by Jerold Last
"We don't know much. He was shot six times at close range. That means the killer emptied the entire clip from the model of pistol he was shot with. The bullets don't match any that we have on file from any other outstanding murders. His killer got into the apartment, so must have been someone with an appointment. There aren't any records lying around that say the name of anybody that might have been the wrong person for Andres to invite for a visit. The door was unlocked, so the killer just walked out and disappeared. There are several detectives looking at the bank's records, but we have no idea of what we're looking for. There was a surveillance camera on the elevator, but the tape was removed and is long gone. And that's about all we know for now."
"Do you have any new ideas about the killings, Martin?" was my next question.
"Do you mean the homicides you're trying to solve or the ones you're committing?" Martin said a little stiffly, clearly indicating his lack of pleasure with regards to last night's violence and the resulting body count we generated.
"Both," responded Eduardo, cheerfully.
"The Montevideo Police clean-up and cover-up unit hauled off four bodies from a dark street in Montevideo last night. The bodies are laying in cold storage in the morgue and are unidentified and should stay that way until my best friends go home. I recognized two of them as frequent clients of our jail and court system, mostly low-grade strong-arm robberies and assaults. They aren't a great loss to anybody but we really don't need to see so many bodies coming into the morgue if you can try being a little more subtle in your approach the next time."
Martin looked closely at me with obvious distaste as he asked, “Do you realize that we have a small morgue here in Montevideo and that you have pretty well filled it? I know that all three of you just dropped everything to come here when I asked for your help, so I’m not in any position to criticize. But being an accomplice to killing people, even hardened criminals, is completely contrary to everything I believe in. I’m just asking whether you can try to keep the body count down in future, and whether all of this killing really is necessary.”
“I think it is,” was my reply, in as sincere a tone as I could summon up, “I don’t think there’s any way we can solve the murders and stop the drug gang killings without making the two drug factions believe that we’re a third faction trying to get in on the action, and that we have the edge of unlimited manpower and a couple of crooked cops on our side. Their response almost has to be either to come after us and expose themselves, or to offer us a deal to join them, which will also give us an excuse to finally meet Mr. X and figure out who he really is. I was thinking along these lines when I first suggested using lethal force to not only protect ourselves, but to also get Mr. X’s attention.”
“I have learned to have an almost infinite respect for your deductive abilities and your judgment,” replied Martin. “To be honest with you I've reviewed the files for the last six months and we currently have between one and two dozen unsolved homicides that are probably drug-related killings here in greater Montevideo. The reason I didn't know this before is that most of the killings occurred in the last week or so while I was suspended. I think I have to agree with your approach that a few additional killings for the greater good will save lives in the long run. Despite my reluctance to deliberately kill anyone, which is why I became a policeman in the first place, I accept that your approach may be the correct one in this case.”
“OK. We have a lot to do. I think we’ll have to split up to get it all done,” I said. “Is it all right with everybody if I suggest today’s assignments?”
Three heads nodded in assent.
“I think it’s time to start ruling out some possibilities and tying up some loose ends. Suzanne, I need to borrow Bruce for most of the day. I’d like you and Martin to take Robert out for a couple of visits and to go somewhere safe and public for a little tourism today. You should be able to just barge in to a couple of places without appointments if you take advantage of Martin’s status as a high ranked police officer. Your visits are to the two people who knew about our visit to Old Man Sanchez’s apartment who I think are the least likely to be directly involved with Mr. X, but who could have been the source of the information leak to Mr. X that we’d be there. First off, I’d like you both to visit our old friend Bernardo Colletti, the man who set up the appointment for us, and sweat him a little bit about whether he told anyone about our plans. For the second stop on your itinerary, I’d like you to ask the same questions of the old man’s wife, Graciela Sanchez.
“We can leave it to Martin to arrange your tourist itinerary for the slow times. He can think about where you should be going for sightseeing when he isn’t concentrating on keeping you and Robert safe.”
Two heads nodded vigorously in assent.
I had fun with the next assignment. “Eduardo, I've got a tough job for you, but someone has to do it. See if you can convince Maria-Elena to have a long lunch with you, perhaps even including a siesta. It would be nice if we could get some firm idea of what her three brothers' involvement in the drug trade here might be. I agree with you that she must know a lot more than she’s told you thus far given how much time she spent with the old man and how much she’s been involved in the bank’s business dealings. It would be nice if we could rule out one or two of the brothers from being involved with either of the two drug factions, either the old man’s gang or Mr. X’s. See if you can figure out what the two brothers that don’t currently live in Uruguay are doing. We don’t really know anything about either of them except they don't live here in Montevideo and they both work for the family bank. It would have been really nice if one or both of them were in jail or in the priesthood so we could eliminate them from our list of suspects, but it isn't going to be that easy.”
A third head nodded in assent.
