Richard Stevenson - The 38 Million Dollar Smile

“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.”

“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.

“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

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 earlier.

Moving through the premonsoon Bangkok night heat felt more like swimming in swamp water than walking through air, and our polo shirts were soon drenched. The part of Sathorn we passed through was a mix of city office towers and apartment buildings on the main streets, and smaller shops, restaurants, and food stalls on the sois that ran off them. The street food was as aromatic as I remembered it, and we paused for some noodles in a pork broth with herbs. We sat on tiny stools at a tiny table on a sliver of sidewalk and were served from a tiny cart with a full kitchen inside it that was operated by a small nuclear family. Timmy said it was the best food he ever ate. It cost a dollar, not that Ellen Griswold wouldn’t have sprung for two.