Tick Tock (12 page)

“No such thing as real life?”

“Reality is perception. Perceptions change. Reality is fluid. So if by ‘reality’ you mean reliably tangible objects and immutable events, then there's no such thing.”

Having used two rolls of paper towels to clean the passenger's seat and the leg space in front of it, heaping the last of them on the sodden little pile that he had created against the wall of the underpass, he said, “Are you a New Age type or something—channel spirits, heal yourself with crystals?”

“No. I merely said reality is perception.”

“Sounds New Age,” he said, returning to watch her finish her own task.

“Well it's not. I'll explain someday when we have more time.”

“Meanwhile,” he said, “I'll wander aimlessly in the wilderness of my ignorance.”

“Sarcasm doesn't become you.”

“Are you about finished here? I'm freezing.”

Del stepped back from the open passenger-side door, the roll of plumbing tape in one hand and the razor blade in the other, surveying her work. “It'll keep the rain out well enough, I guess, but it's not exactly the latest thing in aesthetically pleasing motor-vehicle accessories.”

In the poor light, Tommy couldn't clearly see the elaborate Art Deco, jukebox-inspired mural on the van, but he could discern that a substantial portion of it had been scraped off the passenger side. “I'm really sorry about the paint job. It was spectacular. Must have cost a bundle.”

“Just a little paint and a lot of time. Don't worry about it. I was thinking of redoing it anyway.”

She had surprised him again. “You painted it yourself?”

“I'm an artist,” she said.

“I thought you were a waitress.”

“Being a waitress is what I
do.
An artist is what I
am.”

“I see.”

“Do you?” she said, turning away from the door.

“You said it yourself earlier—I'm a sensitive guy.”

On the freeway overhead, the airbrakes of a big truck screeched like the fierce cry of a scaly behemoth raging through a Jurassic swamp.

Tommy was reminded of the demon. He glanced nervously at one end of the short concrete tunnel, then at the other end, but he saw no monster, large or small, approaching through the rain.

At the back of the van, Del handed one of the two twelve-ounce bottles of orange juice to Tommy and opened the other for herself.

His teeth were chattering. Rather than a swig of cold orange juice, he needed a mug of steaming coffee.

“We don't have coffee,” she said, startling him, as though she had read his mind.

“Well, I don't want juice,” he said.

“Yes, you do.” From the two vitamin bottles, she counted out ten one-gram tablets of C and four gelatine capsules of B, took half for herself, and handed the rest to him. “After all that fear and stress, our bodies are totally flooded with dangerous free-radicals. Incomplete oxygen molecules, tens of thousands of them, ricocheting through our bodies, damaging every cell they encounter. You need antioxidants, Vitamins C and B as a minimum, to bind with the free radicals and disarm them.”

Though Tommy wasn't much concerned about maintaining a healthy diet or vitamin therapy, he remembered having read about free-radical molecules and antioxidants, and there seemed to be medical validity to the theory, so he washed down the pills with the orange juice.

Besides, he was cold and weary, and he could save a lot of energy by cooperating with Del. She was indefatigable, after all, while he was merely fatigued.

“You want the tofu now?”

“Not now.”

“Maybe later with some chopped pineapple, maraschino cherries, a few walnuts,” she suggested.

“That sounds nice.”

“Or just a slight sprinkle of shredded coconut.”

“Whatever.”

Del picked up the red-flannel Santa hat with the white trim and white pompon, which she had found in the display of Christmas items at the supermarket.

“What's that for?” Tommy asked.

“It's a hat.”

“But what are you going to use it for?” he asked, since she'd had such specific uses for everything else they had picked up at the market.

“Use it for? To cover my head,” she said, as if he were daft. “What do
you
use hats for?”

She put it on. The weight of the pompon made the peak of the cap droop to one side.

“You look ridiculous.”

“I think it's cute. Makes me feel good. Puts me in a holiday mood.” She closed the back door of the van.

“Do you see a therapist regularly?” he asked.

“I dated a dentist once, but never a therapist.” Behind the wheel of the van again, she started the engine and switched on the heater.

