“This might be your lucky day,” Khin Myat said. “Buy a lottery ticket and become rich.”
“Are you looking for something or just wasting my time?”
Khin Myat returned to examining the labels on boxes. After a moment the man asked him again what he was looking for.
“Medicine for my mother. She has a bad cold,” he said.
“A good son would take her to the doctor and not hang around a market trying to sell lottery tickets,” he was told.
He’d received similar messages from a couple of other vendors. He should visit a proper pharmacy and not a wholesale market. What kind of a man was he? He must be one of those returnees who’d returned to make money and leave their mothers to die alone at home.
Several times Khin Myat caught himself just as he was about to defend his dignity and mother by telling the merchant that he was on an important assignment. Instead he wandered off, cursing under his breath. This part of a stakeout he’d never seen on American TV—the dead time, the sheer boredom of it, standing around and trying not to be noticed. The sick mother story had backfired. He trimmed his story to the bare minimum and concentrated on selling lottery tickets to a bunch of hardcore merchants who watched him with steely eyes as he circulated past their shops.
Calvino had told him to observe the activity, not just at the target stall, but around it. Khin Myat began to take notes of what he found displayed on tall, rickety wooden shelves in the nearby stalls. He noted the names on the boxes of drugs: Moxiget, Oncet, Loram, Diabenol and Solvin. He walked on past stalls specializing in medical instruments: chrome hammers for testing reflexes, long tapered scissors with gold handles, a large corkscrew device that looked like an instrument of torture, wraps for shoulders and knees, scales for weighing medicine, thermometers, bandages and canes. Wooden shutters for locking everything up at night were pulled back, and their padlocks hung from thick rings. The security system to protect the inventory was basic. He turned the page in his notebook and kept on writing.
Khin Myat closed his notebook, stuck it in his back pocket and rocked back on his heels as he looked around. The most striking feature of the interior area around the medical equipment and medicine stalls was the silence. It was the kind of stillness normally induced by anesthesia in an operating room. Words were exchanged in the hush of a hypnotist. There was none of the loud crying out or jostling that happened around the stalls that sold clothes, bagels, lottery tickets, flowers, peanuts and other food. He’d never been on a stakeout before and wondered if his experience was normal. Calvino had said, “Keep your eyes peeled and ears open.” He’d been more specific than that, adding, “Watch everybody who stops at the target stall, photograph them with your cell phone, and if anyone walks away with a large quantity of drugs, follow him and see where he goes.”
The second time he walked down the lane with the target stall in the middle, Khin Myat slowed down and picked up a box of Actifed. The clerk, a middle-aged woman, sat on a beach chair, half secluded behind the large counter. She nursed a baby.
“Khin Myat?” she asked with a kernel of doubt in her voice.
Hearing her call his name, he jumped as if he’d been tasered. He knew that voice from the past. He stepped closer and stared at the woman’s face. She saw his puzzled expression.
“It’s me. Su Su.”
And so it was. Su Su had been in his class twenty years before. She continued to nurse her baby, waving to Khin Myat.
“Khin Myat. Everyone in the market is talking about you.”
He frowned.
“What are they saying?”
“They want to know why your uncle’s business is so bad that he sent you to walk up and down the market all morning and selling only two tickets.”
“I sold three.”
“Three months ago, Khin Myat, I had a dream that you had come back from America.”
“I’m back.”
“With your wife?”
“That’s finished.”
“Sorry,” she said, shifting the weight of her baby, moving her from one nipple to the other. “At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I saw you wandering around the market like you were lost. And I said that’s Khin Myat selling lottery tickets.”
He clenched his jaw. It was very difficult to bear this humiliation. He swallowed hard.
“Things are not always what they appear to be.”
She shook her head.
“You were always a mysterious boy,” she said. “And if they survive, boys like that grow into mysterious men. That’s what my father always said. Come and sit with me and I’ll tell you what I dreamt last night. It may have meaning. Perhaps I should buy a lottery ticket.”
He decided to accept her invitation for two reasons. First, she was someone from his old school, and he hadn’t seen her in twenty years. And second, her stall was directly across from the one that Calvino was seeking information about. He climbed over the counter and sat on a stool beside her.
She explained that she had named her daughter after an angel, the same name as a dove—mair jopew, a female dove. As she rocked her baby, she told Khin Myat of her dream.
“Two nights ago a mair jopew had flown down from heaven, and not just any heaven, but the highest of all the heavens. The dove took me and my baby on its back and flew to the north, toward a temple in the remote mountains. I wasn’t afraid even as I looked down at a huge forest around the temple. On the ground I found myself surrounded by many kinds of animals: peacocks, monkeys, snakes, hippos, goats, deer and many kinds of nesting birds, all mingled. I saw a python over thirty feet long, a snake that could talk to other animals. The python rose up as I came near, but when it saw that I held my baby, it said that I could pass. Dogs ran up and greeted my daughter with a low-pitched cry of joy, but I saw they paid no attention to the other children who came behind us. A monk came down the path toward us, and when he reached me, said I’d been expected. He said that the temple I was about to enter was more than two thousand years old. Centuries before, the pagoda had been abandoned, but a waysar, a monk possessing supernatural powers—mind reading, flying, dream channeling—had cleaned it up, repaired it, and brought it back from the dead.”
