The Squares of the City Page 16

  Angers shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it past them to let him go hang. Peasants are two a penny, and the men behind the National Party—the ones you don’t hear about, but who really matter—are said to be pretty unscrupulous.”

  “I hope that’s not gospel truth. If it is, I’m in for a thin time. The hotel staff were almost certainly bribed to deny admitting Dalban to my room—but I had hoped to get more action from the police than I did.”

  Angers gave vent to a short coughing sound that might have been a cynical laugh. “I’m not surprised myself,” he said. “If there’s any truth in the rumors I’ve heard, Dalban ought long ago to have been run out of the country—would have been unless he had the police in his pocket. You’re muddying some pretty deep waters, Hakluyt.”

  “So Dalban informed me.”

  His wintry smile put in a brief appearance. “Don’t let it get you down. You’re a valuable piece of property, if I may say so. Despite what Dalban said, he isn’t really in a position to pull anything; he’s precariously balanced already, and the slightest error would bring him tumbling down. He can talk, but his threats are empty ones.” He frowned. “And yet I don’t know that the matter can be left there, because attempted bribery of a government employee is a serious offense.”

  I was tempted to say something about the stories of corruption I’d heard since my arrival, but refrained. Angers looked at the wall clock and got to his feet.

  “We’d better go down to the court,” he said. “Session begins at ten. I don’t expect you’ll be kept waiting today.”

  In the corridors of the court building there was hustle and bustle—or the nearest approach to it that you get under a Latin American sun. Angers excused himself to go and have a word with Lucas, and left me standing alone, looking about me for people I knew. I caught sight of Fats Brown talking to Sigueiras in impassioned Spanish; aside from the color of their skins, the two were oddly alike—fat, untidy, given to loud talking and gesticulation.

  “G-good morning, Mr. Hakluyt,” a voice murmured near me. I turned to find Caldwell, the young man from the city health department, together with an aggressive little man with hard eyes behind his horn-rimmed glasses and a shock of ruffled hair. I remembered Señora Cortés had pointed this man out to me at the presidential garden party, but could not recall his name or office.

  “Good morning,” I said. “Are you involved in this?”

  “Of c-course,” he said with dignity. “My d-department’s proof of nuisance is very important.”

  His companion spoke up suddenly. “Forgive Nicky’s bad manners, Señor Hakluyt. Permit me to present myself. My name is Ruiz, Alonzo Ruiz, and it is a pleasure for me to meet you. I am a doctor,” he finished with a sudden lessening of his vehemence.

  I remembered and shook his hand. “You’re the—uh—the director of health and hygiene, aren’t you? Glad to meet you. You’re giving evidence, too, I take it.”

  “Assuredly, señor! Why, I have statistics to demonstrate that the presence of this slum of Sigueiras’s has raised the typhoid rate in Ciudad de Vados one hundred and twenty per cent in the past ten years—”

  An usher walked down the corridor announcing that the court would be in session in five minutes; Angers hastened back as I was starting to look for the anteroom where I had spent yesterday afternoon and wishing that I’d brought a good book.

  “It’s all right, Hakluyt,” Angers said breathlessly. “I arranged with Lucas to ask the judge to let witnesses sit in court today—something about special circumstances. He’ll fix it.”

  He did. Three minutes after the judge had taken his seat, an usher escorted me into the courtroom. I was given a place near Angers and sat down under the glaring eyes of Fats Brown. Presumably he’d just had a fast one put over on him, and he wasn’t enjoying it.

  I looked around the court—this was a room identical to the one where Dominguez had had his ears pinned back the other day—and stiffened as I recognized two of the people in the public seats. Side by side in the front row were Felipe Mendoza—and Maria Posador.

  She looked at me expressionlessly, her red lips slightly parted, and at length shook her head once, as though I had failed in some important test. Annoyed, I turned my head away.

  But that was interesting, finding those two here. Another case with political implications. It looked as though half the courts in the city were becoming battlegrounds for the rival factions.

