Hold Tight (17 page)

But the spy didn’t sound very plausible, especially when the man finished his tirade, sat down again and resumed asking questions. No spy could be that stupid. Fayette himself admitted it was odd. The man sounded too arrogant and well-off to be an agent. Maybe Fayette accused him of being a spy to get even with the man for his insults, only Erich didn’t believe the sailor capable of anger or vengeance. Half-wits were naturally gentle.

Erich forgot about keeping his coat clean and settled his back against the black wall beside the door.

“The guy just sat there, smug as a preacher’s cat, and started in on asking about something called Operation Sledgehammer.”

“Sledgehammer?” The name broke into Erich’s thoughts.

“You ever hear of that?”

Erich had heard the name last week from Mason, in the presence of a lieutenant commander who sharply reprimanded both of them. Whatever it was, it was too important to mention. “No. Never,” he told Fayette. “But this man asked about it?”

“Yup. Talked like it was some big attack somewhere, so I told him that’s exactly what it was. Told him it was Dakar, over in Africa, just to lead the guy on. Like Mason told me to do. And the guy bought it, repeated it to himself like it was some magic password. He was so happy he gave me a ten-spot. Rich little bastard.”

“You had never heard the word before? Commander Mason never mentioned it?”

“Sledgehammer? Nope. But this guy seemed to think I should already know it.”

Erich tried to keep his skepticism, but too much skepticism could be dangerous. “The man never gave you his name? Again, what did he look like?”

Fayette described him once more. Brown hair, gray suit, smooth pale skin, a face like the faces in advertisements for expensive shirts. The details seemed more than just storytelling embellishments this time, but the man had no distinguishing marks or characteristics. Fayette said he spoke and looked a little like Robert Taylor in the movies, only Erich didn’t know who that was. If Fayette had invented a spy, or imagined one, he would give him something special or sinister, at least a foreign accent. This man sounded like a less likely suspect than Erich himself. He was so implausible he must be real.

Never shifting from his crouch, large hands dangling between his knees, Fayette looked up and said, “So what’s our next move?”

“That’s nothing for you to think about,” said Erich. “It’s up to us.” But what was the next move? No clear routine had been developed for a case such as this, as if Mason had never taken seriously the possibility of stumbling upon a spy. “This was the first time the man ever came here? You’re certain of that?”

Fayette nodded. “But I think he’ll be back.”

“Why? You said yourself he definitely wasn’t here for…sex.”

“No. But he sure got all hot and bothered by the skinny I fed him. I told him there was more where that came from. And he didn’t seem too bright.”

“No.” But could you trust an idiot to recognize stupidity?

“You gonna have somebody outside, watching the house? Have me give a signal or something when he shows, so you can follow him afterwards and find out who he is?”

“Commander Mason will decide our next course of action.” Maybe the sailor had only seen too many movies, but he had thought things out and that made Erich uneasy.

Fayette cocked his head to one side, thought again and said, “What is it you’re not telling me, Erich?”

The question startled him. “What do you mean?”

Fayette rocked slightly on the balls of his feet, then shook his head. “I don’t know. Something. Like you don’t believe I really found a spy. Or something.”

“I believe you experienced everything you told me.”

“But you don’t think the guy’s really a Nazi spy?”

“It’s too soon to leap to any conclusion.” Erich’s voice had become even colder, more distant. Fayette might not suspect they were lying to him, but he suspected something. Suspicion and doubt made Fayette seem less simple, more normal.

“Well. What if you’re here next time he comes by? So you can hear him with your own ears and judge for yourself.”

“What’re you talking about? No!”

Fayette laughed. “I didn’t mean for you to watch him and me. That’d be nuts. But what if there was a telephone in the room and it was left off the hook? Then you could listen in on how this guy talks and see if I’m crazy or not.”

“Nobody thinks you’re crazy, Fayette.” Actually, it was a good idea, unnervingly clever and clear. This man was not an idiot. “But it will be up to Commander Mason what we do next. I’m only a petty officer, Fayette. An enlisted man like yourself. I have little say in any of this.”

“Yeah?” It was Fayette who sounded skeptical now. “But tell him my idea, will you? Although I guess you people already have all kinds of machines and inside dope you can use to find this guy. Maybe they already know who he is and don’t need either of us to point him out.”

