“You got it,” said Yadanar.
They joined the other members of the band on the stage. Calvino sat at the table with Jack Saxon, a few feet away.
The guy is motivated, thought Calvino. He wants to be next to get the ticket to Los Angeles. Being big in the little leagues isn’t his dream. Calvino reckoned this might be one of those rare occasions when what a man wants and what he says he wants are the same. He was telling the truth.
Selling cold pills, Yadanar had a lucrative, if shady, business operation that he controlled, and it wasn’t enough. He had something in common with the Black Cat, who had her band in Bangkok and her boyfriend—the good life—but that wasn’t enough either.
There’s never enough for the dreamers, Calvino thought. He had avoided dreams himself, for the same reason he avoided drugs; they jammed the mind with images and thoughts made from the stuff of clouds. He had no reason to connect the two dreamers, except that they were both Burmese and in the music business. Mya Kyaw Thein played in a Bangkok dive for an audience who couldn’t spell “Lamborghini.” Yadanar hired people to spell it for him, while he waited for a recording agent to turn him into a star.
“Did you ask him about Mya Kyaw Thein, the Black Cat?”
“They run in different circles,” Saxon said.
“Circles connect. Sometimes. It was worth a shot. After this set is finished, I’ll ask him myself.”
Saxon shook his head.
“Be careful, Vinny. This guy has a boldfaced name, and in Rangoon, you need to add italics as well. Don’t screw with him.”
“All I’m saying is Yadanar keeps score,” Calvino replied. “He knows who’s working in the music scene. They say the Black Cat has talent. If she’s working anywhere in the city, he’d know. If she’s in the city and not working, he’d know that too. He can bullshit all he wants. But you know and I know he can call up any woman he likes and invite her over. And what’s she’s gonna say? No?”
Saxon grinned like he’d just eaten the last piece of pizza lifted from his best friend’s plate. But he wasn’t looking at Calvino; he was looking at the woman walking into the room behind him.
Turning around, Calvino said, “Looks like I don’t have to wait until the set ends.”
Shaking his head, Saxon put the beer bottle to his lips and took a long pull.
“When shit like this happens,” Saxon said, “I feel sorry for people who don’t drink.”
Colonel Pratt had his fingers on the saxophone keys ready to play Pat Metheny when there was a change of plans. Mya Kyaw Thein stepped over some wires and picked up the mike, inched across the small stage to Yadanar behind the keyboard and whispered something. He nodded and gestured to Pratt, who leaned over the keyboard to hear the message. Pratt smiled at what he heard. Someone at the bar turned down the volume on the TV. Yadanar introduced Pratt as one of the all-time great sax players in Southeast Asia. His introductory bio left out the part about the saxophone player being a Thai cop. It didn’t seem like the kind of detail this particular crowd would want to know. Most weren’t listening to Yadanar anyway and continued talking or running their eyes and fingers over their little screens, looking up only briefly to calculate if they might be missing a chance to see a big league players score.
After the first song, Saxon tapped Calvino on the shoulder.
“You’ve got a couple of admirers over there.”
Calvino turned around and looked at the spiral staircase. Bianca and Anne waved. He waved them over to the table. Each of the women held a glass of wine. A couple of expats hovered near them.
“Bianca and Anne. You helped them out earlier at the hotel,” said Calvino.
“I thought they looked familiar.”
“I invited them here.”
“Looks like they have other ideas.”
One of the men behind them refilled their wine glasses.
“Seems those two have no problem making friends.”
A waiter brought Calvino a Tiger beer and a glass. Calvino drank from the bottle.
“Pratt should have been a professional musician,” said Calvino.
