by Jerold Last
"I suspect I'll be assigned here several more times in the near future by the Mossad if I can leave here with the job done and nobody knows my part in getting it accomplished. No, I like my scenario with Juan Blanco as the designated villain a whole lot better.”
I thought about Eduardo’s explanation. In that scenario Suzanne and I got to lie to Martin Gonzalez until our noses started growing longer like Pinnocchio’s. That part was OK with me. We still owed Martin a few lies and half truths in return for the time when we had first met and he had manipulated us by not telling us the whole truth. He had wanted us to run all over South America chasing the people responsible for chopping a body into pieces and leaving the parts near a couple of monuments in the park alongside the Rambla in Montevideo. So it was convenient for him to tell us only a small amount of what he actually knew. If we told him a few lies, the murderers would be punished, even if not by the judicial system. Of equal importance, the innocent (Eduardo and us) were going free. I could buy into this outcome.
"I can live with this scenario, Eduardo. How about you, Suzanne?"
"Given the current relationship between the USA and Iran, I almost have to say yes as a patriotic American, don't I? Yep, I think I can live with it too."
A few minutes later we were being dropped off at the hotel and on our way to our room. Eduardo had taken a briefcase full of paper, a laptop computer, and an iPhone from Leila's apartment. He promised to tell us what he found over a late breakfast tomorrow.
We slept in the next morning, meeting Eduardo at ten for brunch at a nearby restaurant. Over heaping portions of ham and eggs with croissants, butter, cheese and marmalade, granola and yogurt, and plenty of coffee, we discussed what was in the papers and computer files in Leila's apartment.
I gradually woke up as we listened to Eduardo. "The materials I found on the computer hard drive proved the involvement of several members of the Iranian Embassy staff in Leila's activities, from renting her apartment before she arrived to laundering money to support her stay in Montevideo. Perhaps more interesting, the paper records and computer files I found documented the payment of large sums of money from several of the embassy staff members to some of the more influential members of the Uruguayan legislature. Those had to be bribes being exchanged for introducing favorable legislation on behalf of Iran or voting for those bills. It looks like there's still plenty of work for me to do here in Montevideo before I can go home. I envy you the possibility of flying out of here tomorrow."
Suzanne helped herself to another cup of coffee then poured additional coffee into Eduardo's and my cups to refill them. "Let's all have a final cup of coffee while I get myself psyched up to go over to the Intendencia building with Roger and tell Martin a fairy tale for his own good. Roger, please call Martin and tell him we're on our way."
Eduardo asked when we were leaving to go home.
"We're ticketed for this evening's flight home," I answered.
"I'll keep the car and pick you up at your hotel at 3 PM to drive you to the airport so I can say a proper good-bye."
Forty minutes later we were in Martin Gonzalez' office sitting in front of his desk. He offered us cups of strong coffee, which all three of us took. Martin explained that he was up all night investigating an apparent suicide. "She was an Iranian national named Leila Tehrani, vacationing in Montevideo," he told us. "There are some inconsistencies that we have to look into, especially that there wasn't any note left behind which is unusual in a suicide. There was also a lot of forensic evidence collected that we'll be analyzing for the next week.
"There's also a lot of gossip and speculation here at the police station. My fellow captain Juan Blanco showed up looking like he'd been badly beaten by a jealous husband. His right arm is in a cast, his left hand is bandaged half way up to the elbow, and he has a big bandage on his face that looks like a broken nose. He refuses to tell any of us what happened to him."
That seemed to be the perfect lead-in to our story. I accepted a refill on my coffee, sipped a bit, and jumped right in. Suzanne got up and walked around the tiny office while I spoke directly to Martin. She excused herself to go to the ladies room.
"Your news about Captain Blanco is very interesting, Martin. We seem to be hearing a lot about him in the last day or so. I can't tell you who our source is because he would only talk to us if we guaranteed his confidentiality, but we learned last night that Juan Blanco was the mysterious voice that called Jose, the room clerk at the hotel, to arrange for the murder of Bernardo Colletti. However, our informant could only tell us that much. He couldn't tell us whether Captain Blanco murdered Bernardo himself or whether he hired someone else to actually kill him."
"That's ridiculous!" the policeman in Martin responded almost immediately. "Juan Blanco is not a nice person, but he's a police captain and a close colleague of mine. He doesn't go around arranging murders for hire. Why on earth would he have killed Bernardo Colletti? There wasn't any motive."
I had to be careful how I said the next part if I wanted Martin to believe it. Careful use of Juan's title, not his more familiar first name, would distance me from him and make me sound a lot more objective. "Sad to say there was a motive. Captain Blanco's motive was that most basic of motives, revenge. He bitterly resented your rapid rise to a captaincy. You threatened him in several ways: Captain Blanco knows that you are scrupulously honest, and he was afraid that some of his own corruption might come to light. He also knows that you are a much better cop and that you would surpass him on the list for any promotions to a higher level in the police hierarchy. Captain Blanco figured that he could kill two birds with one stone by killing Bernardo, because he assumed that he could control the investigation. He could implicate us, which would ultimately embarrass you. It would be your friends who were the major suspects in a murder case. It didn't matter what happened next, you'd be guilty by association in the eyes of your fellow policemen. That could severely slow down your career advancement.
