Timothy Hallinan - The Man With No Time

“All the leather,” he said, “make it easy to mop up after. Yeah, new career path. Man can only chore for the city, pick up dead animals for so long. Hey, your cat still dead?”

The first time I'd met Dexter, the city had sent him to pick up an extravagantly deceased cat at the foot of my driveway. “She's been reincarnated,” I said, “as a dog.”

“All the same to me, by the time I got them, 'cept dog a little heavier to lift. Talk about hard to lift, got a couple of cows, about a week apart, just before I hung up the ole shovel. Cow a week, it was lookin' like.”

“Tran's Vietnamese,” I said, including him in the chat. “He doesn't know from cows.”

Dexter gave Tran the eye again. “I know he some kind of sushi. You shave yet?”

“I'll never shave,” Tran said, sounding defensive.

“Wo. Two bucks a shirt, no razors. Man can live cheap. You sit on the floor?”

“No,” Tran said shortly.

“Shame. Do without furniture, too, you on the way to rich.”

“Same you?” Tran asked, taking in Dexter's furniture.

Dexter stopped in mid-flow and made his eyes glimmer at Tran, who took a step back, up against a low table that might have been the educated child of two pieces of scrap iron. Then Dexter laughed. “You should drive a cab,” he said fondly to Tran, ignoring me. “Got the right attitude. Fare tries to shovel it at you, you shovel it right back. Hey, a free lesson. Fare say, 'You takin me out of the way,' when you just drivin from Beverly Hills to Santa Monica by way of San Diego. You say, 'Hey, garbageface, get out the fuckin cab.' Less you want to say something bad. You drinking?”

“No,” I said, shuddering.

“Does the Pope-” Tran began cheerfully.

“He's drinking,” I said.

“Does the Pope what?” Dexter asked, fascinated.

“You don't want to know,” I said.

“Pope sounds like a good career path,” Dexter said, turning to a perfectly ordinary black cabinet and leaning over to unfold a bewildering number of surfaces, like someone taking apart origami furniture. “Not too many dead cows on the Pope's beat. Somebody hand the Pope a dead cow, he just probably make the sign over it, say somethin in Polish.” Open at last, the cabinet gleamed with bottles and glasses.

“The cow,” I pointed out, “would still be dead.”

“But on the way, ” Dexter said, gesturing skyward with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. “On the way to Elsie Heaven with clover everywhere, milkin done on cue by angels in silk gloves. One bull for every cow, just standin around stupid, waitin for the word.”

“What word?” I asked.

“Moo,” Dexter said pityingly. “What word you think?” He poured two glasses of Johnnie Walker and handed one to Tran. “Want one?” he asked me.

“No.”

“Tea? I could make it real weak.”

“It'll make my heart race,” I said. “You know how I get when my heart races.”

“Grace here,” Dexter said, nodding toward me, “only get wrecked on beer. And, hey, thanks for all the cards and letters.”

“I didn't have your address.”

Dexter started to say something and then laughed again, showing Tran the biggest teeth he'd probably ever seen. “Drink up, little Tran,” he said, “and then let's figure out what Grace here wants.”

“Wait,” I said. “We've brought a friend.”

“How many?” Dexter asked two glasses later. Tran was sitting, happy and red-faced from the alcohol, on the couch. The translator was lying on his side on the floor, trussed in jumper cables and belts. He'd still been unconscious when Dexter and I toted him in, and we'd improvised a hood, an old interrogation technique, from a pair of Dexter's boxer shorts. The legs waved over his head like cotton antennae.

I prodded him with a toe.

“Sixteen,” he said. Tran had poked him with a two-pronged barbecue fork a minute ago.

“Sixteen Chinese guys,” Dexter said, clarifying things.

“Sixteen Chinese guys with guns,” I corrected him, “and God knows how many innocent Chinese along for the ride.”

“But they Chinese, too,” Dexter said. This was what had worried me.

“Chinese shit,” Tran said, returning to his main theme.

“You know,” Dexter said, rubbing his face with long fingers, “some black folks aren't crazy about Orientals.”

I looked at my two allies and went for the hole card. “There's a lot of money here.”

“I made out okay last time,” Dexter said, although money had had nothing to do with why he'd come in with me. Dexter had a low boredom threshold. He'd been an unwilling soldier in two small but stupid American wars, and while he wouldn't have claimed to be richer for having spent time in Grenada and Panama, he'd retained the skills he picked up in the University of Legal Murder. He demonstrated one of them by popping seven hundred knuckles. “How'm I sposed to tell them apart? I can't tell a boy from a girl as it is.”

Tran opened, and then closed, his mouth.

“We'll point,” I said. "We'll say, 'Good, Dexter,' and 'Bad, Dexter.' "

“I think I can keep that straight,” he said. “Less you talk fast.”

“It's going to be easy,” I said, “as soon as I work out the plan.”

Dexter gave me the big eyes. “No plan?”

“I had one,” I said, “until this guy got himself all tangled up in battery cables. Tran here knows where the good Chinese get delivered. Three or four houses in San Pedro.” I nudged the fallen warrior with a toe. “Right?” I said. “San Pedro?”

“Umm,” the fallen warrior said thoughtfully through Dexter's shorts.

“We got somebody here who'd love to kill you,” I said. Tran poked him with the fork again.

“Yeep,” he said. “Yes, San Pedro, yes.”

“And I thought we'd drop by and really mangle the gears in Charlie Wah's little machine. I'll tell you about Charlie Wah in a minute.” The hooded warrior rubbed his legs together, cricketlike, at the mention of Charlie's name. “And I figured that would get Charlie confused, make him lose his way, so that he'd-” I ran out of inspiration and looked at my allies. They looked biracially skeptical.

“Yeah?” Dexter said. “You know, I got a life here-”

“So Charlie would run the wrong way,” I said very quickly, “and maybe he'd run into us.” Dexter looked at the ceiling. “Charlie's the big bad guy,” I added, just to fill the silence.

“Why should I care?” Dexter asked the ceiling. “Bunch of Chinese.”

“There's the money. About a million.”

“You already said about the money.” Dexter sounded hurt. “Money's okay, you know? I mean, I like money. So maybe I come in with you for the money, hey, you can get a lot of guys for that kind of money.”

“I don't want a lot of guys. I want you.”

“Why's that?” He was still addressing the ceiling.

“I need someone at my back,” I said. “Someone I can trust.”

“You got Junior here,” Dexter said, pointing a lengthy finger at Tran.

“Junior,” Tran said angrily.

I got angry, too. I'd been sitting on anger for a long time, and when it bloomed, it blossomed all at once, like a time-lapse hibiscus, big and red and blotting out the landscape. “So fuck you,” I said, getting up. “Come on, Tran.” Tran got up, looking bewildered.

“Hold it,” Dexter said. “Did I make a error in tact?”

“You don't even get to keep the money,” I said, too mad to care. “Most of it is salt for the mine.”

He sat back and waved me back toward my seat. “I never did understand that,” he said. “What good is salt in a mine?”

“Dexter,” I said, still standing. “I'm in this because of Eleanor.”

“Yeah?” Dexter looked at the man on the floor. “What's this got to do with Eleanor?” He'd met Eleanor twice.