The Man With No Time

17

I'd overstated the case when I described Claude B. Tiffle to Dexter as a white man. Claude Tiffle had virtually no color at all. He looked like something that had evolved underground: eyes as pale and soiled as mushrooms, hair like alfalfa sprouts, a sparse mustache that looked like a scraggle of centipede's legs. Fat, wet, white lips it was easy to imagine him licking, a dirty dimple in his chin that you could have sharpened a pencil in, and a belly so beery I expected to hear it slosh when he got up.

Four weary-looking young Chinese women, whom Dexter had nicknamed Weepy, Bleary, Mopey, and Snowbell, had reluctantly passed me, like the baton in a relay no one wants to win, toward the sanctum of Tiffle's office in the back room of the cottage, the one Tran and I had seen lighted first.

My watch said four p.m. Everett was reclining in Dexter's bathtub, wrapped in an honest-to-god straitjacket Dexter had proudly pulled from his closet, thereby justifying all my suspicions about what went on in that glittering, clinical decor. Tran and Dexter and I had been watching in turns for most of the day, timing the arrivals and exits of the staff and getting to know them by sight, with the odd man out racing to Dexter's apartment to relieve the one keeping Everett company. Although the four women worked from eight-thirty or nine to six, Tiffle himself didn't make his morning appearance until eleven or so, probably enervated by his exertions with Charlie Wah's slave girl of the previous evening.

Tiffle's tardiness, I thought, could be a problem.

Nevertheless, I'd have watched for another full day, making sure that the timetable was right, except that a clock I didn't know how to reset was ticking its way toward the moment when the little boats would take the pilgrims on their last short sail into slavery.

The pilgrims had been on my mind a lot.

“They're peasants,” Everett had said defensively the evening before, speaking from the porcelain pocket of Dexter's bathtub. “They've worked like slaves their whole lives.”

“They had a choice then,” I said. How many of them had served my food, broken their backs in the fields that grew the vegetables I bought, laundered my shirts, inhaled the carcinogenic fumes of the dry-cleaning fluids that allowed me, on rare occasions, to look dapper? How much had I profited from Charlie's game?

“Made they own money then, too,” Dexter said, bending low over Everett like he wanted to test his teeth on Everett's throat.

“They wanted to come here,” Everett said, kicking his feet, which were about all he could move. “They knew.”

“They didn't know they'd get cheated,” I said. “They didn't know about the dirty little fake-INS tricks. They didn't know their papers would be shit.”

“They have to be,” Everett squealed, thrashing to get away from Dexter. “Otherwise they'll escape.”

“Wrong audience, Jack,” Dexter said.

“Chinese are very sneaky,” Everett said, as though he were describing a race someone had once told him about. “It costs money to get them here. Ships are expensive, you know.”

“What the profit margin?” Dexter asked, straightening.

“Well. .” Everett began.

Dexter brought his teeth together with a snap. “In dollars. How many? Right now.”

Everett looked at me imploringly.

“He's with me, remember?” I said.

“They pay thirty,” Everett said. He pursed his lips. “We make ten.”

“How much?” Dexter demanded.

“Twenty.”

“Your eyes,” Dexter said meaningfully.

“Twenty-five,” Everett said. “Twenty-five.”

“So you the big humanitarian, bringing them here and putting them to work for-how many years you say?” he asked me.

“Three,” I said, “for starters.”

“Your brothers,” Dexter said forcefully. “Shit, man, I was you, I'd be ashamed to look Chinese. Three years. You know, they ain't gonna get those years back, those years gone, asshole.”

“That's the way it works,” Everett said, looking genuinely puzzled. “I don't make the rules. I just follow orders.”

“Shame we ain't got no Jews here,” Dexter said. “You could offend everybody.”

“When are they going to come off the ship?” I asked.

Everett visibly abandoned hope. He started to make a word, but the breath behind it escaped without shape or meaning. He shook his head.

“I think you still cold,” Dexter said. “How about some hot water?”

“I don't know,” Everett said immediately.

Dexter put a hand on the tap.

“No, really, honestly, I don't know. Only Charlie knows.” He sounded on the verge of tears. “Charlie sets it up with the businesses for the pickup and lets us know about an hour before it's time to move them. Honest.”

“And where's Charlie?”

“Nobody ever knows where Charlie is.”

“Real hot water,” Dexter reminded him, a hand on the tap again.

“But think about it,” Everett shrilled. “Charlie's the boss. If anything goes wrong, it's Charlie's head. He's not going to tell us anything. Chinese are sneaky.”

“Charlie's head,” I said, “sounds good to me.”

“One more time,” Dexter said. “When they gonna get moved?” Everett just squeezed his eyes closed and shook his head, waiting for the hot water.

So at five till four the following day, feeling jumpy, guilty, and seriously sleep-deprived, I left Tran in the driver's seat and rang the bell to Tiffle's little realm.

