John Brunner - The Squares of the City

I had a fleeting impression that Maria Posador would have preferred the conversation to turn into other channels. I snapped quickly, “In what way, Senor O’Rourke?”

“Check,” said Senora Posador, taking another of O’Rourke’s pawns. “I think what Tomas means, Senor Hakluyt, is the same as I was saying to you the other day. One must not think from move to move, in real life as in chess; one must remember the overall picture.”

She gave me a sweet and dazzling smile, and—I thought, but couldn’t be sure—trod hard on O’Rourke’s toe under the table. O’Rourke caught on; I didn’t get anything further out of him, and eventually I gave up trying and went to the bar.

It was almost empty this evening. The now useless television set was gone from its regular place, and where it had stood was a shabby old radio, obviously dug out of storage. It was giving out with a pep talk when I arrived; I recognized the voice of Professor Cortes, who had assumed temporary direction of the emergency broadcasting service. I listened for a little while, but there was no real meat in the words. Aside from another broadside at Miguel Dominguez—Cortes was still not convinced, apparently, of the charges he had made about Caldwell and the health department—it was a woolly reiteration of trust in God and the President to see the citizens through their time of tribulation.

Mayor had certainly been a loss to the regime—perhaps far more of a loss than the television center itself. As a publicity man, Cortes was a good dishwasher.

Shutting my ears, I said to Manuel, who was polishing glasses behind the bar, “Senora Posador spends a lot of time in this place, doesn’t she?”

Manuel’s dark eyes flitted across my face. “She lived in this hotel when she first returned to Aguazul after her time of exile, senor,” he said. “She had grown fond of it, I am told.”

“Ah-hah. For someone who’s supposed to be in official disgrace, she seems to have a lot of important friends, doesn’t she?”

“Many of them were friends of her husband, senor.”

“Of course. Does that include el Jefe?”

“I believe so, senor. El Jefe is her guest to dinner here this evening—you have perhaps seen?”

“Yes, I saw. You’re a fountain of information, Manuel— maybe you can tell me whether they’ve made any progress toward finding out who burned down the television center. I was just wondering when I saw this old radio you’ve put up on that shelf.”

His eyes switched briefly to the radio and back to the glass he was rubbing. “It is said not, senor, and—and some people begin to be disquieted. For many reasons. Whoever took away our television has made himself many enemies. Because, you understand, the chess championships have now commenced, and it has been customary for them to be shown on the television for many years. Now there is no television, and it is much more difficult to understand what is being done from a spoken description on a radio.”

I sipped my drink. “So presumably there are a lot of people who want to know why the police haven’t already presented the culprit’s head on a plate.”

“Exactly, senor.” Manuel sighed. “I am myself one of the people who desire that, senor. This year my son is playing in the junior division, and I wished much to see him on the television. But—” and he shrugged expressively before putting the glass, sparkling, on its shelf and taking another.

I thought over what I had just heard. So O’Rourke was in Dutch with the public, was he? I wondered why he hadn’t produced some kind of scapegoat to distract public attention. Maybe he would. Maybe he and Senora Posador were hatching something this evening. I went back to the lounge to see if they were still there, but they had gone.

Obviously, they had been hatching something. Next morning’s Liberdad stated that the police had descended on the city health department, acting on instructions from someone unspecified, but assumed to be Diaz—assumed by the paper, that is—and had questioned Caldwell extensively about the situation in the shantytowns. O’Rourke was quoted as saying that Caldwell had no right to make wild statements about the incidence of crime among the squatters; the police hadn’t found the lawlessness Caldwell described, and it was an unjustified reflection on their devotion to duty to talk of it.

In other words, “Mind your own business!”

That seemed like good advice to me, too. Such as my business was at the moment. Vados accepted the plan I’d given him for the monorail central—I’d been pretty certain he would—and gave orders for it to be published at once. I got the impression that he had been pretty desperate for some favorable publicity, because naturally, since he and his city were so tied together in the public’s mind, the recent disturbances had been extremely bad for his status.

I could have done without the effusive comments on my skill and ingenuity which accompanied the publication of the plan; if that got to the eyes of any of my potential future employers, it would likely do considerable harm to my status, too.

What the hell!

I went over to see Seixas in the treasury department about the estimates for the project, and he greeted me with a smile that threatened to cut his head in two.

“Senor Hakluyt!” he exclaimed. “Come in! Siddown! Have a drink! Have a cigar!”

It was a tan suit, with palm-trees on the tie, today, and the cigar I got was bigger than usual. Seixas was plainly in a tremendously good mood.

“Yeah!” he said, sitting back. “An’ why not? You done me a lot of good, Hakluyt! You know people been throwing mud at me ‘cause I hold stock in some construction firms—you saw about that in Tiempo prob’ly.”

I indicated that I had.

“Well, I thought I was shut of that crap when Felipe Mendoza got carved up and his brother got jailed for contempt. Not a bit—here comes this lawyer Dominguez an’ starts all over. Well, this plan you turned out, no one can say my company gets a cut, ‘cause they don’t do this kinda work. They do big stuff—divided highways, overpasses, that kinda thing. So I call up Dominguez, an’ I say how about it, unless he can prove I get a cut of this one he’d better shut his trap permanently. And I get this back. How’s that for eating dirt?”

He flipped open the drawer of his desk and hauled out a folded letter for me to read. It was on a neatly printed letterhead bearing the title of Dominguez’s law office, and said:

Senor Dominguez wishes to inform Senor Seixas that he has taken note of the message received by telephone last evening, and concedes without question the justice of the point made therein. He further assures Senor Seixas that he has not associated himself and will not associate himself with any allegations to the contrary.

“How’s that, hey?” said Seixas, and poured himself another shot of his habitual nauseating cocktail.

It didn’t mean much to me; it struck me that it was a most lawyerlike sidestepping of the point, seeming to say a lot, actually saying almost nothing. Still, Seixas was delighted with it, and I made complimentary noises.

“That’ll show the bastard I mean business!” said Seixas, and shoved the letter back in his drawer.

With a bit of difficulty I got him down to business and managed to get provisional approval for the estimates I had; I didn’t really much care what happened to such a makeshift plan, and Seixas didn’t, either—maybe because his construction firm genuinely wasn’t getting a slice of this one. So the matter was disposed of quickly, and that was that.

I ran into Dominguez lunching in a restaurant near the law courts the following day. He was by himself, and I saw that he was frowning over the front-page spread in Liberdad that had been given to my plan for the monorail central.