The Man With No Time

21

We were in San Pedro by two-thirty. Except for the fact that my mouth tasted like I'd been sucking on a roll of nickels for a week, I was fine. It also helped if I ignored the rate of my heartbeat and the chill that emanated from the sopping patches on the sides of my shirt, courtesy of the two faucets that had been implanted under my arms while I slept.

Horace, Tran, and I were stewing in my latest rented car-a big one with a copious trunk this time-parked around the corner from the first of the safe houses. Unless Charlie's boys ignored the Harbor Freeway, always a strong possibility at rush hour, they had to pass us. Dexter and Horton were halfway up the next street, about fifty yards past the house. The five Doody Brothers, who were all bigger, or at least wider, than Horton, were two blocks away.

Horace, sitting at the wheel, was revealing himself as a nervous chatterer, reviewing, with the expertise of hindsight, all the reasons he should have known something was wrong the moment Uncle Lo showed up. Tran was emanating a prickly force field from the backseat, where he'd curled himself into a concentrated ball of silence, knees against his chin and arms around his ankles. He hadn't said a word since we'd left the motel. Once in a while he'd nod, as though some mental calculation had just come out right. I made monosyllabic responses to Horace's monologue by way of polite punctuation, but I was actually paying more attention to Tran's nods. Each nod, I figured, represented one less way to get killed.

We sat there for hours.

It began to get dark: twenty past six. People were coming home from work, and every car that passed us brought our heads around as though they were drawn by a single wire. Horace had developed an anxious sigh and practiced it so often that the windows were misting up.

“Can you concentrate on inhaling for a few minutes?” I asked. He rolled down the driver's window.

Soon, I think," Tran said, breaking his vow of silence.

“I thought you were dead,” Horace said.

“Later,” Tran said.

Lights swept the road. “Heads down,” I said. “Here's another one.”

Horace and I ducked, leaving only Tran to peer through the smaller window in the rear. “Three lady,” Tran said.

Horace sighed.

“Who would have thought,” I asked the world at large, “that so many people would live in this stucco nightmare? And who'd have thought they'd want to come home at night?”

“Van,” Tran said from the backseat. We ducked again. The van, a big one, a minibus really, went past us at a nice, legal twenty-five miles an hour and turned the corner onto the street with the safe house on it. “One more,” Tran said. A second mobile Enormo, twin to the first, followed. “CIAs,” Tran said flatly. “Not long now.”

One of the walkie-talkies Dexter had procured made a throat-clearing sound on the seat between Horace and me, and I picked it up. “They comin home,” he said. “In the driveway now.” He sounded unreasonably calm. “Here's number two.”

“You guys set?” I had to say something.

“Horton done pulled four-fifty out of my ear.” Horton said, “Whuff.”

“You finished getting the labels out of the dresses?”

“Idle hands is the devil's playground. Not a label in the bunch.”

“How do you look?”

“The governor of Jamaica ain't gone invite us home to dinner.”

“And the Doody Squad?” I asked.

“Tryin to keep awake,” said Howard Doody, the eldest of the brothers, from their car. The others were named Harold, Henry, Hector, and Hayward.

“We can all hear each other?”

“No,” Howard Doody said. “This your imagination speakin.”

“Right. Well, keep the line open,” I said.

Tran started to hum. After a few bars I recognized it as “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.” Horace joined in on an off-key counterpoint line lifted from the Modern Jazz Quartet, and I did my best to turn it into a fugue.

“You guys got a future,” Dexter said over the walkie-talkie. “Course, you'll only work once a year.”

“You know a harmony?” I asked. “We've got an opening in the group.”

“We doin Bob Marley. Horton the bass drum.” Horton went “Bum, bum, bum,” obligingly. It sounded like depth charges.

“Tell Horton,” I said, “that he can always get a job in sonar.”

“Man say you sound like a bullfrog,” Dexter said to Horton. Assorted Doodys laughed.

“Bullest frog he ever see,” Horton rumbled.

“Coming, them,” Tran said. Horace and I did our little dive.

“We think this is it,” I said into the phone as the car glided past.

