It hadn’t been an ordinary delivery. The men and the shipment had nothing to do with Udom, Pratt realized. The driver of the Lexus worked for Thiri Pyan Chi. Colonel Pratt had assumed Thiri Pyan Chi was Udom’s man, an assumption that Udom likely shared. While there was a connection between the covered market stall owner and the two Thai men Calvino had killed in Chinatown, it wasn’t clear how Udom’s smuggling business fit in.
Calvino made his getaway from the train station as the driver and two of the other men gave chase. They ran straight into a couple of foreign businessmen, who walked in front of them, absorbed in conversation. They looked the foreigners over before pushing them out of the way. Calvino had a head start.
Colonel Pratt emerged as the men ran after Calvino. He followed them, thinking one of them might be in a position to “spit” some answers. Or were they just hired hands, knowing nothing?
As the men pursued Calvino into the market, the Colonel entered a tea shop and took a seat near a window overlooking the street. Eventually, after the thugs had failed to catch Calvino, they returned to pushing the trolley down the road. Two of the men, sweating from the sprint after Calvino, walked alongside the trolley, steadying the boxes. The trolley needed three men to navigate the uneven brick road. They pulled it to the back of a Lexus, and the men loaded the boxes of cold pills inside. After one of them closed the back hatch, two of the men climbed inside, and the man who had spotted Calvino got into the driver’s seat and pulled the Lexus into the road. They left a fourth man behind with the trolley to return it to the covered market. They worked like a team who had the drill down. Hard-handed men working with armed-unit efficiency. Not one slacker. Men like that never came cheap.
Five minutes later Colonel Pratt looked outside the tea shop and saw the back door of a parked Toyota open and Calvino roll out, squatting down low and holding his cell phone. Slowly turning around, he smiled at Pratt.
“Nothing better than a little rest in the back seat of Toyota Camry.”
“Your 10K run whipped you into shape,” said Colonel Pratt as Calvino took the seat next to him.
“That guy was behind the wheel of the Lexus in Chinatown. I clipped him pretty good.”
“Not something a man forgets.”
“Apparently not,” said Calvino.
Colonel Pratt pulled out the invoice he’d nicked from the cold pill shipment and smoothed it out on the table. He put on his reading glasses, read, turned it over and read some more before looking up at Calvino.
“This confirms a theory I’ve had about Yadanar. He’s Udom’s middleman, and he uses Thiri Pyan Chi for the heavy lifting. It turns out that Thiri Pyan Chi has another partner, whom I suspect Yadanar doesn’t know about.”
When ROI—return on investment—motivates violent men to do business together, Calvino thought, it’s only a matter of time before the battlefield is marked, the landmines are set out and the ambush zones are patrolled.
“You know this secret partner?” said Calvino.
“I had a call from Bangkok.”
“While we were on the platform,” said Calvino.
Colonel Pratt had run a background check with the department on the two dead Thais in Chinatown, expecting to turn up a link to Udom or one of his companies. They’d drawn a blank. There was no connection. But the investigator in the department had found out something interesting.
“The two men in the Lexus were on the payroll of Somchai Rungsukal.”
“Who’s he?”
“An upcountry man of influence,” said Colonel Pratt.
“What were Somchai’s men doing in the back of the Thiri Pyan Chi’s Lexus, working over Rob Osborne?” asked Calvino.
“You might want to ask Rob that question.”
“This sounds like a heart is about to be broken,” said Calvino, reaching over and pouring tea into a cup. “God, I got thirsty in the back of that car. I’m still sweating.”
Sweat dripped off the end of his nose and onto the table.
“Kati wants to join you on the 10K run on Sunday,” said Pratt.
“Join me?”
“She brags to her friends that she has a date with Kiss My Trash.”
Colonel Pratt possessed an irritating memory for names and faces.
“What made you suddenly think of her?”
“You mentioned broken hearts and it made me think of her.”
