AHMM, October 2006 Read online

  The man rose to his knees more angry than ever.

  "I'm going to—” he said, but Gonzalo's kick to the face didn't let him finish the thought. The man moaned and tried to roll away, but this just exposed his belly to Gonzalo, who took advantage of the opportunity to apply the rifle butt and the toe of his boot until he was sure the driver was going nowhere. It was only then that he thought of the passenger who had also exited the car. He primed the gun and ran back around to the front of the gas station. No car or passenger. He found a length of hemp cord and went back to secure his prisoner. The man was on all fours.

  "Get back on your stomach,” Gonzalo ordered.

  "Or what?” the driver said. Gonzalo shot him where his torn shirt exposed a pale love handle. He dropped to his belly, one hand smoothing over the latest injury. Gonzalo primed the gun again and approached, bringing the rope from a back pocket. He stopped short, not sure how to tie the driver's hands together while still holding the rifle.

  "Turn your face to me,” Gonzalo said.

  The driver did as he was told.

  "I need to tie your hands behind your back, but this is going to hurt,” Gonzalo said.

  "Why?"

  Gonzalo smashed the rifle butt into the man's ear. After that pain, the man had no more questions, and he followed Gonzalo's orders about clasping hands behind his back and standing so that while it could have been a struggle, the driver practically tied himself up.

  As the prisoner led the way back to the gasoline station, Gonzalo following three feet behind, he tossed a question over his shoulder.

  "How many bullets does that thing have?"

  "Why? You want more?” Gonzalo answered. He wasn't trying to sound tough. He was just angry. Somehow, though he didn't remember getting hit, his lip was bleeding.

  No one answered the phone at the alcaldia. Gonzalo was thinking of who to call next when a car pulled up outside. It was Francisco Cruz with three other men from town. The posse had arrived.

  "How did you know?” Gonzalo asked.

  "Your last words on the phone were ‘They're here'."

  Gonzalo wanted to ask what took so long but refrained.

  "Where's the other one?” one of the deputies asked.

  Gonzalo shrugged.

  "Did you see which way he went?"

  Gonzalo shook his head, but the look on his face made it clear he wasn't happy to be answering questions about the one that got away if no one cared about the one that had been caught.

  In the time it took the police to get to the gas station, Gonzalo and Francisco Cruz asked their prisoner a terrific number of questions but got no answers at all. The prisoner wouldn't say his name or explain why he had done all he had done. He spat twice; the only two times he opened his mouth.

  That evening, Gonzalo was to come to the town plaza for a little celebration where he could explain how he had captured the hoodlum with no name. The crowd was small but appreciative. At the front, seated in a folding chair, was Don Martín, back from the hospital with a cane. Near him was Doña Ausencia. She was laughing with him, smiling. The troubles of a few days before had lifted from her. Lolita Gomez was not there; her diner was open for business serving the hungry fringes of the crowd.

  The mayor explained what had been happening and the tremendous progress that had been made. He didn't expect any more trouble, but Angustias was going to maintain a high level of alert for the next few days in case trouble came. Cruz explained Gonzalo's role in the whole affair, then had Gonzalo explain himself, then patted him heartily on the back while telling the listeners that without the young man at his side, there would have been no progress at all.

  The entire celebration took a little under an hour, with the gathered people going off in pairs and trios at the end of the mayor's report.

  "It was good what you did,” Doña Ausencia told Gonzalo as she was about to leave. Don Martín was at her side holding on to her elbow so that Gonzalo couldn't tell who was supporting whom. Don Martín nodded his agreement vigorously and mumbled something through a jaw that still wasn't working right before turning with Doña Ausencia to leave. The mayor took them home.

  Gonzalo was in conversation with a man who thought there might be a job opening up one town over for a person with clerical skills when the mayor returned. Doña Ausencia was still in the car, and she was crying.

  "What happened?” Gonzalo asked, leaning in through the driver's side window.