“Ying,” Tran said. “One other.” We all held our breath, waiting for the second car. After thirty seconds, it hadn't come. “Okay,” Tran said.

“They parkin. Here he come, man goin up the walk,” Dexter advised us. “Little squirt.”

“We'll wait a minute to be sure they're alone. He'll be inside four or five minutes. He has to get the cash, count it, check the CIAs against his list, and make sure that everything adds up.”

“Six minutes, maybe seven,” Tran corrected me. “First time, him.”

“You hear that?” I asked Dexter.

“My ears okay. It's my heart done turned to stone. That's why I such a merciless dude.”

Count to fifty. No second car. I tapped Horace on the arm. “We're rolling,” I said to the phone.

“Listen to the man,” Dexter scoffed. “Rollin.”

“Let Horton emerge into the world.” The engine caught, and Horace eased the car into the street, lights out. Now that it was actually coming down, I felt light-headed but clear: The game passed seamlessly through my imagination, without a bump or a missed stitch. Tran touched my shoulder lightly and whispered, “Good.”

Horace pulled to the curb about thirty feet behind the car that had had Ying in it. There were two parked cars ahead of us, and we were between streetlamps.

“Jesus Christ,” Horace said, leaning against the steering wheel for a better view.

Horton Doody, dressed in a flowing robe, was ambling down the sidewalk, looking wider than a king-sized bed. A streetlamp pulled him from the darkness and glinted off the shawl thrown over his shoulders and the colored beads in his braided hair. Since I'd never before seen him with his watch cap off, I didn't know whether the hair was his own or one of Dexter's inspirations.

“He's just going to meander along like that?” Horace asked. “What about a little stealth?”

“It's a question of color,” I said. “If they're expecting anything, it's not someone who looks like Horton.”

“Nobody expect that,” Tran murmured.

“Come on, Horton,” I urged. As he approached Ying's car he gave it an incurious glance and slipped the shawl from his shoulders.

“What if the car's locked?” Horace said. He knew, but he couldn't stop babbling.

Horton was wrapping the shawl around his right hand, looking up at the cloudy sky like someone who's just had her hair done. He was still looking at the sky when he reached the passenger door, and he didn't glance down even when he drew back his wrapped fist and punched out the window.

The guy in the car jumped high enough to bump his head on the roof, but Horton had an arm through the window by then and his left hand had come out of the pocket of his robe with a gun that looked big and deadly even from thirty feet away. He yanked the door open and let the driver see the gun pointed at his head, and the man froze. Up the street the light came on in Dexter's car, and he got out and headed for the house.

We were about two minutes in.

Tran and I pulled ski masks over our faces and climbed out of the car, Tran moving quickly toward Horton while I angled toward Dexter and the safe house. Horace remained in the car, watching the play and waiting for us to come out.

Tran had a wide roll of fiber tape and Charlie Wah's trusty handcuffs, and I had my automatic, another roll of tape around my left wrist, a can of spray paint in a holster, and a quiver full of persistent misgivings. As I joined Dexter I saw Horton pull the driver from the car one-handed.

Dexter was wearing something free-flowing and tie-dyed, and he'd teased his hair up into angular spikes that made him look a little like the Statue of Liberty if the Statue of Liberty had been Jamaican. “Hey, mon,” he said softly, giving the words a passable island lilt. Behind him, Horton was holding the driver parallel to the ground like a piece of driftwood while Tran wound the tape around his head, sealing both his eyes and his mouth. Then Tran went around to the driver's side and got the keys to open the trunk.

“Waitin the hard part,” Dexter said, glancing at his watch.

“About a minute,” I whispered. “Hurry up, Horton.”

Right on cue, Horton tossed the driver into the trunk and floated toward us, his feet hidden by the hem of his robe. Tran shut the trunk, got into the car behind the wheel, and closed the door.

“This my granny's shawl,” Horton said. “She going to be plenty pissed.”

“Buy her a new one,” I said.

“Hell,” Dexter said, “tonight's money, you gone be able to buy a new granny.”

“Against the house,” I said, and the three of us split up, Dexter and me to one side of the door and Horton to the other, six or eight feet away from it. As though he'd been waiting for us, Ying opened the door and came out.

