The Squares of the City

XXVI

There is a moment in the demolition of a tower, an old-fashioned factory chimney, or a high wall, when the falling structure — weighing perhaps a hundred tons — seems to float, leaning against the air.

It lasts perhaps a small fraction of a second, but feels much longer. And in that narrow space of time the whole visible world seems to hesitate, waiting for the inevitable crash.

I was waiting for a crash now. What was worse, I appeared to be directly in the path of what was falling.

I folded the news sheet so that O’Rourke’s alleged statement was uppermost, and signaled along the bar to Manuel. He was serving another customer; when he was through, he came down to stand opposite me, his eyes a little wary.

“Have you seen this, Manuel?” I asked him.

He sighed. “Yes, señor. I thought you would have seen it also before now.”

“No, I hadn’t… What do you make of it, Manuel? What do you think yourself about my job here?”

At first, I could see, he was not going to reply. I said, hearing my voice harsh and dry, “Say what you think, Manuel. Go ahead, for God’s sake.”

“I have no views of my own, Señor Hakluyt,” he said reluctantly. “I have a good job. I have profited much by the making of this city. Before, I was in a little hotel in Puerto Joaquín; now here I am, as you see me. Yet it seems to me that there are also people who have suffered because of the coming of the city, and it is easy to understand why they feel differently.”

“Why should el Jefe be one of those who feel differently?”

“It is this way, señor.” Manuel leaned forward with both elbows on the bar and spoke in confidential tones. “There are some of us — like myself — who are used to the great world. I have served some very rich and famous people at my bars, both here and in Puerto Joaquín when I was called to help at great receptions. I have seen how today a man can be in Aguazul, tomorrow in San Francisco or in Tokyo. To me that is good. I am the friend of all people who come to my bar.

“Then there are others, who say, ‘This is ours, let it remain always ours.’ It is like the difference between el Presidente, whom I have also served at a bar, and Señor Diaz. And I think el Jefe — whom I have also served with his liquor! — is one of the same color as Diaz. That is what I think, señor. But I am only a man behind a bar.”

“And in this city — how many think like el Jefe?”

“As we have seen in the streets and in the plazas — many, señor. Too many.”

I nodded and picked up the news sheet. “Do you mind if I take this?” I asked him.

“Please do, señor.” He glanced under the bar. “Yes, I think I have two examples of that.”

“Thanks. I don’t know whether I can do anything about this — but I’m sure as hell going to try.”

As it turned out, I didn’t get much of a chance even to try. As usual, when I went down to the traffic department in the morning, I went first of all to see Angers. Caldwell was there a few minutes ahead of me, looking even more tired than he had been recently, his face very white, set and strained, his eyes circled with darkness.

I assumed he’d come to check progress on the clearance of the slum at the monorail central; the health department was, of course, very eager to get it moving. In a way, he had.

I caught a fleeting expression of worry on Angers’ face as I sat down, but Caldwell had begun to address me, and I was unable to ask what he was disturbed about.

“How about you, Hakluyt?” Caldwell said. “What do you th-think is the real reason b-behind the d-delay in clearing S-Sigueiras out?”

I shrugged. “From what I’ve heard, it’s due to General Molinas refusing to send in troops — and to O’Rourke predicting riots if they go ahead and evict. What’s more, I entirely agree, and I’ve been saying so all along.”

“Well, you’re wrong.” Caldwell spoke with a triumphant air. “It’s p-political. It’s the National P-Party again.”

Frowning, I shook my head. “I don’t see that,” I said. I didn’t. Things had been rather quiet on the political front for the past three or four days; the Citizens’ Party was like a snake without a head, having lost Guerrero, Lucas, and Arrio, all three — Guerrero dead, Lucas under arrest while the allegations of conspiracy against him were investigated, and Arrio awaiting trial for murder as a result of his duel with Mendoza. Likewise, the Nationals lacked any notable figure around whom they could rally, for Dominguez, though a supporter, was not an official of the party, and Murieta’s action against Arrio had apparently been dictated by his literary friendship with Felipe Mendoza, not by politics at all.

