If Henry Miller were leaving Brooklyn in our time, Calvino figured, he’d rip up his ticket to Paris and find his way to Rangoon, one of the last romantic oases on earth. On the other hand, the city was already filling up with foreign caravans. Come to think of it, Calvino thought, Miller would be not only too late, but irrelevant. Tropic of Cancer—download it for free from the Internet and then forget where you saved it on your computer. That’s how Henry would stop mattering. Saved but unread, except by one exotic Black Cat.
Colonel Pratt asked who was at the door before opening it.
“It’s me, Pratt.”
Calvino heard the security chain slide and fall. The door opened and Calvino walked in. A bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, two glasses and bucket of ice waited on the table near the balcony. The curtains were drawn. Pratt’s carry-on case was open on the bed. Calvino watched Pratt slide the chain back into the slot.
“Still not unpacked?” asked Calvino, staring at the suitcase.
“Got back only ten minutes before I phoned you.”
“The Thai embassy is running overtime.”
“We drove out to a shooting range. It was my good friend from the embassy who had the idea.”
“Did you tell him your running name was Crack Shot?”
The Colonel smiled. “I forgot. He would have liked that.”
Pratt hadn’t offered the Thai embassy official’s name, and Calvino didn’t ask. He understood the power and risk of naming people and things.
Calvino sat in a chair, poured whiskey into the two glasses and took a drink from one of them.
“While I was running through rice fields, I was being followed by an MI asshole. As slow as I ran, he didn’t even pretend to run. He was riding one of those cheap-ass motorcycles.”
“What did he want?”
“He wanted to know why I was running.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Doctor’s orders. I’m still trying to understand how he found me in the middle of nowhere. I had a tail in the middle of nowhere. I could see him for miles. He made no effort to hide.”
Calvino handed Colonel Pratt a glass of whiskey.
“You were running with a group of foreigners. He probably picked you because you were the slowest runner.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. You’re probably right. The lion always takes down the weakest runner in the herd. Darwin said something about that. I think it was Darwin. It might have been Henry Miller.”
He drained his glass and poured himself another.
“I have a present for you,” said the Colonel.
“I hope it’s not jewelry. You know how people talk.”
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Pratt pulled a rolled red towel out of the suitcase and unwrapped it, his hand emerging with a handgun.
“Nine millimeter Walther PPQ. German made. Fifteen shot magazine. It has a short trigger pull. Light release. Polymer frame. Good grip and sharp sights set at the factory.”
“Are you selling me a gun?”
Pratt removed a second towel, a white one. He opened it and pulled out a second Walther PPQ. He passed the handgun to Calvino.
“This one is for you. I have a couple of shoulder holsters. And let me see…” he said, digging around in the bottom of the case until he found two boxes of ammo. “A box of PMC 115 grain hollow points, and a box of 147 grain gold dots.”
Calvino walked over and took one of the handguns.
“Does have a good grip.”
He turned the gun over.
“The magazine eject is that slider on the side. Both sides have a slider. Left-handed, right-handed.”
Calvino worked the slider with his thumb, and the magazine popped out. It was loaded.
“Didn’t you say something about just needing to talk to one or two people and then going back home?”
“I had some information at the shooting range that the people I want to talk to can play rough.”
“Imagine that. Multi-million-dollar racket to trans-ship cold pills into Thailand, and to think the people involved might resort to violence if you happen to get in their face. Learn something every day.”
Calvino smelled the barrel of the Walther. So far, the early evening had carried the scent of perfume and the smell of cordite from the shooting range. They blended in his nose and his mind like the haze following the sun into the ground. Smells can carry a reassurance, but in this case both smells promised to deliver surprise, pain and regret. While Calvino had been out waving at the local villagers, Colonel Pratt had been testing the sights, grips, range and reliability of the available weapons.
“Better to be prepared.”
“Like boy scouts, right? You know what I love most about places like Rangoon?”
The Colonel shook his head as he put on the shoulder holster.
“The Italian women?”
“The Burmese are still in the last century. Except at the airport, do you think you’d find a metal detector anywhere? Even the guards outside the hotel carry AK-47s. Guns are everywhere, and no alarms are going off.”
“The Walther’s made in Germany. Precision.”
“German guns, Italian women… All that’s missing is you playing some Joe Henderson on the sax, and we might almost forget why we’re in Rangoon.”
Calvino turned the gun in his hand. It was an impressive piece of engineering—not unlike the weapons of the people who would be waiting for them outside the hotel, people they didn’t know and would never know. If he and Pratt were lucky they’d be done and out of Burma soon. Rob Osborne would go home to his daddy. The cold pill pipeline would be shut down. The Burmese Tropic of Cancer would once again be a tranquil paradise.
If only life worked out that way sometimes, he thought. Even once. That would be enough. In the meantime he was happy to have the Walther PPQ and a box of PMC 115 grain hollow points.
EIGHT
50th Street Bar
CALVINO STOPPED TO massage his calf muscle. It had seized up into a throbbing knot. Seeing his problem, Pratt waited a moment before continuing down the sloped pavement alone, past the uniformed guards with automatic weapons, and stopping at the street.
