Hold Tight

by Christopher Bram

  “Hank? Have you ever wanted to dress up in women’s clothes?”

  “No, sir. Can’t say that I have.”

  “Hmmm. And your family? What do they say about this?”

  “I never had a reason to talk to them about it. Not something I had to talk about with anybody, until this stuff.”

  “Your officers never said anything?”

  “No. Why should they? I never wanted to do anything with them.” He laughed, glanced at Erich, then stopped laughing.

  Erich tried to relax, tried to hide what he was feeling. He was only a fly on the wall here. He should not let his presence affect what was happening.

  “But you did things with your fellow enlisted men?”

  “No, sir. Or nobody on my ship.”

  “Ah. Then with them you felt you had to keep your desires to yourself?”

  “No. Not really. They knew what I liked, my friends anyway. They just thought it was funny. I never did anything with them, so why should they care? I did it at boot camp a few times and can’t tell you what a mess that made. Some guys got upset, a couple got jealous, one guy got into a fight with me because I wouldn’t promise myself to him and nobody else. That taught me to keep my hands to myself, until I was off by my lonesome.”

  “Your shipmates only found it funny? Nobody ever taunted you or picked on you because of your desires?”

  “No, sir. They like me and I like them. They make jokes about it, but we all find each other funny. I mean, in my section we have me, a dago, a Jew-boy, and a mick. Also, I’m bigger than they are. They know I could flatten them, so they take me as I am.”

  The boy was definitely feebleminded. Erich cringed when he heard homosexualism put on the same level as being Italian or Jewish. More shocking was that the Navy had accepted such an obvious imbecile, regardless of his sexual misconduct. It wouldn’t matter to an imbecile whether he had sex with a woman, a man or an animal.

  Mason asked more questions about Fayette’s sex life. It was as though he too had recognized the man was a mental defective and unqualified for this project, but was mining him for pathological data. Fayette had his first sexual experience at fourteen, with a farmhand, outside Beaumont, Texas. Since then he’d had sex with truck drivers, hobos, a Bible salesman, assorted roughnecks, a school teacher and most of the people at a Civilian Conservation Corps camp. He reported his sexual history without shame or pride, only surprise that an officer wanted to hear about it. He hesitated when Mason asked for technical details—Erich began to think of excuses for leaving the room—but went ahead and gave them, saying in effect that he was willing to do anything the other guy wanted; it was of no matter to him.

  “Uh, Commander.” Erich tapped his watch. “Sixteen hundred. You have four more people to see today, sir.” If Mason wanted to study this case, he could do it on his own time, without Erich having to be present.

  “What? Oh, yes. I was forgetting. This has been fascinating, Hank. ‘More worlds than are dreamt of in your…’ But, there is the matter at hand.” Mason cleared his throat and sat up straight. “You want to get back to your shipmates, Hank. I presume you feel a great duty to them, and to your country.”

  “Yes, sir. I enlisted to serve my country, not to sit locked up in New York City.”

  “What if I told you that you could serve your country, and your friends at sea, by staying in New York a little longer and doing what you like to do?”

  “Pardon?”

  What was Mason doing? Erich had mentioned the time so they could finish with this poor soul and see the others. Surely he didn’t intend to use this man.

  But that was what Mason intended. First, he told Fayette not to mention this to anyone, that many lives depended on his keeping this a secret. Then he told him that the Navy wanted him to live for a couple of months in a homosexual brothel. He gave him the more practical version of why: the search for two possible Nazi spies. “Only for two, maybe three months. Until we catch these two men. Afterwards, we’ll get you back on your ship. Are you willing to do that for us?”

  A normal man would respond to the proposal with shocked disbelief or outright laughter, but Fayette only sat there, thinking it over. “I don’t know, sir. It’s like nothing I ever expected. Me serving my country by having my jollies? And I’ve never done it as a whore, not regularly. That might feel funny.” He looked down at the floor and dug at one ear with a finger while he thought it over.

  “I shouldn’t need to tell you that by working for us you’ll also be working for your shipmates, Hank. We believe one of these spies is the mastermind of a spy network providing U-boats with information that’s enabled them to wreak havoc on our convoys. We nab him and we save lives, possibly your friends’ lives.”

