“That’s him,” whispered Brown. “That’s Mig.” The judge was a wizened man — not perhaps a hundred, as Brown had claimed, but certainly seventy or more. His gavel seemed almost too heavy for his clawlike, shriveled hand. His voice was reedy and penetrating, and he was using it now. I got the gist of his remarks; he was saying:
“—cannot, of course, entertain the evidence offered by the prosecution when it is so plainly colored by personal animosity and political considerations of the basest kind. I have heard cases in this court and others for upward of thirty years; never before have I been faced with such a farrago of rubbish. I shall, of course, report Lawyer Dominguez’s conduct to the appropriate professional body, and I look forward to the day — which cannot be far distant — when the persons responsible for this unprincipled attack on the good character of one of our leading citizens are swept away along with the repositories of filth and immorality where they were spawned. It only remains for me to pronounce the formal verdict — not guilty. Court adjourned.”
The gavel banged; as if it had been a trigger, Sam Francis leaped to his feet and, forgetting his languages in the heat of the moment, shouted at Romero in English.
“Why, you unprincipled old bastard! You’re just a—”
The gavel rapped again, but a storm of booing drowned it and the rest of what Sam Francis said. Beside me, Fats Brown scrambled to his feet, yelling execrations. The judge signaled to the clerk of the court, who ran to open the door behind the dais for him, and the ushers struggled to restore order.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Brown at length. “I couldn’t face Mig in the state he must be in. He’s just been legally slandered to death, so far as his career’s concerned. Like this country, Hakluyt? I think it’s a wonderful country. It’s just got some stinkin’ bastards in it.”
“But how can Romero get away with it?” I demanded.
“Who’s to stop him?” Brown snarled. “Romero’s the senior judge in the country, bar the chairman of the supreme court, an’ he’s a rubber stamp for Vados. Ugh! Fresh air — and quick!”
He led me through the corridors to the entrance so fast that he was panting when we halted at the head of the steps. He hauled out a large bandanna and mopped his face with it. “Well, like I was sayin’, you’ve seen what passes for law an’ order in Vados. Like it?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer, for at that moment Sam Francis came up to us and started to rail at Brown for what had happened. Brown took it calmly, realizing that Francis merely needed someone to listen to him and didn’t care who it was.
After minutes, the flow of Francis’s vituperation was cut short as a group of laughing people came from the interior of the building, I did not have to look around to tell that Guerrero and Lucas were in the middle of them; there was also Guerrero’s girl friend of the previous evening, and others I recognized as supporters of the Citizens of Vados party.
They halted at the top of the steps not far from us, and a man who had been half in the background — the driver of Guerrero’s big black sedan — slipped past us to collect the car. I nudged Brown. “What about him?” I said. “Wasn’t there a charge against the chauffeur, too?”
“Dismissed by Romero,” said Brown thickly. “Said it was only a cover for the real purpose of the case, which was to slander Guerrero.”
“Slander Guerrero!” echoed Sam Francis loudly, in a voice that was meant to carry. “How could you paint the bastard any blacker than he is?”
Guerrero stopped in midsentence and began to approach Francis with even steps. He stopped a pace or two distant, while his companions came up behind him. His eyes locked with Francis’s, and there was a long, cold silence.
“Coming from you,” said Guerrero at long last, “that is a ridiculous remark. You’re the black one here!”
Francis’s face contorted into a snarl, and he closed the gap separating them with a single stride. His thick fingers folded over into his palm with a clapping sound, and he drove his fist like a hammer into Guerrero’s mouth.
Literally, the violence of the blow lifted Guerrero from his feet — literally, because the act of falling carried him back over the lip of the steps beneath us. He seemed to be diving backwards like a ridiculous dummy, and time stopped.
I had a half-conscious memory of a crunching sound that had mingled with the thud of Guerrero’s body striking the foot of the steps. Then we were jostling and stumbling down toward where he lay.
One of Guerrero’s companions — I think it was Lucas — bent down and touched his head. His fingers came away sticky with blood.
“Oh, you fool!” whispered Brown, his eyes on Sam Francis’s heaving chest. “Oh, you double god-damned fool!”
People rushed up from every side. Guerrero’s girl clutched his limp hand as she knelt beside his body. In a moment she was weeping. A policeman shouldered between us, ordered us to stand back, and felt expertly for a pulse. Then he got up and started menacingly to climb the steps toward Sam Francis, who was standing like a man in a nightmare, unable to move hand or foot.
Brown looked at me, with no vestige of humor in his expression. “Sorry, Hakluyt,” he said in a low tone. “When I asked you to come an’ see murder, I didn’t figure it would turn out literally.”
X
An ambulance; more policemen; court reporters on their way to lunch found a sensation thrown under their noses; there were pictures taken. The crowd milled and eddied, growing as the minutes passed.
Then a black-and-white police car howled across the plaza with its sirens screaming, and el Jefe O’Rourke bounced from it — bounced like a huge rubber doll. He had not made a very favorable impression on me in the office when I saw him the day after my arrival; he had struck me as dour and stolid. Now his affected untidiness seemed to fit him as though he had stripped for action. He barked rapid commands, and the policemen moved quickly and efficiently. The names of witnesses were taken; sightseers were driven back from the body, and a reporter’s camera was commandeered for a record of the way the body lay after falling.
The crowd went on growing; it was perhaps three hundred strong within two minutes of the death. It growled as word of what had happened spread from the front to the back rows; insults were suddenly screamed at Sam Francis, standing — still frozen, like a statue — beside the first policemen who had arrived, high at the top of the court steps.
I saw O’Rourke stiffen and turn his head fractionally each time one of these screamed insults arrowed upward. The temper of the bystanders was growing ugly; I wanted to ask Fats Brown why O’Rourke wasn’t doing anything about it, but he had gone closer to the body and was hovering around with his eyes bright and a taut expression hardening the lines of his fat-creased face.
A silence fell as ambulance attendants lifted the body and carried it into their vehicle. Several of the bystanders crossed themselves. The doors slammed, and as though that had been a signal, a roar went up and something hurtled through the air — a soft fruit. It struck Sam Francis on the arm and splashed colored pulp all over him.
I hadn’t looked at O’Rourke for a few moments. Suddenly he was moving, shouldering his way through the crowd like a charging bull. There were shouts and cries of alarm. I lost sight of him for a second; then his black-sleeved arm went up over the heads of those around him, came down again viciously.
When he emerged again into the cleared circle where Guerrero had lain, he was dragging a man in a cheap white suit, across whose left cheek a huge bruise was already showing. The man kept shaking his head as though dizzy, and stumbled as he was hurried along.