Calvino consciously tried not to hobble as he stood up and walked to where Pratt waited to hail a cab. A few minutes earlier they had passed three taxis idling in front of the hotel. How Calvino had wanted to climb into one of them. But it wasn’t an option. Living with aching calves and legs was the cost of following the standard procedure for choosing a taxi in his line of work. Any taxi parked in front of the hotel might be compromised. Colonel Pratt had learnt long ago that staying alive was tied to avoiding unnecessary risks. Even if it meant a bit of pain had to be endured on the walk to the street, where the drill was to flag down the second taxi that came along.
It wasn’t written in any book that it had to be the second car. Sometimes he waited for the third car. Habit and routine were the invisible handmaidens who delivered easy targets to operatives who had the job of tailing them and reporting on their conversations. Calvino’s encounter with the low-ranking MI agent had drawn notice that he was at least a subject of interest. People were watching.
On the drive Pratt said little. It was an old habit, riding quietly in a taxi driven by someone who might not necessarily be a taxi driver by profession. Calvino massaged one calf, then the other.
“Still sore?”
Calvino sighed. “A little. I need to go to the gym when I get back.”
“You could stop running marathons.”
“And give up my place on the Olympic team?”
“That would be a pity,” said Colonel Pratt.
The driver glanced at them in the rearview mirror. The taxi drivers in Rangoon, unlike those Bangkok, understood and spoke enough English to follow a conversation, especially one that involved sports.
The two foreigners let their inconsequential conversation drift away into silence during the balance of the twenty-minute journey. By the time they reached the
50th Street Bar, night had set in. The main streets had streetlights, but once the cab entered the side street, the depth of the darkness enveloped it. Outside was a blur of lights from inside houses hidden behind hedges and trees. The bar was buried down a long, empty street, but the driver had no trouble finding it. On the right side bright lights blazed, outlining a modern bar that looked out of place on the street. The bar stood out like a hooker in hot pants and high heels at a church picnic. Parked out front was a long row of luxury sports cars and SUVs, each one in showroom condition and freshly washed, their polished grilles glimmering in the light from the bar. Like an automotive version of a gated community, they faced the street together, leaving no room for intruders.
Pratt climbed out of the taxi and leaned back in for his saxophone case. He’d worn his blue silk shirt and black trousers. He looked more like a businessman than a musician. Calvino slowly emerged from the other side, turned and paid the driver.
“I hope you make the team,” said the driver.
“Thanks. They’re counting on me,” said Calvino.
“You think the driver believed you were Olympic material?” asked Pratt.
“It was low light.”
“It was dark.”
“Not in front of the bar.”
As they passed two of the expensive cars, Calvino stopped. His legs felt better for the stretch. He rocked back and forth on his toes, feeling his calf muscles.
“What do you figure this one cost?”
A silver Lamborghini Murciélago, sandwiched between a new Jaguar and a Maserati, stood out. Pratt walked around the Lamborghini like an earthling inspecting an alien artifact.
“Landed in Bangkok, taxes, shipping, about a million dollars,” Colonel Pratt finally said as he walked around to a standstill in front of the car.
“Last time I saw a Maserati in Bangkok,” said Calvino, “it didn’t look like this. It’d been in an accident. The owner had been racing it on the tollway. Rescue teams arrived with a blowtorch and mechanical jaws. There wasn’t much left of the driver.”
“I remember that accident. The driver was the son of someone powerful.”
“That’s called development. Soft loans from Western banks to build expressways so that rich kids can use them as private racetracks when they’re bored racing on Sukhumvit Road. And you remember the kid who ran down and killed a good cop, and walked away?”
“‘Discomfort guides my tongue and bids me speak of nothing but despair,’” said Pratt quoting Shakespeare.
“Shakespeare is what the Burmese have to look forward to?” said Calvino.
“People like the ones who own these cars don’t need much help from foreigners, Vincent.”
“I never heard you call Shakespeare a foreigner.”
“I am not talking about what I think.”
It was the Colonel’s polite way of saying that foreigners like him usually attributed too much importance to the role of other foreigners in the lives of the rich.
Calvino walked around the Lamborghini, shaking his head.
“Admiring your Italian ancestry, Vincent?”
“Say some guys at Goldman Sachs form a band. They drive out to Brooklyn or Queens for a gig. I could visualize a parking lot outside a bar in one of the boroughs looking something like this. And none of them would be Italian.”
The parking lot reeked of cash, privilege and immunity. Cars like these should have a sign installed over the gas tank, thought Colonel Pratt—“fueled by drug money, kickbacks or corruption.” Take your pick. Calvino might joke about them, but the people who bought and drove such cars didn’t have a sense of humor when it came to the sources of their money. He’d come to Rangoon to deal with the people who drove such cars, and to lower their fuel consumption.
“Looks like you’re playing in a band of made men,” said Calvino.
The planning had seemed easy in Bangkok. Standing in front of the bar, the full weight of Pratt’s mission came home to him—walk into a bar and charm such men into helping him shut down a business that was kicking out vast wealth. He felt stupid.
