The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard (е книги TXT) 📗
Pugh said, “And what if Mr. Gary is unwilling or, God
forbid, unable to underwrite our efforts and those of the
hardworking Royal Thai Police? What if we track him down and
he laughs in our faces and tells us all to go do what is
anatomically impossible for most people — not that there aren’t
exceptions to that rule at certain clubs I could mention in
Surawong? Or what if we locate Mr. Gary and he is penniless?
This could get complicated, I think.”
“If Griswold can’t produce whatever cash that’s needed,
then I’ll go down to the ATM on Rama IV Road near the
Topmost and stand there for half an hour with my MasterCard
pumping bahts into a bag. That won’t be a problem. Please go
ahead right now and make whatever sleazy arrangements are
appropriate with your sleazy police department’s sleazy higher-
ups.”
Pugh and Panu both squinted at me and nodded.
I remembered Timmy’s warnings to me about getting mixed
up in this case. Timothy, the grounded one. Timothy, the
sensible one. Timothy, the seer.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“So, Bob. What’s the deal with the Griswolds? What I’m
dealing with here seems to be not exactly what it seemed to be
when you sent Ellen Griswold to me to track down her
wayward ex-husband and wayward current brother in-law in
Thailand.” I explained what had transpired in the previous
twenty-four hours and asked the lawyer, “So, what I want to
know from you is, can the Griswolds be trusted, or what?”
I had reached Chicarelli on the golf course Sunday morning
in Clifton Park, near Albany. When I called his house, his wife
was reluctant to violate the sanctity of Chicarelli’s Sabbath golf game by blabbing his cell phone number for a business matter.
But when I said the urgent situation I was calling about had to
do with the Griswolds, a name of consequence in Albany, she
recited the number pronto.
“They’ve got Timmy? Christ, Strachey, have you notified the
US embassy? They’ve gotta bring in the FBI, would be my
thinking. Going at this on your own sounds very risky to me.”
“It may come to that, but my Thai sources say the cops here
are more effectively inspired by cash than by hectoring from
farangs in suits. There’s a big DEA station here, but I’d probably have to convince those guys that there’s a major heroin
shipment involved in order to get their attention.”
“You might want to consider saying just that.”
“I might, in the end. For all I know at this point, it could
even be true. But what about the Griswolds? What’s the story
with them? Ellen sends me flying over here and gives me pretty
much carte blanche to do anything I can to save her ex and his
thirty-eight mil. Then she e-mails me some lame crap about he’s
A-okay, it’s all a misunderstanding, and come on home. Plainly
the guy really is up to his ears in some stinking mess involving influential fortune-tellers and who knows what kind of criminal
weirdos. It seems like half the goons in Bangkok want to get
hold of Griswold and…I hate to think. Give him a shove. My
106 Richard Stevenson
question to you is, why would Ellen call me off? What’s her
game here? It’s possible that Gary lied to her about being safe, but why would she be so ready to believe the lie? Bob, I’m
confused.”
There was a long pause — was Chicarelli taking time out
from my call to pick some grass off his four iron? — and then
he said, “I shouldn’t be telling you this.” More silence.
“Yeah?”
“It could be financial.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Bill Griswold has serious money troubles, I’ve heard from
people who would know. It’s possible all of a sudden that
maybe the Griswolds think they cannot afford you.”
“That sounds unlikely. I’m a monetary tiny speck in their
scheme of things.”
“No, this is big and it’s significant. There’s a hostile takeover underway at Algonquin Steel. A holding company operating out
of the Caymans is busy rolling up shares in the Griswold’s
zillion-dollar family store. Bill Griswold is fighting it, and there’s a high probability that the family’s assets will be tied up in
litigation for years to come. Bill and Ellen may land on their feet eventually, but the family well is going to be shallow-borderingon-dry for the foreseeable future. All this just developed on Friday, so that could help account for Ellen’s change of plans.”
“I was somewhere over the Pacific on Friday. At least she
didn’t call the airline and demand that they turn the plane
around.”
Chicarelli laughed once. “She might have. That’s Ellen.”
“Anyway, what you’re suggesting doesn’t sound right. It’s
not like the Griswolds are suddenly penniless. And surely Ellen
would not cut her ex-husband off if she believed he was in real
danger. And again, if he contacted her and told her he was not
in any danger, why would she believe that? She thinks he’s
borderline bonkers these days. It’s possible, I suppose, that he’s got some scheme in mind to save himself, and my poking
around is screwing that up somehow. But if that’s the case, why
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 107
wouldn’t Griswold just explain that to me, and I’d have another
helping of fried crickets and then head home. No, there’s
something screwy about the way all the Griswolds are behaving.
Anyway, now I have no choice but to get to the bottom of the
entire bizarre mess and get Timmy out of Thailand. You know,
he didn’t really want to come here. He thought it would be dangerous. I talked him into it.”
“People by the thousands go there and have a wonderful
time,” Chicarelli said. “Isn’t Thailand called the Land of
Smiles?”
“That’s what I told Timmy. It’s true, too. But nobody, Thai
or otherwise, who has anything to do with the Griswolds is
smiling these days. What’s that about? That’s what I want to
know.”
“Jeez, Strachey. Now I’m sorry I ever sent Ellen to you. I
figured: Thailand. Gay. Free ride. Big bucks. I thought I was
doing you a favor. And I was helping out Ellen, too. She’s
somebody you don’t want to make unhappy if you can avoid
it.”
“She’s formidable. Though I kind of like her, even if I don’t
quite trust her.”
“This didn’t come from me, but did you ever hear the stuff
about Ellen and the demise of Bill’s first wife?”
“What stuff is that?”
“Sheila Griswold, Bill’s ex, was a vindictive lady who made a
career of making his life miserable after the divorce. Hounding
him endlessly for more, more, more. I knew Sheila’s attorney,
Hal Woolrich, a total scumbag who’s now in Waterbury for tax
evasion. Anyway, Sheila disappears on a Caribbean cruise and a
lot of people thought she went overboard with a little help from others on the boat. Among the merrymakers on the ship that
night were Ellen’s personal trainer, Duane Hubbard, and
Hubbard’s boyfriend, Matthew Mertz. They were pretty scuzzy
characters. Mertz had a history of coke dealing and at least one assault conviction. Word got back to Albany — probably by
way of Woolrich — that these two were on the ship when
108 Richard Stevenson
Sheila disappeared, and a number of people who knew the
situation wondered if maybe Bill and Ellen put those two up to
turning poor Sheila into shark bait. Anyway, there was never
any evidence and, because of jurisdictional confusion, no
investigation to speak of.”
“Ellen told me,” I said, “that her husband was a suspect in
people’s minds in his ex’s disappearance, but not that she was.
