Timothy Hallinan - The Man With No Time

She nodded. Dexter experimentally removed his hand.

“I have no money,” she said.

“We don't want money. We don't want to hurt you. In fact, we're here to give you a break.”

Her eyes widened slightly; she'd recognized me. Then she glanced at Horton Doody, who was still only inches from her. “Can you ask him to move away, please?”

“He don't have to ask me,” Doody said, stepping back. He sounded hurt.

“Let's all sit down,” I said. “This is your lucky day.”

Florence Lam took a chair at the table. Dexter stood with his back to the door, one foot raised and resting against it. I sat on a chair opposite Florence, and Horton occupied the couch. All of it.

“Who are you?” She was using her index fingers to torment the cuticles on her thumbs, but she had her voice under control.

“You don't really want to know,” I said. “I need your attention. Are you with me?”

“What choice do I have?”

“Right,” I said. “I'm going to operate on two assumptions for the next minute or so. The first is that you share my opinion that your boss is a pustule. The second is that you know what's really going on in that office.”

“Like what?” Her eyes were watchful.

“Like many, many broken federal laws. Like ties to organized crime. Like exploitation and extortion, all against Chinese. Like a little prostitution.”

She glanced at Doody, who was staring at her like something you might bump into at forty fathoms, and then quickly looked away. “You're not Immigration.”

“We're much worse than INS. They have to play by the rules.”

She took it in and nodded. Then her lower lip tightened and started to quiver.

“Lady gone to cry,” Dexter said lazily.

Florence Lam straightened in her chair. “That's how much you know.”

“I'm going to give you some good advice,” I said. “But I need a couple of things first. Give me your keys.”

Whatever she'd expected, that wasn't it. “My keys?”

“To the office. They're on that ring with the blue F on it.”

She took that in with a blink. “Why do you need them?”

“That's something else you don't want to know. May I?” I reached out a hand.

“I need them to open the office.”

“You'll have them back in ten minutes.”

She looked around the room as though she were saying good-bye to it. “I suppose I have to.”

“You have to.”

She picked up the key ring, all business now, and sorted out a large brass-colored key. “Front door,” she said. “Back door is this one.”

I crossed my fingers. “And the basement?”

She looked surprised again. “It's not locked,” she said.

“But it does lock, doesn't it?”

“Sure it does. Tiffle loves locks. He's got a lock on everything.” She pursed her lips. “Except his fly.” Her fingers sorted though the keys and came up with an old-fashioned skeleton key. “This one,” she said.

“Got it?” I asked Dexter.

“Oh, please,” Dexter said, taking the key ring from her. “Back in a flash.” He closed the door very quietly behind him.

“And now?” Florence Lam asked, a little steadier.

“And now the advice. Take a big purse with you to work today. When the others are at lunch, go to the personnel and payroll files and grab everything that's got your name on it. Everything.” She hesitated and then nodded, waiting. “Clean out your desk, but don't make it obvious. Leave junk on top of it. Don't go to work tomorrow. Have you got somewhere you can go?”

“For how long?” She was surprisingly calm. Either she'd seen something like this coming, or she intended to go straight to work and tell Tiffle everything.

“For keeps.”

“Oh,” she said. She swallowed. Her eyes went around the apartment again and her hands went to the purse, and Horton stirred on the couch.

“Uh-uh,” he said.

“A cigarette,” she said a little sharply. “Do you mind?”

Horton shrugged, and the couch squealed. “Bad for you,” he said.

“I'll risk it.” She pulled a package of Virginia Slims from the purse and lit up with a silver lighter. When she tilted her head back to exhale she looked younger and prettier. She took another hit and looked around the table for an ashtray, then flicked the ash into a bowl that still had a couple of corn flakes floating in it. “Okay,” she said. “I can go-”

“Don't tell us. Don't tell anybody. Just get the hell out of here. You've got skills, you can get a job. You can do something straight, start over.”

She passed her fingers over her brow. “Sure,” she said. “Start over.” Then she coughed, and the cough turned into a sob. She leaned forward, the hand with the cigarette in it pressed against the back of her head, singeing her hair. I took it from between her fingers and let her cry, the sobs breaking apart like soap bubbles in the early light. There's something especially terrible about a woman weeping in the morning.

“There, there, lady,” Horton Doody said helplessly. He shifted his weight as though he intended to get up and comfort her. “You be okay.”

“What's he got on you?” I asked her when the sobs had slowed.

“I've signed things,” she said, fighting for breath. “We all have. He made us. Federal forms, forged papers, I don't know what.”

“Take them with you.”

Her head came up, and she wiped at her cheeks with a napkin. “They're locked in his desk. He'd never let me get at them. He's got us all.”

“All four of you.” Four was just too many.

“Do you think we'd be there if he didn't? Do you know what he does to us?”

“I can imagine. Listen, Florence, you can't tell the others. We'll try to get the stuff in his desk, but we can't have ail four of you acting crazy. He's stupid, but nobody's that stupid.”

“I could call them tonight,” she said. It was a question. “That way they won't come back.”

I looked at Horton. Horton spread his hands to reveal a soft center.

“You can call them at six in the morning.”

“And I can take their papers?”

“Oh, shit,” I said. “Just don't get caught.”

She reached across the table and took my hand in both of hers and pressed it to her wet cheek. “Thank you,” she said.

I sat there feeling fraudulent and uncomfortable as the door opened and Dexter came in. He started to toss me the keys and saw that my hands were occupied.

“Gettin along better, I see,” he said. He gave me a knowing smile. “Good thing I ain't Eleanor.”

Pressure points.

There were too many of them, I thought, driving south at nine a.m. while Tran caught up on his sleep in the passenger seat. It was almost enough to make me suspicious.

But why shouldn't there be holes in the operation? Charlie had his racket to himself, sewn up with the Snake Triad Black Hats back in Taiwan, and there wasn't much pressure from the White Hat side here in America. Who cared about a bunch of impoverished Chinese? They were an insignificant trickle in the overall illegal immigration picture, nothing like the nonstop cascade over the borders to the South. They provided cheap labor to people who probably contributed to political campaigns. They didn't vote. They may not have had much else, but at least they were safe from the promises of American politicians.

And, as Charlie had said, kill a gwailo, and you bring the police. Keep the violence and the exploitation confined to people with yellow skin-or black, I added to myself, or brown-and they'd stay out of your way. It would take something very conspicuous to draw their attention.

The idea I'd been forming for the last three days would provide something very conspicuous. Unless it got us all killed.