When the Iceman Calls

The knock on the apartment door was so loud that it sounded like rapid-fire gunshots. Simon woke up instantly, and then lay frozen still in his bed though his heart was pounding out of his chest. It was like waking to a nightmare. Bang, bang, again, “Open up, Garcia, open up, this is the Federal Immigration Enforcement Agency, open up the door now”. Simon reached for the wall switch and the naked bulb bleached the room with cold white light. It was 3.15 a.m., according to his alarm clock. He prayed for deliverance.

Simon sublet a tiny room from Mrs. Garcia, the legal tenant. Just the two of them, an odd couple in the small cockroach-infested apartment in Spanish Harlem. She occupied the main bedroom and the kitchen-dining area, he occupied a windowless closet-room that was barely big enough to contain a single bed. Mrs. Garcia worked as an office cleaner, evening shifts, barely spoke English. Simon worked as a foot messenger for a courier company downtown, barely spoke Spanish. He and Mrs. Garcia scarcely saw one another, rarely talked, and when they did, it was about the heat, the rent or the garbage. 

Mrs. Garcia was in the tiny hallway outside Simon’s door, “Quien es, quien es?”, she sounded scared, just as he was.  There was a loud snap-crash as the safety-chain broke and the front door burst open. It was ICE, a middle-of-the-night arrest team; there’d been several raids in the apartment block, but not for a few days now. Simon pulled on his black jeans and gray flannel shirt. There was nowhere to hide his laptop, his precious work, his wallet.

When Simon opened the door of his bedroom, he was confronted by three ICE agents dressed in dark blue paramilitary fatigues and black rubber-soled boots. Mrs. Garcia, whimpering, was pushed up against the kitchen stove in her grubby quilted nightgown, her hands in the air, Simon instinctively raised his hands up too.  They both stood barefoot, it was an odd mutuality.

“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” said Simon. The ICE agents were armed but their weapons were holstered. Mrs. Garcia and Simon exchanged worried glances.  They might not have much in common, but they were both elderly, poor, living and working without legal documents in the United States, They both feared the loss of what little they had, this squalid place of refuge, their minimum-wage jobs, their friends and acquaintances, and the small pleasures of New York City. 

“Garcia, where is Mr. Garcia?” said one of the ICE agents, a young heavy-set man, with cropped hair, and a lopsided quizzical look of the habitual skeptic. Williams was the name on the plastic tag attached to his pleated breast pocket. Williams seemed to be in charge of the operation.

“Garcia. Senora Garcia.” Mrs. Garcia insisted, nodding at the agent, wide-eyed, not understanding that they’d come with a warrant for her husband, not her. Simon didn’t even know she was married until this moment. He nearly spoke up, but it wasn’t really his fight.

Another of the agents, a pretty woman with black hair, swept back into a tidy ponytail, dark eyebrows, intervened, “Alberto Garcia, tu esposo. Donde esta?” she asked. This Agent’s name was Rodrigue.

Mrs. Garcia dropped her hands, held them in front of her as if praying, “Mi esposo esta desaparecido, tal vez muerto…”. She began to explain how her husband was not there, was missing, might even be dead. She had not seen him in two or three years. Simon lowered his hands, he did not understand what exactly was being said, but he understood enough to know that he was not the target of this ICE raid, he was an innocent caught up in a dragnet.  They were after Salvadorians.

“Et tu?” said Agent Rodrigue, looking at Simon. Rodrigue looked surprised by his grizzly, pasty-faced appearance, his long scruffy hair, and was suspicious. 

“I am the lodger”, said Simon. Surely, they could see that he was Caucasian and a native English speaker. They would leave him be.

His arrangement with Mrs. Garcia was informal, week-to-week.  The lodger. It sounded ridiculous when he said the word, as it conjured up an image of lonely-heart bedsit-land, jobless London in the 1970s, when he was freshly graduated from university with a useless degree in English Lit. There were no ICE agents in bedsit-land, the idea seemed preposterous.

“Name, ID, social security?” said the third ICE agent, name-tagged, Delesseps, a Black man with a scowl on his face.  

Delesseps. Simon wondered at the agent’s heritage, how had this brown-skinned man ended up with the French surname of the nineteenth century French diplomat that built the Suez Canal, and then tried and failed to build the Panama Canal. Delesseps was a patrician name, but it was an etymological and genealogical minefield. Simon kept his mouth shut.

