I woke up in need of a toothbrush, but it looked like a swig of hot sauce was going to have to do. I had slept for four hours next to Pugh on the straw mat on his office floor. I had dreams of falling, and I didn’t think the dreams were symbolic.
Two of Pugh’s staff — a muscular, elaborately tattooed young man named Ek and a middle-aged woman named Aroon who carried a bronze figurine of King Chulalongkorn in her shoulder holster — had slept on the floor in an outer office, and I greeted them as I went out to use the bathroom. Being Thai, they smiled. The tiny lavatory had a toilet, a washbowl, and a miniature shower in it. I tossed my sweaty clothes out the door and used all three appliances. I also borrowed somebody’s toothbrush and honey-flavored Colgate, which wasn’t all that bad.
Pugh had sent someone over to Starbucks on Silom for coffee for all of us, and while Ek and Aroon took turns using the shower, Pugh checked in with his surveillance teams. They said there had been no sign of Griswold. A call to the cops produced nothing new either. Pugh showered while I examined the shrine in the corner of his office — gold leaf had been freshly applied to the Buddha figure on the platform — and watched the Monday morning traffic build up down below on Surawong. Pugh came back looking neat and fresh, as if just back from a month in the Swiss Alps. I had never seen a Thai looking dirty or rumpled. The entire population of sixty million always appeared freshly ironed, and they were peculiarly odorless despite the heat. The Thais had a lot of water and they used it.
After Pugh hung up with the police, I said, “You know, maybe the kidnappers were smart enough to suspect we might have every fourteenth floor in Bangkok searched, so they’re holding Timmy and Kawee on the thirteenth floor somewhere.
If so, this is all a waste of time and our only hope is to find 120 Richard Stevenson
Griswold and make the trade. Or at least find him and find out who these people are that he’s gotten so pissed off, and then go after them as fast as we can.”
“There are no thirteenth floors in Bangkok,” Pugh said.
“All right, then, fifteenth. At least they didn’t say ninth floor.
I suppose all tall buildings in Thailand have no thirteenth floors and instead have five ninth floors, increasing the amount of good luck available to the population.”
Pugh laughed. “Mr. Don, you seem bemused by our being a superstitious people.”
“I guess I am. But nothing more than bemused. It’s not condescension, I don’t think.”
“I’d say it is exactly that, but never mind. As I recall, buildings in New York City don’t have thirteenth floors either.”
“I am bemused by that also.”
“And additionally, I suppose, by knocking on wood and avoiding black cats and keeping one’s fingers crossed and not stepping on a crack so as to avoid breaking one’s dear mother’s back.”
“All hokum. Tell me, Rufus. What happens to all those thirteenth floors that are left out of the tall buildings in Bangkok? Are the construction materials divided up among the government building inspectors for resale and monthly bonuses?”
He laughed. “No, we ship all the unlucky thirteenth floors to our impoverished neighbors the Cambodians. This might help explain their unfortunate history.”
“Another flaw in this whole operation,” I said, “is the likelihood that the kidnappers have their own police sources who have alerted them that a search of fourteenth floors is under way and they have simply moved Timmy and Kawee to any other high floor. Even if they didn’t anticipate a dragnet, isn’t it likely that friends in high places would have alerted them?”
“This is possible, though General Yodying is an honorable man who would do his best to protect your investment. I know he planned on deploying his forces and only informing them at the very last moment what their mission was to be.”
Miss Aroon poked her head in and said that Khun Thunska, Pugh’s computer specialist, was on his way over and would arrive shortly.
“Why isn’t he phoning?” I asked. “Can we assume he didn’t find anything useful on the laptop?”
“Perhaps he wants to show us something and explain it.”
Now my cell phone rang. Was it Timmy? Or was it the kidnappers, with instructions for the swap we were in no position to carry out? Pugh watched me open the phone.
“Hello?”
“Don, it’s Ellen Griswold. Can you hear me?”
“Perfectly. Thanks for getting back to me so fast, Ellen.”
“God, I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am that this has all turned into such an incredible fiasco. Your boyfriend has actually been kidnapped?”
