The Man With No Time

start weeping again, but instead he shook his head and said, “Wine.”

“No problem,” I said, but pouring it without spilling took all the concentration I had. “You made a choice,” I said, “between your cousin and your friend.”

He swallowed air twice. “Brother,” he said.

“Shit,” I said, gaping down into a yawning gulf of tragedy. I hadn't meant to say it. I drank the glass he'd asked for.

“Yes,” he said fiercely, displacing his grief, “shit. Shit triad.”

“I need names,” I urged. “You want them dead.”

He turned an unlined face to me. Up close, he looked younger than seventeen. “I can kill them.” It sounded like a new clause in the Boy Scout pledge.

“You can kill one or two, maybe. I can get them all.” I almost believed it. “The ones I can't kill, I can put in jail.”

“Taiwan,” he said bitterly, “you can put them in jail in Taiwan?”

“Give me names,” I said. If I couldn't get them all, I could die trying.

“Names,” Tran said mechanically. “Chinese guy. Peter Lau.”

“Who's he?”

“Newspaper writer. Drink, please.”

I looked at his wine-red face. “I really think it would be better-”

“You want to know about Peter Lau?” He opened his mouth, and I poured and extended the glass.

“Chinatown newspaper,” he said, when he'd finished. “Not with them, against them. They told us to frighten him, not one time. Two times. But we couldn't find him. He writes about them. He used to write about them,” he corrected himself, “but we couldn't find him.” He giggled.

“What's funny?” I asked.

“We found him, both times. But he paid us more than they paid us.”

“How much?” It wasn't what I needed to know, but I wanted to keep him talking.

“Five hundred. He used to write about them but they make big noise at the newspaper and talk about burn it down, and he got fired. We find him and he give us six hundred to say we didn't.”

Five hundred bucks, and he wrote about them, and Lo was worth a thousand. I lose certain abilities when I drink, but subtraction isn't one of them. “Where did you find Peter Lau?” I asked.

“Never same place, but always some coffee shop. Monterey Park. Moves around. Scared all the time.”

“And he paid you.”

“Scared to death,” Tran said, forcing a smile. “Six hundred just to go away.”

“Anyone else?” He looked at the glass and opened his mouth, a fish seeking the bait, and I gave it to him.

“Also old lady,” he said when he'd drained it.

“Old lady,” I said neutrally.

“Old Jesus lady, Jesusloveyou, Jesusloveyou, cometojesus.”

“Summerson,” I said, feeling like someone had just punched me in the face.

“Excuse me,” Tran said politely, turning his face back to mine. “Okay I throw up?”

I guided him to the toilet and, when he'd finished voiding his insides, back to the couch. He was singing along with Ray Davies, syllables only, not a recognizable word per line. “Listen,” I said after he'd settled himself, “you're not going to go anywhere, are you?”

“Where?” he asked dreamily.

“Right,” I said. “Nowhere. Because even if you walk out of here you'll be lost in the middle of the Santa Monica Mountains. It's miles to L.A. And you've got a hole in your shoulder and Saran Wrap around your arms-well, do you understand?”

He nodded and wiped his chin across his shoulder.

“Go to sleep, Tran,” I said, tucking the spare blanket around him. I picked up my gun and the cuffs, and he mumbled something and closed his eyes, and I went into the bedroom and folded down the remaining blanket and closed my own. It was pretty late, and I was pretty drunk.

Bravo came in and made the usual nuisance of himself, and I shoved him aside and tried to force my eyelids down again, and then I heard the sobbing. I decided to ignore it. Ten or fifteen minutes later I decided not to ignore it.

Mumbling to myself about nothing in particular, I grabbed my blanket and went into the living room and propped Tran up again so I could sit next to him. Then I threw the blanket over both of us and sagged to the left, with Tran leaning on me. Bravo joined us, on top of Tran, and Tran cried all of us to sleep.

12

Crash Landing

I woke up with a spacious red headache, and I woke up alone.

My initial reaction-pure reflex, embarked on even before I'd begun to explore the margins of my headache- was to feel blindly around for Bravo. For some time now I'd been entering each day nasally, via Bravo's bravura pong, and my nose knew immediately that something was missing. It took me a few excruciatingly queasy moments and a couple of blind gropes with my right hand to discover that more than Bravo was missing.

“Holy shit,” I groaned. A memory bloomed, horribly bright through the red murk: I had unwrapped Tran. Since there appeared, under the circumstances, to be no reason ever to open my eyes again, I rolled over onto my side and resolved to sleep forever. Death sounded appealing. Better, at any rate, than facing Eleanor, or even myself, and admitting that I'd let the kid get away. With Horace still out there, no less.

Something said, “Ping.”

It did not engage my attention. A ping could have been anything, any kind of mocking reminder from the land of the living: a moth against a windowscreen, for example, or the tags on Bravo's collar, wherever the hell Bravo might be. I consigned all pings to hell and concentrated on the details of a comfortable death. I waited patiently for it to come, to spread its anesthetic wings around my head. It kept its distance. A comfortable death, it seemed, would require effort. I'd have to cure my headache first.

Something said, “Burra-burra-burra.”

I cranked one eyelid open and looked at the cracked leather covering my couch. If I'd achieved paradise, I'd apparently taken my couch with me. I'd imagined paradise before, full of willing, lissome houris, but I hadn't imagined them on my couch. Paradise seemed a lot cheaper with my couch in it.

Someone said, “Wheeee.” Not something, but someone.

“Left wing up,” the voice said, and I recognized words I had spoken myself while I was still alive.

“Throttle back,” croaked a rusty hinge that I recognized as me. “Not so fast.”

“Quiet,” the other voice commanded. “Working it out.”

“Fine,” I said to the back of the couch. “I'm dead anyway.”

“Landing, me,” the other voice said unsympathetically. “Die later.”

“Then get the goddamn left wing up and throttle back.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” the other voice said. I closed my eyes. Then it said, “Shit.”

“You crashed,” I said, disappointed that the exit from life wasn't more clearly marked. What if there was a fire?

“I totally eat it.” The tone was apologetic.

“Do you think,” I asked, trying not to plead, “that you can find the Excedrin?”

“Already took three,” Tran said. “Water?”

“Good idea,” I said, reconciling myself to the thin and tepid gruel of life. “You can walk okay?”

“You took them off, remember?” Tran said over the splash of running water. “I got no place to walk, that's the problem.”