  Erich had grown accustomed to lying, but it seemed criminal to lie like this to an idiot.

  “No. I can see that,” said Fayette. “I want to help, only…a whorehouse? Kind of like that place where I was arrested?”

  Mason glanced at Erich, realizing that Fayette already knew the Bosch house. Maybe that would change the commander’s mind.

  But Mason said, “Kind of. Only that was more a house of assignation, wasn’t it? This one should be more organized, and you’ll be living there. Be just like living in a barracks, I imagine. I think we can arrange that you’re paid a bonus while you’re there. Not combat pay, of course, but something commensurable.”

  Fayette didn’t notice he was being bribed. “That’s no mind,” he mumbled, frowning at something happening inside his head.

  “And we’ll transfer you back to your ship as soon as possible. Otherwise, there’s no telling what the navy might do with you. There’s been talk of making an example of the people picked up in the sex crime raids.”

  Fayette didn’t recognize he was being blackmailed. “I’m sorry I’m so slow in getting used to this. If you just order me to do it, I’ll get used to it soon enough.”

  “Well, we can’t just order you, Hank. We have to have your permission.” The rear admiral’s office had at least insisted on that much. “But it’s not a decision that has to be reached today. All we need to know is that you’re interested. We might find someone better qualified and not even use you.”

  “I’m interested. I’m definitely interested,” Fayette muttered. “I want to help you, only…No, I’ll get used to the idea.”

  “Good,” said Mason, thanked him, said they’d be in touch with him and told Erich to show the man the door. Then Mason took on a look of boredom and began to write.

  Fayette stood; Erich had forgotten how large the man was. But Fayette didn’t seem dangerous. He appeared unsteady, confused. Only at the door did he remember to salute. He looked at Erich before he stepped out to the hall; he had the ghostly blue eyes of an infant. It was unnerving, like finding a child’s eyes in the face of a dog. Erich quickly closed the door and turned around.

  And Mason let himself go. “Hot dog!” he cried, slapping his desk with both hands. “We found one!”

  “Yes, sir.” Erich went back to the filing cabinet, although there was nothing for him to do there. With his back to the commander, he said, “But isn’t the man an idiot? An imbecile or moron or whatever the medical term is? Feebleminded.”

  “Yes, yes, he does show imbecilic tendencies. But I was looking at this.” He held up Fayette’s papers. “Semiliterate, but he scored high on oral tests. He has the moral awareness of a donkey, but that’s not important to us. An idiot savant. Thank God. I was beginning to think we were going to have to turn to the prisons.”

  “Then he is mentally deficient?” Erich was shocked to hear he was right, as though he’d been hoping he had misunderstood the American sailor.

  “He has to be. No other way someone could be so unaware of how sexually sick they are. But it’s a godsend. I realize now that this was exactly what we were looking for: a sick man who didn’t know he was sick.”

  “But…a man like that has no business in the Navy. Shouldn’t he be in a menta
l hospital?”

  “Which is exactly where I intend to send Hank. Once we’re done with him.”

  I am only an enlisted man, thought Erich. I am a foreigner, I have no right to judge what is right or wrong here. But the dishonesty of this business, and his own helplessness, disturbed him. They were exploiting a child.

  “That’s the way it is,” said Mason. “Nice, personable fellow like Hank, no telling who might hear about our escapade if we sent him back to his ship. No, we’ll send him to a good hospital, where he’ll be happy and they can treat his homosexuality. Psychosurgery, electroshock treatment: science has made incredible advances in helping people like Hank. And there, nobody will believe the stories he tells.”

  Erich stood up straight. “Yes, sir. Very good, sir.” He almost clicked his heels, he was so intent on losing himself in rank, protocol, the larger purpose of the war. He owed nothing to that American stranger. His one loyalty was to the war.

