by Rodolfo Peña
“Well, I’ve been busy, boys.”
“Playin’ poker?” asked the black man.
John Wayne ignored the dig. “So, things didn’t go well for you in Monterrey? My inside man says you didn’t get what we wanted.”
The crew chief blew out a long plume of smoke before he answered, “No, things didn’t go well.”
“So, you didn’t get what we wanted,” John Wayne repeated.
“I told you over the phone we didn’t,” answered the crew chief irritated by John Wayne’s insistence on the subject.
“Ah, that’s too bad. We’re going to have to find another way. Where’s the guy now?”
“He’s dead,” said the crew chief.
There was a silence. John Wayne went to the poker table and poured whiskey into a glass. His informant in Monterrey had already told him what had happened, just as he knew that the files were now inaccessible and encrypted. But he said nothing. You have a great advantage if you know what cards the other guy is playing.
“You didn’t tell me that when you called.”
“I didn’t think it was something that should be discussed over the phone and since you didn’t get in touch the whole time we were in that roach motel you sent us to.…”
“We’ll arrange better accommodations for you boys now. So, tell me, what happened?” he asked as he went back to his chair.
“We were, uh, questioning him; he passed out, so we stuck his head in water. He must have swallowed something in the water ‘cause he choked and died, asphyxiated. I think something stuck in his throat, or something.”
“You killed the guy?” asked John Wayne, as if surprised.
“We didn’t kill him; he died while we.…”
“I don’t care what the hell you call it; you killed the guy!”
The three men said nothing; they sat looking straight head.
John Wayne got up and paced in front of them like a father strutting before children who had misbehaved.
“You didn’t get what we wanted and you killed the guy!” He stopped and spoke to the crew chief.
“Whad’ you do with the body?”
“We, uh, dumped it near some railroad tracks. We, uh, took his money and his watch, and, uh, sort of made it look like it was a mugging.” The crew chief lied. He wasn’t about to tell the angry John Wayne how badly they had botched up that part of the job.
“Yeah, right. His damned lungs are going to be full of water, he’s going to leak like a damned water balloon at the autopsy, and you think they’re going to think it was a mugging.”
“Well, we left him on the tracks. There’s a 4:30 freight that comes in every night, so his body might be too mangled for them to figure out what happened.”
John Wayne looked at him with the kind of look a sadistic teacher gives a student that has just given the stupidest of answers.
“Where did you pick him up? I hope nobody saw you.”
“I don’t think so. We waited for him in a parking lot and when he left the place where he worked we followed him. We caught up with him as he was going along in his car, then we snatched him, and took him out of town to, uh, you know, interrogate him. While we were doin’ that, uh, he, you know, uh, swallowed something in the water and died.”
“Do you know if the people at the Monterrey consulate know about this?”
“No, we came here right after; we had no time to talk to anybody.”
“So, the people in Monterrey have the files but can’t decrypt them, eh“?
“Hell, I don’t know. I’m no damned computer expert. They said the guy had found out that they were in there and he had blocked them or something and then hid the information to where they couldn’t get at it, so we had to go in, and get from the guy the key to open the stuff up, you see?”
“Yeah, I see. I see that we have a bunch of idiots down there botching up every job I ask them to do.”
“So, what do we do next? Didn’t you have a guy on the inside who could help?”
John Wayne gulped down his drink and thought for a moment. “Yeah, we have a man inside but he told us the stuff is not available to him either. He also told me that there was some local cop snoopin’ around, so we’d better get moving before people find out about you guys.”
John Wayne turned to the crew leader, “Tell me, did you clean up after you? You didn’t leave any bread crumbs leading back to us, did you?”
“No, I don’t think so,” said the crew chief defensively.
John Wayne paced some more and then stopped again. “What about the car?”
“We took our car to the shop as per instructions. They’ve probably got rid of it by now.”
“Not your car, his car!”
“Oh, we gave the keys to the garage guys and told them to break it up, too.”
“Why the hell didn’t one of you guys take it back with you?”
The third guy spoke up for the first time. “It was a Saturday night,” he said. “We were advised by our control that in Monterrey they put up roadblocks as a measure against drunk driving; we were afraid of getting stopped and, you know, being foreigners and all, at that hour.”
“We’d already risked a lot when we took him out of town for questioning. We didn’t want to push our luck,” said the crew leader.
John Wayne snorted a laugh, “Where do they get you guys?” he asked derisorily. “Well, you’d better make damned sure they got rid of that second car.”
