Chapter 4

May 8, 1997
10:05 a.m.
Reynaldo Adorno was in his favorite robe, wearing his favorite slippers, reclining on his La-Z-Boy, and watching golf on his new ultra-thin wall-mounted flat-screen television when the knock came. His wife, Mayette, couldn’t for the life of her understand his newfound fascination with the sport, and was thankful for the distraction.
“Do you want me to get it?” Reynaldo offered in his urbanized, New York Spanish as he watched his eight-month-pregnant wife hoist herself up from the couch.
“No, I’ll get it,” Mayette answered in rapid, rural Dominican. “I can’t stand this golf you watch.”
Reynaldo shrugged and watched some White guy—he never knew any of their names—come in under par.
“Quién?” Mayette said as she waddled up to the door.
“Excuse me,” the young woman on the other side of the door said in the same rural Spanish, “Magali from upstairs wanted me to walk her dog while she was in Santo Domingo, but the key she left me doesn’t work. Can I please use your phone to call her sister and ask what I should do?”
The voice sounded pleasant enough. Mayette looked through the peephole and saw a pretty nineteen-year-old standing there, looking sweet, honest.
“Who is it?” Reynaldo called out from the living room.
“Oh, just some girl who wants to use the phone,” Mayette called back, unlocking the top bolt lock.
Reynaldo’s eyes bulged wide. “Don’t open the door!” he cried, leaping off his recliner.
But it was too late. By the time his words registered, Mayette had already undone the bottom lock.
The door burst violently open, knocking Mayette to the ground. The man wore a black nylon running suit, a polypropylene balaclava, and black rubber galoshes. His movements were fluid, efficient, and disciplined. His expertise was violence. A black Smith & Wesson 9mm clutched in one fleshy latex-clad hand, he charged over the quivering pile of Mayette and lunged at Reynaldo, crashing the butt of the 9mm into the top of his head three times with brutal force. Reynaldo crumpled to the floor, as a twenty-two-year-old Juan Gustavo Chodas, also in a black running suit and balaclava, stepped in through the front door. A 10mm Glock 20 in his right hand, Juan grabbed Mayette by the hair with his left, and dragged her into the living room. Carrying a duffel bag, Marisol, “Magali’s friend,” was the last through the door. She closed it behind her, and pulled latex gloves and a hair net out of her pocket. With shaking hands, she quickly drew a one-piece nylon jumpsuit from the duffel and pulled it on over her clothes.
The violent man seized Reynaldo by the neck with one powerful hand, hoisted him bodily off the ground, and dumped him back into the La-Z-Boy. He pressed the 9mm against Reynaldo’s bloody forehead and said one word, “Hanger.”
Marisol quickly rummaged through the duffel, found a wire hanger, and threw it to him. He used his teeth to pull it more or less straight, and bound Reynaldo’s hands behind his back. Recovering from her initial shock, Mayette began to scream. Juan promptly struck her on the head with his Glock. Then, from the waistband of his running pants, he produced the sawed-off tip of a broomstick wrapped with precut strips of duct tape. He tore off a strip and slapped it across Mayette’s mouth. Extending a hand to Marisol, he snapped his fingers and she placed a wire hanger in it.
When Mayette’s hands were bound, Marisol brought the duffel to the violent man, then went about lowering the blinds in the living room. Juan forced the prego to her feet and looked at the violent man. “Aight, dawg. I got this.”
He nodded, then searched the rest of the apartment for occupants. Returning thirty seconds later he said, “We are clear, Juanito.” He was the only human on the planet who dared still call Juan Chodas “Juanito.” This was not because he was the most feared Dominican in all of New York. It was because this man’s use of the endearment meant he remembered his now powerful nephew as a young and sensitive child, and that his love and respect for him was undiminished. “Marisol, keep an eye out that window and tell me every time you see a police car or any police on foot, and you let me know what they do, and where they go, okay?”
Marisol nodded, made an opening in the Levalors by creasing two slots apart from one another with her fingers, and peered down on Seamen Avenue below. The world looked peaceful out there, oblivious to what was going on inside Reynaldo’s apartment.
Juan and the violent man looked at each other and removed their head coverings at the same time, tucking them in their waistbands.
“You . . . ,” Reynaldo started to say, staring fixedly at Juan, but the violent man forced the business end of his Smith & Wesson into Reynoldo’s mouth, chipping one of his teeth and splitting his lip in the process. When Reynaldo started to scream, the violent man jammed the weapon farther down his throat and hissed, “Shut the fuck up and listen to what he has to say.”
