To save time for both of us, I told him what I already knew. He seemed nervous now, as if he wished for guidance from some higher authority, like God.
“I remember the woman,” he said. “I checked her in. As I recall, she arrived about the same time of day you did.”
“Did you notice anything at all unusual about her?”
“No, nothing except that she was traveling alone. Not many people vacation alone.”
“How did you know she was on vacation?”
“She told me. She asked me about the sights to see. I gave her several brochures.” He chin-pointed to a rack of colorful reading matter against the wall.
“Did you see much of her?” I asked.
He wagged his head negatively-
“Did you see her with anyone else?”
“No, but Sonia saw her with that man the night she disappeared. I believe he was waiting for her just outside. Sonia told the police all about it as you seem to know.”
“What did the man look like?”
“She said he was in his late thirties maybe, trim, dressed like a cowboy.”
“What kind of car did they get into?”
“The police asked the same question. Sonia didn’t notice. She just passed them on her way in.”
I worked on him for a few minutes more, but that was all he knew. He said I could talk to Sonia when she came in at noon tomorrow. She would normally be around now, but her husband was in the hospital. Gallstones.
I thanked him for all this information and strolled back to my room.
The mysterious man. Did Nancy Canales know him before she came to Albuquerque, or did she meet him here? A middle-age sexual fling? It sure looked that way. Maybe the mysterious cowboy had nothing at all to do with her disappearance.
I switched on the TV and watched half of an awful movie before I fell asleep.
The next morning found me down at the police department, Missing Persons Section. A plainclothes cop there condescended to talk to me in spite of the fact that I was a P.I. from Puerto Rico. His name was Bradley, and Nancy Canales’s disappearance was one of his files.
“So how can you help me, Mr. Bannon?” he said.
“I was kind of hoping you could help me.”
He smiled. He had a wicked, long-time-cop smile. “We’re not here to assist private investigations,” he said.
“I’m working for the missing woman’s daughter,” I said. “You can imagine how she feels.”
“I don’t get paid to imagine,” Bradley said, “I get paid to move files. This file is here because the case is still open. I would like to move it over there—” he indicated a row of filing cabinets “—where we keep the cases that have been closed.”
“Each file is a human being,” I said. “More than one human being.”
“I don’t get paid to think about human beings,” Bradley said.
“The girl is only twenty-one,” I said. “A college student. Her parents have been divorced since she was four. Her mother’s all she’s got.”
Bradley made a tsk-tsk sound with his thin lips. “You’ll have me in tears in a minute.”
“Oh hell,” I said. “I’m on my way out.”
“Good,” Bradley said. “You have a nice day.”
I turned back. “If I do turn up anything on this disappearance, you can be damned sure I’m not going to inform you of it.” I added another pungent pair of words as I slammed the door.
People turned their heads to follow me down the hall. They didn’t seem surprised at my state of mind.
Over lunch I got an idea — a long shot. What if Sonia hadn’t noticed a car because they didn’t get into a car? I pointed my rented Chevy back to the hotel and parked it in the lot. There was a woman behind the reception desk; however, she told me that she wasn’t Sonia, she was Alicia. Sonia’s husband was being operated on at the hospital, and she was still there. There are some days...
I walked out into the street and surveyed busy Central Avenue. On my side of the street, stores, parking lots, another hotel — nothing that looked likely — but across the street were two bars and a Greek restaurant named The Delphi. I headed for the nearer of the bars.
It was deep and narrow, made two storied by balconies along two of the walls. The bar itself was a small horseshoe with about a million glasses hanging upside-down. Most of the place was tables, only three of which were occupied by couples nibbling each other’s earlobes. I grabbed a stool at the bar and ordered a margarita straight up from a burly guy who could have been Puerto Rican but was probably Mexican. I tried my Spanish on him, telling him I was from San Juan.
He seemed interested. “Está de vacaciones?” he asked me. Are you on vacation?
“No, realmente estoy trabajando.” Actually I’m here on business.
I took out my card and handed it to him along with the photograph of Nancy Canales.
“Carlos Bannon,” he grinned at the name, then dutifully studied the photo of the woman. “She’s the one who disappeared about a month ago. The police said she was Puerto Rican.”
“The police were here?”
“Yes, but I couldn’t help them. They also had her picture.”
“I knew it was a thousand-to-one shot.”
He grinned in agreement, then said, “You could ask her,” pointing to a young blonde waitress who was headed in our direction, having just descended from the balcony with a tray of empty glasses.
“Didn’t the police talk to her?”
“No. She was off duty.”
“Two Miller drafts and two margaritas on the rocks,” she said as she walked up.
The bartender started bar-tending. I introduced myself to the girl and went through my preliminaries again. I showed her the photograph. She almost knocked me off my feet when she said, “Sure, I remember her. I remember her face.”
“Was she alone?” I inquired deviously.
“No, she was with a guy — redneck type. I’ve seen him before. He runs a rattlesnake farm for tourists somewhere north of town.”
Jesus Christ, the woman was a gold mine.
“What’s his name?”
“He told me it was Jeb.”
“What else do you know about Jeb?”
“Not much. He’s only been in a couple of times. He’s got this quirk of always wearing yellow glasses — you know, the kind they use for shooting. He wears yellow glasses and jeans and cowboy shirts.”
“How did they behave that night?”
“Like everyone else. They sat over there—” she pointed to a remote corner of the balcony. “Quiet. I assumed they were pretty close.”
“Why didn’t you give this information to the police?” I asked.
“I didn’t know they were looking for her.”
“Don’t you read the newspapers?”
“No. Too depressing. I don’t watch the news on TV either.”
Actually I didn’t know if anything had appeared in the local papers. I said, quite honestly, “I’m surprised you remember her.”
“I remember her because she looked so unhappy. In that respect they weren’t like the other couples. Just look at that photo—” She glanced down at it. “She looks like a woman who’s been out in the rain for a long time.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “I thought so, too. How do I get to this rattlesnake farm?”
“I couldn’t say. I just know it’s north, off I-25.”
“What’s it called?”
“I couldn’t tell you that either.”
“Well anyway, you’ve been a tremendous help,” I said. “A bright girl like you should be doing something better than waiting on tables.”
“I will be, one day. I’m studying drama at UNM,” she said. “I’m going to be an actress.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Milly. Milly Taber.”