  Having recovered from his annoyance, Fats Brown got up with a bored air and asked leave to address the court.

  “I should like to make it plain,” he said, “why in my view it makes no difference whether or not witnesses sit in court. Obviously it makes no difference. Failing perjury, nothing can hide the simple fact that the city traffic department, the city council, and that man Angers over there have conspired to deprive my client of his citizen’s rights and many hundreds of people of their homes.”

  The bang of the judge’s gavel coincided with Lucas’s fierce, “Objection!”

  “Sustained,” said the judge. “Struck from the record. Señor Brown, when appearing before a jury, interjections of that kind serve some purpose. I assure you I’m unimpressed by them.”

  “Yes, your honor,” said Brown, unabashed. “It was purely for the benefit of the reporters.”

  The judge—he was a distinguished-looking man of about fifty—half-smiled. Plainly he made allowances for Fats; equally plainly, the fact annoyed Andres Lucas. I glanced at what I presumed was the press table and saw five men and a girl exchanging amused whispers.

  “So many reporters?” I said under my breath to Angers. He glanced in the direction I indicated and gave a nod.

  “Liberdad, Tiempo, a commentator from the radio, and I should think someone from the local papers in Cuatrovientos, Puerto Joaquin, and Astoria Negra.”

  “This case must be attracting a lot of attention.”

  “Haven’t you seen today’s papers? It is.”

  The judge was frowning down at Angers; he sat back with a mutter of apology.

  “Continue, Señor Brown,” the judge invited.

  Having got his first thrust in, Brown seemed to have calmed down. He had obviously presented most of his case the previous day; he reviewed it now, referring to witnesses who had deposed that they had no alternative accommodation, that in their view Señor Sigueiras was a public benefactor rather than a nuisance, and that they could not have stayed in their villages because their water supply had been diverted to Ciudad de Vados.

  Then he quoted the city’s charter of incorporation at some length and asked leave of the court to recall his witnesses if need be to rebut counter-allegations made by the defense. Then he rested his case.

  Here Lucas took over, and I had to admit that the man was a master of legal expertise. With assured authority, he took Brown’s interpretation of the relevant clauses of the charter and tore it to shreds—Fats looked definitely unhappy while this was going on. But obviously the mere letter of the law was not in dispute in this case; the city definitely had a right to subordinate citizens’ rights to redevelopment plans. What Sigueiras was saying was that if it hadn’t been for the intention to dispossess him personally, there wouldn’t have been any redevelopment plans; Brown was attempting to show on his behalf that the city council, the traffic department, and Angers—named conjointly in the suit—were motivated by malice rather than by a desire to benefit the citizens.

  So it ultimately came down to the question of nuisance. And Lucas, winding up his opening speech, announced that he proposed to get rid of the imputation of malice and prove the nuisance beyond doubt.

  The judge, sitting with a smile of appreciation on his face, recollected that it was time for the noon recess and stepped down.

  He resumed his seat for the afternoon session with an air of expectancy; so did all of us. Lucas proceeded to call Angers, and Angers stoutly denied the imputation of malice. He made a good impression, I thought, studying the judge. But when Fats Brown lum
bered to his feet, he had a sleepy, dangerous twinkle in his eye.

  “Angers, are you honestly stating before this court that it’s bothersome to you to have this ground under the monorail central lying idle, when there ought to be a main road across it?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Does its present employment interfere with access to the station? Or with the flow of passengers?”

  Angers frowned. “It’s definitely a nuisance to passengers.”

  “That’s not the point. Is it? What’s at issue is the motive of your department. Have you any specific proposal for redevelopment of this ground?”

  Angers suddenly looked acutely uncomfortable, and stammered over his reply, with a glance at me. Lucas rose to intervene smoothly, saying that a later witness—me, presumably—would deal with that point. But Brown’s thrust had gone home, and he exploited it.

  “In fact,” he wound up, his voice dripping sarcasm, “you decided that as cover for your attempt to evict Sigueiras you’d hire this outside expert and invent—yes, invent!—a new use for his ground so as to cheat him of his legal rights. Yes or no?”

