The Squares of the City

XIII

All that weekend I felt as though I were walking down a tunnel on the verge of collapse. The threat of violence, which had bared its teeth for twenty-four hours after Guerrero died, still snarled across the city; one saw it in the way certain people walked circumspectly on the street, in the way others — who they were, of course, I didn’t know, but there were many of them — stayed out of sight. This was a conflict that engaged the Vadeanos from the cabinet minister to the factory worker. I thought of what Señora Posador had said about splitting the city into warring camps.

And yet… well, perhaps it was Vados’s firm hand on the controls. At least the threat of violence remained snarling rather than biting.

On Saturday Tiempo’s headlines concerned Dominguez’s victory over Romero — they claimed it as a victory, at least. Not quite overshadowed by this was a spirited defense of Felipe Mendoza, over the signature of his brother Cristoforo, editor of the paper. Though there was no direct mention of the fact, I presumed this was a reaction to the event Señora Posador had told me about — Seixas’s injunction against Mendoza. The article found space to praise Señora Posador as well, referred to Dominguez in the next breath, and topped off by calling Juan Tezol “loyal defender of the people’s freedom.” The whole tone of the article was sickly-patriotic and bombastic.

The more I sought to get ahead with my work, the more circumstances seemed to conspire to make speed impossible. And — what was worse — the more complex became the situation in which I was involuntarily caught up.

Oh, there were probably decent people on both sides — and that was half my personal trouble. Aside from Francis, who was now out of the calculation anyway, the Nationals were probably well-meaning enough, from Mendoza to Dominguez. In spite of her notorious grudge against Vados, Maria Posador seemed to have rational fears to back up her opposition, and certainly Judge Romero had treated Dominguez in a way no one of his eminence should have done.

But the political atmosphere here was of the hothouse kind. The least incident capable of being made to bear political fruit was being nurtured, protected from frost and fed with manure until it blossomed out of all proportion. The only hard case of grievance on either side, so far as I could see, was the death of Guerrero — and that, since Francis was in custody, was emotionally based.

At the time, I now realized, I had been oddly little affected by seeing Guerrero die. The incident was so brief, so nearly unreal. I’d seen men die before — twice in brawls between construction-gang workers, several times from accidents on the job or in the street. As the days slipped by and as the resentment engendered by Guerrero’s death continued to fester in the city, I was coming to see that people who had perhaps never met Guerrero in their lives had been far more affected by his death than I who had seen it take place.

And that could have only one implication. No man could have meant so much to so many strangers unless he was a symbol. A symbol of very great importance.

They buried him on Sunday, after a service in the cathedral at which Bishop Cruz officiated in person. The city stopped, and crowds lined the sidewalks to watch the cortege, the women almost all in black, the men with black bands on their arms or black ribbons on their lapels, and black ties if they wore ties at all. Symbol.

O’Rourke had every available police officer on duty along the route of the funeral procession, which was as well, for half a dozen attempts were made to start disturbances. I assumed at first that they were organized by the National Party; I learned later, however, that it was actually students from the university who had been responsible, and they were demonstrating against the National Party, not against Guerrero and the Citizens of Vados.

The funeral left renewed tension in its wake, as a ship crossing calm water leaves a swell that may endure for hours. Symbol, I said again to myself, and saw that perhaps I should seek a reason for my own unasked-for and unmerited notoriety here.

Maria Posador had said, “Had it not been you, señor, it might have been anyone else. It was what the situation dictated.”

Exactly. As a neurosis caused by repression manifests itself in ways that may bear no resemblance at all to the root of the trouble, so the repressed tension in Ciudad de Vados was showing itself — here, there, disconnected as though poking from a wall of fog, seizing what focal event or personality came to hand and crystallizing briefly around it.

Ill chance decreed that I should be one of the focal personalities it fastened on. And once the process had begun, how to fight it? How to struggle against that amorphous combination of emotions, desires, fears, jealousies, now ruling Ciudad de Vados? I was beginning to feel hemmed in, chained, a prisoner, pushed at by impersonal forces, denied the most essential liberty, which I had all my life prized: liberty to do the work I did best in the best possible way.

Yet, somehow, two more days of illusory calm slipped by. I spent most of them in the traffic department, trying to force some sort of order on a chaotic lot of computer figures, struggling to reduce abstract flow patterns to terms of what Jose and Lola would see, hear, think as they passed on their way. I contrived nearly to forget a lot of things — among them, the suit that Sigueiras was bringing against the traffic department.

But on Wednesday morning Angers warned me that the legal resources of his side were drying up. Lucas had secured one adjournment and had taken advantage of the time to organize his case against Sam Francis — but then, there was no question of the outcome of that trial.

