Money to Burn (13 page)

'With Yamandú picked up, they'll be out there, isolated.'

'So,' said Silva, 'if they're out there, isolated, they'll change their plans. What can they do? They'll attempt to leave the city.'

'Impossible, we've blocked all the ways out.'

'It's important to put it out through the newspapers that Yamandú is collaborating with us.'

The investigators had reached the conclusion that Malito and his accomplices were now finding themselves with rather less money in their pockets. The purchase of documents; the expenses of their clandestine transport - in the yacht the
Santa Monica
, as sources in the police department confirmed - across to Uruguay; the orgies that took place in their refuges; the hiring of cars and the apartments being used as hideouts, had all eaten into their capital. Tales of the orgies were related by Carlos Catania, a rent-boy who presented himself to the police spontaneously, and gave an account of the previous weekend's events. The evil-doers acquired boys and women and quantities of drugs, spending two days in a 'rave', as they called it, filled with 'acts of abject depravity'.

'They're sound,' said the seventeen-year-old, 'they gave me a suit.'

This youth was the first to mention Kid Brignone's visits to the redlight zone around the Plaza Zavala, and his friendship with Giselle.

'I want to speak to that girl alone,' Silva said.

Personnel from the Interior Ministry, exploiting the inexhaustible source of specific references which together make up night life in Montevideo - whisky bars, gaming rooms and the like - thus learnt that the Argie gunmen channelled their attempts to find 'a good place to go to ground' through the mediation of a young escort (the country girl from over the River Negro) who worked in the neighbourhood.

In tandem with the attempts to rent an apartment for a few days, the gunmen were preparing a safe passage into Paraguay, for which they were offering an exorbitant sum. The attempts ended up in the hands of certain persons who owned an apartment in the Liberaij building (at number 1182, Julio Herrera and Obes Streets), who, it transpired, had certain connections with the police world.

A further unconfirmed version relayed that the Argentines had reached the flat thanks to a minor connection with the Uruguayan underworld and that this contact ('a patsy'), in order to rid himself of the risk posed by the Argentine gang, had acquired the lease on the flat and had immediately 'sold' the information on to the police without the original property owners or their tenants knowing who on earth the birds who had flown to seek refuge in apartment number nine at 1182 on Herrera and Obes Streets really were.

In short, it's a long and complicated story which twists and turns into and out of every nook and cranny of a nocturnal existence, where it's easy - as someone might say out of sheer neighbourliness - for the honest night-club punter to hook up with the smuggler, the assailant and the pickpocket, without realizing what their occupations are. It's left to the police to explain all that. Meanwhile, the one thing that's certain is that the Argentine criminals entered the apartment referred to above only a few minutes after ten o'clock yesterday evening.

Flat number nine is the
garçonnière
shared by the two farmers from the East, who had subcontracted it from the proprietor for a sum of 480 Uruguayan pesos a month. The two farmers are male cousins, both around twenty-five years old. Both, again, habitually frequent the night-club circuit and enjoy the low-life with the rent-boys from the port.

How on earth did the gunmen Brignone, Dorda and the Crow Mereles get as far as this flat, being sought on all sides by the police department? The journalist didn't know but had various hypotheses to propound.

One version recounts that the gunmen had done a purchase deal with their legitimate proprietor (a Uruguayan of Greek extraction), likewise a nocturnal animal, who lived more in Buenos Aires than in Montevideo and whose surname, it was said, could have begun with the letter 'K'.

The gunmen had handed over an initial payment of 80,000 Uruguayan pesos to 'K', without his knowing anything of their real identity, having only met up with them on their nocturnal circuit around the Old City.

Going beyond conjecture, what also seems certain is that the flat on Julio Herrera and Obes Streets was a genuine 'rat- trap' set by the police to attract the fleeing gunmen. No one knows quite how, but through some means or another, the police set things in motion so that the gunmen came to take refuge there.

One source who requested to remain anonymous says that the Argentines confided in another Uruguayan crook who turned out to be a police nark, and that he brought them to the attention of people linked to the Homicide Division.

Another version indicates that it was the police who indirectly placed the flat at the disposal of the Argentines and that they got themselves into their lair' without the least suspicion that their Uruguayan protector had sold them to their pursuers. If that's really the case - in which instance, it would be necessary to set aside the other version which says that the Argentines bought the flat with a first deposit of 80,000 Uruguayan pesos - the police no doubt operated cautiously because they knew the lay of the land and the threats posed by the fugitives.

Once these fugitives were surprised on the street, the battle was both inevitable and highly perilous for Montevideans. The police desired a situation in which the criminals would be gathered together and to this end, it was said, they had spread their nets wide from the Headquarters in the desire to hand them an apparently secure apartment on a plate - somewhere central, comfortable, furnished etc. - while the Argentines awaited the contact who was supposed to transport them, according to what Nando had told them, across to Paraguay.

If this is an accurate account of what transpired, and everything leading up to it, the timing mechanism that went into operation to detain the Argentines was triggered at exactly ten o'clock on the night of the move.

Shortly before the appointed hour, the twenty-one-year- old country girl who occupied the flat during her free hours had dressed in a light-blue-coloured suit and was ready to go out, as was her custom, to the night-club in the city centre where she spent her night waiting for the dawn. She carried with her a black handbag and shoes to match, and there's no doubt she had not the faintest notion of what was about to happen.

It was precisely ten o'clock at night. At that moment the intercom downstairs on the building rang and an unknown voice asked permission to come up and speak to the country girl from north of the River Negro. She pressed the buzzer and let him enter.

The man identified himself as a senior officer from Police Headquarters, according to the night-club girl's story (it transpired her name was Margarita Taibo, alias Giselle).

