The Big Enchilada

me from eyes that were nearly swollen shut.
    “You’re fucking crazy, man,” he said weakly in that high voice that sounded like a recording played at too fast a speed.
    I looked down at him. I shook my head. I didn’t know why everybody felt they had to take the hard route today. Maybe it was the heat.

NINE

    I was feeling a little grubby after my exertions. Since my office was on the way to my meeting with Stubby, I decided to stop off there, wash up, and put on a clean shirt. On the way I thought about the fact that Mountain had once worked at the Black Knight Club. I didn’t think a lot about it because it wasn’t very much to consider. It was suggestive, but of what I didn’t know. If I kept pushing, I was sure it would reveal itself.
    The cops were in the process of hauling away a car from the tow-away zone in front of my building, so I hung back and pulled in as they were leaving. They gave me a dirty look through their rear window. Fuck ’em.
    There was still a body sprawled across the entranceway, but it was a different one. Somebody had stolen the son of a bitch’s shoes. It he wasn’t careful, something was going to come along and eat his feet.
    The elevator seemed to be “in oder” again, so I rode it, clanking and grinding, up to my floor. The door was locked, so Maria must have gone home. There was a note that Charlie Watkins had called. Also someone selling life insurance. Something about that struck me as being funny in a not very pleasant way.
    I’ve got an old stained sink in a closet in my office that occasionally spits rust-colored water. After a noise like the starting line at Indianapolis, some stuff came trickling out. I took off my shirt, noting I was going to have a nice bruise where Cueball had hit me, and sponged down. The water was never hot or cold, always unpleasantly tepid no matter the weather, but it served to wash off the sweat and dirt even if it didn’t refresh.
    I stayed stripped to let the air dry me as I poured a tumbler of gin. I took half of it in a swallow, lit a cigarette and sat down, letting the gin relax me and ease the throbbing of the bruise. I sipped at the rest of the drink, thinking of nothing in particular, or maybe about life insurance. I tried to call Watkins at the station but nobody knew where he was. I gathered that people were looking for him at that end as well. I found a clean shirt in the file cabinet, put it on, and went downstairs. Almost as soon as I went outside, the shirt started to cling to me, and my thoughts skipped to a breezy Mexican beach.
    My car was still there, but a mongrel dog was eying it speculatively. My approach made him reconsider. I eased into the sluggish stream of traffic just as the police tow truck pulled up behind me. I waved at them and headed the short distance across town.
    My neighborhood was not so swell, but there was a steady block by block deterioration as I proceeded. The area where Stubby hung out was undecided whether it was Chicano, black, or down-and-out white. The only thing it was sure of was that it was dirt poor and getting poorer. Everything and everyone there had a tentative quality, always looking nervously over their shoulder for the cops or the immigration or the flood of urban renewal that would one day sweep over them and wash them all away.
    I parked the car and gave a kid who was standing around two bits to make sure no one took anything other than what was easily removable. He pledged eternal loyalty, or something to that effect.
    Stubby Argyll’s “office” was a table at the rear of Jack’s Pool Palace. He had used these facilities for longer than anyone could remember, and his tenancy had seen an endless series of Jack’s come and go. He gave the proprietor a few bucks a month, and for that he got his table, a small closet in which to keep his stuff, and his own telephone line. Jack answered the phone when Stubby was out and took messages, ‘he arrangement seemed to work pretty well, and none of the Parties concerned had ever seen any reason to change it.
    The current Jack was a large Polynesian woman who looked up from her copy of Ms. and gave me a sour nod as I talked to the back. Stubby was at his table, looking over yesterday’s racing form, trying to figure out what had gone wrong.
    Stubby was a little scrawny guy who looked about 150-years-old, and not an especially well-preserved 150. His face was all nose and chin that nearly met somewhere in front of his toothless mouth,