Calvino had stood up from his desk, paced behind it, looked out the window, paced again.
“What’s the problem?”
“Every time we’ve traveled together, I recall being shot at. Phnom Penh, Saigon, New York. Sooner or later, you get unlucky.”
“We had that trip to Singapore a couple of years ago. No one fired a shot.”
“Singapore isn’t Burma.”
Colonel Pratt had smiled and nodded. “So I’ve heard. All I am saying is I want you to know that I’m going to Rangoon. You mentioned a case that might take you there. I thought we might do some sightseeing.”
A new case had been the second arrow to the Colonel’s bow. First Brad, the dead ice junkie, and then it was only a matter of time before Pratt would mention Alan Osborne and his missing son, Rob. Calvino wasn’t so much a private investigator as a triage expert brought in by families of expats to save broken hearts.
Calvino had leaned forward on his desk. “Sightseeing in a cold pill factory isn’t my idea of a holiday.” He’d paused and sat back in his chair. “Did the department say why they’re sending you to Burma alone?”
“A delegation would be noticed. It would require official approval.”
“You’re going to Burma off the record.”
Colonel Pratt had smiled. “The country is opening up. Everyone is going in off the record these days. It’s called fact finding.”
“Facts? Like beachcombing for seashells on Koh Samui?” Calvino had said. “They’re kinda hard to find in this part of the world. All the facts and shells have been picked over till there are none left.”
“One day when I become a famous saxophone player, you’ll be glad to have gone to Rangoon with me.”
“I’ll be glad to be alive on that day.”
Pratt had left the Burma visa application along with a UN report from its anti-narc agency. Calvino read through it. In 2009, it said, Thai authorities pulled 15.8 tons of methamphetamine pills out of circulation. It was only the tip of the iceberg. The report fingered Burma as the main source of the pills crossing borders in Southeast Asia. What it didn’t say was how much was still finding its way over the border and who on the Thai side of the border was making the operation profitable for all concerned.
Calvino put the UN report down and picked up the visa application.
Ratana came into his office as he was signing the visa form. She waited until he looked up, shaking his head.
“I’m crazy to do this,” he said.
“I knew you wouldn’t let Colonel Pratt go to Rangoon alone,” she said.
“I get to play one-man entourage to a sax player.”
“Manee was worried about her husband going to Burma alone,” she said.
The truth was coming out. Colonel Pratt’s wife had already co-opted his secretary in the campaign to get him on the plane to Rangoon.
“And you’re not worried about me?”
She shook her head, taking his passport and papers from his desk.
“Not really. You have luck. Manee said the same thing.”
“What does that mean? Am I some kind of human amulet? Maybe I should buy a gold chain and hang myself around Pratt’s neck.”
Calvino lost any chance of resisting. He doodled on his notepad. Brad Morrisey. Rob Osborne. And the high probability of getting shot. There was that old ghost pain, the memory of a bullet hitting hard. Saigon and Phnom Penh. Colonel Pratt had been there. And Manee—she knew this history—still thought that Calvino came down on the side of having luck. He couldn’t figure it out. After being shot a couple of times, he found it impossible to think clearly about his odds the next time around. Up to now he’d either underestimated or overweighed the chances of something bad happening, and he had no reason to think he was getting any better at assessing the odds with experience.
It was too late in life to take up playing a musical instrument. He’d have to go into Burma as a businessman. Enough of them were streaming across the border to make it easy to join the parade and disappear into the crowd of faces.
“Bring me the Osborne file,” he said.
He watched her leave his office. Turning back to his computer, he clicked on iTunes and then on Colonel Pratt’s debut album, the one he’d made after the Java Jazz Festival a few years earlier. He’d reinvented himself.