Now it was my turn. “We need to increase the overall mood that there's a major turf war occurring over competition for the drug franchise in Montevideo, so Bruce and I are going to make some more trouble with the local dealers and try to shake up the establishment a bit. Until now they’ve been attacking us. I think it’s time they got a taste of what it’s like to be attacked back and time to put them on the defensive a bit. I don’t think a lot of killing will be necessary if we are careful to be selective about exactly who it is we go after. Maybe someone will panic and make a mistake. Martin, could you give me the addresses and names of a few of the bigger suspected drug dealers here in Montevideo that you won't miss a whole lot if they disappear from the local scene?”
Martin scribbled a few names and addresses on a sheet of paper. He frowned before asking, “You realize that what you’re proposing to do could start an all-out gang war here in Montevideo, don’t you, Roger?”
“It has already started, Martin,” I answered. “Our job now is trying to contain the collateral damage so innocent people don’t get caught in the crossfire, and so that Mr. X gets smoked out and one or the other factions wins. Or better yet, so both factions lose and the survivors end up in jail here. That’s the only way we can stop the killing from escalating into an all-out war with dozens of civilian casualties.”
We all went off to our respective tasks. It was time for me to fill Bruce in on what was going on, what we had done thus far, and what we thought was behind all the killings.
"Hey, Bruce, could you skip the nanny gig for a day and go out and play with me instead?"
"That sounds like it might be fun, Roger. What do you want me to do?"
"I have a short list of major drug dealers here in Montevideo that need to be killed. For the moment, we're the equivalent of James Bond, Agent 007, in that we have a license to kill with impunity and a get out of jail free card. You can share the task with me, or just back me up, whichever your sensibilities allow."
"I'm in," replied Bruce. "It's certainly something I've done before and I'm pretty good at it."
"The scenario is simple if all goes well. A quick in and out, we'll ask each of them one ques
tion, hopefully we'll get an answer. Either way, it's lights out for the guy we're visiting. Any questions?"
"Not yet."
Eduardo had left me the keys and paperwork for the SUV so we wouldn't leave a back trail to ourselves by taking cabs. A thoughtful additional gift was a handheld GPS system set for Montevideo. We climbed into the car, punched in the GPS coordinates, and headed to the first address. Instructions were in Spanish, but I knew that izquierda meant left and derecho was right, so it was all pretty straightforward. The hardest part was going to be finding parking spaces in the residential neighborhoods we were going to.
At the first address I lucked into a parking spot a couple of blocks away. This was perfect since I didn't want to park any closer to the target address. If we parked on the same street, there was a big risk that anybody who saw us on the same street where a homicide was committed might be able to describe the SUV to the police, or even worse write down the license plate number, if the homicide investigators thought to check all of the cars parked nearby the crime scene. As an additional precaution we both wore hats and sunglasses so we'd be a little more difficult to describe. The simple hats, which made our hair color and style difficult to describe, and sunglasses, which changed the overall shape of our faces, were the extent of our effective "disguises".
"How do you want to play this?" asked Bruce.
"Knock on the door and play it by ear when someone answers. I'll lead and you follow. If in doubt, incapacitate whoever is near you unless it's me."
We went into a typical Uruguayan apartment house---six floors, several apartments per floor, a single self-service elevator, no doorman. We had the elevator to ourselves, got off at the third floor uneventfully, and walked over to apartment 31. I rang the doorbell. A rather large, rather fat gentleman answered the door.
"Who the hell are you?" he asked in Spanish, obviously upset to see us standing in his doorway because he was expecting someone else.
"Are you Bartolomeo Colonista?" I inquired politely.
"Yes, that's me."
I pushed him back into the apartment and into a convenient chair in the living room. Bruce was right behind me. He closed the apartment door and checked that we were alone in the apartment and that there weren't any surprise guests lurking in the bedrooms or bathroom.
"All clear," announced Bruce.
"What's going on here?" asked Bartolomeo, with the slightest hint of concern in his voice.
"I have a question to ask you. Please think carefully before you answer, because I'm only going to ask it once and your life depends on whether you give me the correct answer."
He looked at me incredulously. "Do you know who I am? Do you know what you are dealing with here?"
"My question is a simple one: Who killed Andres Sanchez, or who had him killed?"
"I don't know what you are talking about, and even if I did I wouldn't answer a question like that."
"Fair enough," I replied. "I told you what would happen if I didn't get the right answer."
He was still sitting on the couch, and still didn't understand that no matter how tough he thought he was, nobody is tough enough to bluff his way out of the situation he was currently in. I took a quick step closer to the couch and used a karate blow with my hand to the base of his nose to break the nose and drive some of the fragments of bone and cartilage back up into his brain. He was dead a moment later.
"Let's take a quick look around and get out of here before whoever he was expecting gets here," I suggested.
