Missing In Rangoon

glass to drink and then snapped his fingers until he had Rob’s full attention. He was done playing along with them and their little act of mutual comfort, fear and sorrow.

“Tonight isn’t really about Kati or Pratt or me. It’s about two dead thugs who got themselves killed on their way to kill you. Why don’t we stop singing the daddy-hates-me blues and talk about what the two of you are doing to piss off important people? I don’t think it’s your song selection. Tell me, what is it? Which one of you wants to start with something called the truth? Reach down. It’s inside you, though you haven’t taken it out in some time. Start tonight. Start now.”

Like most stories involving a Lexus, two thugs and guns, the story came down to money and power. As in every part of Asia, the money god exacted a price for salvation, which was what true believers call payday. The idea of unsubscribing from the ruling system, going down and out with Henry Miller, had been a noble, romantic notion sixty years ago. Since then, nobility and romance had lost their virginity and become streetwalkers.

The Black Cat opened up first, and as she talked, Calvino thought he understood how a few artists had an ability to go deep down into where their demons hatched plans and pull them up to the surface, wailing and shrieking. She was taking him to that place.

“My grandfather, who owned a bookstore in Rangoon, was a good friend of Yadanar Khin’s grandfather. Yadanar Khin’s grandfather was a military man. He rose through the ranks to become a general. My grandfather had a different karma. He was arrested and thrown in jail, where he died. Yadanar Khin’s father, like his father before him, became a soldier. He was promoted to be a general and now is a minister in the government. His family is rich. Mine is poor. We needed money for my brother. Rob tried to help. His father refused, even though Alan Osborne’s father had known my grandfather and had been a regular at his bookstore.”

She gestured toward the Johnnie Walker bottle, and Calvino poured her a glass. The Black Cat sipped from the glass and put it to Rob’s lips. He took a swig.

“I’d heard that Yadanar Khin had good connections. His family made money from all kinds of deals. When he found out I was a singer, he said he’d see what he could do. A Burmese band had just signed with an American label. He wanted that for himself. He thought I was his ticket. I said his family owed my family. He said, ‘Bullshit. What’s that got to do with me?’ I told him I had a boyfriend and was already in a band in Bangkok. He said there might be another way to do business, seeing that I lived in Bangkok and had a relationship.”

“Is this why Rob had two Thais trying to kill him?” asked Calvino.

Rob lifted his head from her lap.

“She told me not to get involved.”

Calvino watched him sit on the bed next to her.

“But you insisted,” Calvino said.

“It wasn’t a big thing. I was supposed to pick up a suitcase and deliver it in Bangkok.”

“What was inside?”

“Cold pills. Over-the-counter medicine for hay fever or a cold.”

“Pills that drug dealers buy to make yaba out of,” said Calvino, referring the crazy-making local variety of methamphetamine. “You know that, don’t you?”

It wasn’t that he wanted to know whether Rob had bought into Yadanar’s story that he was taking cold pills into Bangkok for people with a runny nose and fever. He wanted to know whether he would lie about it.

“I guess so,” he said. “But that’s got nothing to do with me. The stuff I brought in was for a clinic in Korat. I wasn’t giving anything to a drug dealer. I delivered to a doctor. Jesus, what’s wrong with that?”

“You didn’t think, why does a doctor in a clinic need me to bring a suitcase of cold pills when he can order them in Thailand?”

“It’s a quota or something. I don’t know. All I know is what was written on the packets. ‘Cold pills.’ Nothing dangerous.”

“After what happened tonight, do you still believe that?”

Rob exhaled a long breath.

“I know, man. I know.”

“Those two guys weren’t sent around to pop you over a suitcase of cold pills. There’s got to be something else you need to tell me.”

Mya squeezed Rob’s hand. He raised his head from her shoulder and took another drink of the

whiskey.

“Yeah, there was a small thing that happened the last time I picked up a case of pills.”

“The last time? Meaning you made a number of trips for Yadanar Khin and his boys?”

“Only three. Not so many. I told them after number three that was my last time taking the shit into Bangkok. I made that clear. Ask Mya. Three times was our deal. After that, they were supposed to pay the money for Wai Wan to get out of Insein.”

As with most stories, this one had holes and parts that didn’t fit in, like clouds and tree branches that had been crammed into a jigsaw puzzle to complete a skyline that now looked upside down.