by Jerold Last
“And if by any chance you have the time, Martin, it would be great if you could also join us. I think your official status will open some doors for us that might require otherwise unnecessary violence if you weren’t there. This is one visit where I hope we can get what we need without our martial arts skills.”
“Let me call my wife and tell her I might be late getting home for dinner tonight and I’ll be glad to go with you.”
Martin drove us to an address in downtown Montevideo, near the private business school Ernesto attended. He had an apartment in a typical run down 6-story building catering to student renters.
Ernesto Sanchez was at home alone in his apartment studying when I knocked on the door. We had decided that I would do the talking after Martin ensured our entry.
“Who is there?” came a masculine voice from the other side of the apartment door.
“Open up, this is the police.”
The door opened and Martin flashed his badge. Ernesto stood aside to let us in before asking, “What’s this all about? I’ve already told the detectives that I don’t know anything about my father’s murder. Why aren’t you out there finding his killer?”
I stepped forward between the young student and Martin and addressed him directly.
“We’re here for something else, Ernesto.”
Looking at me, he asked, “What’s that?” defiantly.
I looked him over from top to bottom. He was about 5’10” tall, athletic build, good-looking in a rugged way. Dark hair, dark eyes, sloppily dressed in jeans and sweatshirt.
I made a snap decision to play it a little differently than I had initially planned to. It seemed a good time to play the sinister drug dealer role to the hilt.
“I represent a group of investors that is interested in buying some of your father’s former assets. We have connections with the police here and in Paraguay, full access to the resources of a large organization, and a desire to expand our business into Montevideo. I’ve heard that you’ve been an active participant in your father’s, shall we call them pharmaceutical, adventures and are the person we need to talk to about a friendly merger of our resources.”
That was as far as he let me get. Calling me a very nasty name, he swung a roundhouse right cross at my face. I moved my head back a bit and he missed completely. He followed up his first miss with an equally inept left uppercut punch towards my face. I pulled back slightly until I was out of the path of the blow. Ernesto was slow, clumsy, and badly overmatched with regards to both size and skill. I didn’t want to hurt him too much, but I didn’t want to get hit with one of his wild punches either. I hit him in the stomach with a conventional closed fist, and he doubled over trying to catch his breath. I followed up with a rabbit punch to the back of his neck, carefully avoiding hitting him too hard. He dropped to the ground, breathless and dazed. I picked him up and sat him in a convenient chair.
“As I said, we are looking for the opportunity to collaborate with you in the drug business. You can have 24 hours to think about a better answer than the one you just tried to give us. We’ll be back for your answer tomorrow evening. I would strongly advise you to answer yes.”
At which point we left.
On the way back we compared impressions.
Bruce’s opinion was simple and straightforward.
“I don’t know if he’s a good guy or a bad guy, but he is one lousy fighter if he’s into selling drugs for a living.”
Martin’s opinion of his guilt or innocence and of his limited fighting ability was much the same as Bruce's.
“I checked his record. He’s been arrested a couple of times for drunk and disorderly conduct at Fraternity parties, but he has no real criminal record. His reaction was what you’d expect if he were completely innocent, but it’s also what you’d expect if he was completely guilty and has been able to get hired muscle to do all of his dirty work up until now. If he actually is Mr. X we have a pretty good answer as to why he hides in the shadows and hires others to do all of the dirty work for him. Innocent or guilty, he has to do some extra work on his impulse control. Thank you for not hurting him except for his pride.”
Then it was my turn to share an opinion of a suspect. “I didn’t get any strong signals or have any strong feelings about his guilt or innocence either. He’s really immature and he acts on impulse are about all I learned from the last 10 minutes. As of now he still stays on the list of possible suspects to be Mr. X. I’m not sure whether I played it right, but being a couple of drug dealers and a crooked cop seemed like a good idea at the time. If he is Mr. X, we can be pretty sure that somebody is going to take some action against us before tomorrow evening, and it won't be a gentle suggestion to think about things for a day.”
We headed back to the hotel to connect with Suzanne, Robert, and eventually with dinner.
Martin dropped us off by the front entrance and headed home. Bruce and I went upstairs to connect with the rest of the nuclear Bowman family.
"Suzanne, do you think Robert is ready for his first ever dinner in a nice Uruguayan restaurant?"
"Why not? I have plenty of milk for him, he's already eaten a dinner of rice, fruits, and vegetables, and he should fall asleep as soon as he's topped off his tummy. He should be good for a 4-hour nap before he wakes up. Let's give it a try. I assume Bruce is invited to join us."
"Bruce, would you care to join us?" I asked politely.
He enthusiastically nodded his agreement. We collected Robert's stroller and a bag of baby essentials and off we walked to a nice restaurant a few blocks east of the back entrance to the hotel towards the old city.
