The Man With No Time Read Online Free Page B

two children when they slept in one crib. His other hand was screwed into a fist and pressed against the bridge of his nose. He was bent forward so far his forehead almost touched the floor. I sat next to him and wrapped my arm around his shoulders, and he straightened and turned in to me and wept, his face pressed tight against my chest and his shoulders shaking convulsively. I looked down at him from what seemed like quite a distance.
    “We'll get them back,” I said, focusing on plans. Plans seemed like the thing. “We'll call the cops. I've got a friend on the cops, you know? And we'll go after Uncle Lo ourselves.”
    “Sure,” Horace said, drawing back and wiping his nose on a corner of the quilt. “And we'll kill the kids playing cowboy.” He listened to the echo for a moment. “Uncle Lo? Uncle Lo didn't do this.”
    “Why not? I mean, he was the only one here.”
    “Why would he?”
    “I don't know,” I said.
    He spread his fingers wide and curled them inward, looking for something to strangle. “I wish he had. I wish I knew it was Lo. At least we could talk to—”
    “Horace. He set it up. Sent you guys out for dim sum and stayed home like he couldn't face it, when we both know he was the only sober one last night.”
    “Huh,” Horace scoffed. He glanced down at the quilt in his hand and tossed it onto one of the beds, where it dangled disconsolately from a wooden leg like an abandoned battle flag.
    “Okay, if it wasn't Uncle Lo, who was it?”
    “Whoever took him away,” Horace said, after swallowing twice. “Whoever came and got him.”
    That stopped me, and I said, “Oh.” There was, after all, a dead man in the closet.  Still, I knew Lo had faked his hangover so he could be alone in the house.
    Horace plowed on. “Why would he save our family and then do, do—this?”
    “Right,” I said, filling the silence.
    “And anyway,” Horace said, “why would he tear the place apart?”
    “Maybe he was looking for something.”
    “Like what? I've lived in this apartment most of my life. I know everything that's in it. There's nothing in it.”
    “Horace. Lo didn't know there was nothing in the apartment. He needed something, so he tossed it. And when he didn't find it, then he took the twins so he could demand whatever it was later.”
    Horace looked around as though he expected to see what Lo had missed. His nose was running, and his long hair, usually sprayed and combed forward to hide his balding scalp, was standing straight up. Without realizing what I was doing, I put out a hand and smoothed it. “However,” I said, “I have to tell you that someone else was here.”
    “Who?” Horace barely cared.
    “He's still here,” I said. “In the closet. We've got a dead guy.”
    It took a second for the words to cut through to him. Then he blinked heavily and said, “No.”
    “Can you look at him?”
    “Oh, sure,” he said. “Look at a dead guy. In my house.” He blew out a quart of air. “Let's get it over with.”
    The dead guy was still there, still folded neatly into his corner. He was in his middle thirties, maybe, wearing corduroy trousers, a Hawaiian shirt, and a shoulder holster that nestled incongruously among the printed palms and flamingos. “Know him?” I asked.
    “Just another Chinese to me.” Horace turned away from me. “I need to talk to Pansy.” I followed him down the hall. He walked without lifting his feet, like an old man whose slippers were too big for him.
    Pansy had turned over onto her back, and Eleanor was rubbing her temples as Pansy sent up skyrockets of Chinese. Eleanor stopped looking into her eyes just long enough to say to me, “Pansy wants the back door locked.”
    “Why?” I said. “We should be calling—”
    “Lock the door, please, Simeon,” Eleanor said. She put enough weight in the words to catch my attention.
    Okay, Pansy wanted the door locked. I went to lock the door. The important thing right now was to make Pansy feel she had