The Big Enchilada

front seat. Along with a variety of heavy crystal glasses there was a bottle of very expensive single-malt Scotch and a bottle of fifty-year-old Cognac. There was a fancy humidor that held some large cigars. They were the same kind as the one that Ratchitt left on my floor. More and more interesting.
    The car revealed nothing else, but I had a pretty good idea who it belonged to.
    I continued around the building and found a door that looked promising. I had a ring full of skeleton keys, and I hoped one of them would work. The third one I tried opened the door as easily as if it had been made for it. No alarms. A quick move and I was inside. Christ! And people are amazed that burglary is the country’s biggest growth industry. They might just as well pile their belongings on the sidewalk for all takers.
    I was in a side corridor, and I started moving in the direction where I saw the light. At the end of another corridor, at the side of the building where I thought the light was, there was a set of double doors. The sign on them said Research Lab—Authorized Personnel Only. Light showed under the doors, and a soft push told me they were locked. Just as well. What was I going to do, walk in there and ask directions to Hollywood and Vine?
    When I had been in the building the time before, I had noticed that the office walls were not structural. Each floor was simply a large area, completely open except for supporting columns. Any differentiation of space was achieved through the use of partitions. It’s not unusual for interior partitions not to reach the ceiling, and I was hoping that was the case here.
    I went back down the corridor. Another key easily opened the first door I came to. It was a kind of storeroom that didn’t seem to be in use. I got lucky. The ceiling was ten feet and the interior partitions were about a foot short. Down at the far end of the storeroom, I saw light coming through the gap.
    I was careful not to make a sound as I carried a couple of boxes over to the wall. These gave me the height I needed to see into the next room. I placed the boxes next to a pillar so that I would be shielded. I stood up.
    The lab was about forty feet by thirty. Work benches went around the outside of the room, and several tables took up the center of it. Some equipment was scattered around at various places, but even from my position I could see that it hadn’t been used for a long time.
    The far corner of the room was the source of the light, provided by several high intensity lamps. Here there was more equipment set up, and it was in use. Three men in lab coats were working. I had seen enough of it in Saigon to guess that the white powder the men were processing was heroin. Off to one side, looking like the ogre in a dark fairy tale, stood the bulk of Mountain Cyclone.
    All of a sudden, a lot of things made a lot of sense.
    I didn’t need to see anymore. I got down from my perch. I crossed to the door. I listened to make sure no one was in the corridor outside, went out, and left through the door I’d come in. I looked at my watch. Not even five minutes had gone by, and most of the pieces had fallen into place.
    I went to move my car. I wanted it close by when the limo started to move. If I could follow it home, that would just about complete the puzzle.
    I positioned myself where I could watch the car without being seen, and waited.
    No wonder people got upset when I started to look at Acker. And if Stubby and Watkins had discovered the secret, I wasn’t surprised that they were killed. A heroin plant in the middle of L. A. was an operation that was worth protecting at virtually any price.
    I shook my head. It was a beautiful setup, and you couldn’t help but admire it. The French connection was gone, or at least severely curtailed. With the end of the Viet Nam war, Southeast Asian supplies were getting harder to come by. Even in Mexico, things were starting to clamp down, and anyway, Mexican brown was at best considered to be second-class goods.
    The problem with heroin is never the manufacture or distribution of it, but its importation. That’s the weakest, most vulnerable part of the chain, and the place the authorities attack the hardest and where they have their greatest successes. The scheme in effect at Medco entirely eliminated that link, and it was no wonder Watkins and his Narco buddies were having such a hard time getting a line on it. Even if they managed to crack part of the distribution