I briefly described the events of the past twenty-four hours.
“They’re holding this young Thai man, Kawee, too. A friend of Gary’s. So we need to talk to Gary fast. How can we do that?”
“Oh, bollocks, I wish I knew. Gary called me on Saturday night, and said he’d heard from somebody that you had been to his apartment and were looking for him, and to please call off the dogs — that would be you — because he was perfectly fine, he said. He’s just meditating for a year to recover from a series of unlucky love affairs, and you were interfering with his concentration. I have to say, I was not entirely convinced that he wasn’t concocting a whole line of BS about meditating for such a long time. I’ve heard of people going off to a cave, literally or figuratively, and doing it for a month. But a whole year? Anyway, I felt I had to take him at his word that you would be making trouble for him somehow. I mean, he didn’t sound at all frightened or upset. So that’s when I e-mailed you.
But now it looks like he really is in trouble, and God, now your 122 Richard Stevenson
Timothy is too. How perfectly awful! I am so, so sorry, Don.
So, what are you going to do?”
I didn’t think she was making this up as she went. It was silly enough, but in its inane way it was too pat. I guessed she was referring to notes she had made. I said, “So, Gary phoned you?
Where was he calling from?”
“He didn’t say. And I didn’t think to get a number. I was so startled to hear his voice, and so relieved.”
“Did he say he would call again?”
“No, but it sounded as if he would eventually. He was emphatic in telling me not to worry.”
“Who told him I was looking for him? Think about this. It’s important.”
“Just a minute.” Now her voice was distant: “Amanda, no, you may not ride into Albany with Josh. You are not to get into Josh’s car at all. Ever. Now, I said I would take you later. No, no. And don’t use that language with me!” To me: “Don, can I call you back? This is all getting to be way too much!”
“No, Ellen, you cannot call me back. We have to talk now.
What we have here is a life-or-death situation. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
“Yes, I hear you, Don.” Distant again. “No, no, I said no, and no means no!” I heard a shriek in the background, as if intruders had broken in and shot someone. “Oh, goddamn it.”
I said, “I have to ask you this again. I need very badly to know this. Who told Gary I was looking for him? Did he tell you this?”
“No, he didn’t. And I didn’t think to ask, not realizing at the time it might become important. Oh God, she is impossible. Are you and Timothy raising children, Don?”
“No.”
“Listen, I do apologize. It’s not that I don’t understand that what you’re going through is so much worse than anything I have to deal with here on boring old Elm Court Drive. It’s just that I think I’ve told you everything I know. And if Gary calls again anytime soon, I’ll make it clear to him that he must contact you immediately and impress on him just how urgent the situation is.”
“You didn’t give him my cell phone number when he called?”
“No, I didn’t have it yet, I don’t think.”
“That’s true. What I want to ask you to help me out with, Ellen, is this. I wish to continue in your employ until I get Timmy back at least. There are some expenses I’m running up in connection with his being released.”
“What? Ransom? You’re paying ransom?”
“No, they don’t want money. They want Gary. Whoever the kidnappers are, they have offered to release Timmy and Kawee in exchange for our handing over Gary.”
“Oh, good God. Well, you wouldn’t do that, would you?”
“What I’m doing is, I’m working hard to get everybody’s ass out of the fire intact. That is my intention. But I’m running up my accounts. For instance, we had to arrange for a search of a number of buildings in Bangkok, and it cost money.”
“Well, just make sure you get receipts.”
“Sure.”
“And keep your costs down as low as you can. My cash flow situation is rather wobbly at the moment.”
“Yeah, well, so is mine.”
“Aren’t the police involved? If someone is kidnapped, why not rely on the police instead of hiring private security at an extortionate rate?”
“In Thailand, it’s complicated in that regard. Anyway, once I get hold of Gary” — I didn’t add and wring his neck — “perhaps he can be persuaded to pitch in and help cover expenses. After all, it’s his disappearance, so-called, that got me into this sulfurous quagmire in the first place.”
