Six months ago, I was at the right place, right time, for an unusual scene. We have often observed money trucks, dark bulletproof windshield like a furrowed brow on a serious, gray, heavy-set body, an impregnable fortress of fortunes, pushing through traffic to its next bank.
That day, the front end of a crippled money truck was chained to the ramps of a big tow truck. Two armed guards, one in the tow truck cab, the other following behind in a taxi, pulled into the mechanic's area adjacent a Pemex station.
The money truck, on one of its pickup stops, had failed to see the extent of the temporary Telmex ditch and crashed the front wheel in. This bent the steering rod and collapsed the exhaust manifold pipe. Quite a crowd had gathered to watch the tow truck maneuver over the ditch, winch-lift the sunken money truck, and scoop up the front wheels amidst squeaks and groans. The police guarded traffic as the two armed guards watched nervously.
At the mechanic's, the money truck was backed into the work area and the front lowered to the greasy ground. Each side of the front was jacked up, and antripods crammed under. After inspection, the mechanic went to work with torch and tools. The two guards, with their 12-guage automatic shot-guns, positioned themselves off the back of the vehicle under a tree, the frazzled driver joining them.
The widower mechanic's diminutive six-year-old son was helping him with the torch hoses, welding rods and tools, as he scurried around under the elevated truck with the ease of a young dog. Within two hours the crushed exhaust pipe was cut away and a new section welded in, the steering rod disassembled, heated, and straightened. During the work, the kid brought a box for tools, torch, gloves, ground cloth, and other stuff the mechanic carried to the shop, then told the driver the work was finished.
After a few successful test turns near the Pemex station, the money truck left. At the next bank delivery, however, they discovered that $1,200,000 pesos of large denomination bills were missing from the cabinets. Under the lumpy rubber floor mat in the truck's center aisle was found a tack-welded 14 inch oval cutout over the acetylene-torched hole in the sheet metal floor. Enough space for a small person to squeeze through.
When the police eventually arrived at the mechanic's work area, they were told that the mechanic had complained of fierce pain in his gut right after the money truck repair and went home with the boy in a taxi. His bicycle was still at the shop. Further inquiry at his rented rooms in town revealed nothing. A neighbor claimed she saw him and the boy with two cardboard boxes board the local bus going to Guadalajara's main bus station.There, in that great, crowded terminal of buses leaving and arriving every few minutes to and from all parts of Mexico, everyone looks the same.
That was six months ago and though the facts might not convince, nobody has seen either of them since.