Juan took his cue. “Reynaldo,” he said pleasantly, almost cheerfully. “I came to give you some bad news. Five-oh went and hit my sneaker store spot. They took all the money I was going to use to pay off what I got on consignment from you. So I guess I can’t pay you back, dawg. Sorry about that, that’s just the way shit go down in the street sometimes, dawg. Oh yeah, somethin’ else. I had this idea. I’m sick of this sellin’ ounces and shit. I wanna take a step up. I don’t wanna buy kilos, I wanna move fuckin’ kilos, know what I’m sayin’? So I’m gonna retire your ass, take your spot, and work with your connection. I wanna start importin’.” Juan smiled sardonically. “I guess that’s more bad news, ain’t it, dawg? Oh well, sucks to be you today.”
Reynaldo tried to form obscenities around the gunmetal obstruction in his mouth, but the violent man shoved it further down his throat to stifle him.
“Whoa, pendejo!” Juan chided. “I know you gots a lot you wanna tell me, but let my friend take the gun out your mouth first!” When Reynaldo’s raving and gagging ebbed, Juan continued. “Now when my friend takes his gun out of your mouth, you gonna tell me two things, aight, dawg? If you don’t, I’m gonna have to kill your woman here.” On the word “woman,” Juan slapped Mayette in the head with the barrel of his Glock. “Now the two things you gonna tell me is who yo’ connection is, and how do I contact the mothafucka.” Then, as an afterthought, Juan added, “Oh, yeah, one more thing. Since we went through all the trouble to visit you here, I’ll take whatever shit you got layin’ around. I know you got at least one trap filled with money in this fuckin’ place, so give it up.”
The violent man unholstered the Smith from Reynaldo’s mouth. Reynaldo retched a few times, going into such a coughing fit it looked like he might pass out. While he carried on, the violent man reached into the duffel and removed an extra-large set of industrial bolt-cutters. He removed Reynaldo’s right slipper, heaved the bolt-cutters up into the air, yanked its handles apart, and then drove it down on the tip of Reynaldo’s foot so hard that the blades embedded themselves into the lacquered parquet floor. Three of Reynaldo's toes were caught between the blades. When the violent man forced the bolt-cutter’s handles together, the blades churned up splinters of pine parquet as they chomped through tiny bones, severing the three toes.
Horrified, Mayette began howling through the muffling duct tape. Juan silenced her with a sharp strike in the forehead with the slide of his Glock 20, opening a nice gash over her left eye. She staggered back from the blow, but Juan held her upright and in place, facing Reynaldo.
Reynaldo’s coughing was replaced by a kind of sickly, hollow gasp, as he thrashed about wildly in his La-Z-Boy. The violent man threw down the bolt-cutters, drew his Smith again and planted its barrel into Reynaldo’s cheek.
“Who is your connection?” he asked plainly.
Reynaldo’s mouth quivered as he stammered, “M-muh-m-mi di-dinero e-es . . .”
“English!” Juan barked. “Speak English, you fuckin’ hick!”
“M-money ees een th-th-the fl-floor…” Reynaldo managed in his best English. “U-uh-under the . . . uh . . . th-the . . . l-la c-c-cama . . . ”
“Under the bed?” Juan confirmed.
“Si . . . the bed, under th-the b-bed in a trap. . . .” Reynaldo continued, “Turn off the cuh-cable with the remote, an-and the m-muh-magnet will release . . .”
“That’s all good, dawg,” Juan said, “But the first thing you supposed to tell me is about yo’ contact.”
“Juan, puh-p-por favor . . .” Reynaldo sputtered, “There ees almos’ one-hundred thousand dollar in there . . . m-maybe more . . .”
“Your contact,” Juan shouted. “Don’ make me ask yo’ ass again.”
“But the General will no deal with you. . . .” Reynaldo blurted out.
The violent man dropped the barrel of his 9mm to Reynaldo’s right knee and fired. The deafening explosion of the gunshot shook the whole room. The 9mm Black Talon round punched through Reynaldo’s kneecap, shattered the upper tibia, and burst out the other side, propelling bone, cartilage and meat onto the front of the comfy recliner.
“Five minutes . . .” Marisol said, activating the preset timer on her digital watch, “. . . now.”
