Richard Stevenson - The 38 Million Dollar Smile

Pugh got on his own phone, made a call to people close to Seer Thammarak Visetchote, the soothsayer working with the younger, anticorruption army officers. Then he hung up and gave me thumbs-up. “Four nineteen!” he shouted and gave a little hop.

Kawee, Mango and Miss Nongnat shared a cab back to Sukhumvit, though Kawee said he wanted to drop by Griswold’s condo on the way and water the plants and light some candles.

Just after noon, as Timmy and I were walking back to the Topmost, we noticed military vehicles moving in convoys up ahead on Rama IV Road. We walked on past the hotel and watched as the trucks soon pulled over on the main thoroughfare and soldiers poured out of the trucks across the road near the kickboxing arena and the night market. We could make out other groups of soldiers down the road toward the Silom metro station, as well as four tanks.

Timmy said, “Tanks. There’s something we don’t see on Central Avenue in Albany.”

People were coming out of all the restaurants now, and the shops and 7-Elevens, and traffic was starting to clog up. Small groups were forming, and some of the people in them had radios and every few minutes a cheer went up. There were occasional bursts of laughter. We overheard somebody say in English that in just a few minutes His Majesty King Bhumibol would be making a statement to the nation about the change in government.

Timmy said, “It’s a Land of Smiles coup d’etat. It’s the best kind, if you’re going to have one.”

Soon there were sirens, and traffic parted for an army convoy of SUVs with flashing lights coming from the north. In the mess of traffic, the convoy had to slow briefly to a crawl as it went by us, and we caught a glimpse of a big man in a police uniform inside the middle vehicle seated between two smaller army commandos. No other police were visible anywhere. The senior police officer in the SUV appeared to be in army custody, and Timmy said, “Could that be who I think it is?”

“It does appear to be who you think it is.”

“It looks like he’s under arrest.”

“Yeah, unless this is yet another feint.”

“The politics here do resemble Albany politics in the mid twentieth century when the O’Connell machine ran it.”

“But the O’Connells didn’t smile so much.”

“I guess we’d better wait and see how all this shakes out,”

Timmy said. “But have our bags packed just in case.”

“You really like this place, don’t you? And these sweet, formal, spiritual, humorous people.”

“I do like Thailand. A lot. If we had come here under any other circumstances, I can imagine being totally smitten with the place.”

“You predicted back home that we might get hurt by the culture’s nasty underside. And we did. You especially. Will you ever forgive me for almost getting you tossed off a balcony?”

272 Richard Stevenson

“I think I will. Not quite yet, Donald. But soon enough.

Anyway, I’ve become much more philosophical about dying since I’ve been here. I can’t say I’ll ever believe in reincarnation, but being around people who do believe in it and who accept death as a natural part of being human has been good for my perspective. I feel more at peace here than anywhere I’ve ever been.”

“And the undercurrent of violence and corruption doesn’t just make you want to scream? Or run away?”

Timmy thought about this. Crowds were moving now toward the soldiers gathered in front of the kickboxing arena.

From where we stood, we could make out people starting to throw things at the soldiers. At first it seemed as if something was wrong and we had misunderstood the situation, and perhaps violence would suddenly break out. Then we realized it was flowers that people were tossing through the air, and some of the soldiers had wrapped garlands of marigolds and jasmine around their helmets.

Timmy said, “I hate the corruption in Thailand. I really do.

And I’m not prepared to mutter, ‘It’s Chinatown, Jake,’ and just gloomily move on. If I were Thai, I would definitely be up to my receding hairline working with the good-government groups, just like I did in Albany in the eighties. But the corruption here isn’t what’s most profoundly Thai. What’s most deeply Thai, I think, is Buddhist perspective and ethics and sane-heartedness.”

“Don’t forget sanuk.”

“Maybe that especially.”

“And of course, lying down in the early evening with some satiny-skinned butch lady-boy for a few kisses and a relaxing mutual wank before enjoying a splendid green curry under a full moon.”

“Those are definitely among the most enchanting forms of Thai sanuk.”

I said, “It’s a shame about the Griswolds. Especially Gary — the guy’s instincts were as pure as they could possibly be. He was oh so naive, but his heart was good. We have to track him down when we get home and see if we can be of any help. It’s the least we can do, since I was hired to get the guy out of any scrape he was in and I didn’t exactly succeed at that. Anyway, without Griswold, it’s unlikely we would have come here and rediscovered — discovered for the first time in your case — this magical kingdom.”

“I wonder,” Timmy said, “what really happened with Sheila Griswold? It was her disappearance that set all this craziness in motion in the first place.”

“Sometimes,” I said, “‘It’s Chinatown, Jake’ isn’t about a strange and unknowable place. It’s about a strange and unknowable family. The Griswolds may be one of those families.”

Timmy said, “Do you think we’ll ever know the truth about Sheila?”

“Maybe in our next lives,” I said. “We’ll just have to be more patient than we’re used to.”

But then people all around us began to shush one another, and us. For the king was about to speak.

Thailand was inexpensive enough for us to stay around for another eight days without breaking the bank. The coup discouraged new tourists from arriving, so it was never hard to get a table in a restaurant, and there were fewer buff Bavarians to compete with during our predinner visits to Paradisio.

Both General Yodying and Anant na Ayudhaya, choosing exile over jail, had flown to Singapore for extended stays, so it was unclear what would become of Gary Griswold’s condo.

Meanwhile, Kawee, Mango and Miss Nongnat moved into the apartment. All three had been hired by Pugh to work as operatives for him, so among them they could afford the maintenance on the condo.

A few months later, we heard from Pugh, the condo was sold for a good price. Pugh took a commission, but the bulk of the proceeds went to Griswold back in the US. He used the money to open up a Sayadaw U storefront Buddhist meditation and study center on Duvall Street in Key West. Somebody also established a Sayadaw U center in Bangkok, but it wasn’t a thirty-eight-million-dollar operation. That money had flown away, into Algonquin Steel stock and elsewhere. The Bangkok center was just a stall in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt, and Griswold’s request for a visa to attend the formal opening was denied. He never returned to Thailand, although he told us later that he had become involved with a Thai-American orthodontist in Miami who was into ballroom dancing and model railroading. Also, a friend in Massachusetts ran into the two men when they got married on a beach in Provincetown in a Buddhist ceremony.

Timmy and I were startled to read in the Albany Times Union a month or so after we returned from Thailand that two men had died when they somehow fell from the roof of the high-rise apartment building where they lived together on Central Avenue in Albany. The two were identified as Duane Hubbard, 276 Richard Stevenson a local personal trainer, and Matthew Mertz, a businessman and sometime actor. Police said it looked like an accident — tests showed that the two men were high on crystal meth when they fell — although officials were not ruling out a double suicide.