A quick search of the apartment turned up little of interest except a huge wad of cash, about $25,000 in a mixture of U.S. dollars and Uruguayan pesos. We took the money and left the apartment building without meeting anyone. We were back at the SUV and heading towards the next destination on our list before Bruce said anything.
"What are you planning to do with the money?" he asked.
"I was thinking of making a contribution to the Montevideo Police Department's fund for widows and orphans. Did you have any better suggestions?"
"Actually, I was going to suggest The Police Benevolent Fund, or whatever they call it down here. Your idea is OK."
Ten minutes later we were parked several blocks away from the next address on the list wearing our hats and dark glasses and walking towards the designated apartment house. This apartment was in a more commercial area of Montevideo, along one of the major streets in the eastern part of the city, Avenida Italia. East-west traffic on the avenue was heavy, but there were relatively few pedestrians on the sidewalks so we remained anonymous. Our destination was newer and taller than the previous one, featuring off-street parking alongside and below the building. Across the street were several small stores and more apartment buildings while there was more of the same in both directions on our side of the street.
Another empty lobby, another slow self-service elevator, and another apartment, this time on the 5th floor, brought us to where we were going. I knocked.
"Who is it?" came from the apartment in a male voice.
"I have a delivery," came from me.
The apartment door was carefully opened a bit on a security chain. One well-placed kick by Bruce later, we were in the apartment, and a very confused man was wondering why it was called a security chain.
"Are you Jaime Velez?" I asked.
The drug dealer admitted that he was. He was a brutal looking guy with huge hands and shoulders, thick dark eyebrows and a low forehead, big all over but some of the muscle had turned to fat and he clearly spent more time eating than exercising these days. Bruce was checking the other rooms for anybody else present in the apartment while I got to ask what had quickly become my favorite question.
"My question is a simple one: Who killed Andres Sanchez, or who had him killed? Please think carefully before you answer, because I'm only going to ask it once and your life depends on whether you give me the correct answer."
Some of the shock from our quick and violent entrance was wearing off. Jaime responded not with words but by rushing me, both fists flailing away as he closed with me in the small foyer of the apartment. He died bravely, unlike Bartolomeo, as I rotated quickly to my left so that my right side faced him and cut his legs out from under him with a well-placed straight leg kick to his solar plexus. As he lay on the floor in a fetal position, gasping for air, a quick hard chop with the side of my hand to his throat crushed his larynx and he was finished. I walked towards the back of the apartment to the bedroom, where Bruce had found a colleague of Jaime's, big, muscular, and dull looking. Probably a bodyguard caught taking a nap when he should have been guarding his employer's body. I watched Bruce at work, the first time I had ever seen him using his martial arts skills outside of a dojo.
Bruce's preferred basic technique, which relied manly on speed and quickness, brought him a lot closer to his opponent than I liked to be in a real fight. He moved inside the thug's guard and I watched his hands and arms moving literally in a blur of motion. There were several karate chops to his opponent's neck and throat, an elbow to the nose, and multiple short powerful punches to the body with his knuckles. This all happened so fast that he wasn't touched by a brawler standing less than a foot away from him. The big thug slumped to the floor, unconscious. Bruce kneeled down and placed his hands on the thug's chin and head. A quick movement, a loud crack, and the fight came to its end. We checked the apartment quickly, earning ourselves an even bigger wad of cash than the previous time, and headed back to the car.
"Are you OK?" I asked.
"Sure, he didn't get any punches in so it was a nice clean in and out, " was the reply.
I made a mental note never to get Bruce upset with me. No gay jokes, no Nanny jokes, maybe a nice bonus when we got back to Los Angeles.
Our third and final destination was half way back to the hotel, in a residential block just off the Rambla with a partial view of the Rio de la Plata. We went through the same routine one more time---park several blocks away, don hats and glasses, walk over, wait
for an empty lobby and the elevator to ourselves, ring doorbell, get into apartment.
""Are you Jose Escobar?" I asked.
The drug dealer admitted that he was. He was a good looking man, middle aged, dressed in suit pants, nice shirt, tie loosened at the neck. He could have been a lawyer or a respectable businessman in middle management. Bruce walked back to check the apartment while I got to ask the question for the last time.
"My question is a simple one: Who killed Andres Sanchez, or who had him killed? Please think carefully before you answer, because I'm only going to ask it once and your life depends on whether you give me the correct answer."
Jose thought for a moment. "I take what you say with the utmost seriousness," he said. "Give me a moment to think."
"OK, you have a moment. Please make it quick."
"I have spent a lot of time thinking about the answer to your question, and also wondering whether there was any threat to me personally because I was close to Andres Sanchez professionally. I guess I know the answer to the second part now. I am Chilean and have been told by my bosses in Santiago to cooperate with you because we have the same goals here, so I will tell you what little I know. I hope it will be helpful to you."
