Timothy Hallinan - The Man With No Time

“Someone in the restaurant, I guess.”

“And you don't think they mentioned me?” I wasn't really thinking about me; I was thinking about the Chans.

“I don't know.” He was sitting with his hands clasped protectively between his thighs. “Maybe, maybe not. The slaves hate Charlie. They might answer only the questions they were asked. If they're worried about Vietnamese, maybe they didn't ask the right questions. You know, 'Who else was in the restaurant before our man got taken?' 'Peter Lau.' 'Was he with anyone from the Vietnamese gang?' 'Yes.' They only asked me about Vietnamese.”

“Right,” I said.

“But now,” he said, “they'll come after me.”

I rounded the corner leading to the third safe house and watched Dexter and Horton's car pull to the curb. “We've got people behind us,” I said, “picking up the slaves. They'll be delivered to a church. Listen, Peter, are you one hundred percent sure I can trust you?”

“Do you think,” he asked wistfully, “I need one more person who wants to kill me?”

“Okay. We'll deliver you to the same church, like you got picked up in the sweep, and you can get home from there. They come back to you, you were delivered blindfolded. It was a black church, somewhere in South Central maybe, but you don't know where. The gang that took you were all black.”

“You think that'll wash?”

Dexter and Horton were getting out of their car.

“If it doesn't,” I said, “I've got things more important than you to worry about.”

The third and fourth safe houses went like Japanese clockwork, with the substitution of one of the henchmen from the first house knocking on the door instead of Ying. We hit the standard two watchers and two briefcases full of cash, flung the standard dresses around the bedrooms, and painted the standard slogans on the wall. At the fourth house, I said nothing, as we'd arranged, and Dexter and Horton, talking blacker than I'd imagined they could, managed to let one of the guards get free, so there'd be someone to report back to Charlie. He'd scaled the fence of a neighboring house as effortlessly as someone who'd just discovered the antigravity principle, and we let him go.

By then the pigeons were mounting up, and Tran had to grab the second van at the last house and join the Doody Brothers Transport Co. By the time we were through, we had six of Charlie's guys, taped wrists to ankles and blindfolded, divided between the trunks and Dexter's backseat.

We took surface streets to L.A., heading north on Western for most of the trip and driving like a caravan of school safety patrols on the way home from work. It took more than an hour, which was what I wanted. By the time we hit Wilshire, around eight-thirty, I guessed Charlie Wah would be getting anxious about his missing collectors and their little briefcases. He was going to be a lot more anxious in the morning.

At Wilshire and Crenshaw we pulled off onto a side street. I consolidated the money into two very full briefcases, and Dexter swung east, heading for his apartment and an appointment with a junkie doctor whose shaking hands were about to be cured by a glare from Horton. The bullet was still in Horton's thigh, which spared him an exit wound but meant that there was some potentially messy medical work ahead.

“Shit,” Horton had said, “for this much money, he could of shot me in the head.”

By the time we had the cases snapped shut, five vans were stacked up behind us, filled to overflowing with rescuees, and I found Horace trying out his Mandarin on them. It sounded rusty even to me, but the guys seemed calm, or maybe just glazed. As Peter Lau had said, they had nothing to lose.

The church, a big one in a Hispanic neighborhood that was starting to go Korean, was lighted up like Christmas, and the moment Mrs. Summerson opened the door, Doreen Wing began to cry. I didn't know what it was-relief that she wasn't going to be killed, delight at seeing Mrs. Summerson, shock at her teacher's age, or sheer exhaustion-but Mrs. Summerson wrapped her big arms around Doreen and patted her with her big blunt hands and talked to her in a Chinese dialect that Horace didn't understand until Doreen's sobs subsided into hiccups.

“And is this all?” Mrs. Summerson asked, looking at the other one hundred and seventy-one pilgrims being herded forward by large Doodys. We were still on the front porch, being dive-bombed by moths.

I rejected several intemperate replies. “It's all there were.”

“Haven't you done well,” Mrs. Summerson said brightly. “Please, come in, come in.” And she extended her arms to all of them, running through dialect after dialect until they were all smiling and nodding at her. We congregated in the chapel, the Chinese taking seats in the pews while Mrs. Summerson and Doreen talked a mile a minute to them, and I waited for a break in the flow and took her arm.

“We need someplace to talk,” I said.

“The pastor's office is open.” She linked her arm through mine, and we set off toward a door at the rear of the chapel. I had one of the briefcases in my free hand.

“Here are their names,” I said, handing her the manifests. We'd found one in each of the briefcases. “That should make the papers easier.”

She leaned against the pastor's gray steel desk, a big strong woman in a shapeless brown dress. She didn't seem vague anymore. “The papers are no problem. I'm getting buses to take the babies to Las Vegas tomorrow, out of harm's way. The papers will arrive in a few days. They'll like Las Vegas, more, I'm afraid, than they should. I just hope they don't lose all their money.”

“They're not going to get all their money,” I said.

The big eyes widened when I opened the briefcase and began to count. “One hundred and eighty thousand dollars,” I said. “Forty each for the four you brought out and twenty for the advance payment on Doreen.” I tidied the piles I'd made and started counting again. It took a long time, and her eyes stayed on my face, which was impressive. I'd have been staring at the cash.

“This is one hundred and seventy-two thousand, a thousand each for the folks in the living room. They can use it to get started, if you can keep them from losing it in Las Vegas.”

“I'll do my best. What happens to the rest of it?”

“It's going in a good cause,” I said. I stood up, toting the briefcase. It felt a lot lighter. “May I use the phone?”

“Right there,” she said, pointing to a black four-pound behemoth with a dial. “Do you need privacy?”

“For your sake, maybe I do.”

“Well,” she said, going to the door, “come in when you've finished. We're making tea.”

“I will,” I replied, resisting the impulse to roll my eyes toward heaven and flipping through the pages of my phone book for the right number.

“Jeez, yeah?” Claude B. Tiffle grunted, and I found myself hoping I'd just contributed to coitus interruptus.

“This is Dr. Skinker,” I said through my nose.

“Froom,” Tiffle said, either cutting through the phlegm or operating under the assumption it was a word. “Little late, huh?”

“I told you we'd have to meet at unusual hours.”

He made a poot-poot sound, gathering his wits. “You mean now?”

“No. Tomorrow morning at eight.”

He breathed disgruntlement into the phone. “Is this important?”

“In God's scheme, no. In terms of your future, yes, indeed.”

“What's going to happen?”

“Earnest money,” I said. “For the purchase of the church.”

He cleared his throat. “How much?”

“Six figures.” It was the truth. “You'll be there?”

“Yeah, okay.” He was alert now. “Eight, right?”

“Eight.”

“Where?”

I swallowed. “Your office.”