Tommy held his trembling hands in front of the dashboard vents, relishing the gush of hot air. With the broken window covered, he might be able to dry out and get warm.

“Well, Detective Phan, do you want to start this investigation by trying to find it?”

“Find what?”

“Your butt.”

“Just before I totalled the Corvette, I'd decided to go see my brother Gi. Could you drop me off there?”

“Drop you off?” she said disbelieving.

“It's the last thing I'll ask you for.”

“Drop you off—and then what? Just go home and sit and wait for the doll snake rat-quick little monster thing to come tear out my liver and eat it for dessert?”

Tommy said, “I've been thinking—”

“Well, it doesn't show.”

“—and I don't think you're in any danger from it—”

“You don't
think
I am.”

“—because, according to the message that the thing apparently typed on my computer, the deadline is dawn.”

“How exactly am I to take comfort from this?” she asked.

“It's got until dawn to get me—and I've got until dawn to stay alive. At that point the game ends.”

“Game?”

“Game, threat, whatever.” He squinted through the windshield at the silvery skeins of rain falling beyond the underpass. “Could we get moving? Makes me nervous to sit here so long.”

Del released the handbrake and put the van in gear. But she kept her foot on the brake pedal and didn't drive out from under the freeway. “Tell me what you mean—game.”

“Whoever made the doll is willing to play by rules. Or maybe they have to, maybe that's what the magic requires.”

“Magic?”

He locked his door. “Magic sorcery, voodoo, whatever. Anyway, if I make it to dawn, maybe I'm safe.” He reached across Del and locked her door too. “This creature it isn't going to come after you if it's been sent to get me and if it has only a limited amount of time to make the kill. The clock is ticking for me, sure, but it's also ticking for the assassin.”

Del nodded thoughtfully. “That makes perfect sense,” she said, and she sounded sincere, as though they were discussing the laws of thermodynamics.

“No, it's insane,” he corrected. “Like the whole situation. But there's a certain nutty logic to it.”

She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “One thing you've overlooked.”

He frowned. “What's that?”

She checked her wristwatch. “It's now seven minutes past midnight.”

“I hoped it was later. Still a lot of time to get to the finish line.” He looked over his shoulder, across the cargo hold, at the back door of the van, which wasn't locked.

“And dawn is in… probably five and half or at most six hours,” Del said.

“So?”

“Tommy, at the rate you're going, the creepy-crawler will catch you by one o'clock, tear your head off—and still have four or five hours of spare time on its hands. If it has hands. Then it'll come for me.”

He shook his head. “I don't think so.”

“I
think so.”

“It doesn't know who you are,” he said patiently. “How would it find you?”

“It wouldn't need to hire your silly detective,” she said.

Tommy winced because she sounded like his mother, and he never wanted this woman, of all women,
ever
to remind him of his mother. “Don't call him silly.”

“The damn thing will track me the same way it's tracking
you
right this very minute.”

“Which is how?”

She tilted her head in thought. The fluffy white pompon dangled. “Well… by the pattern of your psychic emanations, telepathy. Or if each of us has a soul that emits a sound… or maybe a radiance that's visible in some spectrum beyond those that ordinary humans are able to sense, a radiance as unique as a fingerprint, then this thing could home on it.”

“Okay, all right, maybe it could do something like that if it was a supernatural entity—”

“If
it was a supernatural entity?
If?
What else do you think it is, Tommy? A shape-changing robot they send out from MasterCard to teach you a lesson when your monthly payment is overdue?”

Tommy sighed. “Is it possible that I'm insane, tenderly cared for in some pleasant institution, and all this is happening only in my head?”

At last Del pulled back into the street and drove out from under the freeway, switching on the windshield wipers as heavy volleys of rain exploded across the van.

“I'll take you to see your brother,” she said, “but I'm not just dropping you off, tofu boy. We're in this together, all the way… at least until dawn.”

In Garden Grove, the New World Saigon Bakery operated in a large tilt-up concrete industrial building surrounded by a blacktop parking lot. It was painted white, with the name of the company in simple peach-coloured block letters, a severe-looking structure softened only by a pair of ficus trees and two clusters of azaleas that flanked the entrance to the company offices at the front. Without the guidance of the sign, a passer-by might have thought the company was engaged in plastic injection moulding, retail electronics assembly, or other light manufacturing.

