Caribbean: a novel Part 39

'Mind if I walk with you, Ranjit?' Banarjee did mind, but he was afraid to admit it, so leechlike had the man become. 'My business is to remind you how right that barber was when he told that story.'

'I have nothing against Cubans.'

'I mean the part where you would be saved from going back to Trinidad if some American girl fell in love with you and married you.' Before Ranjit could protest, he rushed on: 'She marries you. Perfectly legal. You acquire legal status as her immigrant husband. Now n.o.body can force you to leave the country. Six months she divorces you, and there you are, on your way to American citizens.h.i.+p.' Maintaining hold of Ranjit's arm, he whispered: 'All for a lousy five thousand dollars. American citizens.h.i.+p for life.'

Ranjit brushed his hand away: 'I'm not a fool,' and in his rasping voice Hudak replied: 'You are if you don't listen. Ask around the dorm. Ask how many young fellows like you have gained citizens.h.i.+p through marriage and divorce. The way I do it, foolproof.' Before he left he thrust into Ranjit's pocket a slip of paper, then disappeared in the traffic along Dixie Highway. In the privacy of his room, Ranjit read the message: Gunter Hudak, 2119 San Diego, Coral Gables. It could be done for $4,000.

In the months that followed, Ranjit ran into Hudak about once every other week. On the occasions that Hudak spoke to him, always with the same low, rasping voice, he would say something ominous, like: 'Good evening, Mr. Banarjee. I'm sure you heard about the three graduate students that were flown back to Iran last week. I-94 forms expired.'

At the beginning of the semester in September 1981, his eighth year in Miami, Ranjit's attention was diverted from his own problems by a surprising announcement from his Pakistani fellow scholar, Mehmed Muhammad: 'Wonderful news! The American government has just added mathematics teachers to the list of preferred occupations.'

'What does that mean?'

'Well, the rule's been on the books for years. If you want to immigrate to the United States, no chance at all. Waiting list miles long. But if you're a tailor and want to immigrate, the government says: "Hooray! We need tailors," and they embrace you. Actually seek you out, because in this country we don't produce enough tailors.' Ranjit noticed that he was speaking of the United States as we, and that week Mehmed transferred his graduate credits to Georgia Tech, where he would start on a doctor of science degree. He told Ranjit: 'With my credits from India, I'll apply for an accelerated course. Maybe one year I'll be admitted as a math teacher.' And off he went.

When he was gone, Ranjit made cautious inquiries about the supposed exempt categories and learned that Mehmed was right. Tailors were needed, gla.s.sblowers for the making of scientific instruments and a whole mix of curious occupations, for none of which was he remotely qualified. That avenue to freedom was barred.

Refusing to think about Gunter Hudak's proposition, despite the fact that the man had lowered his price to three thousand, Ranjit spent the fall term in a kind of numbed euphoria. His work toward his history Ph.D. leaped ahead, and one of his essays on the Dutch experience with her Caribbean colonies had been accepted for publication in a learned journal in Amsterdam, causing an envious but generous young professor with his doctorate from Yale to say: 'Banarjee, we ought to initiate a Doctor-of-Everything. You'd be the first to get one. How's the thesis coming?' and Ranjit was tempted to say: 'It's safely slowed down, thank you.'

Before Halloween, Mehmet was back on campus exhibiting the same excitement he had shown when leaving for Georgia Tech: 'The most wonderful news, Ranjit. Mathematics was more difficult than I thought. Could have done it, of course, but not in one year. What do you think's happened?'

When Ranjit said: 'Something promising, I'm sure,' Mehmet rhapsodized: 'More than promising. Salvation at hand, on a silver platter!'

'Tell me.'

'The government has added a new category to its preferred occupations. Male nurses! Yes, a critical shortage. I've enrolled in the advanced program here on campus, and with my various credits ... I've taken a lot of science in my day. They tell me I should get my certificate by June. And once I get that ... bedpans, here I come!'

When Ranjit looked into the new ruling he found that male nurses really were in demand, but since he had no apt.i.tude for such work, and he was getting periously close to his Ph.D. in history, he switched his field of concentration to philosophy, and just in time. Of course, this had been his major interest all the time, the study of mankind's permanent values and the ways in which people organize their thinking.

