The Man With No Time

“All four of you.” Four was just too many.

“Do you think we'd be there if he didn't? Do you know what he does to us?”

“I can imagine. Listen, Florence, you can't tell the others. We'll try to get the stuff in his desk, but we can't have ail four of you acting crazy. He's stupid, but nobody's that stupid.”

“I could call them tonight,” she said. It was a question. “That way they won't come back.”

I looked at Horton. Horton spread his hands to reveal a soft center.

“You can call them at six in the morning.”

“And I can take their papers?”

“Oh, shit,” I said. “Just don't get caught.”

She reached across the table and took my hand in both of hers and pressed it to her wet cheek. “Thank you,” she said.

I sat there feeling fraudulent and uncomfortable as the door opened and Dexter came in. He started to toss me the keys and saw that my hands were occupied.

“Gettin along better, I see,” he said. He gave me a knowing smile. “Good thing I ain't Eleanor.”

20

Safe Houses

Pressure points.

There were too many of them, I thought, driving south at nine a.m. while Tran caught up on his sleep in the passenger seat. It was almost enough to make me suspicious.

But why shouldn't there be holes in the operation? Charlie had his racket to himself, sewn up with the Snake Triad Black Hats back in Taiwan, and there wasn't much pressure from the White Hat side here in America. Who cared about a bunch of impoverished Chinese? They were an insignificant trickle in the overall illegal immigration picture, nothing like the nonstop cascade over the borders to the South. They provided cheap labor to people who probably contributed to political campaigns. They didn't vote. They may not have had much else, but at least they were safe from the promises of American politicians.

And, as Charlie had said, kill a gwailo, and you bring the police. Keep the violence and the exploitation confined to people with yellow skin-or black, I added to myself, or brown-and they'd stay out of your way. It would take something very conspicuous to draw their attention.

The idea I'd been forming for the last three days would provide something very conspicuous. Unless it got us all killed.

Tran dozed most of the way to San Pedro, leaving me lots of time to move mental furniture around as we inched our way southwest on the permanently clogged Harbor Freeway. They're fixing it now, but they're always fixing it. They've been fixing it since it was built, and it still looks like a used-car lot most of the time. I let Tran snooze. I had a couple of big questions to ask him, but they would keep.

San Pedro looks slightly better at dusk than it does in daylight, and slightly worse than it does at night. Unfortunately, I was seeing it in the morning.

I didn't know the street names in San Pedro, and I didn't learn them on that trip. Once we were off the freeway I just prodded Tran awake and let the poured concrete and flat-roofed stucco buildings slide past in the tea-colored air, noting landmarks here and there and listening to Tran tell me where to turn. Finding my way back would be no problem. With luck I'd only have to do it once.

There were four safe houses off the main drags, all within a square mile or two. All were equally anonymous: cheap, run-down one-story houses in what seemed like an endless farm in which cheap one-story houses were the cash crop. They were concealed by their very uniformity, which I supposed was, as Peter Lau might have said, the point, and I was looking at the third before I realized what they all had in common: a driveway that curved around the house and disappeared behind it. Ideal.

“Which door did you go to?”

“Front,” Tran said, still making Roy Rogers eyes against the light.

“All four houses?”

He was peering through the window now, remembering something. “Yes.”

Good, better, best. “Makes sense,” I said. “They bring the pilgrims in through the back and keep them in the back. Anyone comes to the front, the CIAs are out of sight. You're not supposed to know about them, so you come to the front.”

“Charlie Wah no dope,” Tran said grudgingly.

“He's going to feel like one. You always hit the houses in the same order?”

“Always. Quicker that way.”

“Same time?”

“Charlie Wah,” Tran said, “crazy about time. Number one, seven-oh-four, number two, seven-seventeen, like that.”

“But the same times always?”

Tran hesitated, reluctant to deliver bad news. “Sometimes not.”

“How much difference?”

“Half hour sometimes, sometimes hour. Always after dark.”

“We'll live with it,” I said, wishing I had the confidence I was pretending.

“Sure,” Tran said, “no big deal.”

I looked at him and he was smiling at me.

“Good team,” he said.

“Dynamite,” I agreed.

“We going to kill them?” he asked.

“No,” I said, accelerating toward the last of the houses. Charlie Wah's voice echoed in my ear. “We're going to mess with their heads.”

“Listen up,” I said to my mismatched gang. We were gathered in the motel room, which I'd booked for another full day. Even the desk clerk couldn't believe it; he'd called in my credit card twice.

Horace, Dexter, and Horton had been crashed on the two narrow beds when Tran and I came in. Now they all sat, tangled in sheets, backs against the wall, waiting for their coffee to cool.

“They're delivering the slaves tonight.”

“What time?” It was almost below the range of human hearing, so it had to be Horton.

“Don't know,” I said, “but we'll be there first. Let me get through this before you ask questions, or we'll still be sitting here after they've come and gone, okay?”

Skeptical nods all around.

“There are four safe houses, all within a couple of miles in San Pedro. They're in neighborhoods, so shooting should not be anyone's first option. Anyway, from what we've learned so far, there aren't going to be a lot of guards. These people have nowhere to go if we escape, and no one else is competing for their hands.”

Eight eyes, different shapes but all dark brown, gazed at me.

“They hit the houses in the same order every time, just to save time and gas. It's a big loop, and when they're finished they can hit the freeway and head back. What they do there, they pick up money. We're going to pick it up instead.”

“Money,” Horton said, and then sang, “M is for the Many ways we spend it. .”

“O,” Dexter chimed in, “means Only that there's not enough.”

Horace caught the spirit. “N,” he sang, “is for the No one who will lend it.”

I held up a hand, and Tran, who'd been ransacking his brain to translate the next lines from Vietnamese, gave me a grateful smile. “And after we take the money, we're going to take the watchers and move on to the next house. The minute we leave, the Doody Brothers are going to pick up the slaves and take them to a church, where people will be waiting for them.”

“Pick them up in what?” Horton again.