  "Somebody ransacked her house,” Cruz said.

  "They broke everything!” Doña Ausencia wailed.

  Gonzalo and the mayor went to Doña Ausencia's house after she had been taken to a cousin's house to spend the night. Not everything had been broken, but there was certainly a mess. There was also a short note scribbled and left on her dining room table: “We'll be back."

  "It happened while she was at the plaza,” Cruz explained.

  Gonzalo tried to think what had made Doña Ausencia so important to the attacker. A lot of people had left their homes to be at the plaza. True, her home was isolated a bit—set back from the road by fifty feet, nestled into a small grove of fruit trees. But her's was hardly the only one in Angustias that fit that description. He couldn't come up with anything, and when the police arrived, he was ready to leave.

  "It says ‘we’ in the note,” one of the officers pointed out, “but there's only one left."

  "Maybe he has a new partner,” Gonzalo said. It was like the idea hadn't occurred to the officer. Maybe it hadn't.

  The next morning, Gonzalo was buttoning up his best shirt to start his journey to hunt down the job he'd been tipped off about, when Mayor Cruz tapped on the metal slats of his window. Gonzalo rolled them open.

  "There's more work,” Cruz said and walked off to his car.

  This time the attack was against a farmer leading his cow to the fields. The Chevrolet pulled up alongside them as they walked the road, and two men—one of them fit the description of the partner of the man who had been captured the day before—got out and approached. The farmer, knowing what was about to happen to him, let go of the lead cord and ran into the woods nearby. The two men gave chase for a few yards, then went back and killed the cow with several quick stabs to its neck. The farmer told the story and gave descriptions while crying for his cow. Mayor Cruz drove him home and tried to comfort him, but his nerves, as well as his plans for future subsistence, were wrecked.

  "These men don't seem to want to stop,” Cruz said as he drove Gonzalo to town.

  "They have a plan,” Gonzalo said. He had already told the mayor about the movie he had seen. Cruz had found the scheme implausible at first, but he was willing to listen to it now.

  "So what do we do?” he asked.

  "We wait for someone to start offering to protect people,” Gonzalo answered.

  "And then?"

  "Then we arrest them."

  Cruz thought about it for a moment. It must have sounded like a good enough plan—he nodded.

  Later, after Gonzalo and Cruz had spent the morning discussing for the tenth time all the details they had gathered about all the attacks, and just as they were sitting together to lunch, word came to them via a running messenger that another attack had occurred only a few hundred yards away. Another small shop had been invaded, a customer had been pushed aside, the store owner beaten, his wrist broken, his eye bleeding. Cruz drove to the shop as fast as his car would go, but there was no sign of the hoodlums who had done this when he got there.

  "I'm getting a little tired of this routine,” Cruz said.

  "Patience and vigilance will make the difference here,” Gonzalo answered.

  "Another Hollywood movie?"

  "I don't think so."

  * * * *

  Late in the afternoon, Cruz drove Gonzalo past the bar run by Domingo Reyes. They were on their way to Gonzalo's house, but the sight of twenty cars and trucks parked in front of or near the bar a half hour before the opening time meant something was going on, and Cruz parked w
ithout asking Gonzalo if it was all right to delay the trip home. It was a consideration Gonzalo did not think of.

  The bar was filled with men and some women taking up all the chairs and most of the floor space. Several were seated on the two pool tables. Behind the bar, Domingo Reyes stood; he was speaking loudly and waving a handgun. Beside him were six men standing shoulder to shoulder, all armed, three with handguns and three with rifles.

  "We will protect you,” Reyes was saying. “The police are never going to get here in time to save you from danger; they will never be here before the trouble begins. They come in after you have been beaten, with a handkerchief so you can clean up your own blood. The seven of us will be here all the time. Hell, we live here."

  Gonzalo looked at the mayor, but Cruz was busy listening just like everyone else in the crowd.

