Timothy Hallinan - The Man With No Time

When I was absolutely certain they were all too busy to hear me, I stopped fighting the bubble and went outside and threw up.

“There are two possible scenarios,” I said ten minutes later. I'd rinsed my mouth half a dozen times.

Horace and Eleanor were sitting side by side on the exploded couch, which had been covered with a bedsheet. Horace's eyes were vague and his face pinched, white lines framing the corners of his mouth, and he systematically tugged at his thinning hair with his right hand, yanking the occasional loose strand free. Eleanor had put her arms around him and pressed her cheek against his shoulder. From time to time she reached up to stop his hand, but he'd be at it again a few minutes later.

It was another family trait. I'd seen Eleanor do the same thing when she was worried. Early in our relationship I'd reached up to stop her hand.

“Either Lo set up the lunch so he could search the place and took the twins when he was interrupted,” I said, talking to keep myself from slapping Horace's wrist, “or else Uncle Lo set up the lunch for some other reason that required him to be alone here, like maybe to meet someone, and then something went wrong and whoever he met took both him and the twins after they searched the place. Either way, Lo set it up.”

Nothing. Horace, I suddenly realized, was looking at the TV. It wasn't on. “And either way,” I said, “Uncle Lo killed the guy in the closet.”

Eleanor took Horace's right wrist as it climbed scalpward and held it. Then she kissed him on the cheek.

“Except,” I said, wondering if he'd try with the left, “if the other guys took Lo and the twins, why were those kids here? So Lo killed the guy in the closet and got away with the twins, and the kids came here to do some damage control.”

“What are you saying, Simeon?” Eleanor asked. She was still holding Horace's wrist.

“I'm saying we call the cops.”

“Can't do it,” Horace said, immovable as a fireplug.

“Well, you can't just sit here and get older.”

He used his left to pluck a strand. “Sometimes holding still is the wisest choice.”

“Don't sound so Chinese, Horace. Murder and kidnapping are what the police are for. ” Pansy moaned in the bedroom, and I heard Mrs. Chan whisper something urgent, a sound as taut as a rope snapping.

“No Chinese remarks, Simeon,” Eleanor said severely. She had herself under control, except that the hand that wasn't thrown around Horace's shoulders was balled into a white-knuckled fist. She rolled the fist back and forth, knuckle over knuckle, across the bedsheet as she talked. “This is a Chinese situation.”

I felt like I'd just walked through a pane of glass I hadn't known was there. “Chinese?” I asked. “What about Julia and Eadweard? They're babies. They don't even know they're Chinese.” Horace made a noise like a hiccup, his eyes still fixed on the blank screen.

“What good will it do Julia and Eadweard to lose their entire family?” Eleanor asked. “Anyway, we don't think the twins are in danger.”

That made me sit back. “Who's 'we'?”

“Uncle Lo will take care of them,” Eleanor said.

“I really seriously don't understand,” I said.

“He's our benefactor,” Horace said automatically. “Even if he did take Julia and Eadweard, he took them because he needs something. He took them to make sure he'd get it. That's all.” It was the longest speech he'd made since we got home.

“He's in danger, obviously,” Eleanor said. “He's running away from something. Maybe he thinks that having Julia and Eadweard will protect him.”

“From what?”

“We don't know,” Eleanor said, after waiting for Horace to respond.

“Our little buggers,” I said, “would shoot right through the kids to get dear old Uncle Lo.”

“They won't,” Eleanor said, sounding a touch shaky about it. “They promised.”

I looked at her as I listened again to what she'd said. I thought I knew her, had thought I knew her for years, but now she was like a face on an exotic stamp, small and far away and foreign. “They promised?” I finally asked.

“In Cantonese,” she said, “as they left. They said if we'd tell them when we found Uncle Lo, they'd make sure the kids got home.”

It sounded like a wan hope at best, but it wasn't one I was going to contradict. “And how are we going to find Uncle Lo?”

“We're not,” Horace said. “He's going to come to us.”

There were a million possible questions, and all of them seemed wrong; all of them seemed like they'd rip Horace apart. I chose the least harmful. “What does he want?”

“God knows,” Horace said.

“Does your mother?”

Horace tore his eyes from the television, and he and Eleanor exchanged glances. “Perhaps,” she said.

“Let's ask her.”

“No,” brother and sister said in unison.

“Well, for Christ's sake,” I said, suddenly angry, “why not?”

“We'll ask her,” Eleanor said quietly. “Not you, we. You want to do something, Simeon, and we're grateful to you for it.” Horace reached over and patted my knee, awkwardly but feelingly. “But we can't let you. Those guys who were here? The one you tickled already wants to kill you. You cost him a lot of face. You should have just gone ahead and kicked him.”

“You know me,” I said, deciding not to remind her that she'd been horrified at the idea. “Could I kick someone in the head?”

“He'd hate you less if you had. But he's not going to go after you unless you do something. And they'll kill all four of us, and then come after you, the minute they learn you're trying to do something. Anything. And they would learn. You just have to believe that.”

“If all I did was talk to the cops, how would they know?”

“They'd know if the cops did anything in the Chinese community after you talked to them. Anything at all.”

“Where are we?” I demanded. “Albania?”

“We're in China,” Eleanor said. “Right now, we're in China.”

“This is Willis Street,” I said stubbornly.

“No,” she said. “Three or four hours ago, this was Willis Street, Los Angeles. Now it's China. Something Chinese happened here. Whatever happens next will be Chinese, too.”

I looked at her with longing. “You're as Chinese as I am.”

“Three or four hours ago, that was true. Now it isn't.”

I sat there, trying to control my giveaway Occidental face and waiting for all my immediate responses to line up in an orderly fashion. Then I eliminated all of them and said something else, something that might let me into the game.

“Chinese or not Chinese, maybe I can help you without doing anything.”

“Yeah?” Horace asked skeptically.

“I know how to ask questions. I can ask you questions. Only you and Horace. And maybe those questions will help you get a better picture of whatever the hell is going on. I won't act on the answers, I promise. But maybe they'll help you when it's time for you to stop holding still and make decisions.”

“Decisions,” Horace said vaguely.

“What do you do when the phone rings?” I asked. “Let's say it's Uncle Lo, and he's got a deal. You've got to know as much as you can. I don't know anything, which makes me the perfect person to ask the questions. I promise, I swear on whatever you want, that I won't do anything with the answers. They're for you. They're to help you think of things you might not think of otherwise, because otherwise will be too late. And you know how Edmund Burke defined Hell? It's the truth, recognized too late.” Well, maybe it hadn't been Edmund Burke.