us. He had a couple of boyfriends in Key West — one of them

fairly long-term — but we never met them or knew exactly who

they were. Whether it was internalized homophobia or

something else, I don’t know. What I do know is, Gary didn’t

seem to fully come out and grow up as a gay person until he

went to Thailand.”

She blinked a couple of times, realizing she may have

blundered.

“So your ex-husband is not a grown-up, and at the same

time he is a grown-up?”

“What I meant,” she said, recovering handily, “was that on

the one hand Gary seems finally to have found a way of being

comfortably gay. While on the other hand, his long-term

happiness and well-being have been seriously jeopardized by his

fiscal irresponsibility, his susceptibility to Eastern religions —

there was at least one sizable investment decision Bill and I

learned was suggested by his astrologer — and by his choice of

boyfriends over there. The last one he mentioned to me — in a

short note about some estate business before we stopped

hearing from him — was a Thai man named Mango.”

“That’s vivid.”

“You’ve been there, and you may know better. But I would

find it very difficult to take seriously a man named Mango.”

I said, “On some Bangkok R and R from Saigon, I once

spent a pleasant weekend with a Thai man named Bank. He had

a brother named Book. Thais sometimes give their children

English nicknames of objects they value. So I wouldn’t make

too much of that.”

14 Richard Stevenson

Mrs. Griswold took a good swallow of beer and said, “Well,

then, Don, let me run a very different name by you, and let’s see if this gets your attention.” She waited.

“Ready when you are.”

She said, “Algonquin Steel.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Max J. Griswold.”

“Oh, so you all are those Griswolds. If you were Thai, you might have named your son Blast Furnace. Or your daughter.”

“The company Gary and Bill’s grandfather founded is

publicly traded now,” she went on. “But Gary and Bill both

retained substantial holdings. Last August, Gary sold his shares for thirty million dollars and change. Bill learned this from Alan Rainey, the company treasurer. Alan also told Bill that when

Alan questioned him, Gary said he had been offered an

investment opportunity that was too good to pass up and would

lead to his recouping his investment many times over in a short

period of time. It was easy enough, also, for Bill to learn from Angie Hogencamp at Hughes-Weinstock, our brokerage, that

Gary had liquidated all of his remaining eight million in assets and had all of it — thirty-eight million in toto — wired to a

bank in Bangkok.” She eyed me coolly and waited for my

reaction.

I said, “Remind me never to do business with Hughes-

Weinstock if I want my portfolio activity kept confidential.”

She ignored this and added, “All of this bizarre and

potentially disastrous financial activity coincided with the arrival of Mango on the scene and came a little less than a month

before Gary…”

She waited and I said it. “Seemed to fall off the face of the

earth.”

“And by the way,” Mrs. Griswold said. “Blast Furnace

would not be an appropriate Griswold name. The company has

steel wholesale and fabricating facilities in eleven states — plus, of course, the nationwide Econo-Build home and building

supply chain of stores — but no actual steel mills. Anyway,

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 15

most of the steel sold and used in the United States these days

comes from Japan, Korea, Russia and Brazil. I think it’s safe to say few Griswolds have ever laid eyes on a blast furnace.”

I did not reply that Bill and Ellen Griswold might then have

considered naming their only son Middleman. I thought about

it quickly and said, “I guess I have to agree, Ellen, that the

situation you have described to me does sound worrisome.”

CHAPTER TWO

“Thirty-eight mil?” Timothy Callahan was impressed.

“That’s getting close to being real money these days. Not for

some major CEO, who might find thirty-eight million stuffed

into his Dick Cheney’s-birthday-bonus envelope. But for the

family screwup, it sounds like a perfectly respectable sum to

fritter away in the tropics.”

We were dining late at a Thai place on Wolf Road after my

meeting with Ellen Griswold and were enjoying some decent

tom yam kung and steamed rice. I was eating around the

flavorsome but inedible debris in my soup bowl — the

lemongrass, galangal root and kaffir lime leaves — and Timmy

was picking his out of the bowl, bit by bit, and arranging them

on a separate small plate he had requested.

I said, “Gary Griswold wasn’t always a screwup, and that’s

partly why his family is concerned. He did the marketing for

their Econo-Build stores in Florida for six years and turned

them into serious competitors with Home Depot. Then he ran

an art gallery in Key West that wasn’t a big moneymaker, Ellen

Griswold said, but apparently succeeded well enough. It wasn’t

until he discovered the quirky charms of Bangkok that he

apparently flipped out money-managementwise. If, in fact, he

did. Griswold claimed he was investing the thirty-eight million

in a sure bet with a quick payoff.”

Timmy transferred another reed of tough lemongrass out of

his soup bowl and said, “My Aunt Moira once lost five

thousand dollars in a Ponzi scheme.”

“I’ll bet a priest told her it was okay.”

“He was probably running it.”

“Another reason to worry,” I said, “is this business of the

astrologer Griswold once accepted investment advice from.”

“Griswold bought Enron?”

18 Richard Stevenson

“No, Ellen said it actually worked out. Some land deal in

Bangkok. But all the Griswolds were fit to be tied at the time.”

“There you go. You’re always so skeptical about the relative

positions of the planets and stars on erroneous charts drawn up

centuries ago affecting people’s personalities and events in their present-day lives. Let this be a lesson.”

“Anyway, in the go-go Southeast Asian economy, most land

deals probably work out these days. Also, that investment was

about three hundred K, and now we’re talking thirty-eight

million, Griswold’s entire net worth. And the fact that he seems to have broken off all contact with his family sounds bad. He

never said a word to them about moving or dropping out of

sight or that anything had gone wrong. All he said in his last email was that something had come up that would keep him

busy for a while and he might be out of touch, but not to worry.

Then, for six months, nothing. He just seemed to…you know.”

“Fall off the face of the earth?”

“Exactly.”

Timmy said, “And then there’s Mango, the refreshing

tropical fruit drink.”

“The Griswolds know nothing about him, just that

apparently Gary Griswold was seriously smitten. Mango may

have nothing to do with either the investment, so-called, or the seeming disappearance. It is true, of course, that Thailand

harbors more than its share of sexually alluring flimflam artists.

Somebody once rudely called the country a brothel with

temples.”

“So,” Timmy said, “are you flying over? You’ve talked for

years about going back to the region for a visit.”

“Ellen Griswold’s retainer is ample and her expense limit

high. So, sure, it makes sense. Once I’m there, it shouldn’t take long. Griswold probably cut a swath.”