Erich said nothing. Fayette’s faith in their superiors was childlike, but Erich himself had once assumed the people in command knew exactly what they were doing.

“Whatever. I’ll do anything Mason or anybody else wants me to do. I want to see that silver-spoon shit behind bars. And the sooner you guys catch him, the sooner I get back into the war, right?”

“In all likelihood.”

Erich heard himself be ambiguous. But before he could backtrack and produce a complete lie, there was a creak of stairs below and a high voice singing deep inside the house.

“Juke,” said Fayette. “The colored boy.”

“Ah. Then we should finish this,” Erich whispered. “I have what I need to know. For now. You’ll probably see me again tomorrow, at the usual time. I’ll have spoken to Commander Mason by then.”

“And you’ll tell Mason my ideas? For what they’re worth. I want him to know I’m in this with you people a hundred percent.”

“Of course.”

The creaking drew closer, the song clearer. They heard a bruised falsetto voice singing “The Man I Love.” The boy stepped through the door to the roof, an empty wicker basket in his arms. He cut his eyes at the two men, smiled with half of his mouth and continued singing. He went to the clothesline and began to take down sheets, standing sideways so he could watch the men from the corner of his eye. He seemed to sing the song at them.

Fayette slowly stood up. “Appreciate you laying down that bet for me, mister,” he told Erich. “Tough for me to get to the track and I’m new in town. I don’t know any bookies.”

“Quite all right. It’s a pleasure doing business with you, sailor,” Erich answered. But Fayette’s cleverness, the womanly song, the image of the boy’s feminine headgear and his muscular arms? If Fayette wasn’t an imbecile, that meant he was genuinely depraved.

“I know the way out,” Erich called to the boy and hurried down the stairs. He tried telling himself that it was better this way, that the man they were using was a criminal and not a guileless innocent. But he couldn’t work up the contempt necessary to feel relieved by the discovery. The sailor proudly believed he was doing good for his country.

Juke continued to sing his second-favorite singer’s best song—he believed he sounded just like Billie—while he folded a fresh-baked sheet and watched the bookkeeper depart. He waited for Hank to explain the visitor or mock the cold little man now that he was gone. Hank just stood there, frowning at a thought, looking like a man trying to pick up something too small for his fingers. Without ever acknowledging Juke, he padded over to his mattress and lay down again.

Fool cracker, thought Juke. He yanked down and folded up one row of sheets without looking at Hank, then the next, unveiling the view of rooftops way to the east, miles of flat roofs speckled with white people who had come up to catch the first coolness of the day. The sun had settled into a low bank of clouds and there was an orangish glow, like candlelight.

Hank looked whiter than ever in this light, smooth and edible. His hands and face had more color than the rest of him, but in a good way, like he was two colors of ice cream.

Juke stood beside the door with the basket full of sheets, staring at Hank, reluctant to go without saying something. “So what horse did you bet on, Blondie?”

Hank looked up, startled, as if he had forgotten Juke was still here.

Juke walked over to him and looked down at Hank. Standing so close to him, he suddenly wanted to smash the basket into Hank’s face. “Liar. You ain’t sanding me. That man your lover?”

“What’re you jawing about? Lemme alone.” He squinted up at Juke. “Maybe he is my lover. What’s it to you?”

“Shit. That man ain’t nobody’s lover. Gimme your underwear.” Juke held out one hand.

“Something eating you, Juke? Come on. I got things on my mind.”

“Your underwear stinks. Gimme it. I’ll wash it.” He snapped his fingers at Hank. “Whoever heard of a bashful whore?”

“I wash ’em out myself. But, if it’s so damn important to you…” Only looking annoyed, he peeled off his shirt and, lifting his ass, the shorts. He sat there with his legs apart and thrust the wad of clothes into Juke’s hand.

It didn’t mean a thing to him to show himself to Juke. Juke had glimpsed him before, when he was asleep or drying off after a bath, but this was different, because it was deliberate. Hank showed no shame, no awareness of what seeing his nakedness might mean to the person standing over him. Feeling that, it pained Juke to see the groin curve inward to a clump of damp hair, the sagging purse of balls, the big indifferent cock.

