Timothy Hallinan - The Man With No Time

“I didn't say I knew everything.”

“You don't know anything at all.”

“But you're going to tell me.” He sat absolutely still, looking out the window as if he hoped the U.S. Cavalry was about to gallop into the parking lot. “Is it drugs?” I prompted. “Prostitution? Gambling? Extortion?”

“No,” he said. “It's bigger than that.”

“Bigger than drugs?”

He reached up and passed both hands over his scalp, knocking his heavily sprayed hair turban askew, and then reached back and laced his fingers together behind his neck. With a sigh that seemed to have its roots in centuries of finely honed malaise, he arched his neck back against his hands. Vertebrae popped.

“You have to understand the Chinese,” he said, turning his head slowly from side to side. “They're always ready to go somewhere, to follow something that might lead them to a lifetime of regular eating. They followed the Red Eyebrows in the first century, the Boxers in this one, Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek, then Mao on the Long March. Millions of Chinese, hundreds of millions of Chinese, have literally nothing to lose. They accept the first emperors, they overthrow the emperors, they set up a republic, they overthrow the republic and accept communism, they embrace capitalism. They follow the light someone holds up, a light suspended over a full bowl of rice. When the light goes out and they lose their direction, they starve for a while in the dark. When someone shines a new light in their eyes, they follow it again. They've followed the greatest assortment of scoundrels ever produced by a single country in all of history.” He sighed once more, even more heavily. “Of course, part of the problem is that we've had more history than everyone else put together.”

“They're following Charlie,” I said, realizing that the back of my neck was beginning to tingle, although I didn't fully know why. “Charlie's got the light now?”

“Charlie's part of the Snake organization is specialized,” Lau said as carefully as if he'd learned the words phonetically. “They, ah, they effect migrations.”

“Migrations,” I said, my hangover suddenly over. Orlando's migrating starlings swarmed into view, diving and swooping hungrily through a confusion of light-seeking moths.

Peter Lau turned away from the parking lot, bathed in sweat. No help was at hand. He started to say something and then stopped.

“The Snakes,” I said, sitting there surrounded by immigrants who had all gotten here somehow, and wondering why it had taken me so long to figure it out. “The Snakes deal in people.”

“The Snakes,” Peter Lau said, “deal in slaves.”

“Eleven million dollars,” Peter Lau said, “every two weeks.”

We'd followed him to a new restaurant, and the air, or something, had done him good. His eyes were steadier, his voice less susceptible to sudden spikes of nervous energy. The front of his shirt had dried out. He even smiled occasionally, like someone picking up radio jokes on his fillings. He was drinking lemonade without spilling it into his lap.

At my suggestion, Tran had taken up watch in the parking lot, conserving a Coke and eating ice cream and peering through Alice's dirty windows for a sight of the enemy. In his absence, Lau had grown more expansive.

“Eleven million dollars,” I said. It was a nice thing to say.

“That's just on this coast.” He narrowed his eyes, either in speculation or in defense against the light. “Another five, maybe, on the East. Let's make it sixteen million dollars every two weeks, so that's about four hundred and sixteen million dollars a year.” He put down the lemonade and clinked the rings together. “Tax free.”

“All under Charlie Wah?” Four hundred and sixteen million dollars didn't seem real.

“Charlie Wah runs the West Coast only. East Coast is Johnny King.”

“King?”

Lau smiled, for perhaps the third time. He'd wanted me to ask. “Koh, actually,” he said. “His first name, obviously, isn't really Johnny, either.” Now that he'd decided to talk, he was making a good story out of it, Chinese-style.

“Johnny King,” I said. “Charlie Wah. They sound like movie gangsters.”

“Very good,” Lau purred. “Hollywood has a lot to answer for.” He sniffed at his lemonade as though he hoped someone had slipped something alcoholic into it while he wasn't looking. “But make no mistake. These are appallingly dangerous men.”

“I've seen Charlie Wah in action,” I said.

Lau made a tight little P with his lips and blew air behind it. “Charlie Wah thinks he's the last of the old-time mobsters. He affects the whole gestalt: those bodyguards, that haircut, those awful suits.”

“Powder blue, the one I saw.”

“He dresses like sherbet. He's a pastel rainbow, a complete spectrum of bad taste. He has them made in London, nice piece of reverse snobbery there, by a very good tailor who must go reeling every time a bolt of fabric arrives. They're silk, of course, dyed in Thailand by the inmates of a home for unwed mothers.”

“Interesting labor pool.”

He looked a little disappointed at my lack of reaction. “It's a good holding pen. Bring a couple dozen Chinese girls through Bangkok, put them up in the home while their papers are cooking, then ship them out.”

“Why Bangkok?”

Lau sighed. He was feeling better, but it would be days before he was his old self again, if he still had an old self. “There are two main routes,” he said, industriously moving things around on the tabletop. He laid a knife between us. "One is over the Chinese border near Yunnan and then by air into Thailand." He pushed his index finger to the edge of the knife and then hopped over it and skidded onto an unwiped piece of food that apparently represented Bangkok. “In Thailand the CIAs-that's Chinese Illegal Aliens-become Taiwanese or Hong Kongese and fly either to Los Angeles or to New York, sometimes via Taiwan. That's the air route, the most expensive. Fifty thousand dollars each. A hundred arrive on each coast every couple of weeks, about twenty million dollars a month.”

The sums were troubling me. “Where does a mainland Chinese get fifty thousand dollars?”

A scowl informed me that I was breaking his flow. “Later. The second route"-he angled the knife about forty-five degrees away from me-"is by sea. Overland across China to Fujian Province, then by fishing boats into the Strait of Taiwan. They're picked up by a freighter and shipped, like computer parts or automobile bumpers, to San Pedro. Three or four miles offshore, they're loaded into small boats and brought the rest of the way in. As you can imagine, a long and uncomfortable trip. Also, no papers are involved. That's tourist class, thirty thousand apiece. A shipment of two hundred makes Charlie Wah six million dollars.”

“Who owns the freighters?”

“Dummy companies set up by the Snakes. There's legitimate cargo, too, of course. On a good-sized freighter, two hundred people don't take up very much room. Especially if they're Chinese. Chinese,” he said distastefully, “like crowds.”