The Man With No Time

“Good,” I said. “Where are the cases?”

“Hall,” Tran said. “You want?”

“Not yet.” The second drawer was full of papers: deeds, quit claims, contracts, business partnerships, immigration forms. I flipped through them, looking for signatures and finding Florence Lam neatly written at the bottom of seven. Folding them lengthwise, I put them on the floor. Then I thought again and pulled out all the papers with women's signatures.

“What time is it?”

“Five-forty-two,” Dexter said. “Gone be light soon.”

“Get the Doodys to untape their wrists and eyes, and then nail the door shut.”

“Yes, Massa,” Dexter said. He straightened up and threw an arm around Tran's shoulders. “Come on, peewee, the Doodys got work to do.”

“Ho, ho,” I said to the third drawer. It was empty except for a small stack of photographs bound by a rubber band. Charlie Wah's face gazed paternally up at me from the first one.

He hadn't known he was being photographed. He'd been caught coming up the walk, with Granger Street fuzzy and indistinct behind him. He figured prominently in five others: one talking to Ying, two walking down Hill Street with his bodybuilders, one at the wheel of a car, and one, barely recognizable, in a restaurant somewhere. Each of the pictures bore a little electronic date in the lower right corner. Tiffle had been busier than Charlie knew.

Just for the hell of it, I got up and went into the front room, listening to the blur of voices from the basement. Rolling a piece of CLAUDE B. TIFFLE ASSOCIATES letterhead into Florence Lam's typewriter, I typed Charlie Wah, and then Snake Triad, Taiwan. I looked at it for a moment and then realized what I'd forgotten to ask Everett. I couldn't ask him now, so I pulled my little phone book out of my pocket and dialed.

“Whassit?” Peter Lau asked blearily.

“Peter. Simeon. Sorry to wake you.”

“Jesus,” Lau said. “My head.”

“Listen, I need Charlie Wah's real name.”

Bedsprings creaked. “Why?”

“I want to send him a letter.”

“No, you don't.”

“Just give me the name, Peter.”

“Wah Yung-Fat. Spelled like it sounds, but no 'o' in 'Yung.' ' WAH YUNG, I typed. 'Hyphen between Yung and Fat?”

“Yes. What time is it?” — FAT, I typed. “Time for Charlie Wah to start worrying,” I said. “Keep your radio on the news stations.”

I hung up and carried the paper into the office, where I folded it tightly and slipped it under the rubber band around the photos. Then I closed the drawer, got up again, and trudged into the hallway to get the cases.

I put five or six thousand into Tiffle's little box and closed it, then spread the rest of it, more than half a million dollars, over the surface of his desk. It looked impressive. By now nails were being driven into the door at the head of the basement stairs, and then the banging stopped and Dexter ambled in, the hammer still in his hand.

“Wo,” he said, glimmering at the money. “Enough salt for Colonel Sanders.”

“It'll make a nice picture, don't you think?” I locked the desk and tossed Tiffle's keys on top of the money.

“Less the cops snatch it.”

“There'll be too many of them. They'll be watching each other. You got the list?”

“LAPD, INS, U.S. Marshals,” he recited. “Chinatown Association, Chinese Legal Aid Society, ACLU, Times, the radio and TV guys. Start dialin at seven. Give 'em the salt, the slicks downstairs, and the ol' Caroline B.”

“Don't forget the safe houses,” I said. “We haven't got any real slaves for them, but we've got four houses full of stuff.”

Dexter snapped his fingers. “The dresses,” he said, his face lighting up.

“You're a deeply intelligent man, Dexter.” I scooped up the documents Florence Lam and the others had signed and put them into one of the briefcases.

“I the bee's knees,” Dexter said. “Toss that.” I flipped the case at him, and he caught it one-handed. “You throw like a white girl,” he said. “A very young white girl.”

“See you later.”

“You gone sit here, huh? They can't get out.”

“Just in case. No point in taking a short cut now.”

“We had more like you,” Dexter said in mock admiration, “we wouldn't be sniffin around after the Japanese.”

Tran came in behind Dexter. “Getting light,” he said.

I tossed him the second case. “Beat it.”

“You forgot to say we sposed to put a egg in our shoe,” Dexter said.

“If an egg in your shoe,” Tran said to him, “you eat it.”

“Hey,” Dexter said, brightening, “time for breakfast.”

I sat there as the room gradually filled with light, bringing the green of the money out of the gloom like the colors of an underwater reef, and thought about the pilgrims and their long passage and the years of labor they would pass in dingy workplaces and crowded rooms, all to live in a country that didn't want them, that would send them home if it got a chance, but that they thought of as a rich mine, the Gold Mountain where they could trade their hours and days and years and skills for the money they folded meticulously each week into envelopes and sent home to the land of empty stomachs and waiting women. And I thought about Tiffle and his greedy acrobatics with phony green cards and false INS inspectors and the girls he'd invaded on his couch, and wished he were going to take a harder fall.

At seven-ten, while Dexter was making his anonymous phone calls about a cellarful of illegal immigrants, half a million dollars in cash, and a waiting ship, I went out into the dull day and relocked the door behind me. Horace was parked on the short cul-de-sac of Granger on the other side of Hill, and I slid into the car next to him and watched the police and the federals arrive around seven-thirty, followed by men and women with cameras and microphones, and Horace leaned over and punched me on the shoulder when, at eight on the dot, Tiffle sleepwalked right into them.

We drove aimlessly for an hour, listening, and at nine we made the news: a thirty-second story about a Chinatown lawyer, some Chinese prisoners in the basement, and half a million bucks. At nine-thirty I reclaimed Alice from her parking spot, followed Horace while he returned the rental, and dropped him at home, where he could start being nicer to Pansy.

By ten-fifteen, Dexter and I were sitting in Captain Snow's little boat, bobbing up and down in the fog and keeping an eye on the Caroline B. Or, rather, I was keeping an eye on the Caroline B. Dexter had a fishing pole in one arm and Captain Pat Snow in the other, and both of them were looking down at the water.

Some people are said to have postcoital tristesse. Astronauts talk about postorbital letdown. I'd managed to pull off most of something that, two days earlier, I'd privately given no chance of working, and I felt like cold fried eggs. The discontent was so strong as to be physical, a queasy, hollow core in the center of my abdomen that wasn't caused by the rocking of the boat. The only thing that could relieve it, I realized, would be the sight of Charlie Wah coming across the water, on his way to the wrong place.

After forty-five minutes I was sure he wouldn't come. After an hour, I knew he wouldn't come. At eleven-thirty, Dexter caught a fish, and Captain Snow cooed appreciatively and helped him take it off the hook.

At eleven-forty-eight, a big black-and-white cruiser emerged from the fog. There were lots of men in uniform on its deck, and there wasn't much question where they were going. Still, we waited until they went aboard, and then Captain Snow made the engines hum and we headed for Marina Del Rey. I left Dexter on the boat and took a long walk up the dock to my car.