But this wasn’t Caldwell’s view. Smiling, he took some papers out of his pocket.

“I’ve b-been at the s-state c-custodian’s office this morning,” he said. “I’ve b-been looking th-through the account b-books th-they recovered from B-Brown’s office. And who do you th-think p-paid the fee for S-Sigueiras’s case against the city c-council?”

I shook my head.

“It appears to have been Pedro Murieta,” said Angers in a dry voice, and Caldwell shot him an annoyed glance, as though he had been deprived of springing a great surprise on me.

Nonetheless, it was a surprise. I said, “I thought Murieta’s only interest in the matter was because he financed the publication of Mendoza’s novels — wasn’t that right?”

“Th-that’s what we were meant to th-think,” said Caldwell significantly. “There’s more to th-this than meets the eye.”

He got to his feet. “Well, I’m g-going to tell P-Professor Cortes about th-this,” he said. “P-people ought to know what’s really g-going on.”

When he had left us, I stared at Angers. “Do you think this is as important as he wants to make out?” I asked.

Angers shrugged. “I honestly don’t know,” be said in a faintly puzzled voice. “Before you came in, he was dropping dark hints about the extent of Murieta’s complicity in some shady traffic that’s supposed to go on in the shantytowns, and especially in the station slum.”

“Oh, not again!” I said wearily. “You know how he took me on this guided tour of the vice spots of Vados, don’t you? All he could show me was one plot of ground where someone was supposed to be growing hemp for marijuana, and one hut occupied by a prostitute who wasn’t at home. Frankly, I take anything Caldwell says to me now with a sack of salt — I think he’s suffering from some kind of strain, and his imagination is playing tricks on him.”

“If it weren’t for Dr. Ruiz bearing out what he says,” Angers admitted after a pause, “I’d be inclined to agree with you.”

“Well, Ruiz isn’t in any too comfortable a position himself,” I pointed out. “There were some pretty nasty allegations being made against him when he was giving evidence in Sigueiras’s case, weren’t there?”

“If there’d been any substance to them,” said Angers with asperity, “you may be sure the National Party would have kept on with them. But that’s a standard part of their propaganda technique — planting nasty rumors and letting them grow unchecked till someone who’s actually been accused of some very small offense indeed is being described as a murderer or worse.”

Whether it was part of the National Party’s technique or not, that method worked extremely well for Caldwell over the weekend.

It happened this way. Liberdad — Cortes apparently having been impressed by Caldwell’s story — published the information about Murieta financing Sigueiras’s case, but took the precaution of checking with Murieta first. As it happened, Murieta was in New York for the weekend on a business trip, but his personal secretary suavely confirmed the tale. His employer, the secretary said, had been asked by Felipe Mendoza to aid Sigueiras, and owing to his well-known concern for the rights of the private citizen, had consented.

And Caldwell snapped back that apparently Murieta’s view of the rights of the private citizen included the right to take drugs and indulge in sexual perversions, because this was what Sigueiras specialized in providing.

There was a charge — uttered with the theoretical approval of the city health department — that really called for an answer. But Caldwell didn’t stop there. I never found out how anyone allowed him to get away with it, but he topped off his list of charges with a flat statement that Murieta was little better than a professional pimp.

In the twenty-four hours that preceded Murieta’s return from New York, rumors followed this story like weeds sprouting on burned ground. I heard them, even. I was told confidentially how, in the dim recesses of Sigueiras’s slum, children, virgin girls, and raddled old hags were made available at a stiff price to wealthy and debauched patrons; I was told how the air was never free of the stink of marijuana; I was even informed that the livestock in the shantytowns was kept for other purposes than feeding people.

Myself, I wondered how the putative “patrons” of Murieta’s supposed vice ring would have enjoyed indulging their tastes in the uncomfortable and insanitary condition below the monorail central. But only a very few Vadeanos who repeated the rumors had any idea of the real state of things down there, and doubtless assumed that the clients would appreciate a sordid setting for their sordid activities.