Once inside, I found that the staff member we'd dubbed Weepy sat at the front desk behind a nameplate that said Florence Lam. Bleary, Mopey, and Snowbell seemed to have no fixed places of abode: they passed listlessly back and forth with papers in their hands, guiding me toward Tiffle's lair each time I took a wrong turn, which was as often as possible: I didn't know exactly what my agenda for the conversation was, other than to galvanize Tiffle's greed glands to the point where they'd bounce him out of bed for an early morning meet, but I knew I wanted a look at the inside of the cottage. Snowbell was a knockout, pale and slender beneath a tapered shag of hair that would have prompted Eleanor to stop her in the street and ask who cut it.

“Mr. Skinker,” Tiffle said in a fat, damp voice as he rose from his desk and put a hand on his belly, presumably to keep it from flopping down and overturning his desk, “what can I do you for?” He followed his mot with a chuckle, one wit to another.

“Actually,” I said, shaking hands with a wad of well-chewed gum, “it's Dr. Skinker.” I was wearing my hair parted on the left, which made it stand up here and there, a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, patched over the nose with adhesive, that I'd found long ago in a parking lot, and a sober, submissive dark suit. Tran had talked me out of the false mustache.

“The good doctor,” Tiffle wheezed merrily. “Sawbones or phud?”

I made a prim moue. “Neither. Doctor of Divinity.”

“Never enough divinity in the world, wurf, wurf." He held out a Chinese lacquer box and whisked the top off it. “Smoke? No, I guess not. Not in your line, is it? Mind if I do?” He lit one without waiting for an answer, the fat lips hugging it like a living pudding. It didn't take imagination to see why he hadn't gone into criminal law. A shoplifter facing a jury with Tiffle for the defense would have probably gotten the gas chamber. “So anyhoo,” he said, spreading the arms of his chair and squeezing himself between them in a cloud of smoke, "what's on your mind?”

“I want to set up a church,” I said. “In this community.”

He extracted the cigarette from his mouth and regarded it. It was soaking. “Don't you need a bishop or something? Not really a job for a lawyer.”

“A church is a business like any other.”

His interest was fading. “News to me.”

A car backfired in the street, and I turned my nervous jump into a perspicacious chin-scratch. “You may not be aware of the strides our brethren have been making in the Korean community.”

“Don't know much about Koreans. Pretty women. Not, I mean, that you-”

I let him flounder until he ran down and then permitted myself a thin ecclesiastical smile. “Very pretty,” I said.

“Taller than Chinese,” said the connoisseur, lipping the cigarette again and focusing on the adult video loop he probably called his imagination.

“Some of them are exquisite.”

“Still,” he said, blinking his way back into the room, “a church.”

“People come into a community,” I said, resisting the impulse to rub my hands together, “seeking brotherhood. They are strangers among strangers.”

“Nicely put,” Tiffle said dutifully. “Strangers among strangers.”

“Miles from home and family, oceans away from old ties. Whom can they trust?” Whom might have been overdoing it. “Where can they be sure of meeting people who don't want merely to take advantage of them? Oh, I know about the tongs, but man to man, Mr. Tiffle, we know they're not always committed to the high road.”

He nodded, his mouth slightly open, and removed the cigarette. Without looking down, he dried the filter on his tie. The tie was already wet. “Yeah,” he said, waiting. “You know, I'm very busy at the-”

“In the house of the Lord, they can relax. When people are relaxed, when they feel safe and secure, they are generous.”

The word pacified him. He took a long drag that consumed the cigarette down to the waterline and dropped it into an ashtray. “In the Korean community,” I said, pursuing my theme, “membership in the best churches is sought after. It is expensive, and donations are substantial. And in exchange, the pilgrims receive not only spiritual succor, but also, ah, networking opportunities. Once the new arrivals are established, they literally compete to bring in others. It's like-how can I describe it? — like a self-replicating franchise. A very profitable franchise.”

“This is interesting,” Tiffle acknowledged. “Helping people to get established and all. But what would a lawyer do?” He reached toward the cigarette box again, thought better of it, and contented himself with giving his straining shirt a tug.

I picked up the pace. “A major real estate transaction is the first step. We need to acquire an existing church. I don't have to tell you how much that might run into. Seven figures, certainly.” He lost interest in the shirt and drummed his fingers on the desk. “We would want you to handle the financial details, hold the money, set up escrow. People sometimes misunderstand when clerics attempt to function as businessmen, especially when such large sums are involved.”

“You bet,” he said, shooting me a look out of his pale little eyes. “Well, sure, I could do that.”

“Then, of course, the church will need a board of directors, like any profitable enterprise. Some of them must be Chinese; that would only be right. But the board's chairman should be someone familiar with business law, someone who can advise us on how to put the profits to work in the best interests of the congregation, but without doing-or seeming to do, Mr. Tiffle-anything inappropriate.”

He made a sticky little tent of his fingers. “Define inappropriate.”

Right. Smartass. I took a breath. “One of the principles of the founder of Christianity was to render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar. I would define as inappropriate anything that would bring Caesar's representatives to the door, feeling that they are not being rendered enough.”

He gave me a long, doubting look. “Churches aren't taxable.”

“Nonreligious financial activity undertaken with church capital sometimes is, though. It traditionally depends on two things: first, how divorced from religion the activity is, and second, how conspicuous it is. Spending the money, I mean.”

His nostrils widened. “How much money?”

