“I loved Sherlock Holmes and Perry Mason. Do you know their work? Top drawer.”
He spoke perfectly acceptable English, stopping to lean over to spit a stream of betel juice into the dirt. Betel juice justice was an old tradition.
Calvino nodded.
“I watched Perry Mason on TV as a kid,” said Calvino.
“Everyone in Burma knows Perry Mason,” said Ohn Myint.
Perry Mason was something Calvino’s parents and grandparents had discussed over the kitchen table in Brooklyn. The ancient courthouse and now Perry Mason confirmed that he’d passed through an airlock to another time and place, where Raymond Burr defended criminals in black and white on small screens.
The old ex-judge tugged at his gold-framed glasses as he reached for a pen sticking out of the pocket of his black coat. Calvino watched as he unscrewed the cap. He imagined him sitting on the bench performing the same ritual. The lawyer wrote slowly on a notepad, using a deliberate, discursive lettering that had otherwise left long ago with the British. At the end of the note, he wrote a number. He screwed the cap back onto the pen as he reviewed his note. With a satisfied nod, he returned his pen to his coat pocket and handed the paper to Calvino, who read what the ex-judge had written:
“Your Honor, your dismissal of charges against Wai Wan will show the American government your fairness and courage and demonstrate for the world to see that Myanmar’s courts can be trusted to deliver justice.”
Calvino reread the note.
“That’s it?”
But somewhere between the lines was a number with a dollar sign in front of it: $4500. Not a particularly round number, one might say, but that would be to miss the point. The digits added up to nine, and the Burmese were fond of the number nine because it represented good fortune. Ne Win, the old dictator, had once issued a decree requiring that all Burmese currency be reissued in denominations divisible by nine. Ne Win was the same strongman who had once sat atop a white stallion that was loaded onto a military aircraft so that horse and rider could circle Rangoon nine times. A fortune teller had told Ne Win that in a dream he had seen a powerful general riding a white horse in the sky over the city, and that that man could never be defeated.
Calvino passed the note to Mya Kyaw Thein. She displayed no emotion as she read it. The money was already at the lawyer’s feet, and Calvino had his script. Ohn Myint had kept her distance, drinking tea and watching the boys running after the soccer ball. To be that young and innocent, to lose oneself in a game seemed magical to her, like running. Her thoughts drifted to the weekend and the new 10K route she would mark. Maybe Saxon would come along and help this time.
The lawyer slid a piece of betel nut inside his mouth, smiling with red teeth as Calvino finally nodded. The Burmese lawyer had been a judge for thirty years before retiring to private practice. In his view the case had been resolved, and that’s what judges and lawyers did—resolve cases.
“Yes, that’s it,” said the lawyer. “Keep the note. If you have any questions, please ask me.”
The ex-judge smiled like a fat-bellied cat that had scored a sparrow. He liked an audience, especially one with an attentive foreigner. With the business out of the way, he began to recount his memories from his days on the bench. With sad eyes, his jowls shaking as he moved his head from side to side, he confided how hard it had been to sentence men to death.
“Sending a criminal to the gallows is a terrible responsibility.”
He chewed his betel, lost in thought while retaining his executioner’s confidence. He sat erect like a judge on the bench, a professional, a man at peace with working inside the criminal justice system.
“What is the exact charge against Wai Wan?” asked Calvino.
He had no illusions that the executioners in this part of the world worried themselves about technicalities. But he knew that when the executioner’s men were asked, they could play the law game as well as the best of them.
Calvino made his next move: “What elements does the Crown have to prove to convict him? What evidence do they have to connect him to the crime, is what I am saying.”
That wasn’t what they heard him saying. What they heard was someone from New York asking irrelevant questions. None of that mattered. Would someone tell this American lawyer this wasn’t New York, and proving or disapproving hadn’t mattered once the young man had been caught up in the machinery? The gears of the system had meshed, tearing and ripping, running automatically, and it was difficult to remove a man stuck inside.
