Missing In Rangoon

“See you,” she said, and walked into the bar.

Believing in the power of the wrong kind of man was a fast start down the road that led to an unmarked dead end. No amount of backing up would allow such a woman to return to the main road.

“Good luck, Mya!” he called after her.

She stopped, turned around.

“Don’t get too close to these people. You have no idea what they can do.”

SIXTEEN

The Urgent Astrologer and Private Investigator

A MIDDLE-AGED MONK, his polished globe of a head reflecting the sun, sat on a wooden stool and watched a street tailor at work behind a sewing machine, repairing the monk’s bag. The bag had a Buddha image stitched on the front. A young boy and his father also looked on as the tailor operated the machine’s pedals, the blue veins of his gnarled bare feet pumping up and down as if he were on a treadmill. Sewing and making merit for the next life looked a lot like running in place. The boy, nine or ten years old and dressed in bright green trousers, ran over to buy a sweet from a Muslim vendor and then returned to his father’s side.

Calvino had walked the length of 27th Street, checking out access points and getting a sense of the character of the neighborhood and the kind of people who worked and lived there. He’d already passed Naing Aung’s office, next to the Urgent Photo Studio, and continued walking until he’d reached the main road. He’d arrived there in time to watch a mass of people shove and push to get off a bus as others sought to squeeze through the same entrance to get inside.

The

tailor was finishing his work on the monk’s bag as Calvino retraced his footsteps along the crowded street to the Scott’s Market end of 27th Street. Most of Naing Aung’s neighbors ran luggage, bag and lottery shops with small offices wedged in between on the ground floor. He passed a couple of the grizzled owners, chewing betel nut and spitting as they shuffled in front of their shops in sandals and longyis, looking up and down the street for a customer.

A vendor selling roller luggage and shoulder bags in large stacks gestured to Calvino in vain to enter his shop. Calvino walked past a carpet shop plunked in the middle of the bag stores that displayed red and blue rugs hung from the ceiling like prototypes of Third World flags. He stopped to look at welcome mats draped over a table at the front. A young woman yawned as she passed the shop, asking him for money; she carried a bundled-up infant. Calvino gave her a couple of hundred-kyat notes. Next door to the carpet shop was a small office, where several young women huddled over a hand calculator and worked on open ledger books laid out on an old wooden desk. One of the men used a screwdriver as three or four office girls watched him repair an old rotary phone.

Down the road was a Hindu temple that Jack Saxon had mentioned as a landmark not to pass, or Calvino would have gone too far. A simpleton lounged in the doorway staring at the sky. He begged for small change before an Indian chased him away.

Calvino wasn’t lost. He cased Naing Aung’s neighborhood on the old theory that birds of a feather nest closely together.

Having gained a sense of the area around Naing Aung’s office and the covered market, he found himself in front of the old wooden staircase leading from the street to the third floor office. A painted sign in italics read:

The Urgent Astrologer and Private Eye Office of Naing Aung.

The “Private Eye” part had been added to the existing sign recently. Bits of corrugated metal with the name of his fortune-telling business had fresh red paint that made the letters jump out like the cover of Mao’s little handbook. Calvino looked down to the foot of the staircase, where half-dead fish listlessly swam in a pot of water. The building was in a row of houses and shops. Next door, an old woman worked the foot pedals of an old sewing machine. The sewing machine and its operator both looked as if they were from another time. He wondered if she and the barefoot tailor at the opposite end of the street had long ago made a deal to divide up the neighborhood and keep out any competition.

“Naing Aung, is he a good man?” he asked the old woman.

She looked up from her sewing machine, where she’d been working on a handbag for a young girl in a school uniform. She lifted her eyes upward in the direction of the stairs.

“Fourth floor. You come for lottery number?”

“I heard he has all the lucky numbers,” said Calvino.

“Never give me one,” she said, turning back to her sewing.

When Calvino reached the fourth floor, he came to a door with the same words as the sign on the front of the building. This time they’d been printed in boldface and all-capital letters. Calvino opened the door with the opaque glass window and walked inside, expecting to find a reception area. Instead he walked straight into Naing Aung’s office. He was perched behind his desk, leaning forward on his elbows, his fingers touching in a bridge below his chin. Calvino knew it was the private investigator from Pratt’s description of the man who’d followed them to Cherry Mann. He wore the same polo shirt. When he stood up to shake hands, Calvino saw that he was wearing a green and yellow longyi. Also in the room was a matronly woman, powdered and perfumed, dressed in an orange sarong crisscrossed with silver. Gold and silver bangles clinked like wind chimes as she turned around on her chair.

“Mingalabar, Mr. Calvino. Please take a seat,” he said.

The Burmese greeting meant, “It is auspicious to meet you.”

“Daw Aye Htay is my client. She is sharing her dreams from last night.”

“Mingalabar,” said Calvino, though he doubted the auspiciousness of meeting Naing Aung, the astrologer turned private eye.

Calvino had forgotten his dreams from the previous night. In fact, he never remembered dreams. What he remembered were living nightmares, such as the image of two men in the back seat of a Lexus trying to kill him.

“I can come back,” said Calvino.

“No, no, please sit down. We are almost finished, aren’t we, Daw Aye Htay?” the Burmese PI asked the large Indian woman. She made a noncommittal grunt.