He went to the poker table and wrote down something. He gave the piece of paper to the crew chief. “Here, you had better move from wherever you are and stay at this hotel until I can find a way to get you safely out of the country. Take a suite, ‘Gran Clase’; I want all three of you in the same room. Don’t go out unless it is absolutely necessary. Room service for meals and such. Stay there until I call.”
“How long?”
“Until I call! A day or two, I don’t know.”
The three men got up and John Wayne said, “Walk to the avenue and grab a taxi. Tell him to take you to that hotel on Mexico Avenue.”
He saw the men to the door and closed it behind them. Through the window he saw that they left the premises and turned left toward the avenue.
The three men who had been in the kitchen came back into the room.
“You guys set up the next hand; I gotta make a phone call and then I’ll join you.”
The three men sat down and started talking and laughing.
John Wayne typed the fast dial code and said, “Shut up, you guys.” After a pause he said, “Yeah, boss. Yeah, it’s important. That crew that they sent down to get what we need? Yeah, that’s right. Well, they didn’t get it and they also created a problem. Well, we’d better discuss that item in person, the nature of the problem I mean. When are you coming down? OK, but listen, our program is on schedule so we’d better fix this problem before it, uh, you know, causes things to go wrong. Well, lots of things; I’ll fill you in when you come in. Yeah, I’ll pick you up at the airport. Right: see you then.”
Chapter 25: A Series of Political Murders
The working lunch had been held in a restaurant about three blocks from the Chamber of Deputies.
Senator Juan Alberto Romero, leader of the opposition party, and ex-Governor of the State of Veracruz, told his driver he would walk to the Chamber of Deputies where the afternoon session would start at 16:00 hours. He disliked being chauffeured about in bulletproof cars and argued he needed the exercise anyway. He told his driver not to follow him, but to go directly to the Chamber of Deputies’s parking garage.
He walked down the unremarkably named 64 North Street at a fast pace; there were few people about and car traffic was light, an unusual thing for Mexico City. As he turned into 85 East Street and headed toward the Consulado Metro station, a young man crossed the street to walk behind him.
As the crowd streamed out of the Metro station, Senator Romero slowed down to thread his way through the flow of people; the young man wearing a backpack c
aught up with him at the corner of 85 Oriente and Eje 2 Oriente. He reached into his short, suede jacket and pulled out a black, 9 millimeter Baretta and pointed it at the back of Romero’s head.
The young man was so close to Romero that the gun’s muzzle bumped the Senator’s head; as he turned to see what or who had bumped him, the young man pulled the trigger.
The head having turned, as well as the slight bump, caused the gun to be lowered so the bullet penetrated Senator Romero’s neck rather than his head. It severed the left common carotid artery completely, exited through the front part of the laryngeal prominence, commonly known as the Adam’s Apple, and lodged itself in the fleshy thigh of a woman passerby.
Juan Alberto Romero fell to the ground, the wounded woman fell into a sitting position against the Metro stop building and started yelling and crying at the sight of her own blood, and the young man put the gun back into this jacket, and walked firmly into the Metro station. Another man, who had been hired for the purpose, started to yell, “There he goes; he is escaping; he is running down the street.” He pointed toward the Eje 2 Oriente Avenue and away from the direction of the fleeing assassin.
As the people in the Metro station rushed outside to see what had happened, the young assassin went into the Metro station’s toilette, stepped quickly into an empty stall, took off his pants and shirt, changed into jeans and a T-shirt that he took from his backpack, put the jacket, shirt, pants, and gun into the backpack, left it there, and walked out of the toilette.
In the Metro station’s corridors people asked each other what was going on.
As the young man stood by the yellow line waiting for the next Metro train, an old man asked him, “Que paso allá afuera?” He told the old man that he didn’t know what was happening outside and that he had heard there had been some kind of accident.
As the Metro train arrived and the doors opened for the passengers to board, the young man heard the high-pitched sound of approaching sirens—they seemed far away and above him.
He boarded the Metro and stood by the door until he got to the Martin Carrera station where he got off and went to the Line 6 entrance. There he stopped to tie his shoe lace and make sure that there was no one following him.
He boarded the line 6 train and again stood by the door. When he got to the 18 de Marzo station, he walked slowly to the stairs that led to Line 3; the train arrived, he boarded that, and finally got off at the División del Norte station.
As he left the station, he turned west on Matías Romero street, just as he had been instructed. He walked the two blocks to the Arboleda Park and sat down on a bench on the Pestalozzi Street side of the square where cars were allowed to park, just as he had been instructed. The men that washed cars were taking a break and one of them turned up the radio as the news of the murder was broadcast.