"He also knows you and could predict how you would act when your friends were in danger. If you did anything to try to cover up our alleged role in the murder, the captain could use that information to blackmail you in the future. It was a good plan, which didn't work mainly because you were in the right place at the right time to be the first responder on the scene when we found the body. He didn't plan for that contingency."
Martin stood up and leaned across the desk to emphasize his point. "You make it sound plausible but I still don't believe it."
"There are just two more things I have to tell you. Then you can decide for yourself what you do or don't want to believe, Martin. The first is that Captain Blanco was having an illicit and adulterous affair, which may have affected his judgment. You met the object of his affections late last night, or more correctly, very early this morning. Please make sure that when you get all the evidence assembled that you check the fingerprints in the victim's apartment against Captain Blanco's. And be even more careful that nobody here in the Intendencia gets the opportunity to make that evidence disappear before you match the fingerprints.
"The second thing I should suggest to you is that there isn't going to be any way that you can prove all this in a court of law, much less justify arresting a high ranking police officer. My best guess is that Captain Blanco is too tough to confess what he did no matter what you do to him. If it were me I'd do unto him what he wanted to do unto me---hold all of this over his head and threaten to expose him if he ever tries to do anything contrary to your interests. He should become a valuable ally in the day-to-day political infighting that happens in any bureaucracy like the police department here."
I deliberately avoided the opportunity to let him know that his on-again, off-again friend Eduardo Gomez had as a prized possession from this case a little plastic bag containing the mini-scimitar that had been used to murder Bernardo Colletti with Juan Blanco’s fingerprints all over it. That put Eduardo into the same position as I was suggesting to Martin. Now Eduardo had a high-rank
ing officer in the Montevideo police force that he could blackmail into assisting him whenever he needed something done for him in Montevideo and he did not want to ask Martin for the help.
Suzanne came back into the office with perfect timing. I stood up and shook Martin's hand. "Congratulations once again on your well deserved promotion, Captain Gonzalez. I think it's about time that Suzanne and I return home, and we fortuitously have ticketed reservations for tonight's flight from Montevideo. We want to thank you for an exciting weekend."
Suzanne got an enthusiastic abrazo. I had to settle for just the handshake and Martin's overly formal statement of gratitude for our efforts to solve the murder.
We walked back to the hotel to get a bit of exercise. Suzanne explained that her alleged quick trip to the bathroom was actually a very brief visit to Juan Blanco's office to inquire about his health, which was as good as could be expected given the severe beating he had experienced last night. He seemed to be sincerely ashamed and remorseful about his role in this mess. Juan had seen that we were in the nearby office talking to Martin and assumed we were spilling the beans about him to his fellow captain. Juan swore to Suzanne that he would deliver on all of his promises made last night when we spared his life.
Suzanne squeezed my arm and smiled. “If that’s true, both Martin and Eduardo gained a good deal of future good will from an important source as a consequence of this weird case. Bernardo Colletti’s murder may be a classic case of the ill wind that eventually blew some good.”
“Who knows?” I asked Suzanne. “Maybe all of this will also add to our legend here in Montevideo some day. I can imagine the toasts at a different banquet table a few years from now when we’re all celebrating Martin Gonzalez’ promotion to the police chief here. Three aging captains will raise their glasses to us to celebrate the case we didn’t solve, but that eventually earned Martin his final promotion. And in this fantasy, Eduardo lets us sneak a look at the medal he was secretly jointly awarded by the Mossad and the CIA for breaking up the budding alliance between Uruguay and Iran.”
A quick job of packing and a taxi ride later we were in the Aeropuerto Carrasco waiting for the first leg of our long flight home. Eventually, we were back in Los Angeles by noon the following day, and Suzanne was hugging and kissing Robert a half hour later.
A week or so after we got home Suzanne found an obscure news story buried in the Los Angeles Times online version. A limousine carrying several members of the Iranian embassy staff in Montevideo was involved in a single vehicle crash at high speed en route to the resort city of Punta del Este. Among the victims were the military and cultural attaches, several of the ambassador's staff, and three members of the security staff from the embassy. All of the dead were Iranian citizens. There were no survivors. The news article speculated that the driver had lost control of the car due to a stroke or heart attack. The Uruguayan government expressed its sincere regrets to the ambassador.
By an odd coincidence a few days later we received a postcard mailed the same day as the news story's dateline from Eduardo telling us that he had just returned to Paraguay from his working holiday in Uruguay, and that his work had gone very well.
---------------------------------------------The End------------------------------------------
If you enjoyed this novella, please consider writing a review to post on the book page at Amazon where you bought this book. It doesn’t need to be a lot of work; just a few sentences about the story and your reactions to it will help potential readers decide whether this is a good choice for them.
If you want to read more about Roger and Suzanne’s cases, they can be found as Kindle e-books (currently 5 previous books, 4 of them full-length novels, are available) on Amazon, with convenient links to each of them from the author's blog at: http://rogerandsuzannemysteries.blogspot.com. The blog also includes a good deal of background about the various books in the series and a complete free serialized short story in 5 installments entitled "It Was Done To The Butler" featuring Roger and Suzanne solving a murder at home in Los Angeles.
