Dean Koontz - Tick Tock

Now Tommy was surprised by how desperately he wanted to avoid sinking further in Gi’s esteem. He had thought that he’d learned to live with his family’s disapproval, that they could not hurt him any more by reminding him how much he had disappointed them, and that what they thought of him was less important than what kind of person he knew himself to be. But he was wrong. He still yearned for their approval and was panicky at the prospect of Gi dismissing the tale of the doll-thing as the ravings of a drug-addled mind.

Family was the source of all blessings - and the home of all sadness. If that wasn’t a Vietnamese saying, it should have been.

He might have risked speaking of the demon anyway, if he had come here alone. But Del Payne’s presence already prejudiced Gi against him.

Therefore, Tommy thought carefully before he spoke, and then he said, ‘Gi, have you ever heard of the Black Hand?’

Gi looked at Tommy’s hands, as if expecting to be told that he had contracted some hideous venereal disease affecting the upper extremities, if not from this blonde-who-was-nearly-a-stranger, then from some other blonde whom he knew far better.

‘La Mano Nera,’ Tommy said. ‘The Black Hand. It was a secret Mafia organization of blackmailers and assassins. When they marked you for murder, they sometimes warned you by sending a white piece of paper with the black-ink imprint of a hand. Just to scare the crap out of you and make you suffer for a while before they finally popped you.’

‘This is ridiculous detective-story stuff,’ Gi said flatly, rolling down the sleeve of his white shirt and buttoning the cuff.

‘No, it’s true.’

‘Fast Boys, Cheap Boys, Natona Boys, the Frogmen, their types - they don’t send a black hand first,’ Gi assured him.

‘No, I realize they don’t. But have you ever heard of any gang that sends... something else as a warning?’

‘What else?’

Tommy hesitated, squirmed in his chair. ‘Well… say like a doll.’

Frowning, Gi said, ‘Doll?’

A rag doll.’

Gi looked at Del for illumination.

‘Ugly little rag doll,’ she said.

‘With a message on a piece of paper pinned to its hand,’ Tommy explained.

‘What was the message?’

‘I don’t know. It was written in Vietnamese.’

‘You once could read Vietnamese,’ Gi reminded him in a tone of voice thick with disapproval.

‘When I was little,’ Tommy agreed. ‘Not now.’

‘Let me see this doll,’ Gi said.

‘It’s… well, I don’t have it now. But I have the note.’

For a moment Tommy couldn’t recall where he had stashed the message, and he reached for his wallet. Remembering, he slipped two fingers into the pocket of his flannel shirt and withdrew the sodden note, dismayed by its condition.

Fortunately, the parchment-like paper had a high oil content, which prevented it from dissolving entirely into mush. When Tommy carefully unfolded it, he saw that the three columns of ideograms were still visible, though badly faded and smeared.

Gi accepted the note and held it in his cupped palm as if he were providing a perch for a weary and delicate butterfly. ‘The ink has run.’

‘You can’t read it?’

‘Not easily. So many ideograms are alike but with one small difference. Not like English letters, words. Each small difference in the stroke of the pen can create a whole new meaning. I’d have to dry this out, use a magnifying glass, study it.’

Leaning forward in his chair, Tommy said, ‘How long to decipher it - if you can?’

A couple of hours - if I can.’ Gi raised his gaze from the note. ‘You haven’t told me what they did to you.’

‘Broke into my house, vandalized it. Later... ran me off the road, and the car rolled twice.’

‘You weren’t hurt?’

‘I’ll be sore as hell in the morning, but I got out of the car without a cut.’

‘How did this woman save your life?’

‘Del,’ said Del.

Gi said, ‘Excuse me?’

‘My name is Del.’

‘Yes,’ said Gi. To Tommy, he said, ‘How did this woman save your life?’

‘I got out of the car just in time, before it caught fire. Then… they were coming after me and-’

‘They? These gangsters?’

‘Yes,’ Tommy lied, certain that every deception was transparent to Gi Minh. ‘They chased me, and I ran, and just when they might have nailed me for good, Del here pulled up in her van and got me out of there.’

‘You haven’t gone to the police?’

‘No. They can’t protect me.’

Gi nodded, not in the least surprised. Like most Vietnamese of his generation, he did not fully trust the police even here in America. In their homeland, before the fall of Saigon, the police had been mostly corrupt, and after the communist takeover, they had been worse - sadistic torturers and murderers licensed by the regime to commit any atrocity. Even more than two decades later, and half a world away from that troubled land, Gi was wary of all uniformed authorities.

‘There’s a deadline,’ Tommy said, ‘so it’s really impor-tant that you figure out what that note says as soon as possible.’

‘Deadline?’

‘Whoever sent the doll also sent a message to me by computer. It said, “The deadline is dawn. Ticktock.”

‘Gangsters using computers?’ Gi said disbelieving. ‘Everyone does these days,’ said Del.

Tommy said, ‘They mean to get me before sunrise.

and from what I’ve seen so far, they’ll stop at nothing to keep to that timetable.’

‘Well,’ Gi said, ‘you can stay here while I work on the message, until we figure this out - what it is they want, or why they’re out to get you. Meanwhile, no one can hurt you here, not with all those men down on the floor to stand with you.’

Tommy shook his head and rose from his chair. ‘I don’t want to draw these… these gangsters here.’ Del got to her feet as well and moved to his side. ‘I don’t want to cause you trouble, Gi.’

‘We can handle them like before.’

Tommy was sure that the pastry and bread artists of New World Saigon Bakery could hold their own against any group of human thugs. But if it chose to reveal itself in order to get at Tommy, the demon-from-the-doll would be as unfazed by bakers as it was by bullets. It would cut through them like a buzz saw through a wedding cake - especially if it had grown and had continued its apparent evolution into ever more fierce predatory forms. He didn’t want anyone to be harmed because of him.

He said, ‘Thank you, Gi. But I think I’d better keep moving, so they can’t find me. I’ll call you in a couple of hours to see if you’ve been able to translate the note.’

Gi rose from his chair but did not step out from behind his desk. ‘You came for advice, you said, not just to have this message translated. Well, my advice is... you’re safer trusting in family.’

‘I do trust in you, Gi.’

‘But you trust a stranger more,’ Gi said pointedly, although he did not look at Del.

‘It saddens me to hear you say that, Gi.’

‘It saddens me to have to say it,’ his brother replied.

Neither of them moved one inch toward the other, though Tommy sensed a yearning that matched his own.

Gi’s face was worse than angry, worse than hard. It was placid, almost serene, as if Tommy could no longer touch his heart for better or worse.

‘I’ll call you,’ Tommy finally said, ‘in a couple hours.’ He and Del left the office and went down the steps into the enormous bakery.

Tommy felt profoundly confused, petty, stubborn, stupid, guilty, and miserable - all emotions that the legendary private detective, Chip Nguyen, had never felt, had never been capable of feeling.

The aromas of chocolate, cinnamon, brown sugar, nutmeg, yeasty baking bread, and hot lemon icing were no longer appealing. Indeed, he was half sickened by the stench. Tonight the smell of the bakery was the smell of loss and loneliness and foolish pride.