“Cry Me A River” was one of Pratt’s favorite standbys. Women in the audience always loved that song, as most women, sooner or later, cried at least a small stream. Yadanar Khin joined in on piano, and the bass player and drummer followed. The Black Cat held the mike close to her mouth and began singing, “You nearly drove me out of my head…”
She’d brought a rich emotionality to the words, making them wet with tears. Every word a woman ever wanted to say to an unworthy man was in that song. All the heartache, tears, regret and sadness poured out of her, filling the bar with a mood thick with pain. She may not have owned the night, but she owned the room. No one spoke; no one played with their cell phones or iPads. Even the pool players leaned on their pool cues, listening. If anyone in the room had ever wanted proof that a woman is capable of crying a river over a man’s vanished love, the Black Cat was delivering an explosive and powerful demonstration.
The song ended. There was a long moment of silence. Then the bar broke into thunderous applause. The Black Cat nodded at the crowd. She knew her power. “Thank you. I’ll be back,” she said, fixing the mike into its stand. Then she walked from the stage to Calvino’s table and sat at the chair next to him. Crossing her legs, she jiggled a cigarette from a pack on the table and lit, tilting her head upward and watching the smoke float toward the ceiling.
The whole bar stared at Calvino and the Black Cat as if to say, was this the man who made her cry a river? Was this the man who owned the night?
“I heard you were looking for me,” said Mya Kyaw Thein.
“I’m looking for your boyfriend.”
“What about Rob?”
“I want to talk to him.”
She lit a cigarette and stared at him for a moment.
“I’ll ask him.”
“That’s not the deal,” said Calvino.
The Black Cat’s nose twitched as she exhaled smoke. She looked slightly irritated but quickly recovered as applause turned into synchronized clapping and shouts for an encore. Yadanar Khin walked down from the stage and offered his outstretched hand.
She looked at him.
“Maybe later,” she said to Yadanar. “I’ve got some business first.”
Back on stage, he told the audience, “The Black Cat is taking a short break. She’ll be back. What a night! One you are never gonna forget.”
This was a woman used to getting her own way.
“Where is Rob?” asked Calvino.
Mya Kyaw Thein looked away like a black cat seeing motion in the shadows.
“Tell his father that Rob doesn’t want to see him.”
“Rob can tell his father himself. Then it’s over. Done.”
“Rob said that you used to be a lawyer in New York,” she said. “My brother has a lawyer, but he’s useless. Ohn Myint must have told you.”
“She didn’t tell me I’d find you tonight.”
“She wouldn’t know.”
The Black Cat had that right; Ohn Myint wouldn’t have fit into the 50th Street Bar crowd. None of these people looked like runners.
“She said you’d help my brother.”
Calvino nodded, drank from his whiskey.
“I said that. We also discussed the money. She doesn’t want to get involved in that part. I can understand.”
“I’ll handle the money.”
Calvino thought about the way the men around the bar looked at her. She could handle money, men and audiences. It was too easy in a way, and Calvino saw that for men like Mya’s brother and Rob, smaller souls, less capable and less sure of themselves, not everything in life had handles. For them it was like catching fish barehanded; most of the time they slipped away.
“I’ll bring it tomorrow,” Calvino said.
“What about tonight?”
“Tomorrow is better. We meet at the courthouse. Ohn Myint picks me up in the morning. You do whatever you
have to do there. Afterwards, whatever happens, you arrange for me to meet Rob.”
She snuffed out the cigarette. “You know the amount?”
Calvino nodded. “Four and a half.”
She got up from the table, looked back at the audience and flashed a smile—that “you belong to me” smile that entertainers who move audiences to tears turn on whenever they get the feeling that the world is flying away from them. The Black Cat wanted her world. Calvino could imagine her as a political activist. This crowd would have burnt down paradise to please her.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.
“And afterwards I’ll see Rob. Unless you have some secret reason why that shouldn’t happen.”
“If you knew anything about Burma, you’d know there are no secrets. Everyone talks to everyone else.”
She went back on stage, picked up the mike and sang an Etta Jones classic, “Don’t Go to Strangers.” She looked at Calvino as she sang, until his glance broke away. He had a sense someone was watching him from the audience.
Bianca stood on the staircase. She flashed him a smile as he turned in his chair. He took a drink from his whiskey glass, got up from the table and walked to the stairs, climbing to the step where Bianca waited.
