Act of God

sort of thing pretty fast, you do. This beautiful country, it intoxicates, makes you forget most everything that came before her.”
    Despite the nose, the smile looked to have all its teeth. “Mind if I see your registration card?”
    “ What, my green card?”
    “Right.”
    ”His teeth flashed at me again. “I’m thinking neither of us has a badge here.”
    I was thinking how a man like “Honest” Abe might react to finding out he’d broken the law in hiring his new guard “How illegal are you, Quill?”
    “How might ‘Finian’ and ‘John’ strike you for conversational purposes?”
    “Fine. How illegal?”
    “Well now, I’m not sure there’s levels of that where the Irish are concerned, John, but I’ve heard tell of streets in Dorchester where a man could buy himself a lovely package of Social Security card, voter registration, and the like for about a hundred dollars.”
    “Which makes you look like a citizen.”
    “So long as the one doing the looking isn’t too demanding. Now, with what I’m told is my strongish accent, I’m not so sure I could pull that off.”
    “So you have a green card.”
    “Not quite kelly green, but it will do.”
    “Let me guess. You came over on a tourist visa good for what, three months?”
    “More like six.”
    “And you decided to overstay your welcome.”
    “As I said, an intoxicating country.”
    “So long as somebody else is buying the drinks.”
    A flash of more anger than teeth. “Easy words to your lips, born to the advantages here because of the sacrifice of your forebearers. Let me tip you to a few things, eh? First, I’d been wanting to come over for ten years now, but your grand immigration policy, it said I needed an immediate family member already here. That may help the Mexicans and the Chinese, but not so much the Irish, the last wave of us being forty years and more ago. Second, when the policy seemed to loosen some a few years back, I queued up like a good lad and waited my turn, but wouldn’t you know it, by the time my turn came, there were no more of the right kind of visa. Can you imagine that, John? Some forty million— million —of your countrymen trace themselves back to the Auld Sod, but now there’s not enough room at the inn? So I’m looking hard at my own thirtieth birthday and wondering how many years I’ve left on this planet, and I decided it was time. I got myself a green card never you mind just how, now, and that means I can have a job doesn’t require me to work for less than the minimum wage under the table.”
    “What happened to the nose?”
    “Ah, the old honker? A bit of rugby, a few differences of opinion over a pint here and there. A small price to pay for enjoying oneself, don’t you think?”
    “How did you come to be working here?”
    The face went sly. “You’re a man who changes gears a lot, eh?”
    “Depends on the terrain.”
    “That it does, but this question’s a bit easier than the first few you’ve asked me. I saw an advert in the newspaper.”
    “And responded.”
    A nod. “Came in to see Mr. Rivkind. He liked what he saw.”
    “And what was that?”
    “Come on, man. You look at me, you see a lad can handle himself as a bouncer but mostly just act as a scarecrow. That’s what the owners had in mind.”
    “When did you start here?”
    “Two months ago tomorrow.”
    A month after Darbra Proft. “Any trouble?”
    “None to speak of. Couple of scamps, figuring to cause some mischief is all, and they came to see the error of their ways soon enough.”
    “So Mr. Rivkind’s death was the first big problem.”
    “Far as I would know.”
    “Can you tell me what happened that night?”
    “I can. Would you rather I walked you through it, though?”
    “Yes.”
    Quill got up and led me back into the first floor of the store. “I’d already locked up the front and turned off the elevator when the alarm sounded.”
    “Hold on a second. What’s your routine?”
    “You mean for closing up, now?”
    “Yes.”
    “Pretty simple, actually. I wait until eight-fifteen, eight-twenty, when the last of the customers appears to be gone. We’re supposed to close at eight, but this economy, it doesn’t do to rush the good people out.”
    “Go on.”
    “By eight-forty-five, even all the sales clerks have gone, and I turn off the elevator and lock the front entrance.”
    “The only way in and out?”
    “No. We’ve also the loading area out back, for delivering the pieces to the