Juke held the bouquet of dirty cloth in his hand. “Then wash ’em yourself!” he shouted and flipped the clothes into Hank’s face. “Dumbass cracker!” He wheeled around with the basket of sheets and charged down the stairs, before he said anything that might make the man think he was jealous or something.

Hank picked up his underwear, put it back on and wondered what he had said wrong. As if he didn’t have enough to worry about—a spy, a secret, Erich’s secret which he thought was love but now thought might be something else—without the colored boy going nuts on him.

“O
H, DARLING. I KNEW
you’d come through. Papa will be so pleased.” Anna held Blair’s hand between her hands and stroked his manicured nails with her thumb. “And Africa,” she said. “We never dreamed it would be anywhere but—” She remembered where they were, lowered her voice and leaned closer. “Where is Dakar exactly?”

They sat on a bench by a narrow path in the southwest corner of Central Park. It was late afternoon and the sunlight through the trees fell in tatters on the smooth trunks and untrimmed grass. The quiet of the woods was underlined by a distant rumble and honk of city traffic and, up in the bushes on the hill behind them, the thin, whistley music of a portable phonograph. Blair assumed there was a couple back there, kissing and petting to the cheap songs.

After last night, everything suggested sex to Blair. His mind had been poisoned. Even the Brahms concert at Town Hall that afternoon, marred anyway by so many jabbering Jews, degenerated into background music to the images Blair could not shake from his head. He kept seeing the sailor flopping on the bed like a landed trout, and wished those writhings had been the man’s death throes. He could not notice anyone, male or female, without wondering what they did in private and with whom. It was disgusting. But now, compensating Blair for his plague of dirty thoughts, was Anna’s admiration of him.

“You are so clever. A man who works in the
chartroom
? This will convince Papa how wrong he was about you.”

“I’m only too happy to be able to help out,” Blair said gallantly.

“I love you for being so clever.”

Footsteps crunched gravel as another couple came around the bend in the path, a soldier and an older woman who embraced and kissed as they walked. It was a miracle they could see where they were going.

Anna took hold of Blair’s arm as the couple came closer. The front of her white blouse was all ruffles, pushed out like the petals of a flower by her breasts. She watched the couple and moistened her lower lip, leaving a gleam of light there.

Blair began to see Anna writhing on a bed.

She laid her head on his shoulder and waited for the couple to pass before she whispered, “And where’s this social club?”

Blair frowned. “Greenwich Village. Near the waterfront.” He had not told her everything, of course. He was too ashamed of where he had been, especially now, when he was with someone as virtuous as Anna. Remembering who she was, he was ashamed of the way he had been thinking of her, but he felt better picturing Anna than he had picturing the sailor.

“You weren’t too arrogant with them, I hope.”

“I can control my feelings when I have to.” He pressed his legs together to hold himself down, but the warmth of his own thighs only made it worse. Her breast lay against his arm like a cool pillow.

“Can women go to this place?”

“No. Only men. Sailors. It’s very quiet. A place where they can read, relax, write letters home. That sort of thing.”

“This sailor. He never said anything about
when
it was going to be?”

“No.”

“Hmmm. I’ll tell Papa about where and all. Right away. But it’d be even better if we could find out when.” She drew away and looked into Blair’s eyes. “Could you go back there and feel this man out on that?”

“No!” He had not intended to answer with such feeling.

Anna looked puzzled. “But why? You said you made good friends with the man.”

He pictured the sailor again, obscenely gripping himself and leering at Blair. The stiffness in his own trousers sickened him. Blair shook his head. “I don’t know if he’ll still be there. And it’s not a nice place. Full of riffraff and…cheap cigars.”

Anna laughed. “But it’d be worth another visit, wouldn’t it? Maybe you’d make some more friends there. Oh, darling. We’ve come this far. Can’t we go a little—” Her eyes focused on something beyond Blair.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw a policeman strolling down the path. The cop was busy with the billyclub he held by its leather strap, flipping the club like a baton, twirling it like a yo-yo.

Anna swung herself in front of Blair so they would be only another amorous couple. She placed her hands on his back and laid her chin on his shoulder.