Relieved by the last-minute reprieve, he spent much of that year, 19811982, exploring the value systems of Miami, and as he came to understand the intricacies of the city, he gained added appreciation each day for the heroic adjustments it had made. A flood of Cubans had been digested with relative ease. They were now about to take over political control of the city and the state, too, no doubt, and some Anglos did not like this, but they were free to move to the expensive oceanfront communities to the north, like Palm Beach.

The crime rate disturbed him, and at one point as he was coming home from downtown Miami he laughed at himself: In Trinidad it irritated me when white people found it repugnant that Indians slashed people with knives, especially their wives, and here I am in Miami, finding it deplorable that Hispanic men so often kill their wives and their best friends with knives. Plus a change, plus c'est la mme chose. But he could never joke about the drug menace that threatened most aspects of life in southern Florida; he could not imagine willfully introducing into his body any de structive substance: nicotine, alcohol, addictive medicines, and certainly not drugs injected into the bloodstream.

So Miami had its dark side, but on balance it was a magical city, with its miles of alluring waterfront, its increasingly beautiful new high-rise buildings, and the permanent charm of Calle Ocho, as Eighth Street was now known, for here the full flavor of Caribbean life manifested itself in carnivals and celebrations and the daily expression of Hispanic life. 'Not as good as the real carnival in Trinidad,' he told friends, 'but it will suffice.'

But then the self-delusion had to stop. He was not at carnival in Miami; he was engaged in the hard-nosed task of getting a Ph.D. at the university, and there was talk in the school that graduate students who had been in residence beyond a reasonable number of years were going to be handed an ultimatum: 'Finish your thesis and accept your degree, or get out,' and he knew that the last two words really meant get out of the country. Since he had been on campus since 1973 and this was now 1984, he knew his days were numbered. Indeed, the university had already cracked down on Mehmed Muhammad, who had been in and out since 1967, a gaudy seventeen years, but he had once more evaded expulsion by enrolling in yet another exempted specialty, this time nursing. Mehmed was an enterprising fellow, for after having ingratiated himself with one of the staff doctors at the hospital where he had volunteered for preliminary nursing experience, he talked the man into lending him his car while the doctor was on duty, and invited Ranjit to share in one of the most civilized adventures Miami provided-watching s.h.i.+ps head out to sea. The two men, with Mehmed at the wheel, started to drive the doctor's car smack into the turbulent traffic of Dixie Highway, one of the wildest city thoroughfares in America where young vacationers, irresponsible university students and anarchistic Cubans who thought a red light meant 'Hurry up, and bang on through' drove at seventy miles per hour in the heart of populated districts.

'Do you know how to drive?' Ranjit asked, and Mehmed said: 'I've watched others. I'm sure it's not too difficult.'

'Have you a driver's license?'

'No, but who's going to stop us?' and with an aplomb that amazed Ranjit, the emaciated Pakistani headed right into the midst of Miami traffic, screamed Urdu curses at anyone who refused to get out of his way, and came miraculously to that magical spot where knowing spectators in parked cars a.s.sembled each Sat.u.r.day afternoon at five to watch the great cruise s.h.i.+ps of the various lines head out to sea on their way to visit the Caribbean islands.

There was no place in America that equaled this, for the channel was so unbelievably narrow that watchers on land could see clearly the faces lining the railings of the huge white s.h.i.+ps as they steamed past, one after another in majestic line. Deep-throated s.h.i.+ps' sirens blew, bands played, pa.s.sengers cheered, spectators in the cars sounded their horns, and for the better part of an hour this unique parade continued. It enchanted Mehmed: 'I could reach out and touch this next one,' and Ranjit agreed that the illusion was startling.

'Ah, there they go!' Mehmed cried. 'After I get my nursing certificate, I'll study to become a doctor, and then I'll apply for s.h.i.+p's doctor on this one coming along. "Madame, I'm afraid your appendix has burst. Matter of life and death. I must operate immediately." And the s.h.i.+p plunges this way and that, and maybe even the lights go out. Snip, snip. There goes the fatal appendix! Another life saved!'

Ranjit, despite his desire to remain in the United States, suffered a momentary pang of homesickness: 'How I'd like to be aboard one of those s.h.i.+ps. Jamaica, St. Vincent, Trinidad.'

'Are the islands so lovely?'

'They are.'

Impulsively, Mehmed leaped from the car, ran to the edge of the channel, and shouted to the last s.h.i.+p, only a few yards away in the channel: 'Great s.h.i.+p! Stop! Stop! Take my friend Ranjit with you.' And from the railing overhead pa.s.sengers looked down and cheered the frantically waving Pakistani.