Calvino wanted to ask more questions of the hanging judge, but before he had a chance, the lawyer raised his hand.
“As lawyers we know you have a right to know. So I will tell you what the Crown has proved so far. It’s all about a permit. If you have one, okay. And if you don’t?”
He flashed his hanging judge half-smile.
The lawyer bent to the side and spit a glob of red juice in the dirt. He wiped his mouth with a folded and pressed white handkerchief that he produced from his black coat and then told Wai Wan’s story. Wai Wan and three other men had been charged with the illegal transportation of teak. On the outskirts of Rangoon, a cop on a motorcycle had pulled over their truck, examined the cargo and found teak doors and window frames. The cop asked to see the teak transportation permit. Wai Wan shrugged. He didn’t have one. The cargo owner hadn’t gone to the Forestry Department and applied for the permit. Neither had Wai Wan. He admitted that. But he was only a driver, hired labor. He wasn’t in the teak business; he was in the trucking business. Applying for permits wasn’t something a driver did. This was something the teak dealer arranged.
However, the owner wasn’t on trial. She had paid a large bribe and walked away free and clear. The driver, the spare driver and two passengers, who didn’t know the truck carried teak, had been charged and faced ten years in prison. They had no money to buy their way out.
After the lawyer finished, Mya Kyaw Thein stared at Calvino.
“You see? Do you understand?”
Calvino nodded that he got the message and, smiling, signaled that he had his to deliver.
“He’s got a permit problem, and he’s also got a sister who wrote anti-government blogs, and that may have had something to do with the charges.”
“That’s speculation, Mr. Calvino.”
“Does it matter now? Aren’t we done here?” asked the Black Cat.
Both men looked at her, and Ohn Myint turned away from the soccer game to look at the Black Cat too. She was right about that, thought Calvino. There wasn’t anything else to say. The deal was done; the game’s outcome was set.
Mya Kyaw Thein’s brother had been set up while the teak owner had walked. What was happening to Wai Wan peeled away layers of injustice. But the ex-judge was likely right, Calvino realized—to point at corruption was just speculation. Wai Wan was doomed the moment the teak truck without a permit was stopped and he and others were left holding the bag. It had never been political. That had all been inside the Black Cat’s mind.
Wai Wan’s case was a petty-ante nothing of a case. What he’d done and what would happen to him didn’t matter. His misery was no more than a paper cut in a wall of raw meat ten miles high and five miles wide. Yeah, it was unfair that the rich owner walked, but no one cared about such a tiny injury. In the scheme of things, Wai Wan’s life and freedom didn’t have much value. Calvino had started to understand what the ex-judge had been trying to tell him all along—the brother’s case could be fixed for a small sum of money because he was a nobody facing an ordinary criminal charge. If his case had truly been political or the authorities were gunning for the Black Cat, they wouldn’t have settled for a lousy four and half grand.
Ohn Myint spotted Wai Wan among a group of prisoners on the walkway.
“We need to go to the courtroom,” she said.
Wai Wan and three other manacled men were led into the courtroom by two police officers in gray uniforms as a vendor lowered her tray of sliced watermelon tow
ard a granny in the crowd with watery eyes and missing teeth. Behind the prisoners the guards took their place just inside the door. Ohn Myint walked alongside Calvino, the Burmese lawyer and his junior, a young Burmese woman who’d said nothing at the table. When Calvino looked back, the Black Cat had vanished. The ex-judge led the way to the defense counsel’s table. He and his junior sat at the counsel table, and Calvino and Ohn Myint sat on chairs behind them.
The accused shuffled across the untiled floor to a low wooden bench placed against the wall facing the high bench—it looked like a close cousin to the reception desk at the Rangoon Times. The chained men moved in single file and sat down in unison on the bench. A few months in prison had taught them the value of coordination.
The opposing counsels’ wood tables faced one another. The middle-aged lead Crown prosecutor had just entered. His assistant seemed to be freshly graduated from law school and wore two bangles on her left wrist, one blue and the other orange, as well as a gold ring on her middle finger and gold earrings. The two prosecutors leaned together and whispered as they glanced in Calvino’s direction. His presence puzzled them.
