The Man With No Time Page 28

  “Wah Yung-Fat. Spelled like it sounds, but no 'o' in 'Yung.' " WAH YUNG, I typed. "Hyphen between Yung and Fat?”

  “Yes. What time is it?” -FAT, I typed. “Time for Charlie Wah to start worrying,” I said. “Keep your radio on the news stations.”

  I hung up and carried the paper into the office, where I folded it tightly and slipped it under the rubber band around the photos. Then I closed the drawer, got up again, and trudged into the hallway to get the cases.

  I put five or six thousand into Tiffle's little box and closed it, then spread the rest of it, more than half a million dollars, over the surface of his desk. It looked impressive. By now nails were being driven into the door at the head of the basement stairs, and then the banging stopped and Dexter ambled in, the hammer still in his hand.

  “Wo,” he said, glimmering at the money. “Enough salt for Colonel Sanders.”

  “It'll make a nice picture, don't you think?” I locked the desk and tossed Tiffle's keys on top of the money.

  “Less the cops snatch it.”

  “There'll be too many of them. They'll be watching each other. You got the list?”

  “LAPD, INS, U.S. Marshals,” he recited. “Chinatown Association, Chinese Legal Aid Society, ACLU, Times, the radio and TV guys. Start dialin at seven. Give 'em the salt, the slicks downstairs, and the ol' Caroline B.”

  “Don't forget the safe houses,” I said. “We haven't got any real slaves for them, but we've got four houses full of stuff.”

  Dexter snapped his fingers. “The dresses,” he said, his face lighting up.

  “You're a deeply intelligent man, Dexter.” I scooped up the documents Florence Lam and the others had signed and put them into one of the briefcases.

  “I the bee's knees,” Dexter said. “Toss that.” I flipped the case at him, and he caught it one-handed. “You throw like a white girl,” he said. “A very young white girl.”

  “See you later.”

  “You gone sit here, huh? They can't get out.”

  “Just in case. No point in taking a short cut now.”

  “We had more like you,” Dexter said in mock admiration, “we wouldn't be sniffin around after the Japanese.”

  Tran came in behind Dexter. “Getting light,” he said.

  I tossed him the second case. “Beat it.”

  “You forgot to say we sposed to put a egg in our shoe,” Dexter said.

  “If an egg in your shoe,” Tran said to him, “you eat it.”

  “Hey,” Dexter said, brightening, “time for breakfast.”

  I sat there as the room gradually filled with light, bringing the green of the money out of the gloom like the colors of an underwater reef, and thought about the pilgrims and their long passage and the years of labor they would pass in dingy workplaces and crowded rooms, all to live in a country that didn't want them, that would send them home if it got a chance, but that they thought of as a rich mine, the Gold Mountain where they could trade their hours and days and years and skills for the money they folded meticulously each week into envelopes and sent home to the land of empty stomachs and waiting women. And I thought about Tiffle and his greedy acrobatics with phony green cards and false INS inspectors and the girls he'd invaded on his couch, and wished he were going to take a harder fall.

  At seven-ten, while Dexter was making his anonymous phone calls about a cellarful of illegal immigrants, half a million dollars in cash, and a waiting ship, I went out into the dull day and relocked the door behind me. Horace was parked on the short cul-de-sac of Granger on the other side of Hill, and I slid into the car next to him and watched the police and the federals arrive around seven-thirty, followed by men and women with cameras and microphones, and Horace leaned over and punched me on the shoulder when, at eight on the dot, Tiffle sleepwalked right into them.

  We drove aimlessly for an hour, listening, and at nine we made the news: a thirty-second story about a Chinatown lawyer, some Chinese prisoners in the basement, and half a million bucks. At nine-thirty I reclaimed Alice from her parking spot, followed Horace while he returned the rental, and dropped him at home, where he could start being nicer to Pansy.

  By ten-fifteen, Dexter and I were sitting in Captain Snow's little boat, bobbing up and down in the fog and keeping an eye on the Caroline B. Or, rather, I was keeping an eye on the Caroline B. Dexter had a fishing pole in one arm and Captain Pat Snow in the other, and both of them were looking down at the water.

