“Ah, that’s all right,” he said with a sudden surprising switch into strong New York. “Figured you weren’t one of these stuck-up spicks. Tourist?”

I nodded; that was my role at the moment. “Drink?” he suggested, and before I could accept or refuse, he had thrown back his head and yelled, “Pepe!”

I looked at the nearest doorway and found that I was in fact standing outside a shabby bar, converted in makeshift fashion from the entrance hall of a house. A misspelled name scrawled on the wall in black paint announced the fact. “What’ll it be?” said the fat man.

“Something long and cool,” I said in my best tourist manner, wiping my face.

The fat man snorted. “In a hole like this? Pal, if they had a frigidaire here, they’d have to use it for cooking tamales. The power company cut the supply a month ago. Makes it a choice between beer and this muck I’m drinking. Better have beer — at least it doesn’t get dirty inside the cans. “Cerveza!” he added sharply as a worried little man appeared in the doorway, wiping his hands on an apron or maybe the flapping tail of his shirt.

“Siddown,” he went on, indicating a folding chair propped against the wall near him. “Reason I called you over was ’cause I figure I’ve seen you around here a few times before. Didn’t I?”

“You might have,” I acknowledged, finding that the chair, seemingly on the point of collapse, was still strong enough to take my weight. I hadn’t seen him; that I was sure of. But I didn’t comment on the fact.

“You seem to be spending a hell of a lot of time down here.” His eyes fixed on me. “Mind my askin’ why? Sort of — uh — unusual for a tourist.”

“A girl I know back home told me to get her one of those fancy Indian shawls — rebozos,” I answered, thinking in high gear. “You know how it is,” I added, trying to make the words imply I thought he was irresistible to every girl for miles. “I wanted to make it something — something classy, if you get me. Can’t find anything I like.”

The fat man spat with great deliberation into the gutter, three inches from the bare feet of a woman carrying a basket of clay pots. “Should think not. Stuff you get here’s not worth a damn. You’d do better to stop off for a couple hours in Mexico City on your way home an’ spend a few bucks in a big store there. These people can’t afford to spin their own thread any more, y’see. Have to make do with lousy commercial stuff — won’t dye properly, won’t weave the same way. No good.”

“Looks like I’ve been wasting my time, then,” I said. Beer arrived, brought by the worried man; I took it as it was — in the can — and sipped it.

“Maybe not altogether. Get better stuff here than anywhere else in Vados, that’s for sure. And cheaper. Trying to clear this market away — hear about that?”

“No!” I said, feigning astonishment. “Why? Don’t people like having a genuine Indian-style village market right in the heart of Vados? I’d have thought tourists would go for it in a big way.”

“Nuts. Vados is ‘the — most — modern — city — inaworld.’ ” He managed to make the slogan sound faintly obscene. “That’s what tourists come looking for. Old-world crap they can find back in New Mexico or somewhere. What they want here is the day afer tomorrow, not the day before yesterday. ’Sides, the place stinks. Don’t it?”

The smell was pretty thick, and likewise indescribable. Cooking oil and frijoles and rotting fruit and human bodies all had a place in it. So did sun on dust, which smells like nothing else in the world.

“What are these poor bastards gonna do for a living when they clear this market up? Hafta live in that dump of Sigueiras’s — they don’t show that to tourists. Heard about it?”

“Under the main monorail station?”

“Tha’s right.” He looked at me with a speculative expression. “For a tourist, you got eyes, pal — say that for you. Guess you didn’t go down inside, though.” I shook my head. “Guessed right. There’s a guy called Angers in a city traffic department been shooting off his mouth about cleaning out market, shacks, whole damn lot. Him an’ that money-grabbing bum Seixas.”

He gestured with his now empty bottle; he had been sucking enormous gulps between sentences. The movement took in the big-eyed children and the back-bowed women and the shabby men playing chess, the barrows and the baskets and the fruit and corn and clay pots and trinkets. “Riles me! I’m a citizen, same as Angers. I got my stake here, same as him. But it’s these poor bastards’ own damn country, and they don’t get much of a share.”

On the last word he hurled the empty bottle at a rotten melon lying in the gutter; it sank in without breaking and stuck up at an angle, the straw still in the neck. “Have another on me?” I suggested.

“Next time you’re by,” he said, and hauled himself ponderously to his feet. “Got to go make room for it before I have another. Think about Angers while I’m doing it. Maybe we’ll fix him one of these days. Still a law in this country — of sorts. Wouldn’t think I was a lawyer, would you?”

“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.