“But plenty of rats and roaches,” said Raphael, entering from the kitchen. “Of course there was a balanced ecology between them.”
“The rats ate the roaches?” asked Lorimer.
Raphael shook his head. “The other way around.”
“Pay no attention to him,” Mr; Ferrer said. “He’s heard me tell this so many times that he wishes it was only a story.”
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“Is the crossword puzzle around here somewhere?” Raphael asked.
“The magazine section is in the bathroom,” said Mrs. Ferrer.
“To continue,” Mr. Ferrer said, “we were the last family living in this building when a man visited us asking who owned it. I told him as far as I knew nobody did and started pleading with him not to make us leave. I thought he was from the government.”
“He wasn’t?”
Ferrer shook his head. “He told me not to worry, that he was just checking up. He had been to the city hall and the last owner had stopped paying taxes and disappeared two years before. Then he asked us how long we were living here—it was seven months—and said that as far as he was concerned we owned this building by possession and was I interested in making a deal to fix it up?”
“And you took him up on it?”
“Of course,” Ferrer said. “He told me he owned a construction company that would do all the renovation work, and he knew a man that would put up the money, splitting the ownership and profits with me fifty-fifty. All I had to do was remain here and manage the building for another six and a half years to maintain continuous possession.”
“Excuse me,” asked Elliot, “but was this man very tall and black? A glass eye?”
Ferrer nodded; Elliot and Lorimer exchanged pointed glances. Guerdon.
“There’s not much more to tell,” Ferrer continued. “He made the same offer to people left in buildings all along this block. We eventually got together, forming the Community Association to split the costs of garbage collection, police and fire protection, and the food cooperative to buy in bulk—later to buy on the countereconomy to avoid shortages and rationing. We do not receive—or want—any government services, and we Alongside Night
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pay no taxes.”
“Haven’t you had any problems with tax officials, building inspectors, and the like?”
“Our construction friend said he would handle this and he has. Only one city official—housing, I believe—came by with a court order to make us leave. I told our friend about it and never saw the official or his court order again. Police detectives were around this block asking about the man a few days later, but then they gave up and left. This was three years ago, and we have not been bothered since.”
Before they left, Mr. Ferrer remembered to give Elliot and Lorimer the food cooperative’s order form, telling them to return it by that evening if they wished to catch the Monday morning delivery. Lorimer and he thanked the Ferrers for their hospitality, then returned upstairs.
Shortly after their apartment door closed, Elliot asked Lorimer if she had anything to keep herself busy awhile.
“I suppose I could watch some TV.”
“You said that to make me ill, didn’t you?” Elliot’s face then brightened; he found in his coat pocket the Heinlein paperback he had reread half a week before, tossing it to her. “Try this instead.”
Lorimer stuck out her tongue at him. “Snob. I bet I’ve read more science fiction than you.” She retired to the living room with the book.
For the next hour, Elliot brought himself up to date, the Times spread over the dining table, the kitchen radio tuned to WINS, an all-news station.
What he thought most significant was what was not mentioned. There was no news of an FBI raid on a Cadre base (which should have hit the air by now, though missing his paper’s deadline), there was no news concerning the weekend arrest of any dissidents. Had the dragnet his father had been fleeing never materialized—perhaps aborted by Lorimer’s 160
Alongside Night
microfilm theft—or had it proceeded silently to capture the Grosses?
Later, Elliot told Lorimer that he was going out to buy a few items. “Anything you want me to bring back?”
“Something to eat later. I don’t much feel like going out in this weather.”
“Okay. How’s the book so far?”
“Not bad,” she said. “Almost as good as Hello, Joe—Whadd’ya Know? ”
Elliot shook his head sadly and started for the door. A very wet ten-minute walk brought him to nonvideo pay phones at the corner of First Avenue and Fourteenth Street. Elliot inserted a vendy and punched in the number Chin had given him to telephone the Cadre. The phone answered on the second ring, a recorded female voice saying, “You have reached 500-367-7353. After the tone, please record your message.”