“Did she say why she wanted to run the 10K with me?”
Colonel Pratt poured tea in his cup and studied Calvino for a moment. He took a sip and put the cup down.
“I asked her to follow you and see if you dropped any packages.”
“She bought that story?”
Colonel Pratt nodded as he looked at the bottom of his teacup, reading the leaves. Calvino had a flashback to Khin Myat sitting in front of the Hindu temple, sticking his finger in the wet tea leaves and studying the pattern.
“Kati has formed the bad habit of buying any story, if the price is right.”
“What you’re saying is that you’ve found her price,” said Calvino.
“She works for Udom. He sent her to Rangoon, Vincent. He suspected Yadanar had opened another channel into Thailand and was double-crossing him. Kati’s job was to get close to Yadanar and the people around him.”
“Instead, she decided to go for the saxophone player.”
“Udom has people in my department. He found out I’d been sent to Rangoon to deal with Yadanar. That caught Udom’s attention. My boss in the department wanted to close down Udom’s business. Udom couldn’t decide who was a bigger problem—Yadanar or a Thai police colonel on assignment in Rangoon to upset his business. Someone was messing with his cold pill monopoly. If Yadanar was cheating him, he’d handle that in the standard way. Udom had his own way of finding out if someone was shipping cold pills to other sources in Thailand. Yadanar was the man. It couldn’t happen without him knowing about it. Udom is a true believer in the double-cross, having been something of an expert in the fine art himself. Kati’s main job was to compromise me so I’d be sidelined, my boss would take the heat, the investigation would be taken over by Udom’s allies and everyone comes out happy. Except I’m left holding my saxophone and not much else.”
“I thought she was a honey trap. And I also thought you’d reverted to an eighth-grade hormonal rush.”
“Udom wanted video, photographs of the two of us naked. Not for blackmail but to take me out of his hair with the department. That first night I saw the setup. I let her believe she had me trapped. I saw an amateur take her own hook and line and run into the deep water. I wanted to see how far out she’d swim out before I reeled her back.”
“Shit, Pratt. You really knew?”
Calvino remembered the Colonel’s performance of the star musician enveloping his latest hot fan.
“You’re not bullshitting me because you think I’ll tell Ratana, are you? Did you sleep with her?” asked Calvino.
Colonel Pratt sat behind his tea, looking at Calvino, who wiped the sweat from his neck with a paper napkin.
“I told her I loved my wife. I let her know that I had only one chamber in my heart. That is a message no Thai woman can resist because they never hear a man tell them that. It converts the seducer into the seduced. I showed her photos of Manee, the two of us together. I showed her photos of our kids. I scrolled through a hundred photos on my cell phone, looking at Manee the way a teenager looks at a girlfriend. Kati turned away from the display screen and said that she had something important to tell me.
“But first I had to promise not to hate her. I told her that I could never hate her. She said that she couldn’t go through with something sinful with a man like me. The karma would be too awful. I asked what kind of sin? She cried. After she wiped away the tears, she said she’d been the star ‘pretty’ at Udom’s events company, the highest paid pretty on the payroll. No man had ever resisted her.
“Udom had put her on a couple of assignments. She always succeeded in compromising
the man. She’d thought until the end that I’d weakened, and she’d earn a large bonus. All that was missing was an X-rated video of the two of us. She cried again, this time for herself. She said that she was sorry. She didn’t know what she’d tell Udom. And would I please help her. That’s when I had the idea for her to go on the run.”
“You asked her to follow me on the 10K?”
Colonel Pratt nodded, swirling the last dregs of tea in the bottom of the cup.
Looking up at Calvino, he said, “I told her you could help her.”
Calvino glanced at the window. A couple passed by, sharing ice cream.
“Help her with what?”
“Help her find out who in Burma is helping Somchai Rungsukal run cold pills into Udom’s turf. Udom would be happy to act on that information.”
“And Kati believes I know the inside man?”
“Maybe not the inside man, but the inside woman who knows the story.”