“What are you smiling at?” said agent Delesseps. Simon had a vacant grin on his face.

A jolt of fear ran through Simon when he momentarily felt like Delesseps was reading his mind. He wanted to disappear, to be invisible, unimportant, free to live his small life, paid and paying with cash, anonymous, a shadow. The baseball scores, his beloved Yankees, the Knicks, the lousy Knicks, his small stash of books under the bed: Kafka, Jack London, Joseph Conrad; these were the things around which his life revolved, these dead authors and – of course - his cranky old laptop, and his precious movie scripts. One day, soon, he’d find a buyer for the scripts, one of his friends’ Hollywood connections, an up-and-coming director, would buy a script and make a movie. He would get paid, get dental treatment, reading glasses, a passport, he’d travel again and visit old friends, if they were still alive. He just needed to sell the scripts. The ICE agent was impatient, threatening.

“I’m not smiling,” said Simon, answering the Agent’s question. He felt like a naughty school boy, even though he was more than twice the agent’s age.

“Is that an Australian accent I hear?” said Agent Delesseps, “are you an Ozzie?” he asked without mirth.

Simon made a non-committal sound. Ozzies are sports mad, outdoorsy, backslapping, funny and loud, they are white, Christian, in fact they are almost American!  A threat to no one, and definitely not targets of an ICE raid. Simon figured there were worse nationalities to be mistaken for. He could be Australian, no problem.

“What’s your name, smiley?”, said Delesseps, “show me your identification”.  The smiley jab was hurtful, diminutive. Simon had a friendly lopsided but almost toothless smile, which made him feel awkward and embarrassed. He preferred it when people pretended not to notice the lonely front-and-center tooth.

“Is the old guy causing trouble?” It was Williams, calling across the room. Williams and Rodrigue seemed to be frisking Mrs. Garcia, roughly.

Delesseps insisted Simon produce identification. Simon scurried into his room to retrieve his knock-off driving license. The Fulton-Street-Special cost him $200, ten years ago and identified him as a New Yorker called Simon Bryant, a U.S. Citizen. Only the date of birth, the face and height were truthful. His blue social security card was also bogus. He’d been paying taxes as Simon Bryant in the United States for over twenty years, and never received a single refund or benefit. Thirty years of social security payments into the account of a non-existent person, his alter ego. Taxes without representation. It can make you bitter.

A long time ago, one of his few remaining English friends, a haughty insensitive man, asked Simon why he didn’t just go back to London? “For heaven’s sake, why not throw yourself at the mercy of the state? They have your national insurance number on file, you will get free care courtesy of the National Health Service. What are you going to do when you get old here, in the States? You will die a pauper here.” 

It was probably sage advice, even if condescending, but Simon would rather die a pauper in New York, than go back to Merry old England, where there was nothing for him, only memories of things lost, and reminders of things best forgotten. In fact, the advice was deeply upsetting, coming from this “friend” with the oh-so important job, with the American wife, the big house, the two-car garage, bank accounts, credit cards, healthcare, two perfect children, the friend that was not scared of his own shadow.

In comparison, Simon had nothing, but he did have something that his friend would never understand, an authentic identity, he was a New Yorker. England was a small mean-spirited place of silly pomp and suffocating history, foreign to him now, it was a place from which his friend could never completely leave. Simon was dead to England, and England was dead to him. He was a true New Yorker, a citizen of the sidewalks, an avid Yankees fan.

Simon handed the ID documents to the Agent, wishing they would spontaneously combust. “So, you are Simon Bryant” said Delesseps, holding the photocopy of the fake ID in the light. It was rough around the edges and grimy from use. The picture, smudged and faded, was of a man much younger. Simon explained that he had lost the original driver’s license, would get it renewed asap, but – for right now – sorry, this was all he had, this plus the Columbia University library card. The agent turned to his colleagues. Agent Rodrigue was still busy searching Mrs. Garcia, Williams was gathering up her private things in a black plastic “evidence” bag. 

“Grampa has a fake ID, which says his name is Simon Bryant,” said Agent Delesseps. Delesseps typed something into his Motorola device.”

“Search his room,” said Agent Williams, who didn’t really care so much about the old white guy. Australians, Austrians, he wasn’t sure of the difference and didn’t care, they were not in his quota target.

