had been muscle boys once but were over-the-hill.
Drinkers, too, Kawee believes, with unmistakable beer breath at
high noon. Shady characters, it seems, and I suppose we can
surmise, intimately connected with whatever sent Khun Gary
spinning off into financial, spiritual and personal mysterious
activities the minute these two nasty pieces of work left town.”
I asked Kawee if he knew where these men had been staying
in Bangkok. “At the Malaysia Hotel,” he said. “First Malaysia,
then Grand Hyatt. They move, they tell Mr. Gary. I hear them
say this, and they laugh.”
“The Malaysia,” Pugh explained, “is a midrange tourist hotel
not far from the Topmost. The Grand Hyatt is what the name
sounds like. It’s a high-end international business travelers and tourist hotel near Siam Square. Apparently these scruffy
characters were upwardly mobile even during their brief,
unpopular stay in Bangkok.”
Timmy said, “It looks as if Griswold may have given them
money. Or they must have gotten it from somebody else during
their short stay in Thailand. Could they have been investors in
the currency speculation scheme that was abandoned, and they
were the first ones to demand and receive their money back?
Though, from Kawee’s description, they don’t sound all that
Wall Street.”
I said, “The currency speculation deal was just local, I’d
guess. Wouldn’t you say, Rufus?”
“If the esteemed former minister of finance was involved,
the scheme likely involved only a prestigious circle of Thai
scalawags. In any case, investors in that unfortunate incident
lost all their dough. And those who complained got a nice
shove from a precipice for their trouble.”
“But,” Timmy said, “maybe these visiting Americans were
the first ones in line and they threatened Griswold. He paid
them off with his own money and then went into hiding before
the other ripped-off investors went wild.”
210 Richard Stevenson
“The timing is wrong for that scenario,” I said. “We’re
confusing cause and effect. Griswold pulled out of the currency
speculation deal, causing it to collapse, just after these guys
showed up and may have received money from him.”
I asked Pugh if he could use sources in the banks where
Griswold kept his money to check on large withdrawals or
transfers around the time of the visit by the two Americans.
“That would be illegal,” Pugh said. “Banking privacy laws
preclude any such inquiries.”
“Yes, but can you do it?”
“Of course.”
“It would help,” I said, “if we knew exactly when these two
guys were in Bangkok. Is there any way of figuring that out?”
Kawee said, “October fifteen.”
“How do you know that?”
“I remember. One and five. It was day of unlucky sixes. The
bad Americans come. My Aunt Sunthorn have birthday number
sixty. She fall in cinema and break leg.”
Pugh said, “Did the Americans arrive on October fifteenth
or depart on that date?”
“They come Bangkok on fourteen, I think. They phone Mr.
Gary. They come condo fifteen. They go way sixteen maybe.”
Timmy looked at me and said, “Who needs computers?”
I said, “I’m pretty sure that the bulk of Griswold’s funds are
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