Colonel Pratt saw no need to be more specific.
“Okay, so I get her an appointment with the Black Cat. Does that mean Kati cancels the run on Sunday? Because that would be fine with me, if you know what I mean. I’m still recovering from the last 10K. I got a cold sweat with those guys at the train station. My legs are still sore from the last run. They should’ve caught me. I don’t know how I got away.”
“It’s hard to know. What I do know is, a woman like her runs on hope. That’s longer than a 10K. She’s on Udom’s personal treadmill, and that means her marathon never ends. No matter how fast she runs, she never gets square with him. Hope is all she has left to hold on to.”
“That’s all any of us has.”
Hope, Calvino thought, has an on-and-off relationship with the word “square.” No matter where a man looks, geometry between people runs in odd angles, almost no perpendicular lines, with the result that “hope” can sound like no more than the name of an old ghost town or an actor who died a long time ago.
“You’ll set it up?” asked the Colonel. “And you might ask Rob Osborne if Somchai Rungsukal is a name that rings a bell. Someone in Thailand had a reason to have him killed. Ask him if it was Somchai. Then ask the Black Cat. One of them will be lying.”
Calvino thought about the Black Cat stalking a mouse, backing it into a corner, playing with it, until playtime was over and dinnertime had begun. Catching her in the small hollow of that in-between time was the challenge.
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Calvino.
NINETEEN
George Orwell’s Favorite Bookshop
GEORGETTE HEYER’S The Toll-Gate lay open on the reception desk as Calvino walked into the guesthouse. She had to be a Georgette Heyer fan like Ratana, thought Calvino. A lit cigarette burned in a glass ashtray. Down the short corridor he saw a light under the washroom door. He leaned over and took his key off the hook. The sound of a toilet flushing followed him up the first steps on the three-flight walk to his room.
He used the key to open the door and quietly shut the door behind him as he entered the dark room. In the shadows Rob rocked back and forth, his arms folded over his chest as if to comfort himself. He’d pushed the chair in front of the window, his eyes fixed on the windowless brick wall of the building next door. Calvino placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Are you all right?”
He felt Rob’s shrug in the darkness.
“Weird shit. You see it, right?”
Eyes glazed, wide open, seeing stuff on the wall that came from his mind and thinking it real, he looked up at Calvino, but in the darkness it was hard to make out the expression on his face. Calvino walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, taking off his jacket. He smoothed it and carefully laid it beside him. He took the cap off a bottle of whiskey and poured himself a drink.
“You want something to drink?”
Rob was non-responsive, eyes paranoid.
“You don’t look so good.”
“I’m not giving you any, so don’t ask,” said Rob.
“I’m not asking, but what aren’t you giving?”
Rob’s altered mind had been enhanced, and it wasn’t from whiskey. Whatever he’d taken, it didn’t seem to be agreeing with him. Paranoia and drugs go together like rum and coke, Calvino thought. The classic sign of someone high is their illusion that someone is going to take away their drugs. Calvino sipped his whiskey.
“I’m not going to take your stuff, Rob.”
“How can I trust you? You killed those two men.”
“Somchai Rungsukal sent them because you double-crossed him. That’s how I see it. What do you see on the wall outside?”
Fear showed everywhere on Rob. In his eyes, in the twitch of his mouth. His mind was tricking him, telling him the things he saw were slowly cutting through the window pane, would enter the room and surround him, and he couldn’t move. Rob was both a man terrified of leaving a shabby room and a man terrified to stay in the room. Fear pinned him to the chair.
“You know Somchai.”
Calvino looked for a reaction.
Rob stopped rocking and extended his hand.
“Give me a drink.”
Calvino poured whiskey in a glass, got up from the bed and put the glass into both of Rob’s hands. He drank like a thirsty child.
“You were running pills for Somchai.”
“Half of the men in Thailand are called Somchai. I know half a dozen Somchais, so what?”
