The Man With No Time sg-5 Page 13

  Ransacking my haphazard kitchen for the Saran Wrap, I did an emotional inventory for pity and found none. Except for the arrival of Mrs. Chan and her two umbrellas, he might now be a multiple murderer and Eleanor, Horace, Pansy, and I might be murderees.

  On the other hand, I'd recently found someone I hated more, and that meant the kid got a shiny new uniform and number-a spot on the home team.

  In my line of work you tend to get hurt a lot. I had two bottles of Bactine and an old scrip for antibiotics in the medicine cabinet, and after I'd dropped the Saran Wrap on the couch, I went to the bathroom and fished out the pills. I dabbed Bactine onto the long, shallow scratch on his chest and the nicks on his chin and nose, postponing the hard part. When I'd assured myself that the minor cuts wouldn't give him any trouble, I held my breath and poured quite a lot of the Bactine into the flap of skin and muscle below his left shoulder. Then, silently reciting the alphabet to distract myself from the task at hand, I moved the flap around to distribute the Bactine and wrapped the upper arm with Saran Wrap. I tried to leave some room for air at the apex of the wound.

  Hauling him more or less upright, I pulled his arms behind him and wound a spiral of Saran Wrap first around his right wrist and then around his left. Finally I sheathed both wrists tightly together, mummy-fashion, with about twelve feet of crisscrossed Saran Wrap. Pulling off his boots, I took the handcuffs Charlie Wah had thoughtfully left me and snapped them tight around his delicate ankles and laid him sideways and folded his knees so I could pass a short, twisted Saran Wrap rope between the chain connecting the cuffs and the Saran Wrap that linked his wrists. Every time I moved him, Bravo growled a warning low in his throat.

  After I got a couple of Ampicillin and a few aspirin down his throat, I laid him down on the couch on his side, injured shoulder up, covered him with a spare blanket, and then, in the tradition of good homemakers everywhere, I tidied up before going to bed. I made a mental note to buy more Saran Wrap in the morning. It's so useful.

  I hadn't slept in what seemed like months, and this night proved to be no exception. I'd given the kid my last two aspirins, I hurt in places I hadn't known possessed nerve endings, and Bravo kept trying to set up camp on my extra pillow. Until this evening I'd been operating on fear that something might happen to Horace, but now I found that the fear had been shouldered aside by rage. The rage centered itself busily in my chest like the old fifties version of the atom, lots of little hornets zipping circles around a walnut. Each of the hornets was a separate rage: rage at the memory of the girl's slashed and terrified face, rage at the fact that Charlie Wah was still alive somewhere in the world, rage that I hadn't snapped the pillar like Samson and eviscerated Charlie and his fractured idioms with a transitive verb or a piece of broken concrete. The girl closed her eyes as the blood flowed from her cheek. The little translator stuck out his foot, and the boy fell again, over and over, like a loop of film.

  I'd been a detective for almost five years now, and I'd learned that my parents' clean and comfortable world, so absolute when I was a child, was actually something that existed inside a bubble only while the real world was too busy to burst it and let the horror in. Still, I'd never built up resistance to horror as naked as this. Every time I saw the girl's eyes close, I thought, she could have been Eleanor.

  The last time I looked at the clock, it said six-forty-five. At seven-twenty, the kid revealed yet another character flaw by snapping awake, with a yell, no less.

  Just what I needed: an early riser.

  I wrapped a towel around my middle and went into the living room. My neck ached, my sliced ear burned, and each of my joints was competing to register a complaint of its own. He was sitting up, wearing his black trousers and his Saran Wrap, and looking a little woozy. It had gotten cold during the night, so I let him stew while I threw some kindling into the wood-burner that serves as the house's only heat source and got a fire going. Duty fulfilled, I turned my attention to my patient.

  “How you feeling?” I asked, trying for bright.

  He glared at me, swore in Vietnamese, and slammed his back against the couch. I didn't have to understand Vietnamese to know he wasn't wishing me many grandchildren. The winter sun was just starting to beat against the east-facing windows, and as the kid thrashed, the couch threw motes of dust that danced mockingly in the air. Presumably there were always motes of dust doing the latest steps at that hour, but I was rarely privileged to see them. It was going to be a long day.

