The Big Enchilada

ceiling. Special video tapes. Giant sunken bathtubs. Real nice. Our guests have a lot of fun there. How about it?”
    “No. I’m alone.”
    “Alone?” He acted as if he’d never heard anything like it. Given the motel he ran, he probably hadn’t. “Alone? Then I got just the thing for you. Anna Mae, come here,” he called into the back. “I got a few guests who come here alone, just because of Anna Mae.”
    A girl came out of the back room. She was dressed in a transparent pink shortie nightgown and nothing else. Her body was so perfectly, completely voluptuous it was almost unreal. She looked to be eighteen, but the blank, vacant stare in her eyes told me her mental age was about six. She was clutching an old, ragged teddy bear. One of the doll’s legs was being squeezed between her thighs.
    “Look at her,” the manager wheezed. “This is my daughter, Anna Mae. Isn’t she something. Bet you’ve never seen anything like that. Now, Anna Mae ain’t very bright, and she don’t know many things, but she sure does know how to give and get pleasure. A regular pleasure machine, you might say. How about it? We’ll just charge it up to room service.”
    I told him I wasn’t interested, and he got suspicious.
    “Say, what’s the matter with you? You’re not planning to do anything funny are you? Can’t have any of that. We’ve got our reputation to uphold.”
    I almost asked him what he considered to be “funny,” but I couldn’t be bothered. I got my key and took my bag to my room.
    I called Harold Ace.
    “It’s no go, Sam.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The word came down this morning. They’re not interested.”
    “How can they not be interested? You’re a fucking newspaper. This is news.”
    “That’s what I said, but they think it’s a con, that it’s bullshit. They want no part of it.”
    “Who’s they?”
    “I think it went all the way up to the publisher. It looked so hot that everyone wanted higher approval. The publisher nixed it. Cold. I’m sorry.”
    “What’s the publisher’s name?”
    Ace told me. It sounded familiar. I got out the Black Knight’s membership list. There it was. I told that to Ace. “No shit! That son of a bitch! I’ll be damned!”
    He might have gone on like that indefinitely, but I cut him off. “So that’s it.”
    “Wait a second,” he said. “This is a great story. If you can get me solid proof, like you said, I’ll go private with this. There won’t be any money up front, but we’ll split whatever we get, and it could be a bundle. There might even be a book in this.”
    “Okay,” I said, “if I can get it together, I’ll get back to you.”
    It was a good idea, but somehow I didn’t think it would come off. It all depended upon Faro, and whether they were on to him. He was all I had left.
    I dialed his number. I got one of those recordings saying the line was out of order.
    I didn’t like it. Lately, whenever I tried to reach someone and couldn’t, it meant just one thing.

TWENTY-ONE

    I was right. I made the short drive into the hills to Faro’s place. Or rather where Faro’s place used to be. All that was there now was a pile of smouldering ashes. A couple of firemen were still around doing mop-up work, not that there was anything left to mop up.
    I asked one of the fireman what had happened. He told me it had burned down. Instead of putting his fire hose where it would do the most good, I remained cool and asked for some more information.
    “Looks like it started in the darkroom.” He clucked a few times like a mournful chicken. “Some people just don’t know how to take care of chemicals.”
    I clucked along with him. Some people don’t, but others sure do. I asked about survivors.
    “You gotta be kidding. Once the fire started, the whole place went up like a ball of paper. Whoosh. That was it. You see that box over there?” He pointed to a plastic container, a little bigger than a cubic foot in size. “We got what’s left of the occupant in that. Never had a chance.”
    Faro’s kind never do. They want a piece of the sky, but they always end up with a piece of dirt. I probably speeded Faro to his piece of dirt, but this was one death that didn’t bother me. He was scum, and if it hadn’t been me, it would have been somebody else. Or Faro would have done it on his own.
    What did bother me was that I was now left with nothing. Nothing tangible. Nothing to use to apply pressure. Nothing to go on. I couldn’t go