manifestations — into a hell beyond our imagining but not quite beyond his.”
I told Pugh about the phone call from Bob Chicarelli and my belief that Griswold and some Thai investors were behind the takeover of Algonquin Steel. “So Griswold, I think, is so obsessed with this corporate raid and using it to punish his brother, and to atone for some long-ago Griswold family sin, that he’ll do anything to be able to operate freely until the twenty-seventh of this month.”
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“Ah, yes,” Pugh said. “Two and seven.” He seemed to think this explained a lot.
Ek appeared with the take-out food he had picked up before Griswold bolted. As he spread the containers of rice and soup out on a table near the pool, along with spoons and chopsticks, Ek spoke to Pugh in Thai in a tone of self-deprecation and apology. He was plainly mortified that he and Egg had let Pugh get away, but Pugh spoke back to him consolingly.
Pugh said in English, “Ek blames himself for Khun Gary’s flight. But it was a collision of karmas — his bad, Griswold’s good — and he is not to blame. Not, at least, in the present circumstances. I told him, however, that he should (a) make an offering to the spirit of the Enlightened One at the earliest opportunity, and (b) get his ass back out there and drag that SOB Griswold back here pronto. The guy couldn’t have gone far. Though first, of course, Ek must have rice.”
We all dug in, the Thais considering their food as they ate it as if it was both fun to eat and holy.
Kawee had stripped to his thong and had been enjoying a swim with Mango, and soon they both came over to the table for some eats. Noting the uncommonly large bulge in skinny little Kawee’s thong, I glanced at Timmy, who nodded, and I thought, Holy Moses.
Ek ate quickly and soon left to help with the search for Griswold.
Pugh said, “The chances are good that if Griswold has phoned someone in Bangkok for assistance, it will take two or three hours for them to get somebody down here. Word is out around Hua Hin that we are looking for Griswold. This could speed locating him, but it also runs the risk of one of Yodying’s local admirers being tipped off as to our presence and also to Griswold’s being on the loose.”
I said, “If Griswold has friends in Bangkok who can protect him in these circumstances, why couldn’t the same people have protected him while he was hiding out over the past six months? There seems to be a piece of all this that we don’t yet know about.”
“A single piece? Khun Don, you are such an optimist.”
While we all ate, the Thais who had known him talked about Griswold and what a bundle of contradictions he was to them.
Pugh said, “He was a man of the mysterious Occident.”
Kawee told about how he had met Griswold at Paradisio and how Griswold had been forthright in telling him that he was attracted to very butch men and Kawee was too feminine for them to have any kind of sexual relationship. Kawee said this even as he stood up to reach for more rice and his enormous bulge all but brushed my nose. He went on to tell in his breathy voice how he and Griswold had become friends, based on their spiritual quests and yearnings, and that each had learned from the other’s stories of suffering in life and how each had come to understand how suffering is the beginning of wisdom. Kawee told of losing his friend Nonkie to malaria, and he said Griswold told of losing his first Thai lover to a disease with similar symptoms: fever, chills and weakness. They commiserated with each other, and they learned to fully appreciate what they had when they had it but also to accept the transitory nature of all things.
I said, “Griswold had a Thai boyfriend who died? I didn’t know that.”
“It was long time past,” Kawee said. “Maybe eighteen fifty-eight.”
“Back when he was Thai himself?”
“Of course.”
Mango recounted the sad tale of his time together with Griswold, whom he admired for his spiritual depth and searching, and told of the breakup over the question of sexual fidelity. “I was too sorry for the bust-up,” Mango said. “Mr.
Gary was nice man and good lover. Also, he very rich. Lot of money is big plus.”
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I said, “Apparently something else very bad happened soon after you two broke up, Mango. Something that actually changed the way Griswold saw his life.”
“Yes, and that was when bad men find me and ask me where Mr. Gary go. Bad luck for me. Bad luck for Mr. Gary.
Khun Khunathip saw it in chart. Sadness and blood coming.
Soon they come.”
Kawee said, “Mr. Gary too sad for Mango, too sad for other things. Then also everything be worse. That when two farangs come.”
“Two Westerners?”
“Two farangs come and Mr. Gary crying. Too, too sad when farangs come from America.”
“Two Americans made him cry? What was that about?”
“I don’t know,” Kawee said. “He no tell me. But two men come. Then Mr. Gary change big investment plan. He go bank every day. He meditate at wat. Soon he leave condo and hide.
He change. He angry. He sad. I make offerings and I water plants.”
“Did you ever meet these two men?”
“One time.”
“What were their names?”
“They no say. They not nice. They say, where good gay massage? I say where and they go. My friend Tree say they try fuck him no condom. He say no, and they no tip.”
Pugh asked, “Were these men living in Thailand or visiting?”
“Just come from America,” Kawee said. “Then go back America. They no stay long. Two days, maybe three.”
I asked Kawee to describe the two. Doing so was beyond the limits of his English, so he did it in Thai and then Pugh translated. “The men seemed to be in their early forties,” Pugh said. “Definitely American — Kawee knows the accents of the Westerners who sojourn in Thailand — and a bit rough around the edges. Not the sort of international business types you might expect to come calling at Griswold’s condo. One was a dark-haired man who had bleached his hair blond. They looked like they had been muscle boys once but were over-the-hill.
Drinkers, too, Kawee believes, with unmistakable beer breath at high noon. Shady characters, it seems, and I suppose we can surmise, intimately connected with whatever sent Khun Gary spinning off into financial, spiritual and personal mysterious activities the minute these two nasty pieces of work left town.”
I asked Kawee if he knew where these men had been staying in Bangkok. “At the Malaysia Hotel,” he said. “First Malaysia, then Grand Hyatt. They move, they tell Mr. Gary. I hear them say this, and they laugh.”
“The Malaysia,” Pugh explained, “is a midrange tourist hotel not far from the Topmost. The Grand Hyatt is what the name sounds like. It’s a high-end international business travelers and tourist hotel near Siam Square. Apparently these scruffy characters were upwardly mobile even during their brief, unpopular stay in Bangkok.”
Timmy said, “It looks as if Griswold may have given them money. Or they must have gotten it from somebody else during their short stay in Thailand. Could they have been investors in the currency speculation scheme that was abandoned, and they were the first ones to demand and receive their money back?
Though, from Kawee’s description, they don’t sound all that Wall Street.”
I said, “The currency speculation deal was just local, I’d guess. Wouldn’t you say, Rufus?”
“If the esteemed former minister of finance was involved, the scheme likely involved only a prestigious circle of Thai scalawags. In any case, investors in that unfortunate incident lost all their dough. And those who complained got a nice shove from a precipice for their trouble.”
“But,” Timmy said, “maybe these visiting Americans were the first ones in line and they threatened Griswold. He paid them off with his own money and then went into hiding before the other ripped-off investors went wild.”
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“The timing is wrong for that scenario,” I said. “We’re confusing cause and effect. Griswold pulled out of the currency speculation deal, causing it to collapse, just after these guys showed up and may have received money