He was walking stiffly, and even in profile his face was scraped and raw. He looked like someone who'd taken a header into a Cuisinart. Dexter and Horton closed on him soundlessly, and Horton's arm had circled his throat before he even made the sidewalk. He made a sound that sounded like cikkk-cikkk as Horton lifted him from the ground and shut off his air. In a single fluid motion, Dexter extended a hand, gave Ying a casual little slap on the face, and took his briefcase. Horton toted Ying out of sight around the side of the house, and Dexter and I retired behind an overgrown bird of paradise and took a look at the haul.

“Mama,” Dexter said reverently. The briefcase was stuffed with cash, rubber-banded stacks of fifty- and hundred-dollar bills mostly, plus a few thick wads of brightly colored toy money that I took to be Taiwanese. Folded to one side was a sheet of legal paper. I grabbed it and opened it and then let out a sigh of sheer exasperation.

“It's in Chinese,” I said.

“What you expectin? Cyrillic limericks?”

“Well, it means you've got another question for him. He has to read these names out loud. All of them. Anyone who's got a Christian name, I want the Christian name.”

He fidgeted, a sign of nerves at last. “Gone slow us up.”

“One of them is a woman who knows the lady who's got the church. She can help Horace keep them in line.”

“Anything else I don't know about?” He snapped the case shut and took off for the side of the house. I hung back a few steps, not wanting to get too close to Ying, even with the mask in place. I needn't have worried: Ying was totally focused on Horton, who had inserted the tip of his gun barrel into Ying's left nostril. Ying's hands were jammed down inside his pants, elbows straight, and he looked like a man who is trying very hard not to let his bladder go.

“Fuck with us and you're dead,” Dexter said softly, flicking Ying's cut cheek with a forefinger to get his attention. “How many passengers inside?”

Ying's hard little eyes rolled toward him. “Thirty-eight.”

Dexter had been appointed Grand Inquisitor. “How many of your assholes?”

“Two.” It figured: the vans' drivers.

“What kind of metal?”

Ying looked bewildered. “What?”

“Guns, stupid. What kind of guns?”

“Little poppers,” Ying said. His eyes found me, registered the mask, and went back to the immediate threat.

Dexter unfolded the paper, held it in front of Ying's face, and lit a Bic. “Read this.”

“Names,” Ying explained.

“I know they names, you little dink. Read them.”

Ying went for an edge. “Who are you looking for?”

Dexter touched the Bic to Ying's unoccupied nostril, and Ying said, “Yiiii,” in a shrill voice.

“Hush, now,” Dexter said, removing the lighter to a reassuring distance. “Let's see how quiet you can read this.”

Ying read it in a shaky whisper. There were Christian names scattered here and there, but nothing that sounded remotely like the one I wanted. When he'd finished, Dexter looked at me and I shook my head.

“Part two,” Dexter said. “You gone go back up there and knock on that door again. You do it right, and you might get up tomorrow.”

“Any questions?” Horton asked in a voice that made the ground vibrate beneath my feet.

“No questions.” The scabbing on his face was rusty and stiff-looking.

“So what you waitin for?”

With Horton and Dexter flanking him, Ying trudged toward the house. When he got to the front door they moved to either side of it, guns upright and backs to the house. Dexter stretched out a leg and gave Ying a little kick by way of a prompt, and Ying knocked. After a moment, someone called out a question from inside. Ying replied in Chinese, and the door opened.

Even after having seen him go through the car window, I wasn't prepared for how fast Horton Doody could move. He shouldered Ying back into Dexter and slipped through the door, hitting the man who had answered it with his chest and sending him sprawling. Dexter curved an arm around Ying's throat and stepped in behind him. I followed, staring at the dark makeup on my hands.

We were in a short unfurnished hallway. Horton hoisted the fallen man by his belt and carried him into the living room, from which we'd heard a babble of voices when we came through the door. The silence that greeted his entrance was profound.

The room was packed with fatigued-looking Chinese men, mostly in their twenties and thirties, mostly sitting on the floor. They stared at Horton as though Night had just gotten dressed and strolled in.

