“One of the less savory effects of this you may have noticed already — the fringe of shantytowns just outside the city boundary, populated by a shiftless crowd of spongers and beggars: illiterate, forming a positive cesspool of disease, contributing nothing to the life of Vados and expecting everything in return.”
He was growing quite heated with the force of his expostulations. I took advantage of the fact that he seemed to have worked himself up to a climax, and interrupted.
“How exactly does this become my problem, Mr. Angers?” He relaxed a little, remembered his cigarette, and knocked off its accumulated ash. “Well, as you can understand, we citizens don’t like the situation. We played an indispensable part in creating Vados, and we expect the terms of our citizens’ rights to be honored. We don’t want our town smeared with patches of slum development. Matters came to a head some months ago, and it was obvious that something was going to have to be done — something really drastic. Diaz, who is, strictly speaking, the minister to whom the various administrative departments of the city are responsible, wanted to try to integrate this new floating population into the town. I told him it was ridiculous, because the natives just aren’t city-dwellers — they’re backward peasants. But Diaz is a hard-to-persuade sort of man, son of the soil and all that — I sometimes wonder, actually, whether he’s really superior to these people in the shantytowns or whether he’s just more cunning. It would be hard to imagine two people less alike than Diaz and the president, who’s a very intelligent and cultured man. Still, I suppose it’s for precisely that reason that Diaz managed to make himself indispensable — the common touch, you know, and all that sort of thing.
“Anyway, as it turned out, the president fortunately saw the citizens’ point of view. But it wasn’t just a matter of passing a few bylaws, because it’s Vados’s policy to give with one hand if he’s forced to take away with the other, and there’s no denying that a vocal minority exists on Diaz’s side. So the solution that was finally adopted was to remodel the ‘black spots’ of Vados in such a way that the sponging existence of these people became insupportable — and at the same time to confer positive benefits on the whole population. There are four million dolaros at your disposal, Mr. Hakluyt. I’m certain that someone of your qualifications can be relied on to produce a satisfactory solution.”
He gave me his wintry smile again. In thoughtful silence, I digested the statement he had just made.
I had often quoted to people who asked me about my work the standard platitude to the effect that traffic is the lifeblood of the city society. I had never expected to find myself in the position of a leukocyte charged with eliminating an undesirable social germ from that bloodstream. Nevertheless, the idea was logical.
And could probably be made to work. I told Angers as much, and he put out his cigarette with a nod. “I was fairly certain you would say so right away, Mr. Hakluyt. Well, the next step, of course, is to make you acquainted with the various officials with whom you’ll be cooperating, in addition to myself — the chief of police, for example, and Señor Seixas in the treasury department, and our various planning and administrative personnel. But before we really get stuck in, there’s one point I’ve been asked to bring to your attention, which I’m sure you’ll see the necessity for. I’d like to impress on you the need for you to remain absolutely detached in this matter.
“You’ll probably find that I sometimes get a bit — a bit worked up, as they say. But that’s because the whole thing is pretty personal to me, or to any other citizen. The reason we selected you for the task — in addition to your outstanding record, of course — was that you’d never been to Aguazul in your life. It will be much more satisfactory for everyone concerned, and will cut the ground from under the feet of the people who’ve tried to oppose the plan, if we can go on pointing to your verdict as that of a wholly independent and disinterested expert.”
“I presume,” I said, “that that was why you called in an outside traffic analyst anyway, instead of having the job done by your own traffic department.”
He looked slightly embarrassed, as though I had put my finger on a sensitive point, and I had a vision — so sharp it almost brought a smile to my lips — of the opposition he had probably put up to my being engaged.
“Yes, of course,” he answered with a hint of severity. “Well, now that I’ve made that point clear, perhaps you’ll give me an idea whether there’s any special equipment or assistance you’ll be needing.”
I took a sheaf of paper from an inside pocket; I had typed it out before leaving Florida. “That, broadly speaking,” I said, and lit another cigarette while he was running down the list. I’d put down only the obvious items — scraped off the top of my head — but nonetheless they added up to a respectable length. A car to be permanently at my disposal; an official laissez-passer in case the police got inquisitive — I’d more than once been picked up for loitering while standing at an intersection counting the traffic flow; the use of an office in the traffic department with a computer at least up to MAXIAC standard, and a secretary speaking English and Spanish with equal fluency; addresses of every important organization and company in the city, a supply of maps, a team of qualified statisticians, borrowed if need be from a business research firm; comprehensive cost figures for the last half-dozen major construction jobs in Aguazul, down to hard core per cubic meter and standard-rate fees for demolition squads — I was always careful about this now and had been ever since the time when, as a green novice, I produced a beautiful scheme for a budget of sixteen thousand pounds Australian, which costed out at four hundred per cent over; and, not least important, English translations of all relevant bylaws and regulations governing construction work in Aguazul.
Angers seemed to be favorably impressed with the comprehensive list — at any rate, his manner thawed perceptibly as the morning leaked away, and when we had finished going into the details of my requirements, he gave me the warmest smile I had yet seen from him.
“I can tell it’s going to be a pleasure working with you, Mr. Hakluyt,” he said confidentially. “You’re obviously a methodical man, and we appreciate that sort of thing. I don’t imagine I need refer again to the question of being detached about all this, do I? After all, I suppose you people down under look at things pretty much the same way as we do, really.”
I couldn’t have thought of an adequate reply to that if I had tried for a week; fortunately he turned to his clock and stood up.
“It’s about time for lunch,” he said briskly. “Suppose you join me, eh? We can eat in the plaza — it’s a beautiful day.”
I had a wild vision of sitting on the grass and having a picnic when Angers suggested lunching in the plaza; I should have guessed that his dignity implied something different.
In actual fact, a restaurant was what we found — twenty tables for four and a complete portable kitchen that appeared with near miraculous suddenness under the trees every noon and evening except when the weather forecast was bad. I learned afterwards that it was the most expensive place to eat in the whole of Vados, but it was extremely pleasant if you had no objection to being watched by groups of workers who had come to eat their tortilla-and-frijole lunch and take their siesta on the benches all around the square.
We were halfway through the main course — Angers holding forth on the history of the city again — when a stir caught my eye on the steps outside the Courts of Justice, which, as I had previously noted, also fronted on the Plaza del Norte. A tall, good-looking man in his forties was coming out, surrounded by a group of admirers and hangers-on. A big black car pulled up to the sidewalk as he descended the long half-spiral of steps that crossed the frontage of the courts; he called something to the driver of the car and continued across the plaza to take a table not far from where Angers and I were sitting. Here he sat down with three of his friends, and the waiters rushed to serve him. I noticed that whereas they were merely polite to Angers and myself, they were positively deferential to the new arrival,