  “Let's look at that arm,” I said, adopting the first-person plural of nurses everywhere. He jerked away at my touch, and Florence Nightingale did a fast fade. “Hold still or I'll pull your tongue out,” I snarled. “I'm going to look at your arm.” I looked at his arm.

  His arm looked terrible.

  It looked ragged and red and rotten and infected. It looked like something I couldn't look at very long. I did what men have done for centuries when faced with something too revolting to stomach. I called a woman.

  “Holy smoke, Simeon,” Eleanor said from the couch less than an hour later, “this looks terrible.”

  “I know,” I said, staring out the window. “Do something about it.”

  Even with a stop at an all-night market to pick up more Bactine and Saran Wrap, she had arrived from her place in Venice only fifty minutes after I'd awakened her with my call. She'd always been a woman who could get dressed fast.

  “He needs a doctor,” she observed.

  “He's not going to get one. I told you on the phone how it happened. I was there. If we call a doctor, the doctor will call the police, and I'll probably be in jail as an accessory to several murders.”

  She ignored the reproach. “That's an ugly cut. I think he's got a fever. How do you know he won't die?”

  “Come here,” I said. “Into the kitchen.” She continued to peer at the wound, and I said, “Now.”

  She followed me around the single corner that shielded my kitchen from the sight of those in the living room. It was a pitiful privacy, but it was all we were going to get.

  “Listen,” I hissed, “It's Horace who's out there chasing these guys, Sir Galahad in his tinfoil armor, and he has no idea-”

  “What if the boy dies?”

  “He's not going to die. It's his arm, for Christ's sake. People get it in the arm all the time and live. Don't you watch TV?”

  “Infection,” she said loudly. From the living room the boy shouted something.

  “Shut up,” I yelled. “Listen,” I said to Eleanor, “if I really think he's in trouble I'll push him out of the car in front of Santa Monica Emergency. In the meantime, he's my way in.”

  She closed her eyes. “Into what?” she asked at last.

  “Into whatever Horace is stalking. Remember Horace?”

  “Horace.” Her eyes were still tightly closed. “Poor dumb Horace. This is how he's going to make everything up to Pansy, you know.”

  “Pansy's not going to be happy if he's dead,” I said, “and these people have a flair for killing. That's a direct quote.”

  She turned to look out the kitchen window at a mountainside waking up to the sun. “I'll need soap,” she said. I turned to the sink to get it. “And water,” she added.

  “Thank you,” I said nastily, unloading my anger on her as I had so many times. “I never would have thought of that.”

  Dumbo-Ears was sitting upright on the couch, the Saran Wrap rope connecting his ankles and his wrists cut, courtesy of Eleanor the Merciful. After cleaning and disinfecting the shoulder and swabbing the other cuts and scratches, muttering generalities about man's inhumanity to man, she'd gone down to the Fernwood Market to buy a jug of Excedrin and three bottles of red wine. Only after she'd returned, loaded down with wine and unsolicited opinions about someone who'd drink it under such circumstances, did I get to take the shower I wanted so desperately and check out my ear. It looked like something belatedly snatched from a document shredder, but it would stay on. She'd dabbed it dispassionately with Ba
ctine and left again, but not without a concerned backward glance at her homicidal little patient. Talk about wasted motion.

  “Pay attention,” I said as he scowled up at me. All the lines on his face went down, and I thought briefly of those frowning faces kids draw that turn into smiling faces when you turn them upside down. “You there?” His eyes narrowed, which I took to mean that he was listening. “Okay, here it is. I really don't care if you die. But the way I figure it, we've got the same enemy.”

  “Go hell,” he said.

  “Up to you.” I fought down the urge to throw him through the window. “The two who were killed. What were they to you?”

  His mouth tightened and relaxed and then tightened again. I figured he was going to spit, and I stepped back. But he surprised me.

  “What?” he said.

