Missing in Rangoon by Christopher G. Moore

Author:Christopher G. Moore [Moore, Christopher G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: myanmar, vincent calvino, asia, thailand, detective, christopher g moore, Mystery, rangoon, Crime, burma, bangkok
ISBN: 9786167503172
Google: muUMkgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 17154311
Publisher: Smashwords Edition
Published: 2012-11-15T04:38:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

Dreaming of Electric Eels Hatched from Mooncakes

CALVINO HAD GONE up to his room first to pull a shirt from his suitcase. Returning downstairs, he used the shirt to cover up Rob, who leaned against the motorcycle in the driveway. Showing up covered in blood would have invited a police report.

Inside the lobby the old woman at the reception desk watched them come through the door.

“Motorcycle accident,” said Calvino.

The receptionist noticed the ghost-like whiteness of Rob’s face.

“Does he need a doctor?”

“He’s fine,” said Calvino.

Mya Kyaw Thein said something in Burmese about how someone had cut in front of the motorcycle, but his condition wasn’t serious. He’d only been shaken up. That seemed to satisfy the receptionist, who studied Rob over her glasses. She returned to reading a book, the Georgette Heyer novel Death in the Stocks.

“My secretary thought Andrew Vereker deserved to die,” said Calvino.

The old woman glanced up from the book.

“Lots of people deserve to die, but the ones who deserve it are rarely the victims,” she said, displaying a command of English found in Bangkok five star hotels.

Once they entered his room, Calvino switched on the light and pointed to the bathroom door, telling Mya Kyaw Thein to take him inside and clean him up. She started to say something but stopped herself. Taking orders from anyone wasn’t something she was used to. Whatever the emotions brewing inside, she let the moment pass and led Rob into the bathroom and washed his face, pushing his head down to the sink. She wiped his neck with a towel as they emerged. Most of the blood had been cleaned away. But his clothes still smelled of fresh blood and gunpowder. The bruises on one cheek and the busted nose looked bad. Rob sat on the room’s one chair.

“Cool,” he said as he looked around him, blinking, fidgeting with his hands and groaning from the kidney punches. “I’m basically okay.”

The room had twin beds with threadbare sheets and pillows, flattened and yellow, and old headboards that looked like teak. The room was a dump, but it pleased Rob, who’d been sleeping rough in the basement of an abandoned house—Rob’s last address in Rangoon. He’d been on the run, and it had been a good place to hide out.

“You sure you don’t want to take him home with you?”

Mya Kyaw Thein glanced at Rob and back at Calvino.

“I can’t. My mother and my brother and sister don’t know I have a boyfriend.”

“Probably not a good idea, then,” said Calvino.

Rob had taken off Calvino’s shirt and dropped it on the floor. His own, blood-splattered shirt certainly wouldn’t have given the right impression to the Black Cat’s family.

Calvino flicked a switch, setting the blades of the overhead fan to rotate slowly.

“Make yourself at home.”

“I haven’t slept in a real bed for a week,” Rob said. “Ask Mya.”

He was one of those men with the habit of referring to his girlfriend or wife for confirmation, as if a simple fact could never otherwise be accepted as true.

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