Then he quoted the city’s charter of incorporation at some length and asked leave of the court to recall his witnesses if need be to rebut counter-allegations made by the defense. Then he rested his case.
Here Lucas took over, and I had to admit that the man was a master of legal expertise. With assured authority, he took Brown’s interpretation of the relevant clauses of the charter and tore it to shreds — Fats looked definitely unhappy while this was going on. But obviously the mere letter of the law was not in dispute in this case; the city definitely had a right to subordinate citizens’ rights to redevelopment plans. What Sigueiras was saying was that if it hadn’t been for the intention to dispossess him personally, there wouldn’t have been any redevelopment plans; Brown was attempting to show on his behalf that the city council, the traffic department, and Angers — named conjointly in the suit — were motivated by malice rather than by a desire to benefit the citizens.
So it ultimately came down to the question of nuisance. And Lucas, winding up his opening speech, announced that he proposed to get rid of the imputation of malice and prove the nuisance beyond doubt.
The judge, sitting with a smile of appreciation on his face, recollected that it was time for the noon recess and stepped down.
He resumed his seat for the afternoon session with an air of expectancy; so did all of us. Lucas proceeded to call Angers, and Angers stoutly denied the imputation of malice. He made a good impression, I thought, studying the judge. But when Fats Brown lumbered to his feet, he had a sleepy, dangerous twinkle in his eye.
“Angers, are you honestly stating before this court that it’s bothersome to you to have this ground under the monorail central lying idle, when there ought to be a main road across it?”
“Of course not.”
“Does its present employment interfere with access to the station? Or with the flow of passengers?”
Angers frowned. “It’s definitely a nuisance to passengers.”
“That’s not the point. Is it? What’s at issue is the motive of your department. Have you any specific proposal for redevelopment of this ground?”
Angers suddenly looked acutely uncomfortable, and stammered over his reply, with a glance at me. Lucas rose to intervene smoothly, saying that a later witness — me, presumably — would deal with that point. But Brown’s thrust had gone home, and he exploited it.
“In fact,” he wound up, his voice dripping sarcasm, “you decided that as cover for your attempt to evict Sigueiras you’d hire this outside expert and invent — yes, invent! — a new use for his ground so as to cheat him of his legal rights. Yes or no?”
“I—” began Angers, but Brown had thrown up his hands in disgust and sat down.
I began to see how Brown had acquired his reputation. All Lucas’s careful smoothing-over couldn’t hide the fact that a great hole had been knocked in Angers’ statements. I saw Señora Posador and Mendoza looking satisfied.
Lucas had less luck still with his next witness — Caldwell. The poor guy stammered more than ever. Trading on this, Lucas made a great show of sympathy and got the court’s leave to introduce affidavits covering some of the evidence about the menace to the health and well-being of the citizens at large caused by Sigueiras’s slum.
Brown was not so kind. He kept Caldwell in the box for almost an hour, forcing one admission after another — that conditions in the slum were no worse than others in Puerto Joaquín; that there was no adequate alternative accommodations; that, in short, poverty was the root of the trouble and of everyone in a position to do anything to ameliorate it; only Sigueiras had taken practical steps to help the sufferers.
I leaned across to Angers, who was still sweating after his brush with Fats Brown, and whispered, “Clever, isn’t he?” I wasn’t looking forward with much enthusiasm to my own examination.
“Very,” said Angers, forcing a ghastly smile. “I don’t like to think what Tiempo will say about today’s proceedings.”
Ruiz now entered the box with an aggressive air and stood with both hands on the rail before him like a captain on the bridge of his ship, looking around the court. He showed every desire to talk, and talk Lucas let him — about health statistics, about the high incidence of disease, about the moral corruption among the slum-dwellers, about fears that people had expressed to him lest their children should associate in state schools with the children of the peasants, about the direct relation he had discovered between the growth of the slum and the typhoid fever rate in Vados…
The day’s time was almost up when Lucas finished his own questions, but long enough remained for Brown to start on his, and only a few words had been exchanged when it became clear that Ruiz had dug his heels in and was not going to yield an inch. Brown began to mop his forehead at intervals; Ruiz spoke more and more like an orator making a major speech.
In the public seats, Maria Posador and Felipe Mendoza grew tense and frequently exchanged glances; correspondingly, Lucas and Angers began to relax and every now and again to smile faintly. Angers leaned toward me and whispered, “He’s doing very well, isn’t he?”
I nodded.
“Very sound man,” Angers continued softly. “He’s the President’s personal physician. One of the best doctors in the country.”
“I don’t care about the situation in Puerto Joaquín!” Ruiz was exclaiming heatedly. “I’m only concerned with the situation in Ciudad de Vados, which is what this case is about! I’m saying that this slum represents a menace to mental and physical health, and the sooner something is done about it the better. It doesn’t really matter what, so long as it’s got rid of.”
“Have you finished your examination, Señor Brown?” the judge put in.
Fats shook his head.
“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to continue it tomorrow. Court adjourned.”
I noticed that Brown’s forehead was deeply etched with lines of thought as he left the court with Sigueiras, hands clasped behind him, plodding alongside.
Angers had to join Lucas and Ruiz for a further discussion of the case; accordingly, I was leaving the building by myself when, near the exit, I passed Señora Posador and Felipe Mendoza talking together. I said a word of greeting and would have gone past, but Señora Posador called me back and introduced her companion — “our great writer of whom you have surely heard.”
I gave Mendoza a cold nod. “I read your attack on me in Tiempo,” I said shortly.
Mendoza frowned. “Not on you, señor. On those who hired you, and on their motives.”
“You might have made that a lot clearer.”
“I think if you had been in possession of more of the underlying facts of the situation when you read my article, it would have been perfectly clear, Señor Hakluyt.”
“All right,” I said, a little wearily. “So I’m an ignorant outsider and the circumstances are highly involved. Go ahead and enlighten me. Tell me why this case is attracting such a lot of attention, for example.”
“Please, Señor Hakluyt!” said Maria Posador with a distressed look. “It is for us rather than you to be bitter about it.”
Mendoza regarded me with burning eyes. “You are an outsider, señor, let us not forget that. We fought hard to preserve in the city charter the birthright of those who belong here, against encroachment by outsiders. This land on which we are standing, señor — it is part of the country, not just of a city, and the country should come first. The foreign-born citizens care only — as I think you also do — for the city, but we — we feel for the earth itself, for the peasants who scratch it with ploughs, and their children who grow up in its villages. Now, regrettably, some of our own people seek to destroy the very liberties we struggled to preserve on their behalf.”