The laptop, his books, his clothing, the scripts, an old black and white photo of his parents, everything Simon owned was laid out on the bed.   Agent Delesseps thumbed through the double-spaced scripts. He threw the first script aside, “Tenement Games”, picked up the second, “Sidewalk Hustle”, threw that aside too. Simon winced each time.   “Are you a writer then?” said Delesseps.

“You could say that,” said Simon. He had never been published, he had never sold a script, not in thirty years, did this entitle him to call himself a writer?

“Are you fucking with me?” said the Agent, who did not like the cocky, condescending tone. 

“No, no, of course not, Officer,” said Simon. The less said, the better it seemed. Simon wondered whether they would read him his Miranda rights, whether he should get a lawyer, not that he could afford a lawyer.

 “Let us pack up and take her to the station. She probably knows where Alberto is hiding out, and it don’t much matter, little miss teary eyes is heading back to San Salvador, one way or another.” It was Williams, issuing instructions.

Mrs. Garcia was crying loudly, “mi sobrina, mi trabajo”. She was standing close to Simon now while Agents Williams and Rodrigue stuffed more of her belongings into the evidence bag, her handbag, some clothing, her hairbrush, toothbrush, and toothpaste. It was a pathetic sight. The disappearing woman.

The idea of touching Mrs. Garcia – of touching any woman - ordinarily filled him with revulsion, but Simon was overcome with a vestigial sympathy, a Christian impulse. He placed his hand on her shoulder, and Mrs. Garcia burst into tears, and fell into his arms.  He was amazed at how small and wooden she was, a human husk. He could smell jasmine in her gray hair. Her heart was racing. Too much, it was too much intimacy, beyond his capacity. He wished he had not touched her. He didn’t want to feel her pain.

Some remnant of character, missing for so long, arose within him, originating from another place and time, maybe it was a trait inherited from his father the military man, or from his mother the grim Scottish matron, or perhaps it was a lesson learned at the private school in London, or a sermon he’d heard at Church.  “How dare you treat this woman this way!”. He sounded pompous and ridiculous, “have you no sense of decency?” Even more pompous. He shrunk from himself, regretted his outburst, and shriveled back into the kernel of his cowardly self.

“Chill out buddy, or we’ll put you in a bracelet too”, said Agent Williams, amused at the outburst.  When Simon looked down at Mrs. Garcia, he saw that her wrists were zip-tied, in front of her. Her hands were clutched as in prayer. It was a cruelty. 

“What am I supposed to do with him?” said Delesseps grabbing Simon’s arm roughly as he moved past him. Simon released Mrs. Garcia, and she collapsed into a heap on the floor. He felt sorry for her, but it was not his problem. He could not save her.

“Did you run DAS search?” said Williams.

“No outstanding TAB/NOVs, summons, warrants, nothing. There’s twenty-plus Simon Bryants in New York City according to the DAS system, and I cannot find anything that matches this man”. Delesseps was scrolling through a list on the screen on his Motorola device. 

“Leave him be”, said Williams, “we don’t know who he is, where he’s from, the paperwork will be horrible and what are we supposed to do? Send him home international first-class on an airplane?” Williams avoided mentioning the quota, he wasn’t sure how his colleagues might react, but he suspected that they didn’t care, they were ambitious and loyal.

“Will do, boss”, said Delesseps who picked Mrs. Garcia up from the floor, raggedy Ann. The two male ICE agents, one on either side of her, started walking out of the apartment. Rodrigue picked up the black plastic bag – Mrs. Garcia’s paltry treasures - and followed her colleagues out on to the landing. None of them bothered looking back at the apartment or at Simon. The whole raid and abduction took less than fifteen minutes.

“Ayudame, por favor”. Mrs. Garcia was pleading, she looked back at Simon, who stood stock still on the threshold of the apartment, frozen by cowardice and impotence, “por favor”. Her bare feet dangled as Williams and Delesseps carried her down the stairwell. 

It was not Simon’s fault and not Simon’s problem. 

Simon closed the door of the apartment. The lock was broken, so he pushed a chair up to the door to keep it closed. He had no idea what would happen to him. Would Mrs. Garcia be back? Would the landlord kick him out if she didn’t turn up? The place was a mess, Mrs. Garcia’s room looked like it had been ransacked, but it was not his problem. There is not much room for sentimentality in New York, not in Spanish Harlem, not these days.  He went back to his own room. His stuff was still there. He prayed for his own salvation.

Mrs. Garcia was pleading for help; her feet were dangling in the air. 

What a nightmare.