The Man With No Time

back, held by a childproof external bolt five feet from the floor. I slid the bolt, and Bravo rocketed out between my legs, hitting me so hard that the door slammed shut again. I was turning away to join Horace, who was shouting something to Pansy from the twins' room, when I saw the piece of paper tacked to the door.

It said: Theyre okay, dont do nothing.

The sign drew my eyes back toward the door. I opened it and saw a surprisingly large and very dead Chinese man. He had a small mustache and wide empty eyes. He was no one I knew.

From the driveway, far below, I heard Bravo loose a long, bereaved howl.

3

Table Talk

The dead man's gaze gripped me. Even when I looked away I could sense it tugging at me as I shifted from foot to foot, feeling like a boat on a short rope. I forced myself to take a big enough step backward to break the strand. Free, I stood irresolute for a long moment, looking at nothing, and then I closed the door and followed the sounds of grief back into the living room.

Pansy lay facedown on the erupting sofa, her body shivering under spasms of sobs that threatened to break her into pieces. Eleanor was massaging her rhythmically, stroking upward from the base of Pansy's spine in long, steady motions, as regular as the waves on a good beach. She was softly singing what sounded like a Chinese lullaby.

Horace was still yelping and swearing in the nursery. Eleanor looked at me and then through me, indicating that there wasn't much I could do to help with Pansy, so I turned around and went to join him. Halfway there, I realized I was operating on automatic pilot: Head aimlessly for the living room, get bumped from the living room, head for the bedroom. Running on physics, not feelings or intellect, bouncing off other people's emotions like a human pachinko ball. I wasn't feeling anything yet.

The nursery was hurricane country. It looked like one of those amusement-park houses where the furniture is on the walls in one room and on the ceiling in the next. Horace sat in the center of the floor holding on to a quilt Pansy had made for the two children when they slept in one crib. His other hand was screwed into a fist and pressed against the bridge of his nose. He was bent forward so far his forehead almost touched the floor. I sat next to him and wrapped my arm around his shoulders, and he straightened and turned in to me and wept, his face pressed tight against my chest and his shoulders shaking convulsively. I looked down at him from what seemed like quite a distance.

“We'll get them back,” I said, focusing on plans. Plans seemed like the thing. “We'll call the cops. I've got a friend on the cops, you know? And we'll go after Uncle Lo ourselves.”

“Sure,” Horace said, drawing back and wiping his nose on a corner of the quilt. “And we'll kill the kids playing cowboy.” He listened to the echo for a moment. “Uncle Lo? Uncle Lo didn't do this.”

“Why not? I mean, he was the only one here.”

“Why would he?”

“I don't know,” I said.

He spread his fingers wide and curled them inward, looking for something to strangle. “I wish he had. I wish I knew it was Lo. At least we could talk to-”

“Horace. He set it up. Sent you guys out for dim sum and stayed home like he couldn't face it, when we both know he was the only sober one last night.”

“Huh,” Horace scoffed. He glanced down at the quilt in his hand and tossed it onto one of the beds, where it dangled disconsolately from a wooden leg like an abandoned battle flag.

“Okay, if it wasn't Uncle Lo, who was it?”

“Whoever took him away,” Horace said, after swallowing twice. “Whoever came and got him.”

That stopped me, and I said, “Oh.” There was, after all, a dead man in the closet. Still, I knew Lo had faked his hangover so he could be alone in the house.

Horace plowed on. “Why would he save our family and then do, do-this?”

“Right,” I said, filling the silence.

“And anyway,” Horace said, “why would he tear the place apart?”

“Maybe he was looking for something.”

“Like what? I've lived in this apartment most of my life. I know everything that's in it. There's nothing in it.”

“Horace. Lo didn't know there was nothing in the apartment. He needed something, so he tossed it. And when he didn't find it, then he took the twins so he could demand whatever it was later.”

Horace looked around as though he expected to see what Lo had missed. His nose was running, and his long hair, usually sprayed and combed forward to hide his balding scalp, was standing straight up. Without realizing what I was doing, I put out a hand and smoothed it. “However,” I said, “I have to tell you that someone else was here.”

“Who?” Horace barely cared.

“He's still here,” I said. “In the closet. We've got a dead guy.”

It took a second for the words to cut through to him. Then he blinked heavily and said, “No.”

“Can you look at him?”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “Look at a dead guy. In my house.” He blew out a quart of air. “Let's get it over with.”

The dead guy was still there, still folded neatly into his corner. He was in his middle thirties, maybe, wearing corduroy trousers, a Hawaiian shirt, and a shoulder holster that nestled incongruously among the printed palms and flamingos. “Know him?” I asked.

“Just another Chinese to me.” Horace turned away from me. “I need to talk to Pansy.” I followed him down the hall. He walked without lifting his feet, like an old man whose slippers were too big for him.

Pansy had turned over onto her back, and Eleanor was rubbing her temples as Pansy sent up skyrockets of Chinese. Eleanor stopped looking into her eyes just long enough to say to me, “Pansy wants the back door locked.”

“Why?” I said. “We should be calling-”

“Lock the door, please, Simeon,” Eleanor said. She put enough weight in the words to catch my attention.

Okay, Pansy wanted the door locked. I went to lock the door. The important thing right now was to make Pansy feel she had some control over something. So I closed the door, listening to desperate new commands from behind me, and as I tried to lock it, the knob turned in my hand and the door flew open and smacked me in the center of the forehead.

The blow wasn't that strong, but it was unexpected. It propelled me backward into the hallway. My hip hit the little table that held the telephone, and my legs tangled around each other, and as I fell I saw two children come in.

Well, they looked like children. They were tiny and delicate and black-haired and Asian, and they both had big, oily-looking, black semiautomatics.

“Up,” the one in front said, gesturing skyward with a repeater that looked like it could uproot a live oak at half a mile. The other one eased past him, plenty of room in the hall for two people their size, and followed the barrel of his gun into the living room. I heard a sharp yelp in yet another language I didn't speak, and Pansy's commands ceased.

“Up,” Number One said again. He was no more than five feet and a few inches tall, handsome in a diminutive way, and he was dressed in black jeans and a black T-shirt. A cascade of expensively curly black hair tumbled over his forehead. Tony Curtis, 1953. Watching his trigger finger as I climbed to my feet, I saw the initials FF tattooed blue on his right hand.

“I'm up,” I said. “Where do you want my hands?”

“On your head.” I complied, and he grinned. It wasn't an encouraging grin. “Carrying?” he asked.