The Big Enchilada (A Sam Hunter Mystery Book 1)

by L. A. Morse

  It was hard to believe, but it seemed hotter than the previous days. Life in the city had been reduced to a crawl. The freeways were littered with cars that had overheated. The emergency wards of hospitals were filled with people who had collapsed from the heat. The water shortage was severe and growing worse. The massive use of air conditioners had created power shortages and there were blackouts in parts of the city. The sun was an ochre smudge behind the veil of smog and dust. The forecast said no letup in sight. For once, the weathermen were probably right.

  It wasn’t even any cooler at the beach which usually provided some relief from the heat, but that didn’t seem to make any difference, and the place was packed. Every foot of sand that wasn’t covered with the results of the latest oil spill was occupied by some overweight bozo eating chopped egg sandwiches and turning bright red.

  The beach smelted like a garbage dump from the corpses of thousands of oil-clogged fish and sea birds that had washed ashore and were cooking in the sun. Welcome to L.A., the playground of the stars.

  I got to the place I was supposed to be and waited. Nothing happened. I stayed around for about half an hour and still no one showed. I started to get an uneasy feeling in my gut. I was cursing myself as I went to a phone booth. I dialed my office, and there was no answer. There should have been. It might be nothing, but the feeling in my gut was getting stronger.

  I got the car going and headed into town. For a change I was able to make pretty good time. Most of the traffic was heading west, toward the beach, and I didn’t run into much congestion until I got close to my office.

  I found a place to park, ran to the building and up the stairs. The door was unlocked and I went into the outer office. No one there. I crossed to my office. I found Maria.

  I’d had this feeling, so it wasn’t a total surprise. I’ve also seen a lot of death in my time, but this hit me like a rifle butt in the stomach.

  Maria was naked on top of the desk, her legs spread wide, hanging over either side of it. The inside of her thighs and her genitals were ripped and bloody, insanely mutilated. Her body was crushed and flattened, seemingly every bone broken by a great weight. She was like a rag doll with half the stuffing removed. A note was on her breast, held in place by a large safety pin driven into the soft flesh. It said, “Back off or you’re next.”

  I saw white then yellow then red. A howl of rage filled my head and expanded into my body, growing, intensifying, swelling until I felt I would burst. I opened my mouth and it exploded, a scream of anger and agony, a wild, ferocious, insane animal noise. My belly felt like it was in the grip of a giant claw, squeezing and tearing at my insides. I just made it to the sink in the closet in time to heave my guts up. I heaved and heaved and heaved until I was empty, empty of everything. I washed my face and the water helped to revive me. The madness was gone, but it had been replaced by a cold, intense, determined hatred, the like of which I hadn’t known since Viet Nam.

  I went back into the room. In a corner I saw the shreds of what must have been another new dress that Maria had bought for our trip to Mexico.

  It had to have been Mountain. No one else could have broken her body like that. And he didn’t act on his own. He was sent by Domingo. Domingo, who I chased like the faceless shadow in my dream, who had turned and was now striking out at me.

  But he’d made a mistake. Before, it had been more like an exercise, a puzzle. Now it was personal—deeply, intensely personal—and I would make him suffer and pay for this. I’d make them all pay.

  Stupid. Stupid and pointless. Why Maria? They were afraid to take me on directly, but they wanted to scare me off. So they got me out of the way and let Mountain go to work.

  I looked again at what was once the lovely body of Maria. She had been okay—as a woman and as a secretary—and there weren’t too many of that kind around. I spat curses, both at myself for letting it happen and at them for doing it.

  But they would not succeed. I would exact vengeance. Not for Maria—it made no difference any more to her—but for myself. I would shatter their plans. I would shake their, power. I would destroy their riches. I would shoot fire into their bellies and make them puke and squirm on the floor. I would splatter the walls with their brains. Vengeance! I could taste it in my mouth. A red haze dropped before my eyes, and

  I saw vengeance, red vengeance. It would be mine. It would be good.

