The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard (бесплатные книги полный формат .txt) 📗
This is quite a fascinating family you’ve gotten me involved
with, Bob.”
“Yeah, well, Strachey, you send them a billable-hours
statement the first of the month and payment arrives by the end
of the month. Or has so far. Just how fucked-up the Griswolds
may be, I don’t really know. But Christ, if I’d ever thought
Timmy was going to get hurt on account of the Griswolds, I
would never have sent Ellen to you. This just stinks to high
heaven, and I am so, so sorry.”
“Timmy hasn’t gotten hurt on account of the Griswolds.
He’s gotten hurt because of me. So, what became of these two
characters, the personal trainer and his beau, Hubbard and
Mertz?”
“I have no idea. Would you like me to find out?”
“Nah. There’s no real need to know. This all happened —
what? Fourteen or fifteen years ago?”
“Something like that.”
“If you can easily track these guys down, do. Otherwise, I’ve
got plenty of other unsavory characters to keep my mind
occupied. What you might do, though, is try to get an
explanation from Ellen as to what’s going on here. What did
Gary actually tell her yesterday that made her fire me from the
case? I’ve tried phoning her and will try again, and I’ll e-mail her too. Maybe she’ll open up to you.”
“Possibly. Though in my dealings with Ellen over the years
I’ve sometimes wondered if she wasn’t holding back on a few
important details of whatever it was.”
“Now you tell me.”
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 109
“Yeah, well. Have you ever had the perfect client? What
you’re always dealing with are human beings. It’s a hazard of the workplace OSHA can’t seem to do anything about.”
I gave Chicarelli my Thailand cell phone number and asked
him to call me anytime he developed any clue at all as to what
the Griswolds were up to. He wished me luck springing Timmy
and Kawee. I said, “Do you believe in lucky numbers?”
“No. Can’t say that I do.”
“Me neither. I’ve always believed that when good things
happen in circumstances that are beyond our control, that’s
what we call luck. Likewise with bad things. The Thais believe
that events can be manipulated through managing the symbols
of luck — rituals, amulets, wielding the right numbers, prayer. I would try any of that if I thought it would help keep Timothy
safe. But now I look around me here — at the shrines, the
temples, the stupas, the spirit houses — and none of it seems
like anything that will help bring Timmy back. In fact, it all feels like it’s part of what took Timmy away from me and put his life
in danger. And I feel as if I’m not only in danger of losing
Timmy, but that I’m losing Thailand, a place I love. It’s awful.”
“Get Timmy back,” Chicarelli said, “and I’m guessing your
love of Thailand will follow.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “First things first.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When General Yodying Supanant of the Royal Thai Police
declined to order all of the fourteenth floors in Bangkok
searched without payment in advance of the fifty-thousand-baht
fee he charged for this service — he called it a “gift” that would go toward a new wing for a Buddhist monastery in Ubon
Ratchathani — I rode with Pugh over to the ATM around the
corner from the Topmost with a Robinson’s Department Store
shopping bag Pugh had in his car. It took awhile for me to
repeatedly insert my MasterCard and extract a total of fifty
thousand baht from the machine, including time-outs to stand
aside politely and allow others who wished to use the ATM to
withdraw their more modest amounts.
Pugh sat nearby on a stool at an espresso stand and sipped
coffee from a tiny paper cup. Two young woman had set up
their own miniature Starbucks-like operation, about four feet by four feet, the electric coffeemaker powered by a cable that ran
up the side of a building and vanished into the fat spaghetti
maze of black wires strung just above the sidewalk along Rama
IV Road. I remembered Timmy’s story of one of the earliest
Peace Corps deaths. A volunteer was killed not by a wild animal
or an obscure tropical disease but by electrocution while playing poker with four Thais during a thunderstorm. I recalled this as a characteristically Thai way of dying prematurely, and now I
could add defenestration to any such list.
As Pugh sat watching me extract currency from a humming
and blinking machine on the side of a building, it occurred to
me that he might be wondering if he would be left in the lurch,
now that Ellen Griswold was about to sever my expense
account bounty. I assured Pugh that he would be paid, no
matter what. He said, “I only doubted that for a nanosecond.”
Detective Panu refused to participate in the delivery of the
“gift” to General Yodying — having made the initial setup calls, Panu then pointed out to me in a dignified tone that bribery
112 Richard Stevenson
was illegal in Thailand, and he had no intention of physically
handling the tainted bahts — so Pugh said he would make the
delivery. We swung by a police station on Sala Daeng Soi 1 and
Pugh pranced in with the shopping bag and out again in less
than a minute.
I said, “Will this guy follow through?”
“I believe so.”
“It’s a lot of money.”
“Is Yodying a crook? Without doubt. But for the moment
he is our crook, Khun Don. He’s what we’ve got.”
“Rufus, you’re so reassuring.”
We had used the scanner at the Internet cafe/seamstress
shop and e-mailed Timmy’s passport photo to the general.
Within a matter of hours, supposedly, a police sweep of all the
fourteenth floors in greater Bangkok would be undertaken.
Each cop would be armed with a picture of Timmy and a
description of Kawee down to the fuchsia toenails.
I said, “So, are there also six hundred judges issuing several
thousand search warrants for all those fourteenth-floor
apartments and offices?”
“No,” Pugh said. “You would have to pay extra for that. But
don’t sweat it.”
Pugh took a call from Jampen Noo, his field supervisor. She
told him the surveillance team was in place inside and outside
the Internet cafe in On Nut from which Griswold placed his
phone calls to Kawee. If Griswold showed up, they would
snatch him and hold him as unostentatiously as possible in a
van parked nearby until Pugh and I could get there.
Meanwhile, Pugh and I headed back over to Griswold’s
condo to look for the laptop computer Timmy said he and
Kawee had found in Griswold’s ground-floor storage bin. Mr.
Thomsatai greeted us with a deep and respectful wai and the
phoniest Thai smile I had ever witnessed. Why was this guy not
behind bars? That was going to have to wait, along with a
number of this case’s other nagging deferred matters.
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 113
We looked through the storage bin and found nothing there
of use. More art books. A couple of empty canvas travel bags
with Miami-Bangkok airline baggage tags still affixed. There was also what looked like a bike-riding helmet.
I asked Thomsatai, “Does Griswold have a bicycle?”
“Mr. Gary have bike. Good bike. Italian. But it is not here. I
think he took it to where he go.”
Pugh said, “I’ll tell my crew to watch for a possible arrival at the Internet cafe by bicycle.” He made a quick call and did so.
Up in the apartment, the rooms looked surprisingly
undisturbed, given that a forced abduction had taken place
there several hours earlier. Apparently Timmy and Kawee had
