Richard Stevenson: The 38 Million Dollar Smile

“It was actually a video. A DVD, they said. I didn’t want to see it and really didn’t need to. Duane said they had showed it to Bill and Ellen, and that’s when they were told to get in touch with me. Bill and Ellen, in fact, were given a copy of it. Of course, they probably destroyed it immediately.”

“Did you tell them that Hubbard and Mertz had come here to blackmail you and that you had acceded to their demands?”

“No. My plan is to inform them after the takeover of the company by my Thai investment group and the transfer of the shares to the Sayadaw project. That would have been on the twenty-seventh, but now it’ll be the eighteenth, which is even better. There’s less chance that anything will go wrong if we wrap this up posthaste.”

“There may be a hitch,” I said.

Griswold stiffened. “What hitch?”

“Ellen and Bill know what you are up to. She called me.

They are plenty upset about the company takeover. And they also know that you know about the Hubbard-Mertz connection. I seem to have indirectly and inadvertently tipped them off about that. Sorry. But it might actually be good that all the Griswolds are finding out what all the other Griswolds are thinking and what each of you is up to. And unless all of you lie through your teeth even when you are face-to-face, some useful clearing of the air might be about to break out. That’s because Ellen and Bill are en route to Bangkok as we speak. They’ll arrive later this afternoon.”

Griswold went white. “Oh no. Do you realize what this could mean, Strachey?”

“What?”

“More sorrow and bloodshed.”

Griswold sat looking over at me from between his bandages, his eyes full of desolation and fear. I wasn’t sure if he was uncannily prescient or if he basically just needed to stay off bicycles.

Griswold would not agree to see his brother and sister-inlaw until the day after their arrival late Thursday afternoon. He said this was for their own safety. On Friday, Griswold said, a change of government would remove General Yodying from power, and he would no longer be a threat to any of us. Friday would also, of course, be too late for Bill and Ellen to talk Gary into holding on to the controlling shares of Algonquin Steel instead of turning them over to the Thai group running the Sayadaw U project. I asked Griswold about that, and he said,

“Yep. Too bad.”

Griswold was kept under close watch at the safe house through the day, and then while Nitrate picked up Bill and Ellen at Suvarnabhumi. They were coming in on the same flight from New York that Timmy and I had arrived on six days earlier.

Kawee, Mango and Timmy splashed around in the swimming pool throughout the day. I had a brief swim too, and also managed to reach Bob Chicarelli in Albany just before he went to bed.

“Hey, Bob, somebody you were asking about Hubbard and Mertz blabbed to Bill and Ellen. They’re spitting nickels. It isn’t pretty.”

“I know. Sorry, Strachey. They’re trying to get me disbarred.”

“Can they?”

“Nah. I’m not representing them in anything.”

“Me either. I’m not sure I’m representing anybody. At this point, it’s all for the Enlightened One.”

“Don’t forget to send him a bill.”

“So, did you pick up anything on Hubbard and Mertz?”

“They’re in Albany and not doing all that great. Hubbard is back working as a personal trainer, and Mertz is supposedly dealing crystal meth. They got hold of a lot of money 248 Richard Stevenson somewhere last fall, but they lost it. Some guy from Miami conned them out of it with a scheme to open a Mexican fast-food chain where you could also work out. But then this dude disappeared with most of the dough. It was going to be called Taco Terrifico or something like that.”

I told Chicarelli that Ellen and Bill Griswold were at that moment high above the Pacific en route to Thailand to confront Gary. “Gary thinks Ellen and Bill had Sheila Griswold killed by Hubbard and Mertz, and he’s determined to ruin their lives. Their present lives anyway. Over here people make those distinctions. I’m not sure what Bill and Ellen know or think, but they absolutely deny any involvement in Sheila’s death. The only really sure thing is, we’ve got quite a face-off in the works over here.”

“It might interest you to know,” Chicarelli said, “that Hubbard and Mertz used to dabble in gay porn. They’re a little too mature for that by now. But a guy I know in the DA’s office said there was a gay porn video production operation in Schenectady for a while in the nineties, and those two were involved in both production work and performing.”

“So Schenectady was the Budapest of the Mohawk Valley? I never knew that.”

“It didn’t last, apparently.”

I said, “Was it just gay? Or did they do bi stuff, too?”

“That I can’t tell you.”

“Well, good luck keeping your license, Bob”

“You too, Strachey.”

The Oriental Hotel, where the Griswolds had chosen to stay despite their apparent precarious financial state, had retained its cachet but only a little of its former Victorian-era charm. The ghosts of Conrad and Maugham did not greet us as Pugh and I strode past the doorman toward the elevators. But even the rooms in the modern tower section of the hotel were spiffy and THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 249 spacious and had a nice view of the hotel’s riverside gardens and the dragon-tail boats on the Chao Phraya beyond.

The rooms also had TV sets with built-in DVD players, and that was useful for taking a gander at the video Pugh and I were about to watch along with Ellen and Bill.

“I’m really hurt,” Ellen said to me, “that Gary would think I could kill another person. I thought he knew me better than that, and this really all just breaks my heart.”

“Gary and I were never close,” Bill said, “and I know he rejects many of my values. But same as Ellen, I’m really just terribly, terribly disappointed that my brother would see me as a person who would take a human life.”

“Even Sheila’s,” Ellen added and threw me a look.

The Griswolds were not their freshest. Both had showered and changed clothes before Pugh and I arrived just after eight Thursday night. But the seventeen-hour slog across the Pacific and the twelve-hour time difference had beaten them down, and they looked as if they could have used a week on the beach at Phuket instead of a confrontation with a man bent on making them pay for committing a murder they denied having anything to do with.

Ellen had flopped onto an easy chair in her aubergine pantsuit and tangerine headband, and Bill was seated at the desk in fresh khakis and a white polo shirt. Here was the man I remembered from the Albany airport ten days earlier, a beefier version of Gary, with thinning hair and puffy dark eyes. He had popped a piece of Nicorette gum soon after Pugh and I arrived, and I felt for the guy. Having your wealth and your life’s work crumbling while you were in nicotine withdrawal was a lot of people’s idea of hell. I wondered if he would make it through the next few days without bolting down the street to pick up a pack of Marlboros, which in Thailand were required by law to display hideous pictures of rotting gums on the front of each package.

The Griswolds did not appear pleased to have Pugh in the room — their handshakes with him were brief and perfunctory 250 Richard Stevenson

— but they apparently accepted my explanation that he was the man who would keep us all safe while these complex Griswold family matters got sorted out.

I laid out Gary Griswold’s story that he had let himself be blackmailed by Hubbard and Mertz in order to keep Bill and Ellen from going to prison and to protect the memories of Bill and Gary’s parents. They both shook their heads and threw up their hands.