Ramon looks over the crowd milling about in the street, winces as the wave of sound washes over him. The door slams shut behind him from its own weight. Reluctantly, he turns to pull the night gate down and lock it.
The captain looks at his watch — 8:31.
At last the parade rounds the comer, led by a trio of acrobats who turn cartwheels, shouting. The crowd moves out of their path, flowing onto the sidewalk.
The Jomon reach the sidewalk outside the bodega. They are surrounded on all sides, but everyone is watching the parade as it barrels down the middle of the street. They pull their guns.
Ramon struggles with the night gate’s lock. The key turns but the lock doesn’t catch. He shakes the key; he shakes the lock.
The Jomon stand behind him.
Raise their guns.
Fire into his head. His back. And finally, since a third shot was promised, into the fleshy part of his right leg.
The shots go almost unheard amid the cracks and pops of firecrackers and Roman candles. Almost. But the police hear them and know them for what they are. They glance quickly around to find their source.
Ramon collapses in his pooling blood. The Jomon begin to vanish, moving as quickly as they can through the crowd. A woman next to Ramon screams.
The police captain sees her scream, sees the terror in her face, sees the men moving away from her in three different directions. He blows a shrill blast on his police whistle which cuts through all the other noise. The police push people to the ground as they chase the fleeing killers. One policeman tackles the blond around the knees. Another steps into the black man’s path and, seeing the man’s gun come up, fires point-blank into his chest. The third man disappears into the steakhouse, but the police captain pursues him inside and comers him in the back of the kitchen. Once the man is handcuffed, the policeman leads him back outside.
The street is in chaos. The grand parade, unaware of what it is heading into, continues to pour into Pescador Street. Some of the policemen try in vain to calm the crowd. Two men lie dead in the street, two men lie in handcuffs. No one knows what has just happened.
The police captain stands with one of his lieutenants over the body of Ramon Madradas. He has to shout to make himself heard. “I don’t understand it. Why him? Why would anyone want Madradas dead?”
“Perhaps he failed to pay off a debt,” the lieutenant shouts back.
“But then why did we get the tip on when and where the murder would be?”
The lieutenant shrugs. “Someone wanted Madradas dead and wanted the Jomon caught also.”
“Yes, but who?” The captain holds tight to the cuffed wrists of his captive. He turns and addresses the question to him. “Who?”
The young man shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “He wore a mask.”
The man in the mask let the receiver drop into its cradle, silencing the voice of the woman at the police station. Who are you? she had started to ask. Where are you calling from? How do you know about this?
He stood up, pushed the chair back from the desk, and walked to the window. It was light outside; eight-thirty felt a lifetime away. But the Jomon would be successful, he was sure. That meant he had only five hours left to live.
He dropped the hat and gloves on the desk, pulled the mask over the top of his head, and smoothed down his thick, stiff hair. His hair needed to be cut, and looking at his hands he realized that his fingernails needed cutting as well. It didn’t matter any longer, but it bothered him, so he pulled a penknife out of his pocket, sat on the edge of his desk, and pared his tough, yellow nails.
If the Jomon lived, they would lead the police to this office he had rented, where they would find nothing. The money, all saved in cash over the course of the year, was untraceable. The mask and hat he would throw away on his way to the bodega. Amid the refuse of Carnivale, with its thousand identical masks and hats, they would never be found.
He would not be buried at the public expense. All the money he had left would go to Borges, who would use it for a proper funeral.
And the Jomon, caught committing a murder under the very eyes of the police, would surely get the punishment they deserved.
Ramon closed and pocketed his penknife. Then he began the trek back to the bodega. Siesta was over.
He threw the mask out in one street-corner garbage can, the hat in another. His hand trembled as he unlocked the bodega’s front door for the last time.
Trial by Fire
by Donald Olson
© 1993 by Donald Olson
From Donald Olson we have this month a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing tale. Mr. Olson is the author of seven novels, but his first and abiding love is the short story...
She could have shut her eyes and still known the season. The breath of autumn was on the air, that spicy blend of scents: woodsmoke and ripe apples and hay drying on the hills. But Selena Winship’s eyes were wide open and blue as the glassy surface of the lake she gazed down upon as she waited there in the garden of what she had called, seeing it for the first time three years ago, “the darlingest little house in all the world.” Purple phlox and Japanese iris and hollyhocks glowed against its freshly painted white shingles.
She gave a little start, as if rudely awakened from a pleasant dream, when Rob from next door stole up behind her and tickled the smooth white nape of her neck below a tangle of fiery red curls.
“You’re late,” she snapped. “I told you to be here by ten.”
“They’re not home, are they?”
“No, but they’ve only gone to the market. Oh, good, you brought it.”
Rob set the plastic gallon milk jug on the grass and dropped down beside Selena. “I don’t see why it had to be a milk jug. You’re not supposed to keep gasoline in a plastic container.”
“We’re not going to keep it in there, idiot. I told you it had to be a milk jug. Never mind why.”
Rob’s blue eyes, paler than Selena’s but more striking in his deeply tanned face, regarded the milk jug with a worried frown. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Not getting cold feet, are you?”
“No.”
“You’d better not. I’m depending on you. You’re being very well paid for what little I’m asking you to do.”
“Arson,” he replied peevishly, “is not what I’d call a little thing.”
“But you’re not doing it, are you, Rob? I’m the one taking all the risk.” She looked sceptically at the milk jug. “You’re sure that’ll be enough?”
“Are you kidding? A cup would be enough.”
Selena looked up at the sky, where a lazy flock of white clouds had strayed into the field of blue. “It’s not supposed to rain tomorrow, is it? How ghastly if a downpour ruined everything.”
“With that much gasoline I doubt it would matter.” He sprang lightly to his feet and surveyed the little house with a somber look of regret. “Pity I had to work my butt off for nothing.”
“Work for which you’ll be well paid. And who’s going to think someone burned down a house they’d just repainted?” She tilted her head to one side, admiring the coral-colored door, the gray shutters and white shingles. “You know, from a distance it does rather look like a smaller model of our Valley house. Same colors, anyway.”
Rob turned to look down at Selena with an air of cautious surmise. “Look, Selena, I know I’m not supposed to ask any questions, but I can’t help wondering, you’re always so damn mysterious, I mean about what happened in the Valley.”