Days of Whine and Woes (ePub)

Hey, amigos. In 1989, as the Chilean military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet was ending, a Chilean businessman, Doctor Nahuel Millaman was murdered in his home in Santiago. Detectives Diego Silva, Fernando Arava and I were assigned to investigate the murder. Who am I? I'm detective Pedro Salazar. Until I retired from participating in boxing and karate, judo and cage fighting tournaments and joined the Carabineros de Chile, the Chilean National Police Force, at the age of eighteen, I was known as "The Mighty Midget". Don't laugh. It was my sponsor's idea and, as my family history told of a constant struggled against gravity, I had only managed to attain the magnificent height of five feet five inches by the time I stopped growing. So, now that you're up to speed, let's move on.

During the investigation at Doctor Millaman's house we found an identity card belonging to a Santiago taxi driver, Franco Gonzalez. We arrested Gonzalez who claimed that he had been mugged and his identity card stolen and planted at the murder scene. We were under tremendous pressure to solve the doctor's murder but I refused to allow Diego and Fernando to use force to get a confession from Gonzalez. This seriously angered them and when I left the interrogation cell to take a telephone call during the questioning of Gonzalez, Diego and Fernando murdered Gonzalez and framed me for the killing. This also stalled the investigation as Gonzalez had been the only known suspect. I was found guilty of murdering Gonzalez and jailed for twenty years.

The call that I had left the interrogation cell to take, was from one of my informers, Pablo "Clipper" Torres, who told me that he had vital information regarding the Millaman murder and feared that he would be killed because of this. We arranged to meet but I was jailed before I could get to Clipper who then disappeared. I received amnesty four years later after the country returned to democracy and set up a legal consultancy with an old school friend Maria Castillo.

One evening when I was walking home from work an unsuccessful attempt was made to assassinate me. When I'd recovered I set out to find Clipper. I traced him to a shack in the vast Santiago squatter camp known as the Raul Silva "campamento" where I found him dying after being attacked by unknown assailants. Before he died Clipper told me that his attackers were unknown to him and weren't Diego and Fernando whom I had suspected of attempting to kill me and of attacking Clipper.

Then an attempt was made to kidnap me but my big friend Sergio Alvarez intervened and the kidnappers escaped. I had no idea who was responsible for the attacks on me but I found an ally in Detective Alfredo Martinez who was investigating the attempt to murder me and the killing of Clipper Torres. Together with Sergio and Alfredo I set out to track down the mysterious power that was determined to kill me. But how the hell do you track down something when you don't know who or what it is? I had a better chance of out-staring a statue.

92 500 words