The Man With No Time

“Is it because we are in America?” He paused rhetorically as his words of wisdom were translated. “Not really. We see the same thing these days in Hong Kong and Taiwan. America has no corner'-he turned toward me and smiled-” 'no corner'?'

I nodded.

“No corner on thugs,” he said proudly. Then he bypassed the translator and rendered the idiom into Chinese for the benefit of the thugs present before returning to English. “Now we have the two-week millionaires, the men who sell the heroin. Slime.” He turned to regard the two boys, his eyes flat and black. “And now we have the Vietnamese.”

The baby with the Dumbo ears took a quick look at Charlie Wah and clamped his eyes shut.

“We need the Vietnamese in America.” Charlie sounded regretful. “There are things no Chinese man should be asked to do. But the old values are being broken down, and in America the Vietnamese are the hard end of the battering ram.”

He paused and then smiled. “Just so no one makes a mistake, my sons,” he added jocularly, “I am the man with the gun at the moment.” On cue, the two Mr. Chinese Universe contestants displayed short, ugly automatics. Charlie Wah beamed at them paternally. “The Vietnamese,” he said, picking up the thread and stowing the smile belowdecks. “We use them when we have to, and we pay them well, but they are trash and they act like trash. We could kill them, of course, just as we could kill this gwailo, but would it be smart? No.” He seemed to like answering his own questions even more than he liked speechmaking. “We need the Vietnamese, and killing a gwailo brings the police.” He lifted a finger and said sententiously, “Killing a gwailo always brings the police. We do not need the police.”

This sentiment, translated by the mild-looking little guy, brought a murmur of consent. Only Ying seemed unhappy. His eyes flicked to mine and then looked away. I was sorry to see that he'd stopped bleeding.

“So we will send a message,” Charlie Wah said. “One of these boys will take it to the Vietnamese, and the gwailo will write it in his daybook.”

“Diary, I said.

“And he will not be back.” He looked at me inquiringly.

“Absolutely,” I said absolutely.

“It would be very easy to kill you,” he said, a man considering a purely technical challenge. “We could, for example, strip away the covering from the wires above your head and plug in a sewing machine and turn it on. The handcuffs would be a very good. . ” He looked up at the ceiling as though the word he sought was likely to be printed there, like a drunk actor's prompt.

“Conductor,” I said, just to move things along.

“Or we could simply shoot you,” Charlie Wah said impatiently. He'd had his English corrected enough for one evening. Ying brightened and made a clucking noise.

Charlie scowled at him. “But, as I say, it would bring the police. Still. .” He looked at me, and I decided it would be an extremely good idea to shut up.

One of the Mr. Chinese Universe finalists trained his gun on me.

In the darkness, as they used to say on the old Fugitive TV show, fate moved its heavy hand. Dumbo-Ears decided to go for the exit.

His boot came down on the instep of the Chinese man closest to him, and the man made a surprisingly musical sound, raised his foot, grabbed it with both hands, and demonstrated an energetic new variant on the hop, skip, and jump. He was still in the hop phase when Dumbo-Ears, five steps away, stopped cold and sucked in his bare midsection to keep the point of a machete from finding a way through it to his backbone. The other end of the machete was in the hands of the guy who'd introduced the side of my head to the barrel of his gun with such memorable results.

“Ssshhaaaaah,” Dumbo-Ears said, sinking to his knees. Then he burst into tears.

The mood in the room changed, as though atomized blood had been sprayed into the air vents. Men shuffled their feet and sniffed it.

“Swine,” Charlie Wah said meditatively. “And cowardly swine at that.”

“He's just a kid,” I said.

Charlie Wah let go of his change, reached up to his mouth, and took out his gold toothpick. Then he pointed the sharp end of the toothpick in the direction of his left eye and poked it. Message received.

“Kill them all,” Ying said, encouraged by Charlie's dumb show.

“You,” said Charlie, spacing the words for effect, “are too stupid to be Chinese.” It got translated, and a few of the men laughed. Ying's eyes got very small, and he aimed them straight at me. I was losing friends fast.

“Put him back,” Charlie Wah instructed the goon with the machete, and the goon hauled the kid with the unfortunate ears to his feet and dragged him across the room until he was standing behind his friend again. The handsome one put a hand back and grasped Dumbo-Ears' wrist, and the two of them held hands, standing back to back as Dumbo-Ears fought to control his sobs. The girl against the pillar did something with her breath that could have been a cough but probably wasn't.

“You brought this upon yourselves,” Charlie Wah said sententiously. “You were given an address and told to wait outside. All you had to do was fetch Lo if he came out, and come back and tell us if he did not. This you did not do. Instead, when only one of our men came out and Lo escaped into the neighborhood, you terrorized a Chinese family and then tried to kill a gwailo. You got personal, and there is nothing more stupid, nothing more Vietnamese, than getting personal.” Then he said something in Chinese, very fast indeed.

A lot happened.

Most of the men converged on the Vietnamese boys. One of the men carrying a machete, the one who'd clobbered me, forced the knife into the hand of the kid with the Dumbo ears. The machete's mate, identical from my perspective, was urged upon the handsome one. The others forced the two boys apart by six or eight paces and then turned them so they were facing each other. The boys stood there, machete points dragging the floor, like mechanical soldiers that hadn't been wound up.

“One of you will live through this,' Charlie Wah said. He was having a great time. “The one who does will let his friends know what becomes of-what's the idiom?”

I wasn't having any of it. The girl against the pillar stared at Charlie Wah as though she hoped her eyes could burn holes through him.

“Bad little boys,” the handsome one said. “And screw you.”

“A brave one,” Charlie Wah said, sounding regretful. “Unusual in a Vietnamese. Still, you will do it. Because if you don't-” He raised a hand.

The room was full of guns. All of them were pointed at the Vietnamese boys.

“-you'll both die,” Charlie Wah said. “And we'll let little Miss Vietnam carry the message. Or, better still, we'll kill her first and then flip a coin to decide which one of you we should kill. Not as much fun, of course, and if we do it that way only one little fish sauce gets to go out and play. One instead of two. In fact,” he said, jingling the coins again, “maybe that's best.”

“Kill me,” the girl said, her face twisted. “You fat pig.”

Charlie Wah gave her an understanding gaze. “I'm not really very fat,” he said, “but you can be excused an inappropriate figure of speech, under the circumstances. This must be a stressful time for you.” He strolled over to her, change ringing like church bells, and touched her face, the side that hadn't been cut. “Maybe we can find a way to make it more interesting. Who would like to fuck her before she dies?”

“You first,” the girl said defiantly. “If you think you can.”

Charlie Wah put his finger on the tip of her small nose and dragged it upward, distending her nostrils and pushing deep wrinkles into the bridge. The girl bit at him ineffectually, and the cut on her face opened up again.

“Not so pretty this way, is she?” he asked. “Still, she'll do in this light. I'll have to decline your offer, my dear. No way to be sure exactly what a Vietnamese has.”

“We fight,” Dumbo-Ears said. “You leave her alone.”

“Of course we'll leave her alone.” Charlie Wah let go of the girl's nose so suddenly that her head snapped forward. “This isn't personal. The idea is to discourage the rest of you from showing initiative when it isn't called for. Initiative is a fine thing in its place, but it's always touchy trying to figure out what its place is. Clear away,