Five minutes was the time they allotted to remain in the apartment after the first shot was fired. Reynaldo’s apartment was on upper Seamen Avenue, in the northwestern portion of the Thirty-Fourth Precinct. Juan arranged it so that while Marisol was knocking on the apartment’s door asking to use the phone, four separate 911 calls were being made describing an off-duty police officer involved in a shooting and foot pursuit on West 186th Street and Audobon Avenue¾inthe southeastern section of the precinct. This radio run would tie up cops on patrol in the Thirty-Fourth and Thirty-Third precincts for a good twenty minutes. It was a safe bet that it would take a solid five to seven minutes before a car would peel itself away from the Audobon Avenue call and make it all the way up to Seamen Avenue to respond to a call of shots fired.
“Now,” Juan said, “Who the fuck is the General? He your contact?”
Reynaldo’s face was contorted, racked with pain and contempt. For ten grueling seconds, he said nothing.
“I don’t got time for this shit, dawg,” Juan said losing patience. He whispered a word in Mayette’s ear, then left her side and strode over to Reynaldo and crouched down beside him. He took Reynaldo’s head in both hands, the slide of his Glock pressed up against the man’s cheek, and forced him to look at Mayette—who stood frozen to the spot where she’d been left. “You got a wife and a baby here to think about,” Juan said. “Make me ask you again, and one of ’em gonna die.”
Shaking, his lips twitching, Reynaldo said, “Juan . . . p-please . . .don’t make me . . .”
Before Reynaldo could finish his plea, Juan cast a look at the violent man—it was almost sorrowful. But this was why he was here, this was what he’d committed himself to. He had a plan. He was beyond turning back. “Do it,” he said.
The violent man advanced on the doe-eyed Mayette and grabbed her roughly by the shoulder. He jerked her around sideways and commanded, “Look at your husband,” in Spanish.
She met Reynaldo’s gaze with an expression of pure helplessness.
Without hesitation, the violent man thrust the barrel of his 9mm handgun against Mayette’s full, round belly. Her eyes lit wide in terror above the strip of duct tape covering her mouth, and he pulled the trigger. The muzzle flash scorched Mayette’s house dress at the top of her paunch and the tip of her right breast. The high power projectile ripped through her taut, bulging belly, and darted into the floor. She took a few awkward steps backward, then sat down hard and fell on her side, screaming through her nose, snot leaking and bubbling out onto the strip of duct tape.
“Now you just got a wife to think about, dawg,” Juan sneered.
The violent man knelt and placed his 9mm against Mayette’s head. Still holding Reynaldo’s head, Juan forced him to look at her.
“Give me your fuckin’ contact now!” Juan roared.
Reynaldo hitched in a breath, and told Juan everything he knew about his contact—a high-ranking official in the Colombian military, General Frederico Sandoval—and how to reach him. Juan sat on Reynaldo’s couch, put his Glock on the coffee table and took notes on his palmtop, while the violent man loomed over Reynaldo with the bolt cutters. When Reynaldo was finished, and Juan was satisfied that no important details were missing, he folded up the palmtop and nodded to his companion.
The violent man, dropped the bolt cutters, put the Smith & Wesson to Reynaldo’s head, and shot him. Brains and blood soiled the living room, and Reynaldo went instantaneously limp. Then he walked over to Mayette, put the 9mm to her head and shot her too.
Juan called to Marisol, “How much time we got?”
“A li-little less than a minute, Tio Juan,” Marisol replied. She sounded tense.
“Jiram,” Juan said to the violent man. “Grab the bag! Let’s go find that trap in the bedroom and get that hundred K!”

* * *

Two minutes later, three figures in black running suits, balaclavas, and galoshes, exited a building on upper Seamen Avenue and got into a tinted-out Lincoln Town Car. With Jiram at the wheel, they sped down Seamen Avenue to Dyckman Street and then east on Dyckman. Juan sat in the back of the car with Marisol, as if they were just two ordinary passengers in an ordinary livery car.
“Yo, that shit was fucked up!” Marisol was telling Juan as they cruised along Dyckman Street. “I can’t believe that bitch turned out to be pregnant! I didn’t think you was still gonna go through with it, yo!”
“Yeah, well, I do what I gotta do,” Juan said without color.
“Yo, but a pregnant bitch like that,” Marisol continued. “And you had him shoot her baby, ’n’ shit. That was like so fucked up! I can’t believe y’all niggas did that shit!”
“Like I said . . .” Juan began impatiently.
“No, I know you had to do it, but it’s like just that it was so fucked up ’n’ shit, right?”
Juan looked up and met Jiram’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Yo, so how much was under the bed?” Marisol asked anxiously.
“Don’t know,” Juan said.
“You wanna count that shit?” Marisol said, reaching for the duffel at Juan’s feet.
“Not in the fuckin’ car, stupid!” Juan snapped.
“What? It’s tinted, no one could see nothing.”
