Missing In Rangoon

He breathed more freely as he stood on the curb and watched the taxi pull away.

TEN

Ownerless Dogs Sleeping in The Courtyard

THE RANGOON TIME occupied an ugly square box of a building. Its paint peeling and smeared with grime, it faced a church across the road that had the aging, grand style of an old dowager. In contrast, the press, if it ever had a pretty face in Burma, had masked it under a burka of mystery and secrecy for the last half century. Jack Saxon had said the good news about the political changes was that the local press had been upgraded to a hijab.

“One step at a time, and before you know it, we’re going to have tabloids with nude women bathing on the Irrawaddy,” Saxon had said.

The next thing you know, the press might, like a Saudi woman, demand to drive a car without an escort. As for the church across the street, with its donation boxes, prayers and rosary beads, perhaps it would also wake up, stretch, look around and decide to dust off its teachings. Calvino studied the large bank of stained glass windows facing the road. Messages about an afterlife were old news to him.

The newspaper office was at the end of a wide staircase on the second floor. A slightly overweight Burmese woman, reading a newspaper and picking her teeth like a precinct sergeant, sat behind a large teak reception desk. She saw him come up the stairs carrying a suitcase as if he thought he was arriving at a hotel.

“I’m here to see Jack Saxon,” he said.

“Have a seat.”

She picked up the phone, keeping an eye on Calvino as she removed the toothpick from her mouth and dialed Saxon’s number. Calvino sat in a hard chair, waiting for Saxon to finish doing whatever he was doing before coming out to meet him.

When Saxon finally walked into reception, he looked distracted as he talked into his cell phone. He gestured to Calvino to follow him.

“Anyone ever tell you your receptionist looks like she’s straight out of an NYPD borough precinct?”

“Only visiting criminals from New York,” said Saxon, without looking back at Calvino.

He closed his cell phone and left it in his right hand as he led the way. They passed a dozen reporters and staff working at desks in a long, narrow room, eyes glued to their computer screens. That guy is posting on Facebook, thought Calvino, as his eyes passed over the screen. He was rolling his bag behind him, and the racket it made had heads popping up.

“Don’t mind my American friend. He’s mistaken us for the Holiday Inn. It happens all the time.”

Calvino smiled and gave one of those borough politician’s waves of the hand as if to acknowledge their existence on his way to the big office at the end of room. It was the same wave he’d used so effectively in the villages he’d passed through on the run.

The floors of the newspaper office, an unfinished concrete, could have come from a slaughterhouse. The interior design had the look of a warehouse with long rows of desk banged in. At the end of the room Saxon had a separate cubicle, as befitted a senior editor. On his desk was a red phone. Every call to that number was an emergency from the publisher, a police official, a general or a civil servant. The handset lay on the desk beside the phone. The line was permanently busy.

Saxon laid his cell phone on the desk next to the red phone and sat in his chair.

“You can put your bag here. And you can tell me why you checked out of a hotel that hundreds of foreigners are crying and bribing to get into?”

Calvino rolled his case underneath a long built-in desk trimmed with blue strips to make it look modern. Piles of papers were scattered at both ends. His working space was confined to a small center area.

“The toilet wasn’t up to standard,” said Calvino.

Saxon’s jaw dropped.

“Kiss My Trash—you’re kidding! Wait until you see the toilet in my place.”

“Can’t wait, Jack. And thanks for putting me up.”

“You still haven’t told me why you checked out.”

“It’s better Pratt and I stay at separate places.”

“You’re here two days, and already in trouble?”

“Am I going to complicate your life, is that what you’re worried about?”

“You’ve already complicated it. The question is how much grief can I expect while you’re in Rangoon and how much grief you plan to leave behind once you get on the plane. Remember, you go home; I live here.”

Calvino nodded. He understood Saxon’s position. A man’s own troubles in a place like Rangoon or Bangkok were difficult enough, but the shadows left by others putting their noses into the locals’ business scaled the risk in ways that were impossible to calculate. How many times had Calvino told someone what Saxon had just said to him? He’d lost track.