She adjusted the position of her baby, wiped its mouth with a cloth and sipped tea, pouring a cup for Khin Myat.
“That’s it?” he asked.
She had more and had waited for him to show interest in hearing the rest.
“The waysar had enlisted local villagers to help him rebuild the high wall surrounding the grounds and paint it red, and the stones were placed one by one by hand and painted as he had said to do. Soon another monk joined us and gave me coconut juice. The two monks led us inside a sala where the waysar waited in front of an enormous Buddha. This monk, who knelt on the floor, stood up and faced me. I looked at his face. It was you, Khin Myat, and you said that you had come from America, that your journey had led you to meet me at the temple, and that we would meet again. Do you have a ticket ending in 945?”
Many people wanted that number. He checked the lottery tickets.
“I have one with 379.”
“Not so lucky,” she said. “But for old times’ sake, I will buy it.”
Khin Myat thought his first private investigation job was going quite well. Though the people working in the market might not be fully understood by someone like Vincent Calvino, Khin Myat could see right through them. He was one of them. Su Su had been a classmate. Not only had she bought a lottery ticket, but she was giving him a platform from which to do his surveillance. He decided to press his luck with Su Su.
“That stall over there,” he said, nodding in the direction of the target stall, “it doesn’t do much business. They must be unlucky.”
Su Su changed the baby’s diaper before laying her down on a small cot.
“Don’t say that, Khin Myat. Thiri Pyan Chi is the owner, and he’s very lucky. He took over from his father, who died three years ago. He has very good customers in Korea, Singapo
re and Thailand. People say he’s rich. He drives a Lexus. His son drives a Camry, and his wife is friendly with the wives of important people. Looking at his stall, you can’t see the money. But it flies like a bird into his pockets.”
“He does business with the Thais?”
“I know a worker whose name I won’t mention, but he brags that their best customer is a Thai.”
“Wheelchairs and canes?”
She laughed. “Medicine for some of the big hospitals. He has a large supply contract. It’s a secret. My friend told me that the boss told him not to discuss the business with anyone. But I told him that I wasn’t just anyone. I was Su Su.”
“Medicine for polio, high blood pressure and the flu?” said Khin Myat.
“Mostly cold medicine. It’s from a company called Coldco. Thiri Pyan Chi imports it from China.”
“The Chinese medicine arrives every day?”
He acted confused.
Touching his shoulder, she said, “No, silly. On Wednesday afternoons a shipment arrives. Khin Myat, why all of these questions? Don’t you have to sell the rest of those tickets or your uncle will take a cane to you?”
“I am no longer a boy, Su Su. My uncle would never dream of caning me. Not today or any day. I felt a cold coming on and thought it might be good to have some cold pills. Besides, I thought selling a few tickets in the market would be a good business plan.”
“You don’t need to buy cold pills from Thiri Pyan Chi. I will give you Actifed. How many do you want?”
“One package is enough.”
She stretched behind her to pull down a box, reached inside and, pulling out a packet, gave it to him.
“You said Wednesday afternoons. Is that late afternoon?”
“Around closing time. Just after the train comes. “
“Are these big shipments of pills or just a few boxes?”
She shrugged, checking on her baby in a cot.
“Do you think I have time to count Thiri Pyan Chi’s inventory? I don’t work for him.”
“At school, you noticed everything. I guess you changed.”
Across her face came the look of someone searching for a way out of a dead end she’d found herself in.
“A couple hundred thousand pills.”
“Every week?”
“Yes.”
“By train every week? On Wednesday?”
“You know the train station behind the market? The shipments come through the station. It’s only three hundred meters away.”
He was forever being given these familiar details as if he were an outsider. Returnees were thought to have forgotten their knowledge of the country, and Khin Myat struggled not to lose his temper. He swallowed hard.
“Isn’t that a lot of cold pills?”
“Not if you have a bulk sale customer. Most of us sell bulk. It’s how we make our living. The aunties and schoolgirls who come through would hardly support our families.”
In her dream, when Khin Myat had appeared as a specially gifted monk, he had asked many questions. It seemed perfectly normal to Su Su that, having appeared in the flesh, he would ask many more. She couldn’t wait until closing to tell her husband, brother, mother and neighbor how Khin Myat had appeared at her stall and tested her with questions that only she could answer.
“You didn’t see the shipping label on the boxes going to Thailand, did you, by any chance?”
“Khin Myat, you’ve not been fooling me. You are digging for information for someone. I could see that from the way you were prowling around the market. What is it exactly you want?”
He leaned over and touched the baby’s forehead with his pinky finger, leaving a tiny tealeaf stain.
“That’s a blessing for your daughter. My dream last night said I must do this blessing today.”
He thought Su Su might swoon. She clasped her hands around his.
“Thank you, Khin Myat. I always said you were a good boy. I knew you would come back. I can see from your face that there is something troubling you. You can tell me. We are friends.”
“I’d really like to know the name of the person in Thailand that Thiri Pyan Chi ships those cold pills to.”
