Missing In Rangoon

“‘All that is solid melts into air. All that is holy is profaned,’” said Calvino. “I’d always wondered what inspired someone to write those words.”

The lawyer’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Calvino. His client had been accused of teak smuggling, and as far as he could see, it was an open and shut case. Why would the Americans bother themselves with the case of a common criminal? He scratched his head and drank his tea, his foot nudging the briefcase.

“It only looks like an ordinary case,” the Black Cat said. “The fact that the Americans have sent a top lawyer has to tell you that something important is involved, something not in the file.”

Mya Kyaw Thein assured the man that he was still lead counsel and Calvino had come only to offer technical support. He stared at Calvino, wondering how a New Yorker had become an expert in Burmese teak smuggling. The Burmese lawyer, by contrast, looked like he could’ve been the boy who planted the old tree in the courtyard. After the Black Cat finished her speech, he turned to Calvino.

In English he told Calvino how he’d previously worked as a judge and resigned to take counsel work. He knew a thing or two about how the system worked from the inside. His jowls matched his large, rounded stomach perfectly. He wore a gold stud in the top button of his white shirt.

“I loved Sherlock Holmes and Perry Mason. Do you know their work? Top drawer.”

He spoke perfectly acceptable English, stopping to lean over to spit a stream of betel juice into the dirt. Betel juice justice was an old tradition.

Calvino nodded.

“I watched Perry Mason on TV as a kid,” said Calvino.

“Everyone in Burma knows Perry Mason,” said Ohn Myint.

Perry Mason was something Calvino’s parents and grandparents had discussed over the kitchen table in Brooklyn. The ancient courthouse and now Perry Mason confirmed that he’d passed through an airlock to another time and place, where Raymond Burr defended criminals in black and white on small screens.

The old ex-judge tugged at his gold-framed glasses as he reached for a pen sticking out of the pocket of his black coat. Calvino watched as he unscrewed the cap. He imagined him sitting on the bench performing the same ritual. The lawyer wrote slowly on a notepad, using a deliberate, discursive lettering that had otherwise left long ago with the British. At the end of the note, he wrote a number. He screwed the cap back onto the pen as he reviewed his note. With a satisfied nod, he returned his pen to his coat pocket and handed the paper to Calvino, who read what the ex-judge had written:

“Your Honor, your dismissal of charges against Wai Wan will show the American government your fairness and courage and demonstrate for the world to see that Myanmar’s courts can be trusted to deliver justice.”

Calvino reread the note.

“That’s it?”

But somewhere between the lines was a number with a dollar sign in front of it: $4500. Not a particularly round number, one might say, but that would be to miss the point. The digits added up to nine, and the Burmese were fond of the number nine because it represented good fortune. Ne Win, the old dictator, had once issued a decree requiring that all Burmese currency be reissued in denominations divisible by nine. Ne Win was the same strongman who had once sat atop a white stallion that was loaded onto a military aircraft so that horse and rider could circle Rangoon nine times. A fortune teller had told Ne Win that in a dream he had seen a powerful general riding a white horse in the sky over the city, and that that man could never be defeated.

Calvino passed the note to Mya Kyaw Thein. She displayed no emotion as she read it. The money was already at the lawyer’s feet, and Calvino had his script. Ohn Myint had kept her distance, drinking tea and watching the boys running after the soccer ball. To be that young and innocent, to lose oneself in a game seemed magical to her, like running. Her thoughts drifted to the weekend and the new 10K route she would mark. Maybe Saxon would come along and help this time.

The lawyer slid a piece of betel nut inside his mouth, smiling with red teeth as Calvino finally nodded. The Burmese lawyer had been a judge for thirty years before retiring to private practice. In his view the case had been resolved, and that’s what judges and lawyers did—resolve cases.

“Yes, that’s it,” said the lawyer. “Keep the note. If you have any questions, please ask me.”

The ex-judge smiled like a fat-bellied cat that had scored a sparrow. He liked an audience, especially one with an attentive foreigner. With the business out of the way, he began to recount his memories from his days on the bench. With sad eyes, his jowls shaking as he moved his head from side to side, he confided how hard it had been to sentence men to death.

“Sending a criminal to the gallows is a terrible responsibility.”

He chewed his betel, lost in thought while retaining his executioner’s confidence. He sat erect like a judge on the bench, a professional, a man at peace with working inside the criminal justice system.

“What is the exact charge against Wai Wan?” asked Calvino.

He had no illusions that the executioners in this part of the world worried themselves about technicalities. But he knew that when the executioner’s men were asked, they could play the law game as well as the best of them.

Calvino made his next move: “What elements does the Crown have to prove to convict him? What evidence do they have to connect him to the crime, is what I am saying.”

That wasn’t what they heard him saying. What they heard was someone from New York asking irrelevant questions. None of that mattered. Would someone tell this American lawyer this wasn’t New York, and proving or disapproving hadn’t mattered once the young man had been caught up in the machinery? The gears of the system had meshed, tearing and ripping, running automatically, and it was difficult to remove a man stuck inside.

Calvino wanted to ask more questions of the hanging judge, but before he had a chance, the lawyer raised his hand.

“As lawyers we know you have a right to know. So I will tell you what the Crown has proved so far. It’s all about a permit. If you have one, okay. And if you don’t?”

He flashed his hanging judge half-smile.

The lawyer bent to the side and spit a glob of red juice in the dirt. He wiped his mouth with a folded and pressed white handkerchief that he produced from his black coat and then told Wai Wan’s story. Wai Wan and three other men had been charged with the illegal transportation of teak. On the outskirts of Rangoon, a cop on a motorcycle had pulled over their truck, examined the cargo and found teak doors and window frames. The cop asked to see the teak transportation permit. Wai Wan shrugged. He didn’t have one. The cargo owner hadn’t gone to the Forestry Department and applied for the permit. Neither had Wai Wan. He admitted that. But he was only a driver, hired labor. He wasn’t in the teak business; he was in the trucking business. Applying for permits wasn’t something a driver did. This was something the teak dealer arranged.