The Squares of the City (23 page)

The fight began in a bar where I’d gone to quench a thirst founded mainly on boredom. The job was now at the stage where it threatened to become pure routine—indeed, I could have earned myself a free weekend by detailing a couple of Angers’ staff to get me my information. But then again, I’d have lost the immediacy of the data. It wasn’t only a question of how many vehicles of what types where and when; it was also knowing from experience what their drivers were—telling from the way a driver approached a stoplight whether he was a resident, a regular visitor, or a complete stranger in Vados; whether he was in a hurry or at leisure; whether he knew where he was going or was stuck in the wrong lane.

But I had to break for a drink and a rest occasionally. I could do it with a good conscience; the standard of driving in Vados was extremely high, bearing out a cherished theory of mine—that bad roads make bad drivers. In Vados, with its elaborately planned street system, one seldom grew impatient, rarely had to sit fuming in a traffic jam, wasted little time hunting elusive parking spaces, never had to pick one’s way gingerly between twin rows of stationary cars in a narrow street. Consequently people didn’t try to hurry so much, didn’t try to cut corners and take risks to make up lost time, didn’t lose their tempers and try to teach other drivers a lesson.

I only wished everything in Vados went as smoothly as its traffic.

It was getting late when I stopped off in another bar, hoping I wouldn’t find a knife fight in this one also. Television was on, but the screen was turned away from half the room, and the sound was directionalized. I had just placed my order at the bar when a voice bellowed behind me.

“It’s Hakluyt, goddam it! The li’l Boydie himself!”

I glanced in the mirror before turning around. It was Fats Brown, sitting at one of the tables between a long-faced Indian and a woman with a tired, middle-aged face who was just looking at him, infinite sadness in her eyes. There was a nearly empty bottle of rum on the table. He had spilled quite a lot from his glass. His was the only glass.

“C’mon and join us!” he invited, raising his arms. He had lost his jacket somewhere, and he had sweated his shirt into crumpled limpness. “C’mon here, Boydie, an’ have a cigar!” He moved his hands as if feeling for the breast pocket of his jacket and naturally didn’t find it.

I could hardly refuse; besides, he’d probably have changed his tune and insulted me if I had. I went reluctantly over to the table.

“Can’t stay long,” I warned him, praying he was sober enough to register the words. “I’m on the job.”

“Job, hell!” he said. “Can’t be working on Sunday night!
Nobody
oughta be working—oughta be celebrating with me.” He burped.

I looked at his companions; the woman caught my gaze and gave a sad slow shake of her head. Brown went on loudly.

“Meet my wife—won’erful woman! Doesn’t speak English. Ol’ fiddle-face is my bro’er-in-law.
He
doesn’t speak English. Mis’able bastard, isn’ he? Won’ celebrate! Won’ help me celebrate!”

A bitter, writhing grievance underlay his words. I said, “What are you celebrating, Fats?”

He looked at me owlishly, clasping his hands around the glass and leaning forward on the table. “Confidentially,” he said in a thicker, lower tone, “I’m gonna be a father. Whatya think of that—huh?”

I didn’t connect, and he read my reaction in my face. He grimaced. “Yeah, so she tells me. Well,
she
says I’m gonna be a father. An’ I never met her before in my goddam’ life. Ain’ that hell? Gettin’ to be a father an’ not gettin’ any nookie outa it? Whadda
you
think, Boydie—ain’ it hell?”

I said, “Who’s this ‘she’?”

“A li’l bitch called Estrelita. Estrelita Jaliscos.” He closed his eyes. “A tart, pal, if ever I saw one. Painted, dressed like crazy—might be pretty, I guess, ’f you could see her through the crap smeared on her face. Comes to me today an’ says, ‘I’m gonna have a baby.’ Tells me if I don’ give her ten thousand dolaros, she’s gonna tell Ruiz it’s my kid. Hell, with ten thousand dolaros she could pay Ruiz his fee—’s a kinda job he does pretty well, I hear. Should be—he’s had
plenny
practice.” He opened his eyes again, reached unsteadily for the bottle, and slopped some more into his glass. He offered me a shot; I shook my head.