She flashed a smile and nodded.
“They aren’t shipped to a person. He ships them to a company—G.A.J. Electronics Ltd., at Warehouse 189A, Bonded Industrial Estate, Chonburi Province, Thailand. I see it on the packing labels every Wednesday. Regular as clockwork.”
“You haven’t changed, Su Su.”
Her large eyes wide open, she smiled at him.
“I am glad you’re back, Khin Myat. But my dream told me to expect you. And here you are at my stall blessing my baby. I want to buy two more lottery tickets. You choose the numbers for me.”
Calvino grunted as he listened to Khin Myat’s oral report. He trained his binoculars on the entrance to the Pha Yar Lan train station. They stood on the second floor balcony of Scott’s Market next to the retaining wall overlooking the street below. At the entrance was a black hole in the ancient stone wall separating the market from train station.
“You appeared in this woman’s dream?” asked Calvino.
Khin Myat nodded, observing how Calvino studied his face to see how much of this dream business Khin Myat believed in.
“We were at school together,” he said, to change the subject. “I hadn’t seen her in years. Hadn’t thought about her. There she was in the stall opposite the one you sent me to watch.”
“That was good luck,” admitted Calvino. “Had she changed much?”
Calvino answered his own question: “People rarely change. You ever notice that?”
Khin Myat watched as Calvino slowly moved the binoculars along the lane leading from the main street to the passenger entrance from the market into the train station. He paused, lowering the binoculars to examine the SUVs, cars, pickups and vans parked along the lane. He looked for a familiar face.
“Su Su was always different from the other children. But most of my friends are different from me now,” Khin Myat said.
“There’s your clue. It’s not that they’re different. You’re the one who’s changed. That rare thing called change is what New York is known to do to a man,” said Calvino, lowering the binoculars and turning to look at Khin Myat.
“I saw my wife with the union official at Occupy Wall Street one Saturday afternoon. They were holding hands. They looked happy. I went back to looking at security tapes that night but couldn’t get that image out of my head. So you’re right. New York does change a man.”
It was closing time at the main market, and vendors were packing boxes and crates into their vehicles. Not all that much had changed from 1926, when the British had built the market complex. Before Orwell had arrived in Burma, the resident administrator named the market after a colonial official who had introduced the Burmese to football. The father of Burmese football received the red card after independence, and the market was officially renamed Bogyoke after General Aung San, the short-lived father of the country and also the father of “The Lady,” Aung San Suu Kyi.
Aung San had died young and heroically, leaving a romantic legacy. Calvino told himself he’d left it too long to die young. The young were men like Khin Myat and Naing Aung—full of life and wanting to live forever. They believed in luck and dreams. He envied them.
“Have you checked in with Naing Aung?” asked Calvino.
“I thought I should call you first.”
“You did the right thing. Your information stays between the two of us. Understood?”
“You don’t trust Naing Aung,” said Khin Myat.
“I trust you.”
Khin Myat shuffled his feet and looked down, half-guilty.
“I need to tell you something,” he said.
Calvino leaned against the wall.
“What do you have to tell me?”
“I give lottery numbers to Naing Aung in the morning before he sees his first client. Then, when he has a consultation, he has a vi
sion and tells them a number, one that I’ve given him. Afterwards, they come to my table, see the number and buy the ticket. I give him a percentage of the sales.”
“I’m glad you told me,” said Calvino. “I pretty much had Naing Aung’s number from the first time I saw him. Let’s keep our information about the stall between the two of us.”
“Understood.”
Calvino raised the binoculars and scanned the lane. He caught sight of Colonel Pratt walking on the pavement. He saw the Colonel raise his cell phone to his face. Calvino answered the call.
“Turn to two o’clock,” said Calvino. “First staircase on your right.”
Ending the call, he put a hand on Khin Myat’s shoulder.
“You did the right thing telling me, coming clean. Not that I don’t trust Naing Aung, but I don’t want his assignment to start appearing in his dream analysis. That could cause a problem.”
“Investigators are paid to avoid problems.”
Calvino liked the innocent charm of Khin Myat.
“If that shipment of cold pills arrives, I’ll see that you get a bonus.”
“I’ll split it with Naing Aung.”
“That’s up to you. But I ain’t saying anything to him.”
Colonel Pratt appeared at the top of the stairs. His first words were addressed to Khin Myat.
“Are you sure about the address on the box?”
Calvino had gone over the name and address in Thailand several times with Khin Myat, but the Colonel wanted to hear it straight from the source.
“That’s what she said. I didn’t personally see it. Like I told Mr. Calvino, the woman who did see it, my old school friend ever since she was a child, has a good eye for detail. If she says she saw something, I believe it.” He smiled. “But it doesn’t matter whether I believe it. It’s whether you do.”
The Colonel had already had someone pull records of corporate directors and shareholders from the Ministry of Commerce. G.A.J. Electronics Ltd. listed two shareholders connected to well-known names in business and political circles. The proxies never fooled anyone who knew who the proxy stood for. But to be wrong in an accusation of this kind was career suicide. To be right, unfortunately, was even worse.
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