The Big Enchilada

daring and exotic by eating chop suey and some deep-fried crap in bright-pink sweet-and-sour sauce, the usual North American Cantonese garbage. I’d rather starve than eat that stuff. Somewhere along the line, though, I discovered that the cook really knew his Szechuan food and would fix me things that weren’t on the menu.
    I sat down at a table and sent the cockroaches scurrying for cover. They were large and obviously well fed. I shrugged. If the food was good enough, I didn’t mind competing with a few dozen insects for it. I figured I was more than their match.
    The waiter came over, giving me a big smile that showed a lot of gold. I told him to have the cook make me three dishes, whatever he felt like, just so it was good. If it wasn’t, I said, I’d see to it that he’d never wok again. The waiter looked at me blankly. Inscrutable.
    In a very short time the cook himself brought out the dishes. He was just over four feet tall and humpbacked. On his chin there was a mole with several three-inch-long hairs growing out of it which he lovingly pulled at from time to time. He looked like a refugee from an opium den, and was said to be the best Mah-Jongg player on the West Coast. He put the plates down, squawked “Hot! Hot! Hot!” like a malignant parrot, and went back to the kitchen chuckling to himself at some unknown joke.
    The food was good as ever. There was a dish with thinly sliced chicken, dried orange peels from Shanghai that cost $25 a kilo, and a big handful of dried hot chiles. You took a piece of chicken, a piece of orange peel, and a chile into your mouth at the same time arid let the flavors explode. There was a dish of matchstick beef and shredded carrots stir-fried with lots of crushed chiles. The sweetness of the carrots enhanced the hotness of the chiles, and the pieces of beef absorbed it all. The third dish was bean curd covered with a soupy ground meat sauce filled with fagara, the aromatic Szechuan peppercorn. Not bad, and a nice contrast in texture to the other dishes. I had three large bowls of rice and a couple of beers. It was all right.
    On my way into town the various flavors and the hotness of the chiles lingered in my mouth. My belly felt full and warm. I was ready for the third installment. After this I would wait for them to make their move.
    The door to the Black Knight Club was opened and I was admitted without comment. Bulldog I glared sullenly at me. Bulldog II stood at his shoulder and did the same.
    I looked them up and down. I fingered the lapel of Bulldog I’s jacket. Polyester.
    “Hmmm. Nice. Who’s your tailor?” I said. “I need a tuxedo for my performing chimpanzee, and this is just what I’m looking for.”
    I heard a growl in his throat. I shrugged and moved off.
    I stood in the entrance to the lounge. The night’s performance was getting under way. It was announced as “The Revolt of the Slaves.”
    Three immense black men clad only in loincloths, their bodies oiled to show off their incredible musculature, advanced toward a small blond girl wearing a frilly white hooped skirt. She looked like the same girl from the previous evening. She seemed to have survived the Spanish Inquisition okay. The black men grabbed her and began to prod and poke her with quizzical expressions on their faces, as though she were some species of strange animal.
    I felt a touch on my arm. It was Nicky Faro. He was looking terrible. His long body was stooped over, and there was a terrified expression at the back of his eyes. He drew me off to one side.
    “Jesus Christ, Hunter! What have you been doing?”
    “What’s going on?”
    “All hell is breaking loose. Everybody’s nervous. Lascar is jumping around like a spastic. He’s on the phone all the time. I try and find out what’s going on, and nobody says anything. They just look at me kind of funny.”
    I nodded. Things seemed to be progressing nicely.
    “Come on, Hunter.” Faro seemed near to cracking. “You said you would keep me out of it. I don’t like what’s happening. I’m getting pretty scared.”
    “That’s too bad, Faro.”
    “Hunter!” My name was almost a wail. “You can’t do this to me.”
    “Faro, you’re a stupid, slimy schmuck, trying to play a big boy’s game. I owe you nothing. I love to see punks like you go down the toilet.”
    “Hunter!” Panic.
    “But you’re lucky. I’m going to help you.”
    Relief.
    “Not because I think you’re worth saving—because you’re definitely