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Jeronimo Takes Some Hair

by Lawrence J Urban

I am sitting in my office four stories above Albuquerque.

It is July and the swamp cooler, bearings whining, struggles to please me. Water drips from it onto the floor where a puddle is forming. I am thinking about buying a bucket, but that does not rank high on my "to do" list. I have taken a half pint bottle of peach brandy from the refrigerator behind my desk and sip at it half-heartedly. There is a shadow that has passed by the frosted glass window of my office door three times now. It comes, goes, and then comes again, and has mildly aroused my curiosity. Lethargy lies over me like an X-ray room's lead sheet, making me feel weak and unable to move. I will wait to see if it comes inside.

I played poker at Danny K's last night and now all but twenty dollars of my money belongs to five strangers. My "crazy check" from the Army does not arrive for another two weeks. I don't think I am deserving of the "crazy check", but they give me two thousand a month. They can say whatever they want. I usually make it to check day by visiting the pawn shop if I am short of money, but last night, while those strangers took my money gambling, some other strangers broke into my house and robbed me. My hunting rifle, pistol and big screen TV all belong to someone else now. My big three pawnables are gone. I still have a derringer, but the Cowboys will have to play football in somebody else's living room this fall.

The shadow has stopped outside of the door again. This time it does not leave. I adopt the "free the bird" approach. If it comes in, then it is mine. If not? It was not to be.

Chaco Monteverde called me and offered me a job yesterday. He must sink a boat next week, but he cannot swim. I am to take another boat and help him get back to shore.

He tells me it is worth two hundred dollars to me. I am mulling it over. I am always doing favors for people. I am told I have too big a heart.

The door opens then and the shadow becomes a real person. A man comes into the room. The bird seems to be mine. He is quiet, slips to the side of the doorway and stands against the wall. I nod my head at him but he says nothing.

"Can I help you?" I ask.

"Are you Jeronimo McShane?" he asks in a soft voice. He is, perhaps, mid-forties, blond hair which I can tell is graying at the temples, flushed face and slightly overweight. He is wearing Bermuda shorts, white knee socks and black wingtips. A loud, flowery shirt barely conceals a bulge at his waist. Wraparound shades hide the eyes. I make him to be retired military.

"That is my name, but, I do not go by that. Please call me Jerry." I spent most of my childhood being taunted because of that name. Even had to endure it as a Green Beret in parachute school.

"I have some business with you," the man says.

That is when he stands in front of my desk and tells me his name is Jackie Fallis and he loves Poppy Fields. I do not believe him. Spent the last eighteen months out of the country, he tells me, and had last heard from her around St Patrick's Day. She sent him a card. He wrote her a letter. She never answered back. That was over three months ago. He acts a little strange. Most people who come to see a private detective act strangely. I don't know why that is. And make that private investigator. A buddy tells me you need a license to call yourself "detective". Could be. I don't know.

"You have a very long ponytail," he says to me. "Why?" he says back.

I shrug, lean back in my swivel chair and lay a foot, real casual like, on my desk. "I just feel more comfortable when I can see who I am talking to," I answer him. And then I motion toward the chair on his side of the desk. "And have a seat while you're at it," I add.

Now it is his turn to shrug. He removes the shades and it is just as I suspect. He has these white eyebrows, white lashes and ice blue eyes. It all ties in nicely with the pink complexion.

"I prefer to stand," is all he says. He starts moving around the room, checking out all the nooks and crannies. He opens and closes the refrigerator door, looks into the bathroom and then comes to a stop at the corner window behind my desk. He stares out the window for several minutes. I think he maybe forgets that I am there. I walk over and stand next to him and we both stare down at Central Avenue. The city workers are stringing red white and blue bunting from the light poles in lieu of the president's arrival on Thursday, three days from now. "President is coming for the Fourth of July," I tell him. Actually, he and his wife and daughter are all coming to help celebrate. In my opinion, they are okay people as First Families go, a little too liberal for some, but, that is politics. I do not try to deal in politics. It was the daughter that I really liked. She was intelligent, outspoken and somewhat of a problem for the Secret Service. Word was they had lost her on a few occasions and she had been known to slip away from college for weeks at a time. You have to like that in a person.

Fallis seems deep in thought and appears to be content to stand there all day if I was to let him. But, I am not in that kind of mood. I go back to my desk and sit down.

"Okay, Mr Fallis," I say suddenly, "let's get this show on the road."

He jerks back from the window like I had stuck a pin in him and spins toward me, a sudden fire in the icy eyes. I had startled him, but he recovers quickly, turning down the heat. He smiles, walks quickly to the other side of the desk and sits down. I am not sure whether I like him or not. I am about to ask him if the names he gave me were fake, Poppy Fields? Fallis?, when he drops a wad of greenbacks on the desk. I decide it is not important if the names are fake or not.

"There you go, Mr McShane," Fallis says. "Five hundred American dollars. Its yours to start with and there is another five hundred when you finish."

The five hundred bucks makes my heart beat faster. Lethargy is a thing of the past. The lead sheet is lifted.

The whining of the swamp cooler does not grate on my nerves.

Chaco will have to come up with more than two hundred dollars for me to risk driving around Elephant Butte Lake in the middle of the night in a borrowed boat.

I let the money lay like it is no big deal and say, "You have anything I can use to start? An address? Phone number? Picture?"

He produces a piece of paper and tosses it onto the money, like it was no big deal, and says, "Sorry, no pictures, no phone numbers. That's the last address I had on her. You should start there, I suppose." He stands up then and heads for the door. He turns back to me when he gets there and slips the wraparounds back on. "Don't let me down Mr McShane. I need to find her. I want you to go to the police station and see if there is a missing person report on her. I want you to make every effort. Use all your resources. Please. It is very important."

"When I find her, how do I contact you?"

"This is Monday. Meet me here on Wednesday at noon. Do you understand?" "Here. Wednesday at noon. Got it."

He opens the door then and leaves just as quietly as he had entered. He does not say goodbye. I look at the address. It is in the war zone, home to gangs, pimps, whores and drugs. The dregs of society. Losers. I realize suddenly, w ith some dismay, that it is not too far from where I live. I also realize it was probably one of those dregs that robbed me yesterday. I contemplate for the moment whether I should get right on the case or go back to Danny K's until my date this evening. I was at Danny K's playing poker last night when my things got stolen and would still be there if I had not run out of money. The five hundred dollars Fallis gave me weighs heavily in my pocket. It is only six hours until my first date with Zeena Lovato. We had been breathing heavily into the phone at each other ever since I met her at the mayor's five hundred dollar a plate fund raiser I crashed last month. Tonight the heavy breathing would be face to face.

No contest. I caught a cab to Danny K's.

(continued on next page)

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