Timothy Hallinan - The Man With No Time

It was the tooth. I was standing over him by the time the cup reached his mouth, and when he saw me the crack of porcelain on enamel was enough to bring my own coffee halfway back up into the light.

“Whawhawha?” Peter Lau said, looking around wildly. He seemed to have forgotten already where the exit was.

“Relax,” I said, sitting opposite him and trying to look reassuring and urbane, rather than green and sticky and reeking of Bordeaux. “I just want to talk to you.”

“This table. .” he said, “this table, ah. .” Words failed him, and he snatched up the reserved sign and brandished it in my face.

“I only need a few minutes,” I said, looking at him more closely. He was wringing wet.

“No talking,” he said jerkily. He started to put the reserved sign into his shirt pocket, found it wouldn't fit, and tucked it under the lapel of his jacket. “I don't talk. I never talk. Ask anybody.”

I leaned in and took an inconspicuous sniff. Alcohol fumes roiled off him. If I had the mother of all hangovers. Peter Lau had all four of its grandparents.

“I need some help,” I said, reaching over to extricate the sign and put it back on the table.

“I don't help.” He started the catechism. “I never help. Ask-”

He broke off and stared past me, looking like one of those little rubber dolls whose eyes pop out of their head when you squeeze them.

“He's with me,” I said, feeling very sorry for Peter Lau.

“Hey, Peter,” Tran said, dropping a hand onto my shoulder.

“Mr. Lau,” I corrected him.

“How you doing, Mr. Lau?” Tran amended.

Lau wrenched his gaze from Tran to me, and his brain might as well have been a blackboard: The kid is back, but this time they've sent someone with him and he can't be bought off. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and the points on his collar had begun to curl up. “You're from Tiffle,” he finally said. It was more a gasp than a question.

“That's the name,” Tran said happily, slipping into the booth beside me. “White guy. Tiffle.” He was swimming in one of my shirts, looking very small and brown.

I knocked my leg into Tran's. “Why would Tiffle send me?” I asked.

“I don't know,” Lau said jerkily. “I'm not writing-”

“They threatened you,” I said.

“This little monster,” Peter Lau said, peering around for help. Literally everyone in the place looked away, finding the answers to long-held questions on the walls or in the middle of their plates. “This little beast and his-his-”

“Mr. Lau.” He jumped slightly. “Mr. Lau, I'm on your side.”

“I don't have a side,” he said quickly, “and if you're on it, why's he here?”

“Tiffle and the Snakes,” I said, and this time Lau positively leaped. His fingers, frantic for something to do, scrabbled lightly over the keys of his laptop. “They killed his brother and cousin. They kidnapped,” I added, stretching the truth some, “the children of some friends of mine.”

“My stars,” he said, and I realized he had a faint British accent. Hong Kong.

“I'm going to reach into my pocket and bring out a card,” I said. “Don't be alarmed.” His eyes followed my hand as though it were the first one he'd ever seen, and stayed on it even after I'd dropped the card, right in the middle of the coffee he'd spilled.

“Sorry,” I said. “I'm in worse shape than you are.”

“I severely doubt that,” Lau said, picking up the card and wiping it with a napkin. He had to read it twice, closing his eyes between passes. “So what?” he said at last. “Anybody can print a card. You should see some of mine.”

“Tran,” I said, “would you please ask the waitress to bring us some coffee?”

“Oh, sure,” Tran said. “Make me very happy, be of service.” He was gone, and Lau never took his eyes off him.

“The other one is really dead?” he asked when Tran was out of earshot.

“I saw it,” I said.

“I won't ask how,” he said, sitting back slightly.

“But I need to ask you some things.”

“How do I know,” he asked, his voice notching up half an octave, “that Tipple didn't send you to see if I'd talk to you? Hmmm?”

“You don't. Look, Mr. Lau, I'm a private detective. I'm in the phone book. I have a terrible red-wine hangover.”

His eyes narrowed sympathetically. “Did you mix it?”

“No, but I drank enough so that it doesn't matter. Do you want,” I asked, “to go on living like this?”

“It's a perfectly good method,” he said. “I bought dozens of these things.” He pointed to the reserved card. “I just call the restaurant I want to be in, and they set up for me.”

“It's a little public,” I said.

He almost smiled. “That's the point.”

“And I have to say that it wasn't very hard to find you.”

“Yes,” he said thoughtfully, “there is that. But you didn't kill me.”

“I don't want to kill you.”

“So you say.” His eyes went back to Tran.

“If you like, I'll ask him to wait in the car.”

“That would be peachy,” he said. “In fact, why don't you ask him to drive the car to New York?”

“Coffee, boss,” Tran said, setting the cups down. Then he turned to Peter Lau and folded his hands together over his chest, looking penitent. “Mr. Lau,” he said. “Sorry. Please forgive me, you.” He bowed very low. Every eye in the restaurant followed him.

“Bloody little-” Lau began. Then he pulled himself up short and blinked twice. “I have to absorb this,” he said. “Come back tomorrow.”

“Not possible. I want to hot-wire the Snakes, and I haven't got the time.”

“Ho-ho,” Peter Lau said politely. “You're going to undo the Snake Triad?” He clinked together the rings on his index fingers, waiting for something persuasive.

“Mr. Lau,” I said. “This is the situation. I want to help someone I love. With your help, I might be able to be a genuine pain in the ass to the Snakes. Without your help, they'll probably catch me. And if they do, Mr. Lau, if they catch me because you didn't help me, I'm going to tell them you told me everything you know.”

“Oh,” Peter Lau said, blinking again. “You mean you'll lie about it.”

“That's what I mean.” Tran was looking at me admiringly.

“Love is a terrible motive for doing something vile,” Lau said after a moment's reflection.

“And I'm sorry about it. I'm sure you're a nice man and a good journalist and all that. But you're just not as important to me as they are.”

“That's bald,” he said. “And you're only one man.”

Tran waved at him, palm downward, fingers curling in. “Remember me?” he said. He sat beside me.

“You're murderous,” Lau said, “but I don't know that you're smart.” Tran took it in silence.

“What'll it be?” I asked.

Lau sighed. “What do you know?”

I told him about the kidnapping and about Charlie Wah. When I mentioned Wah's name, Lau looked very much like a man who desperately needs the bathroom. “So Wah's the Taiwanese boss, right?”

Lau nodded and wiped his upper lip with a finger.

“And Tiffle?”

“Tiffle's a lawyer.” He closed his eyes, like someone about to go over Niagara Falls in a teacup. “He's the Anglo front, when they need one. Legal chores. He launders a little money.” He fiddled with his cup, clinking it against the saucer, and the waitress Tran had been flirting with hurried over to half-fill it. He waited until she was out of earshot before he said, “Tiffle's very unpleasant.”

“Money from what?” I asked. “And why, specifically, a lawyer?”

Lau measured me with his eyes. “I thought you said you knew something.”