The Man With No Time

upside down. You're salivating, but it's hard to swallow. You're going to laugh so hard you have to inhale, and when you do, sooner or later, you're going to breathe spit. Then you're going to cough and try to breathe again, but I'm still going to be tickling you. If it gets bad enough, you could swallow your tongue. How does that sound?”

He spat at me.

“You'll have more saliva in a minute,” I said, “but no point waiting.” I looked at my watch to give myself time to calm down, but it didn't work. I attacked him with my fingers, gouging his ribs, his underarms, and his abdomen, and I kept checking my watch as though I cared how long it lasted. Gouge and check, gouge and check, and I kept at it for a full two minutes as he shuddered and trembled and coughed and shrieked, until the noise brought Mrs. Chan in from the kitchen to watch, fascinated.

When I saw her, I stopped and backed away, ashamed. The boy's face was covered in tears and spit and snot, and the convulsions went on for at least twenty seconds.

“Who's Lo?” I asked again, breathing almost as hard as he was. Who sent you to get him?'

“Don't know.” He swung his head, upside down, from side to side. His eyes were beads of hate, so intense they looked like they might pop out of his head and roll across the floor at me to bite my feet.

“Kick him,” Horace said again.

A wave of revulsion swept over me. I glanced at Eleanor, and caught her staring at me as though I'd just emerged from the kitchen drain. I aimed all the fear I felt at the kid. “Back to Plan A, then. Do girls like you? I should think they would. You're a good-looking kid. It's a shame I'm going to have to kick your face in.”

I stepped up to him and lifted my right foot. My left knee was rubber.

“He doesn't know,” Handsome said, muffled in his rug. “He doesn't know anything.”

“But you do,” I said, finding someone new to hate. “And he'll remember that you let me kick his face in.”

Nothing.

I hauled back my foot and kicked hard. My boot thudded into the table, half an inch from the kid's extraordinary right ear, and he screeched in a satisfying fashion and then glared back up at me. Even upside down, his face was poison.

“Lo's this old man,” Handsome said sullenly. “Mainland Chinese. He do something wrong, and we came to get him.”

“What did he do?” I could barely get the words past the bubble.

“They didn't tell us,” Handsome said.

“You're going to punch his ticket, and you don't even know what he did? What a guy.”

“They pay us,” Handsome said. Dumbo-Ears was still fixated on my foot. “They don't have to tell us.” It sounded like the truth.

My pulse, a jackhammer in my ears, was slowing. “You were just supposed to kill him. Not ask him any questions or take him with you.”

“What I said.”

“Then why the rope?”

He opened his mouth and then closed it again.

“You were supposed to take him, weren't you?” The mouth was a tight, straight line. “Where were you supposed to take him?”

The boy looked up at the ceiling for a long moment. Then he said, “Go ahead. Kick him in the face.”

I grabbed a breath. Time to change tack. “Who sent you?”

“You don't want to know,” Handsome said.

“Horace,” I said, fighting an overwhelming desire to go to sleep, “tell your mother to go into the kitchen. Hang on to Junior here.”

Feeling old, hung over, and bone weary, I slogged to the closet and grabbed the dead Chinese man beneath his tropically decorated arms. Something sticky clung to my hands as I pulled him out of the closet. His rubber- heeled shoes squealed like the door to the Inner Sanctum, but there was nothing I could do about it, and the three little pigs chased me all the way into the living room as I dragged him.

“Oh, no,” Eleanor said hopelessly.

“One of yours?” I asked Handsome, letting the head and shoulders sag to the floor. I could see the entry wound now, under the left nipple. My right hand was covered in blood. Neither of the Asian kids replied. “This,” I said to Eleanor, “is why we're calling the cops.”

“No,” the two little gunmen said in unison.

“Well, that's interesting,” I said. “You want to tell me why?”

Handsome said something sharp in Chinese, and everybody went still. More Chinese followed, fast and shrill, and Horace stepped quickly out from behind the table, which began to topple forward on top of Dumbo-Ears. I caught it with one arm and held it, hoping it looked easier than it felt.

“Quit, Simeon,” Horace said. “Quit right now.”

Eleanor stood up. “It's finished,” she said. “You've done enough.”

“Like hell I have. The twins-”

“These guys don't know anything about the twins,” Horace said. “They're after Uncle Lo.”

“And there's Mr. Snappy Dresser here,” I said, and then Horace's words registered. “Why? Why are they after Lo?”

Horace looked at Pansy and then at the floor. “Chinese business,” he said, sounding ashamed of himself.

“Well, that's wonderful,” I said. I pointed at the dead man, Dumbo-Ears, and Handsome. “And these are Chinese business, too?”

“Yes,” Horace said, very softly, avoiding my eyes.

“Great.” I took a breath. “And what do we do with these assholes?”

“We let them go,” he said. “If we don't we're all dead.”

The bubble started to swell again. “How about one little kick?”

“No.” That was Eleanor.

“Just unwrap them and send them home to mommy,” I said. “They tried to kill us. Somebody did kill this guy who thought he was in Hawaii.”

“They know they made a mistake,” Horace said. “They won't come back.” He closed his eyes.

“Okay,” I said, giving up. “I'm finished.” I let go of the table and stepped back, and it crashed to the floor with Dumbo-Ears underneath it. He made a sound somewhere between a groan and a sigh, and then went silent.

I crouched down in front of Handsome, who scowled up at me. “These people just lost their children,” I said to him, “and they don't know why. Do you?”

“Lo's crazy,” Handsome said sullenly.

“I thought you didn't know him.”

“I know about him.”

“Where would he take them?”

“Simeon,” Eleanor said peremptorily.

“Hey,” Handsome said, “you find Lo, you tell us.”

“Right,” I said, straightening. “Well, I'm the one who gave your friend the hard time. These folks didn't do anything. My name is Simeon Grist, and I live at Thirteen twenty-one Topanga Skyline Drive. You got a problem about what happened here today, you come and look me up. Not them. You touch them, and I promise I'll cut your little heart out and give it to the dog. Got it?”

“Thirteen twenty-one Topanga Skyline Drive,” Handsome said. Eleanor looked at me and almost smiled. Thirteen twenty-one, the house two down the hill from mine, had burned four years earlier.

“You'll leave them alone,” I said.

“It was a mistake,” Horace said hollowly. There was so little blood in his face that I had the impression a finger pressed against his cheek would have left a dimple.

“Yeah, yeah.” I got up and retrieved the two semis. “You want these, you come and get them from me,” I told Handsome.

“Deal,” Handsome said through very narrow eyes.

Dumbo-Ears had a bloody nose and a scraped forehead from hitting the floor face first, but he didn't make a sound as Horace snipped the rope away from his legs. The look he leveled at me, though, was worth serious