Charles Ardai - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993

It was then that one of his suppliers, a man named Borges who was full of pity and small kindnesses and who never stopped coming to see Ramon even after his bosses told him that Ramon’s bodega was off-limits, told Ramon, in a whisper, of the Jomon.

He said their name quickly and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as soon as the word was out, as though its mere passage between his lips had dirtied him. Ramon, who had never heard of the Jomon, nevertheless picked up on the significance of Borges’s gesture.

“They are loansharks, the Jomon?”

Borges shook his head, but said, “Yes, they are loansharks. But they are more than that.”

“What more?”

Borges groped with his hands in the air, as though trying to pick out with them the words his mouth found so distasteful. “They are... young men. Who think of themselves as criminals. And they are criminals, of course, but not the type they think they are. They fancy themselves gangsters, you understand? Like the Mafia in Chicago. But they are just three punks with guns. They—” Borges spat on the floor and then rubbed it out with the tip of his shoe. “They are killers.”

“You mean,” Ramon said, “they lend money and then kill you if you do not pay it back?”

“They kill you if you do not pay it back. They kill you if you pay it back but they don’t like the way you look at them. They kill you if someone says, ‘Here’s some money, kill this man whom I don’t like.’ ”

“You mean they kill for money?”

“I mean they’d kill for a glass of tequila.”

“So why are you telling me about them?”

“Because,” Borges said, “you are my friend. I see you every week starving a little more. Without money your stores will die and you will die, too. I see Maria and she is too skinny. I tell you because I don’t have any money to give you and you need money and if you want it, the Jomon will give you what you need.”

“And then they will kill me.”

“No, not if you pay them back the way they tell you to. They do not kill everyone with whom they deal. I have taken their money, Ramon, and I am still here. I seriously say to you: think about it. Because I cannot see you like this any longer, it breaks my heart.”

That night, Ramon sat behind the counter at the bodega and listed on a sheet of paper all the monies he needed to repay and figured out how much it would take to keep the stores going at a minimum level for six months. By which time the drought, which had persisted through two summers already, would have to have lifted — nothing lasted forever. He added up his column of figures, circled the sum, and sat staring at it until dawn. Then he telephoned Borges to have him put the word out on the street that he was in need of the Jomon’s services.

The man in the mask held the pictures in front of him one at a time. He looked at them slowly, through the milky layer of plastic and the pinprick holes in front of his eyes. One picture showed a middle-aged woman collapsed against the foot of a staircase, her hands outstretched above her head, a bullet hole in her neck. The other showed a young woman on the floor of a dressing cabinet of the sort that were set up on the periphery of every beach. Her long black hair covered most of her face, but anyone who knew Maria Madradas — or Maria Stone — would have recognized her. And the purple marks on her throat from where she had been strangled were clearly visible.

The man in the mask passed the photos back across the desk and along with them he passed a plastic shopping bag filled with rubber-banded thousand-cruzeiro notes. The blond pocketed the photos and passed the bag to the man sitting next to him. This man, who had worn a sealskin jacket the day before, was now wearing a white T-shirt and, over it, a suit jacket. He pulled out several stacks of bills and thumbed through them.

“The proof is to your satisfaction?” the blond said.

The man in the mask nodded.

“Good. So who is it you want us to kill?”

The man said nothing. He passed a photograph of his own across the desk. It showed a man in an overcoat smiling for the camera.

The blond’s eyebrows rose.

Ramon sat across a wide wooden table from the three young men, sunlight streaming into his eyes from a window high on the wall above their heads. He found himself unable to sit still. Borges’s warnings rang in his ears: be polite, answer their questions, be direct. They are doing you a favor. Keep this in mind.

Ramon wrung his hands under the table and tried to keep the sound of his anxiety out of his voice. “I need the money until the first of October. By then, I will be on track again and I will begin to pay you back. You will have all the money and the interest by Christmas.”

“No. You will pay us the total sum on the first of October.” This came from the tall blond man sitting directly across from Ramon.

Ramon swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

“And the interest, let’s see...” He conferred briefly with the other two. “For interest you will owe ten percent.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Per month.”

The room fell silent and except for his own breathing, Ramon heard no sound at all. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“And if you do not pay,” the blond said, holding up a photograph of Ramon with his wife and daughter that had been taken from a moving car outside the bodega, “we will kill you. Third.” He pointed first to Lienore and then to Maria. “Third, you understand, because we will kill them first.”

Ramon felt his stomach turn to water. “Yes. I understand. You will be paid.”

“We will be paid, that is correct. Remember that and we will do business well together.”

Ramon sat, squinting against the light, and prayed. He prayed for a good season, prayed for rain, prayed for his family’s safety, prayed that the Jomon were honorable men. Under their cool gaze, he prayed that everything would work out well.

And he prayed that Lienore would never find out what he had done.

“Ramon Madradas?”

The man in the mask nodded.

The blond lowered the photograph. “Why do you want Madradas dead?”

“Is that your business?”

“No.”

“Correct,” said the man in the mask. “So don’t ask.”

The blond passed the photograph to the man sitting next to him, who looked at it and passed it on to the black man. Each scrutinized the picture carefully.

“How did you know we killed Madradas’s family?” the blond asked.

“Everyone knows,” the man in the mask said. “Except the police.”

“Yes, except the police,” the blond agreed. The men he was with smiled.

“You will find Madradas outside his bodega tonight at eight-thirty. He will turn his back to lock the night gate. This is when you will come up behind him and shoot him.”

The blond nodded.

“You will each shoot once.”

“Why?” This was from the man in the T-shirt, who had just finished counting the money.

“Because I want to make sure he is dead.”

“Dead only requires one bullet,” the blond said.

“Maybe,” the man in the mask said. “But I am paying you triple what you asked. That buys me three.”

“Very well. Three shots. What then?”

“Then we never see each other again.”

“Naturally. I mean what do you want done with the body?”

The man in the mask paused, as though in thought, before answering. “Just leave it in the street,” he said. “Let someone else clean up the mess.”

The money had come in a courier package. Ramon had received it from a young boy, thinking that the parcel contained boxes of envelopes and postage labels he had ordered from Sao Paolo. Instead, it held paper-wrapped bundles of currency. Ramon had the package half unwrapped before he realized what it was and from whom it had come. He looked up, but the delivery boy was already gone.