Page 147 - Just Deserts

Playa de los Borregos

here, on Fourth Street. We are trying to locate Joseph Burning Horse,
but we do not have an address for him. And the only photograph
available is a rather old mug shot.”
The old man suddenly twisted to the left, attempting to sidestep
the lawyer. One of the front wheels, already half-rusted in its
bearings, refused to surmount a large crack in the sidewalk. The cart
almost capsized, and its owner had to grab at its contents before they
could fall out.
Joe Burns cursed loudly, in English, Spanish and a language
Nussbaum did not recognize. A much younger street-person
slouched past, eyeing Nussbaum with disdain. “Hey, man, why don’t
you just give him a quarter and get out of here?”
Nussbaum smiled with his mouth and waited until the unkempt
youth was out of earshot. “Perhaps you are not Joseph Burning
Horse; perhaps your resemblance is coincidental. Let me leave you
my card, anyway. If you should happen to run into Mr. Burning
Horse, please tell him that a check for twelve hundred dollars is
waiting for him in my office.”
“Eh?” Burns’s jaw sagged, revealing a virtually total absence of
incisors, canines and premolars. “You say—what? Money?”
The lawyer smiled again, this time a genuine benevolence beaming
from his well-fed face. “Twelve hundred dollars. The government
decided it owed him something, and my law firm is responsible for
finding him and giving him the money. If we cannot find him soon,
we will have to return it to Washington. All he has to do is sign a few
papers; we could even cash it for him right on the spot. So please
take this card, and contact me if you have any information about
Joseph Burning Horse.”
Nussbaum deftly slipped the business card into the top of the
parcel closest to him on the shopping cart. Then he turned on his
heel and walked briskly to his car. As he drove off into the gathering
gloom he could see in his rear-view mirror that the old man was
tucking something small and white into the grimy gray laminations of
his tatterdemalion togs. Nussbaum smiled yet again.

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