The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard. Страница 5

garishly on your screen there. Griswold may be in trouble, and

he needs help. I’ve been hired to help him, but of course, you

don’t need to be involved.”

“I intend not to be.”

“That’s up to you.”

He said, “It’s not that I don’t get it. I agree that Griswold

could well be up to his ears in some hideous mire — a swamp

of his own making or not — and he needs somebody to come

along and drag him out. All I’m saying is, Bangkok sounds as if

it can be a very dangerous place, and I’m frightened for myself

and for you.”

“I know.”

“And the other thing is, how objective are you being about

this? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the Griswolds to hire

somebody on the scene there instead of somebody who hasn’t

set foot in Bangkok for years? Maybe,” he said, “your judgment

is a bit off because you mainly want to get back to this part of the world you once found so compelling and do it at somebody

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 23

else’s expense. And maybe reconnect with Bank or Book or

Mango or Dragonfruit or like that. Is what I have just described a distinct possibility, or isn’t it?”

A relentlessly keen-minded piece of work was my beloved. I

said, “Yes, all that is a distinct possibility. And I want you to know that I am resolving at this moment — thanks to you —

to turn into a perfectly rational human being and to behave

accordingly.”

“Uh-huh.”

I added, “In my next life.”

He seemed unamused by me, gave up and tried Jon Stewart.

CHAPTER THREE

The photograph of her ex-husband that Ellen Griswold had

given me was about a year old, she said. In it, a lithe, well-

tanned, curly-haired man in his midforties stood in front of a

frangipani tree in splendid full bloom. Griswold wore khaki

shorts and a lime green polo shirt. While not striking in

appearance, he seemed a leaner, looser version of his older

brother Bill, a tense and weary business traveler with a five

o’clock shadow whom I met briefly at the Albany airport when

his flight from Washington unexpectedly arrived only twenty

minutes late.

In the picture, Griswold’s dark eyes shone brightly as he

peered confidently into the camera lens. His full-lipped smile,

while not beatific, looked natural and relaxed. Buddhists say we inhabit our bodies only temporarily, but in this picture, at least, Griswold’s soul appeared comfortable in its then-abode.

I looked at the picture and the other material on Griswold

on the first leg of my Key West flight, a two-hour ride down to

Atlanta. Ellen Griswold had provided regular-mail notes from

Gary and hard copies of e-mails sent from Thailand. Nearly all

were addressed to Ellen, not to Ellen and Bill. In his messages, Griswold spoke glowingly of his new home — he wrote, “the

Thais are a truly free people” — and of the contentment he had

found in Buddhist ethical systems and through daily meditation.

He also mentioned being pleased with a condo he had

purchased in Bangkok. This was about eighteen months earlier,

and Ellen had included the street address in her packet.

There were several references to what Griswold termed “the

romance department.” All the romances seemed to be with

Thai men. Early in his life in Bangkok, there was Keng, “a

sweetheart of a man,” and later “delightful” Sambul, and then

“quiet” Poom. No mention was made of any of these

relationships ending. It seemed as if when one halted or

dwindled out, Griswold just moved on to another. This left me

26 Richard Stevenson

wondering what the exact nature of these liaisons might have

been.

The last boyfriend mentioned, in an e-mail dated the

previous July 17, was Mango. Griswold called him “a beautiful

man and a fantastic human being.” He also said, “This one’s a

keeper, I hope.” This was a month before Griswold sold all his

holdings in the US for thirty-eight million dollars and two

months before he disappeared.

The other material Ellen provided me, at Bob Chicarelli’s

direction, was biographical and statistical data. I noted that

Griswold had been a business major at Cornell with an art

history minor. His resume consisted mainly of marketing

positions with Algonquin Steel, the family company. He started

low at Albany headquarters then climbed steadily, with his

company career culminating in his becoming head of marketing

in the US Southern region when he was in his early thirties.

Then Griswold left the company and ran his Key West art

gallery before departing for Thailand.

On the smaller plane from Atlanta to Key West, I looked

through the Lonely Planet guide to Thailand I had picked up

that morning at Stuyvesant Books. In the “Dangers and

Annoyances” section that Lonely Planet quaintly and helpfully

includes in all its guidebooks, unscrupulous tuk-tuk drivers were listed, as well as fake-gem scams. No mention was made of

drive-by shootings or police-run massacres. The emphasis in

Lonely Planet’s Thailand was on the green landscape, the

golden temples, and the smiles.

§ § § § §

“I have to admit,” Lou Horn said, “that in retrospect we

should have seen it coming — Gary mentally and physically

sailing off into the blue. There were signs.”

Marcie Weems added, “Thailand, swell — nice people, nice

place. And Buddhism, that’s fine, too — the ethics of tolerance

and acceptance and nonviolence. And, of course, all those cute

monks with their shaved heads and gorgeous orange robes. But

astrology? Numerology? I don’t think so.”

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 27

“And before his transformation Gary was so even-keeled

most of the time,” Janice Romeo said. “And smart and fun to

be around. The four of us took trips together, and Gary was

always a delight. He was focused, yes, even obsessive about

some things, like his bike racing and his good causes. But he

was never really muddleheaded. And after he got out of the

Algonquin Steel power job sturm and drang and opened the gallery, he was pretty relaxed too. Of course, it was also around that time that he started getting into the weirdness.”

“He was weird, but still not weird,” Weems put in. “Gary

was Mister Moderate-and-Conventional with most things —

food, alcohol, dress. Key West is famous for its eccentrics, but Gary was hardly one of the seventeen thousand four hundred

and twelve local characters.”

“And men,” Romeo said. “Don’t forget men — another

area where Gary was Mister Middle-of-the-Road. No Mangos

or Pomegranates or Pomolos for the Gary we knew. He went

for Lou, to cite a nearby example. An excellent, levelheaded

choice. Lou, are you hurt that we all think of you as a merely

reasonable object of desire?”

They all laughed as Horn digested the ambiguous

compliment. We were seated at a table at Salute, an open-air

mainly Italian place along the Atlantic Avenue beach on the nocruise-ships quiet side of Key West. A half-moon hung in the evening sky behind palm fronds rustling in a warm breeze. I had

my Sam Adams and the others their Ketel One vodka with a

side of ice, apparently the national beverage of the Conch

Republic.

Horn was a broad-faced man in his late forties with a salt-

and-pepper beard, a few skin-cancer scars scattered about, a

one-time middleweight wrestler’s build now starting to respond

to the tug of gravity, and a twinkle in both his eyes and his step.

He had brought along Griswold’s two other closest friends in