“Yeah!” he said, sitting back. “An’ why not? You done me a lot of good, Hakluyt! You know people been throwing mud at me ’cause I hold stock in some construction firms — you saw about that in Tiempo prob’ly.”

I indicated that I had.

“Well, I thought I was shut of that crap when Felipe Mendoza got carved up and his brother got jailed for contempt. Not a bit — here comes this lawyer Dominguez an’ starts all over. Well, this plan you turned out, no one can say my company gets a cut, ’cause they don’t do this kinda work. They do big stuff — divided highways, overpasses, that kinda thing. So I call up Dominguez, an’ I say how about it, unless he can prove I get a cut of this one he’d better shut his trap permanently. And I get this back. How’s that for eating dirt?”

He flipped open the drawer of his desk and hauled out a folded letter for me to read. It was on a neatly printed letterhead bearing the title of Dominguez’s law office, and said: 

“How’s that, hey?” said Seixas, and poured himself another shot of his habitual nauseating cocktail.

It didn’t mean much to me; it struck me that it was a most lawyerlike sidestepping of the point, seeming to say a lot, actually saying almost nothing. Still, Seixas was delighted with it, and I made complimentary noises.

“That’ll show the bastard I mean business!” said Seixas, and shoved the letter back in his drawer.

With a bit of difficulty I got him down to business and managed to get provisional approval for the estimates I had; I didn’t really much care what happened to such a makeshift plan, and Seixas didn’t, either — maybe because his construction firm genuinely wasn’t getting a slice of this one. So the matter was disposed of quickly, and that was that.

I ran into Dominguez lunching in a restaurant near the law courts the following day. He was by himself, and I saw that he was frowning over the front-page spread in Liberdad that had been given to my plan for the monorail central.

All the other tables were at least partly occupied; I had the headwaiter show me to Dominguez’s. He looked up and nodded coldly to me, but didn’t speak before going back to his perusal of the newspaper.

I said after a frigid interval, “You’re perfectly right, Señor Dominguez. It’s a mess, isn’t it?”

He thrust the paper aside and scowled at me. “Then what have you permitted it for, Señor Hakluyt?” he countered.

“I’m hired,” I said. “Vados gave me an ultimatum: do it his way, and disregard my personal opinions. So I’ve done it. I did my best to prevent it — I told Vados, I told Diaz, I told Angers, I told everyone I could reach, that if you just throw the squatters out, you’re creating a fund of ill-will that may possibly end in revolution. I sent a memorandum to Diaz about it, and I’m told the cabinet discussed it, and in the end Vados vetoed it. What the hell am I to do?”

He recognized the genuine bitterness in my tone and appeared to thaw a little. “That is interesting, señor. I had not heard. Have you perhaps heard that you have a powerful ally in your opinion?”

“The most powerful ally I seem to have is Sigueiras,” I said acidly. “Wherever he may be — he’s still in hiding, I suppose.”

“Ah — yes, in a sense. He could probably be found today, if it was necessary.” Dominguez spoke indifferently. “But perhaps you have wondered why no steps have been taken to evict the squatters under the monorail central. After all, it seems they all conspired to conceal Señor Brown, a wanted man.”

“I suppose something ought to have been done by now,” I agreed.

“Yet it has not. And why not? Because it would be necessary to use troops for the eviction, and our commander in chief General Molinas has declared that he could not trust his men to do the work. Many of them, after all, are peasants like the squatters, who had no better chance in life than to enter our little toy army. Their officers are, most of them, upper-class dilettanti, who would sooner associate with criminals than with common soldiers. Moreover, there is an element of racial prejudice involved; as you are perhaps aware there exists in some parts of Latin America a kind of social hierarchy based on percentage of European blood, and in our army this is quite marked. It is an exceptional man who despite Negro or Indian ancestry achieves advancement.”

“This is most interesting,” I said thoughtfully. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Do not thank me for anything, Señor Hakluyt. I wish only one thing: that we had met under happier circumstances. For as the situation is, I and those in Ciudad de Vados who think as I do are compelled to regard you as a menace, because you reinforce the capacity of our opponents to implement their highly dangerous plans. This is an honest statement, señor; I hope you will take advice, not offense, from it.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

He folded his newspaper so that the article about my plan was concealed, and let it fall to the floor. “So!” he said. “Let us talk of other things.”

“I’d rather ask you a further question on the same subject, if you don’t mind,” I said. “I was talking with Seixas yesterday.”

Dominguez frowned. “I have no doubt what you are going to say. Seixas is a cunning man, but little else than cunning.”

“I was wondering why you — uh — backed down in your attack on him. I can’t make out if he really is an open scandal or simply a target for random criticism.”

“Oh, he is notorious. But we have more important matters to deal with. Flagrant offenders will sooner or later hang themselves. We must expose the subtler forms of corruption.”

After that we did talk of other things, desultorily, until it was time for me to leave. I had been asked to call on Caldwell in the health department, reason unspecified.

I found him in a pretty bad way. He looked extremely tired, and his stutter was the worst I had heard it since his gruelling by Fats Brown during the Sigueiras case. Distractedly, he waved me to a chair and offered me a cigarette. He was going to take another himself when I pointed out that he already had one burning in an ashtray on the desk.

He gave a nervous laugh. “I’m s-sorry,” he said with an effort. “I haven’t f-felt so good s-since that b-bastard O’Rourke went for me — d-did you read about that?”

I nodded.

“S-scandalous!” said Caldwell with vigor. “I’m c-certain O’Rourke has some k-kind of interest in hiding the t-truth. If it weren’t for the sh-shantytowns, m-maybe he’d be out of a job.”

“This sounds like the old one about doctors having a vested interest in disease,” I said when I’d recovered from my surprise.

“Oh, you d-don’t understand!” said Caldwell irritably. “I mean s-someone must be p-paying him what-you-call-it. P-p—”

“Protection money?” I said incredulously. “But what for?”

“Th-that’s right! What f-for? What for? T-to k-keep quiet about what g-goes on in th-these p-places, naturally.” Caldwell thrust his hands through his already untidy hair and gave me a defiant look through his glasses.

“Look,” I said, “you’ve obviously been overstraining yourself. I’ve been to the shantytowns, I’ve been through this place under the station, and I haven’t seen anything half as bad as the things they were putting over on television, for instance.”

“Ah, but you went there in the daytime, didn’t you?” exclaimed Caldwell, pouring the words out in a rush without a hesitation. “I t-told the newspaperman about th-that when I s-spoke to him this morning. I t-told him what the t-truth must be.”