I shuffled some papers together, lit a cigarette, and sat back to look at Angers, rearranging my thinking. I said, “So you mean that subpoena you gave me may have to be used?”

“So Lucas warns me,” said Angers.

“Now there’s a point,” I said. “I don’t get one or two things about this legal setup here. This Lucas seems to have fingers in a hell of a lot of different pies. I thought it was practically universal for lawyers to stick to either the criminal law or the civil law. Yet this guy Lucas keeps cropping up in both civil and criminal cases. Why?”

“You ask some complicated questions,” sighed Angers. “I suppose the short answer is that it’s part of the Mayor theory of government. Mayor has influenced Vados a hell of a lot, you know. And among his other principles is one to the effect that all contraventions of justice are the business of the state. So in Vados itself — although not yet in the rest of the country, I believe — there’s no real distinction between civil and criminal. A private citizen who can’t afford to litigate against someone he thinks has injured him can apply for the state to prosecute on his behalf, for example. And that kind of case actually occurs every now and then.

“But in Lucas’s case, it’s rather different. Actually, he is a criminal lawyer. It’s just that his position as legal adviser to the Citizens’ Party involves him in a good many associated cases. And, of course, having helped to draft the charter of incorporation for the city, he also gets called in when a case like this one of Sigueiras’s comes up.”

“He sounds like a busy man.”

“He is.”

“Didn’t you tell me to expect a subpoena from Fats Brown as well, by the way?” I recalled. “What happened? I never got it.”

“Things haven’t been going too well for Brown,” said Angers rather smugly. “I’m told that when he heard we were going to call you, he discarded the idea. Lucas says he’s been floundering a bit in court, too. Apparently he’s upset by what this fellow Dominguez did the other day.”

“Brown doesn’t strike me as the kind of man that upsets easily,” I said. “What did Dominguez do?”

“Oh, didn’t you hear? Well, there was a disgraceful article by Cristoforo Mendoza in Tiempo last weekend, in which he gratuitously defended Dominguez against what Judge Romero had said about him — and Dominguez wrote to them and to Liberdad saying he didn’t welcome assistance from the organ of a party whose leaders were given to committing murder in broad daylight.”

“And Tiempo published the letter?”

“No, of course not. But Liberdad did.” I nodded slowly. “So he’s transferred his allegiance to the party that commits its murders stealthily by night, I suppose?”

“What exactly do you mean by that, Hakluyt?” said Angers, his tone implying that I ought not to mean anything at all.

“Nothing,” I said peaceably. “Nothing. I’m neutral, remember? So I suppose it’s my duty to regard both political parties as equally repugnant.”

“There’s a difference between the Citizens of Vados and the National Party,” said Angers stiffly; before he could get going on the nature of that difference, I apologized and told him to finish what he was saying about Dominguez.

“There isn’t any more,” he said shortly. “Except that, of course, Judge Romero is sharpening a knife for Brown. Brown is supposed to have put Dominguez up to it — did you know?”

“Up to writing to Liberdad?”

“Oh, come now!” said Angers in a tone of irritation. “Of course not! I don’t quite see what you’re playing at, Hakluyt, but you seem to be deliberately obtuse today.”

“I’ve got a head full of data,” I said. “These political machinations make a hell of a lot less sense to me than the stuff spewed out by a computer. When am I supposed to show up in court?”

“Possibly this afternoon. I’ll let you know before lunch.”

They told me to be on hand at two-thirty. I shouldn’t have bothered to be punctual; I spent the afternoon kicking my heels in an anteroom before the usher came to tell me the court was rising for the day. I used up a few well-chosen words on the subject of the law’s delays and was going out past the door of the courtroom when it slammed open and shut and Fats Brown stormed down the corridor ahead of me. When he was some distance away, he must have recognized the glimpse he had had of me in passing; he stopped in his tracks and turned to wait for me.

“Evenin’, Hakluyt,” he said. “Warn you, I’m gonna make mincemeat outa you when Lucas brings you on. I like expert witnesses — lunch off ’em every day. They take themselves too seriously. Let’s go have a drink. Unorthodox for the plaintiff s lawyer to drink with the defendant’s witnesses — probably get hell for attempted bribery if Lucas hears about it. Hell with it all. C’mon.”

It made no difference to me whom I drank with, after wasting the entire afternoon. I went with him to the same small bar we had gone to after Guerrero’s death. Brown ordered one of his appalling local soft drinks; I had an aguardiente. We clinked glasses.

“No good askin’ you what you’re gonna say in the box,” Fats ruminated after his first sip. “You’d go all high-hat an’ say you’ll answer the questions put to you. Better at improvis-in’ my attacks on expert witnesses; find their weak spots an’ enlarge on them. Hope I’m not worryin’ you.”