  “Hello there. Anybody here?”

  A voice came from the outer office. Who the fuck was it? Footsteps crossed the room to my door. Shit. I kept my back turned.

  “Ah, Mr. Hunter. There you are. I’ve been trying to get you for several days. I’m Al Allen of Acme Life and Casualty—’You can trust the people who trust in you.’ Have you considered the benefits to be obtained from a three-way life insurance policy—”

  I whirled around in a crouch. It felt like my eyes were blazing fire. My lips were curled back and a growl escaped my throat. I must have looked pretty frightening because he stopped his patter, his eyes grew wide, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his scrawny throat. His eyes left my face and took in the body on my desk. He started to back up.

  “I see I’ve come at a bad time. Well, I’ll just be going now. I’ll leave my card, and you can get in touch when it’s more convenient.” He was almost to the door.

  “If I ever see your face again, you won’t have it anymore,” I said with, complete sincerity.

  He turned and fled. I heard his footsteps retreating down the hallway.

  I felt I should have crushed the worm and was sorry I hadn’t. I took a couple of deep breaths and realized that was stupid. I got hold of myself. If I was going to do what I had to do, I would have to stay cool.

  I tried to force myself to think about my next move. I hadn’t gotten very far before I heard police sirens tearing down the street. They stopped in front of my building, and I knew they were coming to my office.

  Of course the cops would have been alerted. It made sense. Domingo and his crew weren’t worried about anything coming back to them. They felt secure about everything except me. But they knew that if I got into a dance with the cops, I’d be so tied up I’d never get back on the trail. Or when I did, there wouldn’t be any trail.

  I made up my mind in an instant. I had no choice. I had to get away. I wasn’t worried about the cops pinning the murder on me, but I wasn’t a great favorite of theirs, and they might keep me locked up for a while until they decided I was clean, just to remind me of my place. Certainly, they’d hassle me all they could, and I had enough to do without dealing with that. I realized it wouldn’t do me any good to tell them what I knew. There was hardly anything tangible. What there was was centered on the Black Knight, and Ratchitt had that sewed up.

  No, if I was going to do anything, I’d have to stay loose. The cops would sure want to talk to me after they found the mess in my office, but I figured I was better off with them looking for me than with their knowing I was nice and available in a cell downtown, to be hauled out at leisure.

  I heard the elevator grinding away and footsteps coming up the stairwell as I went down the back way. I was glad that no one had thought to cover that exit, or they’d have been after me for assaulting an officer along with everything else. I was in no mood to take any shit from anybody, in uniform or out.

  NINETEEN

  After I got onto the street, into my car, and away, I realized it was probably a good thing the cops came when they did. Otherwise, I might have kept sitting there, getting nowhere, having no ideas, growing crazy-mad again, seeing red, and running in circles until I paralyzed myself. At least I was moving now. I didn’t know where or to what end, but it was better than foaming at the mouth and howling at the walls. At least movement kept me in the game.

  I knew I was going to get pretty hot pretty quick, and I’d have to get some of that heat taken off. Charlie Watkins could help with that, and I needed to find him anyway to see what he’d been trying to talk to me about. I had a feeling it
was tied in with all this, but the thing was, first I had to find him.

  I got to a phone booth and made a couple of calls with the same result I’d been getting. Shit. What to do? It was starting to get to me, and I was even beginning to feel exposed standing in the phone booth.

  Then I realized what I ought to do. I’d go to Watkins’s house and wait there. It would keep me off the street, and Charlie would have to show up eventually.

  Driving back into the Valley, I was feeling very conspicuous. If I’d had a new car like every other jerk in the world, I’d have blended right in, but the age and condition of mine made it stand out. Or at least that’s the way I felt. Christ, I was getting spooked. I tried to comfort myself by saying that you’re not paranoid if someone really is after you. What a comfort.

