Day 125 - Greetings from Bandung

 Greetings from Bandung

 Matthew Ryan Fischer

 

Two low-level street thugs harassed Sonny about parking on their street. He tried to keep a straight face so as not to antagonize them further. They had no idea who he was, and they wanted so little, it was laughably pathetic. Nearly still children, Sonny was sure he would be able to handle them in a fight and could have taken them to the police, but he didn’t see the point. He didn’t have jurisdiction here, and overcrowded jails didn’t need more pickpockets and petty thieves filling them up. There were murders and massacres to solve. Sonny could afford to part with a handful of Rupiah if it meant a few minutes of peace.

Sonny had more important things on his mind. He had two bloodbaths on his hands, seemingly related, men from both families at both locations. It was unclear who had set out to murder who, but what were once business partners, were clearly at war with one another, with bullets from both families interspersed in the bodies of the other. But then there were the missing parties. Yaya Amer’s daughter Fara was missing. Some of the bodyguards from the compound were nowhere to be found either. And there had also been the murder of a father and son at a local auto-body shop that was recently purchased by Jon Quer. The picture was still muddy, but Amer and Quer both had their names and hands in a number of homes and businesses that had been recently attacked, robbed or burnt to the ground. Sonny needed a connection between them though. Someone was missing. Some mutual enemy. Or a rival. These two were clearly more than legitimate businessmen and someone had decided to take them out.

One thing he had not expected to see were photos from a seemingly random killing at an apartment building on the other side of town. Throat slashed, there were no similarities with these other seemingly gangland slayings. But Sonny wanted to see any information available on all major crimes in the past few months. The local police balked and complained, but they eventually turned him loose in the files. The apartment slaying was unique for one reason – the man killed had the number thirty-three tattooed on his arm. Sonny didn’t know the man, but he had seen a similar tattoo years ago when he had infiltrated a gang of pirates in the Sulu-Celebes Seas off the coast of the Philippians. That man’s tattoo had read forty-seven, but it was in the same style. Thirty-three and forty-seven. What was the connection? If not for his time fighting pirates, he would have looked past the thirty-three tattoo as well. But there clearly seemed to be something here. He needed to recheck all the bodies from the massacres. So far, he hadn’t seen any other men tattooed quite like this, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out there. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was a first step. Perhaps one more organization of criminals that would have to be looked into, or perhaps it would provide the link that would tie all this bloodshed together.