The Big Enchilada

and his brown, wrinkled skin made his head look like it was a dried up apple. He was wearing a three-piece plaid suit, but each of the pieces was a different color and pattern, and they were all so large and hung so loosely on his shrunken frame that it was difficult to believe there was a body within. His polka dot shirt and striped tie complemented the rest of his outfit, giving him the look of a demented race track tout. But appearances were deceiving, and Stubby was still tough and fast and had a great nose for things that weren’t as they should be.
    Stubby’s nose, however, was not very sensitive to his own distinctive scent. He believed baths sapped your body’s vitality, and consequently he took only about one a year, whether he needed it or not.
    Stubby looked up from his paper and an expression of amazement crossed his face, as though my presence was totally unexpected. This was just Stubby’s way, and if you had gone to the john and come back a minute later, he would have greeted you with the same look of surprise.
    I sat down opposite him, tilted my chair back in an effort to stay as far downwind from him as I could manage, and waited.
    Stubby thought for a while before speaking.
    “Hot enough for you?” he said.
    I waited.
    “You know, it’s not the heat but the humidity,” he said, as though that was an original idea.
    I waited.
    “It’s this damn smog. It keeps all the moisture in,” he said.
    I waited. It was almost over.
    “This place used to have a nice climate, but not any more.” He shook his head disgustedly and spat with a loud ping into the brass spittoon next to his chair.
    This was Stubby’s standard conversational opening, with slight variations depending on the season. Someone once told me this was because Stubby originally came from Canada, where you couldn’t talk about anything else until you had taken care of the weather, but I didn’t know one way or the other.
    Somebody dropped a beer down next to me, and I drank it and had a smoke as I looked around the pool hall, waiting for Stubby to get around to whatever it was he wanted.
    Like everywhere else in this heat, business at Jack’s was slow and there were only a few customers. A pair of hookers who were long past their prime—if they ever had a prime— were draped over another table, looking as though they were hoping they wouldn’t have any clients until about autumn. Considering their appearance, I thought they might get their wish.
    At one of the front pool tables a couple of guys were finalizing arrangements for a game. I could see that a little one-armed black man was pretending to let himself be hustled by some dude. The black man was called One Arm Shifty, and the dude was obviously a stranger because no one around here would ever shoot pool for money with Shifty. But the mark must have thought a game with a one-armed man was a pretty good bet. The mark broke and then Shifty went to work. It took him about nine shots to clear the table. The balls were racked up, another nine shots by Shifty, and the balls were racked and cleared for the third time. The dude watched with growing disbelief and anger as Shifty hopped around the table, contorting himself into strange positions, using his nose for a bridge, and never missing a shot.
    After the third rack, Shifty held out his one hand to be paid. The dude refused and Shifty complained to Jack. The big woman reached under the counter, pulled out a Maori war club that looked like an intricately carved cricket bat, and lumbered toward the dude shaking her weapon. The dude took one look at her, quickly paid up, and ran out the door.
    A loud hawking noise followed by another ping in the spittoon told me that Stubby was about ready to start talking.
    “Say, Sam, I got something that might interest you.”
    I nodded, and Stubby chewed his gums a bit, like he .was tr ying to find the right words in the corner of his mouth.
    “You know somebody named Acker?”
    “Male or female?”
    “Male. Runs some kind of drug company.”
    “I’m working for his wife.” Only when Stubby mentioned the name did I realize that Clarissa Acker had been nestling at the back of my brain all day. I wasn’t sure I liked the feeling. “She’s interested in his activities,” I said.
    Stubby shook his head. “Yeah, so I heard.”
    “Where?”
    “From the party in question—Acker, male.”
    I must have showed my surprise, because Stubby’s apple-head bobbed vigorously.
    “Yeah, I