  “I—” began Angers, but Brown had thrown up his hands in disgust and sat down.

  I began to see how Brown had acquired his reputation. All Lucas’s careful smoothing-over couldn’t hide the fact that a great hole had been knocked in Angers’ statements. I saw Señora Posador and Mendoza looking satisfied.

  Lucas had less luck still with his next witness—Caldwell. The poor guy stammered more than ever. Trading on this, Lucas made a great show of sympathy and got the court’s leave to introduce affidavits covering some of the evidence about the menace to the health and well-being of the citizens at large caused by Sigueiras’s slum.

  Brown was not so kind. He kept Caldwell in the box for almost an hour, forcing one admission after another—that conditions in the slum were no worse than others in Puerto Joaquin; that there was no adequate alternative accommodations; that, in short, poverty was the root of the trouble and of everyone in a position to do anything to ameliorate it; only Sigueiras had taken practical steps to help the sufferers.

  I leaned across to Angers, who was still sweating after his brush with Fats Brown, and whispered, “Clever, isn’t he?” I wasn’t looking forward with much enthusiasm to my own examination.

  “Very,” said Angers, forcing a ghastly smile. “I don’t like to think what Tiempo will say about today’s proceedings.”

  Ruiz now entered the box with an aggressive air and stood with both hands on the rail before him like a captain on the bridge of his ship, looking around the court. He showed every desire to talk, and talk Lucas let him—about health statistics, about the high incidence of disease, about the moral corruption among the slum-dwellers, about fears that people had expressed to him lest their children should associate in state schools with the children of the peasants, about the direct relation he had discovered between the growth of the slum and the typhoid fever rate in Vados. …

  The day’s time was almost up when Lucas finished his own questions, but long enough remained for Brown to start on his, and only a few words had been exchanged when it became clear that Ruiz had dug his heels in and was not going to yield an inch. Brown began to mop his forehead at intervals; Ruiz spoke more and more like an orator making a major speech.

  In the public seats, Maria Posador and Felipe Mendoza grew tense and frequently exchanged glances; correspondingly, Lucas and Angers began to relax and every now and again to smile faintly. Angers leaned toward me and whispered, “He’s doing very well, isn’t he?”

  I nodded.

  “Very sound man,” Angers continued softly. “He’s the President’s personal physician. One of the best doctors in the country.”

  “I don’t care about the situation in Puerto Joaquin!” Ruiz was exclaiming heatedly. “I’m only concerned with the situation in Ciudad de Vados, which is what this case is about! I’m saying that this slum represents a menace to mental and physical health, and the sooner something is done about it the better. It doesn’t really matter what, so long as it’s got rid of.”

  “Have you finished your examination, Señor Brown?” the judge put in.

  Fats shook his head.

  “Then I’m afraid you’ll have to continue it tomorrow. Court adjourned.”

  I noticed that Brown’s forehead was deeply etched with lines of thought as he left the court with Sigueiras, hands clasped behind him, plodding alongside.

  Angers had to join Lucas and Ruiz for a further discussion of the case; accordingly, I was leaving the building by myself when, near the exit, I passed Señora Posador and Felipe Mendoza talking together. I said a word of greeting and would have gone past, but Señora Posador called me back and introduced her companion—“our great writer of whom you have surely heard.”

  I gave Mendoza a cold nod. “I read your attack on me in Tiempo,” I said shortly.

  Mendoza frowned. “Not on you, señor. On those who hired you, and on their motives.”

  “You might have made that a lot clearer.”

  “I think if you had been in possession of more of the underlying facts of the situation when you read my article, it would have been perfectly clear, Señor Hakluyt.”

  “All right,” I said, a little wearily. “So I’m an ignorant outsider and the circumstances are highly involved. Go ahead and enlighten me. Tell me why this case is attracting such a lot of attention, for example.”

  “Please, Señor Hakluyt!” said Maria Posador with a distressed look. “It is for us rather than you to be bitter about it.”

