A Detective Paco Rerun

I believe this story was the first one in which Detective Paco teamed up with senior Blair commenter Wronwright. It's based on Wronwright's shtick about being a collector of antique weapons, which were periodically (and allegedly) stolen by the blog administrator of Tim's old place, Andrea Harris (although it would probably be more just to say that she simply took them away from him).

Detective Paco and Wronwright in Florida
Some people go to Florida for the sun-kissed beaches; some go for the world-class sport fishing. Me? I went for the abandoned phosphate mine.

I was standing on the lip of a played-out open pit mine in Polk County with my client. “There’s a path that winds around all the way to the bottom”, he said. “But it’s precarious.” He gave me the once-over. “Shouldn’t you be wearing shorts and hiking boots?”

I gave him my patented withering stare. “Look, Wronwright, it’s all in the unwritten rule book for detectives: no matter what - fedora, double-breasted suit and wing-tips. Now let’s go.”

What had brought me to this big hole in the ground was Wronwright’s feverish quest to recover some valuable artifacts – a Zulu spear, an Ashanti shield, an Apache tomahawk - that he claimed had been stolen by an unscrupulous and very dangerous collector. The thing that still puzzled me was, if he knew where the gear was stashed, why did he need me along? Protection, I had assumed. A moment later, I discovered that my guess had been right.

He paused after a couple of hundred yards on the tricky downward trek and looked at me nervously. “Listen, you’ve got a bosco, haven’t you?”

“A what?”

“A bosco. You know” He extended his thumb and index finger at a right angle to one another, imitating a pistol.

I heaved a great sigh, sat down on a rock and fished a cigarette out of the pack in my coat pocket. “In the first place, it’s a roscoe, not a bosco, in the second place, yes, I’ve got one, and in the third place, it’s hot as hell’s cactus garden. What’s in that canteen?”

He uncorked it and passed it over. I took a mouthful of the contents, swallowed, and almost choked. “I don’t know what this stuff is, but it’ll never sell. What do you call it?”

“Water.”

“Don’t you have anything with a little more kick to it?”

He gave me a sidewise, shifty look, and then grudgingly admitted that he also had a bottle of Yoo Hoo, but said he was saving that to celebrate recovering his stolen property. I told him to keep it, then; he might want it to wash down some Hostess Ho-Ho’s later on.

Eventually we reached a shelf of rock on which a solitary pine tree had taken root. Wronwright looked around anxiously, and then cried out, “Eureka!” There in the hill, almost directly behind the pine, was a small cave entrance. We walked in and I took a flashlight out of my pocket, moving the beam around the cave. On the floor of the cave was a rock, with a piece of paper under it, and next to the rock, an earthenware jug.

“This is your treasure? A rock and a pitcher?”

Wronwright’s eyes widened in shock. He glanced around with an air of desperation. “This is the place! The letter and the map said this is the place! Where’s my spear? Where’s my tomahawk?”

“What letter? What map?” I asked.

“I received an anonymous letter in the mail, along with a map, from someone who said he was a friend. He said I’d find my artifacts here!”

“And you believed it?”, I practically growled. “Well, as long as we’re here, let’s have a look at that piece of paper under the rock there.”

The paper turned out to be a typewritten note. I read it aloud: “Hi, Wronwright. Looking for something? Well, you won’t find it here. But you’re probably thirsty after your fruitless search, so I left you a jug of mead. Better luck next time - Andrea.”

Wronwright’s face contorted in rage. He said through gritted teeth, “By God, I’ll at least drink her mead!”

I suspected a trap and shouted, “Don’t open that jug!” Too late.

A moment later, the air was filled with buzzing bees, angry at being cooped up so long, and spoiling for a fight. It was like stumbling into a regiment of Lilliputian swordsmen.

Wronwright screamed. “Aauuuugh! Bees! Wild bees! Shoot the bees, Paco! Shoot the bees!”

“Are you crazy? I’ve only got six bullets; well, 12 including the speed loader. But there must be at least fifty of these things. Let’s get out of here!”

I grabbed Wronwright by the arm and ran with him out of the cave, jumping off the shelf of rock and descending the almost vertical slope directly into a pool of water that had collected at the bottom of the pit.

After doing a belly-flop into the water, I stood up, spluttering. My hat was floating near by and I reached for it, but it suddenly rose in the air as Wronwright shot up under it like a submarine that had blown its ballast too fast.

“Ok, sport”, I said, in a voice of deadly calm. “Just who is Andrea?

One of his eyes was swollen shut from a bee sting on the cheek, but he looked sheepish enough with the good one. He spit out a tadpole and muttered, “Well, I told you she was dangerous.”