The Man With No Time

22

Lau gaped at Dexter, who had Ying in front of him, with the air of someone whose final earthly expectation has been proved wrong. As Dexter raised his gun over Ying's shoulder, someone put one eye around the door, and Horton Doody lifted a leg, hiked up his skirts, and tried to put a foot through the door.

It was a heavy, old-fashioned oak door. It attained maximum velocity instantly and slammed against the skull behind it with Louisville Slugger results. The head disappeared, and the door bounced back, cracked Peter Lau on the shoulder and knocked him toward us, and then bounced back and hit the falling warrior on his way down. Dexter passed Ying to me like a discarded partner in a reel and shoved his gun at Peter's open mouth.

“No,” I whispered. “Take Ying, and leave him to me.” By then, Horton was through the door and reaching around it to do further damage to the guy who'd hidden behind Peter and whatever surprise Peter had been intended to provoke, and Dexter grabbed Ying again and carried him forward. I took Peter's arm and said, “Shut up and do what I say.”

“Bu-bu-bu-but,” Lau said.

“You're okay,” I said. “This is Simeon.” His arm was so boneless that I grabbed a handful of jacket and yanked him along behind me, toward the living room.

The next thing I knew, someone was shooting.

The shots made muffled little snapping sounds, and I heard a smack and Horton went, “Whuff,” and this time he wasn't laughing. He took a step back into the hallway, releasing the man he'd carried in with him and kicking him behind the knee. The man fell, and Ying turned quickly and lashed out with a foot at Dexter. Dexter blocked it with an upraised knee and shoved Ying into the living room, and Horton's semi went off like the world's biggest deck of cards being shuffled. He leaned forward and grabbed his thigh.

A woman screamed.

I let go of Peter and stiff-armed the fallen man, slamming his head sideways, and then grabbed his left arm, lifting and twisting it until the joint went pop and it was dislocated. He moaned and rolled over onto it, trying to stifle the pain, and I was up and running toward the doorway that led to the living room, my gun out with a bullet in the chamber. Peter stayed in the hallway, saying something that sounded like a Chinese prayer.

Ying and the man Horton had been holding were hanging on to Dexter like dogs trying to bring down a bear, Ying's hand pulling back and then driving four straight fingers up and under Dexter's ribcage. Dexter gargled. Pilgrims hugged the floor, two deep in some places. Something flashed across the room and a man ducked behind a couch, but not so quickly that I didn't see the automatic in his hand. I fired twice at the ceiling and then dodged left, hoping he'd come up and take a shot in the direction of the sound, but I tripped over a body and went down on my hip and elbow, and my gun went off again, involuntarily this time, and the woman screamed once more.

A crack and a whimper drew my attention, and I saw the guard who'd been flailing at Dexter go down, his face broken and bleeding from the barrel of Dexter's gun. Ying pulled himself free from Dexter's grasp and fled into the hallway, stumbling over the man Horton had dropped before he disappeared from sight.

But now fingers were scrabbling at my gun and I turned back to stare into a pair of terrified eyes belonging to a kid of eighteen or nineteen. The moment I looked at him, he froze solid. Something made a huffing noise from the doorway, and there was Horton, gun in his left, making a motion with his right that needed no translation anywhere in the world; Get down. The pilgrims dug holes in each other to get closer to the carpet, and Horton emptied the gun into the couch, blowing big gaps into the fabric and scattering white stuffing into the air like popcorn. He stitched the couch methodically, left to right and back again, and then repeated the entire pattern for good measure. When he stopped, the air rang with reverberation and reeked of cordite, and no one was moving.

The woman was halfway across the room, lying on top of a man. She had short graying hair and wore a shapeless gray dress, and she was as still as stone.

I got up, checked my gun, and stepped over the bodies to get to the couch. Feeling altogether too large to miss at that range, I edged along its length and then lunged around its far corner. The unexpected guard was a huddled mass of cloth and blood, tucked into a ball that hadn't been small enough.

“He's finished,” I said to Horton, who was standing in the doorway and leaning forward to examine his right thigh. A deep red stain was spreading over the front of his robe. 'This ain't gone clean," he said.

“Out of here,” Dexter said. People were beginning to stir.

“Just a minute.” I went to the woman and knelt by her. When I touched her, her head came up and dark eyes bored into mine. “Doreen?” I asked.

She paled. “No,” she said in English.

I put my mouth to her ear. “Mrs. Summerson,” I whispered.

“No,” she said again, not buying it.

“You were in her school,” I said. “1941. Third row, eighth from the left. Come on, she needs your help.”

