Hold Tight (24 page)

The crowd began to thin out up toward Sixty-sixth Street, where rows of mud-colored tenements pressed against the grimy hotels and pawnshops along Broadway. Aware of where she was, Anna was suddenly aware of something else she should do. There was a bar with a pink-gray neon palm tree in its sunlit window. Anna went inside. The place was quiet, with a handful of men her father’s age picking at the free lunch that came with their beer. She went into the ladies room and splashed water on her face and neck. She came out and went straight to the lone phone booth wedged in the corner. She closed the door, thought a moment, then slipped a nickel in and dialed Blair.

Blair was still in his robe, sitting in a wing-backed chair, slippers on the oriental carpet, cup of coffee at his elbow, pretending to read the good, gray
Times
while he floated in his dream of success and love—love was so much clearer now that he was alone with it—when the telephone rang.

“Anna? Darling, hello. I was just thinking about you. How did it go with your father? Was he impressed with my discovery?”

From where he sat, he could see his and Anna’s city through the enormous curtained windows. He sat at the top of the world. Last night had been wonderful, laying to rest all his foolish fears about being powerless. He was so buoyed up with love and strength and confidence it took him a moment to hear Anna’s flat, breathless tone, then to understand that she hadn’t seen her father. Then that a man had been following her. From Blair’s lobby.

“Oh, my God.” But he said it automatically, only in response to Anna’s tone. “You’re certain of that? I don’t understand. Why would anyone care about you seeing me? This is awfully unreal over the telephone, darling. Why don’t you meet me at Morocco in an hour or so? We can discuss this face to face, have an eye-opener and—”

“Blair! Can’t you see? They’re watching both of us! You most of all. If they see us together again, they’ll know for sure. And if they know about me, they’ll know about Papa, and that’d be the end of everything. We can’t risk seeing each other.”

That hit first. He was losing Anna almost as soon as he had had her? It was too cruel, too ironic. Then he understood why. “They’re watching
me?
” He was blank before the possibility, until he remembered the house last night. “Damn. Damn them.”

“What is it, Blair? You know why they’re watching you?”

There was nobody else who could have accused him, even falsely. The homo sailor had done it out of spite; he couldn’t know for certain Blair was a spy. The homo sailor had gone to the police with a lie inspired by Blair’s taunts. It was a queer’s revenge on a real man.

“You blabbed to some stranger, Blair!” said Anna, reading that into his silence.

“No. I didn’t blab to anyone,” he said angrily. “What kind of idiot do you think I am?” But he felt like an idiot, reduced to helplessness by a pervert. His feeling of power collapsed and he was left with a numbing hatred. It was as if the hatred had been there all along, left over from last night but temporarily blocked by love for Anna and confidence in himself. “You can’t see me? You couldn’t do something to lose this man and come over? You could stay here, Anna, until this was over and done with. We could lay low together.”

She was silent for a long time. “No. I only saw the one man, but there’s sure to be others. I might lose him, but I’ll never know who else is following me. And…I promised my father I wouldn’t see you again.”

“Who are you in love with, Anna? Me or your father?”

“I…You have no right to talk to me like that. I feel angry with you already, for letting my feelings for you get us into this.”

It hurt that she blamed love. The queer had poisoned everything. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that, Anna. But I love you. I’ll do something to fix this. I will.”

“How? What’s there you can do?”

“I don’t know.” he admitted. “There has to be something. I won’t just sit by helplessly and let us end like this.”

“It’s not just us, Blair. If the police suspect you of anything, there’s a chance you’ll be arrested.”

“That’s not important to me.” He wanted to be heroic and selfless, but the truth was that Blair couldn’t really believe
he
was in danger. It was too impossible. “You’re going to take a room somewhere, you said. Call me when you know where you’ll be, Anna. So I can reach you when I’ve cleared this mess up.”

“Blair. Don’t do anything rash. Please.” Concern surfaced in the voice that had had all emotion frightened out of it. “Don’t do anything that might hurt me and my father.”

“Of course not. Don’t talk foolish. I love you.” He waited for her to say she loved him, but she said nothing. “Goodbye, Anna. We’ll see each other in a day or so. I promise.”

“Yes? Maybe. Okay then. Goodbye, Blair.” And she hung up.

