"And this Alonso Mendoza came to speak to you face to face?” Gonzalo asked. Don Martín's face and gestures said the question was a dumb one. Of course, Alonso Mendoza had conducted his business face to face.
Gonzalo ate his lunch at the counter in Lolita Gomez's diner. He tried to think through who had been attacked and when and where; why was a more interesting proposition. He stopped Lolita for a moment as she was making her way out to one of the tables.
"Have you ever heard of Alonso Mendoza?” Gonzalo asked.
"Alonso who?” Lolita answered, and she kept on with her work.
Gonzalo stayed around after his meal, waiting for the lunch hour rush to subside.
"Has anyone offered to buy your store?"
"Why? Are you thinking about making an offer?"
"No, no. I was just wondering."
"There have been a lot of offers in the past couple of years."
"And since the attack?"
"None."
A short walk to Doña Auscencia's shop showed that it was dark and empty and the front glass had not been replaced or boarded over. Gonzalo crossed the plaza and went down a side street to find the cobbler, Ignacio Ramos. Ignacio's face was still swollen and bruised, but he was at work, sitting on a bench on his porch.
"Has anyone offered to buy your house or your business since the attack?” Gonzalo asked after the greetings.
"Why? Do you know anyone interested?” Ramos asked. “It's not a bad house once you take all the shoes and supplies out. There could be room for a nice family in here.” Ramos got up from his bench and unlatched the front gate to let Gonzalo in as though he were a potential buyer.
"I won't take up your time, Don Ramos. I was just curious. Some of the other victims of the recent troubles have sold their houses. Don Martín, Doña Ausencia, José Alvarez. I was wondering if anyone had asked you to sell your house."
"No. But then all those people have houses in the hills. Maybe someone wants to build something up there or make a big farm. I used to have land up there too, but I sold it months ago."
"To Alonso Mendoza?” Gonzalo tried.
"Who?"
"You've never heard of Alonso Mendoza?"
Ignacio Ramos searched his memory but came up with no such name. Gonzalo let him go back to work. Gonzalo tried to relax once he was back at home, but he felt anxiousness within, as though he had finally received all the needed pieces to a puzzle and all that remained was to put them in the right order. His mother came in from the market, breathless with news.
"There was a shoot-out,” she announced. “Just like in the Wild West. The two sin vergUenzas tried to beat up Bernardo Maldonado, but just as they were going to start, one of Reyes's men drove up in a pickup truck with a rifle; he shot at them. One of the guys had a gun and shot back. It looks like the guy with the gun got hit in the leg, but so did the guy working for Reyes. The sin vergUenzas drove away. Bernardo Maldonado came out of this without a scratch, which is good because just this morning he went to Domingo Reyes to pay the three dollars.” She bustled into the kitchen with the groceries.
Gonzalo saw it all now—how the pieces of the puzzle went together, or at least most of them. A few pieces didn't fit. Alonso Mendoza was one of those. Gonzalo felt like rushing back to town to be in the middle of the flow of gossip and information. He restrained himself a moment.
"Do you know anything about a man named Alonso Mendoza?” he asked his mother. She came out of the kitchen to answer.
"Of course, I know about him,” she said, then she went back to packing away the groceries.
Alonso Mendoza was the uncle of Martín Mendoza, the wealthiest man in Angustias and one of the wealthiest on the whole island of Puerto Rico, though he was a year or two younger than Gonzalo. “The Black Sheep,” as Doña Gonzalo called him, Alonso had left Angustias when she was a child and hadn't been back, but for a few years back then, he had been heard of, mostly as a man who had lost the enormous fortune he had been gifted in a series of visits to casinos in San Juan, Las Vegas, and Europe. Then, it was rumored, the Mendoza family, Martín Mendoza's father really, had given him another fortune. That, too, was spent decades ago. If he had money to buy a house or two, she didn't think it came from the family. There hadn't been even a rumor about him to reach her ears since long before Gonzalo was born.
"I guess for him it is lucky these attacks have occurred recently so that people want to sell their homes,” she pointed out. It was as much as Gonzalo could take. He kissed her cheek and left for town.
