The Man With No Time

that bounced his forehead on the blacktop. I kicked him in the ear for good measure, and he lay still.

“Go start the car,” I said, retrieving my belt. “Wait for me.”

Tran jumped nimbly into the air and landed with both knees on the kidneys of the one he'd kicked, tearing the man's sport coat up the back seam, and then sprinted for the car. I went to his victim and took a look: Ying. Tran's cousin's face swam into the air in front of me, and I grabbed a handful of Ying's hair and lifted his head and then scrubbed his face back and forth against the asphalt, pushing down with all my strength. He bled rewardingly from forehead, chin, and nose, and the seam down his left cheek opened up very nicely. I realized I was growling as I took a little leap of my own, nothing as graceful as Tran's, and landed on his kidneys with the heels of my Reeboks, hoping he'd be pissing blood for weeks.

The whole thing hadn't taken fifteen seconds. With my heart beating three-quarter time in my ears, I went to the one I'd choked and rolled him over to make sure he was alive. His face was swollen and almost purple, but he was breathing, and I recognized the mild-looking little translator. I took a moment to check his pockets out of habit, found nothing, and, just for the hell of it, I lifted my right foot and dropped on my left knee into his gut. As his breath escaped him with a whoof, Alice came around the corner with Tran at the wheel.

He was laughing and pounding the dash, but when he saw the man at my feet, his face darkened.

“Take him,” he said through the driver's window.

“Ying's over there,” I said. “We can't handle both of them.”

“Him,” Tran said. “Or drive off, me, and leave you here.”

“Him it is,” I said, grabbing the translator by the back of his pants and hauling him toward the car. Tran leaned over and opened the passenger door, and I tossed the translator into the backseat.

“Around the building,” I gasped, as Tran navigated around Ying. “Get Peter.”

But Peter wasn't there. While I fought to regain my breath and kept an eye on the little translator, motionless on the backseat, Tran drove sedately across the lot and into the street. Half a block later, he turned to me, grinning fiercely, and raised a fist.

“Turn left,” I said. My mind was whirling with possibilities. “Get to the freeway heading south.”

“Where we going?”

“We're going to deal ourselves a wild card.”

14

Ralph and Grace

“Wo,” Dexter Smif said, efficiently blocking the doorway. “You in the wrong 'hood.” Then he glanced past me at Tran, and said, “United Nations still in New York.” He pushed the door wider, craned his neck forward to give Tran a good look, and nodded. “I be drivin a cab now. Driver got to know where the U.N. is.”

“I don't mean to seem unfashionably nervous in a largely minority neighborhood,” I said, “but do you think we could come in?”

“Be nervous,” he said. “This a good place to get your ass chewed.” Dexter was impossibly tall and thinner than soap film. He favored uniforms with his name embroidered on the pocket. The one he was wearing was bright orange and said RALPH.

“Ralph,” I said forcefully, “we'd like to come inside. Now.” The translator had been wrapped in battery cables and stored in the trunk.

He looked down at the name on his pocket. “Fifty cents a letter,” he said. “Saves me half a buck. Always thought I looked like a Ralph.”

“This is Tran,” I said, switching tactics. “He'd like to come in, too.”

“T-R-A-N?”

Tran nodded, craning up at Dexter.

“Lucky dude. You a two-buck-shirt man.”

“Tell it to Consumer Reports' I said, 'and get out of the way, would you?”

“No manners at all,” Dexter said, stepping aside. Tran and I filed past him into a room that looked like a bordello for dentists.

“Why a cab?” I asked, looking around. The living room was furnished entirely in cut-rate Ikea stuff, leather, black steel, and glass. Literally everything emitted clinical glints of light. “Jesus, I'd hate to think what you do in here.”

“All the leather,” he said, “make it easy to mop up after. Yeah, new career path. Man can only chore for the city, pick up dead animals for so long. Hey, your cat still dead?”

The first time I'd met Dexter, the city had sent him to pick up an extravagantly deceased cat at the foot of my driveway. “She's been reincarnated,” I said, “as a dog.”

“All the same to me, by the time I got them, 'cept dog a little heavier to lift. Talk about hard to lift, got a couple of cows, about a week apart, just before I hung up the ole shovel. Cow a week, it was lookin' like.”

“Tran's Vietnamese,” I said, including him in the chat. “He doesn't know from cows.”

Dexter gave Tran the eye again. “I know he some kind of sushi. You shave yet?”

“I'll never shave,” Tran said, sounding defensive.

“Wo. Two bucks a shirt, no razors. Man can live cheap. You sit on the floor?”

“No,” Tran said shortly.

“Shame. Do without furniture, too, you on the way to rich.”

“Same you?” Tran asked, taking in Dexter's furniture.

Dexter stopped in mid-flow and made his eyes glimmer at Tran, who took a step back, up against a low table that might have been the educated child of two pieces of scrap iron. Then Dexter laughed. “You should drive a cab,” he said fondly to Tran, ignoring me. “Got the right attitude. Fare tries to shovel it at you, you shovel it right back. Hey, a free lesson. Fare say, 'You takin me out of the way,' when you just drivin from Beverly Hills to Santa Monica by way of San Diego. You say, 'Hey, garbageface, get out the fuckin cab.' Less you want to say something bad. You drinking?”

“No,” I said, shuddering.

“Does the Pope-” Tran began cheerfully.

“He's drinking,” I said.

“Does the Pope what?” Dexter asked, fascinated.

“You don't want to know,” I said.

“Pope sounds like a good career path,” Dexter said, turning to a perfectly ordinary black cabinet and leaning over to unfold a bewildering number of surfaces, like someone taking apart origami furniture. “Not too many dead cows on the Pope's beat. Somebody hand the Pope a dead cow, he just probably make the sign over it, say somethin in Polish.” Open at last, the cabinet gleamed with bottles and glasses.

“The cow,” I pointed out, “would still be dead.”

“But on the way,” Dexter said, gesturing skyward with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. “On the way to Elsie Heaven with clover everywhere, milkin done on cue by angels in silk gloves. One bull for every cow, just standin around stupid, waitin for the word.”

“What word?” I asked.

“Moo,” Dexter said pityingly. “What word you think?” He poured two glasses of Johnnie Walker and handed one to Tran. “Want one?” he asked me.

“No.”

“Tea? I could make it real weak.”

“It'll make my heart race,” I said. “You know how I get when my heart races.”

“Grace here,” Dexter said, nodding toward me, “only get wrecked on beer. And, hey, thanks for all the cards and letters.”

“I didn't have your address.”

Dexter started to say something and then laughed again, showing Tran the biggest teeth he'd probably ever