Richard Stevenson: The 38 Million Dollar Smile

Friends said both men had been despondent after losing money in a business investment that had not worked out.

Bill Griswold was just barely able to wrest back control of Algonquin Steel. A sizable minority share of the company remained with a group whose base was in Singapore, although Griswold found out that this organization was almost certainly a front for unidentified Thais.

I learned about Algonquin Steel’s fate when I ran into Ellen Griswold at the Subway shop down the street from my office in the early fall of that year. She was a morning-shift volunteer at the fund drive for the public radio station across from my building, and she had stopped in at Subway to pick up some eats to take home for her kids’ lunch.

“Well,” she said, “if it isn’t the man who swindled me out of

— how much was it?”

“I actually lost money on your case,” I said. “Or broke even at best. And I didn’t appreciate your trying to have my business-class plane ticket back to New York downgraded to coach.

Somebody Rufus Pugh knows at Thai Airways tipped him off, and he told me what you were trying to pull.”

“The airline basically told me to go fly a kite. I was just terrifically upset at that point. So was Bill.”

“But he’s still CEO at Algonquin, I see. So you two landed on your feet well enough, it looks like.”

It was then that she told me about the legal machinations — as well as a sizable cash payment to the group in Singapore — that enabled the family to retain control of the company.

“So you must have some fairly bitter feelings about Thailand,” I said. “Your experience with the place was less happy than mine was in the end.”

“Yes, for a while that was true. But it’s all worked out for the best between Bill and me and Thailand. Bill is opening three Econo-Build stores in Bangkok next year and one in Chiang Mai. In fact, he’s in Bangkok right now working on the financing. Three of the younger army generals are investing, as well as a few others. I’m actually looking forward to going along on Bill’s next trip. Both of us have always loved travel, and we travel well together. It’s one of the best things about our basically good marriage. Speaking of significant others, how is your partner Timothy? Has he fully recovered from his nearplunge-off-a-balcony ordeal?”

“Timmy came through all of that less traumatized than you might expect,” I said. “In fact, he’s so enthusiastic about Thailand that we’ll probably take a winter vacation there.”

“If we’re there at the same time, maybe you could join us for dinner at the Oriental. You could pay. On second thought, that might not work. Bill still holds you responsible for siding with Gary in his absurd attempt to give away Algonquin Steel to a group of religious fanatics.”

“I know you’re not in touch with Gary,” I said. “I’ve spoken to him a few times in Key West. He seems to be doing okay, but he did not speak well of either of you two.”

“No, the misunderstandings between us were just too ugly and complicated to sort out. It’s all just kind of sad and pathetic, is what it all is.”

“Gary was especially disturbed to find out that the two men who extorted two million dollars from him, Duane Hubbard and Matthew Mertz, died in falls from a building half a dozen blocks from here not long after we all got back from Thailand.

He thinks you and your husband had something to do with their deaths.”

She sighed theatrically and slowly shook her head. “Here we go again!”

“I guess it is far-fetched,” I said. “Unless, of course, the sex-movie DVD you showed Pugh and me in Bangkok wasn’t the proof-of-murder recording those guys claimed to possess, and there was a second, very different CD somewhere that some of us have never seen. And Hubbard and Mertz tried to blackmail 278 Richard Stevenson you and Bill a second time. And you had had just about enough of those two bozos, and you hired somebody else — is there a Thai community here in Albany? — to get those two pests out of your hair once and for all.”

She looked at me evenly and said, “You know, Strachey, when I hired you, I have to admit I wasn’t sure what my own motives were. I really did care what happened to Gary. I loved him once — for his moral seriousness and for his truly good heart. And I really did not want anything terrible to happen to him or to his money. But I confess I was also worried at the time about whether Duane and Matthew had turned up in Bangkok and maybe planted some screwy ideas in Gary’s head.

Idiotic ideas like the one you have just outlined. And lo and behold, it turned out that that’s precisely what happened. I thought you might smoke all that out, and you did. So I guess I must be some kind of soothsayer myself, wouldn’t you say?”

“I want you to know, Ellen,” I said, “that Timothy and I live just over on Crow Street in a two-story townhouse. We don’t plan on moving into a high-rise building in the foreseeable future. Or maybe even visiting one for a while.”

She seemed to decide that I was joking, and let loose with a good-natured snort.