“We ain’t countin’ the money in the fuckin’ car,” Juan said with finality as Jiram turned onto the Harlem River Drive southbound.
“Aight, well how ’bout my cut?” Marisol asked. “You gonna hit me off now or . . .”
“Later,” Juan said.
“Later when?” Marisol persisted. “’Cause me and my sister we’s goin’ clubbing tonight, and if I had that money, we could get a fly car from O-Jay’s.”
“Just later,” Juan said, sounding tired. Then Juan looked at Marisol and said, “Your ass was quiet up in the apartment, why the fuck you don’t shut up now?”
“No, it’s just that in the apartment I was like scared and shit, but now we okay. . . .”
“We’re not clear until we switch cars, Marisol,” Juan cautioned. Then he added,
“That’s why we ain’t countin’ the money.”
“Oh, aight. That’s cool,” Marisol said looking out at Queens drifting by her on the other side of the East River as the Town Car cruised south on the Drive. “Where we gonna switch?”
“Ain’t far,” Juan said, looking through the windshield.
Jiram exited the Drive at 155th Street. He followed the exit ramp to the north end of Frederick Douglas Boulevard and looped around back on the southbound Drive entrance ramp. There, he pulled into a fenced-off construction area under an elevated portion of the Drive, and parked the Lincoln behind two waiting cars.
Marisol was talking about Mayette again. “. . . no, it’s like I knew we was gonna kill them, but when I saw that that bitch was pregnant, I was like, ‘Oh, shit!’ you know? And I didn’t know if . . . what the fuck are you doing?” Marisol looked quizzically at Juan, who had suddenly pressed his hands to his ears. Then her face shattered and the back of her head blew open, expelling blood, skull, hair and clods of gray matter all over the seat behind her. Marisol’s eyes went abruptly vacant, and she sagged lifeless in her seat.
“Fucking coño!” Jiram shouted, dropping his smoking 9mm and putting his hands to his ears. He realized he couldn’t hear his own voice. “Fuck, Juanito! I can’t fucking hear! Shit!”
The gunshot had been incredibly loud. Neither man had been fully prepared for how loud it was. Even Juan, who had covered his ears and braced himself, was thrust into the throes of a pounding headache, and Jiram’s shouting sounded muffled and distant. “Jesus fuck, that was loud!” Juan said, then, realizing he could hardly hear his own voice, he said, “Hello? Hello?”
The two sat in the Lincoln with Marisol’s grisly corpse for a minute checking their hearing until it had mostly returned. Then they got out, stripped off their nylon over-suits and galoshes and tossed them into the Lincoln with their head coverings. Jiram retrieved a one-gallon tank of gasoline from the car’s trunk and began emptying its contents into the passenger compartment.
“So what’s goin’ on wit’ our friend, Officer W¾?” Juan asked.
“I know a cop in the Thirty-Fourth Precinct, Fausto Colon. He works the same hours as W¾,” Jiram said, his upper body in the Lincoln. “The day it goes down, I’m going to call him, and he’s going to tell me what section of the precinct W¾’s working in. Then I will call 911 from an apartment in that section and make a noise complaint or something, and when W¾ responds, I’ll take him out.”
“You already gots the apartment lined up?” Juan asked. “And it’s clean?”
“I have three lined up, Juanito, and they’re completely clean,” Jiram assured. “Fausto told me the precinct puts out four police cars every shift, each one in a different section of the precinct. He told me what the sections are, and I’m setting up one apartment in each section. I should have the last apartment lined up by tomorrow night. W— is off tonight and tomorrow, we should be able to do it Saturday, the tenth.”
“Aight, good. That motha-fucka’s bad for . . .” Juan began, but he was interrupted by the ring of his StarTac cell phone.
Expecting the call, he picked it up right away, flipped it open and said, “Well?”
“He’s here,” said the voice on the other end.
Juan closed the phone and looked at Jiram. “Enrico’s here.”
“Good,” said Jiram, placing the now empty gas can on the back seat. He opened the front passenger window, and stood next to Juan. “What time do you want me at Escobar’s?”
“Be there by noon. I’m gonna go eat some breakfast, dawg. I’ll meet you over there.”
“I will be there,” Jiram said. He and Juan removed their latex gloves and tossed them into the Lincoln.
Staring at Marisol in the back seat, Juan said, “That bitch talked too fuckin’ much.” He lit a single match then used it to light the entire pack.
“Yes. She would have been a problem.”
“You were right,” Juan said. “We shoulda used Yasenia.” And he threw the flaming matches into the Lincoln.