The Man With No Time

“No. Why'n earth would he-” I heard a familiar sound. He was clinking the rings together.

“Peter?”

“I'm thinking. There's something about missionaries. Are you a toll call?”

“Yes.”

“Then hold on.” He missed the table with the phone, and it took a couple of bounces on the way down. I was rubbing my ear again when the door opened and Eleanor came in, carrying a small shopping bag. She was wearing a nubby red sweater over black bicycle shorts, and she looked like the entree on a lecher's menu. Bravo, who was sitting with his head on Tran's lap, slapped the floor with his tail and whimpered welcome.

“Bactine,” she said, holding up the bag as though that would help me see through it, “and some nice red wine.”

“Gaaaahhh,” I said, wincing at the idea of wine.

“Kidding about the wine,” she whispered. “It's white. Are you talking to someone?”

“No,” I said, “I'm hooked up to the radio telescope on Mount Palomar.”

“I've got something to tell you after the supernova. There's my little patient.” She brightened at the sight of Tran.

“Hello, Eleanor,” Tran said, slowly and formally. “How are you today?” He sounded like he'd been practicing.

“Tell her,” I suggested, “where is the pen of your aunt.”

He looked startled. “Pardon?”

“He's just being Simeon,” Eleanor soothed. “He does it whenever he can't come up with something better.”

Tran stood and raised his hands to his chest, palms together. “Eleanor,” he said, “I am sorry.”

“For what?”

“For trying to kill you and frighten you.” He had been practicing.

“That little thing.” Eleanor pulled the Bactine from the bag. “Take off that fat man's shirt and sit down, and I'll make you sting.”

“Old fart shirt.” Tran began to unbutton.

“That's enough of that,” said the old fart.

“Of what?” Peter Lau asked.

“Talking to the dog,” I said.

“Oh. Had to get my files.' He sounded like he'd gotten more than his files. “I knew there was something about missionaries. Back when Charlie Wah was an innocent, pink-cheeked lad, long before the suits and the haircut, he was taken in by missionaries.” He swallowed, a long and melodically liquid sound, and ice tinkled gaily. “This is in China, of course. He lived with them, mishnaries, and went to a mishnary school. Quite the little suck-up, too, our Charlie, until he decided that the kingdom of heaven was here on earth and helped a local gang break in and steal everything the school owned. I mean, down to the pencils. Five years later, he and the gang were on Taiwan.”

“I'll be damned,” I said. “How could you know all that?”

“Taiwan mag'zines,” Peter Lau said impatiently. “Charlie is a businessman as far as Taiwan is concerned, and on Taiwan they write about businessmen the way we do about movie stars. But that's not the point.”

'And the point

“The point is, Charlie hates mishnaries. Hates them probably even more than he hates p'licemen. You can buy p'licemen, but you can't buy mishnaries.”

I watched Eleanor minister to Tran's slender form. Maybe I should lose a little weight. “I'm not so sure of that.”

“He wouldn't, though, even if he could get a bulk rate. He loathes them. Thinks they're agents of a vast plot to rob Chinese of their birthright.”

“Which is what?”

He clobbered the mouthpiece with his hand to conceal a hiccup. “In Charlie's case, it would seem to have been poverty.”

“Do you happen to have the name of the missionary who attempted to pervert little Charlie?”

“I do,” he said happily. “Charlie tol’ all in a interview. Can you imagine interviewing Charlie? ‘Whass your favored means of execution, Misser Wah?' An' they call this journalism.” Papers rustled, and I watched Eleanor minister to Tran.

“Here we are,” he said. He swallowed. “What an evocative name.”

I closed my eyes. “What is it?”

“Skinker,” he said. “Dr. and Mrs. Finney B. Skinker. I wunner what the 'B' stood for.”

“Probably Binky,” I said. “Thanks, Peter.”

The moment I hung up, Eleanor said, “What about missionaries?”

“Just background,” I said.

She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Just horseradish. How did missionaries get into this?”

“Precisely the question I've been asking myself.” Tran was staring out the window, apparently rapt at the sight of pitch darkness. The winter fog had slipped in again.

Eleanor gave me a look that I'd long before learned meant no more nonsense. “Any particular missionaries?”

“My ear hurts,” I said.

She lifted her chin imperiously. It made her neck look impossibly long. Someday I'd have to tell her that it was more alluring than frightening. “Simeon. What has Mrs. Summerson got to do with this?”

“Aaahh,” I said, trying to postpone the question. “Listen, do you think Mrs. Summerson was ever married to a man named Finney B. Skinker?”

She stood up, the empty paper bag tumbling from her lap to the floor. “Mrs. Summerson mated for life. That was the phrase she used. I doubt that she mated for life twice. As a Christian, she doesn't believe in reincarnation any more than that little Orlando does. And she certainly never mentioned anyone named Skinker. Sounds like a species of lizard.”

“It wasn't Mrs. Summerson, then. I guess you don't want to look at my ear.”

“I can see it from here,” she said, not quite snapping at me.

I chucked it in. “Tran picked up money from Mrs. Summerson's house,” I said. “Twice.”

“Nonsense,” she said, looking at Tran. Tran, still looking out the window, nodded. “Absolute nonsense,” she said again. Then she sat down on the couch, heavily enough to make Tran bounce.

“I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation,” I said, searching for one.

“Of course there is.”

Now we were all looking out the window.

“I lived in that house,” she said, a bit tremulously.

“No strange Chinese coming and going.”

“Of course not. I lived there. For years. I was the only strange Chinese in sight.”

“He picked up money,” I said. “Tran did, I mean.”

“She hasn't got any. She had his insurance, but that was years ago.”

“Then she owns the house?” I asked.

“Forever. But she hasn't got anything else.”

“Not her money,” Tran reminded us, buttoning my shirt. “CIA money.”

“She's not smuggling in CIAs,” Eleanor said, and then promptly backed up. “And if she is, she's not doing it with a bunch of criminals.”

“Not with this bunch of criminals, anyway,” I said. “Charlie Wah hates missionaries.”

“So there,” Eleanor said, and then said, “but Tran picked up from her.”

“We'll talk to her,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow. Why the wine?”

“I was celebrating.” She didn't sound very celebratory. “Horace called Pansy.”

“Great. Where is he? Where's Pansy, for that matter?”