“Oh God. Maybe that’s it. This could be even worse than

we thought.”

“Well, worse or not worse. What had Gary spent large sums

of money on in the past?”

She screwed up her face to the extent she was able to. “Not

much. Art. Art books. Fancy European bicycles. His condo.

Gary lived comfortably and liked having money. But he was no

serious spender.”

“Did he give money away?”

“I’d say he was like his parents. Generous, but responsible. I

know he gave to arts groups and to human rights organizations.

But I would be very surprised if he ever went into capital for

charitable giving. Of course,” she said, “I’m talking about

before Gary started losing his marbles and babbling about past

and future lives and all that garbage. God knows what was

going on inside his brain six months ago when all this looniness apparently came to a head.”

“Gary’s friends in Key West have wondered if his falling off

his bike during a race and landing on his head brought about

some kind of personality change. Do you know about this?”

“What? No. How bizarre.”

“The timing could have been coincidental.”

“Gary never mentioned this to Bill or me. Was he

hospitalized?”

“Just briefly, with a concussion.”

“Wasn’t he wearing a helmet?”

“He was. But I guess the brain can still get badly rattled

around in a crack-up.”

“Well, this is a new one. So, somebody thinks Gary’s brain

was injured, and he suddenly started hallucinating about past

lives in Thailand, and maybe he gave his money away to the

poor people of Asia or some weird thing like that?”

“It’s far-fetched, I know.”

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 51

“Anyway,” she said, “if Gary was going to drop thirty-eight

million in a monk’s alms bowl, why would he have to disappear

in order to do it? No,” she went on, “I don’t think so. Weird

bump on the head or no weird bump on the head, I think

something bad happened to Gary in Thailand that he was not

expecting and which he had no control over. Something totally

external. And that’s what I am paying you a lot of money to

uncover and — if it’s what’s needed — do something about it.”

Her summary was a sound one, I thought, and her

continuing concerns about Griswold’s well-being justified.

Both our fears were only heightened when my cell phone

rang and it was Lou Horn with the news that the Key West

Citizen was reporting the death of Geoffrey Pringle in Bangkok.

The newspaper said the man Gary Griswold had visited on his

initial trip to Thailand — and later apparently had had some

major disagreement with — had died three days earlier in a fall

from his twelfth-story condominium in Bangkok’s Sathorn

district. The death appeared to have been a suicide, the

newspaper reported, although Thai officials had said that was

uncertain.

CHAPTER SIX

“You said it would be hot here in April,” Timmy said. “But

this is ridiculous. It’s like India.”

“This is a good sign,” I said. “You’re already getting

sentimental.”

“Anyway, I’m just happy to be off that plane.”

“Maybe we’ll be lucky and die here, and we won’t have to

get back on the plane and sit immobilized for another seventeen

hours.”

“Please don’t say that.”

We were waiting in the taxi queue outside Suvarnabhumi

Airport in Bangkok. The night I got home from Key West,

Timmy had left a note on my pillow. At first, I thought he had

forgotten to gather up an official document of the New York

State Assembly, an uncharacteristic untidiness on his part. Then I saw that it was a message for me, composed following our

Atlanta airport–Albany phone conversation of a few hours

earlier. The note read: “About you and me falling in love with

Asia again — sign me up!”

I had told Ellen Griswold that my aide and I preferred flying

business class, and she had replied, “Of course. Are you

kidding?” But even with Thai Airways orchid-garnished entrées

and comely cabin attendants of both sexes, we were glad to be

on the ground after the nonstop slog and standing out-of-doors

in the soaking heat.

“This doesn’t look like India at all,” Timmy said, once we

were in the taxi speeding down an eight-lane expressway.

“Bangkok looks more like Fort Lauderdale or San Diego.”

“What does India look like?”

“Oh, Schenectady.”

“Anyway, this is not the Bangkok I remember — all these

skyscrapers. This is the shiny all-new Asia. In the seventies,

54 Richard Stevenson

Bangkok was still mostly quaint, filthy canals and teak houses

on stilts.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“No,” I said, “I’m sure that just below the surface it’s still

very much Thailand,” and noted the Buddha figures on the

dashboard and the amulets and garlands of jasmine dangling

from the rearview mirror. Getting into the taxi, I had had a

back-and-forth with the driver, Korn Panpiemras, over whether

he would lawfully employ the meter or we would instead pay an

extortionate flat rate — we eventually settled on the meter —

and this ritual also was reassuringly Thai.

As we approached the city center, the late-afternoon traffic

was nearly as thick as the air, and we didn’t reach our hotel until almost seven o’clock. The Topmost-Lumpinee, described on a

gay-travel Web site as “gay friendly” and convenient to gay bars and clubs — and not far from Gary Griswold’s last known

address — was a pleasant tourist hotel with a spacious lobby

adorned with gold-leafed Siamese dancers and smiling

elephants. In the time it took to fly from JFK to Bangkok, the

dollar had declined even further against the Thai baht — and

most other currencies — but the Topmost still looked like a

bargain at under fifty dollars a night.

When the bellhop checked our room key, he exclaimed

happily, “Nine-oh-nine! A lucky number!”

When we got up to 909, however, the key didn’t fit. “Oh,”

the kid lugging our bags said with a dark look. “It is six-oh-six.”

Inside the unlucky room, Timmy headed for the shower and

I phoned Rufus Pugh. This was one of the Bangkok private

investigators my New York PI friend had suggested I try. I had

liked the look of Pugh’s Web site. It said he spoke fluent Thai

and employed Thai investigators. Other Web sites I looked at

made no such claims, even though they all seemed to be run by

foreigners. Also, most of the others specialized in “cheating

husbands” and “cheating girlfriends,” and Pugh Investigative

Services also listed background checks, surveillance, due

diligence and, significantly, missing persons. So I had e-mailed THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 55

Pugh, and he replied that I should phone him when I got to

Bangkok.

I reached Pugh on his mobile, and wherever he was, the

reception was poor. He said he was tied up on a stakeout with a

team, and we made a plan to meet for breakfast at eight at the

Topmost. Pugh had an accent of some kind that I couldn’t

place. I figured with a name like his it had to be Arkansas or

Louisiana.

Timmy and I had slept on the plane, thanks to Griswold

family business-class largesse. So we picked up a Bangkok city

map at the hotel front desk and set out to have a look at

Griswold’s apartment building on the way to dinner. It looked

like a twenty-minute walk. And I soon saw on the map that

Geoff Pringle had lived less than half a mile away from

Griswold before he died in the fall from his balcony a week