  4

  ANNA LOOKED UP AGAIN and saw the person she never dreamed she could be: a beautiful woman with a mouth like a red diamond, penciled crescents for eyebrows, hair perfectly scrolled along the sides, a shiney dress, a plunging neckline and skin like cream. Behind that beautiful woman was the perfect setting: a night club with night-blue walls, white satin palm trees, tiny colored lights in the ceiling and seats upholstered in zebra stripes. The room in the mirror was full of elegant men and women who rubbed elbows here just as they did in the columns of the society pages. A velvety orchestra played in the dining room upstairs.

  Unfortunately, also reflected in the mirror over the bar was Teddy, Anna’s date for the evening, flopping on the next stool.

  “Decadent brats, all of them. I got this friend who says his girlfriend knows someone who says Bitsy Rockefeller’s a hophead. Errol Flynn, too.”

  Teddy was drunk. He had lied to her when he said they knew him at El Morocco and he and she would be mingling with café society. The best the bribed maitre d’ could offer were two stools at the bar, by the entrance to the famous room. Teddy’s noise managed to spoil even the pleasure of that. When Anna turned away, embarrassed, he began to harangue the bartender with his gossip and hearsay.

  Anna had met worse in the past two months. Enlisted men were especially bad, feeding you lines about how they were giving their lives for their country, and the least you could give in return was one last, happy memory. Anna had learned how to evade their paws while pumping them for rumors and stray details. Teddy was a civilian who said he worked with the Foreign Information Service. Drunk tonight, he let slip that he didn’t work there yet, that he only knew someone who knew someone who might get him a job there. Anna should have expected as much from a “writer” met at Sammy’s on the Bowery.

  In her two months as a spy, Anna had learned much about the world. She had learned to like cocktails and how to talk to men without seeming like a tart. She had discovered she was attractive. She had also found that, while her father might be the center of her world, he was not the center of their spy ring. Before Pearl Harbor, Simon had worked alone, which had protected him when the FBI swept up agents associated with the German bunds in Yorkville. Simon mailed his findings directly overseas, using the packets he received from the American Ordnance Association. Anna, when younger, often helped Papa steam open the packets in the kitchen after Aunt Ilsa went to bed. Simon slipped his additional information inside with the association’s latest news about weapons, re-sealed the envelopes and forwarded them to an address in Lisbon. The packets looked so official they were never opened by inspectors in peacetime. But America’s entry into the war closed that route and Simon had to tie himself in with other agents if he wanted his material to reach Germany.

  He never sat down with his daughter and explained who their bosses were. “The less you know, the better,” was Simon’s constant answer to questions. Anna was used as a messenger a few times, giving skittish strangers folded squares of rice paper or frames clipped from newsreels that were wrapped in foil to look like sticks of gum. Simon hated using her for that; there was always the chance the contact wasn’t really one of them. He did not trust the competence of his colleagues. Once, walking in Riverside Park with his daughter, they had run into a Mr. Eisman, who Simon introduced as a friend of his. Simon had no friends and Anna immediately sensed that this smiling man with a vandyke and dachshund was someone important, that this encounter was no accident. Simon looked uncomfortable; Mr. Eisman put his homburg over his heart and said he was most pleased to meet “the little lady.” After they parted, Anna knew better than to ask if Eisman was their boss or even one of them. The newspapers suggested New York was riddled with spies, but there was no way of telling who was and who wasn’t.

  Teddy wasn’t, of course, and he had revealed himself as useless to her. Anna wished she could forget Teddy and her father tonight and just enjoy her glimpses of sophisticated people. There was no romance in her work, only bums who talked and bums who didn’t know anything.

  Various couples and parties were escorted to the bar and asked to wait until their tables were ready. They chatted among themselves and paid no attention to the two nobodys, no matter how loud Teddy became. A handsome young man with perfect hair and a perfect chin waited alone next to Teddy, languidly leaning against the bar, as at home here as in his own livingroom. He had the world-weary eyes of someone whose photograph had been taken many times for the newspaper.

  “The usual, Mr. Rice?”

  Mr. Rice made a slight hum and a tall glass full of ice and amber immediately appeared at his elbow. He cut his eyes at Teddy for a split second—Teddy was ranting about what was wrong with Hollywood—then looked out at the room, coolly, beautifully bored.

