The fourth volume in
my South American mystery novel series, "The Matador Murders", is complete and
ready to publish this summer, pending a few more rounds of editing, and
formatting of the front matter.
For those of you who’ve visited this blog and might be interested, this
is a preview of coming attractions.
There may be some minor changes between this and the final version.
In this installment of
the series Roger and Suzanne are back in Montevideo after being summoned from
Los Angeles by a late night phone call.
One of their friends is suspected of murder and needs their skills as
detectives to help clear him of the charges. Life for Roger, and especially for Suzanne, is more
complicated these days as they now have an infant son, Robert. The three of them, accompanied by
Robert’s nanny, Bruce, fly to Uruguay and the game is afoot. Before long we have our heroes directly
in the middle of a gang war, off for a quick trip to Chile to learn all about
the local crime scene, and meeting some unlikely allies in their mission. The book has lots of action, a good
whodunit storyline, guest appearances by several old friends and by an old enemy
from previous books in the series, "The Ambivalent Corpse" and "The Surreal Killer", and occasional opportunities
for sightseeing and eating regional specialty foods. I hope you all have as
much fun reading this novel as I had writing it. A short excerpt from the current draft of the book follows:
Chapter 1. Adios to a crooked cop
Early that day, Jose Gonzalez, in his usual
role as a detective on the Montevideo police force, had a loud and highly
acrimonious argument with his partner.
Martin Gonzalez, the partner, was proud of two things. The first was that he and Jose were not
related despite the common surname.
The other was that he was the ranking half of the partnership and could
say whatever was on his mind with no real fear of the consequences. Martin was in fact a Detective
Lieutenant and the officer with the second highest ranking in the detective
division after his Captain, fortuitously not named Gonzalez.
On
the other side of the door Martin was saying to Jose, loudly and forcefully,
“You are a lousy liar and a corrupt cop, a dirty crook and a disgrace to the
police force!”
“You
can’t prove that,” was the loud reply.
“If you could, we wouldn’t be having this argument.”
“You
know, and I know, that you’re crooked.
That’s enough for me. Get
out of here, and stay out of my sight till I’m able to get you reassigned and
get myself a new partner.”
Jose
opened the door and left the room.
With the door open, everyone heard Martin’s last words to Jose and more
than a dozen reported them, more or less verbatim, to the Captain after they
learned of Jose’s death.
In
one form or another, they all reported that Martin Gonzalez said, “You’ve
stolen your last peso from the public you’re supposed to serve. I’m going to see that you never do it
again!”
Meanwhile, Jose left the police station, walked
a few blocks to a convenient bus stop, and hopped on an untraceable bus to ride
to the street where his next meeting was scheduled. Jose, whose second deadly sin after greed was vanity,
admired himself as he sat on the bus.
The suit was well tailored for his slight frame, the shoes were made from
real Argentine leather rather than the cheap imitation junk from Brazil, and
his hat made a fashion statement more than it just covered his head. The bus came to his stop and he pushed
the button to alert the driver and stepped off the stairs from the now open
back door. He walked anther
careful couple of blocks after ensuring nobody was following him by bus or car,
and entered an apartment house almost exactly 15 minutes late for his
appointment. If anything, he was
early by Uruguayan social custom, but he knew that Carlos would already be at
the apartment waiting for him with his payoff for services rendered. In this particular case the service
rendered was to lose the contents of a police file, which would throw a major
monkey wrench into the trial of an important local drug dealer.
Jose got off of the elevator and rang the
correct doorbell.
Carlos Cavernas opened the apartment door and gestured Jose Gonalez to
enter. Jose was slim, medium
height, very well dressed---what would have been called dapper a few
generations ago---with a fussily trimmed mustache, dark brown hair, and brown
eyes. He was quite obviously
Spanish in origin. Carlos was much
heavier, squat and built like a fire hydrant, clean-shaven, and sloppily
dressed in brown corduroy trousers and a gray seaman's cable sweater. He followed Jose into the apartment,
shut the door, and led his colleague into the adjacent living room, stooping to
pick up a white envelope from a coffee table in front of a long brown
sofa. He passed the envelope to
Jose, who looked inside, riffled the thick stack of cash to estimate the
amount, and put the envelope into the breast pocket of his expensive woolen
sport jacket.