“You made it,” he said.
“You and the singer…”
She broke off in mid-sentence.
“Business.”
Bianca led Calvino up the stairs, making a display of taking his hand and lingering a moment so the Black Cat couldn’t help but see the man she’d been singing a ballad to was holding hands with another woman. Nothing like the attentions of a sexy woman to bring the other women into play, Calvino thought. Their competitive spirit propelled them forward. It was pure instinct.
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” she said.
They passed booths and tables filled with customers admiring themselves in mirrors mounted on the brick walls. Bianca stopped at a booth near the bar end, a secluded alcove where lovers could sit without being disturbed. A well-dressed foreigner in his early fifties, eating a hamburger, sat in the middle of the booth, elbows on the table, chewing and smiling as Bianca appeared. Anne sat next to him, smoking a cigarette, looking bored.
Bianca slid into the booth and introduced him as Arnold or Harold, or it might have been Reynolds. Calvino didn’t catch the name. The noise from downstairs made it difficult to hear. But his name didn’t matter. Nor did his nationality. He was just another guy who was rich or pretending to be rich, who had charmed Bianca.
“The burgers are great,” he said. “You want one?”
Calvino waved off the offer. The man shrugged as if to say Calvino didn’t know what he was missing. But Calvino did know what he was missing, and it wasn’t a hamburger.
Arnold/Harold/Reynolds told Calvino how he’d worked his ass off to locate a Flying Tiger P-40 because he had a collector in the States willing to pay a million dollars for one. He’d now located one of the airplanes and was looking for a partner to retrieve it. This was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. He confided his insider’s information about how the P-40 had been stored in Russia during the war. His previous partner had figured out they could forge the registration plate and pass it off as one of the American Volunteer GroupV planes.
During World War II, there had been only a hundred Flying Tiger P-40s in Burma. All but a couple had been accounted for. It was a dangerous business running a scam on people who had spent a lifetime studying the Flying Tigers and knew each and every P-40 as if they were their children. The guy had convinced himself it wasn’t a grift. He believed that he’d found the real thing and that it was going to make him rich.
“I specialize in finding missing people,” said Calvino. “Unless the guy I’m looking for is harnessed inside the cockpit of a P-40, I’m not interested.”
Mr. P-40 fell into an uneasy silence. Grease dripped between his fingers as he finished the hamburger and wiped his hands on paper napkins. Calvino had the impression this setup was Bianca’s doing; she must have built him up as the guy to talk to about international business ventures. It could have been a covert sting operation, or she might have been using Calvino to assess the deal. Or they could have been looking for a mark, and Calvino, like a lot of others who turned up in Rangoon, seemed to have money. Whatever the plan had been, Arnold/Harold/Reynolds now looked away, embarrassed. Busted expectation made a man go quiet just as it made a woman turn the emotions into song. At least that’s the way it seemed to Calvino as, in the silent interlude, the singer’s voice penetrated from downstairs.
The Black Cat—it was difficult to think of her under the name Mya Kyaw Thein—had finished her version of “My Man,” and after a couple of beats the audience erupted in wild applause and catcalls.
“That girl can belt it out,” said the P-40 con man.
Arnold/Harold/Reynolds was a crook, but even a crook couldn’t help but speak the truth about a talented performer. Black Cat made it easy for him and everyone else in the room. She had that rare ability only a few singers had. Something beyond a good voice and good looks. She personalized the lyrics, made the audience feel them, convinced each of them that the Black Cat alone owned the feelings and the words and shared them from her heart.
He’s not true. He beats me, too. What can I do? Oh, my man, I love him so. He’ll never know. And my life is just despair, but I don’t care. When he takes me in his arms the world is bright.
Bianca massaged his leg under the table. The muscles, tender from the run, had knotted.
“Are you all right?” she asked him as he winced.
He put his hand over her hand, stilling it.
“That’s better.”