“We can narrow it down to one man, the one you’ve done mule work for out of Rangoon.”
Rob searched for Calvino’s eyes.
“He sent those men to kill me?”
“You know the answer, Rob.”
“It’s not over, is it?”
A new tidal wave of fear washed over his face. This time it wasn’t paranoia but a genuine understanding of his situation.
“What kind of shit did you take?”
“Acid.”
“How did you get acid?” asked Calvino.
It might have been from the old lady at reception, dealing on the side, but much likelier it was from Mya. Calvino figured the old lady who lived in the world of regency romances would have thought of acid as something thrown to disfigure a face.
“I borrowed two tabs from a sea lion in the smuggling game.”
“Does the sea lion have a name? Play a musical instrument? Speak Thai? Give me a hint, Rob. I like games as well as the next guy, but I don’t have a lot of time to play right now.”
Calvino waited for a response that made more sense. He wasn’t certain if Rob had the capacity to respond. He drank his whiskey, thinking he might be in for a long night.
“Mya’s dumping me.”
“She told you that?”
Rob slowly turned away from the window.
“She got the family bookstore back, the one on 42nd Street.”
“Yeah?”
She couldn’t scrape up the money to spring her brother from prison, but she’d found the resources to acquire a building in the heart of Rangoon? Calvino knelt down beside Rob and touched the rim of Rob’s glass to his own.
“Here’s to books and black cats.”
“It happened a few days ago. I found out today.”
He paused, lost in his thoughts.
“Her mother and brother have moved in upstairs.”
“How she’d manage that?”
Rob’s mouth felt dry. He licked his lips, swallowed hard.
“Yadanar fixed it.”
“What makes you think she’s going to break up with you?”
“She said she bought the bookstore for us. She said it was a new start. It was like a new life for the two of us in Rangoon. But I don’t believe her. Mya did it for Mya.”
His mouth trembled as he stared at the wall across the way.
“When I look at the wall outside, I see stuff falling apart. I see people drifting away from each other. They can’t stop it from happening.”
“But you haven’t split up.”
“Not
yet,” said Rob, shaking his head. “I’m watching the wall, and you know what I see? I see Splitsville station one more stop down the track.”
His lips trembled. They were dry. He licked them, swallowing a mouth of Johnnie Walker.
Rob made the sound of an old steam locomotive train whistle.
“Train pulling into the station.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Calvino said. “You’ve got a life back in Bangkok. I can get you on a flight tomorrow. What do you say? Fresh start.”
Calvino refilled the empty glass as Rob stared at the brick wall out the window. Dark shadows sprawled in a tangle of blurred webs. A sudden agitation propelled Rob to lurch forward and gesture with his fist.
“Somchai, I’m not afraid of you!” Rob shouted, the veins in neck thick and bluish under his pale skin.
His eyes moved in a hellish frenzy, the torment of the vision burrowing deep into his psyche.
“There’s no one there.”
“You’re not looking. There! Do you see him?”
He twisted his hand into the shape of a gun and pretended to fire it at the phantoms dancing on the wall opposite the window.
“Out of ammo,” said Calvino.
Rob lowered his arm and stared at his hand as if it were a smoking gun.
“Still loaded.”
Rob smiled and dropped his arm by his side.
“Mya promised to clear me with Somchai. But she doesn’t know the Thais. You can’t fix things with Somchai.”
“Maybe she’ll come back later and surprise you,” said Calvino.
“She sleeps above the bookstore. It’s her dream. I’m not in it.”
“People change.”
Rob glared at Calvino.
“You sound like my father.”
“There’s something you’re holding back, Rob. What’d she say before she left?”
“She said it was okay for me to go back to Bangkok. That I’d be okay. How can it be okay if she stays here? Do you get that? I don’t,” he said, slurring as his voice slowed. “Somchai said he’d kill me. How can she fix my problem? Can you tell me that?”
Missing In Rangoon Page 25