With even more incredulity, the man would find himself courteously negotiating with Checker over the phone, trying to find an afternoon he was “free.” By the time Check showed up, the principal would feel grateful and offer the boy the big armchair and a cup of tea.
After all, appealing to his mother was hopeless. Lena Secretti was illiterate; Check had been signing her name to permission slips and even money orders to Con Ed since the age of six. His mother had borne children much the way she scrounged junk from trash piles—she carted them from the hospital and placed them in the apartment and sometimes, at moments, would remember having brought something interesting home once and look around for what had happened to it. After picking up the roll of bubble wrap, checking behind the broken adding machine, and moving the big box of paint-sample strips, nubby crayons, and plastic surgical gloves, she would dig up a dirty, hungry, but contented son playing Olympics with roaches. Now, Lena Secretti was not exactly insane, and no one ever died or got permanently misplaced in her care, but she was not the kind of woman you sent curt notes about truancy.
In his obliviousness of rules and even of law, Check had been accused of being “unrealistic,” but in fact his world was profoundly concrete. He understood tangibles, like, there is an agent who wants to ship your sax player back to Iraq, so you take your friend away from the man. Checker tried to explain.
“But we’ll get him eventually, and you could get prosecuted yourself, bucko,” said the agent the next day at Plato’s. The club was closed for The Derailleurs’ rehearsal on Sunday afternoons, which the man had interrupted with his enthusiastic investigation. “Aiding and abetting, harboring fugitives. We’re arresting Catholics for that shit lately, for Christ’s sake. Think we’d bat an eye at a black rock drummer?” But somehow the agent, Gary Kaypro, didn’t sound very threatening. Like all the high-school teachers before him, he was leaning back with Checker Secretti, waving his cigarette, trying desperately to entertain.
“Gary,” said Check affectionately, “we have a gig next weekend. I can’t find another sax player in five days.”
“Play here, man, your buddy won’t be around for the encore.” Gary Kaypro said “man” a lot. He’d shed the pink bandanna from the night before, but still propped heavy leather boots on the table. He’d managed to emphasize early how very much guitar and saxophone he’d played in high school. The agent was vaguely middle-aged, for from the vantage point of nineteen anything between thirty and sixty is simply not young; after sixty you are old. Kaypro himself knew this, and though he kept trying to intrude the fact that he was only thirty-six, he guessed correctly that they didn’t care.
“Well, say we toe the line,” Check proposed. “How can I get my sax man legit? You must know immigration law—how does it work?”
Kaypro shrugged with casual expertise. “There’s the political-asylum gambit. Say they’re going to flay the kid with a potato peeler if he sets foot in Iraq.”
“They would,” said Check. “He’s a draft evader.”
“Still a bad bet,” said Kaypro. “None of that shit is flying lately, see. With the Cubans, the Haitians, and now the Salvadorans, we’re burned out on the but-they’ll-shoot-me routine. Pretty much the U.S. says, So what? Unless you’re Eastern European or Soviet. And you ever read the newspaper?”
“Only the little articles on the inside pages.”
“Well, the big articles are full of Middle Eastern maniacs blowing up Americans and shoving them out of planes. Imagine how overjoyed the INS gets when they apply for asylum. We figure most of them belong in one.”
“So what’s another angle?”
“He could disappear. Get out of New York, or at least never show up here, or at his room on Grand.”
“No good. What else?”
“He could marry an American.”
“No kidding.”
“Sure. Even gets you citizenship eventually. But—only if it’s for real.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re on to that scam, see. We do interviews now, in intimate detail. Ask the couple the colors of their underwear? Any moles? Form of birth control? The works. Sometimes split them up, compare their stories. I’ve done it. A scream, really. Catch these guys, picked up a wife for three thousand dollars, can’t even remember her first name. Man, they’re on the plane by sundown, bingo.”
“But if Hijack got married this week, you couldn’t arrest him?”
“I could. He’s still illegal until he goes through channels.”
“But would you?”
“What are you trying to pull here, bucko?”
“I’m shooting straight, Kaypro. If he gets married, will you leave him alone and let him go ‘through channels’?”
“You have a lady in mind?”
“I might.”
“Depends,” said the agent, clicking his eyeteeth together. “You know the INS is famous for corruption, don’t you?” He smiled.
“We don’t have any money, Kaypro.”
“No, no. What I want I can’t buy. I—” He seemed flustered. “I’d like to play with you guys!”
“What?” said the band.
“Just a set once in a while. I used to get in my licks, see? And—you’re half decent, Secretti. Three-quarters, even.”
Checker laughed. “Deal’s on.”
“But the kid has to do the whole bit,” the agent added. “Someone turned him in; I have to report. And if the marriage is a fraud, they’ll skewer him and the girl both. Likewise, you don’t get wedding bells to chime before I find him, the ax is gonna fall. I’ll look the other way if he’s got a solid claim to living in this country, but as of now he’s moist, through and through. I’d like to beat out a few oldies with you kids, but I’m not a sleazebag—I do my job.” With that moment of officiousness, he left the club.
“Well, that’s the ticket,” Check announced.
“Ticket’s on the family plan,” said J.K. “What about La Señorita, Jack?”
“Well …” Check drawled, moving to his Leedys to tune the heads for their upcoming rehearsal. “That’s the one tiny hole in an otherwise flawless scheme, isn’t it? Rache, why don’t you run down and tell Hijack we’ll get him out of that steam bath before the week’s out.”
“Tell him he has Super Check on his side. Mild-mannered rock drummer by day, wild-man immigration lawyer in a phone booth.”
Checker turned to the door, unable to decipher Eaton’s tone. Eaton kept a straight face. So many of Eaton’s compliments would have this quality—balanced perfectly between admiration and mockery. Never quite sardonic, never quite sincere. “Right,” said Check uncertainly. “Guys, I thought Strike should rehearse with you instead of me today, learn our tunes.”
“When I talked to you last, you were
