The Big Enchilada

of the service, lady.”
    She laughed, a rich, throaty sound. “Hunter, you really are a creep.”
    I decided that she was a dangerous woman. At least for me. I got into my clothes.
    “You have to go?” she said.
    “Yeah.”
    “Okay.”
    Dangerous.
    As I left the house, I got the feeling that it was very precariously placed. It wouldn’t take much to push it off the hill, down to the hot, dirty, common level of the rest of the city.
    And I wondered if Clarissa Acker would go over with it.

FOUR

    I had some time to kill before I could pay my next visit, and there were a couple of phone calls I wanted to make, so I drove back downtown to my office.
    The sun was starting to get low. This was always the hottest time, when the accumulated sweat of the day seemed to hang in the air and form an almost visible haze. I didn’t understand it. It used to be desert here, but it seemed to be getting increasingly humid. Probably due to all of the swimming pools. Put together, all the pools must add up to more inland water than the largest lake in the world, and the evaporated moisture couldn’t get past the constant level of smog that hung at 2000 feet. This was getting to be a shitty place to live, and I’d go somewhere else if I thought there was any place better.
    After inching through the perpetual traffic jam, I finally arrived at the old brick building where my office was located. It had never been a very classy place. In the last twenty years the area had gone badly downhill and was now a slippery step above skid row. The owners of the building had only made whatever repairs were necessary to keep the place from falling down, but the rent was cheap and the location suited m y purposes. At one time I had considered getting a better office, but I couldn’t think why I should. I didn’t need to impress anybody. If my clients needed me, they needed me, and if they didn’t like my office, they could go to some fancy ass in Beverly Hills who wouldn’t touch a job that clashed with his pretty decor. Fuck ’em. I was selling my guts and my brains, not my office.
    The elevator only worked part of the time, and I walked up the three flights of stairs. I shared the floor with the Elegante School of Modeling, which promised dreams of high-fashion glory to starry eyed girls fresh off buses from the midwest and Chiquitas who couldn’t speak any English, and gave them the chance to staff a cheap call-girl service, twenty-five dollars a trick, they keep half. The other office on the floor was the Jiffy Music Publishing Company. In four years I had never seen anyone go in or out, though occasionally a light showed in the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor.
    My name was on the door, so I guessed that I was still in business. The door was locked. Maria must have gone home, or wherever it was she went when she left the office. I went in and turned on the lights. I walked through the coat closet where Maria had her desk and that served as a waiting room, into my office. There was my desk upside down and cracked in the center of the room.
    I didn’t keep anything of importance in my desk except for a couple boxes of bullets, and I pulled these out of the wreckage. The telephone had been flipped off the desk, but it was still working.
    I got my bottle of gin out of the filing cabinet. It was next to my .357 magnum in its holster, and I thought it might be a good idea to start wearing it. If I met the brother of Godzilla again—and I fully intended to—it would serve as an equalizer. Even that monster would find it tough to function with a hole in him the size of a baseball. The gun could probably take out an elephant, but I figured if I had to shoot, I didn’t want to be lobbing marshmallows.
    I found a glass that didn’t look too dirty, and filled it halfway with the gin. I took a big swallow, felt it burn as it went down, and poured some more in the glass to replace what I had drunk.
    I sat in my chair, put my feet up on the windowsill, lit a cigarette, and leaned back. I grabbed the telephone cord and pulled the phone over to me. I dialed the number for Ellis Maycroft of Spode, Maycroft and Burbary, Stock Brokerage, not really expecting to find him there since it was after working hours. I was surprised when Maycroft himself answered.
    “Maycroft, this is Sam Hunter. What are you doing there so late, doctoring accounts again?”
    He gave an uneasy laugh.
    “Just finishing some work that had to be done. I