Blair quickly returned the receiver to its white cradle, as if he had things to do. But he only sat there, very still, for a long time. It was only right that she loved her father more than she loved him. With his stupidity and helplessness, it was right that she not love him at all. He had to do something to prove himself to her. He had to clear away the danger he had created by consorting with degenerates. If he went to the police and explained to them who he was, then told them their informer was a homosexual prostitute…But that solution was as distasteful as it was impractical. Even if he found the people responsible—police or FBI or whatever—and even if they believed him and he was cleared and the queer put in prison, he would be turning over to the authorities a task that should be his. His own failure would remain with him for the rest of his life. What then?

There was an annoying tickle across his ankles, a sickening caress of something silky. Blair looked down and saw Ming, his mother’s Siamese cat, rubbing herself on his leg. He picked her up just as he always did, held her in his lap and stroked her. He suddenly disgusted himself. Here he was, a grown man in wartime, lounging in his robe and caressing a pussycat. He lifted Ming beneath her forelegs and looked into her glassy, mascaraed eyes. She returned his look with perfect calm, coolly acknowledging his harmlessness. It was unnerving to find such human eyes gazing back at him from the face of a cat.

Blair stood up and went to the window that looked out on Park Avenue, carrying Ming in the crook of one arm. He pushed open a panel of the window with his free hand. Ming hung on his arm, boneless and unthreatened. Only when he held her with both hands and lifted her toward the window did she snap to life, twisting and scratching, her pink mouth wide open.

“Stupid pussy,” he said, thrust his arms out and released her.

She seemed to hang in midair for an instant, flipping herself about as if she could save herself by landing on her feet. The further she fell, the more anonymous she became. The sharp slap reached Blair’s ear a split second after the end of the fall, it was that far away.

Blair looked down at the small gray patch on the sidewalk. A woman under a big hat with feathers approached, her poodle straining at its leash to sniff the dead cat. She jerked her dog back, walked more quickly, then called the uniformed doorman out from under the canopy over the building’s entrance. The man saw the cat and looked up. Blair jerked his head back inside. He was pleased with himself, satisfied he could be cold-blooded.

“H
IS NAME IS THOMAS
Blair Rice III, born in 1918, the son of independently wealthy parents. The family’s money is in real estate, all of it managed by a Mr. Karl Lowenstein. The father’s an antiquarian and is a member of several archeological societies. The mother used to be an avid America Firster. Now she does a little volunteer work with the Red Cross.

“Rice attended both Choate and Yale, distinguishing himself in no way at either place. A classmate at Yale told us, ‘He was known to the drinking set as an intellectual, and to the intellectuals as a drunk.’”

“Typical spoiled rich kid. He doesn’t sound like a likely foreign agent, Mason, no matter what your contact thinks.”

“No, Admiral Whyte. But let Sullivan finish his report. There’s more.”

“While at Yale, Rice joined several America First-type organizations, but never stayed a member for long, apparently put off by their pacificism. He was arrested in May 1938 for taking part in an attempt to break up a Young Communist League rally in New Haven. No charges, although he was placed on probation at school. On his police record, there’s only that and two counts of drunk driving. His drinking seems to have tapered off since college. None of the five people we talked to from his class at Yale admit that they’ve stayed in touch with him. They remember him as a harmless, silly snob who admired Hitler and Mussolini, hated Communists, and dated several well-known debutantes.

“After he was graduated from Yale in 1940, he worked briefly at J. Walter Thompson, an advertising agency, in some sort of vague, managerial capacity. He is frequently seen at the Stork Club, 21 and El Morocco. Rice was exempted from the draft. No strings were pulled. He has asthma.”

“Thank you, Sullivan. As you said, Admiral, not the most likely suspect. But you’ve read the transcript of our contact’s conversation with the suspect, all heard and duly recorded by Mr. Zeitlin here. And there’s the fact that the suspect did go to a male bordello but didn’t do anything.”

“I’d think his not doing anything is a fact in his favor, Mason.”

“Maybe. Although his mere presence there suggests latent homosexual tendencies. More important, he seemed to be there primarily to gather information. For whom? Anything is possible. As you can see by the biographical material, we’re dealing with a very unstable personality. Which is why I feel we should continue to monitor the man’s activities.”

