The Griswolds shot each other a Who-is-this-guy? look.
Ellen said, “Thanks for clearing that up. Now I can just close my eyes anytime I feel like it and drift toward the white light.”
I said, “How did Hubbard and Mertz know that Gary was in Thailand with a lot of cash in the bank? They told Gary that you sent them his way.”
Bill said, “They knew about Gary from another one of Duane’s clients, a man Gary had dated when he was still in Albany and who had tried to contact Gary on a visit to Key West. Gary’s friends there told this guy what Gary had done — left the company and moved to Thailand. Duane and Matthew told us if we didn’t pay them — they wanted something laughable, like half a million dollars — they would go to Gary and show him the DVD and tell him what a slut Sheila was, and did he want this gross family stuff turning up at six and eleven on Channel Thirteen?”
“As if Gary would give a crap,” Ellen said.
“As if we would,” her husband added.
“Well,” Ellen said. “Of course we would care if Bill’s ex turned up on the news in the altogether with those two dorks, her face and tits all blurred out to save the Hudson Valley grannies and kiddies who were watching from wondering what that was all about. Yes, we would care. But not to the tune of half a million dollars. Or even half a million — what’s the currency here?”
“Baht,” Pugh said.
“Yes, or even half a million of those. Bill told Duane and Matthew to get lost. We never heard another word, and 252 Richard Stevenson naturally it never occurred to us that they actually followed through and went after Gary for money. It all just seemed too preposterous.”
Pugh said, “It is my duty to inform you that pornography is illegal in Thailand. That does not mean that it is not ubiquitous.
Nonetheless you are breaking the law by possessing the DVD you have brought into the country, and I hope you do not end up in one of our notorious, squalid, soul-destroying prisons for eight or ten years. But anyway here we all are, so let’s have a look.”
The Sheila Griswold who soon appeared on the hotel room’s TV screen was quite a specimen: rangy, taut, bright-eyed, nicely coiffed and made-up, and above all, eager and versatile. On the fifty-minute video — much of which Bill Griswold fast-forwarded through — the notorious JAP did everything but shop. Hubbard and Mertz were also physically well put together: muscular, fine skinned, with better-thanaverage endowments. And while equally busy, the two men seemed perceptibly more keen on each other’s parts than on the ex-Mrs. Griswold’s. Though they did do what the DVD’s producers apparently had required of them, and at every opportunity Sheila Griswold was ready to help out.
Ellen had only just glanced at the video from time to time while Bill, Pugh, and I sat paying attention.
“Jesus,” Ellen said when The End came on. “If any of you fellows need to go take a shower, feel free. Me, I could use a beer.” She was seated near the minibar and got up and extracted a Singha.
I said, “So this is why Hubbard and Mertz were on the cruise ship with Sheila when she disappeared? What was it?
They were blackmailing her too? Making her pay for their Caribbean vacations?”
Ellen laughed. “If only.”
“Sheila was paying those two to travel with her and service her,” Bill said evenly. “It was one of the expenses I was expected to pick up after the divorce.”
“Too sad,” Pugh said. “It sounds like a Thai soap opera.
Except, in Thai soap operas of this kind, murder often is the result.”
“What I still don’t get,” I said, “is why Gary ever believed that Hubbard and Mertz had proof of the murder accusation.
This DVD certainly would not serve that purpose.”
“In Thailand it might,” Pugh said. “And Khun Gary had been living here and could conceivably have picked up some of the local attitudes.”
“But he never even saw the DVD.”
“Perhaps,” Pugh said, “he wished to believe the worst of his brother. Is that a possibility, Mr. Bill?”
Again, Ellen and Bill glanced at each other. He nodded and said, “It could have happened that way.”
“That may make it harder,” Pugh said, “to talk your younger brother out of the transaction he is determined to conclude in a matter of hours — a transaction that will be detrimental not only to your financial well-being but to your reputation in the larger society. I know face is less important among farangs than among Thais. But may I please be the first to offer you my deepest sympathies for your coming out of all this with an awful lot of egg on your face.”
It was then that Bill Griswold said he needed to have a look in the minibar too.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Pugh and I rode back to the safe house and went up to Griswold’s room. We relayed to him Ellen and Bill’s version of events.
Without hesitation, Griswold said, “They’re conning you.”
“Maybe. But we don’t think so.”
“Hubbard and Mertz didn’t say a thing about a sex tape.
That makes no sense. They told me their tape had evidence of a murder on it.”
“It was a bluff, and you fell for it. That’s what Ellen and your brother think.”
Griswold’s face drooped. “But if they didn’t have Sheila killed — if she just got drunk and fell overboard — that would mean my whole exercise in atonement and trying to restore moral balance for me and my family has been — pointless.”
“Making merit is never without its reasons,” Pugh said.
“And never without moral benefits for the merit-maker and for the human race.”
I said, “I’d like to suggest that you at least see Bill and Ellen and hear them out before you take the final step. What’s to lose? It might even make it easier for you. Tamp down doubts.
Clear away any pangs of conscience. Maybe they’ll even see how worthy a project the Buddhism center is and want to make a big contribution.”
“But the deed is practically done,” Griswold said. “I’ve already accumulated controlling shares in Algonquin Steel. They are in my name now, but unless I intervene the shares will pass over to Khun Anant and his group at noon tomorrow, and the consortium will begin work on the Sayadaw U project immediately.”
Pugh said, “These valuable shares of stock are going through Khun Anant? Oh, Khun Gary, I don’t know.”
256 Richard Stevenson
Now Griswold twitched. “But this is all for the propagation of the Four Noble Truths. How could Anant dare to interfere with such a worthy endeavor?”
Pugh shrugged. “Hypocrisy, as I believe I have mentioned previously, is not unknown among Buddhists. Do you really believe that Christians and Jews have a monopoly?”
Griswold looked at Pugh and then at me and then back at Pugh. Finally, he said, “I’ll talk to Ellen and Gary first thing in the morning. Just to cover all the bases here. Can you set that up?”
“Of course,” Pugh said. “Tomorrow is Friday, April eighteenth, an auspicious day by anyone’s reckoning.”
“But my plan is to go ahead with the project,” Griswold said. “Whatever Ellen and Bill might have to tell me about Sheila and her death, it’s really too late to back out of the Sayadaw U project. I’ll explain it all to Bill and Sheila and try to make them understand. Anyway, they have been such staunch supporters of so much in America and the world that is greedy and destructive, they really do need to have their souls cleansed even if they have not committed murder directly. Which I am not yet convinced that they have not.”
I said, “You’re going to ruin their lives because they’re Republicans, Griswold? That’s harsh.”
“Oh, I don’t think so at all. No, unless Bill and Ellen can tell me something I don’t already know about themselves and me and the lives all of us have led, I really see no reason to postpone the Sayadaw project at all. Also, I can’t quite bring myself to believe that Khun Anant would attempt to cheat me.