“I’d hate to fall off one of these things. Like Geoff Pringle.”
“It’s not how anybody wants to die.”
Griswold’s dining room had a well-crafted teak dining table in the center and eight semicomfortable-looking teak chairs around it. The most interesting object in this room was not the dining table, however, but a carpeted two-foot-high platform off to the side, upon which rested an elaborate shrine. It was a Hindu temple-style spirit house like the ones found outside many Thai buildings, including modern office towers, where offerings were left to appease the natural spirits displaced by the 62 Richard Stevenson structures. Griswold’s building had one near the main entrance, as did Pringle’s, and our hotel.
Griswold’s personal spirit house had a seated Buddha statuette inside it, about a foot high, in the raised left palm mudra. This is the attitude of the Buddha’s hand that means you are in the presence of the Buddha; do not be afraid. Freshly burned incense lay in a dish in front of the spirit house and its pleasantly scratchy aroma still hung in the air. The garlands of marigolds, jasmine, and rose blossoms that lay in front of the shrine, brownish and wilting, appeared a day or two old.
I said, “Griswold is really into it. He’s sincere.”
“So is somebody else with a key to this apartment.”
“We need to talk to the super again.”
In the bedroom, a king-size bed with cream covers was pristinely un-slept-in. In the closet, there were plenty of designer label, warm-weather clothes, but empty spaces too, and no luggage. The bedroom art and decoration continued the astrological motif, with more stars, planets, and numbers flying around. There were no rich-gay-guy paintings or prints with muscular male nudes striking I’ve-been-waiting-for-YOU poses or clutching a rope.
Timmy and I did not have to seek out Mr. Thomsatai to find out who had been entering Griswold’s apartment, for now the manager reappeared. He had quietly let himself in, found us in the bedroom, and asked if we were finished with our visit.
I asked him, “Have other people been in the apartment besides us? Someone has watered the plants. And left offerings.
Or do you do that?”
“No, no. Kawee has a key. Kawee comes sometimes.”
“Who is Kawee?”
“Kawee is Mr. Gary’s friend.”
“Thai?”
“Of course.”
“When does Kawee come?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I see him. He has a key.”
“No one else comes?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Have others such as myself come looking for Mr. Gary?”
“Of course.”
“Who?”
“Thai man. I don’t know his name. He comes sometimes and asks where is Mr. Gary. He comes on a motorbike. He is unfriendly. I don’t like him. He asked me to phone his mobile if Mr. Gary comes.”
“How much did he pay you?”
“One thousand baht. Like you.”
I produced another note. “Have you got this man’s phone number?”
“Of course.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I’m confused,” I said to Rufus Pugh. “I thought you were probably American.”
“Yeah, ha-ha. This happens all the time. Some clients get up and walk out.”
“I find it reassuring that you’re Thai.”
“Yes, it helps to be Thai if you’re operating in Thailand.
You’ll see.”
Pugh, Timmy, and I were in the Topmost dining room for the breakfast buffet. Timmy had his papaya and yogurt, I my omelet, and Pugh four slices of pineapple and a side of bacon.
“So, is Rufus your real name?” Timmy asked. “It sounds so…I guess American.”
“No, the name my parents gave me was Panchalee Siripasaraporn.” Pugh spelled it out, letter by letter. “But we Thais are not so rigid about names as you foreigners are. It can be confusing, I know. Sometimes Thais change their names.
And we have different nicknames for different situations and relationships. Am I making myself unclear?” He laughed.
Pugh was a wiry little man who looked tough as old lemongrass. I could imagine somebody trying to fish bits of him out of their tom yam kung. He had the dark-faced, flat-nosed look of the North, meaning he was a man who got what he needed in Thai society with his wits and industry and not with his looks or his family history. What he had that was almost universally Thai was his humor.
“But why ‘Rufus Pugh’?” Timmy asked. “It doesn’t sound anything like your real name.”
“I picked the name up when I went to Duke,” Pugh said.
“Oh, you went to Duke? I went to Georgetown.”
“How long were you there?” Pugh asked.
“How long? Four years.”
66 Richard Stevenson
“Well, I was only at Duke for a week. I was visiting my friend Supoj. He had a roommate named Rufus Pugh. I liked the sound of it. Oh, have I confused you gentlemen again?
When I say I went to Duke, I mean I went to Duke on a Greyhound bus.” He chuckled.
I said, “Where did you take the bus from, Rufus? Not Bangkok.”
“From Monmouth College, in West Long Branch, New Jersey. I was there for one semester. Then I came home and completed university at Chulalongkorn in Bangkok. It was cheaper. That way, my three sisters had to fuck only three thousand seven hundred and twelve overweight Australians to put me through college instead of five thousand two hundred and eleven.”
Timmy said, “I’m sorry. God.”
“No need. This was twenty years ago. Now two of them are back in Chiang Rai with their lazy husbands, and the other married one of the large mates and lives in Sydney. I help them out — I look forward to getting my hands on some of the Griswold megabucks — and my wife and children are not big spenders. Neither is my girlfriend. But I do need to hustle.
That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
“How did you turn into a PI?” I asked.
“I was in the police, but eventually I started feeling guilty about being on the wrong side of the law. How about you, Mister Don?”
“Army Intelligence originally. I also had ethical issues.”
“I’ll bet. That must have been the US Army.”
“In the seventies. I was here a few times.”
“In Bangkok?”
“Bangkok and Pattaya.”
“I was a child at the time. But maybe you fucked one of my sisters. Or me. I picked up some spare change on a few occasions.”
“No, no youngsters for me. Anyway, I’d remember you.
You make an impression, Rufus.”
He smiled again, briefly, then said, “If you were in the American military, then you must know that the Thai military has its corrupt elements.”
“I do know that.”
“Parts of it are busy ruthlessly stamping out the drug trade, and parts of it are busy buying and selling drugs. Some elements do both. The police are often involved, and also our authoritarian neighbors, the Burmese generals, as well as the Burmese generals’ authoritarian friends, the Chinese.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“I bring this up,” Pugh said, “because you told me that your Mr. Gary Griswold planned on investing thirty-eight million US dollars and making a quick killing.”
“That’s what he told someone. It may not be true.”
“With that kind of money, we may be talking drug deal.
Heroin, yaa-baa, who knows? If that is the case, his family is correct to fear for his well-being. So let’s hope he was up to something else.”
“A drug deal,” I said, “would be seriously out of character for this guy.” I told Pugh about Griswold’s discovery of Buddhist philosophy and meditation, his deepening interest in past lives, astrology and numerology, and on top of all that his infatuation and then de-infatuation with the mysterious Mango.
“I think,” I said, “that Griswold would consider heroin dealing, what with all the social harm involved, unethical if not downright evil. Unless, of course, it’s Mr. Mango who’s the gangster here, and it was Griswold’s discovery of that that led to his disillusionment with Mango. And he actually believed he was investing in something else.”