The Big Enchilada (A Sam Hunter Mystery Book 1)

by L. A. Morse

  I made it up the driveway and around the side of the building with no difficulty. Hell, I could’ve driven a tank up and the cops wouldn’t have noticed.

  My apartment seemed the same as when I had left it. The way things had been going, that was not so small a blessing.

  I flipped on my answering machine. Harold Ace, reporter, wanted me to call him. He didn’t sound too happy. Who did?

  I gathered up some clothes, some weapons, some ammo, and whatever else I thought I might need for a few days and threw the stuff into a canvas carryall. I could never remember if those instructions about how to pack for a trip said to put your guns under or on top of your clothes. I must ask the newspaper’s travel consultant about that.

  I looked around to see if there was anything else I should take, and the phone rang. I looked at it, trying to decide if I should answer it or not. I had turned off my machine, so that was no help. It rang some more. It might be the crooks or it might be the cops.

  I picked it up. It was both. It was Ratchitt.

  “Hunter, I’ve got some bad news for you.” He was gloating.

  “What’s that?”

  “Your good pal, Charlie Watkins. He couldn’t take it anymore. He killed himself.”

  It wasn’t possible for Ratchitt to have heard yet. That meant he knew. It could mean he did it. Stupid of him to call me. They were so confident of themselves that they were getting careless. They didn’t care what I knew or what I didn’t know.

  “How’d he do it?” I said.

  “Bullet in the mouth. Messy.”

  “But effective.”

  “Very.”

  “You wouldn’t have any idea why he did it, would you?”

  “How could I know?” Ratchitt laughed. He couldn’t even be bothered to put up a good act. “But I have a feeling some people might be asking you that.”

  “What would I know?”

  He laughed again. “Nothing, Hunter. Absolutely nothing. That’s what’s so funny “ He laughed some more and then continued. “People are getting real concerned about you, Hunter. Hear you’ve been depressed lately.”

  “Me? No. I’m not depressed. I take great interest in the many curious occurrences of life.”

  “No, Hunter. You’ve been depressed. Everything that’s been happening is taking its toll. It’s getting to be too much for you. You’d better watch it. You never know, but you might get one of those suicidal urges too, and before you change your mind, it’ll be too late.”

  “You really think that might happen?”

  “I’m afraid I do. But you know, a nice long rest away from all this stress and strain, away from the mysteries of life, might do you a world of good.”

  “As much good as, say, thirty years in San Quentin would do you?”

  His voice grew hard. “Some people just don’t know what’s in their best interests. Think about it, sucker.” He hung up.

  The anger came over me again. I drifted off for a second, thinking how much pleasure it would give me to bring Ratchitt down. But first things first.

  I looked out the corner of the window. I had told what’s-her-name to keep the cops busy for about ten minutes and then to work really hard because I’d be coming down. She played her part well. I heard her ask for some help applying her suntan oil, and both cops were out of the car in a flash. If they responded to their police calls that quickly, they’d have an enviable arrest record. They fought over the bottle of oil and then both set to work on her body like a pair of kneading machines in a bakery.

  As I strolled down the driveway, I noticed that the bikini bottom had become untied. Everybody involved seemed to be enjoying themselves. Ah, Hunter, you spread pleasure wherever you go.

  I reached my car and drove it to where I thought it wouldn’t be found. I caught a bus and got off at a car rental agency where I got myself a new, inconspicuous set of wheels. That took care of one problem.

  I rode along Ventura and pulled in at the Love Nest Adult Motel. The walls of the motel lobby were covered with centerfold pinups. From the number of magazines it took to accomplish that bit of decorating, it was obvious that someone was a lover of literature.

  In answer to my shout, the manager emerged from the rear. He was a scrawny, bald-headed little guy with only a couple of yellow teeth in his head and a bad squint. He had a three-day growth of beard that made his face look dirty. He wore a discolored sleeveless undershirt , and suspenders held up an overly large pair of pants that looked more like hip waders than anything else.

  He popped a breath mint into his mouth and pushed the register across to me. This seemed to be the favored accommodation of a lot of different members of the Smith family. Not wanting to break with tradition, I signed the same way.

  “How many hours you want the room for, Mr. Smith?”

  Amazing. He didn’t look at the register, but he knew my name just the same. I noticed he had a faint southern accent.

  “I might be here for a couple of days,”

  “Suit yourself. Most of the guests only stay a couple of hours, but maybe you got more going on. You want a regular or an X-rated one?”

  “Regular.”

  “The X-rated are real nice. Eight-foot water beds. Mirrors on three walls and the ceiling. Special video tapes. Giant sunken bathtubs. Real nice. Our guests have a lot of fun there. How about it?”

  “No. I’m alone.”

  “Alone?” He acted as if he’d never heard anything like it. Given the motel he ran, he probably hadn’t. “Alone? Then I got just the thing for you. Anna Mae, come here,” he called into the back. “I got a few guests who come here alone, just because of Anna Mae.”

  A girl came out of the back room. She was dressed in a transparent pink shortie nightgown and nothing else. Her body was so perfectly, completely voluptuous it was almost unreal. She looked to be eighteen, but the blank, vacant stare in her eyes told me her mental age was about six. She was clutching an old, ragged teddy bear. One of the doll’s legs was being squeezed between her thighs.