I sat back and breathed in. “Lots.”

“Have you had dinner?”

“I have an engagement, with a missionary, in fact. But it's interesting you should suggest dinner, because if we were to decide to go into business together, I would have to insist on meeting you frequently outside of office hours.” I raised a hand. “Once again, the appearance of propriety.”

He went for it. “Yeah, yeah. Well, early, late, it's the same to me. Except I'm generally tied up from seven to eight in the evening. Personal.”

“Of course,” I said maliciously. “A man can't spend all his time at the old grind. Anyway, mornings are better for me.”

“So mornings it is. Tell me again. Why me?”

“Your connections. Your reputation. Your expertise. Mr. Tiffle, I shouldn't say this before we've signed some papers, but you're probably unique.”

“Fine,” he said, leaning back to a groan of protest from his chair. “I'd handle the transaction, direct business operations. That it?”

It almost sounded legal. “And, of course, we'd want your help with the newer immigrants. You deal with hundreds of them. In addition to your regular stipends, there would be an emolument for each Chinese soul-each solvent Chinese soul-you bring to the fold. You could be very, very helpful as we build the flock.” We exuded oil at each other.

“Yeah,” he said, yanking at his shirt again. “I could.”

“I need a shower,” I said to Tran as I got into the rented car, a gray Flazoolie or something else I'd never heard of. Tran had waited out the meeting in it, half a block away, as arranged.

“Long time,” he said, sounding nervous. He looked into the rearview mirror.

“Believe me, it seemed a lot longer to me than it did to you.”

“You can get him early?”

“I can get him out of the John if I need him.” Tran jerked his head around to look behind us again. “Why do you keep trying to dislocate your neck?”

“Somebody following me.”

“Oh.” I involuntarily turned in the same direction. “Who?”

“Chinese. Not there now.”

“Well, balls,” I said. “When did you see him?”

“Maybe last night. Today for sure, while you're inside, two times. Not there now.”

“Well, let's get out of Chinatown. You drive, I'll watch.” I angled the passenger-side mirror so I could see behind us, and Tran picked up Sunset and followed its curves more or less west. Traffic was building, and it was impossible to pick up any single car as suspicious. Absolutely everybody seemed to be Chinese.

“What kind of car?”

“Hyundai. White.”

“Nothing there now.”

“There before.”

“It's time for a new car.”

Ten blocks later I told the smoothie at the rental agency that we needed something with a little more pickup, and he tried to talk us into a Corvette at several hundred dollars a day. We compromised on a little BMW that set Tran's pulse racing, and I let him drive it out.

“You see Weepy?” he asked as he pulled into traffic.

“Florence Lam,” I said. Florence was the one who'd opened the office, arriving twenty minutes before the other women. Like Tiffle, and unlike the rest of the staff, Florence Lam didn't go out for lunch; if the circles beneath her eyes were any indication, she was probably too busy. I figured when Tiffle was hungry he just sacrificed a goat in the back room.

“How old Snowbell?” Tran was sharing the American male experience of ego infusion by automobile.

“Too old for you.”

“Eleanor prettier anyway.”

“Eleanor,” I said, “is definitely too old for you. Last night, you think you saw the guy outside Tiffle's?”

“Yes.”

“And today, he picked you up around Tiffle's.”

“I already say so.”

“That's interesting.”

“Why?”

“Because of what it suggests he doesn't know.”

“Pardon?”

“He keeps picking us up at Tiffle's, but never anywhere else. Well,” I said, “we can either wait for him to make a move, or we can make one ourselves. And if we wait for him, he'll have an agenda. Let's see if we can't take him.”

Tran gave the wheel an eager little back-and-forth. “When?”

“Now. Rush hour's good.” Even as I said it, my heart sped up. “Damn, I wish Dexter wasn't home.”

“Not home. Eating. Dexter always eating.”

My blood pressure rose. “Who the hell's watching Everett?”

“Friend, he say.”

“Great. A friend. Well, nothing we can do about it now. Where's he eating?”

“House of Breakfast. Olympic Boulevard. Dexter only eat breakfast, but he eat it four times a day.”

I checked behind us again. “Let's go interrupt him.”

We cruised Tiffle's four times: Tran driving, me sitting on my lungs in the passenger seat so I couldn't be seen through the window. By then Dexter was stationed in his maroon Lincoln on the little dead-end section of Granger Street across Hill. If the tail made a move, he'd have to get across Hill somehow, but I figured he'd manage.

On the fourth pass, Tran said, “Nothing.”

I turned to wave Dexter to join us, and we met a block away. “Who's with Everett, anyway?” I demanded.

“Somebody make Everett wish he never learned English. You gone to meet him.”

“I can't wait. I need you to follow Florence Lam home.”

Dexter made an elaborate show of scratching his head. “Florence Lam.”

“Weepy,” I clarified.

“I like Snowbell.”

“Me, too,” Tran said.

“Florence Lam,” I said. “And don't let her see you yet.”

“You didn't have to say that,” Dexter said. “Hurt a man's feelings.”

“We'll meet back here at ten and cruise old Granger Street again.”

“She got a eye for a man,” Dexter said, “she gone to spot me.”