"Alonso Mendoza is forcing people out of their homes, making them think it is unsafe to stay here. He's buying their land and houses, their businesses for cheap,” he told Francisco Cruz.
Cruz sat back in his chair and thought.
"But he paid Don Martín four thousand for two acres and a small house. That's not cheap,” Cruz countered. “That's fair."
"For now,” Gonzalo said. “But you know better than anyone, once the new highway is built, property values will go up for a lot of people, right?"
"Yes,” Cruz drew out.
"Does the plan for the new highway bring it past Don Martín's house?"
Cruz nodded and searched in his desk drawer. Finally, he pulled out a stack of contracts and a large map of the area that had been folded and refolded so that it only showed the portion of Angustias that would be affected by the planned construction. He moved his finger across a hilltop and into a valley.
"And Doña Auscencia?” Gonzalo asked. “And José Alvarez?"
"Yes, of course. Everyone on this road."
"Domingo Reyes?"
"Especially Domingo Reyes. His bar is at a junction between the road you live on and the one that's planned. It'll be prime real estate."
Gonzalo looked at his watch.
"His bar should have opened ten minutes ago. Give him a call. Ask him if he's been given an offer."
Cruz was a little reluctant, but he did as suggested. There was no answer. The two men decided to take a drive over to the bar to make sure everything was all right. They weren't.
Domingo Reyes had been tied to a wooden chair, gagged with a red bandana, and beaten until he died. His hands, tied behind his back, dripped blood still. His hair was wet through. He had died only minutes before Gonzalo and Mayor Cruz arrived, though as Gonzalo quickly pointed out, he might have been left bleeding an hour earlier.
When the police arrived at Domingo's home, they collected fingerprints and took photos. When Gonzalo and the mayor explained their concerns about Alonso Mendoza, one of the officers said it was a nice theory. Then he asked the mayor and Gonzalo to leave the crime scene.
News of Domingo's murder spread quickly throughout Angustias. People were surprised at first, then terrified. They wondered who they would pay the three dollars to. They wondered if the murder was an accident or an escalation and who was next.
By the time Domingo Reyes had been lowered into the earth, the beatings around town had stopped, the vigilante group he had formed had disbanded, and Alonso Mendoza had entered into contracts to purchase eight properties in the valley where Reyes had had his store. He was negotiating for at least as many more.
Gonzalo accompanied Cruz traveling throughout the valley trying to convince those with property to hold on to it. It was during one of these trips that Gonzalo met with Alonso Mendoza face to face. Mendoza was leaving the home of a farmer as Cruz pulled up in front with his car.
"I've heard what you've said about me,” the man said. He was smiling and wagging a wooden cane at Gonzalo as though he were castigating a small boy or a dog. “You can't keep spreading lies about me."
"Or what?” Gonzalo asked. “You'll kill me too?” He wasn't combative by nature, but Alonso's tone sounded like a taunt in Gonzalo's ears. To the question, Alonso Mendoza simply shrugged and started to walk away.
"Accidents happen,” he tossed over his shoulder. There weren't many ways to understand his meaning.
The day after this confrontat
ion, Alonso Mendoza entered into a contract to purchase two more properties in the valley, and a small cloud of doubt lifted from Gonzalo's mind.
He had wondered why Lolita Gomez was attacked if she didn't own any land in the valley.
"I did,” she told him when he pressed her about it. “I inherited some land—an acre and a half—about eight months ago. I sold it a few days later."
"To who?"
"To Hernandez, the lawyer. He gave me a thousand dollars,” Lolita volunteered. Hernandez, one of two lawyers working in Angustias, had sold his holdings to Mendoza a few days earlier. Lolita had owned the land long enough so that official records had her down as the property owner, but no one had bothered yet to take her name off the tax rolls.
"I got a notice to pay the property tax just a few days ago,” she told Gonzalo. “I threw it away."
* * * *
That evening, the bar Domingo Reyes had run for more than a decade was reopened with his widow behind the bar, dressed in black with a white apron. The mood was somber, the customers’ voices subdued; some were dressed in suits and ties and had their hair slickly parted; none drank anything stronger than beer.
