The Man With No Time

“That's your problem,” I said primly.

“You should learn to throw up,” he said, sounding closer. 'Me, I throw up.' A tentacle touched my arm, and I rolled blindly toward it and opened my eyes to see a hand that looked larger than Australia, with a couple of pills in it.

“Five,” I suggested.

“Salowly,” he said. “Two first.” He extended a glass of water in the other hand.

I gulped them down, closed my eyes again, and slid down a long greased chute into queasiness. I had no indication that we were no longer alone until I heard Eleanor's voice saying, “What's wrong with this picture?”

“We're alternating,” I said. “Tomorrow I take care of him.”

“Well, who should I look at first?”

“Him,” I said, without turning over to face her. “There's nothing that can be done for me.”

Something clinked. “All three bottles,” she said accusingly. “Did you get this boy drunk?”

Tran laughed, a light, merry, truly merciless little laugh.

The bottles hit the paper bag in the kitchen that serves as a garbage can. “Sit down,” Eleanor said. She sounded sympathetic.

“I haven't got that much energy,” I said.

“Not you, you sot. You.” The chair in front of my computer-the computer on which Tran had just totaled an electronic airplane-creaked. Saran Wrap rustled. “Well, well,” Eleanor said approvingly, “this is much better.”

“He's seventeen,” I said bitterly.

Tran said, “Ouch.” It momentarily cheered me.

“Shhh. Have you had coffee?” she asked.

“Yes,” Tran said.

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

“You know where it is,” Eleanor said.

“I know exactly where it is,” I told the back of the couch, “and I know I can't possibly get there.”

“Sit tight, sweetie,” Eleanor said to the little murderer. “Let me get the old sot some coffee.”

“I finish it,” Tran said, without a tinge of guilt.

“That's all right. He needs some special coffee. We make it with uranium.” Extremely familiar puttering sounds came from the kitchen. If I'd died, I found myself thinking, I would never have heard those sounds again. A little butterfly, or, more likely, a cabbage moth, spread its wings in my soul.

Two and a half hours later, I was sitting in a blindingly bright coffee shop in Monterey Park, watching the most nervous man I'd ever seen in my life. Peter Lau was definitely not enjoying his middle forties. He was tall, almost six feet, and unhealthily thin, with the jaundice-yellow face of a drinker whose liver is moments away from retirement. Wary eyes swept the restaurant from above dark circles that looked like they'd been planted with a punch press. He'd checked me out twice, but he hadn't seen Tran, who'd retreated strategically into the men's room.

Across an expanse of scalp that began three inches above his eyes, Lau had meticulously pasted twenty six foot-long hairs, left to right, to form a clever little hair hat. The vanity behind this hopeless pretense was echoed in his clothing, which was stylish in a way that had nothing to do with style, like someone who'd once heard a description of the well-dressed man on the radio but had never actually seen one: color-coordinated tie and handkerchief, both in a large check; striped shirt; blazer nipped too sharply at the waist; wide gray slacks; white shoes. The gold rings on his index fingers, like the rings under his eyes, were a matching set.

We'd visited five coffee shops before we found one with a window table that had a reserved sign on it. Tran had led me to a table and we'd had more coffee, not as bracing as Eleanor's, but strong enough to keep the floor level. After a few minutes, one of the Chinese waitresses had started to set the reserved table: a carafe of coffee, a couple of pieces of toast.

“Here goes,” Tran said, and did his fade. Thirty seconds later, Peter Lau jittered in with three briefcases, looking like something that had been run over by the Doodah Parade. He'd sat down as though he were afraid his knees would snap, and gone immediately to work on the latches of the first briefcase. After nine or ten false starts he worried the snaps into submission and pulled out a laptop computer, which he opened and put dead center in front of him. The next case yielded, after a prolonged struggle, a cellular telephone and a miniaturized fax machine. Case number three, which probably contained his secretary, he placed on the seat next to him.

Only then, floating office in place, did he take any sustenance: He lit a cigarette, cupping his shaking hands around a cheap plastic lighter as though he were in a full-force gale. Smoke streaming from his nostrils, he carefully poured coffee onto the table near his cup and then gave up and handed the trembling carafe to the waitress, who doled out something less than half a cup. When he lifted it, I could see why; his hand was so unsteady that I would have taken equal odds on his dropping it, spilling the coffee on his shirt, or knocking out a tooth with the rim of the cup.

It was the tooth. I was standing over him by the time the cup reached his mouth, and when he saw me the crack of porcelain on enamel was enough to bring my own coffee halfway back up into the light.

“Whawhawha?” Peter Lau said, looking around wildly. He seemed to have forgotten already where the exit was.

“Relax,” I said, sitting opposite him and trying to look reassuring and urbane, rather than green and sticky and reeking of Bordeaux. “I just want to talk to you.”

“This table. .” he said, “this table, ah. .” Words failed him, and he snatched up the reserved sign and brandished it in my face.

“I only need a few minutes,” I said, looking at him more closely. He was wringing wet.

“No talking,” he said jerkily. He started to put the reserved sign into his shirt pocket, found it wouldn't fit, and tucked it under the lapel of his jacket. “I don't talk. I never talk. Ask anybody.”

I leaned in and took an inconspicuous sniff. Alcohol fumes roiled off him. If I had the mother of all hangovers. Peter Lau had all four of its grandparents.

“I need some help,” I said, reaching over to extricate the sign and put it back on the table.

“I don't help.” He started the catechism. “I never help. Ask-”

He broke off and stared past me, looking like one of those little rubber dolls whose eyes pop out of their head when you squeeze them.

“He's with me,” I said, feeling very sorry for Peter Lau.

“Hey, Peter,” Tran said, dropping a hand onto my shoulder.

“Mr. Lau,” I corrected him.

“How you doing, Mr. Lau?” Tran amended.

Lau wrenched his gaze from Tran to me, and his brain might as well have been a blackboard: The kid is back, but this time they've sent someone with him and he can't be bought off. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and the points on his collar had begun to curl up. “You're from Tiffle,” he finally said. It was more a gasp than a question.

“That's the name,” Tran said happily, slipping into the booth beside me. “White guy. Tiffle.” He was swimming in one of my shirts, looking very small and brown.

I knocked my leg into Tran's. “Why would Tiffle send me?” I asked.

“I don't know,” Lau said jerkily. “I'm not writing-”

“They threatened you,” I said.

“This little monster,” Peter Lau said, peering around for help. Literally everyone in the place looked away, finding the answers to long-held questions on the walls or in the middle of their plates. “This little beast and his-his-”

“Mr. Lau.” He jumped slightly. “Mr. Lau, I'm on your side.”

“I don't have a side,” he said quickly, “and if you're on it, why's he here?”

“Tiffle and the Snakes,” I said, and this time Lau positively leaped. His fingers, frantic for something to do, scrabbled lightly over the keys of his laptop. “They killed his brother and cousin. They kidnapped,” I added, stretching the truth some, “the children of some friends of mine.”

“My stars,” he said, and I realized he had a faint British accent. Hong Kong.