“The little big leagues are the most lethal,” said Colonel Pratt.
“The big minor leagues are even worse.”
“Shakespeare once wrote, ‘The miserable have no other medicine but only hope.’ And robbers of hope are in a league of their own.”
Calvino cracked a smile. “Shakespeare comes to Rangoon. Time to check out the players on stage.”
They went inside. The door opened into a large room. Pool tables on the left, a large bar in the center, stools on the right, a stage opposite the pool table area and a dozen tables with chairs. The tables had young, well-dressed men and women with perfect makeup and hair—the kind of people who were never seen carrying a paper sack, using a hammer and nail, or unscrewing the back of a motor casing. Most were Westerners, but a few Burmese were mixed in, like a few almonds floating in a bowl of peanuts.
Several white women sat at the bar drinking red wine, talking to the other women, index fingers hovering above smart phones, as bartenders and admirers floated in and out of their field of vision like screen icons.
Calvino spotted Jack Saxon at a corner pool table. Saxon stared down the shank of his pool cue, left eye squinted and breath held, took his shot and dropped the five-ball in the side pocket. As he rose up, his face wore a self-satisfied grin. When he saw Calvino and the Colonel advancing across the floor, his grin morphed into a crooked smile. He pointed his pool cue in their direction, leaned over and took his next shot, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.
Saxon missed the shot, winced and waved at Calvino. His luck ended, his shoulders slumped forward as if acknowledging defeat.
“Over here!” he shouted, taking the cigarette out of his mouth.
The attractions of the 50th Street Bar were many. It was a place to be seen. Certainly one could drink there while watching the live feed of soccer and cricket matches and Formula One races—the English taste in sports. You could do some business. You could see who was sleeping with whom this week—one of those old colonial habits that was far more resilient than the empire—or check out who was driving which car. The good life, with an English flavor, had arrived for the children of the few. Saxon led Pratt and Calvino over to the table occupied by the band and made the introductions. Calvino pulled back a chair and sat down, while Pratt leaned his saxophone case against the edge of the stage.
Yadanar Khin stood up and extended his hand to Colonel Pratt. It was soft. He had the hand of a man who’d never known hard physical labor.
“Man, you’ve got the gift. The Java Jazz Festival album a few years ago blew me away. People probably tell you that all the time. I am honored you’re here. When Jack said you were in town and wanted to sit in with us, I thought, that’s more than good. That’s great.”
As he spoke, Yadanar hadn’t paid attention to Calvino, who’d been watching him like the chaperon of a teenager with a reputation for getting herself in trouble in the back seats of expensive cars.
Yadanar noticed Calvino’s gaze.
“This is my friend Vincent Calvino,” said Saxon. “He’s in town looking for the son of a friend who’s gone missing.”
Yadanar gave Calvino the once over, registering his expensive jacket and trousers that helped him blend into the mix of foreigners at the club.
“People get lost in Rangoon. Hope you find the guy. You two know each other?”
He’d turned back to Pratt.
Pratt nodded. “Vincent is one of my biggest fans. Wherever I play, he comes along.”
“Like a manager?”
“I screen his groupies,” said Calvino.
The Burmese bandleader no longer focused on Calvino. He’d already been assigned to the role of Pratt’s flunky. Pratt was the performer, the star, and for the two visitors from Bangkok that was the best result possible.
“We have a lot of musical talent in Rangoon. A couple of months ago, a five-girl band that used to
play here got a deal in Los Angeles. We’ve had talent scouts coming in ever since. Everyone is betting who’ll be next to get the big label deal.”
Through his family connections in government and business, Yadanar’s family owned the day, but that wasn’t enough to satisfy him; like the children of oligarchs everywhere his ambition was to possess the night. His tone of voice and gestures toward Pratt were his way of acknowledging that he was in the presence of someone who owned a significant piece of the night. Rangoon was not that different from anywhere else. If you had the power to set business hours your goal was to acquire the rest of the clock. It was old-fashioned greed—predictable, brutal, funny and sad, especially in a world in which most people were lucky if they could rent a moment to call their own at dawn or sunset, feel alive as the world separated day from night, before the Yadanars of the world put their hand out for the rent.
“We’re about to start our second set,” Yadanar said to Colonel Pratt. “Join us.”
The Colonel took out his saxophone and put the strap around his neck. His lips touched the mouthpiece. He worked the buttons. He looked up and smiled. Calvino pursed his lips and glanced at Saxon, who was laughing.
“I left my banjo out in my Lamborghini,” said Saxon.
“Go out and get it,” said Yadanar.
“Only if Vinny will be my manager.”
Calvino grinned.
“Stick to pool, Jack.”
Yadanar laughed.
“Hey, Jack, this guy knows a thing or two.”
The other members of the band had drifted back to their instruments on stage and waited for Yadanar to take his place at the keyboard.
“Anything special you’d like to play?” Yadanar asked the Colonel, as he rose from the table.
“Pat Metheny’s ‘Bright Size Life’ is as good as any to start.”
Missing In Rangoon Page 9