What Mehmed called remorseless destiny could no longer be avoided, so the mournful evening came, the time when Ranjit had to bite the bullet. Walking slowly along the streets east of Dixie Highway, he came at last to the address on the slip of paper he had kept in his wallet. Approaching 2119 San Diego from the opposite side of the street, he studied the ordinary two-storied house, imagined all sorts of ugly things happening inside, and was about to slink away when a firm hand grasped his right arm from behind: 'Good evening, Mr. Banarjee. I've been waiting for you. Let's talk.' It was Gunter Hudak.

He did not take Ranjit into his home, but maneuvered him down back streets to a Burger King restaurant on Maynada Street near the University of Miami. Without explaining his purpose in bringing Ranjit to this place, Hudak edged him into the line and trailed along as Ranjit approached the ordering counter, where a kindly woman in her late forties asked: 'Yes? What will it be?' When Ranjit hesitated, Hudak said: 'Whopper, fries and vanilla shake.' For himself he ordered a smaller hamburger and a strawberry shake.

When they were perched on revolving stools bolted to the floor, Hudak said in his insinuating rasp: 'My sister works here. Which one do you think she is?' and while Ranjit studied the group of girls putting out the prepared orders, one of them, perhaps at a signal from her brother, moved into a position from which she could clearly be seen by the customers.

As she stood in the clean, bright light she was a memorable young woman. Her age? No one could say. She was about the same height as Ranjit, had the slim figure of a nineteen-year-old, and an attractive face with regular features set in a frame of neat brown hair. But her face was disturbing as well as inviting, for it had an acquired hardness which could have belonged to a woman of forty; nevertheless, she was a young woman that any man would look at twice, and Ranjit did.

'I think that one,' he said, and Hudak pressed his hand in congratulations: 'You're right. She's the girl who wants to marry you,' and now he flashed an open signal, whereupon his sister left her job of supervising the delivery of French fries to the pickup counter and walked primly and with purpose to where her brother sat with his new client. 'h.e.l.lo,' she said as she approached Ranjit's stool, 'I'm Molly,' and she looked down at him with eyes that almost shouted: 'My G.o.d! You're a s.e.xy man!'

Ranjit, who had never before received such a glance, was too befuddled to speak, but she continued. 'My brother tells me interesting things about you, Mr. Banarjee. It would not only be a pleasure, it would be very exciting. A Hindu prince. Elephants. Tigers. The Taj Mahal. It would be wonderful.'

Awkwardly, Ranjit mumbled: 'I'm far from a Hindu prince.' Then he tried a clumsy joke: 'And I'm far from India, too. A Portugee Shop in Trinidad.'

'I'm sure that's a fine place,' she said, and when the bell rang, indicating that fries were acc.u.mulating, she excused herself: 'You know, around here people get fired if they don't do their job. Mr. Banarjee, I'd be honored.' Since nothing had been said about what she would be doing to be so honored, Ranjit was left in the dark, but as soon as Gunter and he were back on the street, Hudak began to bore in: 'Now, Banarjee, I know d.a.m.ned well you have to do something by the end of June. You can't switch majors again. And your thesis is finished. I know the girl who typed it. So this time you graduate, and it's back to good old Trinidad. Unless you marry Molly and follow the route we've discussed. It's foolproof, it's quick, and Molly and I can do our part for twenty-five hundred. Make up your mind. Now!'

He snapped out the command so forcefully that Ranjit was left with the feeling that he had no alternative, and in a floundering confusion he accepted the proposal. As soon as he agreed, Hudak became a tough, clever manager, for he took Ranjit to the Hudak home, introduced him to his parents, and said they would wait for Molly to come home from work. As soon as she appeared, her brother launched a training program: 'Every word I say is crucial. From this night on, you two are to look and act as if you are in love. People we can later use as witnesses must see you together. Banarjee, you're to be in that Burger King five nights a week, mooning at her, walking her home. You are to stop under streetlights so that people can see you. Three times a week you come here for lunch. You go to the movies on Dixie Highway. You are deeply, pa.s.sionately in love, and you show it.'