  Watkins lived in one of those crappy tract houses that look the same wherever they’re built. Six- or seven-room flimsies with all the character of a parking lot. The tract that Watkins lived in was especially bad. About a year after it was fully occupied, the houses started to disintegrate. Plaster cracked and fell off the walls. Electrical wiring burned out. Plumbing backed up and stopped working. Roofing material fell off and the roofs leaked. All the appliances and equipment were factory seconds with a life-span measured in months. And if all that was not enough, it turned out that the soil had some odd chemical composition that killed anything that was planted. A few varieties of weeds seemed to thrive, but that was all.

  Naturally, when all this came out there was a big scandal followed by an investigation. It revealed that at every possible opportunity the developer used substandard material and workmanship. If a nickel was to be saved, he saved it, and almost nothing in the houses met even the minimum standards of the building code. To get away with all this, there were big payoffs to inspectors up and down the line. The investigation resulted in enough indictments to wallpaper most of the houses in the tract. But by the time this happened, the developer and the others who had made all this possible were comfortably residing in Costa Rica. Meanwhile, nobody would buy any of the houses at any price, and payments still had to be met every month. Those that were smart abandoned their houses to the banks and finance companies, took their losses, and got out. Those that weren’t smart stayed. Obviously most people were still there. If they’d been smart, they wouldn’t have bought in the first place.

  Driving through the streets with the barren, weed-choked lots surrounding the faded, dilapidated houses, I felt I was on a deserted army base or one of those temporary villages that spring up around some big public-works project and are then left to rot when the project is completed. This village was still inhabited, but by people who wished that they were elsewhere. If for no other reason, I could see why Watkins’s wife left him. A sleeping bag in a swamp would be preferable.

  I passed the remains of a gopher that had unsuccessfully tried to cross the road, and slowed down to look for Watkins’s house. I could never remember if his was the phony Cape Cod or the phony Tudor. It was the phony Tudor, and it looked like I was in luck. His car was in the sagging garage.

  I parked, and as I walked up the pitted drive, I noticed that he was sitting in the car, like he was getting ready to go out. I waved and went over to him.

  He wasn’t going anywhere. He was sitting upright, held in place by his seat belt and shoulder harness. His head was drooping forward and his chin rested on his chest, as though he were looking at something on the seat next to him. At first I thought he was, and then I saw the two-inch hole in the top of his skull. I put my head through the window and looked up. A circle of dried blood and brains was stuck to the roof of the car, radiating around a bullet hole in the roof liner. His hand was beside him. It held his revolver.

  I went around to the passenger side. Being careful not to leave any prints, I opened the door. I saw that his jaw was hanging open, a slimy trickle of blood still oozing from the hole in the roof of his mouth. Not much doubt about what had happened, but there were some questions about why. And why had he been trying to contact me? To tell me what he was going to do? Possibly. Even though I could see Charlie offing himself, in view of everything else that was happening, it didn’t seem right.

  I carefully picked through the litter of rubbish that covered the car seat. Maps, old newspapers, candy wrappers, empty bags from fast food joints, all the kinds of stuff that remain from long hours on stakeouts. I finally found the note. He was sitting on half of it and his arm was covering the rest of it. I maneuvered it out from under him.

  Holy shit! It looked like it was Charlie’s writing, but very labored and awkward. The note was short: “Hunter got me involved in something. It was too dirty and I couldn’t take it anymore. This is the only way out. Tell Rosie I’m sorry.”

  Charlie didn’t commit suicide any more than Stubby was a hit-and-run victim or Maria died of natural causes. The first part of the note was total crap. I knew it, but the cops probably wouldn’t. Whoever killed Watkins not only rigged it to look like suicide, but fixed it to implicate me. If Maria’s death wasn’t enough, here was something else to tie me up.

  I also knew that Charlie fought it, but he was forced to do it. That’s what the last line meant, but I was the only one who would understand it. Rosie was a Saigon whore who Charlie had spent a lot of time with. One time he’d had it fixed up to meet her, but he’d gotten a last minute assignment. He’d tried hard to get out of it, but he had no choice. He asked me to tell Rosie he was sorry he couldn’t make it.

