As easy as that. She must have made many bankers very happy. “How many times have you done it?”
“Four,” she said promptly. “And this time makes five.” She put a hand to her mouth. “I'm afraid I fibbed about how many times I've seen Lo.”
“This time,” I said, remembering the name she'd mentioned. “You mean Doreen?”
All the good feeling left her face, and she looked old and confused. “That's a problem,” she said, “now that Lo is gone. I really don't know what to do about Doreen.”
“Doreen. Does she have a last name?”
“Doreen Wing. A lovely girl, tiny and so smart. She spoke French, too.”
“And the problem?”
“Lo's gone, and Lo's henchman, the one who sent Tran here all those times-”
“Right,” I said.
“Well, even if the henchman is still in place, this young man,” she fretted, glancing at Tran, “isn't. Whoever replaces him won't know where to find me, where to send this boy's replacement to get the money. If the second half of Doreen's payment isn't forthcoming, they'll put her in some dreadful place. Lord knows what they'll do to her.” She had one hand to her mouth, as if she'd just said something unspeakable.
“Probably nothing,” I said with an assurance I didn't feel. “Put her to work for a couple of years, unless she runs away and comes to you.”
“She has no idea where I am. Lo brought them to me after the payment was made.”
“You're right,” I said, not particularly interested. “It's a problem.”
“It's ghastly. That poor little girl, all alone here with no one to help her.” In Mrs. Summerson's mind, Doreen Wing was eleven years old and would be until she showed up, graying, on the doorstep. I was trying to integrate Doreen into the plan, such as it was, when she added, “Of course, none of them will have anyone to turn to.”
I waited, hoping she didn't mean what I thought she meant. She just gazed at me, perfectly at ease with the silence. “None of them,” I said neutrally.
“The other two hundred or so,” Mrs. Summerson said. “It is two hundred, isn't it?”
“One hundred seventy-two,” I said. Everett had been firm about that.
Tran began to laugh.
“You think this is funny?” I demanded.
“Has to be sad or funny. I choose funny.” He thought about it and laughed again.
“What does he mean?” Mrs Summerson didn't actually sound very confused this time, and I wondered whether I was being manipulated by a seventy-some-year-old missionary. Still, I'd wondered about the hundred and seventy-two, too. Over and over. It was the reason we hadn't simply called the INS about the ship: that and the fact Charlie hadn't been aboard. I'd been poking at the thought of the hundred and seventy-two like a sun blister I was afraid might be malignant, afraid to go any deeper.
“If we can do anything,” I said hopelessly, “we will.”
She looked from me to Tran and back again. For a moment I thought she was going to smile. “What do you mean, if you can do anything?”
“We, um, we plan to put a little crimp in their operation.”
“Good. Then you can rescue them,” Mrs. Summerson said, sipping her tea at last.
“We're not set up,” I protested, “to rescue the entire adult population of China.”
“Well, surely that's figurative,” she said.
“Where could I put them?” I asked, just to slow her down.
“A church,” she said. “I have one you could use.”
“Swell,” I said. “A church.”
“Simply deliver them to me. 'Deliver the little children unto me,' as Jesus says in one translation.”
“I don't know. I mean, I do know. We can't do it. I mean, what are we going to deliver them in?”
“The vans,” Tran immediately volunteered. “They go to San Pedro in-”
“Shut up,” I snapped. He gave me a Vietnamese snicker. It sounded a lot like an American snicker.
“That's rude,” Mrs. Summerson said to me. “I can have the church ready in twenty-four hours.”
My resistance gave out. “We'll do what we can.”
“Good. And if there's anything I can do. .” she said, sounding doubtful.
“Not really,” I said cheerlessly. “Not unless you know when they're coming.”
“Well, that's easy,” she said promptly. “I have to know, so I can get the money. They're coming tomorrow night.”
Chez Tiffle was dark. The cottage was the same vintage as Mrs. Summerson's, and I was reasonably certain that it also had a nice, big, more or less soundproof basement.
Tran and I had cruised the block twice, trolling for our furtive friend, and on the third pass, Tran said: “Here, him.”
I was cramped down in the passenger seat, and as much as I dreaded the encounter, the idea of straightening up had a lot of appeal. “You know the drill.”
“Salowly,” Tran said, sounding like his brother. He turned left and then left again. One more left brought us onto Hill, a block from the place where Dexter was waiting in the truncated little stretch of Granger. Tran dimmed the lights once as we approached, and when Dexter pulled out into traffic he was behind the white Hyundai.
“Three blind mice,” Tran said, eyeing the rearview mirror.
Traffic was a little lighter than I would have like it to be. “Watch the stoplights. You want to get a yellow one.” The light directly in front of us turned from red to green, and Tran slowed the car by a few miles an hour and looked elaborately around, overacting a man searching for something. We were in the right lane, and cars passed us impatiently on the left. One fat clown shoehorned into a tiny Honda Civic honked at us with a sound like a Velcro sneeze.
“They're both through,” I said, looking back nervously. “Slow down a little, would you?”
“Who's driving?” Tran asked, braking anyway. He caught the Sunset light, a good long one, on the yellow, and slowed to a stop. Behind us, Dexter pulled his big tubby Lincoln up so that it almost touched the rear bumper of the white Hyundai.
“Here goes,” I said, forming the words around my heart, which had decided to move north and take up residence in my mouth. We'd already disconnected the interior light, so I got out of the car on the passenger side without sending up any skyrockets. Hunched over and feeling like Lon Chaney, I worked my way back past three cars until I was to the left of the Hyundai, and then I pulled out the automatic and stood up, approaching the passenger door.
When I yanked it open and shoved the gun inside, the Chinese man in the driver's seat yelped and whipped his head toward me. Then the yelp turned into a sigh, and he narrowed his eyes and pushed the gun aside.
I stood there, listening to my heart booming in my ears. “Where the hell have you been?” I asked Horace Chan.
PART IV
Our tidy notions of time and space quickly break down in the realm of the very small. For example, at the subatomic level it is possible to measure both the velocity of a particle and its position, but it is impossible to measure them simultaneously.
19
One-thirty a.m. In the waxy light of yet another McDonald's, my crew looked pasty and ill-matched. I'd been fantasizing the James Gang and gotten the Musicians of Bremen.
I felt like my battery life had been cut to minutes. Horace and Tran were still bickering. The missing Musketeer, Dexter, had disappeared after we worked the snare that had netted us Horace, saying he'd return with a surprise. I wasn't sure I had energy in reserve for a surprise, but it was always hard to say no to Dexter.
Despite fifteen minutes of concentrated explanation, Horace eyed Tran as though he expected him to sprout fangs and dive for the throat. Tran was, after all, half of the reason he'd abandoned the comforts of home and hearth to stalk the mean and lonely streets of vengeance, or whatever the hell he thought he'd been doing. I let them growl at each other while I listened to my internal clock running down and tried to figure out where we were.