“Pal,” he said pleadingly when he had gulped a mouthful, “I’m a happy married man, know that? Tha’s my wife there—not much to look at, but the goddam’, finest woman I ever met!” He almost shouted the last phrase. “What would
I
wanna lay a teen-age tart for, hey? I’m too old, so help me—y’know I’m nearly sixty? Know that? I got a boy practicin’ law in Milwaukee an’ a daughter married in New York. I’m a
grandfather,
pal! An’ this stinkin’ Estrelita bitch says—ah, hell, I tol’ you a’ready.”

He interrupted himself long enough to take another drink.

“Maybe it’s her own idea,” he resumed. “Maybe not. She don’t have enough brains to figure out a son’vabitch idea like this. Maybe somebody put her up to it. Coulda been Angers, ’cept he’s so righteous an’ limey an’ King’s English he prob’ly never heard of havin’ babies. I figure—know what I figure?”

I shook my head.

“I figure it’s Lucas, rot his soul! Mister, what’s this gonna do to me? It’s gonna finish me, know that? Have people laugh at me in the streets, know that?”

He jabbed a stubby finger at me. “Y’ don’ believe it, hey? Y’ don’ think one little thing like this could wreck me for good! Well, I’m
tellin’
you. I’m on the wrong side! Me, I oughta be distinguished an’ respectable an’ expensive, like Lucas an’ his gang. I’m a foreign-born citizen;
they
think I oughta be like Angers, rot his tin-plated hide.
They
think I’m a disgrace ’cause I spend my time an’ effort tryin’a give these poor bastards who
own
the country a decent lawyer’s arguments. With me? Get me? ’Cause I don’ worry myself sick ’bout whether or not I collect the whole of a fee; ’cause I know law and say when it’s on the other side, they’d love—just
love,
pal!—one teeny hook to drag me down. An’ then they’d stamp on me.”

He put his head in his hands and fell silent. I felt embarrassed, watching the compassionate gaze his wife bestowed on him, and tried to avoid looking at her. But the only other place I found where my eyes would stay still was on her brother’s long lined fiddle face. There was no other description.

“Señora Brown,” I said at length, and she raised her eyes to mine. “
Tengo un automóvil—desean Vds. ir a casa
?”

“
Muchas gracias, señor
,” she answered. “
Pero no sé si mi esposo desea irse
.”

“Fats,” I said. I shook his shoulder gently. “Like a ride home?”

He lifted his head. “You got a car, pal? Me, I never had a car since I came here.
Ten thousand
she wants, the li’l bitch. Me, I don’ earn ten thousand in two years!”

“Like a ride home?” I insisted. He nodded, unseeing, and got awkwardly to his feet, like a hippopotamus coming from a wallow.

“I’d like to smack her behind for her—dammit, she’s a kid, pal, just a kid. It’s not even as if I
liked
’em young an’ skinny. Ask m’ wife! Ah, maybe not. Useta run aroun’ a bit, true enough, but hell, that was twen’y years ago!”

We got him to my car. His wife gave me the address and sat in the back seat comforting him, while the brother-in-law sat beside me. I glanced at Fats in the mirror occasionally; he quieted down when we were on the move, and sat gazing into space. There was something almost pathetic about his attitude. He was holding his wife’s hand and stroking it like a shy teenager at a movie.

It was not a long trip. The Browns lived in a block of medium-priced apartments a mile or so away; I dropped them off there and made sure that between them his wife and brother-in-law could get him indoors. Señora Brown dropped me a sort of curtsy as I turned to go, and her half-whispered,
“Muchas gracias, señor!”
stayed in my ears all the way back to my beat.

About a quarter of an hour after I returned to the main traffic nexus, the bored-looking policeman in the booth overlooking it showed the first sign of activity I had noticed in all the time I had spent here. A little light began to shine in intermittent flashes beside his telephone handset. Hastily he snatched the microphone and punched buttons. Red lights shone from lamp posts; his voice boomed from the loudspeakers. The traffic came to a halt.

There was a wail of sirens, and two motorcycle cops and a squad car raced into sight, shot past, disappeared again. A few moments later there was an ambulance. The policeman in the booth, his job done, hung up the microphone and took his thumb off the button. The traffic moved on.