Gonzalo got the widow's attention and drew her to the least populated side of the bar.
"You understand that this could be dangerous, no?"
"There are many dangerous things. This was our livelihood. I never liked it, dealing with the noise and the drunks, but this is how we made our money. What am I supposed to do? Close the place down and die of starvation?” She seemed a little bit angry, as though she was tired of explaining herself. Maybe she had gone through this story a dozen times with different customers; maybe she had worked it over in her own mind ceaselessly before returning to the bar she hated. Maybe she just resented feeling like she had to make her decisions understood to someone fifteen years younger than herself.
"You realize that Alonso Mendoza is buying up all the property he can get in the valley,” Gonzalo pointed out. “In fact, he may have been the one responsible for ... for the incidents that have caused so many pain ... for the incidents that have caused many to sell and move."
Anna Reyes shrugged; what the Fates had decreed was out of her hands.
"I've already spoken with him,” she said. “This is a business, Gonzalo. Every business has its sale price. The bottles behind the counter each have a price, the glasses cost a certain amount. Even the tiles you are standing on, I remember, they cost twenty-two cents each.” Gonzalo glanced down at the floor as though checking whether Reyes had gotten his money's worth. “Anyway, Alonso is coming here tomorrow morning to check the place out. Maybe he'll make an offer."
"He won't offer what it's worth,” Gonzalo warned. She shrugged again.
"Maybe not. But remember, this place also has an acre of land to the back and a very nice apartment upstairs,” she said. Then she went to attend to a customer whose beer had run dry.
It bothered Gonzalo that Anna Reyes might well make the most money out of all those who sold their property to Alonso Mendoza. She was right, of course. The law might never catch up to Alonso Mendoza, and no one was going to pay her bills or buy her food except herself. She hated the bar, but her options, if she wanted to eat every day, were exactly to keep it running or to sell it. It seemed that the death of Domingo Reyes would benefit both his wife and his killer.
In the middle of that night, Gonzalo awoke, sweating. He had been dreaming of a movie he had seen where giant spiders took on the American army, but when his mind cleared, he had a solution that might please Anna Reyes and keep her from the indignity of having to sell her husband's bar to her husband's killer.
He got out of bed early, dressed well, and headed out for the bar. The widow had moved back into the apartment upstairs to be near her work. Gonzalo rehearsed his opening statement.
"Doña Anna, your bar needs a manager, someone honest, good with bookkeeping, and willing to work long hours to ensure your success..."
He was going to propose himself as a manager for the bar. He thought that if she agreed, she might be willing to let some of his wages be paid in use of the apartment above. This would provide him with a salary and a place to live. It would allow him to get married sooner.
He heard shouting as he neared, and as he made out the words he also made out Alonso Mendoza's car in the small paved area in front of the bar.
"That's not enough!” he heard Anna Reyes scream. “Don't you see how that's not enough?"
Something made of glass shattered. Gonzalo ran to the stairway at the side of the bar that led up to the apartment. As he hit the top landing, the noise of two gunshots rebounded off the concrete walls. Gonzalo charged into the apartment. Doña Anna stood over Alonso Mendoza, her stare willing him to die. Mendoza was on his back, trying to lift his head off the ceramic tile floor. He waved his right hand in the air slowly, as though he were outlining a passing cloud. After a few seconds, the hand stopped, and Alonso Mendoza's head rested on the floor, his eyes still open.
"What have you done?” Gonzalo asked. He wasn't trying to sound accusing.
Anna Reyes looked at him as though the world had grown so strange that there was no reason why he should not be there, though she hadn't heard him come in. If Mendoza can lie dead on the floor, why couldn't Gonzalo appear out of nowhere, uninvited?
"What happened?” Gonzalo tried again.
"I shot him,” Anna said, pointing at the corpse with her gun hand. Gonzalo looked at the gun and the body.
"Why?” he asked.
