The Big Enchilada

he began acting strange—saying things I didn’t understand. I thought he was having a breakdown. He was never a very warm man, but he got even colder. I wanted to help, because I still cared for him and for our relationship, but he wouldn’t let me, wouldn’t let me near him. And it just kept getting worse, until three or four years ago he closed up completely. Never said a word, just looked at me with cold contempt. I’ve thought about it a lot since, and I honestly don’t think it was my fault. I guess that was when I really started to hate him, the bastard. And I’m sure he hated me as well.”
    “Then why didn’t you get a divorce? You asked, didn’t you?”
    “Of course I asked. He would just stare at me for a long time and then say .things like ‘It is forbidden’—like he was making a pronouncement. Shit, he isn’t even Catholic. At those times I felt like shooting the son of a bitch. It scared me, Hunter.”
    “So why didn’t you leave? Just leave. You could’ve.”
    “What, and give him that satisfaction? No way.”
    I looked at her and she shrugged.
    “Hey, Hunter, I didn’t say it was smart. Just that that’s the way I felt—feel. You want rationality, talk to a computer. But I want out now. I want to go, but I want him to know it. I want him to hurt.” She gave me a crooked smile and shrugged her shoulders again. “So I’m a vindictive bitch? I admit it. But he owes me.”
    “There’s not necessarily anything wrong with revenge,” I said, thinking of things she couldn’t know about. “But it can be hard. You can hurt yourself almost as much.”
    She looked at me for a long time, her face serious. “Yeah, I guess you’d know about that, wouldn’t you? I think I hired the right investigator.”
    That was a tough lady. Maybe a little crazy, but that was okay, too.
    “Let’s go on,” I said. “Three or four years ago he closed up. What caused it? What was he doing?”
    “I don’t know, but whatever it was, it took a lot of money.” “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, we never had all that much, but we were fairly comfortable. Not Bel Air comfortable, if this is comfortable,” she said, waving her arm at the expanse of living room, “but okay. And then for a while there seemed to be no money. His job was good, but he was spending it somewhere, and spending a lot of it. I never found out where it went.”
    “Weren’t you curious?”
    “Maybe I should have been more curious. Maybe it would have made a difference, but I couldn’t get anything out of him about anything, and I got tired of trying after a while. And besides, money was never that big a thing with me, not like it is with my husband. He gets off on all this Bel Air shit, like he was some feudal lord.”
    “Okay. What happened next?”
    “Well, a couple of years ago, Medco was going to be taken over by some big corporation—Megaplex, I think it was. One of the few things my husband said to me was that he didn’t know what would happen when the company was sold. He thought he’d probably lose his job. He was only managing director, and he figured he wouldn’t be kept on. He seemed very concerned about this, and then his mood changed. He got very happy—almost elated—like he’d had some great experience, only he wouldn’t tell me what, just got that sly, mysterious look of his, the shit. And then one day he comes m and tells me he bought Medco—that he’s the new owner.” “Weren’t you surprised at this?”
    “I guess I should have been, but, again, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of showing it.”
    “Where’d he get the money?”
    “I have no idea, but we soon had a lot of it, and I became your typical Bel Air matron, dreaming of balling her gardener... and maybe her private eye,”
    She winked again with that deadpan expression of hers. The invitation couldn’t be clearer, but I wasn’t quite ready to accept. Did she look just a little bit annoyed as I went on?
    “So your husband starts acting strange. He spends a lot of money somewhere. He acts stranger. He’s going to lose his job. Something happens and suddenly he owns Medco Pharmaceuticals. He makes a go of it, and there’s a lot of money and a house in Bel Air and everything else. Interesting sequence.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Just that. Interesting,”
    “You think there’s something fishy going on with the factory?”
    “I don’t know yet,” I said. I noticed she was getting a speculative look in her