I reach the Palms to find Mrs. Reichert lounging in the sun. I sense something oddly familiar as I gaze on her slick, tanned skin. The aroma of her suntan oil made me want to take a bite out of her. Catch me, I'm falling. My memory was coming back suddenly. I took a seat. "What's goin' on?" I mutter.
She laughs with a deep voice. "That's what I am paying you to find out."
The waiter brings me a tall ice tea and I hesitate, watching the glass sweat. The little decorative umbrella does nothing to keep it from the sun. The moisture has me desperate, so I drink another sip at my own risk. "You can't tell me you don't know what kind of arrangement you two have?"
"What do you mean?"
I can see her dark eyes glare at me through her dark rimmed lenses, as I have seen so many wives look at the world. As I speak, the less her eyes move, the more truth is crystallized, but put aside and used as an extravagant ornament somewhere in there fairytale world. "I mean, you don't have a real relationship with him do you?...You're married but there is no relationship, per se? It's a marriage of convenience, isn't it? I mean c'mon, this is Los Angeles."
She casually reaches for her purse. "How much more do you need?"
"Stop it!" I halt her. "You don't need me to tell you this and you know it. What difference does it make now? You have to pay someone to tell you he doesn't love you? It's bullshit, you're wasting your money, money that you could be spending on loving someone else. Plain and simple."
One single tear drops, but not an ounce of emotion is shed. She has learned to supress them so well, they dissipate before they get to the surface. An encounter with emotion for her, is now a wave rippling over the sand, back into the deep abyss of the corrupt ocean. She is calm and still. Her purse lays there. "Of course, you're so right."
"Then let's not do this." My intention was to leave as quickly as possible before she could see my own disgrace. It was a wicked awakening, remembering everything now. I had been drugged and taken to my own home for an all night orgy by Reichert and his girls. The images I saw last night were replaced by my own conscience trying to mask my participation, my lack of control. I felt my own ocean of rage swelling like a tsunami, only I had no training or barricades to hold them back, I would find Reichert and make him pay. This fool women who paid me to get screwed has probably paid other investigators good money to tell her the same thing more than once before. She was emotionally gone. So I left her there, sitting by the pool with her magnificent purse and palm trees. She would never seek another reason to be alive.

Big T was here 9:26 AM
******