Anne and Bianca started a conversation in Italian. Soon both hands were above the table and she carried on the discussion as if she were conducting a band.
Calvino sat back and thought about the performance he’d heard downstairs. Like every person—man and woman—in the room, Calvino wanted to cradle the Black Cat in his arms and whisper, “Baby, you’ll be okay.”
He thought about going downstairs and telling her that, but he had a gut feeling that, actually, it wasn’t going to work out for her. How would it end? The way that kind of thing always ended, in disappointment and frustration. Calvino would go downstairs and she’d be gone. Tomorrow morning, she’d show up at the courthouse and be there waiting for him when he arrived with Ohn Myint, his translator, the marker of trails for the Rangoon Running Club, the fixer who gave the MI agent the language he needed to file his report.
They had business to transact, and that was always a problem. Business poisoned the well where all those feelings waited to be lifted up. He had money to offer—it wasn’t even his own; it came from Alan Osborne—and she had a boyfriend she was selling. He thought that a woman could still love a man who was unfaithful and beat her but never a man who had rightly calculated what it would cost for her to betray her man.
Colonel Pratt put his saxophone back in the case and closed it. He was ready to return to the hotel. Calvino flew past him and out the door as the Colonel shook hands with Yadanar Khin and the other members of the band. Mya Kyaw Thein had vanished before the applause ended. No one had followed her out. By the time Calvino had gone downstairs and into the street, she’d gone. No one had seen her get into a taxi or a car or onto a motorbike. Wherever she’d vanished to, she hadn’t left a clue—it was the way a black cat disappeared into a dark alley.
Bianca lifted her head slightly from Calvino’s chest and looked at her watch in the early morning sunlight reflected from the Shwedagon Pagoda. The curtains were open. The golden temple was a beacon in the distance, and the flame of its color washed over her body. Calvino had kicked off the sheets. Sweat beaded on her breasts and spilled onto his belly as she pulled herself up on one elbow. She tried to make out the expression on his face. His head was turned to the side on the pillow as if waiting for her to say something. Anything.
“Do you ask every wom
an you sleep with to work for you?”
He cupped his hand around the back of her head and pulled her back onto his chest.
“Only if I think she has...”
“Talent?”
He pushed the hair away from her face.
“Talent for digging behind the lies people tell.”
She let out a long sigh and shifted her weight to swing one leg over his. He cried out, reaching down to stop the spasm in his calf from working its way up his leg.
“I forgot. You’re a sore runner. Not a sore loser.”
She sat up to light a cigarette and walked to stand in front of the window, staring at the dark forest and at the temple, enveloped in a cone of golden light.
“I could help you find this person. If you want me to, that is.”
Calvino racked his memory to see if this was the first time, moments after making love to a strange woman, she’d volunteered her services to help him find a missing person. Though it wasn’t exactly volunteering. He’d practically asked her to do it. He’d just finished telling her that he planned to follow up a lead on the Black Cat’s mother, who had a stall in Scott’s Market. He told her he’d learnt from a member of the Black Cat’s band in Bangkok that her mother had a shop there and was in Bianca’s line of business, jewelry. Scott’s Market, or Bogyoke Zay, was a big place with lots of stalls, he’d heard. It could take a couple of days to find the mother, and if he went around asking for her, suspicions might arise and she’d shutter her shop and take a holiday.
He’d also told Bianca that finding the mother was less important now that he’d met the Black Cat. But Bianca had thought he should still talk to the mother.
“If you want to know the daughter, always talk to the mother,” she’d said.
She’d sounded very Thai at that moment.
Calvino told himself she was right. It was just that this wasn’t something you normally asked of a woman ten minutes after one of those Henry Miller scenes of tearing off clothes, deep-mouth kissing, grabbing and sucking, falling into bed, kicking off shoes and peeling off underwear while choreographing body parts as if the participants were alternating between trampoline jumping and mud-wrestling. The entire performance had taken place within the glow of Burma’s most holy and sacred symbol.
Missing In Rangoon Page 10