Missing In Rangoon

The Black Cat hadn’t committed to showing up with Rob. That was something she hadn’t worked out with him. But it didn’t matter, thought Calvino. It might be better if she didn’t turn up. His old man wanted Rob. The woman, in Alan Osborne’s world, was a distraction, a person of

no interest outside the fact that she’d lured his son into hiding. Mya Kyaw Thein had been bitter about Alan Osborne’s ill treatment of his son and her. She hadn’t mentioned that her boyfriend had punched his father in the face. Besides, it had worked out well for her in the end. Without Rob running away to Rangoon, the old man would have never paid the money for her brother’s release.

Calvino walked behind Colonel Pratt, who had Kati in tow. He felt like the manager of a rock star. The Colonel had won a prize at the Java Jazz Festival a few years back, which had led to more engagements and prizes in Macau, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Colonel Pratt was a cop who played the saxophone as a hobby to release pressure from the job. Things and people change. The Colonel had started to think of himself more as a saxophone player whose hobby was policing. Calvino had witnessed the shift over the last year. After Pratt had been shot, he had thought about things in a different way. He’d never seemed happier. There was no boss in jazz. He turned a blind eye to the politics inside his department, where corruption money kicked upstairs, letting connected people walk free. He told himself that people inside the jazz culture were made of better stuff. His music made other people happy. He could riff and improvise and no one lost face, no one got hurt. When was the last time he’d done that as a cop? Pratt had asked Calvino that question not more than six months ago.

“Midlife crisis, Pratt,” he’d said. “You’ll out grow it.”

“Music is the best life. I have no desire to outgrow it.”

Kati—the Thai woman also known as Titiporn—was another good reason for Colonel Pratt to think of himself as a musician. No cop with his head screwed on right would have invited a strange woman to a meeting in Chinatown while packing a weapon because a scar itched. Women like Kati made a man forget about planning, forget about concentrating on who was on the scene, who was waiting in the shadows, and what firing position to assume in case of an ambush. Kati made him like a bomb unit commander who felt safe with a phony detector because he had faith things would all work out somehow. A beautiful woman could make even a cautious man like the Colonel feel safe when he should have been on high alert for danger.

Kati had threaded her hand through Pratt’s arm as they walked away from the Savoy Hotel to flag a taxi on the street. Calvino made a point of staying a couple of steps behind them. The sky was pitch dark. Heavy traffic passed as they looked for a cab. The Shwedagon Pagoda swallows had flown elsewhere, looking for food while avoiding predators, or folding their wings in a flutter of sex.

As they got into a taxi, Calvino sat up front with the driver. A small, dark man with glasses and a silver front tooth, he reminded Calvino of the judge who had presided over the trial earlier that morning. In physical features, they were largely indistinguishable. That was a dangerous way of thinking. Calvino thought about the line written by Orwell: “You turn a Gatling gun on a mob of unarmed ‘natives,’ and then you establish ‘the Law.’” Whether Burma was opening up or not, the local history had shown that the natives were perfectly capable of turning the Gatling gun on their own.

THIRTEEN

Chinatown and Dragon Dancing

EITHER A MAN finds a way to own the street where he lives or it will end up owning him. Wai Wan’s trial proved that the wisdom applied in Burma. It was his absence of Rangoon street smarts that made Calvino uneasy. Colonel Pratt had the same instinct about their own presence in Rangoon—we don’t know these streets, and we’re in over our heads, so hire a local.

Kati and the Colonel spoke in soft tones, having switched to Thai in the back of the taxi. Calvino sat in the front with the driver, who looked straight ahead at the road. One street after another, and none of them had any recognizable feature. He had no idea whether the taxi was headed to Chinatown. He sat back and thought about Rob Osborne and how things had gone his way so far.

New York taught its children a couple of early lessons. One of them was never allow yourself to become compla-cent. The other was stay clear of strange neighborhoods unless you’ve got a rabbi on board to vouch for you. Calvino had never forgotten these lessons, but his gut told him he was about to violate both.

“You all right up there, Vincent?” Colonel Pratt asked from the back. “You’re being very quiet.”

“I have no idea where we are,” said Calvino.

“We’re on Lanmadaw Street, and he’ll turn right onto Maha Bandoola Road. When we reach Latha Street, that’s Cherry Mann,” said Kati in English.

For someone who didn’t like Indian food, she had a GPS fix on the location of the Cherry Mann restaurant.

“How did you know that?” asked Colonel Pratt.

“I go shopping in Chinatown,” she said.

“We won’t get lost, Vincent,” said the Colonel.

They settled back into their Thai conversation in the back.

Getting lost wasn’t what worried Calvino. He still hadn’t got over the way the Black Cat had manipulated the location. Letting her choose the meeting place gave Rob a tactical advantage. She’d insisted. Her choice of place—though she’d said it was Rob’s decision, not hers—or forget about a meeting. A small voice in the back of his head repeated another wisdom: Never let a woman choose where to meet a lover who has gone missing.

When the taxi turned right at Maha Bandoola Road, they found that a power shortage had left the street in darkness. It was like driving through a tunnel. The dim light from the cab’s interior gave the driver a ghoulish look. Calvino tried staring out the window, but he was looking into a black void. Out there in the darkness were the men who “owned” the street. Calvino knew that who owned the streets and the neighborhood wasn’t something that could be figured out by reading the title deeds. That kind of ownership required force and brutality, and there was a chain of owners, one stacked upon the other, the boss above more powerful than the one below. To get those relationships straight required insider knowledge of the flow and movement of people, who was on the take, who was muscle and how the money circulated. Stuff that happened in corners and alleyways served a purpose. But an outsider had no access to the chain of command.

The streetlights came on, and a group of Chinese New Year dragon dancers appeared in the headlights. The taxi slowed down. Dancers passed on both sides of the car. There’d been no sign welcoming them to Chinatown, but they were there. The sidewalks were crowded with restaurant tables of celebrating Chinese. Candles and gas lanterns flickered, throwing star-rays of light on glasses and bottles of whiskey.

The taxi pulled to the curb as Maha Bandoola Road intersected with Latha Street. The three of them got out of the taxi and walked in the street. Calvino strode next to Colonel Pratt and Kati was on the Colonel’s other side, holding his arm. They navigated around cars double-parked in front of restaurants. Calvino looked for a sign or a building number. The lighting was strictly Third World; the streetlight had a faint amber glow, but its illumination never managed to touch the ground. They stepped from pools of dim light into large shadows that swallowed up the buildings.

“Cherry Mann. Mann, like man and woman. The number is 88,” said Calvino.

“That’s a lucky number,” said Kati.

“Can you read the number on the building?” asked Calvino.

Colonel Pratt squinted at a building.