‘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 courtship 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 hell 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 God, 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 damned 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 circumstances, 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 embarrassing 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 interrelationships 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 passing years and the important position she occupied had matured her in ways he could not have anticipated, 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 relationship 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 refreshing 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 establishing herself, the more attractive he had become and the more she wanted to renew their acquaintanceship.
When her purpose was almost overtly exposed, Ranjit drew back in trembling fear: My God! 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 ineptitude, ‘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 shell 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 embarrassment, thought of his Pakistani friend Mehmed Muhammad: ‘Norma! There’s someone you must meet,’ and he sent a library assistant 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 D
r. 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 assailed him: Dear God! 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 assist 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 citizenship like the others. Get your divorce and get the hell out of Miami. Or …’ and he pushed the knife closer.
‘Who are you?’ Ranjit asked when the knife was withdrawn, and the man said: ‘José 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 assailant 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 assigned 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 entitled 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 establishing an honest husband-wife relationship … 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 God! 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 God 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 assistant 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 bastard 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 documents 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 cocky 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.