  It looked like Charlie might have been drugged and forced to write the note. He’d had no choice, but a part of him had held out, and he put in that last line just for me. Charlie had more spunk than I thought—not any more brains, but more spunk. So long, Charlie.

  I looked over the setup. Somebody was sure working hard, and it would have gone down fine, except I got lucky and got there before the body was found. Otherwise, I was supposed to have been picked up at my office. I would have been in custody when Watkins’s body and the incriminating note were found. And then I would really have been in for it.

  Without any hesitation I pocketed the note. That was against the law, but there was no point in being lucky if I left the damn thing lying around. That improved the situation, but not much. There might still be other stuff concerning me that I didn’t know about. I was being more and more isolated, made more and more vulnerable. I was dancing to somebody else’s tune, and I didn’t like the feeling, but I was not at all sure how to change the music.

  Although I would have liked to do a thorough search to see if I could get a line on what Watkins had been doing, I was getting nervous. There was some kind of timetable in operation, and there was probably only a short time before a “neighbor” reported the suicide. My being found at Watkins’s house would be even worse than having the note found.

  I thought I heard sirens. It might have been my imagination, but I couldn’t afford to wait and see.

  I quickly started going through Watkins’s pockets. There was nothing of interest in his wallet or his notebook. Odds and ends of garbage in his other pockets. The sirens were getting closer. In his outer left jacket pocket there was a crumpled ball of paper. Three rooms of furniture for $250— terms can be arranged. The same flyer that was stuck on my windshield when I went to Medco.

  Did it mean anything? Fuck if I knew. An army of rummies had probably plastered half the city with the things. Still, it was something.

  No time to look further. The sirens were definitely getting closer. I ran to my car. I drove away at a nice legal speed.

  TWENTY

  When I got close to my apartment, I had a hunch. I parked a few blocks away, and casually walked the rest of the distance. I turned the corner onto my block and quickly ducked behind some bushes. I saw that I was right. A patrol car with two cops in it was parked in front of my building.

  Shit. They didn’t waste any time. I knew I’d have to stay out of sight for a while, and I wanted to pick up some things first, but they coul
d see both entrances from where they were sitting. I thought that if they were distracted for even a moment, I could get up the driveway without being seen. I only had to cover about twenty feet, and then the side of the building would hide me. But the cops looked young and alert, and I couldn’t see how I would manage. I decided to wait a few minutes to see if anything developed.

  It did. Sandi or Mandi or whoever came walking by my bush. She was wearing cutoffs that were cut to reveal half her ass and a tiny halter top that halted nothing.

  I hissed at her. She looked around, puzzled, and when she saw me she squealed with delight and ran around to join me.

  Before I could say anything, she said, “Do you want to do it right here?” and started to pull down her shorts.

  Her shorts were around her knees and she was attacking my waistband by the time I restrained her. She looked disappointed, but when I told her I needed her help, she was quite willing. I explained that I wanted her to distract the two cops so I could get into my apartment without being seen. She said it sounded exciting, but she didn’t think she could do it. I looked at her. She still hadn’t pulled up her shorts. Fuck!

  “You won’t have any trouble,” I said, and told her what she should do.

  She went into the building and I saw the cops’ heads turn to follow her. I smiled. In a couple of minutes she came out carrying a beach towel and wearing the bathing suit she had had on when she invaded my bathroom the other day. Even from this distance she was pretty spectacular. Poor cops, they didn’t stand a chance.

  She walked by the cruiser nice and slow to catch their attention. She did. I started moving up, being careful to stay in the shadows as much as I could. With a great deal of movement and wiggling, she spread the towel on the skimpy front lawn and settled down on it on her belly. She untied the thin string that fastened the bikini top and let it drop. She then started twisting and turning around, trying to get into a comfortable position, seemingly unaware of the cops’ presence and of the fact that she kept revealing tantalizing glimpses of her bare breasts.