Timothy Hallinan - The Man With No Time

The truck driver gave up around four and turned into a seaside motel that announced itself in a smear of pink light as The Last Wave. Deprived of my scout, I slowed even more and watched the world grow dark. Above the glow of Alice's instrument lights, Uncle Lo smiled at me from wherever he was, safe on a dead man's papers. I switched off the news and found some rock and roll, loud and mindlessly busy, and daydreamed about the next time I'd meet Lo. Like the truck driver, he'd guided me into the fog and then disappeared. I couldn't seem to remember a time when it wasn't foggy.

I punched up the news again at six-thirty as I turned into Topanga Canyon, and got a story about the Feds busting a ship in San Pedro, the Caroline B. , operating on a warrant based on an anonymous tip. Nine people, all Taiwanese nationals, taken into custody, no names. Part of an international ring smuggling Mainland Chinese into the country. The word "slaves" was used four times. In a related story, the good folks living next to the safe houses had suddenly realized there'd been something strange going on and stepped forward eagerly to tell lurid tales of broken-spirited young women being herded in and out. It made me feel good enough to stop at the Fernwood Market and grab a six-pack.

It was close to seven and already completely dark, the night black and fog-muffled, when I climbed out of Alice and scaled the driveway. I whistled for Bravo, but he was probably off disrupting the agendas of the local coyotes. Ready for a shower and sixteen hours' sleep, I felt my way to the door and opened it and then stepped inside and switched on the light.

The first thing I saw, sitting on the stool in front of my computer, was Mrs. Summerson, looking dazed and large and empty and frail. The second thing I saw was Charlie Wah.

“Looking bad, Charlie,” I said, and he was. His eyes were puffy and skittish, and his hair was pressed flat on one side as though he'd slept sitting up. The suit of the day, a stomach-curdling shade of lemon yellow, was wrinkled and bunched, and something sagged heavily in his pocket, dragging the jacket further out of shape. His necktie was at a lopsided half-mast, and he'd apparently missed his step coming up the driveway because one yellow knee was smeared with dirt. Still, the little gun in his hand was clean and bright and well maintained and absolutely steady.

“You live like a pig,” he said. He was standing beyond Mrs. Summerson, in front of the living room's one south-facing window.

“Well,” I said, “we can't all afford to dress like Life Savers. I guess you weren't on the boat.”

The gun came forward an inch or two, and my abdominal muscles went into involuntary aerobics. He saw it, and he smiled, but then he replayed what I'd said. “The boat?”

“The good ship Caroline B. , your floating hotel. She's now the property of Uncle Sam.”

The smile congealed on his face, and his gaze suddenly went right through me, fixed on the distance as he started a whole new set of calculations. A sound from the bedroom drew his glance, and one of the steroid junkies, the one with the single eyebrow running across his head, came out, toting my spare gun. He pointed it at my midsection, and Charlie relaxed his, still distracted by all the shuffling realities in his head.

“Here's Bluto,” I said to Mrs. Summerson. “Have you met Pluto?” She didn't stir, just looked at the floor as though she were trying to see through it.

“What have you done to her?” I asked Charlie Wah.

“A little lesson in mortality,” Charlie said absently. Then he was back with us, giving me a glare that would have blistered paint. “The old have a low pain threshold. I wonder how high yours is.”

“It's subterranean.” I wasn't much liking the conversation's drift.

“That will simplify matters.” The gun came up again, and he said something to the bodybuilder. Bluto tucked the gun in the back of his pants and came toward me, gesturing for me to lift my arms. He patted me down quickly and thoroughly, relieving me of the automatic and the wad of money I'd counted out for myself at Dexter's. The gun went into his pants pocket and the money into Charlie's free hand.

How much?” he asked, hefting it.

“Fifty,” I said.

He wrinkled his nose. “Cab fare. Still, it's reassuring to know that you kept some. I suppose each of your associates has a similar amount?”

“Suppose anything you like.”

He said something, and Bluto punched me. I didn't even see it coming, just watched Bluto's face change suddenly and then my head exploded and I was lying on my back on the floor with my ears ringing and the room rippling in front of me like I was looking at it over a radiator.

“I suppose each of your associates has a similar amount?” Charlie Wah repeated, word for word.

“Yes,” I said, not trying to get up. I was damned if I was going to let him see me stagger.

“Two hundred fifty thousand dollars,” he said. “Add that to the two-eighty you left with Mrs. Jesus here, and we're over half a million. What in the world prompted you to leave half a million in Tiffle's office?”

“A love of symmetry,” I said. He'd heard the half million on the news, but he didn't know about the money for the pilgrims.

He shook his head. “Let's get things straight,” he said flatly. “You've cost me immeasurably. I've lost money, respect, and now a ship. There's nothing that I won't do to you.” He reached down and flicked his forefinger forcefully against my right eye, which I barely closed in time, and when I got it open again he was shape-shifting through my tears. “Anything you can think of that hurts, I can think of too. And, unlike you, I can do it.” He glanced at Mrs. Summerson, big and mute and absent on her chair. “I can even enjoy it.”

“Charlie,” I said, “you're getting personal.”

“I suppose I am,” he said, without much interest. “Certainly, if I cause you unnecessary pain, it will be for my own satisfaction. But there are business reasons, too. I need to recoup as much of my money as I can, and I have to annihilate the men who disrupted my transaction and cost me my ship. Anything less will not be understood by my associates.”

I watched him sweat.

“I was on the telephone most of the night,” he said in an aggrieved tone. “In Taiwan they actually took seriously the idea that some blacks were trying to move in on us. They were expecting some sort of proposition this morning: a partnership, perhaps. But then we got the news about Tiffle, and it all fell into place.”

Blacks. The henchmen we'd let go had apparently called Taiwan.

“Still, you might have gotten away with it if you hadn't handed so much to the police, just to inconvenience Tiffle. I don't understand how you could mount an operation so complicated, so elaborate, and then do something so revealing.”

He wanted me to talk. “My memory palace was full.”

“Was it?” he said dismissively. “Well, we're going to help you to clean it out.” He gestured to Bluto, who went into the bedroom and came back out carrying a coil of rope. Bluto surveyed the room briefly and then threw one end of the rope over one of the beams below the ceiling, the beam from which the hermit who built the shack had hanged himself some thirty years earlier, when he realized they were paving Old Topanga Canyon Boulevard a mile below. The man had prized his solitude.

Bluto took both ends of the rope in his hands and hoisted himself on it, bringing his legs up and parallel to the floor just to show off.

“He weighs more than you do,” Charlie Wah observed. “Too much muscle."

“It's a strong beam,” I said, my voice sounding thin and far away.