The Big Enchilada

blocks back.
    Mountain made a lot of detours and circular maneuvers to see if there was a tail on, but I anticipated his moves and was so far behind anyway that he never picked me up. Finally he settled down and continued in a fairly straight line. He was heading toward Beverly Hills.
    He left Sunset and turned up into the hills. A couple of more turns and he was onto one of the pricier streets. Suddenly I realized I knew where he was heading, and I knew what it was about Domingo that had been scratching away at the back of my skull.
    When I had been staking out George Lansing’s house to see what his idiot son was up to, I spent a lot of hours sitting in my car. This disturbed some of the residents and the cops came around to check me out. They would have liked to roust me, but there was nothing they could do. Just to make things look better, I moved around a bit—parking up the hill one day, down it the next. I spent two days in front of an elegant house that was three up from Lansing’s. There was nothing special about the place, but there was a small ivy-covered sign at the bottom of the drive. I had just remembered that the sign said Casa Domingo.
    It was fucking incredible. No, on second thought, it wasn’t. I had stopped being surprised by anything a long time before. Now I knew what had started it all. In combination with everything else, my spending two days in front of his house had got him pretty nervous. He didn’t know I was watching a different house and that the cops were trying to chase me away. What he thought he saw was cause for alarm... and for action.
    I didn’t need to follow the limo any more. I turned off at the first opportunity and raced up a street that ran roughly parallel to the one where Domingo lived. From the time I spent on the Lansing case, I knew the-neighborhood pretty well, and I knew how to get into the backyard from the next street over. I figured it was better to approach the house that way than from the front.
    I studied the houses I was going past and parked in front of the one I thought was likeliest. It was completely dark, so I didn’t have to worry about being seen and having some half-wit hero defend his household by firing a shotgun into the night.
    I went up the driveway and into the backyard. I skirted the swimming pool built in the shape of a giant star—very classy—and made it to the rear fence. I hoisted myself up and looked around. I could just see Lansing’s house from where I was, and counted three. Dead on. I was looking into the backyard of Casa Domingo.
    As I was letting myself over the fence, I saw the lights come on in the big room that looked out on the rear gardens. The drapes were open and it was like I was looking at a brightly illuminated stage. I moved as close as I could safely go and hid myself behind a large clump of spiky desert plants.
    As soon as I was in place, Mountain trundled into the room carrying the two bags. He stood motionless for a few moments, and then a man crossed to him. The new arrival was of medium height but was grossly obese. He wore a dressing gown that was thickly embroidered with red and gold Chinese dragons. He had thick black hair, a prominent hawk-like nose, and droopy sensual lip«. Without the excess weight he would have had the dark, striking good looks that one associates with Mediterranean gigolos, and he looked familiar to me. I concentrated.
    Son of a bitch! Charlie Watkins was right after all. Take off fifteen or twenty years and more than 150 pounds and it was the guy that played that half-baked television detective Domingo. The critics had said his acting was criminal, and I guess he took it to heart. I realized then that his was the voice that had called me about Stubby Argyll.
    Not much was happening on the stage. Domingo took the bags from Mountain and carried them off past where I could see. He returned in a minute, lit one of those special cigars, and opened a magnum of champagne that was icing in a bucket. He didn’t bother to offer any to Mountain, who was pulling candy bars from his bulging pockets and stuffing them into his mouth. I couldn’t tell if he troubled to remove the wrapping first.
    The rest of the scene was about as interesting as Domingo’s long-dead TV series, with about as much action. Domingo said a few words to Mountain, and Mountain left. The fat former actor continued to pour out glasses of champagne and toss them back in one swallow. The wine probably never even hit his