The Big Enchilada

scheme, they’d always run up against a blank wall.
    The idea of using an established pharmaceutical supplier for the processing plant was so beautiful it was almost laughable. You might look for a backroom kitchen somewhere in the desert or the mountains, but you’d never look at a well-known drug company in the city. Not only that, but Medco could easily and legally obtain all the supplies of morphine they wanted. A simple chemical process converted the morphine into H., and because they were using good morphine, they would end up with a dynamite product. It wouldn’t be difficult to juggle the company’s accounts and records to make a pretty sizeable quantity of morphine disappear. Acker, having been general manager, would know how to do that.
    By the same token, a lot of the profits from the heroin could be funneled through Medco’s legitimate books—a slightly bigger sale here, a nonexistent order there, and pretty soon you’ve got the means to justify a considerable improvement in life-style; whatever is not declared that way is gravy, and the existence of that extra money would not be very obvious. As long as Medco’s books looked good and they paid their taxes like a good corporate citizen, nobody would look very closely at them. If somebody did get curious, it would be a lengthy, difficult process to discover what was wrong, and the participants could be clear long before the whistle was blown.
    Given all that, it was hardly surprising that things at the factory felt funny. The whole place was just a front, and the legitimate business wasn’t enough to justify their existence.
    If my reasoning was right, and I was sure it was, it was easy to see how the whole thing had come about. Through the Black Knight Club, Domingo had gotten something on Acker. I had no idea what it could be, but it had to be something pretty heavy because Acker didn’t seem to be the type to be bothered by anything comparatively mild. In any event, pressure was applied, and they came up with this scheme. I didn’t know for sure, but Acker must have been pretty agreeable to it, since he’d end up with more money than he could ever hope to get any other way.
    There had been the problem of the proposed take-over, but that was easy to deal with. Sweet caved in without a struggle. It only remained to give Acker the money to buy out the owner, and the boys had their private chemical company to do with as they pleased, complete with protection, happily provided by their old pal detective Ratchitt. Nice, nice, nice.
    It all held together, but, after thinking it through, I was still bothered by the fact that they reacted so strongly to my appearance on the scene. They were pretty secure, and it was unlikely I would have come upon the Medco setup unless I had been pushed into it. Even the coincidence of my poking around Venus Films asking about Linda Perdue didn’t seem enough to account for their overreaction. Of course it could be that they were really stupid, but they couldn’t have come up with this beautiful operation if they were that dumb. No, there were some things I didn’t know.... Even beyond the identity of Domingo.
    Clarissa Acker’s face popped into my head, and I began to wonder what all this would mean to her. Not anything good, that was for sure. She had no involvement in her husband’s dirt, but she would be affected just the same. Badly.
    Shit. What was happening to me? Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have given it a thought—I’d just let things fall where they would. And they were going to fall. Hard. Too much had gone on, and I was owed too much. I didn’t have any choice. I had to take it all the way, no matter what, no matter who got buried. The damn thing was, I knew she would understand that, even if she was one of those who got buried. Well, I’d just have to try to pull her out. “How” was another of those things I didn’t know.
    Shit.
    My deliberations were cut short by the appearance of Mountain around the corner of the building. He was carrying a couple of shopping bags, and they didn’t contain his groceries.
    He put the parcels in the back seat of the car and squeezed into the space behind the wheel like a giant hand going into a glove that’s too small.
    The limo moved out, a silent black shadow.
    After a pause, I fell in behind.

TWENTY-THREE

    It wasn’t hard to follow the limousine. It was the biggest thing this side of the yacht harbor, and I was able to keep it in sight from a couple of