The next day, Rob took off with the band’s Burmese lead singer, who had a sexy, smoky voice and wore black stockings, high heels and velvet dresses as she belted out “Mad About the Boy.” Mya Kyaw Thein was twenty-something, with a voice as hot as a boiling cauldron of honey, and a past as murky as a Bangkok klong. Unstable, talented, impulsive and theatrical, after the first song she owned the audience just as she owned Rob Osborne.
After the blowout with the old man, Rob and Mya Kyaw Thein had left Bangkok. No one had heard from them in six days. They’d disappeared into Rangoon. Enough time had now passed that Alan Osborne decided he wanted his son accounted for, and Vincent Calvino was the man for the job.
“It’s more like an audit exercise than any demonstration of paternal affection,” Osborne said.
Roughly translated, the words seemed to mean that having a loose end like Rob, his only son, his flesh and blood, disappear under the carpet in Burma, without his lifting a fatherly finger to find him, wasn’t any good for his reputation. If a man didn’t look after the welfare of his son, how could he be expected to look after his shareholders? These public-relations ramifications hadn’t escaped the old man. Even if the father did nothing, the kid would still cost him money. Osborne wanted to cut his losses. Getting his son back had become a personal fiscal policy.
“Have you tried contacting the girlfriend?” asked Calvino.
Osborne smiled, lit a cigarette, inhaled and took a sip from his whiskey water.
“She’s in Rangoon. If I had a phone number or contact, why would I be sitting here drinking your whiskey and wasting my time?”
“Hire someone in Rangoon. I wouldn’t know where to start looking for him.”
“If I knew someone I trusted in Rangoon, would I be sitting here drinking—”
“Okay, I get your point. Have you talked to anyone in Rob’s band?”
“They’re useless. They can barely find their way home at night. A bunch of cheap drunks who take drugs and live in dreamland. Just like my son.”
“You don’t know anything about the girl’s family in Rangoon?”
“Mya Kyaw Thein. I mean, what kind of name is that for a singer? It sounds vaguely Jewish.”
“I’m half-Jewish.”
“Your name doesn’t sound half-Jewish.”
“The girl, Alan. You know someone who can give you some information?”
Osborne drained the glass.
“I know someone in Bangkok who might be able to help. Will you take the case?”
“I’ll think it over and get back to you.”
Osborne sighed and dragged himself out of the chair.
“What the fuck does that mean? I don’t see a line of clients waiting outside your door. Take a few minutes, then tell me you’ll take the case, and I’ll see you receive a retainer.”
Calvino watched him finish the last sip of whiskey and put the glass down a little too hard on the desk.
“We’ll talk later.”
Osborne wasn’t the kind of man who liked to be kept waiting for an answer. The mention of money hadn’t done the usual trick of accelerating the decision in his favor. It was like pulling the pin on a grenade, throwing it and then waiting as nothing happens. Calvino hadn’t moved an inch. The money grenade landed like a dud.
After Osborne left in a state of advanced annoyance, Ratana waited a couple of minutes before going into Calvino’s office. She found her boss behind his desk, his fingers pressed together in the form of a wai as he watched a gecko crawling on the wall. She could see he was deep in thought. As she came in, the lizard uttered a tiny bark of menace. She looked up at the gecko, staring at its large bright eyes that stared directly back.
“Jingjok tak,” Ratana said.
The office lizard had squawked his verdict on Alan Osborne.
“It is a warning, Khun Winee,” she said.
He’d heard the squawk, too. He studied his secretary. She had graduated with a law degree from Ramkhamhaeng University. She’d lived in England. Travel broadens some minds; others, it closes down a lane. In Ratana’s case he felt it wasn’t possible to slip a piece of paper between her beliefs and those of a rice farmer’s daughter from Issan. Messages from house lizards weren’t something she’d picked up in school or abroad.
“Since when does a jingjok decide who I take on as a client?”