In between the tables, a court reporter sat dwarfed behind a large black typewriter that would have been old in Orwell’s day. It had a long carriage to allow the user to find the key for each letter in the Burmese alphabet. Facing the prisoners and with his back to the high bench, which blocked any avenue of escape, he was like a bombardier, totally alone and exposed.
The courtroom had no seats for family, friends, the press or the curious retirees who in Western countries found courtrooms a form of entertainment. Calvino saw Mya Kyaw Thein moving in and out of the doorway along with a host of other relatives and friends of the men inside. They took turns, rotating after a couple of minutes, letting another set of eyes watch. She caught her brother’s eyes, and he smiled.
Behind the large teak bench was an empty high-backed chair made of leather. Everyone had taken their assigned places except the judge, and the room of people waited in silence, shuffling papers. The open windows behind the defense table allowed traffic sounds to filter in from the road behind the row of palm trees. Wai Wan’s lawyer pulled on his black gown. Outside the courtroom, a rooster crowed as if signaling a false dawn, when in fact the crowing coincided with the arrival of the judge.
The judge walked through a doorway framed with faded yellow curtains that were tied back. He appeared in black robes and wearing a gaung baung with green trimming. Everyone stood.
He entered in a dignified fashion, sitting on his throne-like chair behind the towering teak bench. On the wall in a gold frame hung the country’s coat of arms—roaring lions, red on white. The judge looked like the awe-inspiring Wizard of Oz staring down at the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion in handcuffs on the wooden bench below. A murmur arose outside the courtroom as word spread that the proceedings were about to start. People from the courtyard crowded into the doorway. The soccer game stopped.
A calendar was nailed above the half-partition that separated the courtroom from the one next door. There was no clock. One of the guards found a key on a thick ring of keys and unlocked Wai Wan’s handcuffs. He was the first to testify. He walked to a platform and stepped up, facing the judge, but still much lower than where the judge sat. He swore an oath to tell the truth. He swore by placing his hand on a lacquered palm leaf with Buddhist scriptures written in Sanskrit and wrapped in a red cloth. He swore to the Buddha to tell the truth. During the swearing the feathery beating sound of bird wings nearly drowned out Wai Wan’s voice. No one paid any attention to the far wall, where at the top a row of windows with torn wire mesh had become a nesting place for birds. As Wai Wan swore his oath, pigeons fluttered and cooed, flying in and out from the courtyard side.
The ex-hanging judge slipped on his official white hat, a gaung baung, casting him in the role of the good guy in the drama. The junior lawyers and the Crown counsel wore pink versions. The hats were frayed and yellowed around the rim, as if they’d been handed down for generations without ever being laundered.
Wai Wan gave his name, his father’s name and his mother’s name. The three other defendants leaned forward on the wooden railing in front of their bench, listening to Wai Wan testify to events he’d spoken about many times. His voice droned on as if he were reading from a script. He explained how his truck had been stopped forty miles outside Rangoon. A policeman on a motorcycle had pulled him over. It was night. They had almost reached their destination when the police officer had asked for their papers.
Wai Wan had been behind the wheel of the truck carrying the teak cargo. He had stopped at eight checkpoints and been waved through. There hadn’t been a problem. After the ninth toll-gate, though, he saw in his rearview mirror that the truck was being tailed by a sole motorcycle cop. Something had gone wrong. He’d done nothing and had nothing to hide. He was a truck driver. He hauled cargo. Owners phoned him and gave him work. He assumed the paperwork had been done. That was the owner’s job. They did the paperwork, he drove. Officers manning eight toll-gates had sent him on his way to Rangoon. Not one had asked to see a permit. Besides, he was a little fish. Trading teak was a big-fish business. The biggest teak traders were sending truckloads across the border to China. It was an open secret.