…member of the political elite of the most conservative faction of the PAC party, he had served as Governor of Veracruz before being elected to the Senate and was linked by marriage to the family of President Echeverría…
A car rumbled noisily by; the young man looked casually at the occupants; they were not his contacts. He paid attention to the newscast again:
…the assassination is a direct attack on our collective psyche, and to the plans of the government for a more open presidential election as was announced in…
Another car came by but it parked and two women descended from it. One of them yelled to the car wash guys that she wanted her car washed. The men waved an “OK.”
…he was described as a tall young man, green or light-colored eyes, tanned and short, military-style hair. The woman who was also wounded in the incident said that the man was…
A black SUV, with dark, polarized windshield and windows turned slowly onto Pestalozzi Street. The young man stood up and the SUV stopped in front of him. The door clicked open and the young man got in.
The two car wash guys saw the SUV through the corner of their eyes but instinctively did not turn to look at it. They ate their tacos and stared straight ahead. They knew better than to pay attention to something that was none of their business.
Inside the SUV, a well-dressed man with a youngish face, despite his completely gray hair, extended his hand and said to the young man, “Congratulations, Isidro, you did very well.”
“Thank you, Senator Elizondo,” said the young man.
The Senator spoke to the men sitting in the front seats of the SUV, “Give Isidro a drink, He deserves to celebrate.” Then turning to Isidro he said, “I’m having whiskey; would you like one, too?”
“Yes, yes,” said the young man, flattered that he would be treated like this by someone as powerful as Senator Elizondo.
One of the men in the front seat gave him a whiskey high ball.
“Salud,” said the Senator as he clicked his glass against Isidro’s.
The black SUV rumbled along slowly until it turned into Matías Romero Street, went down that lane for several blocks and then turned left into Insurgentes Avenue as it sought a way to leave Mexico City by the quickest route.
An hour later, Insurgentes Avenue had turned into the highway leading to Cuernavaca, the city of eternal springtime. By then, Isidro was fast asleep knocked out by the drug in the drink and the Senator was on the phone.
“Yes, yes,” he was saying into his phone. “No, he’s fast asleep here beside me. Yes, when we come to the ranch, I’ll let you know. Yes, they are both with me. They are driving and I am having a drink! Do you think I would drink and drive?” The Senator laughed. “Yes, I’ll call you when we are done.”
The black SUV drove off the highway and onto a dirt road. It stopped in front of a gate marked Propiedad Privada, Prohibido el Paso. The private property sign was for others. One of the men in front got out and opened the gate. The SUV drove through and they continued up the dirt road until they came to a stand of pines.
The black SUV was almost invisible among the pines. The two men got out and took off their coats and ties. They went to the back of the SUV and took out two shovels. A few meters away from the car they began to dig.
The ground was soft and it didn’t take long for them to dig a grave deep enough for the bodies they were going to bury.
Then they went back to the car and said, “Please step out, sir, so we can drag him out.”
The Senator, a bit woozy now since he was on his fourth highball, stepped out of the SUV and drink in hand, stood by the grave as the two men dumped Isidro, the young assassin, into the hole. The young man moaned softly as he lay face down in the dirt. One of the men screwed a silencer to his gun and then pumped three bullets into the young man’s back and one into his head.
As Senator Elizondo stood grinning down at the body, the other man came up behind him and put a bullet into his head. The glass fell from his hand as he slid into the grave beside the young man he had hired to kill Senator Romero. The two men fired several more bullets into both bodies.
One of the men flipped his phone open and punched in a number. Alfonso Echeverría, the President’s cousin answered, “Yes?”
“It’s done,” said the man simply.
“Both of them?”
“Yes,” said the man.
“OK, so now…”
“Now we leave. Please deposit the money as agreed. We don’t want to have to come back, OK?”
“Yes, the money will be there tomorrow.”
The man snapped the cell phone shut, took out the battery, and threw both items into the grave. They then shoveled the dirt back in, tamped it down with the shovels and put the shovels into the cargo space of the SUV.
The black SUV went back to the highway where it turned south, toward Cuernavaca. There a private plane was waiting for the two men at the airport. It would fly them to Miami where they would take the late evening flight to Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Chapter 26: A Visit with the Dean
Lombardo went directly to Dean Herrera’s home. He did not phone to announce his visit; he wanted to m
ake sure the Dean would be home.
Lombardo rang the door bell and an old woman, whom Lombardo assumed was the Dean’s housekeeper, opened the door.
“Yes?”
“I’d like to see Dean Herrera, please,” said Lombardo taking off his hat.
“I am not sure the Dean is home,” she said, visibly annoyed at Lombardo’s brashness.
“I am,” said Lombardo. “Please tell him Captain Lombardo of the Public Ministry’s Investigations Department is here and that I would like to speak to him.”
