A visit from the FBI

Special Agent

We had the first snow of the year here this morning (Sunday), and I was almost enjoying my sidewalk shoveling. I was nearly finished when a long, black Mercedes pulled up in front of the apartment house next door. A rather shabbily dressed guy who looked like a skinny Santa Claus (he had a white beard anyway) stepped out with a big shovel and began to push snow from in front of the house into the street. Must be the landlord, I thought, although his grizzled appearance didn't match the role or the car. I smiled, but he ignored me, or maybe didn't notice me as he plowed the sidewalk.

I was about to speak to him when my young neighbor pulled up on his motorcycle. He's Asian--perhaps Japanese or Korean--and doesn't speak much English. "Hello, how are you?" he said. I was going to answer, but then I realized he was talking to the shoveler next door. "Hey how are you," said the landlord. It wasn't a question. "Do you have the rent for me?" "Tomorrow," said the neighbor. "I work tomorrow," Mr. Shoveler said, in what I thought was an unnecessarily nasty tone. "But I'm here today." "Tomorrow--no problem," said the neighbor. They went back and forth this way several times, saying the same things over and over.

While this ping pong was going on, I took a closer look at the Mercedes. There was a round sticker on the back window, and I squinted to read it: Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"What time tomorrow?" the landlord finally said, and the standoff collapsed. The neighbor went into the house and Scrooge finished his shoveling.

"How-ya-doin'." he finally said to me. "Pretty good," I said, but he wasn't listening. He got back in his car and drove away.

For some reason, I kept thinking of that memorable quote from Hitchcock's North by Northwest: "Seems to me you fellows could stand a little less training from the FBI and a little more from the Actor's Studio."