“Call your buddy,” Dexter said to Ying, and Ying emitted a short bark. A man in a white shirt came into the room with a coffee cup in his hand. When he saw Horton, the hand loosened and the cup sagged and then dangled by its handle, pouring coffee over the front of his trousers.

“Come here,” Horton said to him, pointing the big gun at the bridge of the man's nose. The man had been one of the laughing pack in the sweatshop. Looking a lot less cheerful now, he threw an uncertain glance around the room as though he hoped his pigeons had turned into a trained army in his absence. Men stared back at him, wide-eyed and empty-handed.

“Now,” Horton said, and the man picked his way across the room to Horton's side. “Turn around.” Horton made a little circle with the gun, and the man complied. I slipped past Horton and taped the man's hands behind him, looping the tape through his belt for good measure. Then, following the drill, I passed the tape around his head to seal his mouth and eyes. When I'd finished, Horton passed a possessive hand between the man's body and his taped arms. The pigeons watched, silent and openmouthed as I repeated the treatment on the one who'd opened the door, and Dexter wrapped him in a long dark arm, the one that wasn't cutting off Ying's breath.

“Who speaks English?” I asked the room at large, trying to imitate Dexter's island lilt. Nobody answered. In fact, nobody looked at me, all of them finding the walls and the carpet more interesting than my question. “Okay,” I said a bit wildly. “Nobody speaks English, we kill you all.”

A face bobbed up. It belonged to a skinny guy with a wispy mustache and a black Marlboro T-shirt, and it looked terrified. “Come here,” I snapped. He looked at me, turned to his friends, and then shook his head in tiny, quick swings. Horton snapped his fingers with a sound like a firecracker and pointed imperiously at the floor in front of him. Drawn by a supernatural force, the young man got up and came to us, walking against the wind. I put my hand on his arm, and he started violently, eyes still fixed on Horton's face.

“It's okay,” I said, realizing belatedly that most of them had never seen a black man before. “You're going to be fine.” I wrapped my fingers gently around his arm. “Here's what I want you to say. Tell them we're here to set them free from the Snakes. Tell them to hold tight for one minute, and they'll be all right.”

“No,” he said, a totem of disbelief.

“What the fuck?” Dexter asked the ceiling, hugging Ying and the guy who'd answered the door, and looking like the middle man in a trio about to start dancing the hora.

“Yes.” I told the Marlboro man. “If they stay here they'll belong to the Snakes. If they wait a minute, we'll get them out of here and keep them safe from the Snakes and the Immigration Service. We'll take care of them.”

Dexter muttered monosyllables, and Horton emitted subsonic chuckles. The Chinese man stared at the floor.

Horton stopped chuckling. “You want to get dead?” he asked.

The Marlboro man took one terrified look at Horton and let loose a brief burst of Mandarin. Any uncertainty he might have felt about delivering the message had vanished at the sound of Horton's voice: he sounded positively Messianic.

When he'd finished, people looked at each other. No one moved.

“Good enough,” I said. “Hang on.”

“We gotta go,” Dexter hissed. “Drive time.” He still had his arms around two Chinese throats.

I grabbed the Marlboro man's arm and tried for a reassuring smile. “Sit still, hear?”

We closed the front door behind us, and I took Dexter's henchman, as Mrs. Summerson would have called him, in my grasp, and used my free hand to spray-paint rasta power across the door. I saw Horace sprinting around the corner toward the car with the Doodys in it, and we turned Ying and the two henchmen in the direction of the car Ying had arrived in. As we neared it, Tran got out and popped the trunk, and one of the guards joined the driver in the trunk, with an assist from Horton. I hauled the other one to my car, and Horace opened the trunk. After it had been slammed down, I made a run to Dexter's car, grabbed fifteen or twenty dresses, and went back in to distribute them among the bedrooms with all the other stuff the pilgrims had hauled along to the New World. By the time I'd climbed into my rented whatever, Horton and Dexter had taken off with Ying between them, and Tran had followed in Ying's car.

“Okay,” I said over the walkie-talkies as I started the car. “That was the hard one.”

And I thought I was right until the door at the second safe house opened, and I found myself staring over Dexter's shoulder at the terrified face of Peter Lau.