Ricardo Piglia - Money to Burn

'And you, how much do you earn? You'll be killing each other over small change…'

Comments made by the criminals demonstrate that they were evidently under the influence of alcohol and drugs. A stream of curses and foul language signalled to the chief of police the impossibility of 'dialogue and negotiation' with those cornered and that the incident was threatening to turn violent. As if in further demonstration of this was the relay of their voices on the building's intercom demanding to know if there were Argentine cops among those surrounding the house, challenging these compatriots to be the first to come and arrest them.

'Bring on the Argentine cops…'

'We want the Argie pigs…'

It is known that this type of criminal (indicated the police doctor in charge of the first aid post installed at the siege), particularly in the cases of the three who concern us here, is likely to be a drug addict, needing to maintain his habit in order to survive the kinds of conditions in which these three now found themselves. In corroboration of this fact, in a police search carried out later, they found 144 wraps of a drug known as Dexamil Spanzule and various 'raviolis' of cocaine that in their haste to get out the criminals had abandoned there. But persistent consumption can, as we know, induce hallucinations over a sustained period, something it was impossible to verify at this stage of the proceedings.

Further proof that the criminals found themselves in abnormal psychical conditions due to drug abuse was found in the fact that, on encountering themselves in such a difficult situation, today (yesterday) during last night, when the chief of police tried to intimidate them into giving themselves up, they replied: 'No, we're all doing just fine where we are, thanks, eating chicken and drinking whisky, while you lot are standing around outside getting hungry!'

'Why not come upstairs? We're inviting you…!'

The Crow signalled to the Kid and they moved back, still crouching down, to one side. They looked at one another, close to, leaning against the wall.

'Do we go out?'

'No. Let them come and get us, if they've got the balls. Malito will soon be here to get us out… Something'll happen, he must have run into them a short time ago, when he got near, since the block is bound to be surrounded and he couldn't get through. We have to hold out… and make a try for it when they weaken a bit… Let's try and make it out on to the flat roof.'

'Where are the cops positioned?' asked the Kid. 'Can you manage to see them?'

'They're all over the place.' Dorda was amusing himself. 'There are about a thousand… and they've got lorries, ambulances, patrol cars… Let them come up, let them just try… It'll be like potting starlings.'

'Lorries, whatever do they want lorries for…'

'To take away the corpses…' said the Crow and at that instant the firing began.

First there came the dry juddering of a 9-millimetre and then the noise of a machine-gun.

Dorda, squatting by the window, looked out on to the street and smiled.

He was looking out of the window in the unused room, which opens on to the inner well for light and air, and also looks into the corresponding window of the block opposite, through which the police had opened fire on to the besieged criminals. The round was responded to in kind by the Argentines and was prolonged by intermittent firing, much to the amazement of the entire population of Montevideo who began to follow the events on radio and television.

At a given moment there came a loud shout from one of the criminals.

'One to the door and the others to the upper windows.'

That was the strategy they employed throughout the night.

The apartment's location turned it into a mortal trap. There was no way out. But in its defence, it has to be said that it was the perfect hideout. The sole means of accessing the door was along the corridor and the door itself was protected by a bend in the staircase. Any attempted advance by that route was sheer suicide. The police continually fired down the corridor (there are hundreds of bullet holes in the walls and the plastering has fallen off exposing the brickwork) and the gunmen fired against the wall, mounting a submachine-gun at every one of the breaches opened up by the tracer bullets, in the hope that the projectiles would ricochet off the walls and rebound into the street.

'Once, in Avellaneda, the pigs holed us up in a shed, me and my youngest brother by Letrina Ortiz, and we found a basement leading into the sewers… A narrow opening no wider than this,' Mereles demonstrated the size, 'and we got out through there.'

They became energetic, trying to move around without being seen from any of the points controlled by the police. They had put the television on the floor so that it wouldn't get shot up and, from time to time, whenever there was a pause, they watched what was happening in the street. They also followed the account of what was going on on Radio Carve, the heightened register of the voices of their presenters, taking turns to recount the intense moments being lived in the city of Montevideo ever since the Argies occupied the el Liberaij apartment block. People had gathered together in the district, were making absurd statements into microphones and in front of cameras, as if they all understood exactly what was happening and were its actual and immediate witnesses. Thanks to the television screen, the Kid and the Gaucho realized that outside it had begun to drizzle, it was as if they were lost in space, holed up in a kind of capsule, a submarine (Dorda said) that had run out of fuel and was resting on the rocks at the bottom of the sea. The shots were like depth charges that shook them without succeeding in dislodging them.

The police confined themselves to firing at the door, preventing the faintest possibility of escape. They kept up a repeated, terrifying, angled fire at the kitchen skylight which gave on to the inner well. A continuous stream of iron poured through that skylight, barely illuminated in the shadows, whenever one of the criminals attempted to gain access to the kitchen.

'They're never going to get in this way. There are over six clear metres from here to the staircase.'

'So long as we hold out, they can't approach from the front.'

'It was the whore,' said Dorda.

'Don't think so.'

'It's the ill luck we bring with us.'

'You stick by the window.'

'How much dope is there?'

'Malito, surrender, you're surrounded.'

'The buggers think that Stripey is in here with us…'

At this moment, through the window, there came a huge explosion, shattering the panes. With it came two teargas bombs.

'Get water… from the bathroom.'

They covered their faces with damp handkerchiefs and used wet towels to pick up the two smouldering bombs and toss them back out through the window towards the staircase and down into the hall below. The police and journalists (and the excessively curious) retreated on receiving an unexpected shower of teargas. The police decided to delay before resuming the gas attacks, and to switch tactics. They were going to attempt to gain control of the flat roof on the neighbouring house and, from there, to control the bathroom window.

The police connect up another spotlight which begins sweeping a white light across the room. Mereles fires through the door while Dorda covers the window. The Kid opens the door and leans out on to the corridor.

'D'you see anything?'

He goes to the window which looks out on to the terrace.

'They're going to try and cut us off from the flat roof.' He retreats rapidly, and returns to them. 'From there they can control all the rooftops.'

'They're trying to come in from above.'

'Impossible: if they do that to us, they'll be showering us in shit.'