Missing In Rangoon

“Can you two work together?” Calvino asked.

They exchanged a knowing smile. One man sold lottery tickets on the street, and the other sold winning numbers, stitched together by the invisible thread of greed and opportunity.

“Good, then we can all work together.”

“I work well with Americans,” said Khin Myat.

Naing Aung’s eyebrow did its familiar tell, suggesting he wasn’t happy with the way his friend was positioning himself as the superior investigator.

“If you’d worked that well with them, you’d still be at Walmart.”

The moment of tension between them passed as a young woman turned up at the table, chose one of Khin Myat’s lottery tickets and paid him the money. She had the confidence of a regular customer.

Upon his return to Burma, Khin Myat had found that his time in America both helped and hurt him. As a young Burmese, he fell into the class of what the locals called returnees, the men and women who had filtered back to Burma after the first hint the place was opening up. Ohn Myint was another example. Her nickname, Swamp Bitch, Jack Saxon had said, voiced an attitude the other Burmese mainly kept to themselves about the returnees. Their time spent abroad made for feelings of jealousy and envy, combined with a lot of misinformation about the “good life” elsewhere.

“Khin Myat left America very rich,” said Naing Aung.

“I wish it were true. Unfortunately it’s bullshit. You ever hear of anyone reviewing security tapes in a Walmart office getting rich?” asked Khin Myat. “Since I came back a couple of months ago, I’ve been selling lottery tickets for my uncle. If I were rich, why would I bother?”

Naing Aung held out a cup and poured himself tea.

“Because even the rich need to feel productive. They need to do something for their family.”

Khin Myat stabbed a finger into the tea leaves on the table and held up his finger for Calvino and Naing Aung to see the leaves stuck to it.

“The rich don’t have to raise a finger, and if they do, it’s to order a servant to run to the table to clean it.”

He popped his finger in his mouth.

“I clean my own hands.”

“When I was transferred to the security department,” he said. “I made minimum wage. You know what living on minimum wage in America means? Food stamps. You live in a small room in a bad neighborhood. So I came home, thinking it had to be better.”

He’d followed up leads in Rangoon but they’d led nowhere. He’d then drifted back to 27th Street, where his uncle had an office and a lottery ticket business. Khin Myat found himself ahead of his time. He had no idea when the rising tide in Burma would lift small boats like his.

Meanwhile, Khin Myat was not a rich man. It also turned out that he and Naing Aung had a family history from 27th Street. Naing Aung had wanted him to invest in his new private investigation business, only Khin Myat had said he had no money. The astrologer had taken that statement as a negotiating posture. He’d assumed Khin Myat wanted to drive down the price. Calvino had given them their first chance to actually work together.

“Tell Naing Aung that not everyone in New York is rich. He won’t believe me.”

“New York has poor people,” said Calvino.

Naing Aung wrinkled his nose. It was a conspiracy.

“Maybe that’s true. But any Burmese who lived eight years in America is rich.”

“That’s wrong on so many levels, I don’t know where to begin. Just because I lived in the States doesn’t mean that I’ve got money. I had to pay taxes, insurance, social security, a mortgage and gasoline. By the end of the month, I hadn’t saved anything, and even worse, I had credit card debts piling up.”

Khin Myat turned to Naing Aung. They’d had this conversation before and likely right in front of the same Hindu temple.

“Naing Aung, do you pay taxes in Rangoon? Do you know anyone who pays taxes? Who do you know who pays for insurance or social security? You don’t. No one you know does. You are the one who should be rich. In the US you make all that money, but you blow it on shit no one thinks about here. Man, being rich isn’t something they know anything about.”

“You want the job?” asked Calvino. “Fifty bucks a day.”

“Plus expenses,” said Naing Aung.

“I’m in. Just tell me what I’ve got to do, Sherlock,” he said, looking at his friend, who had used his long pinky fingernail to peel the skin from an orange and now popped a slice into his mouth.

“Your fee can be a down payment on your junior position in my private investigation business,” said Naing Aung.