“You phoned the police. But they came later?”
“Police? Ha!” He made some gesture with his head, but I wasn’t sure what it meant. It seemed to be a negative opinion.
I said, “Do you think Mr. Geoff fell accidentally or jumped from his balcony?”
The guard may not have known all the English words, but he seemed to understand the question. It was a question he must have given a good deal of thought to over the previous week.
The guard said, “Maybe fall. No jump, I don’t think. Maybe
— bee-ah,” he said, making a guzzle-with-a-bottle motion.
“Maybe he fall. Maybe bee-ah. Maybe” — he got a hard look now — “maybe I don’t know.”
I tried to learn from the guard whether any of Pringle’s friends had visited him that night, or in recent days, but I had reached the limits of the guard’s English and didn’t make any headway. I thought maybe Rufus Pugh could learn more. I wished the guard good luck, and Timmy and I walked on.
“It doesn’t sound as if there was any serious police…anything,” Timmy said.
58 Richard Stevenson
“No. I’ll try to find out.”
We turned up a quieter, less-traveled soi toward Griswold’s condo. Bangkok’s Miami-like skyline glowed in the near distance, but the prettily walled-off places along this tranquil lane were individual homes of the well-off — a lighted swimming pool was visible behind one low wall hung with flowers — and the back entrances to a couple of the smaller European embassies.
When we passed the discreetly appointed entrance to Paradisio, Bangkok’s best-known gay bathhouse, Timmy said,
“Oh, I’ve heard of this.”
“We may have to check it out in our search for Mango. Or I may have to.”
“Me get left out? I don’t think so.”
“Bangkok is full of ghosts, the Thais believe. Maybe Cardinal Spellman’s is over here keeping an eye on you.”
“An eye and a roving hand. His spirit is probably in there right now frolicking. The Holy See is way over on the other side of the world.”
“What with such things being unheard-of in Rome.”
A taxi cruised down the soi and turned into Paradisio’s palm-adorned driveway. Two farangs got out, paid the driver and went inside. Timmy said, “This could be where Griswold met some of his multiple Thai boyfriends.”
“This or any one of hundreds of other gay bars, clubs, bathhouses, and massage parlors. But since Griswold lived nearby, Paradisio is a good place for us to sniff around when we get the chance.”
Griswold’s apartment building was about a hundred yards beyond Paradisio. It was one of the tonier in a tony neighborhood, with meticulously tended gardens below and balconies above, and an easy-on-the-eye white-with-silver-trim art deco design.
The security guard standing in the driveway — apparently building guards in Bangkok were not allowed to sit and risk dozing off — returned my sa-wa-dee and smiled politely. I told him I was Gary Griswold’s brother and was looking for Gary, not having heard from him for some time. Did Griswold still live at the same address?
“Yes, but he not here now.”
“When was he last here?”
“Mr. Gary come two weeks before. Then go. No stay.”
So Griswold was alive, at least. Or had been two weeks earlier. “Are you sure it was two weeks? Not three?”
“Two weeks. Today Saturday. I no work last Saturday. Mr.
Gary too much no here. He go ’way.”
By establishing that I was Griswold’s brother, a term that in Thailand can mean sibling, cousin, second or third cousin, or close friend, I was able to engage the guard long enough to learn that Griswold had visited his home only a few times in the past half year. And those visits had been brief and late at night.
Griswold had arrived and departed by taxi and had been unaccompanied. If he had carried anything in or out of the apartment, the guard was unaware of it.
I asked if I might look inside Griswold’s apartment to see if he had received mail from me, but now I was pushing it. The guard was a slight, dark-skinned Thai, probably from impoverished Isaan in the Northeast, supplier of cheap labor for greater Bangkok. Kreng jai, the Thai highly refined attunement to social status and its rituals of deference to be shown or received, meant that as an older white foreigner I had to be catered to. But only up to a point. The security company had its own kreng jai, and this man no doubt needed his job. So he played it safe and passed me off to the building manager, Mr.
Thomsatai, who soon appeared from around the back of the building.
In black slacks and a blue polo shirt similar to mine, minus the sweat stains, the super was an older Thai who didn’t smile so readily. Here the kreng jai was also complex. Out of earshot of the guard, I told Mr. Thomsatai the truth, that I was a PI working for Griswold’s family and needed to get into his 60 Richard Stevenson apartment to check on his welfare. I thought honesty might pay off, and also it couldn’t hurt if word got back to Griswold that somebody unthreatening was searching for him. The manager sized me up, and something in his coolly noncommittal manner suggested that another Thai custom might be brought into play.
I thanked Mr. Thomsatai for the time he spent talking with me and said I wished to give him a present. I palmed him a thousand-baht note, thirty bucks, and he quickly led Timmy and me into the building and up to Griswold’s condo on the ninth floor. The man opened the door with his master key, showed us the light switches, then went out and left us.
Timmy said, “That was sleazy. Jeez.”
“Yes and no. People need to get by.”
“Oh. Okay.” For such a Peace Corps old boy, he was not big on cultural relativism.
The view from Griswold’s capacious living room was splendid, with an oasis of red tile roofs and green foliage below, along with a few turquoise-lighted swimming pools, and the office- and hotel-tower skyline beyond. The furnishings were a nice mixture of Scandinavian modernity and traditional Siamese wood and stone carvings of dancers, guardian spirits, and Buddha images. One wall was all shelves full of art and art history books. The graphic art on the wall was astrology related, signs of the zodiac and various astral and planetary configurations. One entire interior wall was covered with numbers in interlocking circular patterns. The numerical sequences seemed random, but this was not my area of expertise.
“What do you make of that?” I asked Timmy about the wall of numbers.
“I don’t know. I think there might be more nines than anything else.”
“Maybe they’re upside-down sixes.”
“Why would the sixes be upside down and not the other numbers?”
“You tell me.”
I took a picture of the wall with my cell phone. Griswold’s landline phone was dead when I lifted the receiver. He — or someone — was paying the condo fees and the electric bill, but not for a telephone. A desk in an alcove looked as if it had been where Griswold had set up a computer; a space that was now empty was just right for a laptop. There were no personal papers on the desk or in any of the drawers, just some art exhibition announcements and catalogs, none dated during the previous six months. Nothing in, on, or around the desk looked like an “investment” guide. I looked for a calendar, date book, or address book and found none. Nor was there any reference anywhere to Griswold’s bloodshed-forecasting seer.
I unlatched the sliding glass door to the terrace, and we stepped out of the fiercely air-conditioned room into the Bangkok night oven. Next to the rattan porch chairs was an array of elegantly glazed ceramic pots, some holding feathery young bamboo plants and some white azaleas. One pot overflowed with purple and white orchids. Only a few dead leaves lay around the plants — apparently sweeping up dead leaves was still a Thai national pastime — and a watering can sat in a corner.
I said, “Somebody’s been looking after the plants.”
“Who?”
“We should find out.”
Timmy peered down at the shadowy driveway far below.