"Oh. He wasn't able to come up with the right price,” Anna said. Gonzalo had no idea how to deal with that answer or the situation he faced, so he called Francisco Cruz. Anna and Gonzalo sat out on the balcony, waiting for the mayor to arrive. The widow broke the silence as Cruz parked.
"I asked him how much the bar was worth,” she said. “And he said five thousand. I told him what I wanted—I wanted Domingo back—but he only offered me six thousand. When I pulled out the gun, he offered seven thousand.” She waved the gun.
"Why don't you put that down?” Gonzalo said. His voice was low. He wasn't afraid; after all, he hadn't killed Domingo Reyes. Doña Anna waved the gun again and still had it in her hands when Francisco Cruz came up the stairs.
When the police came later, they took a statement from Gonzalo, the closest they had to a witness. He told them—shouting, glass breaking, then shots.
"Self-defense then?” the officer asked.
"Well...” It didn't matter. The officer had already written his note and wasn't listening.
The gun was taken as evidence. Doña Anna was questioned but not arrested. These same officers had spoken to her when her husband's body was found. She broke into tears as she retold what had happened, and they were not going to bring in a hysterical woman in their squad car. They did make a call from her living room and spoke with a detective who, from thirty miles away, declared there was no reason to bother the woman who had already suffered so much.
* * * *
A week later, several of the properties Alonso Mendoza had entered into contracts for reverted back to their prior owners. After funeral costs and paying off several debts, his estate didn't have the funds to make the payments that were needed. Several other properties were passed along to Alonso's nephew, Martin Mendoza, who didn't really need them.
"You did well in the investigating,” Francisco Cruz told Gonzalo. Gonzalo had heard of a possible job stringing up lights and decorations for the Fourth of July in a couple of weeks. It was, of course, only temporary work, but better than nothing. It had, however, already been promised to someone else.
"Thank you,” Gonzalo said. Going from house to house asking questions and shooting a criminal with an air gun were not really things one could put on a résumé.
"Would you like that job?” Cruz asked.
"Which?"
"Sheriff of Angustias. It pays better than the minimum, but not much. It is a state job, and you would need to go to San Juan for
some weeks of training."
"There's no such thing as a sheriff of Angustias,” Gonzalo said. The possibilities of that type of job were already running through his head, so that he found it hard to concentrate on the mayor's explanation of how the police who had responded to all those beatings and the two homicides had complained about the chore of protecting such an out of the way place. The governor himself had added to the budget a request for a small stationhouse and the salary of one law enforcement officer in Angustias.
"You would have a badge, a uniform, a gun,” Cruz pointed out. “No squad car; that's not in the budget, but we could think of something. Maybe we could reimburse you for mileage on your car."
"I don't have a car."
"Well, maybe you can get one; then we can reimburse you for the mileage."
There were benefits to the job and obvious dangers.
"Boredom, I think,” Cruz said with a smile. “Most of the time, we don't have people beating up the citizens. Still, it's a steady job."
Gonzalo asked for time to think it over, discuss it with his fiancée. Cruz agreed.
"Monday, okay? I need to fill the position or we lose the funding."
It took the four days between that meeting and Monday morning for Gonzalo to convince Mari, the woman he loved, that he could do this job and come home safely each night.
"If I take the job, we can get married this summer instead of next year,” he argued.
"But you could get hurt."
"I'll be the one with the gun."
She was not entirely convinced by his reasoning, but she was unable to withstand his pleading. In the end she gave her blessing to his taking the position, and Gonzalo was sitting on the steps of the alcaldia waiting for the mayor when he came to the office on Monday morning. For the mayor, the encounter meant the filling of a position that was sorely needed. For Gonzalo, it was the start of a whole new life.
Copyright © 2006 Steven Torres
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THE PECULIAR DEATH OF DANIEL HUNT by Keith McCarthy
"What do you know about spontaneous human combustion?"
Helena was reading the newspaper as they sat together on the sofa watching a DVD. Eisenmenger looked at Helena, his surprise taking his eyes from the screen despite the fact that it was a particularly exciting scene involving spectacular special effects and patently impossible action sequences. “Pardon?"
AHMM, October 2006 Page 4