'Get out of here
...
Leave at once,' the man ordered her.

The girl, followed a short distance behind by the senior police officer, did indeed go straight outside on to the street without even finishing applying her make-up, and the apartment remained empty, like a trap awaiting the arrival of its prey.

It was approximately 10.10 p.m.

The dark girl from north of the River Negro went to the home of a friend who lived on 25 de maio Avenue, and then, with the friends of this friend, they all went together to the night-club in a car with Brazilian licence plates.

Taking advantage of the fact that they knew the flat, which they then went on to bait as a 'rat-trap', the Intelligence Section of the police service controlled the gunmen's moves from the very start, from the first instant they established the contact which gave them access to taking over the hideout.

According to one version, the police stuffed the place with microphones, because they wanted to discover where the stolen money - some 500,000 dollars - had been stashed. Others said that the surveillance and bugging system anticipated the arrival of the gunmen and had been used to survey the possibly illegal activities of the night-club owners (basically drugs trafficking, and white slavery). Be this as it may, the attempt to recover the loot is (according to certain sources) the one plausible explanation for the strange flaw in the operation.

As is well known, it's current practice in police proceedings to set 'rat-traps' for crooks. This consists in preparing the ambush inside the house or flat they know will have to be visited for some reason or other and making a surprise entry before a defence can be mounted.

In the present instance, it would appear that an error was made. They prepared the rat-trap the wrong way around, working from the outside in rather than from the inside out. If the police, when they went in to bring out the young occupant of apartment number nine, had surrounded the place, they could have denied the criminals access to the immense arsenal at their disposal to resist the siege until the moment reached by the description given in this account.

But the police (from Argentina) were looking for something more. What's most likely is that they wanted to kill them off rather than take them alive, in order to prevent them from incriminating any of the officers who (according to the same source) had clandestinely participated in the operation without receiving the share of the booty promised to them.

What remains certain is that the gunmen's red Studebaker entered the garage downstairs in the building at 10.11 p.m.

Kid Brignone ascended the staircase followed by the Crow Mereles and the Blond Gaucho. The Kid inserted the key into the lock and with a light push the door to the apartment opened.

The
garçonnière
installed in flat number nine, on Julio Herrera and Obes Streets, is a small complex of near-empty rooms, painted a pale green. The door to the flat (the bell doesn't work so, to get in touch with its occasional inhabitants, it's necessary to do so via the intercom system down at street level) opens on to a narrow corridor where (the youth who wrote the police reports for
El Mundo
pointed out) the doors to other flats are also located. It's on the first floor of the apartment block, which has no lift, being only three storeys high. It is important to bear this detail in mind.

Once inside the flat, the first sight afforded to the viewer is that of a kind of living-cum-dining-room of some four metres by three, on whose left-hand side there runs a kitchen, in which there's finally a window giving on to an inner well intended to provide air and light. The kitchen contains a marble-topped counter with a sink in the middle and cupboards underneath. The visitor who enters this flat will meet with empty walls and scant living-room furniture. The door that ought to separate the living room from the kitchen is also missing.

Next in line, opening on to the living-room, there are three doors leading to the two bedrooms and to the bathroom.

The first of these rooms, overlooking the central well, is the alcove used by the dark-skinned girl from north of the River Negro and in it can still be seen a bed, a shelf and a small wardrobe, a wicker table with a glass top, and a chair. There was nothing else in there at all apart from a small lamp on the shelf and, also on the shelf, a photo of the country girl. The bare walls give the flat that atmosphere of precariousness which such places have.

The next room looks on to a second inner well (for light and air) and is also an alcove which was used by the subtenants of the flat, along with the numerous occasional visitors who came, by one way or another, to have the key to the apartment or to have access to borrowing it. There's a double bed in the middle of the room, a toilet to the left and a wardrobe to the right, facing the foot of the bed. To the right, in the middle of the room, another window opens on to the inner well (affording light and air). The basic difference between this bedroom and the other is that the one belonging to the dark-skinned girl from north of the River Negro has polished parquet flooring and its walls are whitewashed, in this room the reverse is the case. The room has no regular incumbents: nobody is bothered to keep it in even a minimum state of cleanliness.

Finally there is the bathroom, containing nothing but the usual fittings, just a General Electric boiler and a blue plastic curtain running around the bath. Above the bath there is a window that opens on to the inner well, affording light and air.

'Across the other side there's nothing at all, only the patio.'

Mereles had clambered on to the edge of the bath and was leaning out, looking downwards from the window. Grey walls, lit windows and beneath them the corrugated iron roof of a shed. The Kid and Dorda headed into the living-room.

'There's a TV here, look
...
'

'Didn't I tell you it was reasonably well furnished
...
'

'Che, what a stink there is in the toilet
...
'

'So,' the Kid continued explaining, 'we went, because you'll remember, Crazy, that before, we wanted to go to Mexico, and I had a friend who went and bought a passport, because he had so many stamps on his, he was called Suárez and was helped by his surname (because every other person is called that) and it was in Mexico they finally bumped him
off
...
'

'Listen to me, Rubberlips, who in their right mind would think of going to Mexico
...
The altitude bursts your eardrums, and once in La Paz my snout poured blood simply from opening my bedroom window.'

'But what I'm telling you is that you have to get to New York. There's a highway that runs from the Tierra del Fuego to Alaska, didn't you know that? Look at the map and it's like a thread, running and running, all through the open countryside, the Germans built it, they brought in the diggers, made the natives do the work and you could get from one end to the other by bicycle.'

'I'm going to crash here, chuck over the bolster, would you? Let's eat something.'

They had bought chickens on a spit and whisky and corned beef, enough reserves to last them a week, in case they couldn't move around.