She looked around the room, thinking it over, and then extended a hand in a ladylike fashion so I could help her up. “Ask if anyone's hurt,” I said when she was standing.

She said something musical and interrogative and got no answer. Most people lay absolutely still.

“Ask them all to get up,” I said. Tell them no one will harm them."

What she said this time had a current of command in it, and people began to disentangle themselves and get to their feet. Dexter used the time to dust himself off and go into the back of the house. Men backed away from him, but no one made a play of any kind. No one was bleeding, although some of them were feeling themselves for wounds, unable to believe their luck had held.

“Roundin third,” Dexter announced, coming back into the room with a briefcase and tossing me a reproachful look. “How you doin?” he asked Horton.

“Muscle,” Horton grunted. “I seen worse in high school.”

“Doreen,” I said, “there will be men here in two minutes to take all of you to Mrs. Summerson. One of them will speak Chinese. Mrs. Summerson is his family's friend. Tell these people to go with him. Got it?”

She nodded, looking dazed, and I glanced at Dexter. We'd had shots, and there was no time to solicit recruits. As we rounded the corner, I saw Peter Lau cowering in a corner, and stopped cold.

Tran was standing there, drawn inside by the gunfire, and he was folding a knife. Ying lay facedown in the center of a dark lake of his own making.

“Two,” Tran said to me in the softest voice I'd ever heard.

“I told them they were all Vietnamese,” Peter Lau said as we drove toward the third safe house, trailing Dexter's car. The surviving guard had been thrown into its trunk, and the two dead ones were wrapped in blankets and plastic bags in my backseat. By now the Doody Bus Co., abetted by Horace and Doreen Wing, was picking up the second houseful of slaves. “They saw your little stiletto freak, but they didn't see you.” He swallowed several pints of saliva. “I figured nothing would happen. I figured no one was crazy enough to try to bust Charlie.” He rested his head against the window. “I figured they'd let me go home.”

“How'd they get you?”

“Someone in the restaurant, I guess.”

“And you don't think they mentioned me?” I wasn't really thinking about me; I was thinking about the Chans.

“I don't know.” He was sitting with his hands clasped protectively between his thighs. “Maybe, maybe not. The slaves hate Charlie. They might answer only the questions they were asked. If they're worried about Vietnamese, maybe they didn't ask the right questions. You know, 'Who else was in the restaurant before our man got taken?' 'Peter Lau.' 'Was he with anyone from the Vietnamese gang?' 'Yes.' They only asked me about Vietnamese.”

“Right,” I said.

“But now,” he said, “they'll come after me.”

I rounded the corner leading to the third safe house and watched Dexter and Horton's car pull to the curb. “We've got people behind us,” I said, “picking up the slaves. They'll be delivered to a church. Listen, Peter, are you one hundred percent sure I can trust you?”

“Do you think,” he asked wistfully, “I need one more person who wants to kill me?”

“Okay. We'll deliver you to the same church, like you got picked up in the sweep, and you can get home from there. They come back to you, you were delivered blindfolded. It was a black church, somewhere in South Central maybe, but you don't know where. The gang that took you were all black.”

“You think that'll wash?”

Dexter and Horton were getting out of their car.

“If it doesn't,” I said, “I've got things more important than you to worry about.”

The third and fourth safe houses went like Japanese clockwork, with the substitution of one of the henchmen from the first house knocking on the door instead of Ying. We hit the standard two watchers and two briefcases full of cash, flung the standard dresses around the bedrooms, and painted the standard slogans on the wall. At the fourth house, I said nothing, as we'd arranged, and Dexter and Horton, talking blacker than I'd imagined they could, managed to let one of the guards get free, so there'd be someone to report back to Charlie. He'd scaled the fence of a neighboring house as effortlessly as someone who'd just discovered the antigravity principle, and we let him go.

By then the pigeons were mounting up, and Tran had to grab the second van at the last house and join the Doody Brothers Transport Co. By the time we were through, we had six of Charlie's guys, taped wrists to ankles and blindfolded, divided between the trunks and Dexter's backseat.

We took surface streets to L.A., heading north on Western for most of the trip and driving like a caravan of school safety patrols on the way home from work. It took more than an hour, which was what I wanted. By the time we hit Wilshire, around eight-thirty, I guessed Charlie Wah would be getting anxious about his missing collectors and their little briefcases. He was going to be a lot more anxious in the morning.

