Chili Murder Baffles Cops

"Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night
Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall
She sees the bartender in a pool of blood
Cries out "My God they killed them all!!!..."
- Dylan, Hurricane

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
The Paz Files

MATAMOROS, Mexico - Chili Perez was drunk, the sexy woman is saying as she walks away from the jukebox of the old Mocambo Bar, drunk and annoying. "He made a pass at me and I told him to go sleep it off," she went on. "I was with this blogger guy from Brownsville and he was kinda pissed at Chili. I mean, I'd had Chili other times, but I was not with him that night."

Perez would be dead a few hours later, gunned down as he walked toward his battered Volvo. He'd been deep in the murder case involving the college student Louise Herrera, and he thought he had the killer in sight. The gunfire, cops were now saying, had come from a passing car, an El Camino, a witness later told the newspaper. No arrests had been made and the mystery of why the Mocambo Bar had been cleared and shuttered still hung heavy in the air.

This particular woman, Gloria "La Almohada" Jasso, had been the last one to speak with Perez, a detective with the Brownsville Police Department. Had he said anything about the case?
"Yeah, but I forget," she threw out, sipping from a bottle of Dos Equis inside Las Tres Lichas Lounge, the business now operating out of the old Mocambo Bar location. "It was something about some guy whose name I can't remember. It was not a common name, not like Juan somebody or Jose Fulano De Tal. It was way different."

Was the name Rudolf Von Bulow?

"I can't remember," she said, frowning.

Von Bulow, a writer for The Paz Files, had been targeted as a rapist by the 23-year-old Miss. Herrera, who told police he had repeatedly assaulted her sexually inside his South Padre Island condo after a long, long night of drinking at various bars and nighclubs. Miss Herrera was later found dead at the base of a craggy mesquite in an outlying area of Cameron County. Charges against Von Bulow were later dropped by the district attorney, but her family is said to be in the process of filing a civil lawsuit seeking millions.

Rumors snaked across town that Von Bulow had put a price on Chili Perez's head, and that perhaps it was local ruffians who had killed him. According to Miss Jasso, a shapely former employee of the local bordello's La Rata Muerta Club, Chili Perez had met with several men inside the bar the day before he was killed.

"One of them looked strange," she said next. "He was a thin, goofy looking guy in cowboy clothes. He had a big hat like the kind you see in cowboy movies, and that guy had a short, chubby Hispanic woman with him. I forget his name, too."

Asked the name of her blogger friend, she did not hesitate: "Jerry McHale."

Was McHale one of the men at Chili's meeting in the bar?

"He was here, but he was dancing with a real ugly woman we know as La Caballona, ugly broad, but with big tits," she said, killing the beer in one last gulp. McHale was in the Herrera case peripherally. He'd been the one who'd introduced her to another Paz Files writer, LaCandrelle Jefferson, who had been shot dead soon after the rape allegation surfaced. Jefferson's killer remains at large.

Did you ever see McHale talking with Chili, the woman is asked.

"Of course," she answered. "Those two were regular customers here. But Chili's dead and McHale doesn't come around anymore. Maybe he's afraid that he's next..."

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