On Tommy's instructions, Del drove around to the back of the building. At this late hour, the front doors were locked, and one had to enter through the kitchen.

The rear parking area was crowded with employees' cars and more than forty sizable delivery trucks.

“I was picturing a mom-and-pop bakery,” Del said. “Yeah, that's what it was twenty years ago. They still have two retail outlets, but from here they supply breads and pastries to lots of markets and restaurants, and not just Vietnamese restaurants, in Orange County and up in L.A. too.”

“It's a little empire,” she said as she parked the van, doused the headlights, and switched off the engine.

“Even though it's gotten this big, they keep up the quality—which is why they've grown in the first place.”

“You sound proud of them.”

“I am.”

“Then why aren't you in the family business too?”

“I couldn't breathe.”

“The heat of the ovens, you mean?”

“No.”

“An allergy to wheat flour?”

He sighed. “I wish. That would have made it easy to opt out. But the problem was… too much tradition.”

“You wanted to try radical new approaches to baking?”

He laughed softly. “I like you, Del.”

“Likewise, tofu boy.”

“Even if you are a little crazy.”

“I'm the sanest person you know.”

“It was family. Vietnamese families are sometimes so tightly bound, so structured, the parents so strict, traditions so… so like chains.”

“But you miss it too.”

“Not really.”

“Yes, you do,” she insisted. “There's a deep sadness in you. A part of you is lost.”

“Not lost.”

“Definitely.”

“Well, maybe that's what growing up is all about—losing parts of yourself so you can become something bigger, different, better.”

She said, “The thing from inside the doll is becoming bigger and different too.”

“Your point?”

“Different isn't always better.”

Tommy met her gaze. In the dim light, her blue eyes were so dark that they might as well have been black, and they were even less readable than usual.

He said, “If I hadn't found a different way, one that worked for me, I would have died inside—more than I have by losing some degree of connection with the family.”

“Then you did the right thing.”

“Whether it was or not, I did it, and it's done.”

“The distance between you and them is a gap not a gulf. You can bridge it.”

“Never quite,” he disagreed.

“In fact, it's no distance at all compared to the light-years we've all come from the Big Bang, all the billions of miles we've crossed since we were just primal matter.”

“Don't go strange on me again, Del.”

“What strange?”

“I'm the Asian here. If anyone's supposed to be inscrutable, it's me.”

“Sometimes,” Deliverance Payne said, “you listen but you just don't hear.”

“That's what keeps me sane.”

“That's what gets you in trouble.”

“Come on, let's go see my brother.”

As they hurried through the rain, between two rows of delivery trucks, Del said, “How do you expect Gi to be able to help you?”

“He's had to deal with the gangs, so he knows about them.”

“Gangs?”

“Cheap Boys. Pomona Boys. Their kind.”

The New World Saigon Bakery operated in three eight-hour shifts. From eight in the morning until four in the afternoon, Tommy's father served as the shift manager while also conducting corporate business from his front office. From four o'clock until midnight, the oldest of the Phan brothers, Ton That, was the chief baker and the shift manager, and from midnight until eight in the morning, Gi Minh filled those same positions.

Organized gangs, intent on extortion, were active around the clock. But when they used sabotage to get their way, they preferred the cover of deep darkness, which meant that Gi, by virtue of running the graveyard shift, had been on duty during some of the nastier confrontations.

For years, all three men had worked seven days a week, a full fifty-six hours each, because most of the bakery's customers needed fresh merchandise on a daily basis. When one of them needed to have a weekend off, the other two split his time between them and worked sixty-four-hour weeks without complaint. Vietnamese-Americans with an entrepreneurial bent were among the most industrious people in the country and could never be faulted for failing to carry their own weight. Sometimes, however, Tommy wondered how many of Ton's and Gi's generation—former refugees, boat children highly motivated to succeed by early memories of poverty and terror in Southeast Asia—would live long enough to retire and enjoy the peace that they had struggled so hard to earn.