The Burglar on the Prowl - By Lawrence Block Page 0,41
killed three other people, and one of them was a doorman just like you. Of course I’m going to call the police.”
He looked on the point of tears.
“Why not?”
“INS.”
“You want me to call the INS?”
“Ay, Cristo! No!”
“Oh,” I said. “You don’t want me to call the INS. And you don’t want me to call the police because you’re afraid they’ll call the INS.” He was nodding enthusiastically, clearly pleased that he’d finally made himself understood by this gringo idiot. “But you’re not illegal, are you? How could you get hired here without a Green Card?”
It took a few minutes, but he got the point across. There were, it turned out, Green Cards and Green Cards. Some of them were issued by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, while others were the product of private enterprise. The latter would serve to placate a prospective employer, but someone from the INS would be able to tell the difference, and one more hardworking and productive New Yorker would be out on his culo.
I started to tell him the police had better things to do than run interference for the INS, and that all they’d want from him was whatever he could tell them about the men who’d wrapped him up like a Christmas present. But halfway through I changed direction, because I wasn’t convinced of the truth of what I was saying.
To paraphrase the song from My Fair Lady, when a cop’s not near the suspect he suspects, he suspects the suspect he’s near. A lyric like that’s not ever going to make the charts, but it’s sadly true all the same. Edgar was clearly the victim in this case, but when they couldn’t get anywhere else with what they had, some bright-eyed cop would decide they ought to take a harder look at the doorman, on the chance that he might have been in on it all the time.
And, when his Green Card turned out to be a little gray around the edges, making them even more suspicious of its holder, they’d have no choice but to inform the Immigration and Naturalization bozos, who’d pick up Edgar the minute the cops came to their senses and cleared him. And away he’d go, back to Nicaragua or Colombia or the Dominican Republic, wherever he’d lived back in the good old days when his name was still Edgardo and he earned three dollars a month cutting sugarcane.
“No cops,” I agreed, a little belatedly. “And no INS. Come on upstairs and we’ll get you cleaned up and get a couple of glasses of water into you. And maybe some coffee. Una copa de café, eh?”
“A cup of coffee,” he said, helpfully. “Sí, como no?”
There were two of them, although he only got a look at one, and not a very good look at that. The way they worked it was simple enough. He’d come on duty at ten, and maybe twenty minutes later the first man, taller and heavier than Edgar—a description that fit the greater portion of the adult male population—came up to him, asking for me. He was wearing dark trousers and a zip-front jacket in tan suede, and he had a blue Mets cap pulled down over his forehead. And a shirt, but Edgar didn’t get enough of a look at the shirt to remember it.
He rang my apartment, and when I didn’t answer he reported the fact to my caller, who hefted the briefcase he’d been carrying. He wanted to leave this for Mr. Rhodenbarr, he told Edgar, but it was important, and he wanted to make sure it was safe. Was there a room for parcels? Something with a lock on the door?
There was, Edgar assured him, and he’d put it there. The man said he wanted him to put it there now, just to be on the safe side, and that he’d make it worth Edgar’s while. He’d accompanied this last phrase by rubbing his thumb across the tips of his index and middle fingers, a gesture that, north or south of the border, meant some money would sweeten the deal.
It struck Edgar as an unusual way to earn a tip, but then America was an unusual country, with ways he hadn’t entirely figured out yet. So he got the parcel room key from the drawer of the lobby desk, and led the man into the corridor beyond the bank of elevators and unlocked the parcel room door.
He’d no sooner accomplished this task than the man reached around and slapped