Up on the street, it was peacetime and Sunday.
The farmers’ market in front of the Bosch house was breaking up when Erich crossed the square. Tarpaulins came down and broken crates were hurled into a garbage truck. Mixed with the trucks and wagons were a few automobiles owned by victory-gardeners, trunks piled with vegetables. Beneath the shed roof to the right of the house, poultry butchers hosed off the pavement. Sunday was ignored for the duration. “Victory Chicken,” declared the sign painted on the poulterer’s wall, with a picture of a giant chicken chasing Hitler.
Two men in paper caps and bloody aprons nudged each other and laughed when they saw Erich go up the steps to the house. Erich rang the doorbell and wished it were answered more quickly. He hated standing out here in broad daylight.
The door was opened by Mrs. Bosch herself. She wore a brown hat with white netting and was pulling a white glove on. “Meester Zeitlin? What are you doing here?”
He explained he had come to see Fayette, of course.
“He is here, but he is sleeping, I think. We not to keep bankers’ hours, you know. Juuuk!” she hollered into the hallway. “I would get him myself, but I must get to six o’clock mass. My houseboy will take care of you.”
Before he could remind her Fayette was their secret, Mrs. Bosch clomped down the steps and set off across the square, quick and serene, piously indifferent to the whistles and catcalls from the chicken butchers.
Erich stepped inside and cautiously pulled the door shut. The sudden silence was unnerving. The house seemed abandoned and dead.
Then the houseboy strolled out of the kitchen. “Mrs…? Oh, you again, Mr. Bookkeeper. Mrs. Bosch ain’t here and I’m only the lady of the house.”
The boy had a polka dot kerchief tied around his head and his sleeves were rolled over his shoulders. His brown arms were leanly, startlingly muscular. Noticing him on earlier visits, Erich assumed the boy was as frail as a girl, sexless and harmless. Those arms seemed like the ultimate stroke of perversity. The boy smelled of harsh soap and bleach.
“Yes. I passed Mrs. Bosch on her way out. I’m here to, uh, see Mr. Fayette.”
The boy looked blankly at him, then sneered and said, “So you’re taking your fees out in trade.”
Only a Negro, Erich told himself, and it was of no importance what a Negro thought. Erich cleared his throat and said, “Get him for me, boy. I need to speak to him.”
“You get him yourself,” Juke snapped back. “I got things soaking.”
Erich knew he was being fought, but he wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. “All right then. Where is he?”
“He’s somewhere. I forget.”
“Please.”
The boy smiled. “Up these steps. Third floor. Third door on the left. But I should warn you, honey, he gets mighty ripe when he’s been sleeping in his funk all day. Or maybe you like ’em cheesy.”
Erich pinched his lips bloodless, then immediately climbed the steps to get away from the boy. He could feel the boy’s obscene eyes following him until he was past the second floor.
The hallway on the third floor was hot and dusty. The doors to all the rooms were open and there was plenty of light, but no air. Bare mattresses lay in each room. Erich knocked on the doorjamb of the third door on the left, careful not to look inside. No answer. He peered around the open door. Not only was the bed empty, the mattress was gone. Someone clearly lived here, however. Clothes lay neatly folded on a chair. There were no books, no knickknacks or framed photographs to suggest what kind of person lived here, only the stamped metal wafers of the dog tags that lay with their chain on the dresser. A half-wit had no other identity he could impart to a room.
“Who’s down there? That you, Juke?”
The voice came from down the hall. Erich looked and saw a man’s shadow stretched along the end wall in the sunlight that came from around the corner.
“Fayette? It’s me…Erich.” First names were the closest American equivalent to du, but Erich had no alternative. He was afraid his last name, divulged by Fayette, might tie both of them back to Navy Intelligence.
“Thought it was you. Had to be sure. Come on up, Erich. Cooler on the roof.”
Around the corner was a rickety staircase. Fayette stood in the door at the top of the stairs, the sunlight at his back glowing in the nimbus of hair on his arms and legs. He wore an undershirt and boxer shorts—the silhouette inside the white shorts was edged with orange—and his sailor’s cap was upside down on his head, to keep the sun out of his eyes. He took the cap off as Erich came up.
“Sorry I wasn’t downstairs waiting for you,” he said. “You’d gone out already when I rang you this morning, and I needed some shut-eye.”
Seeing him so large and blond and out of uniform, Erich told himself this man would be a storm trooper, if they were in Germany. The idea didn’t make him feel any better about what they were doing with Fayette.
Fayette stepped back when Erich reached the door and stood in front of a view of warehouses, zig-zag painted ships and bright river. The view opposite was curtained off by rows of patchy sheets tugging and floating on clotheslines. Erich felt unbalanced when he stepped through the door, until he realized the flat roof slanted away from the street. A mattress and sheet lay on the tar paper where Fayette had been sleeping.
“I came when I received your message,” Erich said coldly. “Why did you need to see me?”
“You want to sit? This might take some telling.”
“I’ll stand, thank you.” He remembered to take a quick look back inside the door.
“We’re fine up here,” Fayette assured him. “Just the colored boy down there and the stairs in this joint are like walking on a squeeze-box.”
Erich was doubtful, but it sounded reasonable. “All right. I’m listening.”
Fayette went down in a crouch, laid his arms across his thighs and balanced his whole body on the balls of his feet. He took a deep breath and announced, “I think I met a Nazi spy last night.”
Then he told a story.
He addressed the tar paper and air while he told the story, as though he were telling it just to himself or making it up as he went along. He even raised his eyebrows over some of the details or worriedly smiled over others, as if he had never heard any of this himself. He gave a yarn instead of a report. Erich impatiently waited for him to get to the point, already doubting that there had been a spy.
There had been a well-dressed man who asked too many questions. When Fayette undressed and abused himself in front of the man—“I know you don’t like hearing that stuff, but if I start skipping I might leave out something important”—the man went crazy, cursing America and praising Hitler.
Who wouldn’t go crazy, Erich told himself. Cursing America was nothing new. Praising Hitler sounded suspicious, but people unleash their nastiest secrets when they’re upset; homosexuals probably adored Nazi men.
Erich knew he was overly skeptical toward Fayette. Part of it was prudence, but there was more. Afraid of the pity he felt for the man, worried that sympathy might cloud his judgment, Erich distanced himself by distrusting Fayette, doubting his every word. Not that he thought Fayette was lying. Lying required cunning and Fayette was incapable of that. Wasn’t he? Doubt was a slippery slope and, once begun, Erich found himself doubting that Fayette was what they thought he was.
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 Oper
ation 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.
10
“OH, 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?”
Hold Tight Page 13