“Not much,” I said.

“Won’t talk shop anymore,” he went on. “Um — hear about Mig?”

“Dissociating himself from that article in Tiempo the other day? Angers just told me about it.”

“Ah-hah. Guess Mig an’ I were the only two guys in Vados who knew about it beforehand. Clever! Wish I’d thought of it!”

“You what?”

He gave me a faintly surprised look. His eyes nearly disappeared in rolls of fat as he wheezed into an enormous laugh. “You thought it was a run-out? Oh-ho-ho-ho! Hakluyt, you’re dumber’n a Vadeano when you try! That was strictly for the — hey, of course! It was strictly for the boids, and here’s a Boyd who swallowed it. Heh-heh-heh-heh!”

I waited for him to finish chortling. “Since you think it was so clever,” I suggested, “suppose you tell me why.”

“Pipeline for the scandal of the legal world, that’s me. Sure I’ll tell you. Mig was in a pretty sticky position. Romero had smeared him ’bout as thorough as he could. He had to get himself out of it in the eyes of the reputable citizens of Vados, get? So up he Stan’s an’ makes this dignified an’ lawyerlike statement — all hogwash, but like I said, Vadeanos are dumb once you get out of the gutter, where they’re sly as foxes. Anyway, people give him another look an’ say, ‘Not such a bad guy! That’s pretty good!’ Result — swing of public opinion. Romero’s wondering if he’ll stay around long enough to finish what he started on Tezol. Didya know it was Romero tried that case? No? Trust the old coot to grab himself anything where the National Party’s involved. Hates their guts.”

“So I gathered,” I agreed. “But how do you mean — finish what he started on Tezol? Did he pay his fine?”

“Romero gave him time to find the cash. Prob’ly thought he’d make him squirm a bit. Anyway, here’s Romero, he says to himself, right, this guy Dominguez is chickening out, won’t have the guts to push through what he started against me. So what does Romero do? He goes on TV — one of this bastard Rioco’s little programs, sat around for days while he was tryin’ to make up his mind. I got advance word of it from a pal at the studios — they’re finally going to shove it out. Tonight. He’s goin’ to lambaste Tezol an’ take a swipe or two at Cris Mendoza for good measure, an’ say what he’s gonna do when that fine’s not paid.” Brown sipped his drink. “Think he’d have learned his lesson by now, wouldn’t you? They make out he’s a fine respectable upholder of justice an’ all that crap. Well, figure for yourself what’ll happen when Mig shows him up as an ol’ blowhard who don’t even know what evidence means!”

“You mean when this case against Guerrero’s chauffeur is tried again?” I said.

Brown finished his drink and nodded; his cheeks shook. I finished mine also and called for a repeat.

“Confusion to you in the witness box!” Brown said with a big grin, and lifted the glass.

“Down with lawyers,” I replied.

The television set at the end of the bar came on; it was six o’clock. I saw the familiar face of Francisco Cordoban smiling down at me. I deliberately turned my back. Whether or not the picture they interspersed with the programs by subliminal perception were a fair representation of the state of things, I preferred to form my own judgments.

I had a sudden vision of Maria Posador, perched on the bench in the concrete shed where she had shown me those pictures, her long slim legs swinging, her lovely face drawn and serious.

“Well, see you tomorrow,” Brown said after a pause, gulping the contents of his glass. The CO₂ in the drink came back in an unashamed burp. “Make a mess of you — promise. ’Night.”

I stayed only a few minutes longer myself and then went back to my hotel, intending to have dinner there. First, though, I went upstairs to clean up and change my shirt — the day was hot and sticky, and even the air-conditioned court building had wilted the one I was wearing.

There was a man sitting in my room reading one of my textbooks.

I stopped with one hand still on my key, in the act of withdrawing it from the lock, and said in an incredulous voice, “Who in hell’s name are you?”

Unconcernedly, he shut the book. Then he rose very leisurely to his feet. “Good evening, Señor Hakluyt,” he said. “Please come in. Close the door, if you don’t mind.”

I took a good look at him. He was six feet two and broad-shouldered. He had big hands, which held the fat textbook as though it were a paperback. He had dark brown skin, darker than sun-tan, and his hair was inclined to be nappy. He wore a gray suit, a real silk shirt, expensive hand-lasted shoes. Diamond cuff links. Platinum watch. Wealthy.

He outweighed me by about forty pounds; he outreached me by inches in every direction. Obviously, I couldn’t throw him out. Well, either he was here for some good reason — in which case I had better hear what he had to say — or he wasn’t. And if he wasn’t, maybe I still ought to hear what he had to say. I shut the door.

“Thank you,” he said. He spoke good English with a vanishing trace of a local accent. “I should apologize for the intrusion, but it was necessary, I assure you. Kindly be seated.”

