Richard Stevenson: The 38 Million Dollar Smile

That’s all? No specifics?”

“No.”

“Did Gary tell anybody the seer’s name?”

“No.”

“Not death, just bloodshed? That was the word? And sorrow?”

“It is tantalizingly and unhelpfully vague,” Horn said.

I asked Janice how she had replied to Griswold’s unnerving e-mail, and she looked sheepish. “I never really responded, really. What I thought was, this is supermarket tabloid stuff.

Gary didn’t have to go all the way to Thailand for this. He could have picked up forecasts like that for a couple of bucks at the Winn-Dixie checkout. He said the seer was some kind of renowned figure in Thailand, but it sounded like a racket to me.

I wasn’t about to say that, though, so I just let it go. About a week later, I sent him some chirpy message about nothing at all.

I stupidly just ignored this thing that obviously was terribly important to Gary.”

“Well, if it was a scam,” Weems said, “Gary could afford it.

He had more money than God and Buddha put together.

Anyway, what could you possibly have said? Sometimes when people are acting screwy, silence from friends is the only kind and useful response.”

I asked if Griswold had informed any of the three that he had transferred his entire fortune to a Bangkok bank and that he planned on a large investment with an early big payoff. No, they said, they had not known about this until I had told Horn on the phone. “You scared the bejesus out us of with that one,”

Weems said.

“We’re just hoping that something really horrible hasn’t happened,” Horn said. “Gary has all that money over there in a part of the world that I assume can be dangerous. And then there’s the Griswold family history of violent death. It almost makes you believe in fate or karma or people being doomed by forces beyond their control or understanding. Notice I said

‘almost.’”

I said, “What Griswold family history of violent death? I don’t know about that.”

“I suppose there’s no reason Ellen would have mentioned it,” Horn said. “But Gary’s parents died in a small-plane crash fifteen or so years ago. This was just a year or two before Bill’s ex-wife, Sheila, sailed off on a Caribbean cruise and disappeared at sea. Presumably, she fell overboard, though nobody knows for sure.”

32 Richard Stevenson

So the JAP was actually the late JAP. “This is news.”

“It does help show,” Horn said, “why Gary might take predictions of bloodshed by a fortune-teller more seriously than a lot of us would.”

“It seems,” I said, “as though Gary was closer to his former wife than to his brother Bill. Why might that be true? Or am I wrong?”

“There was never any love lost between Gary and Bill,”

Horn said. “They were just two different types of animal. It was partly the gay thing. The Griswolds only accepted that grudgingly, and it just wasn’t discussed. But there were other big differences. The steel and building supply businesses never really interested Gary. He was in it for fifteen years to prove something to his family and to himself, I guess. And then he walked away from the company without giving it a second thought.”

“Plus,” Romeo said, “Gary’s brother was some kind of big Bushophile. That was certainly an issue. It was another topic that could never be mentioned among the Griswolds.”

“Gary hated the militarism of the Bush people,” Horn said.

“He was constantly giving money to peace groups and to human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. A big part of Thailand’s draw for him was the Buddhism and the philosophy of nonviolence.”

I told them I wasn’t surprised that the reality of Thailand for Griswold may have turned out to be something other than a travel-poster Buddhist paradise. “I am also fond of the place,” I said. “But if you don’t like militarism, it’s hardly the place to go.

Thailand has had a dozen or more military coups since it started electing governments in the nineteen thirties. The generals, of course, always go to the country’s beloved King Bhumibol to ask his permission to overthrow the elected government. If he ever said, ‘No, sorry, you can’t do that,’ I’m not aware of it. The place also has a thoroughly corrupt police force that’s been known to simply execute suspected drug dealers, as I recall.

And drive-by shootings are sometimes used to resolve business disputes, I’ve heard.”

The three were now looking at me queasily. I guessed I should have told them, as with Timothy, only about the reclining Buddhas. I said, “But the Thai people generally are gentle and humor-filled. And deeply spiritual. And they have a highly developed sense of fun — sanuk, they call it. Sanuk infects just about everything the Thais do.”

“Like their drive-by shootings?” Romeo asked.

The waitress arrived to clear away the antipasti platter, which we had picked clean. Griswold’s three friends, subdued now and a bit shaken, decided this would be a good time to order another round of drinks.

“Look,” I said, “I think you’re right to worry about Griswold. It’s reasonable to think that anybody vanishing in Southeast Asia with thirty-eight million dollars at his disposal has either met foul play or is in hiding in order to avoid foul play. Or — and I know you’d much rather not think about this

— Griswold has himself done something illegal, and he is in hiding not from criminal bad guys but from Thai-cop bad guys.

Which are sometimes one and the same thing, I’m sorry to say.”

They all set down their glasses of Ketel One and looked at me soberly.

After a moment, Horn said, “I guess we were hoping you would tell us things about Thailand that were more reassuring.”

“I wish I could.”

“Well, then,” Weems said. “It’s good you’re going over.

When do you leave?”

“In a couple of days, I think. I’ve booked space on both Thursday and Friday.”

“Are you going alone? Or do you have a staff?”

“I may have help. That’s unclear.”

“Poor Gary,” Horn said. “I can’t believe, really, that he’s done anything wrong himself. The guy is just so decent. So, something really bad must have happened to him. Oh, God.”

Our pasta dishes arrived, and we talked quietly about what Horn, Weems and Romeo all saw as the good life in Key West.

34 Richard Stevenson

There were rising costs and overpopulation and the threat of catastrophic hurricanes. But low-pressure island life was still the best, they all agreed and wished that Gary Griswold had not lost his capacity to be happy in this place that his friends all loved.

We were well into our lasagna and fettuccine when an acquaintance the three hadn’t seen for a while stopped by the table to greet them. Nadine Bisbee, an angular, middle-aged woman in a sarong and fourteen pounds of turquoise and silver jewelry, was introduced to me as another friend of Griswold who was quite concerned about him. Horn told her I was a private investigator preparing to fly to Thailand to search for Griswold.

“Oh,” Bisbee said, “I don’t think we need to worry about Gary anymore. Elise Flanagan saw him two weeks ago in Cambodia.”

Horn and Romeo said it at the same time. “She did?”

“It was at a border crossing. Elise was on a tour bus on her way from Bangkok to Angkor Wat with her Antioch-alum architecture history group, and there was Gary at Thai passport control heading back into Thailand from Cambodia. She yelled at him, she said, but he either didn’t hear Elise or for some reason he didn’t want to run into anybody he knew. Elise said she thought maybe he had some underage youth in tow and was embarrassed by it.”