The Big Enchilada

me.
    “Sir,” I hissed back, “if you do I will shove it up your tight little asshole.”
    “Well, really—”
    “Now, move aside, you greasy toad, or I will pick you up and throw you into the middle of the buffet table.”
    I had spotted Sweet over at one side, walked across to him, and introduced myself. He looked the same as he did in his pictures except a little more drawn around the eyes, and he didn’t seem to be enjoying himself nearly as much.
    Bela came hurrying over to the table.
    “Is everything all right, Mr. Sweet?”
    “Yes, André,” he said, not too sure if it was.
    André asked if we wished drinks. Sweet ordered a Scotch. I asked for a lot of gin in a tall glass with a little ice. André shook his head as if to say he should have known. He handed us leather-covered menus that were nearly as large as the table and as thick as the telephone book for a medium-sized town. André asked if we wished to order now or later. Sweet said the abalone was excellent and we both said we’d have that. André looked pleased to leave.
    I said, “If that guy’s an André, my name’s Chou En-lai.” After that, we both sat in silence. Sweet tapped his fork on the table.
    The drinks arrived. Sweet looked relieved, drank his in one gulp, and signaled he wanted another. I tasted my gin. It was cheap and might have been watered. More silence.
    The food came. Sweet seemed happy for the diversion and attacked with enthusiasm. The abalone was frozen, tough, and badly prepared. I’d had much better at the shack next to the Santa Monica pier. We ate in silence. Halfway through the meal, André came over and asked Sweet how everything was.
    “Fine as ever, André.”
    André smiled and bowed slightly forward.
    “The gin is cheap and the food’s lousy,” I said.
    André’s smile froze. He pulled himself erect.
    “The gin is the finest imported English gin,” he said.
    “You may use imported English bottles,” I said, “but the stuff inside is the finest domestic cat piss.”
    André sputtered for a minute and then hurried away.
    Sweet looked pained. “That wasn’t necessary, you know. I frequently eat here.”
    “That’s one of your lesser problems.” Sweet cringed as I said that. I looked at him steadily. “Look, Sweet, you may not believe it, but I’m not here to fuck you over. I came on hard because I wanted to get your attention, and that seemed to be the easiest way to do it. I’m a private investigator, and the Black Knight seems to figure in a case I’m working on, but I can’t get much information about it. That’s where I want your help. In return, I may be able to do something for you. I don’t know yet, but we’ll see how things turn out.”
    He hesitated. “How do I know I can trust you?”
    “You don’t, but what do you have to lose?”
    He thought about that for a minute and shrugged helplessly.
    “You’re being blackmailed?”
    “Yes. I thought you knew that.”
    “I assumed it. I didn’t know for sure. How can they blackmail you? I know what they’ve got on you, but that seems to be pretty mild stuff these days when nearly anything is tolerated.”
    “I wish that was the case, but I’m pretty vulnerable. You see, the people who run Megaplex are Mormon and very conservative. They’d prefer that their top executives didn’t even smoke or drink, but they know that’s unrealistic, and so those ‘vices’ are tolerated. They’d have no such tolerance for my... uh... habits.” He paused and I nodded. “I also have a wife and family whom I love very much. They have no idea that I like... certain kinds of things... and I know it would destroy them and our relationship. I don’t want that to happen.”
    “So how much are you paying out?”
    “That’s the funny thing. I’m not. Well, I am, kind of, but basically I’m not.”
    This started to get confusing, so I had Sweet explain it from the beginning. After a lot of questioning from me, and a lot of digressions for self-pity and self-justification from him, I finally got most of the story.
    Sweet’s obsession for discipline dated from the years he spent at an English boarding school in the early ’50s when his father was working in London. Homosexuality among the students was traditional at the school, and mildly sadistic forms of punishment and abuse were among the main diversions. For years after Sweet returned to the States, those experiences were forgotten, but under the pressures of work and family life,