He gave Ranjit additional instructions about laying a trail of paperwork at the university, meeting with his professors, a session with a religious counselor about the problems of a Hindu marrying a Catholic, two sessions with Molly's priest, the purchase of a ring with Molly present. Keep the dated receipt. He had, in his management of several former such marriages, acquired a great deal of experience, and he knew how to fabricate the evidence that the Banarjee-Hudak wedding was an act of pure love, and he knew how to direct his actors in creating and maintaining that illusion.

So for six weeks Ranjit lived in a double dream world. He allowed his doctorate in philosophy to gallop toward a successful conclusion and at the same time he conducted his courts.h.i.+p of Molly Hudak. The latter operation involved bizarre elements. Four or five nights a week he sat in the Burger King staring at her as if he loved her, and by the end of the second week he did, for she was a delectable la.s.s and sometimes he imagined what joy it was going to be when they were husband and wife, if only briefly; he walked her home faithfully, but she never allowed him to kiss her; and when he produced the two thousand dollars on which they finally agreed, it was Gunter who grabbed it, not Molly, for as he explained: 'Not even the faintest taint of money must touch you, Molly. They'll investigate every penny in your possession.'

'Investigate?' Ranjit gasped, and Hudak explained: 'Like you won't believe. They'll look into everything, like bloodhounds, but we know how to cover our tracks. From now on, you do as I say.' He never said, as he must have been tempted to: 'I know we can trust Molly. She's been down this road before. But you, you stupid Hindu, I'm worried whether you can stand up to it.'

The awkward courts.h.i.+p ran its course, with Ranjit convincing spectators that he was not only in love, but gratified that a young woman so appealing should be interested in him; this required little acting, and the day came when the Hudaks, Ranjit Banarjee and Mehmed Muhammad as his scare-crow best man traipsed off to the courthouse in downtown Miami where a wedding was performed in a civil ceremony.

The rest of that day was a h.e.l.l so awful that Ranjit in later years would try to believe it had never happened. The wedding couple reached the Hudak home at 2119 San Diego with considerable noise so that the neighbors could testify, if needed, that the newlyweds were indeed living together, and when the front door was closed, Gunter, in a roaring voice unlike any Ranjit had heard before-an ugly, hissing voice-laid down the rules.

'Banarjee, you have to live in this house till Molly files for divorce, but you sleep down in the cellar. You use the laundry tub for your bathroom. You do not eat with us, never, and if you ever so much as touch my sister, by G.o.d, I'll break both your legs above the knees. Do you understand?'

He had thrust his face so menacingly close to his terrified brother-in-law that Ranjit had to fall back a step, but Gunter pressed on: 'Do you understand, you d.a.m.ned filthy Hindu? You touch my sister, I'll kill you.'

Modern houses in Coral Gables have no cellars, for the land is so flat and near the ocean inlets that moisture would have filled their cellars with inches of brackish water. Since Hudak's old house had been built on a slight rise, the builder had risked a cellar, which was now musty and fetid. In it Gunter had arranged a wooden slab on which his mother had thrown two blankets to form an inadequate mattress, with another blanket for cover. There, without adequate ventilation, Ranjit would sleep. A rusted, zinc laundry tub with a cold-water spigot was his bath, and he was given a big tin can for a urinal and instructions to go to the bathroom elsewhere when he got the chance, and never, under any circ.u.mstances, to use the Hudaks'.

To complete his agony, he must appear at the Burger King at least five nights a week to walk his wife home after closing, and in some ways this was the cruelest part of his treatment, for he would perch on one of the stools, watch Molly as she performed her tasks, then wait for her to join him, a beautiful young woman, really, one whom any man could love, and walk home with her in silence, for she refused to speak with him. Once, in despair, as they walked along Dixie, with the university looming across the highway, he cried: 'Molly, how did you ever get caught up in such a dirty racket?' but she refused to answer him. She must have informed her brother that her husband was growing difficult, for that night Gunter grabbed his brother-in-law by the throat and started banging his head against the living-room wall: 'I warned you not ever to touch my sister,' and Ranjit gasped: 'I didn't,' and Hudak stormed: 'But you yelled at her. You ever do that again, I'll kill you.'

Since this was the second time Gunter had made this threat, Ranjit had to take it seriously, and now when he went to sleep in the damp cellar he sprang awake at any unusual noise, for he feared, with reason, that the Hudaks might be coming down to murder him.

