“My mother had this dream many years ago.”
The hooded men whined like beaten dogs, their muffled voices sealed by duct tape.
“Is this the Burmese way of dealing with party crashers?” asked Calvino, watching as Yadanar moved closer to the prisoners on the floor.
Yadanar glanced back.
“I like that. Yeah, that describes them exactly. Party crashers. They weren’t invited and decided to sneak in and help themselves. Isn’t that right, asshole?” he said, kicking one of the men in the ribs.
The kicked man let out a loud, throaty groan of pain. Calvino had begun to wonder if the men, the setup and Mya in the T-shirt were all part of the artwork. The look he’d seen on Thiri Pyan Chi’s face, the fear in the eyes, his shaking hands, hadn’t been those of an actor performing a role. He’d been terrified.
Sitting apart from the three men on the floor, an Asian woman was also tie
d up with a pillowcase over her head, her skirt hiked up to her thighs. Yadanar lifted his shoe and jabbed the shoulder of one of the bound men on the floor.
“This one is named Somchai. He’s a Thai who came to visit my country. He read somewhere that Myanmar was open for business, and everyone was invited to come and look around. We are the new land of opportunity. But Somchai made a big mistake. He didn’t do his homework. He thought, I don’t know any of those people in Rangoon, and you know what? If I don’t know them, then they probably don’t know each other. Would he think that in Thailand? I don’t think so. Somchai lacked a basic understanding of the situation. He had no idea—nor did he care to find out—who holds the real power, the man you must see before you make your deal. Just to be on the safe side that you’re not stepping on toes. You want to know how stupid Somchai is? He recruits a man whose girlfriend is connected through her family to the top. But he doesn’t have a clue.
“People in her extended family control the export side of the retail pharmaceutical business. Why wouldn’t he think, Myanmar, another country, yes, so shouldn’t I find out who are the people in my country, Thailand, doing business with that family in Myanmar? Could someone important like Khun Udom already have the business covered? If he didn’t know Khun Udom was in the business, then he had no brains and should have stayed home. No, he left home and came here to export cold pills. What does he do with the pills? He puts them in circulation in Bangkok, and Udom phones me and asks me why I’m setting up a second channel into Thailand. Why am I sneaking around his back, cheating him? And I tell Udom that is news to me. I am a person of honor. My family are people of honor. We keep our word. Before you came into the room, I asked Somchai if he ever bothered to read the newspapers in Thailand. The Thai government apparently doesn’t like the amount of cold pills entering the country. Udom was asked to lay off the business. He did. But pills still showed up. He took the heat. And then he blamed me for causing him a problem. But it wasn’t Udom. It wasn’t me. It was this little shit named Somchai.”
Yadanar slapped one of the hooded men in the head. Calvino assumed that one was Somchai. The blow knocked the man to his side.
“Thiri Pyan Chi has told me everything about you, Somchai. You didn’t figure that one either. What a dickhead. Always ask around about the guy you are thinking of going into business with, and ask yourself who is he, and why doesn’t he have a business going with someone bigger than you? You don’t marry someone on your first date. Your timing is terrible. You could never play the piano with such poor timing. I asked you before, ‘Don’t you read the papers?’ The Thai government is investigating the import cold pills business. They are digging for information. They are looking for someone to hang the blame on. And then you arrive at the party.
“A good businessman knows not only when to enter a market but when to leave it. Udom is a very good businessman. He’s been our partner in China. He loves us. We told him not to worry. We’d shut off the cold pills going into Thailand. And we’d put him in some new projects. Seaside resort developments are a good investment. You build places for the rich to lie on the beach and relax. Instead, what does Somchai do? He kills Rob Osborne. Because he thought he was a threat. Rob a threat? Somchai’s lack of judgment knows no end. He got it in his head Rob would talk about his business to other people. Rob made him nervous. Maybe Rob would tell his girlfriend he’d threatened him. But did Somchai care? He didn’t. Until someone told him that Mya and I are family. But then it was too late. He’d already killed him. Or maybe he knew and just didn’t really care that I’d be very unhappy. I’d promised Mya that her boyfriend would be safe. But Somchai made me a liar. We keep our family promises.
“Now I have Udom screaming at me. I have my cousin saying I’m a lying shit. And all of this comes around my birthday. I thought to myself, what would make me happy on my birthday? And I said to myself, ‘Let’s have a conversation with Somchai and his Thai colleagues. Sort this out. Start the new birth year on happier ground.’”
Talking to a room where three men and a woman sat gagged and bound, Yadanar had created a perfectly attentive audience. No matter how long Yadanar paused, no one cut into the silence with a question or comment. One of Yadanar’s friends handed him a flute of ice-cold champagne, and he took a sip. He pointed the glass at the woman on the floor.
“She pulled the trigger. Blew out Khun Rob’s brains, didn’t you?”
Mya stepped forward and pulled the pillowcase off the woman’s head. A gag, stained with blood, muted her shouts.
“Kati?” said Mya.
She looked at Yadanar.
“She killed Rob?”
“I’m afraid she did,” said Yadanar.
Kati’s face was bruised, swollen. A large red welt had risen on one cheek. Her eyes were puffy and black. Her front teeth, visible above the gag, were jagged stumps. They’d done a thorough job of beating her. The beauty had been erased from her face, leaving a mask of horror.
“She decided to help Somchai out by pulling the trigger. None of the men in this room said she was lying, that one of them pulled the trigger. She shot him because that’s what Somchai asked her to do.”
Yadanar walked to a cupboard, unlocked a drawer and removed a nickel-plated handgun, a Colt .22 with a long silencer fitted to the barrel, and showed it to Calvino.
“She killed the man you were looking for,” said Yadanar. “Do you want to do the honors on behalf of his father?”
“I don’t shoot women who are tied and beaten up,” said Calvino.
“Right,” Yadanar said.
Turning to Mya, he flipped the gun around. Grabbing Mya’s right hand, he slapped the gun into her palm. Her fingers wrapped around the grip. She pointed the long-barreled Colt .22 at the floor.
“It’s my birthday,” said Yadanar. “Calvino doesn’t have the stomach for it. Will you avenge Rob’s death? You should be the one. You know why? She told us she found out Rob was hiding in your room from you. She heard you talking to the Colonel at the 50th Street Bar. You looked surprised. Shocked. That’s what happens when you treated a strange woman like she’s wallpaper. Foreigners regularly do that with Thai girls, am I right? Think about it. Is this your karma? The moment must be in one of our family dreams. One recorded in some painting stacked in some room of this house.”
Calvino looked away. Staring at Kati, broken and terrified, full of pain and suffering, only made him feel sorry for her, and he didn’t want to feel any pity for a murderer. He understood now that Yadanar had an even better reason to separate Colonel Pratt from him. No one wanted a police colonel to witness what would be done to a woman who had gambled her life and lost with her bet on a stupid man. Bad things turned up in the real world and landed at the door of a woman who’d never given a thought to the real odds of things going completely wrong. It wasn’t something she’d remotely thought could happen. Luck had always been with her.