It was not until the papers came out the following morning that I learned the errand of these policemen and the ambulance. Apparently a girl called Estrelita Jaliscos had fallen to her death from a window in the apartment block where I had dropped the Browns last night, and Fats himself was nowhere to be found.

XVI

Sigueiras was literally in tears when his suit reopened on Monday morning. It was hardly surprising. Fats Brown’s place had been taken by a substitute lawyer with no interest in the argument, who tamely allowed things to go ahead when he could have secured a long enough adjournment to acquaint himself with Fats’s groundwork. Lucas, coldly triumphant, cut his own case short without calling me; the new lawyer made a hash of his concluding speech, and the judge ruled, as was inevitable on the facts presented to him, that the redevelopment plans were not motivated by malice, Sigueiras’s slum was a public nuisance, and citizens’ rights did not extend to cover public nuisances.

Sigueiras had to stand up and shout at his lawyer to get him to file notice of appeal; there were shouts and complaints from people in the public seats—it was great to leave the court and breathe fresh air outside.

This morning I had noticed a stranger sitting in court; as I left in company with Angers, he came up to us—a tall, black-haired man, faultlessly dressed, whom I had a vague idea I had seen somewhere but did not know.

“Good morning, Luis!” said Angers warmly. “And congratulations on your new appointment! Hakluyt,” he added, turning to me, “you must meet Señor Luis Arrio, the new chairman of the Citizens of Vados.”

Arrio smiled and shook my hand. “Delighted, Señor Hakluyt!” he exclaimed. “I have been hoping to make your acquaintance since your arrival. I saw you at Presidential House the other day but did not contrive an introduction.”

So that was where I’d seen him. And the name also rang a bell now. Multiple stores. I’d seen it in half a dozen places in Vados alone, over large and small branches.

“Well!” he continued. “So as it turned out there was no call for your assistance in this little matter that has been settled today. The judgment, of course, represents a further triumph for—might one not almost say civilization over barbarism? Like your own work, Señor Hakluyt, this will help to make our beautiful city yet more beautiful!”

“Thank you,” I said shortly. “But—being a foreigner, not a Vadeano—as far as I’m concerned, it’s just another job. One that I almost
regret having taken on.”

He looked sympathetic immediately. “Yes, that I very well understand. So your esteemed colleague tells me”—he gestured at Angers—“that rascal Dalban and his associates have made threats to you. Well, I can personally assure you, señor, that you have nothing to fear from them. We, the Citizens of Vados, will see to that—and you may rely on our guarantee.”

He looked forthright, like the statue of
el Liberador
in the Plaza del Norte, but there was something more than just a pose in that. As far as he was aware, he was speaking the absolute literal truth. I took the statement at its face value.

“Yes, Señor Lucas and I will ensure that you meet no further incidents of that kind,” he pursued. “I am convinced it is all a matter of correctly informing the people—once the citizens see what benefits these changes will bring, there will be no further hindrance. Señor, you must do me the honor of dining with me and my family one evening during your stay.”

“I’d be delighted,” I said. “Unfortunately, I can’t accept at once—I’m spending most of my evenings out on the streets studying the traffic flow.”

“Of course!” he exclaimed, as though chiding himself for stupidity. “Your work occupies you all day and night, does it not? Not the profession I would have chosen, señor. I admire your self-dedication. Then if it cannot be dinner, let it be luncheon, and let the time be now, here in the plaza.” He glanced at Angers. “You will join us?”

Angers nodded; the three of us, and Lucas who joined us a few minutes later, took a table under the palms.

Much of the conversation was concerned with the affairs of the Citizens’ Party. While if flowed past me, I had a chance to study my companions.

There was Lucas, of course. I had seen enough of him in action to know that he was a brilliant lawyer—he lacked Fats Brown’s gift of identifying himself with the cause he was pleading, but his faculty of analyzing arguments with detachment more than compensated. He struck me as a cold man; he could be an angry man—as I had seen when Sam Francis killed Guerrero—but I doubted if he had it in him to be fanatical.

Nor had Angers. Dogmatic, certainly, and stubborn. But—well, Angers was almost
too
much of a type. The reason was probably not far to seek: perhaps it was simply the common expatriate habit of overemphasizing one’s personal background in reaction against alien surroundings.