It was about 9 PM, still early for dinner for Uruguayans, so we had our choice of tables in the empty restaurant. We found a nice vantage point where we could see out of the plate glass window to the street, but at an angle that should guarantee that we'd be pretty much invisible once the restaurant started to fill up.
The waiter came by, assured us that the establishment was honored to feed families, and left us with menus. He was back shortly to take our orders, roasted free-range chicken for Suzanne, lomo for Bruce who remembered my suggestion from lunch, and the local fish and seafood stew called Zarzuela, similar to the French Bouillabaisse or the Italian Cioppino. A bottle of the red wine tannat, salad, and a side order of grilled sweetbreads (mellelones) and another side order of chimichurri, my two favorite dishes in South America, rounded out the meal. Robert had a bottle of milk, burped, yawned elaborately, and went to sleep in his stroller by the table.
I filled Suzanne in on what had taken place during our visit to Ernesto Sanchez's apartment.
"Do you think you actually found Mr. X?" she asked.
"I don't know. I expect we'll have a visit from some pretty rough characters tomorrow if Ernesto really is the mysterious Mr. X."
We chatted aimlessly for a while about theories in the absence of any hard data until the food came, then we concentrated on eating our huge portions.
"What is this stuff?" asked Bruce. "It's the best steak I've ever had."
"They cut the beef differently down here than we do in the United States. That's called lomo and it's the filet mignon attached to a large chunk of beef loin. The beef is from free-range cattle, no hormones, no antibiotics, and no feedlots. It's broiled over hot coals from a wood fire. There's no marinade, no seasoning, no tenderizing."
"I like the sauce too. What did you call it?"
"Chimichurri."
More food got eaten before I turned back to Bruce to ask a question.
"Hey, Bruce, I've never asked you this, and it's none of my business, but what's your story? How did you go from being a Navy Seal to a Beverly Hills Nanny?"
"The short version," he replied, "Goes something like this. With the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy in the military nobody in the Navy seemed to be worried too much about my sexual orientation. I did my job well so my squad all liked me, and vice-versa. But there was a glass ceiling that nobody liked to talk about and I wasn'
t about to get much beyond the rank I held. That was fine as long as I got lots of exciting travel to exotic far away countries, but after a while I'd had enough time spent in deserts and jungles and enough killing and was ready for something else. I thought about career options while I waited for my hitch to end, and came to a couple of simple conclusions.
"I was trained for a very limited range of jobs in the civilian sector. So I went home to Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin after my hitch ended and applied for a job as a cop. Nobody said anything about my sexual preferences, but neither the local police force nor the state patrol had any positions available for me. I spent a couple of months reconnecting with my extended family and living off my mustering out pay. That was OK at first, but it became clear after a while that there was a bit of social awkwardness whenever we went anywhere together. I finally got the message and thought some more about career choices.
"There was no way I was going to get married and live happily ever after in suburbia or in small town America with two cars and three kids or with three cars and two kids, which was too bad because I like kids. So I thought about jobs, lifestyle, kids, and what I was actually qualified to do. Being a Nanny in a big city like Los Angeles, which has a lot of toleration for diversity, seemed to be a perfect fit to my life style, at least for now. I spent a good sized chunk of what was left of my savings on a 3-month intensive course at a Nanny school over in West Hollywood and got my credentials as a certified Nanny. I had several short opportunities to practice my diapering and feeding skills substituting for other nannies while they took vacations or on weekends and holidays, but your family is my first full-time, live-in experience. So, here I am, and I'm really enjoying the job and the family. The pay is great and the travel is a bonus."
"Do you still stay in touch with any of your buddies from your old outfit?"
"Some of them, especially a couple who live in Southern California now and are also retired from the navy. It's hard though because they're both married and starting their own families. We seem to be going in very different directions. And their wives hate it that they can't fix up their younger sisters or girlfriends with me."
"If you'd be interested in doing some moonlighting as a highly paid bodyguard and it fits your schedule, I have an associate in my detective agency I'd like you to meet when we get back to Los Angeles. Vincent Romero handles all of the bodyguard work we do. It seems to be a growth industry, and he needs some intermittent help when he has to be in two places at once. You and Vincent should like each other since you have a lot in common in terms of professional backgrounds, and you're both from Wisconsin. Think about it."
"And while both of you are thinking about that," added Suzanne forcefully, "remember that being a Nanny is a full time job. Make sure that Robert's and my needs come first and that we coordinate when, and whether, you have the free time to do any moonlighting.
"Oh, by the way Bruce, do you like dogs and puppies?"
"Yes, I do. A lot. Why?"
"Never mind. Just a random thought I had when we were in Chile."
We finished dessert and coffee at almost exactly the same time that Robert started getting restless, so I paid the check and we walked back to the hotel, taking care to do so on the brightly lit main drag of July 18th Avenue where we were unlikely to be mugged or attacked on the street crowded with pedestrians. We weren't. One of the many things I found difficult to get used to in South America was how much activity there was on the major streets at night, often lasting until past 1:00 in the morning. When dinner usually isn't finished until about midnight in the local restaurants, the clock shifts on all of the other activities like getting to and from restaurants, movies, and social interactions of every other kind. For tonight, however, where I craved the security of crowds, this bizarre schedule of staying up far too late on weekday nights when one had to be at their job early the next morning worked just right for me.
