The Man With No Time

On the way home, I realized I wasn't going there. The Pacific lay gray and cold to my left as I passed the Topanga turnoff and headed toward Alaska. There was a longer news story on the radio around twelve-thirty, and by now they'd gotten around to the houses, which the announcer dubbed “rest stops on the slave highway.” Apparently someone had seen a little capital in it, because a couple of politicians served up outraged, overwritten sound bites about exploitation and human misery. One of them, an Orange County admirer of Louis the Fourteenth, yapped shrilly about the need to control immigration more effectively and protect American jobs, just like there were millions of Americans eager to work sixty-hour weeks for three thousand a year, net.

Nothing about the Caroline B. yet, and nothing about Charlie.

Maybe the parts of it I'd pulled off hadn't been the right parts. Maybe I should have let the INS get the pilgrims and concentrated on Charlie, taking the long view: There'd be fewer slaves for a while. On the other hand, as Everett had said, they want to come. So maybe there weren't any easy answers.

I hate it when there aren't any easy answers.

By the time I hit Rincon, we'd made the one o'clock news, the national news out of New York. The dresses had been announced to the media, and the report was rife with implications that there were forty or fifty female slaves, presumably naked, rattling around the streets of Los Angeles. Never underestimate the power of cash and sex and the media fascination with the word “slave.” I grinned for a moment at the image of Norman Stillman trying frantically to reach me, and then hoped that the phone lines between Taiwan and Charlie Wah's left ear, wherever it might be, were about to catch fire.

Charlie. Just his name was enough to bring me back down to earth. I watched a bunch of freezing surfers pretend to have fun as I ate a couple of greasy fried clams on a pier somewhere near Santa Barbara. The thought of Charlie and his pastel suits and his prostitutes finished off whatever remnant of my appetite the grease on the clams hadn't already quelled. I hurled the rest of them, one at a time, at the heads of the surfers, and gulls swooped down and picked them out of the air.

Charlie was going to skate. He might have a few bad hours with the Snake overlords, and his trip back to Taiwan probably wouldn't be a pleasure cruise on the Love Boat, but he'd still be able to afford his terrible clothes. He'd still be able to play with other people's lives, making and breaking promises and watching the thick blood flow whenever he got bored. Nobody was going to practice the Death of a Thousand Cuts on him in retribution for the two Vietnamese kids in the sweatshop.

Since the clams were all gone I balled up the paper sack they'd come in and pitched it into the gray air. A fat gull caught it and dropped it and squawked at me indignantly. I squawked back and headed toward Alice.

Fog had ghosted its way in from the sea. It pressed itself against the slopes of the mountains and thickened maliciously as I drove south, cutting visibility to a hundred feet or so, and I saw one, then two, accidents, all crumpled metal and flashing lights, and I slowed to a crawl, fixing my eyes on the taillights of a truck in front of me and letting it run interference. I figured it would mash anything in front of us flat, so that I could just ride over it. Smart.

Mr. Smart Guy. Charlie, free as a seagull with millions in the bank. Eleanor's family, never able to be sure that they wouldn't get tied to this somehow and waiting for the knock on the door. Two men dead. Millions of Mainland Chinese lining up to put their money into Charlie's sticky hand and head for what they thought would be freedom, poorer by ten thousand dollars and one last hope.

The truck driver gave up around four and turned into a seaside motel that announced itself in a smear of pink light as The Last Wave. Deprived of my scout, I slowed even more and watched the world grow dark. Above the glow of Alice's instrument lights, Uncle Lo smiled at me from wherever he was, safe on a dead man's papers. I switched off the news and found some rock and roll, loud and mindlessly busy, and daydreamed about the next time I'd meet Lo. Like the truck driver, he'd guided me into the fog and then disappeared. I couldn't seem to remember a time when it wasn't foggy.

I punched up the news again at six-thirty as I turned into Topanga Canyon, and got a story about the Feds busting a ship in San Pedro, the Caroline B., operating on a warrant based on an anonymous tip. Nine people, all Taiwanese nationals, taken into custody, no names. Part of an international ring smuggling Mainland Chinese into the country. The word 'slaves' was used four times. In a related story, the good folks living next to the safe houses had suddenly realized there'd been something strange going on and stepped forward eagerly to tell lurid tales of broken-spirited young women being herded in and out. It made me feel good enough to stop at the Fernwood Market and grab a six-pack.

It was close to seven and already completely dark, the night black and fog-muffled, when I climbed out of Alice and scaled the driveway. I whistled for Bravo, but he was probably off disrupting the agendas of the local coyotes. Ready for a shower and sixteen hours' sleep, I felt my way to the door and opened it and then stepped inside and switched on the light.

The first thing I saw, sitting on the stool in front of my computer, was Mrs. Summerson, looking dazed and large and empty and frail. The second thing I saw was Charlie Wah.

24

Velocity and Position

“Looking bad, Charlie,” I said, and he was. His eyes were puffy and skittish, and his hair was pressed flat on one side as though he'd slept sitting up. The suit of the day, a stomach-curdling shade of lemon yellow, was wrinkled and bunched, and something sagged heavily in his pocket, dragging the jacket further out of shape. His necktie was at a lopsided half-mast, and he'd apparently missed his step coming up the driveway because one yellow knee was smeared with dirt. Still, the little gun in his hand was clean and bright and well maintained and absolutely steady.

“You live like a pig,” he said. He was standing beyond Mrs. Summerson, in front of the living room's one south-facing window.

“Well,” I said, “we can't all afford to dress like Life Savers. I guess you weren't on the boat.”

The gun came forward an inch or two, and my abdominal muscles went into involuntary aerobics. He saw it, and he smiled, but then he replayed what I'd said. “The boat?”

“The good ship Caroline B., your floating hotel. She's now the property of Uncle Sam.”

The smile congealed on his face, and his gaze suddenly went right through me, fixed on the distance as he started a whole new set of calculations. A sound from the bedroom drew his glance, and one of the steroid junkies, the one with the single eyebrow running across his head, came out, toting my spare gun. He pointed it at my midsection, and Charlie relaxed his, still distracted by all the shuffling realities in his head.

“Here's Bluto,” I said to Mrs. Summerson. “Have you met Pluto?” She didn't stir, just looked at the floor as though she were trying to see through it.

“What have you done to her?” I asked Charlie Wah.

“A little lesson in mortality,” Charlie said absently. Then he was back with us, giving me a glare that would have blistered paint. “The old have a low pain threshold. I wonder how high yours is.”

“It's subterranean.” I wasn't much liking the conversation's drift.

“That will simplify matters.” The gun came up again, and he said something to the bodybuilder. Bluto tucked the gun in the back of his pants and came toward me, gesturing for me to lift my arms. He patted me down quickly and thoroughly, relieving me of the automatic and the wad of money I'd counted out for myself at Dexter's. The gun went into his pants pocket and the money into Charlie's free hand.

How much?” he asked, hefting it.

“Fifty,” I said.

He wrinkled his nose. “Cab fare. Still, it's reassuring to know that you kept some. I suppose each of your associates has a similar amount?”

“Suppose anything you like.”

He said something, and Bluto punched me. I didn't even see it coming, just watched Bluto's face change suddenly and then my head exploded and I was lying on my back on the floor with my ears ringing and the room