The Man With No Time by Timothy Hallinan

feel same-same Rambo, got too-big gun.”
    I couldn't help it. I laughed. Her face darkened, but then her Thai good nature carried the moment and her teeth gleamed, sudden and white in her face.
    “Well, it's the truth,” she said. “You think the guy wants to know that his little piece of sweet-and-sour has a day job translating English news for the local Thai paper? Will he tip her more if he knows she went to school longer than he did?”
    “You have a degree?”
    “I have two from Thailand, in English. Ning's a nurse, three-quarter time.” She turned her head slightly to one side, regarding me. “I remember you now. You're the one who was no fun.”
    “You can put down the mace, then,” I said.
    “No way,” she said, “but I'll change hands and lean on my car. My arm's getting tired and my feet hurt.” She backed up against a gleaming little white Toyota that was parked facing out. The mace went from the right to the left hand. Her chin lifted a quarter of an inch, a prompt for me to talk. “So?”
    “I want to ask you about the old man.”
    “Lo,” she said.
    I nodded, faintly surprised that she remembered him.
    “Funny old guy. Still likes the girls, maybe too much. Like a dog sniffing, but funny about it. Some old guys never seem to run out, you know?”
    “Lucky him,” I said. “Some of us run out almost immediately. You were with him when he made his phone call.”
    “No.” She raked damp hair back from her forehead with her right hand, and her eyes suddenly seemed even larger. “I was in the toilet, trying to look younger.”
    “Could you hear him?”
    I got the sidelong gaze again. “I liked him,” she said.
    I spread my hands in what I hoped was an international gesture of reason. “I don't want to do him any harm. I just want to know who he called.”
    “Why?” It was thick with skepticism.
    “I can't tell you.”
    “Go away.” She started to back around the Toyota, mace still pointed at my face. “Go to the end of the parking lot and stay there until I've driven away.”
    “Wait,” I said. “Um, wait, look here, I'll put my driver's license and my business card and whatever else you want right here on the hood, and then I'll back off and you come and check it out. Would I do that if I was going to hurt him?” I slipped my wallet out of my shirt pocket and started to pull pieces out of it. “Oh, hell, look at the whole thing.”
    The wallet landed with a hollow thump on the Toyota's hood as I backed away, my hands in plain view again. Lek waited until I was a good ten feet off before she came and flipped through it one-handed.
    “Okay,” she said at last. She'd read everything in it and compared my face under the lamplight with the photo on my driver's license twice. “I'd take your check.”
    “Anything happens to Lo, the cops talk to you and you can send them straight to me.”
    “I said I liked him. I said I thought he was a funny old man. I didn't say I thought he was a good old man.”
    “No,” I said, “he's not a good old man.”
    She pushed her lower lip out and then drew it back in again. Then she lowered the mace and dropped it into her purse. “In fact, I think he's probably a pretty terrible old man. I don't think he told the truth once all evening. And he was jumpy, always looking at his watch like he heard it ticking all the time.”
    “Did he speak English or Chinese on the phone?”
    “I still don't know why you're asking.”
    “He did something to someone I love.”
    She weighed it. “A girl?”
    “The people I love are mostly girls.”
    Her teeth caught the light again, and she chuckled. “I didn't think you were a lady-boy.”
    “As you said, he's a pretty terrible old man.”
    “Fun, though.” Lek sighed at the injustice of it all, and then made up her mind or, more likely, her heart. “Spoke mostly English, a little Cantonese when he ran out of words. Only talked a few seconds. He called a lady, said he'd come for his things the next