Ranjit was diverted from the horror in which he was living by the unexpected appearance in Miami of a trusted friend, who arrived, as friends often do, exactly when she was needed most, but also, as so often happens, at a decidedly embarra.s.sing moment. It was the hospital administrator Norma Wellington, the clever woman from St. Vincent and U.W.I. She was now an American citizen, with her nursing degree from Boston and a responsible job in a medium-sized hospital in Chicago, and she had come to Miami as a member of a four-person committee to advise on the interrelations.h.i.+ps among that city's many hospitals. Knowing that her friend Ranjit Banarjee was in residence, she tracked him down through the university and learned that he had a permanent carrel at the library in which he kept the stack of books he was currently using in pursuit of one of his various interests.

The little room had no phone, so a librarian led Norma to the door, and when it opened, revealing Ranjit seated among his piles of books, she cried in unaffected delight: 'Ranjit, how wonderful.' The pa.s.sing years and the important position she occupied had matured her in ways he could not have antic.i.p.ated, and when the librarian left and she sat alone with this man of about thirty, the differences between them became apparent. She was a mature adult who interacted each day with other adults as able as she, for she had accepted and absorbed the years as they came along, not fighting the inevitable, but not surrendering to it either. In Chicago her light-colored skin was neither a hindrance nor a help, but it had aided her to avoid slipping easily into romances with either her doctors or the male members of her staff. Norma Wellington was about as well adjusted as a young woman of twenty-nine from a tiny island like St. Vincent could be.

Ranjit, on the other hand, had always been a diffident fellow, withdrawn as a lad, shy when girls became important, and now totally disoriented because of his relations.h.i.+p with the horrible Hudaks. As he welcomed Norma he fumbled, and when he faced her he did not know how to begin to tell her about himself.

They talked casually for a while, and then, in subtle ways that neither of them could have explained, she dropped hints that her coming to Miami was not entirely for professional reasons. Her refres.h.i.+ng experiences in the free air of Chicago had eliminated most of the prejudices she had acquired on St. Vincent and Jamaica, and she no longer gave a whistle about the inherent differences between Hindus and Anglicans, between Indians and West Indians. At times, when she had been pressured by this man or that in Chicago, she had compared him with Ranjit Banarjee, always to Ranjit's advantage, for she remembered him as a scholar who honestly sought the truth, wherever it led, and who had a heart expansive enough to embrace the entire human race. He was a man of merit, and the more she had thought of him in those years of establis.h.i.+ng herself, the more attractive he had become and the more she wanted to renew their acquaintances.h.i.+p.

When her purpose was almost overtly exposed, Ranjit drew back in trembling fear: My G.o.d! She came here to see me. And she thought: I've come so far and he's still so shy, I really must say something. It was not clever what she said, but it was a statement from the heart of an extremely well-balanced young woman who had not endless years to waste: 'I have so often wanted to see you, Ranjit. Those talks we had at U.W.I.... really, they were the best part of my education.' When he said nothing, she forged ahead: 'In those days I think you and I both thought that Hindu and Anglican ... they were irreconcilable, but after working in Chicago ...'

'Norma,' he blurted out with his old inept.i.tude, 'I'm married.'

She hesitated just a moment, then quietly and adroitly called back her exploratory cavalry: 'How wonderful, Ranjit! Could I invite the two of you to lunch?'

He did not have the courage to tell her of the disaster in which he was trapped, but the pathetic way in which he mumbled 'Sorry, she's working' revealed so much that Norma thought: Poor Ranjit! Something terrible's happened. But she did not try to find out what. Instead, she retracted into her own sh.e.l.l and began to evaluate rather more favorably than before a young gynecologist from Iowa, but both she and Ranjit knew that a proposal of marriage had been offered and rejected.

Her trip to the university was not a complete waste however, because Ranjit, to escape from his deep embarra.s.sment, thought of his Pakistani friend Mehmed Muhammad: 'Norma! There's someone you must meet,' and he sent a library a.s.sistant scurrying to the carrel which Mehmed had occupied for nineteen years. When the tall fellow came shuffling in wearing bedroom slippers, Ranjit cried: 'Mehmed! A wonderful break for you. This is Dr. Norma Wellington, director of a major hospital in Chicago. Norma, this is my good and trusted friend Mehmed Muhammad, who is about to get his certification as a nurse ... and he's going to be a very good one.'

Norma and Mehmed hit it off, for within a few moments she had him catalogued: How often I've met you before. The perpetual scholar. Who knows how many years at the university? Unmarried, sympathetic, loving. Striving desperately to remain in America, and America needs you. To Mehmed she said: 'How soon do you get your certification?' and he said: 'June.'

