John Brunner - The Squares of the City

“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.

“Senora Brown,” I said at length, and she raised her eyes to mine. “Tengo un automovil — desean Vds. ir a casaT’

“Muchas gracias, senor,” she answered. “Pero no se 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. Senora Brown dropped me a sort of curtsy as I turned to go, and her half-whispered, “Muchas gracias, senor!” 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.

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.