Free The Detective & the Chinese High-Fin by Michael Craven

ocean, and were modeled on the actual Venice canals in Italy, only much smaller. So you’ve got a neighborhood with bungalows and some cool little houses and some really big houses all stacked on top of one another, and all facing and connected by little rivers, with just a few roads into the neighborhood and a few roads out. You can literally canoe over to your neighbor’s house. To your neighbor’s really expensive house. The canals are high dollar. Overall, it’s a pretty unusual, and pretty damn charming, way to exist in Los Angeles. Some depressing, cement-laden sprawl isn’t that far away—shit, right over on Lincoln Boulevard—but when you’re in the canals, sliding through the water in your canoe with your girlfriend upfront and a bottle of wine or perhaps a cold six-pack of Coors Light between your feet, you’d never know it.
    I drove down Washington Boulevard, then turned into one of the little side streets that take you into the canals proper. Once you’re in the neighborhood, little alleys take you to the backs of the houses. In the small spaces between the houses you can see sections of the water on the other side.
    I wound around a couple of these alleylike streets until I found Sydney and Geoff’s house. I parked in front of their garage, which faced the alley, then knocked on a door that did too.
    No answer. I was right on time, knocking on the door literally one hour from the time Sydney and I had hung up, so getting no answer annoyed me. Sydney and Geoff were probably still doing their workout, maybe even somewhere other than the house, and had lost track of time. They were late.
    If you know me, you know I can’t stand people who are late. And let me tell you, the thing people always say about people who are late is that they are selfish, and disrespectful of the time of others, and that’s why they are late. Sure, I guess that’s part of it. But I think that’s giving these people too much credit. Because I think something else is happening as well. I think people who are late—not all of them, but most of them—are just a little dumb. Look, I’m not saying totally fucking stupid. You know, walking around drooling all over themselves, screaming at strangers, unable to comprehend the simplest of concepts. I’m saying just a little bit dumb. Because to be on time, you have to have the mental capacity and the mental disciplineto think into the future. You have to sit there and use mental energy to contemplate some variables, some possibilities, and then make a decision about what you need to do to manage it all. It’s a teeny tiny chess match. And you have to figure out your moves. By and large, the people I know who can do this regularly are the same people who can figure out other, bigger, problems. And the ones who can’t do that? You’re not putting them on the top squad. You’re not giving them the big jobs. You’re not saying to them: Cut the red wire, not the blue wire, or we’re all going to die. Because, you know, they’re just a bit dumb.
    I walked around to the side of the house, then through the sliver of space between it and the house next to it, and emerged just on the edge of Sydney and Geoff’s yard, right on the canal. I could now see all the houses lining the little river on both sides. It was beautiful, wonderful. A breeze put modest ripples on the water.
    I moved my eyes over to Sydney and Geoff’s backyard. There I saw them finishing their “workout.” They were both dressed in, essentially, black karate uniforms, and they were acting out what looked like a karate fight, only they were doing it in slow motion. And they weren’t making any contact. One of them would do a slow-motion punch but stop before contact. Then the other one would do a slow-motion chop but, again, stop right before contact. And so on.
    They were also humming some sort of chant.
    I said under my