At Wilshire and Crenshaw we pulled off onto a side street. I consolidated the money into two very full briefcases, and Dexter swung east, heading for his apartment and an appointment with a junkie doctor whose shaking hands were about to be cured by a glare from Horton. The bullet was still in Horton's thigh, which spared him an exit wound but meant that there was some potentially messy medical work ahead.

“Shit,” Horton had said, “for this much money, he could of shot me in the head.”

By the time we had the cases snapped shut, five vans were stacked up behind us, filled to overflowing with rescuees, and I found Horace trying out his Mandarin on them. It sounded rusty even to me, but the guys seemed calm, or maybe just glazed. As Peter Lau had said, they had nothing to lose.

The church, a big one in a Hispanic neighborhood that was starting to go Korean, was lighted up like Christmas, and the moment Mrs. Summerson opened the door, Doreen Wing began to cry. I didn't know what it was-relief that she wasn't going to be killed, delight at seeing Mrs. Summerson, shock at her teacher's age, or sheer exhaustion-but Mrs. Summerson wrapped her big arms around Doreen and patted her with her big blunt hands and talked to her in a Chinese dialect that Horace didn't understand until Doreen's sobs subsided into hiccups.

“And is this all?” Mrs. Summerson asked, looking at the other one hundred and seventy-one pilgrims being herded forward by large Doodys. We were still on the front porch, being dive-bombed by moths.

I rejected several intemperate replies. “It's all there were.”

“Haven't you done well,” Mrs. Summerson said brightly. “Please, come in, come in.” And she extended her arms to all of them, running through dialect after dialect until they were all smiling and nodding at her. We congregated in the chapel, the Chinese taking seats in the pews while Mrs. Summerson and Doreen talked a mile a minute to them, and I waited for a break in the flow and took her arm.

“We need someplace to talk,” I said.

“The pastor's office is open.” She linked her arm through mine, and we set off toward a door at the rear of the chapel. I had one of the briefcases in my free hand.

“Here are their names,” I said, handing her the manifests. We'd found one in each of the briefcases. “That should make the papers easier.”

She leaned against the pastor's gray steel desk, a big strong woman in a shapeless brown dress. She didn't seem vague anymore. “The papers are no problem. I'm getting buses to take the babies to Las Vegas tomorrow, out of harm's way. The papers will arrive in a few days. They'll like Las Vegas, more, I'm afraid, than they should. I just hope they don't lose all their money.”

“They're not going to get all their money,” I said.

The big eyes widened when I opened the briefcase and began to count. “One hundred and eighty thousand dollars,” I said. “Forty each for the four you brought out and twenty for the advance payment on Doreen.” I tidied the piles I'd made and started counting again. It took a long time, and her eyes stayed on my face, which was impressive. I'd have been staring at the cash.

“This is one hundred and seventy-two thousand, a thousand each for the folks in the living room. They can use it to get started, if you can keep them from losing it in Las Vegas.”

“I'll do my best. What happens to the rest of it?”

“It's going in a good cause,” I said. I stood up, toting the briefcase. It felt a lot lighter. “May I use the phone?”

“Right there,” she said, pointing to a black four-pound behemoth with a dial. “Do you need privacy?”

“For your sake, maybe I do.”

“Well,” she said, going to the door, “come in when you've finished. We're making tea.”

“I will,” I replied, resisting the impulse to roll my eyes toward heaven and flipping through the pages of my phone book for the right number.

“Jeez, yeah?” Claude B. Tiffle grunted, and I found myself hoping I'd just contributed to coitus interruptus.

“This is Dr. Skinker,” I said through my nose.

“Froom,” Tiffle said, either cutting through the phlegm or operating under the assumption it was a word. “Little late, huh?”

“I told you we'd have to meet at unusual hours.”

He made a poot-poot sound, gathering his wits. “You mean now?”

“No. Tomorrow morning at eight.”

He breathed disgruntlement into the phone. “Is this important?”

“In God's scheme, no. In terms of your future, yes, indeed.”

“What's going to happen?”

“Earnest money,” I said. “For the purchase of the church.”

He cleared his throat. “How much?”

“Six figures.” It was the truth. “You'll be there?”

“Yeah, okay.” He was alert now. “Eight, right?”

“Eight.”

“Where?”

I swallowed. “Your office.”

“Glad to be of service,” he said.

“No happier than I,” I said, hanging up.

“One million twenty-four thousand dollars,” I said. “That's eight thousand and change per pilgrim, roughly, minus the money I gave to Mrs. Summerson.” Dexter's mutant coffee table was awash with cash, and four briefcases lay open and empty on the floor. “And about fifteen thousand in Taiwanese. Make it a million forty all together.”

