The Squares of the City (22 page)

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 certainly 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.

“Señor,” he said with a reproachful shake of his head, “is your honor a Catholic?”

Startled, I indicated no. Guzman sighed. “I am, strictly. And yet I would not condemn Señor Dalban for what he does—I come of a large family, and we were very hungry when I was a little boy.”

I began to see that I’d jumped to a stupid conclusion somewhere. “What exactly
is
this shady business of Dalban’s?” I said slowly.

Guzman glanced around. “Señor, in a Catholic country it is not a respectable matter. But—”

I began to laugh. Suddenly, for all my recollection of his bulk and manner, Dalban seemed far less menacing. When I had mastered my amusement, I choked out, “Just—contraceptives? Nothing more illegal than contraceptives?”

Guzman waited woodenly till my face was straight again. Then he said, “Even they are not illegal, señor. They are—let us say unpopular in influential quarters. Yet we think, some of us, that he performs a good service for our people.”

“All right,” I said. “Granted. He still came to me and told me that if I didn’t get out of my own accord, he’d see to it that I was got out forcibly.”

Guzman looked unhappy. “Señor, we are prepared to offer you a bodyguard if you wish—a man who would remain with you day and night. We have good men, well trained. You need only say the word and they are at your command.”

I hesitated. Before learning of Dalban’s real claim to notoriety, I would probably have accepted; now, thinking the question over, I was suddenly reminded of what I had seen on my first day in Ciudad de Vados—the policeman stealing my money from a beggar-boy’s pot.

“No,” I said. “No, I don’t want a bodyguard from your police. And I’ll tell you why.”

He heard me out with his face immobile. When I had finished he gave a nearly imperceptible nod.

“That is known, señor. That young man was dismissed the following day. He has gone back to Puerto Joaquin to work in the docks. He is the only support of his family, and his father was killed in Puerto Joaquin in the great fire. Perhaps the beggar from whom he stole was also the only support of his family.”

He rose to his feet. “I will inform
el Jefe
of what you have said. Good evening, Señor Hakluyt.”

I didn’t reply. I had a curious sensation, as though I had stepped on what seemed to be firm ground, and instead found myself floundering up to my neck in a river. A river that threatened at every moment to sweep me off my feet.

The Sigueiras case made practically no progress the following day. With incredible persistence Brown hammered at Dr. Ruiz; with corresponding doggedness Ruiz stuck to his guns. Brown got more and more bad-tempered, though the directness and subtlety of his questioning endured; Ruiz got more and more vehement, and it was a considerable relief when the judge adjourned the case until Monday.

Most of all, it was a relief to me. During the course of the week, the city had quieted down. I felt things were near enough back to normal for me to go out and assemble the supplementary data I needed to clarify my tentative conclusions. For one thing, Lucas was deputy chairman of the Citizens’ Party, and seeing how busy he was, I hoped the political front might remain quiet for a while—at least until this Sigueiras case was over.

Accordingly, I went down on Saturday to the market area.

The first time I passed the little wall shrine where I had seen the candle burning in memory of Guerrero, I looked for it, but it had gone, and there was no sign of the notice attached to it. I felt a curious sense of relief—as though somehow the influence of symbol-Guerrero was to be measured by that candle.

The relief didn’t last. Sunday morning saw the whole thing flare up again.

The immediate excuse for the disturbance was an article in the Sunday edition of
Tiempo
regarding the Sigueiras case. It said a number of pointed things about Ruiz, about his close association with the president, and about how this association dated back to the death of the first Señora Vados.

I couldn’t judge how the article would strike someone who had no additional information. To me, though, in view of what Mendoza had said about Ruiz, the implications were unmistakable. I could only assume that Cristoforo Mendoza was hoping to provoke a suit for libel and bring the whole thing into the open—against the advice, presumably, of Maria Posador.

Suppose the evidence existed to show Ruiz a murderer; the consequences would be appalling. If the case was ever allowed to come to trial, the attack on Ruiz would become an attack on Vados himself, for sheltering a murderer and conniving at his crime; Vados would probably liquidate his accusers, the opponents of his regime would rise in arms—and, as predicted by Maria Posador, civil war would tear Aguazul apart.

Or maybe it wouldn’t even be such a roundabout route as that which led to civil war. Someone at least must have understood the message the article contained, or the message had been following it on the grapevine, for Sunday afternoon was the first time for many days I saw National Party supporters standing up boldly to followers of the Citizens of Vados. I saw, in fact, a knife fight developing—I didn’t stay to see the finish—between a tall young man with a huge
sombrero
who had openly declared his belief that Ruiz was a murderer, and a couple of well-dressed teen-age youths who were slumming in the market quarter.