Ranjit, who was watching his two friends carefully, could not fail to see the kindly scorn in which Norma, a no-nonsense working girl, held Muhammad, the ineffectual wandering scholar, and as they spoke together a horrible thought a.s.sailed him: Dear G.o.d! Do people look at me that way? A quiet Hindu off to one side, offending no one, just puttering around year after year? His flow of rhetorical questions was broken when he heard Norma saying brightly: 'Mr. Muhammad, we're always looking for reliable men like you,' and Ranjit, to a.s.sist a friend who had helped him, chimed in: 'You know, Norma, Mehmed's taken a lot of fine courses that don't show in his record,' and she replied: 'I'm sure.'

That night Ranjit, his mind in a turmoil from Norma's visit, decided he simply could not go through the pretense of reporting to the Burger King to escort his wife home, but after starting twice to the Hudak house, he turned and went dutifully along Dixie Highway to his appointment, partly because he was afraid that Gunter might punch him in the head if he didn't but mostly because he was truly in love with Molly and wanted to be near her, no matter how badly she treated him.

He was about to enter the restaurant when he was confronted by a man who pushed him into the shadows so they could not be seen from the restaurant. He was a Hispanic-a dark, handsome fellow with a small mustache and darting eyes-perhaps thirty-five and somewhat taller than Ranjit. His English was good but marked with the delightful singing lilt that made even a menacing statement light and airy.

'Are you the Hindu they told me about?' he asked ominously.

'I am Indian, yes.'

'So you're the one married to her this time?'

Although aware that his response might mean fearful trouble, Ranjit said weakly: 'Yes.'

'So you fell for it?' Ranjit was puzzled, and he recognized that this could be a trap. The man looked Cuban, but he could also be a paid informer for Immigration, so how to answer this question? He had no need to try to devise an adroit escape, for suddenly the man whipped out a long-bladed knife and held it to Ranjit's throat: 'I'm her real husband. You touch her, I'll kill you for sure. Get your citizens.h.i.+p like the others. Get your divorce and get the h.e.l.l out of Miami. Or ...' and he pushed the knife closer.

'Who are you?' Ranjit asked when the knife was withdrawn, and the man said: 'Jose Lopez, Nicaraguan. I got a good job, plenty money. And I want her back.'

Terrified by the complexity of the jungle in which he was entrapped and convinced that his a.s.sailant meant it when he threatened death, Ranjit tried to warn Molly during the silent walk home: 'He had a knife,' but she said scornfully: 'Oh, that one,' and she would say no more, but when they reached the Hudak house, Ranjit warned Gunter: 'Molly's real husband, the Nicaraguan, is making threats,' and the mastermind of deception said: 'We'd better move you out of here as fast as possible,' so next morning Molly filed for divorce in the Miami courts on the grounds of cruelty.

His colleagues in the Miami office of the United States Immigration Service said of Larry Schwartz: 'He may not be the brightest guy on our staff, but he does have that fantastic stomach.' They referred to the exceptional skill Larry had in evaluating the paperwork in a marriage suspected of being a fraudulent attempt to bring an alien into the country: 'I've seen him do it a dozen times. He studies the papers, spots the fraud, and looks up at me and says: "Oooh! My stomach is as tight as a knot." And nineteen times out of twenty, when he goes to work on the case he proves that it's ... How does he phrase it? "As phony as a Nevada mining certificate." '

As Larry worked, he kept on his desk, facing him, a cardboard sign with three big numerals outlined in red: 31-323-41, and he used them to indoctrinate new agents a.s.signed to the Miami office: 'Whenever you're investigating a marriage that looks fraudulent, remember that thirty-one is the average number of other aliens he will be legally ent.i.tled to bring in once you let him in. So if he's illegal, do your country some good. Keep him out. The three twenty-three? That's the worst case in this office, and I was responsible. I had to give the green light to a guy who'd contracted a fake marriage. I knew it but I couldn't prove it. And that's how many he succeeded in slipping past us as he brought in his brothers and sisters and their wives and children till he had three hundred and twenty-three, an entire village.'

But it was the last number, the 41, that caused the real knots in his stomach: 'In this office, when we got our computer working, we identified eight women scattered around south Florida who had among them an average-an average, mind you-of forty-one fake marriages.'