“I don’t know, Mason. There’re too many maybes here and not enough facts. The transcript does sound fishy, but it might be just some drunk, rich 4F shooting off his mouth. What about you, Sullivan? What’s the FBI’s take on this matter?”

“The FBI agrees it’s terribly iffy, Admiral. But nothing a spoiled brat like that did would surprise me. He might be a foreign agent. A bad one and perfectly harmless on his own. But there’s the possibility he could lead us to others more important and dangerous.”

“Hmmm. All right then. You have my permission to continue surveillance of the man. But only for a week. One week from today, we’ll review the additional evidence. If there’s been nothing else to suggest the man’s a spy, we’ll terminate the operation. This war’s too important for the Navy or FBI to squander valuable personnel on the doings of some poor little rich boy.”

“What about the girl? The one seen leaving Rice’s apartment yesterday.”

“What did you find on her, Sullivan?”

“Not much. She registered at the Martha Washington under ‘Mary Austin of Kansas City, Kansas,’ but we have no records on such a person. She might be nothing more than a prostitute or party girl, but she could also be Rice’s contact.”

“No. I don’t like the idea of our men chasing after dollies. Call your men off her, Sullivan.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’ll be all for now, gentleman. I thank you for your efforts, but I’ll be damn glad when this unsavory business is over.”

Mason and Zeitlin stood up and saluted. Sullivan and the other FBI man stood and nodded. They filed out of the rear admiral’s carpeted office and past the two whispering WAVEs in the front office, none of them speaking until they were out in the hall.

“I wish you’d put up a fight over the girl, Sullivan. She could prove important.” said Mason, undercutting his criticism with a smile.

Sullivan frowned and stood up straight. “We’re shorthanded as it is. In point of fact, I have to spell one of my men myself now. Goodbye.” He and the new man turned and walked away, as identical and business-like in their padded gray suits as a pair of adding machines.

Erich followed the commander back to their office on the floor above. The presence of others in the hallway or on the stairs didn’t deter Mason from talking about Rice or criticizing Rear Admiral Whyte’s inability to appreciate sexual warfare. Erich waited until they were in the office and the door was closed to mention the sailor.

“So what do we tell Fayette, sir? It’s been two days since his encounter with Rice. He probably feels very confused over being left in the dark.”

“Tell him he did well.” Mason made himself comfortable behind his desk. “Tell him we’re working on his lead and’ll let him know what we turn up, if anything.”

“Yes, sir. And what do I tell him when he asks how much longer he has to stay?”

“Meaning…?”

“He’s going to think he found our spy and it’s time we return him to his ship.”

“Is that still so important to him? If I were Hank, I’d want to enjoy that brothel for as long as possible. Considering where he’s going when he’s finished.”

“But Fayette doesn’t know that.”

“No. And ignorance is bliss. Why spoil it for him?”

Mason frequently changed plans without telling his subordinate, but clearly he had not changed his plans for Fayette. Erich felt uncomfortable. He wanted to get away from his superior.

“It’s after four, Commander. I need to go back to the house, retrieve the microphone and perhaps speak to Fayette. If it’s acceptable to you, sir, I’d like to go now. Before their business hours.”

“Perfectly acceptable. We’ve done all the mischief we can do here for today.” Mason flipped through a new manual on his desk. “If you don’t mind me asking, Erich, what makes you so concerned about Fayette all of a sudden?”

“Concerned, sir? Not at all. I only want to keep the machine in working order.”

“As a doctor with patients, I’ve learned to be very careful not to identify too strongly with them. Not to become too involved. One must stay detached.”

“I am quite detached, Commander Mason.”

“It’s especially tricky with mental incompetents, because we can’t help seeing them as children. And children are eminently lovable. No, when we’re finished with Hank, he’ll be sent to a place where he’ll be happy, cared for and protected.”

Mason had heard Erich’s reports over the past two weeks, had read the transcript of Fayette’s clumsy but effective fencing with Rice, and yet he still assumed the sailor was mentally deficient. Hadn’t he noticed the cunning, even the distrust, becoming more apparent behind the man’s slow innocence? Fayette was not eminently lovable. Erich wanted to point that out to Mason, insist on it. But if Fayette weren’t an imbecile, he was a criminal. A life in a mental asylum was preferable to life imprisonment in Portsmouth.