John Brunner - The Squares of the City

“Aside from the fact that he categorically denied being the father,” I insisted, “Brown told me she wanted ten thousand dolaros, and he didn’t have that much.”

“He could probably have got it,” shrugged Angers. “No, he obviously panicked; presumably, then, he felt he was in too awkward a position to defend himself. If it were just a matter of money, I’m sure he would have been worth ten thousand to the National Party as a capable, experienced liar.”

“Lawyer?” suggested Lucas.

“I know what I mean,” said Angers, and barked a laugh.

Lucas glanced at his watch and started. “Well, excuse me,” he said. “I have much business to attend to. Hasta la vista, Donald—Senor Hakluyt.” He gave a polite little dip of the head and went across the road.

“Well, I think things are going to liven up a little in Vados now,” Angers commented. “With Arrio and Lucas working together, we should see progress.”

“You think Arrio a better choice than Guerrero?”

“No question. Excellent fellow, Arrio—man of decision. I like men like that.”

I didn’t watch Arrio on television that evening, or the bishop. But when I passed the little wall shrine in the market on my way back to my hotel, dead beat at one in the morning, there were several candles burning. I glanced around for any sign of men with clubs like those who had greeted me just after Guerrero’s death, saw no one, and ventured to examine a slip of paper stuck to one of the unburnt candles.

It said on it, “Estrelita Jaliscos.”

Poor Fats, I thought. I remembered how pathetic he had been the night before. Then I recalled how drunk he had been, also, and how unstably poised between anger and self-pity. It had to be admitted: Lucas was right. So many things could have happened to Estrelita Jaliscos; one of them might conceivably have been murder.

By now it had become a habit for me to read Liberdad and Tiempo every morning; my original intention to improve my Spanish had become secondary, as I spoke it much of the time. Now I read the papers to keep abreast of what was happening in the city. I took up Liberdad first as usual the next morning and found that of course it had everything its way today.

The appointment of Arrio was the main story, together with a report of what he had said on television. Next to it was an account of Bishop Cruz’s diatribe on Vadeano morals, and that was so strongly worded it made me blink. According to the bishop, Ciudad de Vados was going to be mentioned on Judgment Day in the next breath after Sodom.

He didn’t mention Fats Brown by name, but there were a dozen barbed references to those who lead the young into sin, and with it there was an ingenious argument to the effect that, since this rush of depravity in what had formerly been (so the bishop stated) a highly moral and reputable city could be traced to its source in the shantytowns and more especially Sigueiras’s slum, then Brown’s spirited defense of Sigueiras must have been due to a desire to perpetuate these hotbeds of vice.

That was a kind of argument I thought was dead with the two Joes—Stalin and McCarthy.

Brown’s disappearance was the next major story; there was a picture of the secretary of justice, Gonzales, declaring that he would be found, another of el Jefe O’Rourke scowling over the sheet-draped body of the girl, and a story saying that the police were working on various leads. I’d read the same thing practically word-for-word in too many different countries to go through it in detail; I glanced at the next story and found it was a report on some regional chess championship, so I picked up Tiempo, wondering how they were going to save any face at all in view of what had happened. They couldn’t very well defend Brown except vaguely, in general terms; perhaps they would try to distract attention by attacking a scapegoat—

I was right. It was just the identity of the scapegoat I wasn’t expecting.

In the middle of the front page was a crude cartoon; it depicted Ciudad de Vados as the Garden of Eden. Standing before it was an angel with a flaming sword, scowling down on ragged peasants—a man holding his hat in his hand, a woman with a baby at her side—who were saying, “Why is it a sin to be poor?”

And across the angel’s robe in big black letters was scrawled my name.

I was still staring incredulously at the drawing when a discreet knock came at my door and the chambermaid brought in my morning mail. Automatically, my mind not on what I was doing, I slit the two envelopes she gave me and glanced at the contents.

The first was a letter from a friend of mine in the States to whom I’d promised to write and then—as I usually do—had put it off. The second was the front page torn from a copy of this morning’s Tiempo, identical with the one I was reading except that the cartoon had been ringed with red and a single word added in English beside it: “Well?”

“Dalban,” I said aloud.

“Who else?”

“Well, Dalban or whoever was responsible, this was going to stop. Now. Tiempo seemed to get away with a hell of a lot of libel and near libel, but Maria Posador had told me that Seixas obtained an injunction to prevent them from accusing him of taking bribes. Someone was going to have to organize the same for me. Right now.

I put the torn page back in its envelope, stuffed the envelope in my pocket, and went to the traffic department to see Angers. I told him what had happened, showed him the red-ringed cartoon, and then slammed my fist down on his desk.

“Right!” I said. “There’s a law about this sort of thing. Get something done!”

Angers bit his lip. “So you think it’s Dalban behind this, eh? I suppose that’s logical, after the threat he made to you. Your best course, Hakluyt, would be to have a word with Lucas—suppose I call him and see if he’s free to join us for lunch?”

He picked up the envelope and glanced at the postmark. “Posted early this morning or last night, about half a mile from the Plaza del Sur—at least, I think that’s the postal zone in that area. Early today, more likely, unless whoever was responsible got hold of an advance copy of the paper.”

He picked up his interoffice phone and told his secretary to get Lucas for him. I waited, feeling my first hot-tempered reaction cool perceptibly.

Lucas was free; he was engaged in sewing up the case against Sam Francis, which was mainly a matter of collating the evidence of witnesses. I told him my story over lunch in the plaza that noon.

He nodded gravely when I’d finished. “Yes, Senor Hakluyt,” he said. “You have what is, I think, called a hard nut to crack in both these problems. The Mendoza brothers are very skilled at almost libeling persons they disapprove of, without being so rude as to bring the fury of the law about their heads. Since, however, you are not a citizen but, so to say, a guest of our government, I think it well worthwhile to investigate the possibility of a suit over this attack. At the very least, we can obtain an injunction to muzzle them for the time being.”

“That would help,” I said. “But it’s not enough. I want Dalban investigated. If he is responsible, then I want something done about him. I had no action out of the police when I was threatened by him, except the offer of a bodyguard— and I turned that down because of another experience I’d had with the police just after I got here.”

Lucas made a note in a small memorandum book. “I will make inquiries for you, senor,” he said. “It is, alas, no secret that a man with the right influence can—uh—discourage the enthusiasm of our Vadeano police force. Dalban certainly is one of them. But as it happens I am interested to know myself what has been going on with Dalban; I expected him to make a move before this.”