The 38 Million Dollar Smile, стр. 42
over to the shoulder of the highway. He did so, and the second
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 183
minivan followed us. I looked back to see the guardrail-side
door open on the other vehicle, and the soothsayer Surapol
Sutharat step out and stand by the roadside. Then the door
closed and both vans drove on.
I said, “Do you think Khun Surapol predicted this turn of
events, Rufus?”
“He would have had an inkling. The man is not stupid. He’s
corrupt, but not entirely incompetent with his charts.”
“So now what? Do we ride around on the freeways of
Bangkok until April twenty-seventh? We’ll run out of gas.”
“Nope. Not necessary. What I think is, we all deserve a few
days at the seashore.”
“Sounds good. Can we pick up our bathing suits at the
hotel?”
“No, Khun Don. I am sorry. We must proceed directly to Hua Hin. It is a pleasant town a few hours’ drive south of
Bangkok on the Gulf of Thailand. Hua Hin is such a desirable
getaway spot that Jack and Jackie themselves have quite an
impressive palatial hideaway there.”
“Well, if it’s good enough for Jack.”
“Others will be in danger, also, and will need to join us
there. In fact, I must make some calls now. My wife and
children will be along, as well as my girlfriend Furnace, a
delightful woman you will enjoy tremendously. Furnace will, of
course, be housed separately from the rest of us, though with
luck your paths will cross. Kawee, you should invite Miss
Nongnat to visit. And it might be wise for Khun Gary’s old
paramour Mango to attend our seaside holiday also. The general
is sure to be ripshit over today’s developments, and his agents
will tend toward impatience and extreme violence toward
anyone who might be expected to know of our whereabouts.”
Pugh got on his cell phone and made several calls in Thai.
This was the first time since Timmy’s rescue that we could
speak with each other without the risk of gunfire erupting, and
the first thing I said was, “Okay. Yes. You were right.”
He said nothing.
184 Richard Stevenson
“I’ll spend the rest of my life making this up to you,
Timothy. You name it. It’s yours. Plus, of course, I’ll listen to you in the future when you talk sense. Really, I’ll try harder to do that.”
He was breathing evenly but was still sweaty and didn’t smell
so great.
I looked across Timmy and said to Kawee, “I’m really so
sorry I got you two into this. It must have been very
frightening.”
Kawee said, “We think we die.”
“Yes.”
“I tell Timothy he live better life next time.”
“I know he’d like some improvements.”
“He say okay. But he ask if you be there, too.”
“In his next life?”
“Yes, he want next life with you. You his soul mate, he say.”
“That would be my preference also. What did you tell him?
Will we be together?”
“Yes, maybe. But maybe not human. Maybe you both
snake.”
“Two snakes?”
“Timothy and Donald spirit in snakes. Or other animals. All
depend on karma.”
“If we were mammals, it might be okay. We’d manage.
Mammals with small brains and large penises.”
Timmy was too polite and respectful toward other decent
people’s deepest beliefs to roll his eyes, but I knew he was
doing it mentally.
Finally, Timmy said, “Kawee was very thoughtful and
supportive during our captivity, Donald. He enlarged my
perspective.”
I wondered if he had also massaged his prostate, but this
was no time for that discussion. I said, “How so?”
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 185
“I just have a better understanding now of the way the
human mind can both retreat into itself when that’s the only
way it can stay safe, and at the same time how any one mind is
only a temporary partial manifestation of something far larger
and longer lasting.”
“Oh. Well, good. Except, that doesn’t sound Buddhist. It
sounds Jungian.”
“You and your Western insistence on labels. God.”
“Are you putting me on?”
“Yes, a little. But, really, Kawee did help me with the whole
idea of acceptance. Acceptance of how temporary any one
human life is, and how the transitory nature of life should be
nothing to fear. There’s actually something quite beautiful about it. All that gorgeous fluidity.”
Pugh was in the front seat with Nitrate, who was driving,
and when Timmy said this, Pugh reached over to the steering
wheel and hit the horn three times.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The compound where we took refuge in Hua Hin — which,
Pugh explained, was spelled Hua Hin but pronounced Wah-
HEEN — was a few miles south of the town center near
Monkey Mountain. This was a high hill overlooking the Gulf of
Thailand where monkeys frolicked on the grounds of an old
temple. Pugh suggested that Timmy and I have a look while we
were in the vicinity. But he said not to get too close to the
greedy and always-quarreling monkeys, a few of whom were
deceased former officials from the Thaksin Shinawatra
administration.
Timmy said, “Do you really believe that’s true?”
“Of course,” Pugh said. “This is known.”
The compound, a quarter mile off the main road and a few
hundred yards from the beach, was owned by an anti-Samak,
anti-Thaksin businessman friend of Pugh’s who owned about
fifty 7-Eleven franchises and a Hua Hin hotel that catered to
German tour groups and, Pugh said, served the greasiest
schnitzel south of Bangkok.
Pugh’s friend, Sila Chusuk, was vacationing with his family
in Switzerland and we had the run of his two commodious
guesthouses. These were rambling, tile-roofed stucco structures
with big louvered windows that were sealed shut now for the
hot season and with central air-conditioning keeping everything
crisp. There was a pool in the palm-fringed flower gardens at
the back of the walled compound, with fuchsia blossoms
floating in it the color of Kawee’s toenails.
We had stopped in town to buy some light clothes for
Timmy and Kawee — Pugh said we would not be calling on
Jack and Jackie, so beachwear would do — and some toiletries,
and of course, food. The Thais had missed their lunch, so a
stop was made out on the main road to pick up soup and rice.
As soon as we arrived at the compound, Pugh and his crew
served up the take-out savories and went at them. Nobody had
188 Richard Stevenson
a lot to say. They were all just happy to be alive and enjoying
another good meal. The same was true of Timmy, Kawee and
me — and presumably Griswold, although he had precious few
words to offer any of us.
Upstairs, Timmy and I shared a room, Pugh was next door,
then Kawee and Nitrate, then Griswold, Egg and Ek. Griswold
bore constant watching, Pugh and I agreed. While Timmy took
a long shower, I noted on my cell phone that Bob Chicarelli had
called from Albany during the rescue while I had left my phone
in the van. It was just past four in the afternoon in Thailand,
predawn in the eastern United States. I returned the call, but
Chicarelli didn’t answer and I guessed he was asleep. I left a
message, saying we had rescued Timmy and Kawee from the
kidnappers, that Griswold was with us, and we were in hiding
until some loose ends got tied up. I didn’t mention that the
loose ends included a Thai police general who was intent on
blowing all our brains out. For reasons I couldn’t quite
articulate to myself, I hesitated before asking Chicarelli to notify Ellen and Bill Griswold that their family member Gary was now