Richard Stevenson - The 38 Million Dollar Smile

And a bit of an egomaniac, I think.”

Pugh said, “What if Khun Anant’s very own soothsayer, Khun Pongsak, read Khun Anant’s chart and discovered that it is essential that events transpire in the manner Khun Don and I have just described? Wouldn’t that make a difference?”

“Of course it would. But Seer Pongsak would never do such a thing. He is a man of integrity.”

“What if you paid him half a million dollars to do it? You could write it off as overhead.”

“Bribe a seer? Has that ever been done in Thailand?”

Pugh said, “Uh-huh.”

Griswold screwed up his banged-up face and said after a moment, “I’ll have to think about that.”

“Think fast,” Pugh said. “Khun Pongsak will be here in twenty minutes.”

The great seer arrived in a gold Mercedes with two young monks in tow. He was a slight, bony fellow with gold-rimmed specs who wore a formal black dinner jacket over a Brooks Brothers button-down striped shirt. He had on a Burmese sarong instead of pants and on his feet he wore dollar-store flip-flops. His fingers bore a number of gold rings. Around his neck hung a gold amulet with a picture of a wizened monk on it. The seer’s overall presentation of himself was that of a dubious character who had gotten away with some casual shoplifting at Harry Winston’s.

The Thais all wai — ed the soothsayer. Timmy and I picked up on the cue and performed a show of respect, too. Griswold shook his hand, and the two had a brief, chatty back-and-forth like a couple of old Cornell alums. Pugh informed Khun Pongsak that rice was on the way, and we adjourned to the 236 Richard Stevenson spacious living room for some small talk next to an enormous stone Buddha figure before which candles had been lined up.

Each of us lit one.

Khun Pongsak said to Timmy and me, “So, how do you like Thailand?”

I told him that we had not had much time to enjoy its many pleasures but we hoped to do so as soon as our work was completed.

The seer did not ask about the nature of our work, but he did ask, “Have you ever been to the Trump Tower?”

Timmy and I both said we had walked by it.

“I hope one day to see the Trump Tower with my own eyes.”

Pugh said, “You should go there, Khun Pongsak. You will be amazed. The Trump Tower is made of solid gold.”

“So I have heard.”

There were some more pleasantries exchanged and then the food arrived. We sat around a teak table while Pugh’s crew served up rice, fish red curry and morning glory vines in a spicy sauce. Pugh and I had a beer, and the seer requested green tea.

Griswold asked if any chardonnay was available, and somehow a chilled bottle was soon produced.

Pugh’s staff and the seer’s monk posse were then asked to step outside the room, and Pugh got to the point.

“Khun Pongsak,” Pugh said, “as security agents for Mr.

Gary, we wish to make a request of you. General Yodying, as you may know, wants Mr. Gary taught a lesson following the unfortunate currency speculation scheme that went amiss when Mr. Gary pulled out of it. General Yodying passionately desires that Mr. Gary be thrown down from a high place and smashed to pieces. And the general’s wishes for us, Mr. Gary’s protectors, are now, we have every reason to believe, nearly identical. Mr. Gary needs to remain alive, however, because for one, he so much enjoys living and breathing, and secondly, to complete the Sayadaw U project that you yourself have invested in and which we all believe has earned the blessings of the spirit of the Enlightened One.”

“Ah,” said the seer.

“Now, we have been led to understand that General Yodying is scheduled for early retirement, so to speak, following a government shake-up which perusal of the heavens has determined should take place on April twenty-seventh. But sooner than April twenty-seventh would be so much safer and more convenient for Mr. Gary and for all of us. What if a reconsideration of the comings and goings of the planets and stars were to reveal that April eighteenth is the more auspicious date?”

We all watched the soothsayer, who was peering over at Pugh with fierce concentration.

“It is not just the charts that must be taken into consideration,” the soothsayer said finally. “It is practical considerations also.”

“But surely,” Pugh said, “if these events are fated to occur on April eighteenth, how could reality not fail to keep up?

Would the army — or whoever it is that’s prepared to move — dare to defy the karma of the occasion as it has been revealed in your latest examinations of the heavens?”

Khun Pongsak continued to stare at Pugh, and we could all but hear the whirring sounds of his brain cells attempting to rearrange themselves lucratively.

It was Griswold who spoke up. He said, “How much do you want?”

“Oh, dear me.” the seer said. “I can reveal but I cannot control what is fated.”

“Let’s say a hundred thousand US.”

“No, a million. You are asking me to alter history.”

“Two hundred thousand. That’s final.”

“I don’t think that’s final at all. You are over a barrel.”

“Two fifty.”

238 Richard Stevenson

“Eight hundred thousand.”

“You’re mad.”

“No deal.”

“Half a million. Cash.”

“All right. Five hundred thousand. Half of it in advance.

Tonight.”

Griswold said, “Well, it is all for the spirit of the Buddha, isn’t it? And for the memory of Sayadaw U.”

“This moment will live in Thai history,” Pugh said. “I congratulate each and every one of you.” He raised his bottle of Singha beer in a toast, and the soothsayer solemnly lifted his cup of green tea.

Everything began to unravel when Ellen Griswold woke me up in the middle of the night. Griswold had been successfully spirited over to his condo and back, and half a million dollars extracted from a vault that had been constructed under his spirit house. Seer Pongsak had been paid off and been driven away in his gold car. Fate had been nudged into moving our way. But then my cell phone rang at two forty-eight a.m.

“Strachey?”

“Ellen?”

“What the hell are you trying to pull?”

“I’m not sure I should explain to you what I’m doing. You fired me, and I’m working for your brother-in-law now. It’s a question of professional ethics. I think I can’t talk to you. Also, I’m half asleep.”

“What I am about to say will wake you up fast. Listen to me.

Gary is trying to take over Algonquin Steel, and I think you not only know all about it but you are a party to the conspiracy. As is Bob Chicarelli. Who probably sent me to you so that you could spy on me and keep Gary up to speed on what I know about this monstrous betrayal and what I don’t know. What you are doing is so professionally beyond the pale that I am certain I can get you disbarred. Would you like to comment on that?”

Timmy was now stirring next to me.

I said, “I’m not an attorney who can be disbarred, but there is a licensing commission for private investigators. Just Google New York State PI licenses to file a complaint. But here’s the thing, Ellen. You’ve got things really bollixed up. Where did you come up with this wild-eyed theory anyway?”

“And the other thing is,” she went on, as if I had never spoken, “you are dragging Duane Hubbard and Matthew Mertz into this, and I am so mad — and so insulted and so offended

— that I am just…beside myself with anger! Is Gary himself 240 Richard Stevenson now retailing the absurd story that Bill, or Bill and I, paid Duane and Matthew to shove Sheila off the cruise ship? Is this part of his grand plan to discredit Bill and take control of the company and come back to Albany and make us pay for something that is a pure figment of his and other people’s imaginations?”