“God, now I feel terrible about getting you mixed up in one of my family’s typical messes. Listen, just do whatever you can 124 Richard Stevenson to get Timothy safely back with you. That’s the important thing.
And that poor Thai man too. Have the kidnappers threatened them in any way?”
“Yes, they have. So I need your ex-husband’s help as soon as possible. There’s a deadline, which is later tomorrow. Gary will know who these people are, we can reasonably assume, and perhaps know where to find them. So I do need to talk to him, and fast.”
“Well, I have total confidence in you, Don. Bob Chicarelli said you were a bit of a pain in the rear end sometimes but totally committed to whatever you took on and totally professional. You’ll know what to do, if anybody will. Good luck, and do keep me posted. So, it sounds like you should have everything more or less under control by later tomorrow?”
“I certainly hope so, Ellen.”
“I’ll wait for your report.”
I rang off and told Pugh what Ellen had told me.
“She’s a doozy of a client,” Pugh said. “How much did you get up front?”
“Ten K. But the plane tickets were forty-four hundred. So with the bribes to your police department, I’m already in the hole over nineteen thousand dollars. Plus what I owe you.
Griswold’s thirty-eight mil had better be largely intact.
Southeast Asia is supposed to be such a bargain tourist destination. What am I doing wrong, Rufus?”
Grinning, Pugh said, “You’ve had a run of bad luck, Mr.
Don, and you are defenseless in the face of it. Like most farangs, you rely solely on your brainpower and your financial assets, both of which are finite. I’m doing everything I can to compensate for your limitations, however, and between the two of us we’re going to pull the rabbit out of the hat. So, do not despair, my friend, do not despair.”
I looked at Pugh and said, “Rufus, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He guffawed. “You must be amazed that Thailand functions at all.”
Miss Aroon came in leading another man into the office, and Pugh got up to greet him, smiling and bowing and wai-ing.
Thunska Rujawongsanti, the computer consultant, was small and round, and appeared to be somewhere between the ages of fourteen and fifty-eight. He looked more Chinese than Thai. I knew that there had been a certain amount of intermarriage since the nineteenth century, when the Chinese began arriving in Siam in great numbers to — as a Chinese-Thai journalist had once explained it to me — teach the Thais how to count.
Khun Thunska had Griswold’s laptop with him and opened it on Pugh’s desk.
“So, what was the password?” I asked.
Thunska shrugged. “I have no idea. We just dispensed with that type of foolishness and spoke to this little honey of a Mac on a higher plane. It never knew what hit it.”
I gave Pugh an Is-this-guy-putting-me-on? look, and he said,
“No Thai juju was involved. Just some trade secrets and perhaps some Johnny Walker for a Mac company representative in Singapore.”
Thunska acted as if he hadn’t heard this. He was busy juicing up the Mac. He quickly produced an image on the screen and said, “I wanted you to lay eyes on this. I would have phoned it in, but you have to see this to believe it.”
“Who is it?” I asked. “The foreigner appears to be Gary Griswold. But who are the Thais? One does look familiar.”
Pugh said, “Oh, baby.”
The photo was of three men standing with drinks in their hands on the balcony of an apartment. They were casually but elegantly dressed, and they were relaxed and smiling. The digital image seemed to be of an unremarkable social occasion until Pugh identified the two men standing with Griswold.
“The man on Griswold’s left is former Minister of Finance Anant na Ayudhaya. He was removed from office in the coup last year but is generally understood to control the ministry under the current restored nominally democratic government.
The man on Griswold’s right is the one whose photo you have 126 Richard Stevenson perhaps seen, Mr. Don. It is Khun Khunathip, the esteemed fortune-teller who fatally went over a high railing just two days ago. Perhaps it was the very railing he is leaning against in this photo.”
“I believe, yes, that that is the unlucky railing,” Thunska said. “You can make out the Westin Grande in the background, suggesting that this photo was indeed taken in Khun Khunathip’s apartment in Sukhumvit.”
I said, “This is big stuff, no? Shouldn’t the police be told about this?”
Pugh and Thunska exchanged quick glances, and Pugh said to me, “Mr. Don, you are half right.”