Saxon walked past Calvino and the Colonel and stood between the assistant manager and the two Italian women. He kissed the younger of the two on both cheeks and saw the kiss hadn’t changed her attitude.
“Bianca, you don’t look so happy.”
Bianca explained their problem with the room booking. Saxon whispered something in the assistant manager’s ear. He turned and left. A moment later, the assistant manager emerged from his office and the women were upgraded to a suite with a view of the Shwedagon.
Saxon’s little performance impressed Calvino and the Colonel. In a few moments he’d cut through the runaround and fixed the problem. Saxon then introduced the private eye and the Colonel—as he referred to them—to the women.
“This is Bianca Conti and her friend Anne Russo.”
Calvino locked eyes with Bianca just that fraction of a moment to establish a connection.
“Bella donna,” said Calvino.
She smiled for the first time in the lobby.
“A private eye with a Brooklyn accent, yes?”
Then the women vanished behind a bellhop. Bianca looked back as they turned the corner. She nodded at Calvino.
“Nice demonstration of home turf fixer. Nothing like it when you need a hotel room,” said Calvino. “It’s the other stuff that gets difficult.”
Saxon playfully cuffed Calvino on the shoulder. He’d expected a couple more points from Calvino but settled for the half-star for getting the Italians a room and a full star for the introduction to the good-looking one.
“My brother still tells everyone how the Colonel and you saved him from starring in the Thai version of Midnight Express.”
“Who’s Bianca?” Calvino asked.
“You came to Rangoon to ask about Bianca?” asked Saxon with a crooked smile, shaking his head. “What? You don’t get enough action in Bangkok?”
He gave Calvino a playful punch on the shoulder and they embraced for a moment.
“Good to have you in Rangoon. Sorry I was running late.” He shook his head and added, “Women, who can understand them?”
Colonel Pratt, standing beside Calvino, chipped in: “Shakespeare once wrote that ‘Women speak two languages—one of which is verbal.’ Men speak three languages—one of which is silence.”
“Shakespeare said men have three languages?” asked Saxon. “Learn something every day.”
“Actually, I said that,” said the Colonel.
“You might pass that along to your brother, Jack.”
Silence was that third language that the spit had to be taught to forget. It didn’t take a Shakespearian scholar to tutor a man in detention in the fine art of snitching.
“Paul has never talked about what happened,” Saxon said.
Paul had escaped into silence. He’d beat the system. He’d got away, never having been truly tested in a cell where silence no longer a remained virtue. Paul got away without understanding how lucky he was—that most men trapped in the Thai legal system lacked the right connections to get out. Abandoned inside a prison cell, these men waited thinking about their choice of either ‘justice’ or a deal. The call of freedom drove a man to spit for the deal.
The three men walked from the hotel across the road to a Thai restaurant in a gravel parking lot next to a small lake. The waiter showed them to a big table overlooking the gardens and tropical trees. Colonel Pratt took a menu, put on his reading glasses and looked down the
column of photographs next to each item on the menu. He ordered noodles and pork. Calvino pointed at the picture of pad Thai, and Saxon ordered a big plate of boiled shrimp, fish cakes and fried fish cooked in lemongrass, rice and Chinese mushrooms. Saxon had the old journalist’s habit of ordering half the menu.
“Hungry?” asked Calvino.
“Starving,” said Saxon.
After the waiter took their order, Saxon pulled a notebook from his backpack and thumbed through the pages. He stopped and looked up.
“Jack, next time introduce us by our names. Not ‘This is a private eye and that’s a colonel,’” said Calvino.