  The fellow was so suave he made Anna’s stomach hurt. He wore his tailored black clothes like a second skin and sipped his drink as lightly as he would a cigarette. The double corners of his display handkerchief were pure geometry.

  “Eleanor Powell’s another!” Teddy crowed. “Eleanor Powell’s a goddamn dancing horse! No wonder she’s Adolf Hitler’s favorite movie star.”

  Mr. Rice turned and glared at Teddy.

  “It’s true,” Teddy insisted. “Old Schickelgruber never misses an Eleanor Powell movie. The Gestapo smuggles ’em in now through Switzerland.”

  “And what does that prove?” Mr. Rice said angrily, surprisingly passionate.

  “What’s the matter, buddy? You pals with horsey Eleanor or something?”

  Anna sighed and looked away. This was too embarrassing.

  Mr. Rice leaned forward. “Miss? Is this man annoying you?”

  Anna’s heart leaped into her mouth. The man had noticed her? “Yes, but I…”

  “You don’t need to protect him. Gus!” he called out, snapping his fingers for the maitre d’. “What’s happened to this place? There’s a drunk making a nuisance of himself and you let him sit here?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Rice. I’ll take care of it immediately. Sir?” The maitre d’ took Teddy’s arm and helped him off the stool. “If you’ll come with me, please.”

  “What are you?…Hey!” Teddy was so drunk it took him a moment to understand what was happening. “Let go of me! My money’s as good as his!”

  “This place is getting as common as Grand Central Station!” said Mr. Rice. “I wonder if you want to keep my patronage, Gus.”

  “I don’t know how he got in, sir.” The maitre d’ called for a waiter to help him hustle Teddy to the door.

  “Let go, you apes. I’m a writer. Ask my girl there. Tell ’em I’m a famous writer, Annie.”

  Mr. Rice stared at Anna.

  Anna wanted Mr. Rice’s respect. And Teddy deserved this for leading her on. “I never saw this man in my life. Until he started annoying me.”

  “You lying bitch!” Teddy cried as he was hauled away. “See if I ever go out with you again!”

  Anna watched Teddy disappear around the corner and breathed a sigh of relief, already hoping that thanking the manly Mr. Rice
might give her a chance to meet him. “How can I ever repay you, Mr…?”

  “Rice. Blair Rice. Pleased to have been of service.” He shook her hand like a gentleman. His fingers were smooth and manicured.

  “I was waiting for a friend, and that drunk started talking to me. But one dislikes making a fuss. Oh, my name’s Anna. Anna Cromwell.”

  “Pleased to meet you. With so many men away, one finds it necessary to step in now and then. Damn riffraff. Uh, beg your pardon.” He looked at her, as if noticing she was beautiful. He nodded goodbye and faced forward again.

  Anna hoped he was only being polite. She was determined to continue this. “Do you know Eleanor Powell?”

  “What? Oh. Not at all. She’s in musical comedies, right?”

  “Why did you come to her defense?”

  Mr. Rice studied Anna. “I simply don’t like hearing riffraff run down anyone at the expense of, uh, the Germans. The Hitler and Schickelgruber jokes. Despite what’s happened, I still have a special fondness for things German.”

  Anna was overjoyed. She was German. She was immediately curious about how deep this fondness went. “I don’t know much about politics,” she ventured, “but sometimes I almost feel we’re fighting the wrong people.”

  Mr. Rice’s blue eyes widened slightly. He promptly sat on the stool vacated by Teddy. “Yes. You’re right to feel that way. So few people do. It’s the right war, but we’re fighting on the wrong side. The Communists are our real enemy. We should be helping Hitler crush the Communists, instead of the other way around.”

  Anna noticed the bartender frowning while he dried a glass, only Mr. Rice was clearly much too important a personage for anyone to contradict. She never thought about politics and her father never discussed Nazism, but she wanted to explore Mr. Rice’s admiration of Hitler, wondering if she could parlay it into an interest in her. She had to be very careful. “The newspapers tell us things, but I never know what to believe. The Jews and all.”