  Some people are said to have postcoital tristesse. Astronauts talk about postorbital letdown. I'd managed to pull off most of something that, two days earlier, I'd privately given no chance of working, and I felt like cold fried eggs. The discontent was so strong as to be physical, a queasy, hollow core in the center of my abdomen that wasn't caused by the rocking of the boat. The only thing that could relieve it, I realized, would be the sight of Charlie Wah coming across the water, on his way to the wrong place.

  After forty-five minutes I was sure he wouldn't come. After an hour, I knew he wouldn't come. At eleven-thirty, Dexter caught a fish, and Captain Snow cooed appreciatively and helped him take it off the hook.

  At eleven-forty-eight, a big black-and-white cruiser emerged from the fog. There were lots of men in uniform on its deck, and there wasn't much question where they were going. Still, we waited until they went aboard, and then Captain Snow made the engines hum and we headed for Marina Del Rey. I left Dexter on the boat and took a long walk up the dock to my car.

  On the way home, I realized I wasn't going there. The Pacific lay gray and cold to my left as I passed the Topanga turnoff and headed toward Alaska. There was a longer news story on the radio around twelve-thirty, and by now they'd gotten around to the houses, which the announcer dubbed “rest stops on the slave highway.” Apparently someone had seen a little capital in it, because a couple of politicians served up outraged, overwritten sound bites about exploitation and human misery. One of them, an Orange County admirer of Louis the Fourteenth, yapped shrilly about the need to control immigration more effectively and protect American jobs, just like there were millions of Americans eager to work sixty-hour weeks for three thousand a year, net.

  Nothing about the Caroline B. yet, and nothing about Charlie.

  Maybe the parts of it I'd pulled off hadn't been the right parts. Maybe I should have let the INS get the pilgrims and concentrated on Charlie, taking the long view: There'd be fewer slaves for a while. On the other hand, as Everett had said, they want to come. So maybe there weren't any easy answers.

  I hate it when there aren't any easy answers.

  By the time I hit Rincon, we'd made the one o'clock news, the national news out of New York. The dresses had been announced to the media, and the report was rife with implications that there were forty or fifty female slaves, presumably naked, rattling around the streets of Los Angeles. Never underestimate the power of cash and sex and the media fascination with the word “slave.” I grinned for a moment at the image of Norman Stillman trying frantically to reach me, and then hoped that the phone lines between Taiwan and Charlie Wah's left ear, wherever it might be, were about to catch fire.

  Charlie. Just his name was enough to bring me back down to earth. I watched a bunch of freezing surfers pretend to have fun as I ate a couple of greasy fried clams on a pier somewhere near Santa Barbara. The thought of Charlie and his pastel suits and his prostitutes finished off whatever remnant of my appetite the grease on the clams hadn't already quelled. I hurled the rest of them, one at a time, at the heads of the surfers, and gulls swooped down and picked them out of the air.

  Charlie was going to skate. He might have a few bad hours with the Snake overlords, and his trip back to Taiwan probably wouldn't be a pleasure cruise on the Love Boat, but he'd still be able to afford his terrible clothes. He'd still be able to play with other people's lives, making and breaking promises and watching the thick blood flow whenever he got bored. Nobody was going to practice the Death of a Thousand Cuts on him in retribution for the t
wo Vietnamese kids in the sweatshop.

  Since the clams were all gone I balled up the paper sack they'd come in and pitched it into the gray air. A fat gull caught it and dropped it and squawked at me indignantly. I squawked back and headed toward Alice.

  Fog had ghosted its way in from the sea. It pressed itself against the slopes of the mountains and thickened maliciously as I drove south, cutting visibility to a hundred feet or so, and I saw one, then two, accidents, all crumpled metal and flashing lights, and I slowed to a crawl, fixing my eyes on the taillights of a truck in front of me and letting it run interference. I figured it would mash anything in front of us flat, so that I could just ride over it. Smart.

  Mr. Smart Guy. Charlie, free as a seagull with millions in the bank. Eleanor's family, never able to be sure that they wouldn't get tied to this somehow and waiting for the knock on the door. Two men dead. Millions of Mainland Chinese lining up to put their money into Charlie's sticky hand and head for what they thought would be freedom, poorer by ten thousand dollars and one last hope.

