Timothy Hallinan - The Man With No Time

“Stuff,” he said shortly, and I wasn't sure whether it was a request for clarification or a command, but I passed on aggressiveness and put the glass to his lips and let him drink again.

“Stuff,” I said equably, “like, first, who's Lo and why were you sent to get him?”

“Don't know,” he said. Then he looked at the wineglass and said, "Good."

“Glad you like it. More?” He nodded, more enthusiastically than before, but this time I drank a full one myself before I gave him another couple of ounces. The Grand Inquisitor at work, pitiless and perhaps slightly drunk.

“Where were we?” I said. “Uncle Lo, and don't tell me you don't know.”

His mouth went wide and negative. “Don't. They said get him. They said if he came out from apartment, get him.”

“Why did they send you to get him? Why not send Chinese?”

The mouth curled scornfully. “Two Chinese they sent. Only one got out.”

“Lo killed the other one?”

He shrugged. “Must be. Only one got out.”

“So you were supposed to be backup?”

He nodded.

“And they didn't tell you who he was or why they wanted him?” Some epicurean judge inside was telling me that this was a very nice wine.

“Why?” he asked, eyeing the glass in a fair imitation of Bravo, who had managed to sit on my foot again. His weight felt good, so I let the bum sprawl.

“Why what?” I asked, getting confused.

“Why tell us? If they don't tell us, we don't know.”

There was a certain unassailable logic in that. It was what he'd said before, under the Torture of a Thousand Fingers. “You didn't know who he was, but you were going to kill him.”

He shrugged, as well as someone can who's sheathed in Saran Wrap. “Only get him. If he come out. Kill him if we have to, sure. If he try to kill us.”

“Or if he was getting away,” I suggested. He hesitated and licked his lips, and I poured a little wine down his throat.

“Sure,” he said, after he'd swallowed, “kill him. No problem.”

There was something elaborately casual about the words. They sounded like make-believe.

“Have you killed a lot of people?” I asked. I was thinking about how he'd laughed when I tickled him.

“Very many,” he said gruffly.

I let it pass. “You were supposed to get him if he came out. Why'd you go in?”

He blinked. “Uh,” he said.

“Could you be more specific?”

He tried a smile. “Mistake.”

“It sure was.”

“We run out of gas,” the hitman said, dropping the smile and looking embarrassed. “Gas thing on my car broken. So, late, almost half hour. We don't know who's in, who's out. Think maybe Lo's there.”

It was too stupid to be a lie. At seventeen, I'd always run out of gas.

“One more time,” I said, “who was Lo?”

He looked into the middle distance, and oak popped in the fireplace. The boy started at the sound and then tried to hide the movement by turning it into a shiver. Something furtive and intelligent came into his eyes, and I involuntarily caught my breath as words formed themselves on his tongue. Here it came, the big news flash. He looked at the wine again, and then at me. He licked his lips.

“Water chaser?” he asked.

I heard myself laugh, and I heard Bravo's tail thump against the floor, and I said again to Bravo, “Kill him if he moves,” and then I laughed again and went to the kitchen for a glass of water.

Two hours later I was sitting next to him on the couch, and he was leaning against me in a friendly fashion. I'd undone the cuffs around his feet and slightly loosened the Saran Wrap connecting his wrists, and we were well into the third bottle. I'd learned that he was, in fact, seventeen, that the name of his gang was the Flying Fists, and that his parents were long divorced, his father gone God knew where. I'd learned that he lived-whenever he was home-with his mother, who worked as a cashier in a Vietnamese restaurant in Westminster, about forty miles south of L.A. He'd learned all about the relationship between Eleanor and me, and he'd agreed that nothing was harder than being a bad man who has somehow come into possession of a good woman. A grand and malicious joke. He'd also taken another Ampicillin, to make up for the one I'd eaten, and another Excedrin, and he was, both literally and figuratively, feeling no pain.

“Why join the gang?” I asked again. I was propping him up and pouring the seven hundredth glass of wine, and Bravo was snoring under the table and chasing phantoms from the ankles down. He'd had a little dog-dose himself, out of the extra glass.

“If you don't join one gang, two gangs try to take money. If you join a gang, only one.” He grinned at me, looking suddenly shy. “Better odds,” he said.

“Fine. Why work for the Chinese?”

The grin vanished. “More money,” he said as though it were painfully obvious. “Chinese have all the money, same in Vietnam. Chinese always have all the money.”

“Where does the money come from?” The words were no more precise than my mental processes, but he understood them.

“Chinese,” he said with an odd mixture of admiration and scorn, “sweat money.”

Eleanor, as far as I could remember, didn't seem to sweat at all. There was no question, though, that she was tight with a buck. I wasn't. It was one of the things we'd fought about.

“But where does it come from?” I put the glass to his lips and wondered briefly why I seemed to be doing all the talking. “The money, the Chinese money, I mean. Those men, for example.”

His eyes went opaque. “Don't know.” He looked around the room, seeming to notice it for the first time. His eyes fell on the loudspeakers, almost as tall as he was, bounty from a case on which I'd actually had a client. “Music, please. Rock and roll?”

“Music,” I said, sighing. It was getting late. I tilted him upright and got up-not quite as stiffly as before, lubricated by the wine-and put on a CD by the Kinks, not his vintage, but fuck him. If he wanted Ice-T, he could escape.

“Old fart stuff,” he said after the opening guitar riff, wrinkling his nose.

“That's because I'm an old fart,” I said, draining the glass. “And you're a young one.”

“Young fart,” he said, grinning again as I settled back onto the couch and rested a foot on Bravo's shoulder. “Funny man.”

“Back to business,” I said, drinking again. “How did they find you when they needed you?”

He shook his head dismissively. “Guy came around.”

“Around where?”

“School,” he said. “More, please.”

“School,” I said, pouring. I was dealing with a drunk baby. “Names.”

“Wine first,” he said, looking cunning. I put the glass to his lips, and he gulped it down.

“Charlie Wah,” he said immediately after swallowing. “Charlie Fucking Wah.”

“Who is he?”

“Taiwan king shit. Big man. Back and forth, yo-yo, yo-yo, Taiwan to America.”

I leaned forward. I was getting some content at last. “They're from Taiwan, then.”

“Shit floats,” he said. “They float here from Taiwan.”

“Why? What are they doing?”

The smooth features froze tight. “Don't know.” He looked into my eyes. “True. Don't know.”

“Well, what do they ask you to do?”

“Dangerous stuff. Stuff they afraid to do. Frighten people, beat them up. Pick up stuff and deliver it.”

“Drugs.” It was a guess.

“No. Charlie Wah doesn't like dope.”

“What, then?”

“Don't know.” He inhaled and then blew out through his lips. “Lying to you. Money. Always wrapped up, all taped up in a bag or in a briefcase, but money.”

I was feeling dubious. “They trust you to pick up money?”