  “Look at her,” the manager wheezed. “This is my daughter, Anna Mae. Isn’t she something. Bet you’ve never seen anything like that. Now, Anna Mae ain’t very bright, and she don’t know many things, but she sure does know how to give and get pleasure. A regular pleasure machine, you might say. How about it? We’ll just charge it up to room service.”

  I told him I wasn’t interested, and he got suspicious.

  “Say, what’s the matter with you? You’re not planning to do anything funny are you? Can’t have any of that. We’ve got our reputation to uphold.”

  I almost asked him what he considered to be “funny,” but I couldn’t be bothered. I got my key and took my bag to my room.

  I called Harold Ace.

  “It’s no go, Sam.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The word came down this morning. They’re not interested.”

  “How can they not be interested? You’re a fucking newspaper. This is news.”

  “That’s what I said, but they think it’s a con, that it’s bullshit. They want no part of it.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “I think it went all the way up to the publisher. It looked so hot that everyone wanted higher approval. The publisher nixed it. Cold. I’m sorry.”

  “What’s the publisher’s name?”

  Ace told me. It sounded familiar. I got out the Black Knight’s membership list. There it was. I told that to Ace.

  “No shit! That son of a bitch! I’ll be damned!”

  He might have gone on like that indefinitely, but I cut him off. “So that’s it.”

  “Wait a second,” he said. “This is a great story. If you can get me solid proof, like you said, I’ll go private with this. There won’t be any money up front, but we’ll split whatever we get, and it could be a bundle. There might even be a book in this.”

  “Okay,” I said, “if I can get it together, I’ll get back to you.”

  It was a good idea, b
ut somehow I didn’t think it would come off. It all depended upon Faro, and whether they were on to him. He was all I had left.

  I dialed his number. I got one of those recordings saying the line was out of order.

  I didn’t like it. Lately, whenever I tried to reach someone and couldn’t, it meant just one thing.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I was right. I made the short drive into the hills to Faro’s place. Or rather where Faro’s place used to be. All that was there now was a pile of smouldering ashes. A couple of firemen were still around doing mop-up work, not that there was anything left to mop up.

  I asked one of the fireman what had happened. He told me it had burned down. Instead of putting his fire hose where it would do the most good, I remained cool and asked for some more information.

  “Looks like it started in the darkroom.” He clucked a few times like a mournful chicken. “Some people just don’t know how to take care of chemicals.”

  I clucked along with him. Some people don’t, but others sure do. I asked about survivors.

  “You gotta be kidding. Once the fire started, the whole place went up like a ball of paper. Whoosh. That was it. You see that box over there?” He pointed to a plastic container, a little bigger than a cubic foot in size. “We got what’s left of the occupant in that. Never had a chance.”

  Faro’s kind never do. They want a piece of the sky, but they always end up with a piece of dirt. I probably speeded Faro to his piece of dirt, but this was one death that didn’t bother me. He was scum, and if it hadn’t been me, it would have been somebody else. Or Faro would have done it on his own.

  What did bother me was that I was now left with nothing. Nothing tangible. Nothing to use to apply pressure. Nothing to go on. I couldn’t go to my office. I couldn’t go to my apartment. And I had nothing to give the cops to buy myself some room to move.

  Somebody’d had a busy day. Three up and three down. Everybody I talked to seemed to get their contracts canceled. Maybe I should get new cards printed up: Sam Hunter—Kiss of Death. I was left alone with only my smile and a worn-out line of patter which, along with a quarter, would get me a cup of coffee.

  ... Jesus Christ! I was really starting to get freaked. Faro and Stubby and Watkins and Maria. I was feeling responsible for them all, and that wasn’t right. Faro I didn’t care about. I might have helped prevent the deaths of Argyll and Watkins, but they never gave me the chance, and they supposedly knew what they were doing—whatever that was. It was Maria that was getting to me, and only Maria. She was on my head. Aw, fuck that shit. I didn’t kill her, but I was going to nail the assholes that did. Right! Fuck guilt and get moving, I told myself, and I believed it. I was still on the loose and that was enough.

  There was one avenue left that I hadn’t yet explored. Medco Pharmaceuticals. It looked like both Stubby and Watkins had been poking around there. The fact that they both bought it must mean they’d found something. Now I’d give it a try. It was either that or leave town. And I don’t run.

  Since I wasn’t about to go there during working hours, I had a lot of time to kill until it was late enough and dark enough to pay my visit. I picked up a bottle of gin and half a dozen chili dogs and went back to the motel.

  By the time I had finished the dogs—which weren’t at all bad—and washed them down with the better part of the gin, I was feeling more myself. I had a long shower, drew the shades to darken the room, and lay down on the bed. The air conditioner in the window made a lot of noise, but it worked, and I felt pretty comfortable.

  I must have fallen asleep because I was awakened by something moving next to me on the bed. It was Anna Mae.

  “Oh, goody,” she chirped happily when she saw me open my eyes. “Papa tell me to come and play with the nice man.”