With a generous gesture he offered me the chair he had been sitting in. I shook my head.

“Well, our talk may take some time, but if you prefer to stand, let us not argue.” His eyes twinkled. “My name, señor, is Jose Dalban, and I have come to discuss with you the subject of your presence in Ciudad de Vados.”

“I’m here,” I said shortly. “What else is there to say?”

“Oh, very much! Very much indeed! Such as why you are here, and what you are doing. Now please” — he raised one hand; the broad palm was very bright pink — “do not try to be elusive and say you are only here because you signed a contract and you are doing only what that contract calls for. What I wish to make clear to you is what your contract implies — what misery and deprivation for how many human beings.”

“Señor Dalban,” I said, taking a deep breath, “I’ve probably heard all this before. I know quite well that if I do what I came here to do, a lot of people are going to be made temporarily homeless. I can’t see, though, that anything could be much worse than the so-called homes they have at the moment. Sooner or later the government is going to have to face the problem squarely; till then, what I do isn’t going to be as important as you seem to claim.”

“I represent,” he said, not answering me directly — he sounded as if he were launching into a prepared speech — “a group of private individuals who are afraid that if the government’s plans are put into effect, there will be civil war in Aguazul, and that soon. I have come to suggest to you that you might consider changing your mind. You would not, of course, lose by doing so. You might even profit.”

“Out of the question,” I said. “For one thing, I’m a freelance expert. I’ve worked for years to build up my reputation. If I quit this job, it wouldn’t just be a contract I’d broken; it would be a setback to my professional status.”

“Señor Hakluyt,” said Dalban, blinking rapidly, “we are businessmen, we for whom I speak. We are not poor. If it were necessary, we would guarantee your earnings for life — outside Aguazul.”

“The hell with money!” I snapped. “I do this work because it’s the work I want to do! And let me tell you this. Getting rid of me would solve nothing. Nothing at all. If I don’t do the job, since the government seems determined to have it done by somebody, Angers and his crowd in the city traffic department will probably be turned loose on it. They’re not competent. The result will be a botched makeshift worse than what you’ve got already.”

Dalban looked at me steadily for a long while before speaking again. “I apologize,” he said at last. “I had been of the impression that you did not know what you were doing. I realize you have given much thought to the matter. The only cause for regret is that you have come to a wrong conclusion.”

“If there’s going to be civil war in Aguazul, then it’s not going to be my fault,” I retorted. “The suggestion is ridiculous.”

“You must accept, señor, that your departure would materially improve our chances of escaping that civil war.” Dalban kept his voice level. “I fully realize that you did not choose the key position in which you now find yourself; however, it will be the act of an intelligent man to recognize the fact that you are of importance and that your least decision now affects many people beside yourself.”

He smiled. “Therefore I must say this. Either you change your mind voluntarily — or means will be found to compel you to do so. You will find me in the telephone directory if you want me: Jose Dalban. Good night.”

He went past me and opened and shut the door with a swift coordinated movement. The instant he was out of the room I went to the phone and rang the reception desk, demanding that Dalban be stopped before he left the hotel, demanding how he had got into my room in the first place.

The receptionist, bland-voiced, echoed the name. “Dalban, señor? Yes, I would recognize Señor Dalban. But he is not in the hotel.”

Infuriated, I realized that bribes must have passed somewhere. Large ones, which would stick. I demanded the manager and got no satisfaction out of him, either. Blank-faced, he poured out streams of denials in his own defense — adding assertions about the rectitude of Señor Dalban and the unlikelihood of his doing any such thing as I accused him of.

“Who is this bastard, anyway?” I demanded.

“Why, he is a businessman of great distinction and wealth, señor! Even if he were to desire to do such a thing, he would not come himself — he would send an agent!”

“Get me an agent,” I said. “Of police. And with speed!”

A blank-faced man who might have been the manager’s elder brother was brought; with an air of pandering to the whim of a mad foreigner, he took down particulars in a scrawling hand and promised to report it at the police station. I had a suspicion that report would never materialize; in a last burst of annoyance I called police headquarters and demanded to speak to el Jefe O’Rourke in person.

O’Rourke wasn’t there. A sour-voiced lieutenant took my name and promised to investigate. By the time I was through with him, apathy had dulled my anger.

It didn’t really matter, anyway. The city council was supposed to have been having me followed outside the hotel, for my own protection; I only hoped the protection worked. But whoever Dalban was, and whomever else he represented, they were thinking with their muscles. If threats and bribes were their chosen technique, then I wanted nothing to do with them. I was going ahead with my job come hell or high water.

Still, there were times, and this was one of them, when I felt I was a stubborn idiot and wished I wasn’t.