  Mendoza regarded me with burning eyes. “You are an outsider, señor, let us not forget that. We fought hard to preserve in the city charter the birthright of those who belong here, against encroachment by outsiders. This land on which we are standing, señor—it is part of the country, not just of a city, and the country should come first. The foreign-born citizens care only—as I think you also do—for the city, but we—we feel for the earth itself, for the peasants who scratch it with ploughs, and their children who grow up in its villages. Now, regrettably, some of our own people seek to destroy the very liberties we struggled to preserve on their behalf.”

  “Surely,” I said, “the foreign-bom citizens have a stake here, too. They gave up their own lands voluntarily; they invested their efforts in Ciudad de Vados, and they don’t want to see their work wasted. Ruiz was stressing that when he insisted that this case now is concerned purely with the city—and after all, if it weren’t for the outsiders, the city wouldn’t be here.”

  “Ruiz!” said Mendoza with violence, and twisted his mouth as though about to spit. “The hypocrite Ruiz! Listen, señor, and I will tell you what lies behind that smooth and aggressive face!”

  “Felipe,” said Maria Posador in a warning tone. Mendoza brushed the word aside and thrust a forefinger through the air toward me.

  “Think on this! Our President was married before. As a good Catholic—hah!—when his first wife became an encumbrance, he could not think of divorce. She fell ill. He had Dr. Ruiz to attend her. Within a week she was dead, and yet—and yet—Vados has made Ruiz his director of health and hygiene.”

  “I—you’re trying to tell me Ruiz killed her,” I said.

  “You should not speak recklessly, Felipe,” Señora Posador sighed, and I turned to her.

  “You’re too right! I’ve read some of this guy’s articles in Tiempo which ought never to have seen print. You can’t go around tossing out accusations of bribery—or murder—with no evidence to support them.”

  “There is evidence,” Señora Posador contradicted, and kept her violet eyes set on my face. “Enough evidence to ensure that if the regime falls, there will be a firing squad waiting to deal with the good doctor—if he does not flee first.”

  “Well, what the hell has stopped you from using the evidence if it exists?”

  “The fact,” she said coldly, “that he who would destroy Ruiz by using it will certainl
y destroy himself if Vados is still in power; he will then, destroy Vados and perhaps the country. We are realists, Señor Hakluyt. What does it matter to us if one murderer goes free when to condemn him would be to tear Aguazul with civil war? There are men walking the streets here with worse crimes than murder to answer for. Come, Felipe—and hasta la vista, señor!”

  She took Mendoza’s arm, and they walked toward the exit, leaving me with a peculiar taste of ashes in my mouth.

  XV

  There was a saturnine policeman waiting for me when I returned to the hotel—a man called Carlos Guzman, who spoke good but heavily accented English and presented himself as a sergeant of detectives.

  “It is about a threat that was made to you,” he said, and left his words hanging.

  I said, “Go on.”

  “Allegedly, by a certain José Dalban,” he said. And waited again.

  I took a deep breath. “Look,” I said. “Why not say what you have to say and get it over with?”

  He glanced around; we were in the lounge of the hotel. Not many people were present, and none of them were in earshot of a low-toned voice. He sighed. “Very well, señor. I would have thought you might prefer to discuss it in more private conditions—but as you wish. We are unable to make proceedings on your unsupported word.”

  “Well, that’s no more than I expected,” I snapped.

  He looked unhappy. “It is not that we doubt you, señor. But you must realize that Señor Dalban is respected and well-known—”

  I decided to take a long shot on the strength of a hint Angers had dropped to me. “Especially respected by the police, hey? Respected so much that you turn a blind eye on his affairs.”

  Guzman colored a little. He said stiffly, “Your honor is unjustified in his remarks. Señor Dalban conducts a business of import-export, and—”

  “And traffics on the side in unofficial goods, I’m told.” I more than half-suspected Dalban’s main business might turn out to be in marijuana or something like that; Guzman’s reply shook me rigid.