By Monday the whole matter had gone past a joke, and tempers were running high. Inoffensive peasants from the shantytowns had been stoned on the streets; police had twice had to be called to the monorail central to drive away indignant bands of demonstrators and enthusiastic would-be customers; and, much to the annoyance of business people and the city tourist bureau, a large party of statesiders had noisily canceled their visit to Vados because they got wind of what was being said about the city’s morals.

Caldwell turned up again in Angers’ office on Monday morning, looking bloody but unbowed — not, this time, specifically to talk about Murieta, but on formal health department business. Nonetheless, Angers and I both went for him, and from his reaction I gathered that we weren’t the first by a long way.

“I t-tell you I’ve s-seen all th-this for myself!” Caldwell kept insisting, his voice shaking with rage. The fourth or fifth repetition was too much for me.

“If you have,” I snapped back, “you’re probably Murieta’s only customer yourself!”

I thought for a long instant that he was going to throw himself at me like a wild animal, and I automatically tensed to beat him off. But at that very instant the door was thrust open and one of Angers’ assistants, looking harassed, put his head into the office.

“Señor Angers,” he began, “por favor—”

He got no further before he was pushed to one side bodily by a huge bull of a man in an open shirt and canvas trousers which stretched so tight across his seat they threatened to split at every step he took. He was very large and very dark, and it seemed for a moment that he filled the entire doorway, shutting out the light beyond.

“Caldwell aquí?” he demanded; then his eyes fell on Caldwell who had dropped back into his chair as the door opened, and he gave a grunt of satisfaction. Turning, he signaled to someone behind him.

This was a rather small man, immaculately dressed in a snow-white summer suit and cream Panama hat, smoking a king-size cigarette and holding a silver-knobbed walking cane. He had a thin moustache and brilliantly white teeth.

Caldwell remained frozen to his chair. The newcomer raised his cane and pointed it as though it had been a gun at Caldwell’s chest. “You will pardon this intrusion, señores,” he said without taking his eyes off Caldwell’s chalk-white face. “But I have business with this cur.”

Angers got to his feet with dignity. “What do you mean by walking uninvited into my office?” he snapped.

“I,” said the intruder calmly, “am Pedro Murieta. I am informed that Señor Caldwell has told lies about me. He has said that I, a citizen of Ciudad de Vados against whom no man has ever breathed a foul word, am a pander. A pimp. A trafficker in immorality of the vilest kind. It is not true, before God it is not true!”

The cane whined across Caldwell’s face, raising a tiny red weal where the very tip touched the skin of his cheek.

“Sayit is not true, misbegotten son of a mangy mongrel bitch!”

And Caldwell burst into a flood of tears.

Bewildered, Angers glanced from him to Murieta to me, his eyes demanding explanation. While Murieta dropped the end of his cane to the floor and leaned on it, watching Caldwell with considerable satisfaction, I said, “Señor Murieta, do you know why he has been saying — saying this about you?”

“He is sick in the mind,” said Murieta after a long pause. He straightened up and turned away, sighing. “I am not a vindictive man, señor, but this I had to do when I learned what he had published to the world about me. Yes, no doubt he is sick in the mind. We have been to his apartment this morning in search of him — with the police, for he has committed a crime in our law — and we have found certain books and pictures which suggest that he is not normal.”

His sharp black eyes flashed to my face. “Did you not know? Could you or another not have stopped him? Although we shall show what he said was mere lunatic raving, it will nonetheless do me very great harm.”

I said wearily, “Señor, I cannot care any longer what happens in Ciudad de Vados. I live only for the day when I can leave it.”

“Leave it, then!” snapped Murieta, and turned his back on me.

The enormous man who had come in with him had lumbered out again; now he returned, with a policeman and two white-jacketed male nurses. Seeing them, Caldwell began to scream.

The complete disintegration of a human being is not pleasant. When it was over, and Caldwell was in the ambulance, I suggested we go out for a drink, and Angers, shaking like a leaf, agreed instantly.

Over a whiskey in a nearby bar, he said dully, “Who’d have expected it? He’s always been such a steady fellow — hardworking, reliable — and then all of a sudden, this!”

