“No,” I said, genuinely astonished.
“Pretty good one, too. Not the sort that gets the classy clients, like that bastard Andres Lucas, but I am a lawyer, and I’m out here drinking in the atmosphere so I can plead a case good tomorrow. Sigueiras filed suit on the traffic people — Angers’ lot — an’ I’m handling it. Name’s Brown. Everyone calls me Fats, even the spicks. Don’t give a damn — I am fat.”
He glared at me as though challenging me to deny it.
“Well, thanks for the beer,” I said, getting up and wondering whether I could safely admit that I was going to be by here again.
“Oh, hell, that’s okay, Hakluyt. Nothin’ against you. Mucky stinkin’ business, but not your fault. Wouldn’t buy Angers a beer, so help me. But don’t blame me if you’re out of a job before you’re started.”
For a moment I was completely stunned. “How did you know who I was?” I asked at length.
“One of Sigueiras’s boys saw you around here Friday and Saturday. I didn’t. Wasn’t here. Won’t be tomorrow. If you want to buy me that drink, you’ll have to come to the courts. So long.”
He disappeared into the dark entry of the bar; he must have turned back immediately, because I hadn’t taken more than one step away before he was calling me back.
“Oughta warn you,” he said. “These lousy double-crossing sonsabitches at the top won’t pay a cent ’less your plan is just what they wanted anyway. Watch yourself.”
He vanished again — so quickly this time that I suspected his succession of soft drinks must finally have made the matter urgent — and left me to walk very thoughtfully off down the street.
VI
I had been up late the three previous nights, watching the weekend flow of late-night traffic in the main traffic nexus. It appeared that at no time was it dense enough for me to worry about; it consisted mainly of heavy trucks on through journeys and a few cruising taxis. Except for a comparatively small area on the far side of the Plaza del Oeste where nightclubs were concentrated, Vados seemed to close down fairly completely by about one in the morning. There were, of course, parties and theaters and movies and so on which contributed irregular bulges in the flow, but nothing very significant, even on a weekend, on the generous scale of the streets here.
That, combined with the shock Fats Brown had given me, decided me in favor of knocking off work early.
It was about half past six when I got back to the hotel. The evening was warm, and the glass panels separating the loggia bar that ran along most of the ground-floor frontage from the sidewalk had been slid back. Several tables had been set outside under a wide green awning. Inside, the bar was crowded with men and women in evening clothes: the women’s jewels glittered brilliantly. I realized that since the opera house was only two blocks south, the Hotel del Principe was conveniently situated for a drink before the show, and there must be some kind of gala performance tonight.
Few people were sitting outside, except for a small group at the far end table; a bored, dark-haired, dark-complexioned girl with a guitar was idly plucking chords on a seat just outside the loggia, stopping every few moments to pick up a cigarette. I was intending to go inside, into the lounge, but a quiet voice called to me. “Señor Hakluyt!”
I glanced around. Maria Posador was looking at me over her shoulder; she was sitting in one of the chairs at the far end of the awning, with her back to me. I had not noticed her as I came up. Beside her was a dark, scowling man whom I thought I ought to recognize but could not identify.
I walked over and said hello, and she signaled a waiter. “You will drink with us?” she suggested, eyes twinkling. “You have had a thirsty day, no doubt. Please be seated.”
I couldn’t think of a reason for objecting, except for Angers’ ill-phrased advice to stay clear of this woman, and I had reacted against that. I took the place next to the dark man, who continued to scowl. He looked extraordinarily out of place next to Señora Posador’s elegance, for his hands were like a workman’s, blunt-fingered and with broken nails, and he wore a floral shirt and grimy off-white trousers. His feet were thrust without socks into rope-soled espadrilles.
“Señor Hakluyt, I should like you to meet Sam Francis,” said Señora Posador equably, but with a hint of mischief in her tone. “You remember you were listening to him speak in the Plaza del Sur last week. Sam, this is our visiting traffic expert.”
The swarthy man’s scowl didn’t lighten. I managed to smile, though his brooding presence made me uneasy. I wondered what Juan Tezol’s right-hand man was doing here, among the kind of people he seemed to have made his deadly opponents.
The waiter took my order and was back almost immediately. I raised the cool glass to my companions, and was taking the first sip when Francis stubbed out the cigarette he had been smoking and spoke angrily to Señora Posador.
“Maria, what the. hell you do around here, anyway? Ain’t things bad enough without you waste time ’mong these sonsabitches?” He jerked a large thumb at my glass. “Why not you put that cash to help Juan pay his fine, hey? What’s the reason?”
He had a sweet, thick Caribbean accent that was hard for me to follow at once; Señora Posador was used to it. “The idea is that Señor Hakluyt had a thirst,” she answered. “Didn’t you?” she added, glancing at me.
I realized I’d come in halfway through an argument. “I — was thirsty,” I agreed. “And this was very welcome.”
Señora Posador half-smiled. She took from her handbag a thin gold case containing half a dozen of her black Russian cigarettes, offered me one, which I took, offered another to Francis, which was refused with a gesture of disgust, and took one herself.
“I should explain to you,” she said urbanely. “Sam and I have had a difference of opinion regarding yourself. I’ve been maintaining that as an independent expert called in to solve a problem here in Vados you can be relied on to give a satisfactory answer to it, regardless of personal interests. I remember you saying to me in so many words that you had no interest in affairs here. Whereas Sam—”
Sam Francis made his opinion plain enough without uttering-a word.
“So you see it was very gratifying that you arrived when you did,” Señora Posador finished with gravity. “We now have a chance to decide our argument.”
Then they both looked at me, very hard and very closely, in a way that made me feel like a specimen under a microscope.
“I have to admit,” I said slowly, “that when I took the job I didn’t realize there was so much local feeling involved. I was told I just had to straighten out some kinks in a traffic pattern. That’s my job; that’s what I came here to do. If I find myself instructed to solve a social problem, and it’s been made pretty clear to me that’s what I’m really supposed to do, then I tell them: any halfway proposition designed to fit what they want and not what’s really needed will land them in a whole mess more of trouble.”
Francis turned to me, laying one enormous fist on the table before him. “You better mean that, man,” he rumbled. “ ’Cause trouble is something we got too much of right now.”
He sat back glowering; Señora Posador put a calming hand on his arm. “That seems a fair answer to me, Sam,” she said. “Have another drink, Señor Hakluyt — we’ll toast a solution satisfactory to all parties.”
I was about to insist on buying this one when a big car halted at the curb and a man and a woman got out. The woman was plumply attractive, wearing an evening gown and a diamond tiara, with a stole around her bare shoulders; the man was thin and good-looking, and I recognized him at once. It was Mario Guerrero, chairman of the Citizens of Vados.