Missing In Rangoon

“Jack has never forgotten what you did for his brother,” Calvino said to Pratt.

“He was your friend. I helped him. It wasn’t much.”

That wasn’t strictly true. What Colonel Pratt had done was rescue Paul’s ass from a five-year stretch eating red rice and sleeping in shifts along with forty other prisoners in a Thai prison cell. Five years would have been on the light side, but to keep the story simple, five years was the number that Calvino had used on the phone to remind Saxon how helpful the Colonel had been.

Events had happened faster that night than shifts at a Patpong short-time. Paul Saxon had gone through a few beers, left the last bar and walked down a small side street, alone, lost and not used to the heat, when two cops pulled up on a motorcycle. They got off and called Paul over. They searched him. One cop stuck his hand inside Paul’s front pocket, staring him in the eye, a little smile crossing his face as he withdrew the clenched hand. As his fist opened, he revealed a couple of pills. He showed the pills to the other cop. He’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time—the definition of a setup. Paul refused to pay the cops twenty thousand baht, about six hundred dollars, to cut him lose. It was Paul’s first trip to Bangkok. He was meeting his brother, who was flying in from Rangoon. He didn’t understand how to read the situation. Nor had anyone briefed him on the business aspect that came from being ambushed on a dark soi with no one around. He called his brother’s hotel from the police station. Jack Saxon got Calvino out of bed at three in the morning. At eight o’clock that morning, Colonel Pratt came to the lockup where Paul was being held and talked to a couple of people behind a closed door.

The Colonel paid forty thousand baht out of his own pocket. He said it was from the farang. Calvino found out about Colonel Pratt’s payment only later, and indirectly. Manee, the Colonel’s wife, told Ratana, and later as the conga line reached his office, he found out. By then there wasn’t much Calvino could do about getting the forty thousand baht returned. Paul had gone back to the hotel, packed his case and booked a flight to Toronto the same day. Jack Saxon had flown back to Rangoon before Calvino could explain the situation. Calvino gave the money to Pratt in an envelope. Pratt left the envelope on Calvino’s desk. For a week the envelope passed back and forth between the two of them, until finally Calvino sent it to Father Andrew in the Klong Toey slums as money to help street kids get out of jail.

Paul had had a short first visit to the Land of Smiles, as the lady in the tourist brochure had characterized it with her “I no

bullshit you” smile. Can’t imagine why he’s never come back, thought Calvino. Two feet of snow in the streets of Toronto would seem like nothing in the life-is-a-bitch department after a few hours in a Bangkok police lockup.

Forty-eight hours after his run-in with the law, with Pratt’s help, the brother had boarded a plane to Toronto. All happy tourists in Asia have the same experience; they are invisible in the way that anonymous people are everywhere. The unhappy ones—young men like Paul Saxon, who’ve found themselves boxed into a corner—those are the ones whose stories crossed Calvino’s desk.

“Jack’s on the way,” said Calvino. “He said to tell the Colonel that he’s sorry to keep him waiting.”

Two women in the lobby had been distracting Colonel Pratt. As the minutes passed, Saxon’s delay had hardly registered as he watched them. He glanced at Calvino and smiled.

“Relax, Vincent. We have all the time we need.”

Colonel Pratt had slipped into Thai time, the flow metered by mood rather than established increments. A place where no one counted off the seconds and minutes, and the presence of the two women gesturing and carrying on nearby made for a small, enveloping drama.

Shakespeare quotations ran through Colonel Pratt’s head like cherries, apples and oranges on a slot machine.

“‘Wine loved I deeply, dice dearly.’ King Lear.”

It was as if two of King Lear’s daughters had inherited their father’s rage gene. The two Italian women sat on large rattan chairs with scallop-shell-shaped backs. One appeared to be in her mid-thirties, the other possibility a decade older. Maybe sisters. They wore silk scarves around their necks, necklaces of gold, fine jewelry on their fingers and expensive Italian shoes. Designer handbags sat atop travel bags with airline handling tickets still attached to the handles. Calvino spotted the word “Roma” on one tag. Already in the lobby when he and Pratt had sat on the couch, they’d been in the middle of a deep, highly emotional conversation with an assistant manager of the hotel, with two guests speaking Italian and gesturing like maestros warming up an orchestra. Just as the two women approached the high-pitched climax of Cio-Cio San! from Madama Butterfly, the tension in their voices hit the ramp, flying up to the next level of anxiety and hostility.

“We travel more than twenty hours. You say our room is ready. It’s not ready. We book a room with a view of the Shwedagon Pagoda. You say you not have. We can’t wait. We need to sleep. Now! Do you hear me?”

She looked pale beneath her econ seat hair—matted, and stringy at the split ends.

Everyone in the lobby heard her hysterical outburst—half-wail, half-blowtorch. As she rose to her feet, holding up her hands like a boxer, Calvino tried not to laugh. The assistant manager remained cool, smiling—understandably, as he’d probably been through a lot worse when dealing with the police, military, officials… Anyone powerful enough to kick him in the balls.

They eyed each other, the assistant manager calmly keeping his hands at his sides. His only chance with a woman ablaze on a high-octane slurry of jetlag, frustration, language problems, broken promises and culture shock was to play defense. Would the confrontation turn physical? Or would a miracle suddenly calm her nerves? Calvino saw how close she was to taking a swing. She was so tired it would have been easy for the assistant manager to duck out of the way, but it seemed to Calvino that her awareness of this was making her even more frustrated and angry.

“Think I ought to help?” he asked Colonel Pratt.

“They will find a compromise,” the Colonel replied.

Calvino figured Pratt was right. He only had to recall Calvino’s Law on gentlemanly intervention in Southeast Asia—never get between people who are spoiling for a fight unless you want your blood on the floor. He watched the women as Colonel Pratt watched the door.

Jack Saxon bounced in with his hand outstretched as he approached Colonel Pratt on the couch.

“Welcome to Rangoon, Colonel Pratt! You got my message?”

“Vincent said you had a slight problem.”

“I don’t know what causes a newspaper more problems: shootings in the streets or streets filled with people looking to find gold and get rich.”

“Jack, you look like you’ve been sleeping in a pothole,” said Calvino.

“Nah, that’s no good for my back.”

Saxon moved his shoulders forward and then stretched them back, making a bone-cracking sound with his spine. He did a couple of side turns, shifting his body in one direction and then back in the other.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said.