  "Three other men with guns are ready to work for us. All we need,” Reyes said, “is a financial commitment from you. If you are willing to pay just three dollars a day each, we will make regular patrols past your house several times a day, and we will respond to an emergency call faster than any police department on the island can."

  "Three dollars each, or three dollars per family?” someone shouted out.

  "Per family, per family,” Reyes answered. “Sorry, I should have made that clear."

  "And what happens if you get beat up anyway?” someone else wanted to know.

  "Look,” Reyes said, pointing to the bruises on his own face. “I've been through that. I don't want anyone to go through that. But it might happen even if you do pay us the money. I won't lie and say it's impossible. But not only will I refund your money, whatever amount you have paid up to that time, but I will also give you twenty dollars from my own pocket.” To prove that he was a man of his word, he pulled twenty dollars from his pocket and put it on the bar.

  There was a low murmur as neighbors consulted. Gonzalo tried to get the mayor's attention, but Cruz was listening to the chatter around him.

  "So who is with me?” Reyes went on with energy. “Whoever has three dollars can be protected starting right now."

  A line quickly formed at the far end of the bar, where for the first time Gonzalo recognized Mrs. Reyes. She was taking crumpled bills from the men and jotting their names down. Some were paying for several days in advance, and it was only a few minutes before she had gathered over a hundred dollars. Several more cars had pulled up during the speech, and people who had been listening from positions outside the bar were filing in to opt into the plan.

  "Did you hear all that?” Gonzalo asked when he finally caught the mayor's eye.

  "Yep,” Cruz said. He sighed and moved through the crowd toward the front of the bar where Domingo was. The two men stood across the bar from each other and spoke earnestly with each other for a few minutes. Then Cruz came away shaking his head. He led Gonzalo outside and back to the car.

  "Don't ever become mayor,” Cruz said. He was clearly frustrated.

  "What happened?"

  "Well, I spoke with Domingo, but I guess being mayor doesn't earn me any respect. It's like I'm a nobody."

  "What did he say?"

  "He said he can't extend me credit. ‘If I give you credit, then I have to give everyone.’”

  "What do you mean?"

  "The three dollars for the protection. I told him I don't have it. Not on me. I have to go home to get it."

  Gonzalo said nothing. He couldn't think of anything that wouldn't sound like he was calling the fragile-egoed mayor feeble-minded as well.

  The next morning there was another beating; someone who had not yet paid for protection. Domingo Reyes had a steady stream of customers and many of those who had paid for one day's protection and gone through the night without an attack bought several more days of protection.

  Gonzalo was dressed and had eaten and was listening to the radio when Francisco Cruz arrived at the front door.

  "Doña Fidelia called my mother,” Gonzalo said. “So I've heard about the beating. I think we should..."

  The mayor stopped him with a hand up and a smile.

  "I'm here to pay you what I owe,” Cruz said. He pulled out a check already filled out. It was the biggest check Gonzalo had ever held in his hands, but it also meant the job was over.

  "Domingo Reyes looks like he can handle this by himself. Well, him and his men."

  "But people can't pay three dollars a day."

  "It won't be forever,” Cruz said. “Reyes said he would be lowering the price in a week or two."

  "But remember,” Gonzalo tried, “Reyes might have been the one behind all of this."

  "There's no proof of that. He's trying to help,” Cruz said.

  There was no arguing. Gonzalo was back on the hunt for a job that afternoon. The tip about the next town over came to nothing. By the time he came back in the evening, someone else had been beaten in Angustias, and though everyone told him about it, he wasn't asked to do anything, speak to anyone, or otherwise meddle.

  The next morning, defeated, Gonzalo walked into town to seek the mayor and a job clearing weeds from the roadside.

  The mayor wasn't in. He was consoling the victim of another beating. Gonzalo took a seat on a bench near the plaza fountain and listened to the trickle of water. The idea came to him to visit Don Martín's store—there was a chance the old man had reopened the store, though his doctors would have advised against the strain. Maybe it was a good time to talk with him about the assistant manager position.