I said after a moment’s thought, “I’ll make a wild guess. I’ll bet you that when they go into the matter they’ll find that Caldwell probably laid some tart or other in one of the shantytowns some while back, and he’s collected a load of guilt in consequence. I imagine that he’s always suffered because of that speech impediment; he’s acquired a string of complexes a mile long.”

“All this is just words,” said Angers impatiently. “What I want to know is — what’s it going to do to the project? We relied on what the health department was saying, and so did the public. When it turns out that it was all the raving of an idiot, what will happen then?”

“They’ll probably laugh like demons,” I said. And I was right.

Having a pretty primitive attitude toward mental illness, most of the Vadeanos did laugh — loudly, long, and often. Not only at Caldwell, but also at everyone else who had swallowed his story, if only for a day.

The worst sufferer, naturally, was Professor Cortes, who had allowed the story currency in Liberdad. It was extremely galling for him to have to order the printing of a full-scale retraction. He tried to cover himself and distract attention from the matter by going for Miguel Dominguez again. But the lawyer’s personal position was now virtually unassailable, because of the way he had successfully demolished Andres Lucas and showed up his complicity in the fate of Fats Brown. He laughed the whole thing off.

I had half forgotten my own worries in the atmosphere of tension that followed Caldwell’s breakdown, but I still kept one eye open for any further rash statements by O’Rourke. I preferred not to provoke trouble with him so long as he didn’t repeat what he had apparently said about throwing me out of the country. And at the present moment he seemed to have something else on his mind — more exactly, someone else. Dr. Ruiz, in fact.

I had this from Manuel, as usual — the barman was getting to be quite a pipeline of information for me. He seemed to be dismayed because it was through him I learned about O’Rourke’s attack on me, even though I’d asked for it — literally — and he tried to make up for it by slipping me reassuring snippets of gossip.

According to him, O’Rourke had told Ruiz that if he went on with his accusations, the police would prosecute him for aiding and abetting Caldwell in publishing a libel, and still more than that would start investigating the allegations that he had murdered the first Señora Vados.

There was an air of desperation about this, as though Vados were gradually wearing down O’Rourke’s resistance to the eviction of the squatters. Of course, it was unthinkable that Dr. Ruiz should be officially accused of this crime — the mud that would splash on Vados would topple his regime, and el Jefe would find himself in one of his own cells before he was allowed to say a word in public. Nonetheless, Manuel assured me he had the story on excellent authority, so I took it for what it was worth.

“Any more news sheets, Manuel?” I asked. “Or have they been closed down again?”

“I do not know whether they have been closed down or not, señor,” Manuel said regretfully. “But I cannot obtain any more of them. Have you not seen today’s Liberdad ?”

He opened a copy of the official paper on the bar before me and jabbed his finger down on a large-headlined story. I read: Bishop Cruz had forbidden all practicing Catholics to buy or read the unofficial news sheets.

“I am a good Catholic,” said Manuel, with regret in his voice. “But I had hoped to collect all of these for the information about the chess championships; the name of my son is in many of them, for he has done very well in the tournament so far.”

“So you won’t have any more unofficial news for me, Manuel?” I suggested.

Manuel smiled. “Señor, behind a bar one has the news anyway.”

It was not a rash boast. A day later he was able to inform me of something else to which Cortes had refused space in Liberdad and time on the radio, which was scarcely known to most Vadeanos. General Molinas had pledged his entire support and that of the army for O’Rourke and the police; he had said that if rioting started because the squatters were evicted, he would be unable to keep his forces at the disposal of the Vados government. I found this far more interesting than what Ruiz had been saying, and what was reported at length by the official organs, which was approximately, “No smoke without fire,” in the question of immorality in Sigueiras’s slum. It looked as if Professor Cortes were making a desperate effort to save face over the Caldwell affair.

And that was the situation when Sigueiras exploded his bomb.

I hadn’t given another thought to the threat he had made to Angers on the first occasion when he took me to see the slum; I’d dismissed it as fine words and hot air. I’d realized that the Negro was a determined man, but now, when things were practically all going the Citizens’ way, he capped every desperate move the National Party had ever made with a gesture of spectacular defiance that made people all over the city — myself included — regard him with astonished admiration. The one person who didn’t, of course, was Angers.