  Good old Papa. I told her I didn’t want to play. Her eyes got all puffy, like she was about to cry.

  “Oh, please play. Please play with me. I like to play.”

  She grabbed both my hands and placed them on her breasts. Yes, she was completely naked, an impossible combination of mounds and curves and fleshy dimples. Her skin felt smooth as custard and as resilient as marshmallows. At my touch her nipples expanded and grew hard and hot, red diamonds drilling into the palms of my hands. Her breath came in quick gasps as she arched her back to press her breasts more completely into my grip.

  Suddenly she took one of my hands and placed it at the juncture of her legs. Immediately she was steaming and moist. She moved her hips up and down several times and tensed for orgasm. “Goody,” she said. Twice more she pushed herself into my fingers and tensed. “Goody. Goody,” she said.

  She gently took my hard penis in both her hands. “Now I play with you,” she said.

  I felt like the traveling salesman with the farmer’s daughter. Fuck it. Who cared?

  Some time during the course of the evening, I vaguely wondered what my room service charges would be. The thought passed.

  TWENTY-TWO

  It was about midnight when I approached the Medco building. I was tired, but I had that empty feeling I liked so much because it gave me a really hard edge. There was nothing left in me to get in the way. Everything was clear and clean and immediate.

  The first thing I noticed as I came up to the place was that lights were on in the ground level. Blackout curtains masked the windows high on the wall, but there was a tiny rim of light that showed in the darkness. Not enough to notice unless you were looking for something. Okay, somebody was home.

  I started to go around the building, looking for a way to get in. In an alley that ran along one side of the building, a giant black limousine was parked in such a way that it would not be seen from the street. Interesting.

  The limo was unlocked and I checked the registration. It was made out to a leasing agency. I made a note of the name and also the car’s license number in case I needed to check it out later.

  I went into the immense backseat area. It was big enough to hold a bridge table with room left over for kibitzers. I opened a walnut cabinet that was built into the back of the front seat. Along with a variety of heavy crystal glasses there was a bottle of very expensive single-malt Scotch and a bottle of fifty-year-old Cognac. There was a fancy humidor that held some large cigars. They were the same kind as the one that Ratchitt left on my floor. More and more interesting.

  The car revealed nothing else, but I had a pretty good idea who it belonged to.

  I continued around the building and found a door that looked promising. I had a ring full of skeleton keys, and I hoped one of them would work. The third one I tried opened the door as easily as if it had been made for it. No alarms. A quick move and I was inside. Christ! And people are amazed that burglary is the country’s biggest growth industry. They might just as well pile their belongings on the sidewalk for all takers.

  I was in a side corridor, and I started moving in the direction where I saw the light. At the end of another corridor, at the side of the building where I thought the light was, there was a set of double doors. The sign on them said Research Lab—Authorized Personnel Only. Light showed under the doors, and a soft push told me they were locked. Just as well. What was I going to do, walk in there and ask directions to Hollywood and Vine?

  When I had been in the building the time before, I had noticed that the office walls were not structural. Each floor was simply a large area, completely open except for supporting columns. Any differentiation of space was achieved through the use of partitions. It’s not unusual for interior partitions not to reach the ceiling, and I was hoping that was the case here.

  I went back down the corridor. Another key easily opened the first door I came to. It was a kind of storeroom that didn’t seem to be in use. I got lucky. The ceiling was ten feet and the interior partitions were about a foot short. Down at the far end of the storeroom, I saw light coming through the gap.

  I was careful not to make a sound as I carried a couple of boxes over to the wall. These gave me the height I n
eeded to see into the next room. I placed the boxes next to a pillar so that I would be shielded. I stood up.

  The lab was about forty feet by thirty. Work benches went around the outside of the room, and several tables took up the center of it. Some equipment was scattered around at various places, but even from my position I could see that it hadn’t been used for a long time.

  The far corner of the room was the source of the light, provided by several high intensity lamps. Here there was more equipment set up, and it was in use. Three men in lab coats were working. I had seen enough of it in Saigon to guess that the white powder the men were processing was heroin. Off to one side, looking like the ogre in a dark fairy tale, stood the bulk of Mountain Cyclone.

  All of a sudden, a lot of things made a lot of sense.

  I didn’t need to see anymore. I got down from my perch. I crossed to the door. I listened to make sure no one was in the corridor outside, went out, and left through the door I’d come in. I looked at my watch. Not even five minutes had gone by, and most of the pieces had fallen into place.

  I went to move my car. I wanted it close by when the limo started to move. If I could follow it home, that would just about complete the puzzle.

  I positioned myself where I could watch the car without being seen, and waited.

  No wonder people got upset when I started to look at Acker. And if Stubby and Watkins had discovered the secret, I wasn’t surprised that they were killed. A heroin plant in the middle of L.A. was an operation that was worth protecting at virtually any price.

  I shook my head. It was a beautiful setup, and you couldn’t help but admire it. The French connection was gone, or at least severely curtailed. With the end of the Viet Nam war, Southeast Asian supplies were getting harder to come by. Even in Mexico, things were starting to clamp down, and anyway, Mexican brown was at best considered to be second-class goods.