Timothy Hallinan - The Man With No Time

“Can you concentrate on inhaling for a few minutes?” I asked. He rolled down the driver's window.

Soon, I think," Tran said, breaking his vow of silence.

“I thought you were dead,” Horace said.

“Later,” Tran said.

Lights swept the road. “Heads down,” I said. “Here's another one.”

Horace and I ducked, leaving only Tran to peer through the smaller window in the rear. “Three lady,” Tran said.

Horace sighed.

“Who would have thought,” I asked the world at large, “that so many people would live in this stucco nightmare? And who'd have thought they'd want to come home at night?”

“Van,” Tran said from the backseat. We ducked again. The van, a big one, a minibus really, went past us at a nice, legal twenty-five miles an hour and turned the corner onto the street with the safe house on it. “One more,” Tran said. A second mobile Enormo, twin to the first, followed. “CIAs,” Tran said flatly. “Not long now.”

One of the walkie-talkies Dexter had procured made a throat-clearing sound on the seat between Horace and me, and I picked it up. “They comin home,” he said. “In the driveway now.” He sounded unreasonably calm. “Here's number two.”

“You guys set?” I had to say something.

“Horton done pulled four-fifty out of my ear.” Horton said, “Whuff.”

“You finished getting the labels out of the dresses?”

“Idle hands is the devil's playground. Not a label in the bunch.”

“How do you look?”

“The governor of Jamaica ain't gone invite us home to dinner.”

“And the Doody Squad?” I asked.

“Tryin to keep awake,” said Howard Doody, the eldest of the brothers, from their car. The others were named Harold, Henry, Hector, and Hayward.

“We can all hear each other?”

“No,” Howard Doody said. “This your imagination speakin.”

“Right. Well, keep the line open,” I said.

Tran started to hum. After a few bars I recognized it as “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.” Horace joined in on an off-key counterpoint line lifted from the Modern Jazz Quartet, and I did my best to turn it into a fugue.

“You guys got a future,” Dexter said over the walkie-talkie. “Course, you'll only work once a year.”

“You know a harmony?” I asked. “We've got an opening in the group.”

“We doin Bob Marley. Horton the bass drum.” Horton went “Bum, bum, bum,” obligingly. It sounded like depth charges.

“Tell Horton,” I said, “that he can always get a job in sonar.”

“Man say you sound like a bullfrog,” Dexter said to Horton. Assorted Doodys laughed.

“Bullest frog he ever see,” Horton rumbled.

“Coming, them,” Tran said. Horace and I did our little dive.

“We think this is it,” I said into the phone as the car glided past.

“Ying,” Tran said. “One other.” We all held our breath, waiting for the second car. After thirty seconds, it hadn't come. “Okay,” Tran said.

“They parkin. Here he come, man goin up the walk,” Dexter advised us. “Little squirt.”

“We'll wait a minute to be sure they're alone. He'll be inside four or five minutes. He has to get the cash, count it, check the CIAs against his list, and make sure that everything adds up.”

“Six minutes, maybe seven,” Tran corrected me. “First time, him.”

“You hear that?” I asked Dexter.

“My ears okay. It's my heart done turned to stone. That's why I such a merciless dude.”

Count to fifty. No second car. I tapped Horace on the arm. “We're rolling,” I said to the phone.

“Listen to the man,” Dexter scoffed. “Rollin.”

“Let Horton emerge into the world.” The engine caught, and Horace eased the car into the street, lights out. Now that it was actually coming down, I felt light-headed but clear: The game passed seamlessly through my imagination, without a bump or a missed stitch. Tran touched my shoulder lightly and whispered, “Good.”

Horace pulled to the curb about thirty feet behind the car that had had Ying in it. There were two parked cars ahead of us, and we were between streetlamps.

“Jesus Christ,” Horace said, leaning against the steering wheel for a better view.

Horton Doody, dressed in a flowing robe, was ambling down the sidewalk, looking wider than a king-sized bed. A streetlamp pulled him from the darkness and glinted off the shawl thrown over his shoulders and the colored beads in his braided hair. Since I'd never before seen him with his watch cap off, I didn't know whether the hair was his own or one of Dexter's inspirations.

“He's just going to meander along like that?” Horace asked. “What about a little stealth?”

“It's a question of color,” I said. “If they're expecting anything, it's not someone who looks like Horton.”

“Nobody expect that,” Tran murmured.

“Come on, Horton,” I urged. As he approached Ying's car he gave it an incurious glance and slipped the shawl from his shoulders.

“What if the car's locked?” Horace said. He knew, but he couldn't stop babbling.

Horton was wrapping the shawl around his right hand, looking up at the cloudy sky like someone who's just had her hair done. He was still looking at the sky when he reached the passenger door, and he didn't glance down even when he drew back his wrapped fist and punched out the window.

The guy in the car jumped high enough to bump his head on the roof, but Horton had an arm through the window by then and his left hand had come out of the pocket of his robe with a gun that looked big and deadly even from thirty feet away. He yanked the door open and let the driver see the gun pointed at his head, and the man froze. Up the street the light came on in Dexter's car, and he got out and headed for the house.

We were about two minutes in.

Tran and I pulled ski masks over our faces and climbed out of the car, Tran moving quickly toward Horton while I angled toward Dexter and the safe house. Horace remained in the car, watching the play and waiting for us to come out.

Tran had a wide roll of fiber tape and Charlie Wah's trusty handcuffs, and I had my automatic, another roll of tape around my left wrist, a can of spray paint in a holster, and a quiver full of persistent misgivings. As I joined Dexter I saw Horton pull the driver from the car one-handed.

Dexter was wearing something free-flowing and tie-dyed, and he'd teased his hair up into angular spikes that made him look a little like the Statue of Liberty if the Statue of Liberty had been Jamaican. “Hey, mon,” he said softly, giving the words a passable island lilt. Behind him, Horton was holding the driver parallel to the ground like a piece of driftwood while Tran wound the tape around his head, sealing both his eyes and his mouth. Then Tran went around to the driver's side and got the keys to open the trunk.

“Waitin the hard part,” Dexter said, glancing at his watch.

“About a minute,” I whispered. “Hurry up, Horton.”

Right on cue, Horton tossed the driver into the trunk and floated toward us, his feet hidden by the hem of his robe. Tran shut the trunk, got into the car behind the wheel, and closed the door.

“This my granny's shawl,” Horton said. “She going to be plenty pissed.”

“Buy her a new one,” I said.

“Hell,” Dexter said, “tonight's money, you gone be able to buy a new granny.”

“Against the house,” I said, and the three of us split up, Dexter and me to one side of the door and Horton to the other, six or eight feet away from it. As though he'd been waiting for us, Ying opened the door and came out.

He was walking stiffly, and even in profile his face was scraped and raw. He looked like someone who'd taken a header into a Cuisinart. Dexter and Horton closed on him soundlessly, and Horton's arm had circled his throat before he even made the sidewalk. He made a sound that sounded like cikkk-cikkk as Horton lifted him from the ground and shut off his air. In a single fluid motion, Dexter extended a hand, gave Ying a casual little slap on the face, and took his briefcase. Horton toted Ying out of sight around the side of the house, and Dexter and I retired behind an overgrown bird of paradise and took a look at the haul.