Timothy Hallinan - The Man With No Time

“And four,” I said, abandoning hope for the discussion, “we want to get out of this alive, in a way that won't endanger your family, Horace, when the assholes sort this out.”

I glanced at Horace, and got more reaction than I'd expected. He was staring past me and above me, looking like the crack of doom had just opened in the parking lot.

“Five,” Dexter said, dropping a hand onto my shoulder, “we want to free the slaves.”

“I was getting to that,” I said, and then I looked beyond him and into a face that would have stopped a grizzly in mid-charge. It belonged to a man the color of fresh asphalt who might have been six and a half feet tall and who might have weighed two hundred and ninety pounds, and who might have been the end of civilization as we know it. He wore a pink Bryn Mawr sweatshirt, baggy blue jeans, and a black watch cap rolled low over his eyebrows.

“This here Horton Doody,” Dexter said. “He my surprise.”

“Horton Doody?” I said involuntarily.

The obsidian marbles Horton Doody used for eyes rolled slowly toward me and fell into a slot that locked them on my face. “Somethin wrong with that?” he growled, bumping the bottom of the aural ocean.

“Horton a knife man,” Dexter offered tactfully.

“Wrong?” I said immediately. “What could be wrong? Fine old name, Doody. One of the Philadelphia Doodys?”

The left corner of Horton Doody's mouth twitched upward. He probably thought he was smiling.

“So, Mr. Doody,” I said, “you're joining our merry band?” Hope made a belated reentrance, wearing a tutu and gossamer wings.

“Dexter say money in it,” Horton Doody rumbled.

“Horton here fond of the green,” Dexter advised. “Take a lot of cash to sustain all that flash.”

“Whuff,” Horton Doody said. I think it was a laugh.

“He already been watchin Everett at a hundred an hour.”

“Big job,” Horton Doody said, sounding like an entire bowling alley.

“Of course, money ain't everything,” Dexter said. “Horton want to free the slaves, too, even if they Orientals.”

Something came to mind. “Who's watching Everett?”

“Horton's bigger brother.” Dexter said. “He in, too.”

“The Doody Brothers?” Horace asked, looking confused. His frame of reference, on rock and roll and practically everything else, had stopped expanding in 1979. “How many more are there?”

“Five,” Horton Doody thundered. “I the baby.”

“I take it all back,” Horace said to me. “You might have the help you need.”

“This little Oriental peewee name Tran,” Dexter said to Horton Doody. “Big bald Oriental name Horace.”

“Horace?” Horton Doody asked. His eyebrows did something complicated under the cap. “Whuff, whuff.”

“People who live in glass houses,” Horace said, passing a hand self-consciously over his remaining hair.

“And the faggot asked you about his merry band name Simeon. Think he got a big brain. He the one gone suicide us all.”

“Whuff,” Horton Doody said. He was having a great time.

Dexter looked at each of us in turn. “What a bunch,” he said. “Look like somethin in a bum's pockets.”

“Count Horace out,” I said. “He's going home.”

Horace slapped the table. “Goddamn it, Simeon, stop speaking for me.”

“But you've got a fam-”

“I know what I've got. And we've got Horton Doody, here.”

“He only one man,” Tran said. Horton Doody gave him a glance that knocked him back a step.

“Yeah, but he a man we can all hide behind.” Dexter said. “And he got brothers.”

“Eleanor will kill both of us,” I said to Horace.

“Thass Simeon,” Dexter told Horton Doody. “Takes on the whole Chinese mafia but scared of his girlfriend.”

“Look,” I said, the soul of reason, “why don't we all sit down and sort this out? Pull up a couple of chairs, Mr. Doody.”

He took it literally. “Name Horton,” he said, distributing his weight.

“It's really swell to meet you,” I said. “Really, really swell. You have no idea. Tran? Have a seat. Horace?”

“I've got to go the bathroom,” Horace said. “I was in that car for hours.”

“I'll come with you,” Dexter said. “Just a couple of girls.”

“That Dexter,” Horton Doody said fondly when they were gone. People looked around to see who was moving furniture. “Ack like a African violet. You're cute,” he said to Tran, who was working on his ice-cream cone, looking perhaps eleven.

“I can shoot you,” Tran said mildly.

“Whuff, whuff,” Horton Doody chortled. “You wear high heels yet?”

Things were not going well. To my surprise, Tran smiled at Horton, looking very much like someone with a secret he intends to keep. "Funny, you" was all he said.

“Five of us?” Horton Doody asked me. “And my five bros make ten. That it?”

“That's it. Sixteen of them.”

He nodded, apparently thinking about something else. He put both hands on the table, balled them into fists, and gazed at them.

“Two,” Tran said helpfully.

The marbles rolled around until they were looking at Tran. Then Doody lifted a fist and moved it, very slowly, until it was almost touching Tran's ear. Tran sat very still, which was more than I could have done. He didn't even flinch when Doody took his ear between two thick fingers.

“Looky,” Horton Doody said, and pulled a silver dollar out of Tran's ear.

Tran's eyes went to the dollar and then to Doody's face, and then he broke into a grin that looked like one the Cheshire cat had left behind. “How?” he asked delightedly.

“Come here, honey,” Doody said. “Ears like those, you probably a rich man.”

Tran pulled his chair over to Horton Doody's, and when Dexter and Horace returned from the powder room, Tran was well into his first lesson in the fine old art of palming.

“Okay,” I said when they were seated. “Let's cut to the chase.”

Florence Lam's apartment was a few blocks north of Sunset, a regal old fourplex liberally decorated with angular graffiti. At seven-thirty the next morning, Dexter, Horton, and I were in place. We'd passed a memorable night in a motel about six blocks away, two thin walls away from a Chinese family of thirty or forty, most of whom seemed to be under two years of age and suffering from colic. When I finally went to sleep, I had a second installment of the dream about babies I'd begun at Eleanor's. In this chapter, a second chute opened at the far end of the room and the fattened babies slid down it to make room for the new arrivals. It seemed to me that there was a Chinese restaurant at the end of the chute. The idea woke me up.

I was as ready for action as anyone who's yawning can be when Florence Lam's door opened and she came out backward, fitting a key to the lock, and backed straight into Horton Doody.

“Excuse me,” she said automatically. Then she turned around, looked up at Horton, and screamed.

Dexter's hand cut off the scream. He'd slipped behind her and stuck his foot into the open door. Horton simply took a few steps forward, bulldozing both of them back into the apartment, and I followed, feeling like a rowboat behind an ice-breaker.

Up close, Florence Lam was smaller than I remembered, and older. Dark smudges beneath her downturned eyes sullied her fine skin, and her hair was dirty and slightly matted. Florence Lam was neglecting herself.

“Hush,” I said, although she'd already choked off the scream. “Nobody's going to hurt you.” I closed the door the rest of the way. The apartment was disheveled and grimy. Clothes were tossed onto the couch, and a couple of days' worth of dishes were growing crusts on the small table. She was either seriously sloppy or seriously depressed. “If he takes his hand away, are you going to be quiet?”