'How do you define fake?' agent-in-training Joe Anderson asked, and Larry said: 'Anytime an American woman who is a legal citizen of our country marries an alien man solely for the purpose of enabling him to get his Resident Alien Card, and without any intention of establis.h.i.+ng an honest husband-wife relations.h.i.+p ... we label that a fake and take action.'

'Why does she do it?' and Larry said: 'Money. Going rate seems to be somewhere between five hundred dollars and five thousand dollars.'

So when the clerk who had first spotted the probable fraud delivered to Schwartz the rather fat dossier on the Ranjit Banarjee-Molly Hudak marriage and pending divorce, Larry turned the papers with a practiced thumb and felt his stomach definitely tightening at several facts: 'She's older than he is, and that's always a flag. But my G.o.d! She's nine years older. They're not only different religions, but she's a Catholic and he's a Hindu, and you can't get much further apart than that. Also, whenever you have a graduate student switching his major three times ... What were his grades as an undergraduate? Almost straight A's? But of course it was probably one of those Mickey Mouse universities in the Caribbean. But you can be almost certain he's switching majors to avoid getting his Ph.D. How long's he been in graduate school-1973 through 1986? That's not an education, it's a career.'

On and on he went through the papers until his stomach was so knotted that he marched in to his superior's office, tossed the dossier on the desk, and said: 'Sam, it's as phony as a Nevada mining certificate.' After a cursory look at the signals that Schwartz had marked, Sam said: 'Go for it,' and the probe was on.

Special agents on the trail of what they had good reason to suspect was a fraudulent marriage followed one of two traditional procedures, as Larry explained to newcomer Anderson: 'Some prefer to drag the couple in, interrogate them, throw the fear of G.o.d into them, and trap them into disclosing the fraud. Not bad. Often works. But I prefer the second route. Leave the couple alone, but quietly check their behavior, their work habits, their religious attendance, the comments of their friends, everything. And you'd be surprised at the canvas you begin to paint with those individual brush strokes. By the time you're through, the word Fraud is written two feet high across your painting. Then you bring them in.'

So in the summer of 1986, Larry Schwartz, thirty-four years old, and his a.s.sistant Joe Anderson, twenty-seven, began spending many hours in the vicinity of the university, Dixie Highway and the area in which Mr. and Mrs. Ranjit Banarjee claimed they were living. They were careful not to speak directly to any university officials lest they inadvertently alert Banarjee, who after all, was not really the target.

'It's not even the woman,' Schwartz kept reminding Anderson, 'even though she's probably pulled the trick three, four times.' Clenching his fist, he hammered his desk: 'It's the miserable pimp who arranges these deals. I want to get that swine.' Then he relaxed and laughed: 'As soon as I nail down for sure that it is that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Hudak ...'

When from a distance he checked the Hudak house, a plain affair a few blocks from the university, he saw that the Indian did come and go, but Larry was more interested in another youngish man who seemed to have the run of the place, and he quietly checked with some of the neighbors: 'I'm the census taker. How many live in your house? And in that house over there?'

'You mean where the Indian married the daughter? Five. Him, her, the parents and their son Gunt.'

'Does Gunt have a steady job?'

'Never seems to keep one long.'

When he and Anderson had made more than a dozen checks, finding no glaring discrepancies between the facts as he observed them and the doc.u.ments which were supposed to support the marriage, Schwartz started dropping in at the Burger King where Molly worked, and the more he saw of her, the easier it was to believe the Indian's claim that he had fallen in love with her while taking his supper at the fast-food place, for although her birth certificate proved that she was thirty-eight, she was an attractive, slim woman who could not have weighed more than a hundred and twelve. Besides, her green uniform and c.o.c.ky little hat seemed to have been designed just to make her look attractive. She's no dog, Larry thought as he finished his hamburger and shake without looking at her again.

Larry Schwartz had been born in Boston and had worked the northern Immigration beats before winning an a.s.signment to Florida, and he was so grateful for the hot weather and so fed up with the cold that he customarily wore a lightweight seersucker jacket, white s.h.i.+rt and no tie. This made him conspicuous in the Florida summer, but he was not comfortable without the coat, so when he had eaten at the Burger King three or four times, he failed to notice that while he was shadowing Molly, someone off to the side was shadowing him. It was Gunter Hudak, who had been alerted by his sister, who was far more clever than the men around her a.s.sumed. 'Gunt, there's this guy in a seersucker jacket keeps coming in at night.'

