The Big Enchilada

shrugged. “Domingo took a lot, and a lot went into the house and things. I like expensive things. They suit me.”
    “Where is it?”
    “Safe deposit.” He named a bank.
    “I won’t be too hard on you. I want a hundred.”
    “Too much.”
    “You’ve got no choice. I won’t bargain.”
    “All right.A hundred.”
    “How much cash have you got here?”
    “Why?”
    “I need money to get things moving, man. Arrangements take dough.”
    “I’ve got a couple of thousand.”
    “Not enough.”
    He sighed, which was the extent of the emotion he displayed. “Okay. There’s about ten thousand.”
    “Give it to me.”
    He looked at me with his cold eyes and then went to a cabinet and unlocked it. He took out a thick envelope. He hesitated before he handed it to me. “How do I know I can trust you?”
    “You have no choice. Besides, one phone call and I cancel your ticket. I haven’t made that call. With a hundred K coming, I won’t.”
    He handed me the envelope and I put it in my pocket. “Now some information,” I said.
    “Why?”
    “Call it professional curiosity. I’m tired of chasing shadows.... Who was the girl?”
    “How do I know? Just some tramp. She was nothing. A whore. She only existed to provide me with pleasure.”
    “And you killed her?”
    “So what? Her death was the only significant thing in her life. It provided me with pleasure, and thus her existence had meaning.”
    “That’s a tough way to get meaning.”
    “It is more than most people get. Most people are only robots, things, machines. They exist only to serve those of us who are set apart.” His eyes were staring at some unseen thing far away. “We can do with them whatever we want. We have that privilege by right of our superiority, by right of our power, by right of our needs. They understood that in the Middle Ages. That girl only existed to serve my needs. I have The Power.”
    “Did you get off on it?” I sneered at him.
    He looked at me with contempt. “You can never understand. You are one of them. You try to pull me down to your level, but you cannot. Because I am set apart. She gave me pleasure. And she continues to give me pleasure. She still lives—there, on the tape—and in my mind. The experience is still there. She will never die. By using her, I have made her immortal. I have The Power.”
    The man was fucking crazy, but he would pay. I owed my friend at least that much.
    “Unfortunately,” I said, “this is not the Middle Ages, you’re not a feudal lord, and murder’s a crime.”
    “We who have The Power can commit no crimes.”
    “The police may not agree. You did kill someone, and there was a tape of it.”
    “That is so.” He appeared to have returned to normal— whatever that meant with someone like Acker.
    “Domingo blackmailed you?”
    “In a manner of speaking. He said he had no wish to turn me in to the police, but if he was to do me a favor, I would have to do something for him in return. He asked me what I could do. I had long thought about the potential that existed in the company for the manufacture of illegal drugs, but I was not in a position to implement my ideas. I mentioned my ideas to Domingo, and he was much taken with them.”
    “I imagine he would be. A licensed drug company producing smack is like having a key to the mint.”
    “I, too, was sensitive to the financial implications. Too long had I worked for people who were my inferiors. It was not fair. I was being stifled. Great wealth was my right. I needed it to develop my potential.”
    His eyes were beginning to glaze over, and I didn’t want him to get started again on that subject. “But the company wasn’t yours at that time. It was about to be taken over by Megaplex.”
    “That’s right. I told Domingo about that. He did not seem too concerned. He’s a most remarkable man. He understands power... and the needs of power. He said he would investigate. I don’t know how he did it, but he stopped the take-over.”
    “And gave you the money to buy the company?”
    “That’s right. He wanted it kept in my name. He also made the necessary preparations to begin operations. It took longest to set up a distribution system. He ran the heroin side. I ran the company and fixed the books to absorb the profits. We went into production about a year ago.”
    “Why do you have a copy of the tape?”
    He looked surprised at the question. “I insisted upon it, of course.”
    “Of course.How nice to have a