  Don Martín was inside with a cane, clearing off a shelf into a cardboard box one can at a time. He wrote out his greetings for Gonzalo and explained he was closing the store for good. He was too old for the business. It had been sold.

  There was nothing Gonzalo could say to argue. It was Don Martín who had the broken jaw, broken ribs, and bruises. And it was his store. He offered Gonzalo ten dollars for helping him throughout the rest of the day packing away cans and dismantling shelves. At the end of the day, Don Martín made Gonzalo another offer—twenty dollars to help him pack away the furnishings of his house later in the week.

  "You're moving?” Gonzalo was shocked. After all, Don Martín was a fixture in Angustias. Don Martín's answer was a slight nod.

  Out on the plaza on his way home, Gonzalo ran into the mayor.

  "About that job,” Gonzalo started.

  "Which?"

  "Roadside cleanup."

  "Oh. Oh, that one. I gave that to someone else—Raulito Vega. You know him. He doesn't have a college degree, but ... well, that's not a requirement for swinging a machete."

  For a fraction of a second Gonzalo wanted to protest, but then the job in question simply wasn't worth it, and he had made enough money in the last few days to stave off anxiety for at least two weeks more.

  "Did you know that Don Martín's moving?” he asked.

  "Who isn't moving?” Cruz responded. “There are at least five families selling their homes. Three have already sold. Don Martín is number four now."

  Gonzalo thought for a moment.

  "Who else has sold?"

  "Doña Ausencia, for one. José Alvarez. Pancho Rivera."

  "Pancho wasn't attacked,” Gonzalo said. Cruz shrugged. Pancho was smart for selling before he was attacked.

  Gonzalo got a ride home, then before entering he looked to the sun descending but hours from extinguishing in the sky. He walked on without going in.

  A footpath to a dirt road to a paved but narrow one. José Alvarez's house was on this road; by the short cut, thirty minutes walk from Gonzalo's house. He wanted to ask Alvarez about selling the house, about leaving Angustias, but there was laughter coming from the children and even from the parents as Gonzalo approached, and he didn't have it in him to disturb that moment for the family, a family he supposed had had few things to laugh about in the previous few days.

  Another twenty minutes uphill and Gonzalo was in front of Don Martín's house—no lights on and no car in the driveway. He kept walking, passed at one
point by a Ford pickup carrying one of Domingo Reyes's mercenaries, as some people called them. With another half hour he was in front of Pancho's house—no car, no lights, possibly at Mass.

  If he walked a half hour past the dirt road that had brought him onto this paved one, he could reach Doña Ausencia's house, maybe talk some sense into her about leaving town. But then that would leave him walking home in the absolute darkness of a small road with no streetlamps. As it was, he made it home just as the last rays of sunlight were put out.

  Early the next morning Gonzalo was in Don Martín's store. There was a truck and truck driver that had been hired, and Gonzalo was helping to load the truck, though there was no extra money to be made from it and Don Martín hadn't asked for the help. Gonzalo, however, insisted it was part of the service he had been paid for the day before. Besides, he was looking for a good time to ask his questions. That didn't come until the truck was full and driven off near lunchtime.

  "My mother was thinking of selling her house,” Gonzalo started. It was a lie, but Gonzalo thought it was best to start that way. “And I was wondering if you could tell me about how much you got for yours. Of course, if this is too private, then..."

  Don Martín was proud of the bargain he had made. He wrote out the figure on a scratch pad he carried with him. Four thousand dollars for two acres and a small house. Generous, Gonzalo thought, though he didn't know much about real estate.

  "And who is going to be our new neighbor?"

  "Alonso Mendoza."

  Though there were several Mendoza families in Angustias, the Alonso name rang no bells for Gonzalo; apparently he was an out-of-town buyer.