“I in the wrong line,” Dexter said.

He'd traded in his robes for a pair of jeans and a lime-green shirt that identified him as a two-dollar-a-shirt man named Paul. Tran was asleep on the leather couch, and Horton was out cold in Dexter's bedroom. The doctor had come and gone, a frail, frizzy-haired white man with yellowish skin who smelled like a chemical dump. Two of the Doodys, after checking on the slumbering Horton and making clucking noises, had gone out to watch the prisoners in the car, and the other three had taken off to put the two bodies on ice, I didn't know-and didn't want to know-where. Everett still had possession of Dexter's bathtub.

“Fifty each,” I said to Horace, fanning myself with a wad of bills. “And another fifty for each of Horton's brothers. That'll leave about half a million.”

“Lot of salt,” Dexter said, eyeing the green.

“We're looking,” I reminded him, “to attract attention.”

“Quarter of a million gone to catch the eye, too.”

“Half has a nice ring to it.”

“You want a ring, go to Zale's. You can pick up a real flasher for three or four bills.”

“Dexter,” I said, glad that Horton was off marauding in the Land of Nod, “you're pocketing fifty thousand for one night's work.”

“What am I going to do with fifty thousand dollars?” Horace asked querulously.

“You could give me some,” Dexter said. “All donations gratefully received.”

“You make a down payment on a house for Pansy,” I said. “Give the kids a yard to play in.”

“I'd have to cut the grass,” Horace said.

“Astroturf,” Dexter suggested, giving up on further riches. “What time is it?”

“You're wearing a wristwatch,” I pointed out.

“Man with fifty thou in his jeans don't look at his own watch. Get some style.”

“I've got fifty, too,” I said, counting it out. “We all do. I guess we'll just have to keep checking for sunrise.”

“Ain't no good to be rich if everybody else rich, too,” Dexter said, checking his watch. “After two. Let's get some poor folk over here and lord it over them.”

“Here's yours,” I said, pushing money at Dexter. “Don't spend it all on implements of torture.”

“Peewee asleep,” Dexter observed. “Let's give him twenty and split the rest, act silently superior all night.”

“Ha,” Tran said without opening his eyes. “You silent. Ha.”

“Must of heard the money,” Dexter said.

“Here,” I said to Horace. He looked down at the banknotes like they were cabbage. “Your turn for trunk patrol,” I told him. “Take some coffee to the Doodys.”

Horace got stiffly to his feet, grumbling. He left the money on the table and went out to check on our human baggage.

“Pizza,” Dexter said, solving his snobbery problem. “Order up some pizza, sneer at the delivery boy.”

“Anchovies,” Tran said, rolling over to face the back of the couch.

“Man eat fish on everything,” Dexter said. “Fish cookies, fish ice cream.”

“Good for brain,” Tran said. “Try sometime.”

“You could always stiff Horton,” I said to Dexter.

“Not a wise career path,” Dexter said. “What you want on your pizza?”

“Sausage.” I yawned and stretched the joints of an aging man. “Three hours, more or less. We'd better give ourselves forty minutes to get there.”

Dexter, at the phone, said, “Thirty's plenty. We just gone sit there a couple of hours anyway.”

“We go in in the dark,” I said for what seemed like the hundredth time.

“We go in in the dark,” Dexter mimicked. “Hello, that Domino's?” He waited. “You can't be closed, man, we hungry.”

“Denny's open,” Tran said without turning his head. “Get breakfast.”

“A hundred bucks,” Dexter said to the phone. “And that's the tip.”

“You'll be broke in a week,” I said.

“Damn straight,” Dexter said to the phone. “Four big ones, one with sausage, one with everything, one with-”

“Anchovies,” Tran said stubbornly.

“-little fish all over it, and one with anything you want. Think that'll do for Horace?” he asked me.

“Horace won't eat.”

“He could go home,” Dexter said. “Extra little fish, hear? Pour the little fuckers all over it.”

“He could, couldn't he?” I asked.

“Could what?” Horace asked, coming in. “They're alive. Nobody wants coffee.”

“You could go home,” I said.

“Not likely,” Horace said. “Not when I'm having so much fun.”

“Could of fooled me,” Dexter said.

“That's because I'm hungry,” Horace said. “My blood sugar is low.”

“Horace won't eat,” Dexter said in his white man's voice.

“Shame it's so late.” Horace picked up his money and fanned it idly. “Nobody delivers now.”

“They do to the rich and famous,” Dexter said.