"It's not enough any more for all of the
stuff you're asking me to do," Jose told Carlos. "I need a big raise, say about 50%!"
Carlos pulled out a small pistol, which he
pointed at Jose. "That's the
wrong answer. My orders were to
give you the money and thank you if you just took it, but to officially
terminate the relationship if you tried to get cute and ask for more. I've been looking forward to your
decision. I hate cops."
He shot twice. A third and fourth eye sprouted on Jose's head as he fell to
the floor, obviously dead. Carlos
bent over the body and removed the envelope with the cash, which went into one
of his trouser pockets.
"Thank you very much, Senor Gonzales. I think that is the first time you have
ever given me anything. I am
pleased that your only gift to me is such a generous one."
The detective's pistol disappeared into another
pocket and Carlos was ready to go.
He checked the scene to make sure nothing important had been left behind
and walked to the front door.
Doorknobs were wiped clean of fingerprints, as were any other surfaces
he might have touched. After an elaborate ritual with locks
and keys, he walked down the stairs and out of the building onto the street
completely unobserved. He walked
to his car, parked unobtrusively several blocks away, and drove off.
Chapter
2. An early morning telephone call
The telephone woke us
up with its incessant ringing at 5 AM on a Saturday morning. Suzanne had just fallen back asleep
after Robert’s regular demand for a 4 AM feeding, so I got up to answer the
phone. The connection was lousy,
but I could make out Eduardo Gomez’s deep voice on the other end of the line.
“Roger, is that you?”
“Yes, it is,” I
replied.
“I’ve got some bad
news to share. Somebody murdered
Martin Gonzalez’s partner, Detective Jose Gonzalez, last night. The local cops have no idea who did
it. I think that Martin is their
primary suspect. There don’t seem
to be any forensic clues, there were no witnesses, and we seem to have a classic
locked door mystery to solve. I
was wondering if you wanted to come down here to Montevideo and give me a hand
trying to solve this case and keep Martin of jail. I think I’m really going to need your help on this one,
since I’m under orders to keep a low profile around here.”
“What are you doing in
Uruguay and how did you get involved in a murder case so far from your home in
Paraguay?”
“It’s a long
story. I’ll tell you when you and
Suzanne get here.”
“Not Suzanne. She’s nursing an infant and can’t
travel that far away from home. It
has to be just me this time. I’ll
figure out what needs doing here, do it, and make reservations to fly down
there as quickly as I can. I can
probably be there Tuesday morning.
Will that work?”
“Nursing an infant,
eh? Congratulations. Tuesday morning should be OK. I’ll either meet your flight at the
airport or you’ll find me visiting Martin in the Montevideo jail. Or, for all I know, I might be in there
with him. Can I assume the usual
American Airlines flight to Montevideo by way of Miami will be the one you plan
to fly on?”
We completed our
arrangements. I got Eduardo’s cell phone number so I could reach him if things
went wrong on my end and crawled back to bed to try to get a couple of more
hours of sleep. I fell asleep
reflecting on how much change had occurred in our already chaotic lives with
Robert's birth. Among other things
I missed was the intimacy we had shared as a couple, which had fallen victim to
the constant fatigue of round the clock feedings and diaper changes, and the
passing of the ritual of a pun or bad joke as we went to sleep every night,
also a victim of chronic fatigue and now unmatched bedtimes.
The next morning,
after the usual chaos of feeding Robert and a diaper change, I told Suzanne
about Eduardo’s call and my promise to fly down to Montevideo to help our friends
out. That’s when I got my second
surprise of this young day.
“Whoa, Roger. You’re a married man now, with family
and responsibilities. You can’t
just leave us here and fly halfway around the world because someone tells you
they need you. Robert and I need
you. If you have to go to
Montevideo, book three seats in Business Class and we’ll all go.”
……………………………………………..
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