“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 all in a tizzy,” said Eaton, languishing in a chair. “Now you’ve solved everything?”
“We just have to find him a wife.”
“The Sheik doesn’t have a sweetheart, does he?” asked Caldwell.
“Who needs a sweetheart,” said Eaton, “when your band leader has such a pretty smile?”
Checker looked at Eaton with anthropological curiosity.
“Surely, Secretti,” Eaton proceeded, “with those big broad shoulders and wide blue eyes and that impressive set of drums there, you must have quite a harem. Just point. Marry your friend? Sure. Anything for you, Checker. Whatever you say.”
“Now that,” said Check, ratcheting his keys, “is a laugh.”
“Check don’t have no harem,” said J.K. “He got a death squad.”
“Remember Janice?” said Checker, pointing to four faint white scars scraped parallel down his arm.
Checker remembered Janice. Sure. Last summer, right here. More than once that wiry little creature waited all night for some joker to finish his beer, methodically splintering the edge of The Derailleurs’ regular table with her nail file. The way she dug into that wood and twisted as it got so damn late and the son of a bitch ordered another one. But she liked it on the table, hard and half off the edge. She said she sat here during sets and kneaded the varnish, watching Checker drum. She said she liked knowing what they did there and no one understanding why she was smiling. So she’d chip away until the waitress packed out; Checker had a key.
It was the last time he remembered, best and worst. Before, he’d always figured her a hellion, a vicious little animal survivor, with long, stringy muscles and wary eyes. He didn’t worry about her. Janice was thin, but more flexible than fragile, like Rachel. That afternoon she’d been to the beach; sand still stuck to her skin. Stubble had risen on the sides of her pelvis, where she shaved for her bikini, leaving only a little black tuft in the middle, like a Mohawk. Checker needed a shave, too, so between them the grind of their bodies had a satisfying grit, a resistance. She never liked it too smooth, too perfectly, simply good. And she wouldn’t let him roll