John Brunner - The Squares of the City

I had expected a colder reception from Dominguez than the one I actually got—not that that was any too warm. But I was spared the need to deny what had been publicized about my part in Fats Brown’s death.

“I was told by Jose Dalban what you said to Mayor in his office,” Dominguez informed me. “I am glad to hear that. We were much afraid you cared more for your contract than you did for the rights of the situation.”

“I don’t,” I said shortly.

“I accept that. What can I do for you?”

“Well, as I understand it, Senor Dominguez,” I said, “you were going to try to get an impeachment of Romero, or something of the sort. Is there any hope of hurrying it up? Because closing down Tiempo seems bound to cause disaffection—there was practically a riot in the Plaza del Sur today—and surely, if Romero was removed for incompetence, there’d be a chance of salvaging the situation.”

He gave me a shrewd, searching stare. “Continue, Senor Hakluyt,” he said in a voice that had suddenly acquired a purr. “I think you are about to speak good sense.”

“This is the way I see it,” I said. “If the Nationals are deprived of their paper, they’re going to riot. Only the storm saved Vados from a minor civil war today. The government has lost its television station—who did that, we don’t know, but what the hell, anyway? They’ve got twenty years’ advantage! I should have thought that even if Vados himself wasn’t prepared to crack down on Romero, Diaz would have done so by now, or Gonzales. Luis Arrio was trying to tell me a little while ago that ‘it’s the law’—but law or not, damn it, it’s bad politics and bad psychology!”

He was actually smiling now—not broadly, but smiling. “Good, Senor Hakluyt. Very good. Yes, it is true that we have taken action to secure a new trial of Guerrero’s chauffeur. And we have put in motion the procedure for impeaching Judge Romero for his behavior on that occasion—at which, now I come to think of it, I believe you were present, no? Unfortunately,” and here he frowned, “owing to the tension created by Guerrero’s death, it was judged advisable not to progress too rapidly in the matter, and it will still be a few days before anything definite is done. In the meantime, God knows what may happen. You may, though, accept that Judge Romero, who has been too long in his place already, is, as you say in English, ‘washing up.’ “ I was too relieved to correct him. “Then what?”

“Then all his subsequent judgments will be null and void and all cases at which he has since presided will have to be retried. Of course, this implies that his injunctions against Tiempo will fall, and no one else on the judicial bench will be so stupid as to ban the paper completely.” He spread his hands. “But between now and then other things may happen… I agree with you, senor. We must not delay longer. We must take steps now, at once, and I will see to it.”

Only a little less worried than when I arrived, I left him on that note.

The main story in the next morning’s edition of Liberdad — this was Saturday—was about Dominguez demanding an impeachment of Romero. Diaz had formally given orders for an investigation into the matter. The paper’s hackles had risen in righteous anger: a polemical and furious article by Andres Lucas on an inside page, bearing the signs of hurried writing, profiled Romero and his career. Lucas declared that this was the crowning insult to a man who despite being reviled by his enemies had served his country faithfully during a long and distinguished career—the sort of defense I could imagine him putting forward in court when he was convinced his client was guilty.

In any case, Romero was out of the reckoning after this; as Dominguez had put it, he was “washing up.” And, reading between the lines of Lucas’s article, I got the strong impression that he was suddenly afraid of Dominguez—perhaps seeing in him that rival who might usurp Lucas’s position of supremacy in the legal world in Aguazul. How real, I wondered, was that threat? Not very, if Lucas had the might of the Citizens’ Party on his side.

Coincidentally, I saw Lucas that evening. He was eating in the restaurant in the Plaza del Norte, for although the weather was still cool, it had not rained today, and the tables had been set out again under the palms.

The look on Lucas’s face made me suddenly think back to the expression Juan Tezol had worn the day I saw him trudging toward his home under the monorail station, wondering where he could find a thousand dolaros to meet the fine Judge Romero had imposed on him. In the end the powerful backers who had used him as the figurehead of the party had discarded him—made him a martyr. I imagined, realizing it was imagination, Lucas picturing himself in the same situation and perhaps for the first time feeling in his bones what a dirty game politics can be.

I couldn’t feel sorry for him now.

Angers turned up at my hotel on Sunday; he had called me before he came, and I had been a bit brusque with him. But he came nonetheless, a little nervously, a little less self-possessed than usual—almost, I would have said, a little ashamed.

I let him find an opening when we had sat down in the hotel lounge. I didn’t say anything; I didn’t even try to look anything in particular.

He had brought a portfolio with him. He covered a minute’s awkward silence by searching in it for some documents, and at last, having found them, cleared his throat.

“I—uh—have bad news, I’m afraid,” he said. “Diaz has studied that plan for the market area you gave me. He says he can’t approve it. He wants a lot of changes. I tried to object, of course, but—”

I said wearily, “I warned you. It’s too expensive as it stands, for one thing. And Diaz is at perfect liberty to criticize individual points. So long as he hasn’t questioned the actual traffic flow, that’s fine. I thought I’d made that clear when I gave you the draft in the first place.”

Angers looked at me. He didn’t reply for a moment, and before he did he had to drop his eyes.

“You feel pretty ba’d about what happened to Brown, don’t you?” he said.

“Yes.”

He opened his hands, palms up, and looked at them, seeming not to know how to go on. Eventually: “So do I, damn it! I—I was scared, Hakluyt. You must understand that. When I felt him hit me on the back and I turned around to look into his face—it was like a maniac’s or a wild animal’s! What else was I to do, in Heaven’s name? If I’d hesitated, I’m certain he’d have tried to kill me with his bare hands.”

“You weren’t exactly treating his wife in the way an English gentleman is supposed to,” I said.

He flushed scarlet, all the way to the roots of his hair. “She—she—oh, hell, Hakluyt! Brown was a suspected murderer, whatever else anyone says, and he’d run away to hide instead of staying to face a trial the way an innocent man would have done—”

“Stop trying to convince yourself,” I said. “I saw the way you loved that gun the police gave you. Why the hell can’t you stick to your own job? You’re a highway manager, a traffic organizer, not a one-man crusade for the moral improvement of Ciudad de Vados! And I don’t think the conceited pleasure you got out of playing Sir Galahad was worth the life of a good lawyer and an honest man.”

His face was interesting over the next few moments; it began to go dignified, hesitated, flushed again, and ended up tattered, like a papier-mache mask that has been out in the rain.

“I don’t suppose there’s anything I can say to convince you you’re wrong,” he said. “Probably not.”

He took out a cigarette, but didn’t light it. With it waiting between his fingers, he gave a bitter smile. “You just don’t like us or our country, do you, Hakluyt?”