'Lots of people come in at night.'

'But he's different.'

However, when Gunter studied the stranger he concluded that he was just another customer who had no wife and frequented the Burger King because the salad bar was copious and inexpensive, and he convinced his sister to stop worrying about him.

Then, one evening when Schwartz and Gunter happened to be in the restaurant at the same time, a tall, good-looking Hispanic came in, ordered a hamburger, kept his eye on Molly, and waited till her stint ended. Then, as she came out in street clothes, he moved close, took her arm, and encouraged her to snuggle up, betraying in a dozen different gestures that they were lovers. Her brother had become alarmed the minute he saw Jose Lopez, the Nicaraguan to whom his sister was legally married, and immediately notified his gang, who had given Lopez strict orders, and a few dollars, to stay away from his wife until she received her divorce from the Hindu, and this bold intrusion imperiled their plans. But what had worried Hudak even more was what he saw happening inside the restaurant: the man in the seersucker suit was carefully watching the lovers and making notes. And as Schwartz left the Burger King, he was grabbed by two members of the Hudak gang, who punched him about the head, and one of the men snarled: 'Now who in h.e.l.l are you, mister?'

When he blurted out the answer he always gave: 'Insurance adjuster,' one of the thugs rifled his pockets while the other man held him. There was not a single card indicating that Larry was with Immigration, but there were two forms proving he was in insurance, so after giving him several more sound thumps they let him go. That night the same thugs waited till Molly reached home, intercepted her, took her for a drive in their car, and cursed her for having been seen with her husband. 'The G.o.dd.a.m.ned Indian's divorce papers ain't final yet.'

She promised never to take such a chance again until the Immigration paperwork was completed, but two days later Mr. and Mrs. Ranjit Banarjee received a registered letter requiring them to report to the office of Investigator Larry Schwartz at Immigration headquarters, and that night Gunter Hudak began his intensive coaching.

'This is deadly serious,' he said to the divorcing couple, and with the a.s.sistance of a member of his gang who had handled such situations in the past, he laid out his instructions: 'You have filed for divorce, and that's what alerted the Feds. Our job is to prove that even though you're splitting now, you did enter into a legal marriage last year.' His accomplice, an evil-looking man from the Gainesville area who had supervised numerous fake marriages for alien students at the University of Florida, warned: 'You've got to make it sound real, and we're here to teach you how. Molly's been through this before, but you'-and he stared contemptuously at Ranjit-'can screw it up if you don't learn your lines.' And from a grease-stained portfolio he produced a well-thumbed xerox of t.i.tle 8 of the Federal Criminal Code, Section 1325 (b), brutal in its clarity and threat: Marriage Fraud: Any individual who knowingly enters into a marriage for the purpose of evading any provision of the Immigration laws shall be imprisoned for not more than 5 years or fined not more than $250,000 or both.

When Ranjit realized he might be subject to a quarter-of-a-million-dollar fine, he cried pathetically: 'Why did I ever get mixed up ...?' but he was not allowed to finish, for Gunter struck him across the lips and growled: 'Shut up, you d.a.m.ned fool. You asked to do this. You paid me money to arrange it.'

When Ranjit tried to claim ignorance of the law, Gunter hit him again and said: 'You have to protect yourself, but you also have to protect your wife. Even more, you have to protect me. And if you make one mistake, you filthy Hindu, you are dead, because my neck is on the line.'

Satisfied that Ranjit was properly impressed by the gravity of the situation, he became conciliatory: 'We're going to be all right. We've been through this before and we know all the cons to beat the rap.' He told them that Schwartz, whoever he was and 'ten to one he's the guy in the seersucker,' would interrogate them separately, Molly in one room, Ranjit in the other, 'and we've learned just about what questions he'll ask to trap you. So memorize these answers.' And from a paper his gang had used when preparing for past interrogations, he hammered into their heads the answers they must both give when describing their happy marriage.

'Did you sleep in the same bed?... Yes.'

'Who slept on the right-hand side, looking down from the headboard?... You,' and he indicated Ranjit.

'Who went to bed first?' Again Ranjit.

'Did you use the same bathroom?... Yes. And I want Ranjit's toothbrush and shaving things in there tonight.'

'How many people had dinner at the table, most nights? Five. Because he probably knows I live here.'

'How many went to church on Sunday? Where?'