  The truck driver gave up around four and turned into a seaside motel that announced itself in a smear of pink light as The Last Wave. Deprived of my scout, I slowed even more and watched the world grow dark. Above the glow of Alice's instrument lights, Uncle Lo smiled at me from wherever he was, safe on a dead man's papers. I switched off the news and found some rock and roll, loud and mindlessly busy, and daydreamed about the next time I'd meet Lo. Like the truck driver, he'd guided me into the fog and then disappeared. I couldn't seem to remember a time when it wasn't foggy.

  I punched up the news again at six-thirty as I turned into Topanga Canyon, and got a story about the Feds busting a ship in San Pedro, the Caroline B., operating on a warrant based on an anonymous tip. Nine people, all Taiwanese nationals, taken into custody, no names. Part of an international ring smuggling Mainland Chinese into the country. The word "slaves" was used four times. In a related story, the good folks living next to the safe houses had suddenly realized there'd been something strange going on and stepped forward eagerly to tell lurid tales of broken-spirited young women being herded in and out. It made me feel good enough to stop at the Fernwood Market and grab a six-pack.

  It was close to seven and already completely dark, the night black and fog-muffled, when I climbed out of Alice and scaled the driveway. I whistled for Bravo, but he was probably off disrupting the agendas of the local coyotes. Ready for a shower and sixteen hours' sleep, I felt my way to the door and opened it and then stepped inside and switched on the light.

  The first thing I saw, sitting on the stool in front of my computer, was Mrs. Summerson, looking dazed and large and empty and frail. The second thing I saw was Charlie Wah.

  24 - Velocity and Position

  “Looking bad, Charlie,” I said, and he was. His eyes were puffy and skittish, and his hair was pressed flat on one side as though he'd slept sitting up. The suit of the day, a stomach-curdling shade of lemon yellow, was wrinkled and bunched, and something sagged heavily in his pocket, dragging the jacket further out of shape. His necktie was at a lopsided half-mast, and he'd apparently missed his step coming up the driveway because one yellow knee was smeared with dirt. Still, the little gun in his hand was clean and bright and well maintained and absolutely steady.

  “You live like a pig,” he said. He was standing beyond Mrs. Summerson, in front of the living room's one south-facing window.

  “Well,” I said, “we can't all afford to dress like Life Savers. I guess you weren't on the boat.”

  The gun came forward an inch or two, and my abdominal muscles went into involuntary aerobics. He saw it, and he smiled, but then he replayed what I'd said. “The boat?”

  “The good ship Caroline B., your floating hotel. She's now the property of Uncle Sam.”

  The smile congealed on his face, and his gaze suddenly went right through me, fixed on the distance as he started a whole new set of calculations. A sound from the bedroom drew his glance, and one of the steroid junkies, the one with the single eyebrow running across his head, came out, toting my spare gun. He pointed it at my midsection, and Charlie relaxed his, still distracted by all the shuffling realities in his head.

  “Here's Bluto,” I said to Mrs. Summerson. “Have you met Pluto?” She didn't stir, just looked at the floor as though she were trying to see through it.

  “What have you done to her?” I asked Charlie Wah.

  “A little lesson in mortality,” Charlie said absently. Then he was back with us, giving me a glare that would have blistered paint. “The old have a low pain threshold. I wonder how high yours is.”

  “It's subterranean.” I wasn't much liking the conversation's drift.

  “That will simplify matters.” The gun came up again, and he said something to the bodybuilder. Bluto tucked the gun in the back of his pants and came toward me, gesturing for me to lift my arms. He patted me down quickly and thoroughly, relieving me of the automatic and the wad of money I'd counted out for myself at Dexter's. The gun went into his pants pocket and the money into Charlie's free hand.

  How much?” he asked, hefting it.

  “Fifty,” I said.

  He wrinkled his nose. “Cab fare. Still, it's reassuring to know that you kept some. I suppose each of your associates has a similar amount?”

  “Suppose anything you like.”

  He said something, and Bluto punched me. I didn't even see it coming, just watched Bluto's face change suddenly and then my head exploded and I was lying on my back on the floor with my ears ringing and the room rippling in front of me like I was looking at it over a radiator.

  “I suppose each of your associates has a similar amount?” Charlie Wah repeated, word for word.

  “Yes,” I said, not trying to get up. I was damned if I was going to let him see me stagger.

