where Griswold kept some of his excess belongings. There was

a laptop computer inside its carrying case inside the box. I

brought it upstairs for you to have a look at.”

“Excellent. Great. Was there anything else of interest?”

“Not so far as I could tell. It was mostly books and empty

suitcases.”

“Guard that computer with your life,” I said, “until I can get

over there. I’m going to check e-mails at the Internet café by

the Topmost, and then I’ll be right over.”

I told Pugh what Timmy had found, and he said, “Now you

guys are cookin’ with gas.”

Pugh drove me the few blocks over to the Topmost. While

he drove, he took a call from a friend at AIS, Kawee’s mobile

phone service. Pugh learned that the digital Skype phone

through which Griswold communicated with Kawee was on an

account at an Internet café in On Nut, in eastern Bangkok, on

the way to Suvarnabhumi Airport. Pugh said that within three

hours he would have a surveillance team in place inside and

outside the café, with each team member carrying a copy of the

photo of Griswold that Ellen Griswold had provided for me.

“We’re on our way,” I said to Pugh.

“Ih.” This was the common Thai word, or just sound, that

was somewhere between an exhalation and a grunt, and whose

meaning seemed to land somewhere between “yes” and “I

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 93

acknowledge that at this moment you physically exist in my

presence.”

I said, “Your team will tail Griswold if he shows up at the

café, but they won’t spook him, right?”

“Ih.”

Pugh said he needed an hour or two in his office, about a

mile away on Surawong, to bring his team together and get

photos of Griswold copied and distributed. I said I would stay

at the Internet café until he picked me up, that I needed to

check my mail. And anyway I wanted to do some online

digging.

The Internet café was a small storefront family operation,

with eight or nine computers and farang tourists and Thai

teenagers seated at several of them. Two of the owners’ kids

were snoozing on straw mats in the middle of the floor, and a

middle-aged Thai woman sat operating a sewing machine just

inside the front door. Here was an Internet café where you

could check your MySpace or Facebook accounts and have your

hemline lowered at the same time.

My Hotmail account was up to here with the usual crap, but

my eye snagged on EllenG1958, and I clicked open the

message. It read:

Dear Don,

This is to thank you in advance for everything I am assuming

you have done to locate Gary, but it turns out that all your good exertions have been unnecessary. We have heard from Gary, and

he is perfectly okay! Isn’t that terrific news?

Gary is fine, his assets are intact, and he is just incredibly

embarrassed over his being out of touch and with all the fuss that’s been raised. You must have been closing in on him, because he

heard about your being in Bangkok and your searching for him on

Bill’s and my behalf. Gary is feeling like such a dope at this point, in fact, that he would rather not see you personally and urges that you settle up with any expenses incurred in the course of your

investigation and just come on home to Albany — where spring is

finally showing signs of breaking out!

94 Richard Stevenson

Look, I know. You’re saying, what kind of BS is this? So let’s

just cut to the chase. What I’m saying to you is, I accept Gary’s explanation for his freak-out — it had to do with a personal rather than financial crisis — and Bill and I are choosing to wrap this up.

It’s my money, so it’s my cal . Enjoy a few more days in the Land of Smiles, if you like, on my nickel. And be assured that the terms of your contract with me will be honored in all respects.

Let me know, please, that you have received this message, and

reply with an Albany ETA when you have one.

Thanks again for your professionalism and for your keen interest in my incorrigible ex-husband’s continued well-being.

Fondly,

Ellen Griswold

I closed and saved the message, logged off, and then sat

there, the meter running at sixty baht an hour, about a buck

seventy-five. One of the kids asleep on the floor behind me

moaned, in the grip of a nightmare, I guessed. I sat for a while longer. The air-conditioning was far preferable to the pounding

heat outside, though the café smelled of German underarm

deodorant and Thai fish sauce.

I got up, paid my fee, and went outside. Now Bangkok felt

not so much molten as molting, as if, in the heat, the city was

shedding its skin or other outer layer in my presence, and what

was now exposed was formless and incomprehensible to a

wandering and lost farang like me. I loved Bangkok, but it

seemed to be making a fool of me. I wished I knew why. What

had I done to it?

Oh, but wait a minute. Now I had a rational thought. The

thought was this: No, it’s not Bangkok that’s jerking me around in some cruel and unusual way. Nuh-uh. It wasn’t the place. Bangkok itself was just a large, traffic-choked Asian city full of basically nice Thai people — drive-by shooters notwithstanding — who

loved to laugh and believed in ghosts and ate great food. No, it was not Bangkok making an ass of me. Of course it wasn’t.

What a silly thought. It was the Griswolds.

I looked around and then ducked into an alleyway leading to

a couple of laundry service holes-in-the-wall. They were closed

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 95

on Sunday and the area was relatively quiet. I had Ellen

Griswold’s cell number and dialed it, 001 for the US, then the

area code and number. It was six fifteen p.m. in Bangkok and

— swiftly doing the math — seven fifteen a.m. the same day in

Loudonville, New York.

“This is Ellen. Please leave a message.”

Beep.

I cut the connection and put my phone away. I walked out

and stood on the sidewalk for a few minutes — or was it

fifteen? — and then walked over to the Topmost. I retrieved

the room key, took the elevator to the unlucky sixth floor, went into 606, and lay down on the bed with a mild headache. I lay

there for half an hour or so. Then I took an aspirin and walked

back over to the Internet café.

When I Googled Khun Khunathip, the Thai soothsayer, I

got over a thousand hits. The man was indeed a big deal. There

were news photos of him at Buddhist New Year outdoor

gatherings bestowing tidings of good luck on the throngs. In his company on other occasions were ministers of state, princesses,

movie stars, industrial magnates. Several news stories reported

Khun Khunathip’s acumen in forecasting the military coup of a

few years earlier that sent the thought-to-be-corrupt but still

democratically elected prime minister into exile and installed the junta that had run the country until recently. You had to

wonder if the seer’s prescience about the coup came from

charting the heavens or from a discreet phone call.

Although Khun Khunathip seemed to be the foremost

figure in the pantheon of Thai soothsayers, his was a crowded

field of practitioners. One survey said about a quarter of Thais regularly sought life guidance from a mo duu, or “seeing doctor,”

on matters ranging from family to love relationships to money

to auspicious dates for marrying or having children. Some of

the seers were neighborhood men and women, often with

humble stalls outside Buddhist temples, who charged several