As Wai Wan testified and the birds glided in and out of the holes in the broken wire mesh—sparrows and pigeons—the sound of the clattering old typewriter and the echo of the same machine from the courtroom next door created a dull ache of sound as if the suffering of the defendant’s voice had inhabited it.
From the doorway Calvino saw Mya Kyaw Thein’s face among the crowd. She blended into the background. Calvino saw her and wondered how much the thoughts of Henry Miller mattered to her at that moment. The author who had roughed it in Paris had never been in a Rangoon courtroom. That was an order of magnitude beyond what Miller could have imagined. The criminal proceedings involving her brother had delivered a nugget of meaning; she’d learned the ultimate definition of being down and out. She struggled with what she saw and fought with all of her will not to make a scene. She told herself that she must be patient, that everything would work out. Wai Wan would be set free. What she saw before her was a brother she hardly recognized. He was like a living dead man, pushed down so far that it might already be too late to get him back to the surface. Her eyes showed an emotion Calvino hadn’t seen when she was performing on stage the previous night. In the door of the courtroom the Black Cat wore a look of perfect hopelessness, a look that spoke of pure, distilled despair.
Two men, one old and one in a gray and pink shirt, pushed their way into the doorway, taking Mya Kyaw Thein’s place. The old man, who wore a peaked, billed cap, stared at one of the prisoners who sat against the far wall on the low bench. One of the young men stared back. They looked like father and son.
The senior defense counsel asked Wai Wan questions. The defendant appeared frightened, angry, frustrated and humbled. He stared straight ahead, giving his answers in short bursts, as if each word was the result of painful labor. His short hair made him look severe. His yellow thick-cloth shirt and green longyi hung on his slender body as on a scarecrow. He noticed that his sister was no longer watching from the doorway, and what little morale her presence had given him vanished. He was alone in a room with officials and guards, the hard core, whose reserve of sympathy had been exhausted long ago.
The prison guards, in their gray shirts, blue trousers and sandals without socks, looked bored in the back of the room. One of the guards had his shirt unbuttoned and wore a thick gold chain with an amulet attached. He mocked Wai Wan, rolling his eyes. The patch on his uniform had a large white star on a field of red, blue and yellow. Two stripes, blue, ran underneath the star.
Wai Wan had changed his story from the one he’d given at an earlier hearing. In his previous testimony, he’d left the owner out of the story. It was his way to protect her, and in return she’d promised to stand by him and the others, paying w
hat was necessary to get them released.
She had lied about her side of the bargain. She’d never intended to help him or the others. When he’d found out that he’d been set up as the fall guy, his world had collapsed. He’d wanted nothing more than to get his revenge against the teak wood owner who had double-crossed him. Now he was discovering that not only had he been used, but it was too late to switch stories. The shock was that the court wasn’t interested in the truth but only the discrepancy between his two versions of the story.
The clerk at the typewriter typed as fast as a World War I machine gun, every word like a bullet mowing down an advancing infantryman. Wai Wan got emotional, saying he’d gone through a number of toll-gates without a problem. It was after the ninth toll-gate that the police motorcycle had followed the truck and pulled him over. No one cared that the officials at the other toll-gates must have been paid off. That made the guards in the back finger their amulets and snicker. The case wasn’t about the officials who’d taken a backhand payment; the case was about Wai Wan driving a truck filled with teak wood without a transportation permit. Other people might have been dirty, but that had no bearing on the case.
He told the judge that the owner had promised to get him released if he didn’t mention her name. This was why, for this hearing, he had decided to have his own lawyer rather than the one hired by the teak owner.
“I was hired to drive a job. I didn’t do anything wrong. I drove a truck. That isn’t a crime, is it?”
He’d worked for the same lady before. She would call him from time to time with a job. There had never been a problem. He drove the truck. She paid him for his services. What was in the truck wasn’t his business.
Then it was the Crown counsel’s turn to cross-examine Wai Wan.
“How long have you been a driver?”
“Eight years.”
Missing In Rangoon Page 14