  “Two hundred fifty thousand dollars,” he said. “Add that to the two-eighty you left with Mrs. Jesus here, and we're over half a million. What in the world prompted you to leave half a million in Tiffle's office?”

  “A love of symmetry,” I said. He'd heard the half million on the news, but he didn't know about the money for the pilgrims.

  He shook his head. “Let's get things straight,” he said flatly. “You've cost me immeasurably. I've lost money, respect, and now a ship. There's nothing that I won't do to you.” He reached down and flicked his forefinger forcefully against my right eye, which I barely closed in time, and when I got it open again he was shape-shifting through my tears. “Anything you can think of that hurts, I can think of too. And, unlike you, I can do it.” He glanced at Mrs. Summerson, big and mute and absent on her chair. “I can even enjoy it.”

  “Charlie,” I said, “you're getting personal.”

  “I suppose I am,” he said, without much interest. “Certainly, if I cause you unnecessary pain, it will be for my own satisfaction. But there are business reasons, too. I need to recoup as much of my money as I can, and I have to annihilate the men who disrupted my transaction and cost me my ship. Anything less will not be understood by my associates.”

  I watched him sweat.

  “I was on the telephone most of the night,” he said in an aggrieved tone. “In Taiwan they actually took seriously the idea that some blacks were trying to move in on us. They were expecting some sort of proposition this morning: a partnership, perhaps. But then we got the news about Tiffle, and it all fell into place.”

  Blacks. The henchmen we'd let go had apparently called Taiwan.

  “Still, you might have gotten away with it if you hadn't handed so much to the police, just to inconvenience Tiffle. I don't understand how you could mount an operation so complicated, so elaborate, and then do something so revealing.”

  He wanted me to talk. “My memory palace was full.”

  “Was it?” he said dismissively. “Well, we're going to help you to clean it out.” He gestured to Bluto, who went into the bedroom and came back out carrying a coil of rope. Bluto surveyed the room brie
fly and then threw one end of the rope over one of the beams below the ceiling, the beam from which the hermit who built the shack had hanged himself some thirty years earlier, when he realized they were paving Old Topanga Canyon Boulevard a mile below. The man had prized his solitude.

  Bluto took both ends of the rope in his hands and hoisted himself on it, bringing his legs up and parallel to the floor just to show off.

  “He weighs more than you do,” Charlie Wah observed. “Too much muscle."

  “It's a strong beam,” I said, my voice sounding thin and far away.

  “Get up. Take off your shirt.”

  “Take off your own shirt. It might help the suit.”

  The gun tilted down to point at my midsection. “What's going to happen to you on the beam won't be pleasant, but it'll hurt less than being shot in the gut.”

  I got up and took off my shirt. The buttons seemed to be smaller than I remembered.

  “Over there,” Charlie Wah said, wiggling the gun toward Bluto. “Don't do anything you're not told to do, or I promise you really exquisite pain. Is that what they say? Exquisite pain?”

  “For Christ's sake, Charlie,” I said. “Get a dictionary.” The shirt landed at my ankles. Feeling as naked as a shelled shrimp, I took the long walk to Bluto.

  “Hands out,” Charlie Wah said. “Wrists together.” Bluto was an expert; it took him only a few seconds to wrap one end of the rope around my wrists. He knotted it off tightly enough to make the veins on the backs of my hands pop out, and then he backed off and began taking in the other end of the rope, hand over hand. He pulled effortlessly until I was dangling by my wrists, barely able to reach the floor on tiptoe. When I was stretched to capacity, he tied the rope's end to the leg of the wood-burning stove and stood back to admire his handiwork.

  “This is a good trick,” Charlie Wah said. “We use it on first-time runaways, people who try to welsh on their contracts. There are very few second-time runaways.” He reached into the sagging pocket and pulled out a shiny little ballpeen hammer. “It also has the advantage of being consistent with the natural causes you are probably going to die from in a little while,” he said, advancing on me, “unless you are very, very cooperative.” We both listened to the lie, and he smiled apologetically. “A drunken fall from your sun deck.” He stopped in mock dismay. “Stupid me, I've forgotten something,” he said. He pointed behind him and snapped his fingers, and I saw a black medical bag at Mrs. Summerson's feet.