We made it back to our rooms safely, topped off Robert's tank with some more milk courtesy of Suzanne, and headed for bed. We had a meeting with Martin and Eduardo planned for breakfast tomorrow. I had a hunch that tomorrow would bring some real action since we were getting close to figuring out who Mr. X was. Hopefully, we were also close to bringing this particular case to closure.
Chapter 16. Ernesto's story
The mood of our little group at breakfast was very different than it had been previously. I had a strong sense that we were nearing the end of the hunt, a sense obviously shared by the others based on the vibes permeating the atmosphere at our table. The group seemed to have selected me to be the titular leader by mutual consent, at least nominally, so I parsed out today's assignments around the table.
"Martin, we need to tie up a few loose ends. Can you ask the local cops in Buenos Aires and Santiago to check out the alibis for Juan and Pedro Sanchez for the night that their father was killed?"
"I've already done this, of course. It's routine. Pedro was at work all day the next day, including early in the morning before the first flight from Montevideo got to Santiago, so he couldn't have killed the old man in person. Of course, he could have hired someone else to do it, so we really can't rule him out completely yet. But my gut feeling tells me that Mr. X did this killing himself, so Pedro's currently at the bottom of my short list of suspects. Juan doesn't have any real alibi that would hold up for the time in question. He was in and out of his bank all day and had plenty of time to take the fast ferry over and back if he wanted to. With his Mercosur passport there's no record kept of entries and departures at the border, so there's no way to check if he took the ferry and paid cash for his tickets. And before you ask, Ernesto here in Montevideo doesn't have an alibi for the time of the murder either. So, we have two brothers still in the running for being our infamous Mr. X.
"I should also tell you that we had six killings in Montevideo last night. That's normally what we might expect in six months. When we sorted out the bodies, four of them were from the old faction and two were from the new faction trying to take over. Both of the two newcomers to our drug scene were Uruguayans, so the Chilean muscle seems to be out of the picture for now. Or else they do better in gun battles than our homegrown talent does. Thanks for using your connection to Octavio Cortes, your newest drug dealer friend in Chile, to help convince the Chileans to stay at home, Eduardo. I think you've probably saved a few lives already."
"OK," I said, "It's time for today's assignments, troops. How about Martin and I visit Ernesto again and threaten him with jail if he doesn't tell us all he knows this time. I can rough him up a bit if he doesn't see the logic of cooperating with us. I'm pretty sure he knows a lot more than he's told us thus far. I think it's time to stop coddling him.
"Eduardo, I think it's time you got Maria-Elena to tell you what it is that she's so afraid of. Maybe you need a woman's touch to encourage her to tell all. Why don't you take Suzanne with you this time, and let her help you try to get Maria-Elena into a more talkative mode than you've been able to do so far.
"Finally, we need Bruce to make sure Robert is safe. If my hunch is right we're coming into the home stretch today and we need to be careful that none of us makes any mistakes. Yesterday's visit to Ernesto Sanchez or our visit to Chile might have moved us up high enough on Mr. X's radar screen to provoke a reprisal. Mr. X is acting more desperate every day, the drug gangs are ramping up the rate of killing, and we don't want any of us to join the casualty list."
Suzanne stood up and announced, "I'm going upstairs for a bit to feed Robert again and to discuss today's arrangements with Bruce. Eduardo, suppose I meet you downstairs in the lobby in 45 minutes or so and we can run our errand. Roger, Martin, can we plan on meeting back here in time for a late lunch? I need to spend some time with Robert today after Eduardo and I get back to the hotel from our errand. And, if either of us finds out anything important during our respective visits to the Sanchez family this morning, why don't we just call and let the others know in case we need to ask Maria-Elena or Ernesto an
y additional questions."
"Martin, I'm going upstairs with Suzanne for a couple of minutes. Let's meet in the lobby in 15 minutes, OK?"
All of the arrangements were made and I could feel a bit of adrenaline flowing.
As we walked upstairs to our room Suzanne reached out, put her hand in mine, and squeezed gently while asking:
“Are you feeling a bit romantic or did you just need to use the bathroom?”
“Actually, neither,” I said squeezing back. “Though you always make me feel romantic about you. I wanted to talk to you about today. Have you figured out who Mr. X is yet?”
She turned her head back to look directly at me a she continued to climb the stairs. “Yes, I’m pretty sure that both of us have."
“Do you think we’ll be in any position to prove it after today?”
“I think its possible Roger, but it’s going to depend a lot on how much pressure we can bring to bear on the family, directly and indirectly, whether we can make our murderer reveal that they really are Mr. X.”