  I replayed what I'd said and found what I thought was the problem. What were they to you? So, unlike Charlie Wah, he wasn't a student of idiom. “Your friend?” I probed. “Your girlfriend?” He said nothing, just looked at me as though he was trying to figure out where we'd met before.

  "Relatives? I asked.

  The mouth worked again, and I kept my distance, but all he did was repeat, "Go hell"

  “Fine,” I said, advancing on him. “Be a hardass.” Idioms be damned. I leaned over and punched him lightly on the arm that Eleanor had so meticulously unwrapped and washed and Bactined and rewrapped.

  The scream would probably have pleased Torquemada, but it made me feel like shit. He fell sideways onto the couch, blubbering in the language of his mother and father and his vanquished country, and I stood over him trying to see a murderer and seeing instead a frightened seventeen-year-old.

  “That's just the beginning,” I said, but my voice lacked conviction even in my ears. I heard Hammond's voice, saying something about the Vietnamese kids having lost everything. If they had anything left it was dignity, and I knew I couldn't take his.

  “Don't you want to get Charlie Wah?” I asked, still leaning over him.

  At the sound of Charlie Wah's name the blubbering turned into real weeping: choking, shuddering, gut-deep sobs that overpowered his will, that came from a place inside him where the will was a distant rumor. I silently went into the bedroom and closed the door to leave him alone with his grief.

  When I woke up, aching like a hit-and-run victim, and remembered that I'd forgotten to take any aspirin, it was getting dark. I'd slept nine hours, and there was no sound from the living room.

  He was out cold on the couch, his mouth partly open, snoring as delicately as a girl. A little more hair, I thought, and a little less ears, and he'd make quite a passable girl. I poked the fire and added some paper and wood, and waited until the coals did their incendiary work. Older than the Parthenon, I limped into the kitchen, turned on the light over the sink, ran some water, and took four Excedrins, gagging as they went down. Then I poured a glass of milk to protect my stomach from the acid and trudged heavily back into the living room to entertain my guest. Once I'd flipped on my one and only floor lamp, the wound looked a little better, despite my shameful and inept attempt at torture: The edges weren't quite so red, and nothing unwholesome seemed to be seeping from them. I tugged the Saran Wrap down to let the wound breathe, and he made a little sound of protest and then sank back into sleep. He looked even younger asleep. It was very hard to hate him, but I was determined to try.

  The music for hatred is Wagner. I put Parsifal on the CD player, cranked it up, and went to open all three bottles of wine.

  The opening chords had already whacked the kid awake by the time I returned, bearing a tray containing a bottle and two crystal glasses Eleanor had given me for use on special occasions. Well, this was special, if not in the precise sense she'd intended.

  “Drink?” I asked.

  “No,” he said sullenly, refusing to look at me.

  “It wasn't really a question,” I said, pouring. It had a promising color.

  “I need toilet,” he said.

  “God,” I said, putting down the bottle and glass, “I thought you'd never ask.”

  I lifted him to his feet and helped him hop into the bathroom. “You'll have to sit,” I said, undoing his pants and yanking them down, “and I’ll have to leave the door open. Problem?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then hold onto it,” I said. He lapsed back into angry Vietnamese, but he sat. Listening to the splash of water on porcelain, I went into the bedroom and got the gun I usually keep in Alice's dash compartment.

  When I came back with the gun shoved into a pocket, he was trying to stand. I pulled him to his feet and reversed the process with his pants. The fly took some attention, which is why I was off guard when he tried to kick me.

  A knee struck my thigh, but he'd forgotten that his ankles were cuffed together, and the force of his kick pulled his other ankle up and he tilted backward and fell. Adrenaline, prompted by the vision of his head striking the toilet, kicked in, and I managed to straighten up and grab him before the collision took place. He was already pitching away from me, and I felt my back emit a murmur of protest, followed by a shout of pain. I strained against it and kept him upright somehow, but by the time we had both stabilized I was mad again.

  “Try it again,” I said, my face inches from his. “Try it again, and I swear I'll take your fucking arm off. This arm,” I said, tugging at the wrist below the sliced shoulder.

  He sighed, in a fashion that might have been described in the nineteenth century as “melting,” and folded like a marionette whose strings had been sliced. He'd fainted.

  Disgusted with myself, I towed him back into the living room and lowered him gently to the couch. Air, pushing itself out of his mid-section, made a popping little motorboat sound between his lips.

  “Party time,” I said. I put the gun on the table in plain sight, poured an ounce of wine into a glass, and tossed it into his face.

  Accompanied by a crash of Wagnerian Sturm und Drang, his eyes snapped open. They were glazed and vague, and I knew, as he tried to get to his feet, that he had no idea where he was. I stepped back to let the handcuffs around his ankles remind him, but Bravo pushed past me, making a sound like an idling tractor, and the sheer malignancy of the dog's gaze got the kid's attention. His eyes widened and focused on Bravo's face, about eight inches from his own, and he froze.

  “He remembers you,” I said.

  The kid said nothing, but he kept his eyes on Bravo. “If I tell him to kill, he'll take your throat out,” I lied. Bravo didn't know the command for “sit.” "Understand?"

  He nodded, still staring into what he probably thought was the face of death. Bravo chose that moment to let his tongue loll out in a grin, so I stepped on a paw, and he looked up at me. “Bravo,” I said sternly, “if he moves, kill him.” I growled at Bravo, and Bravo growled back. It was his one trick.

  “Not me, you idiot,” I said, “him.” I snapped my fingers in front of the kid's bare chest, and Bravo swung his head around, back into the kid's face. He was still growling.

  “Drink?” I asked the kid again. I held up a glass and poured some wine into it and held it out to him. Bravo, momentarily diverted from guard duty by the possibility of refreshment, followed the glass with his eyes.

  The kid nodded, never taking his eyes off the dog.

  “We'll take a little medicine at the same time,” I said, lapsing once again into Nursese. I sat on the table in front of the couch and measured out two more Ampicillin and a couple of Excedrin. “Open,” I said.

  “Nuh-uh,” the kid said, staring at the pills as though they were hemlock. He was more afraid of them than he was of Bravo.

  “Look,” I said, putting one of each into my mouth and washing it down with what turned out to be a very nice red wine. This was getting to be a lot of Excedrin. “Medicine. For your arm.” I gestured toward his arm and he shrank from me, making me feel like Klaus Barbie. “Make you strong,” I said hurriedly. “Fix your arm.” I rubbed my own
shoulder with the hand holding the pills and then flexed it. The kid's eyes went to my mouth.

  “Swallow,” he said, with a hollow note of command.

  I poured some more wine into my mouth, swallowed extravagantly, and opened wide to show him that the pills were gone. The second gulp of wine hit my stomach like a hot, wet towel and spread out, radiating upward toward my chest. “Now you,” I said. I dropped the two pills into his mouth; he gave me a dark, sour look as he tasted the aspirin.

  “Drink this,” I said, holding out the glass, which was empty. “Whoops,” I said, “sit tight.”

  “What?” he asked, a little furrily, as I poured.

  “Just stay there,” I said, resolving on the abolition of idioms forevermore. “Here.” I held the wineglass to his lips and he took a suspicious sip and stopped. He washed it around inside his mouth and then drank the rest.

  “Good boy,” I said. “Listen, I can't keep saying 'good boy' to you. It confuses the dog. What's your name?”

  He looked down at my chest and pursed his lips, and I growled at Bravo, who responded with something that sounded like the overture to the Lisbon Earthquake. It even cut through Parsifal

  “Tran,” the boy said quickly.

  “Okay, Tran.” I pulled the glass back and refilled it. “I've got the dog and I've got the gun and you've got a bad cut on your shoulder. And you tried to kill some people I love not so long ago-”

  “Not kill,” he said. “Only frighten.”

  “Spare me the embarrassment. And then you tried to kill me. Twice.” I drank half the wine.

  “Only beat up,” he said. He squirmed to find a more comfortable position and failed. “You tickled me.”

  “And you set a house on fire,” I said, letting him finish the glass.

  “Not yours,” he said, the soul of reason. “We came to beat you up but the house was burned down. I got mad, burned it the rest of the way.”