Hold Tight

by Christopher Bram

  “This might change your mind.”

  The boy looked, and stopped.

  Blair lifted the gun higher into the light. Its sculptured weight had seemed almost magic when he first held it in the pawnshop in Flushing that morning. The magic became very real when the gun was pointed at someone.

  The boy’s hands began to rise. “You want a blowjob that bad?”

  “Shut up. And put your hands down. I just want to talk.” He had to use his left hand to shift the auto into neutral while he kept the gun aimed at the boy. “Don’t run off. I’m not going to hurt you.” He opened the door and stepped out. “I think you know why I’m here.”

  The boy glanced up and down the street, then stared calmly at the gun. He screwed his mouth into a smirk, as if he found this merely ridiculous.

  “Back there in the corner. We’re not going to converse in the middle of the street.” The boy would be too close to him inside the car—he might grab for Blair’s gun. “You heard me. Move.”

  The boy rubbed one bare foot over the other, then obeyed. His feet slapped insolently on the packed clay floor beneath the roof. Locks hung on the closed sliding doors. Empty chicken crates were stacked between the posts supporting the roof, screening off a corner from the street. The place stank of chicken ordure and offal. A faint band of light slanted through the space between the roof and stacked crates. Everything else was darkness. Blair’s shoe struck something movable and hard. He rolled it with his foot and decided it was a pipe. He stood with his weight on it, in case the boy saw it and tried to use it to defend himself. Coloreds probably saw better in the dark than whites.

  “Romantic enough for you, mister?” The boy stood with his face half-visible, a spark of light in each eye. The pale dress hung in the darkness.

  “Shut up. I still have a gun pointed at you. You might be more respectful when you hear there’s money in this for you.”

  “Yeah? How much?”

  “Two hundred, three hundred dollars. Maybe more.”

  The boy bared his teeth and shook his head. “Shit, mister. You ain’t got dough like that or you wouldn’t go pointing that puppy peter at me.”

  Blair reached into his left coat pocket and pulled out the hard roll of bills. “You see that?” He held the bills up to the light. “That’s three hundred dollars.”

  “I can’t see. Let me feel it.” Even then the boy sounded as if he was sneering.

  Blair slipped the roll back inside his pocket. “Stand back. Stand closer to the wall. I need to see where your hands are.”

  The boy’s face backed into darkness. A pair of hands appeared, fingers lightly drumming the pale dress. The fingernails were painted, like Anna’s.

  “They arrested your loverboy back there. Your sailor friend?”

  “He ain’t no loverboy. He just likes to get fucked,” the boy sneered. “Hey. How you know about the raid? You have something to do with that? You a cop?”

  “Maybe. You want to end up in jail with your sailor?”

  “Ha! You ain’t no cop. You think they got cells enough to hold every queen they collar? Shit, he’ll be back on the street tomorrow morning, if not sooner. Although it’d do his ass good if he spent some time in the Toilets.”

  “He won’t go to jail? That’s good to know. Then you can give him my message.”

  “What message?”

  “I’ll pay both of you three hundred dollars if you go to the police and withdraw your accusation.”

  The fingers stopped drumming.

  “Tell them it was a case of mistaken identity. Or that you remembered incorrectly things I said. It doesn’t matter, so long as you tell them you were wrong.”

  “And if I say we will? Do we get any money up front? Payment in advance?”

  Blair hadn’t considered that. If he were dealing with the sailor, he might agree, but since this was only a flighty colored boy—“No. You don’t get any money until I see that my friends and I are no longer being followed.”

  “If that be the case.” The boy snorted. “I’d love to take your money, honey, but I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t play coy. You want me to raise my price?”

  “You think I’d go to the cops? Oh, baby. You don’t know the facts of life. We may play kiss and tell, but never with the law.”

  “Somebody told the police. Was it your boyfriend?”

  “He ain’t my boyfriend. How should I know what he did? I don’t know that cracker from Moses. Oh, yeah. You watched me go up his ass. Well, that don’t mean I know what goes on in his head.”

  “I want you to forget that night.”

  “Wanna forget it myself. Is that what’s eating you? You’re afraid somebody’s found out you’re a pansy? And a pansy too yellow to do anything—a circus queen into two-tone.”

  “Stop talking that way! You forget I have a gun pointed at you.”

  “And you got a pecker but you don’t use that either.” There was a weary sigh. “You bore me. All you big tough men with your big tough secrets bore me to tears. If it ain’t love you’re scared of, it’s the cops. Like you’re so important the cops really care. Screw every damn one of you. I’m going home.” He stepped forward and his foot hit the pipe. Blair felt the object budge beneath his shoe as the boy went, “Ow!”

  “Stand where you are!”

  But the boy bent down into the dark.

  Blair bent down and grabbed the pipe. “I said get back!” He picked up the pipe and it wasn’t a pipe but a long metal rod, not nearly as thick as it had felt through his shoe. He gripped it in his left hand and tapped it against the ground. The rod was four feet long and solid.

  “I hurt my foot. Shit, mister. You’re scared of cops, you’re scared of a little ole drag queen stubbing her toe. You’re a regular Clark Gable.”

  “Shut up. You know what I really am. You’re lying when you say you don’t.” Holding the heavy rod in one hand and the gun in the other, Blair was confident the boy was lying, had been lying all along. “You know who I am and you’re scared.”

  “I’m more scared of catching cold in this wet frock.”

  Blair cocked the revolver. “You hear that? You know what that is?”

  “Your compact.”

  Blair swatted the darkness with the rod and hit the white dress.

  The boy flinched, suppressed a gasp, then said, “You’re nuts. I don’t wanna play no more.” He stepped forward again.

  “Get back or I’ll shoot.” Blair’s heart was pounding. It was like a dream where the darkness itself threatened to rush you like a hundred phantoms, only Blair had a weapon in each hand and the phantoms were as fragile as papier-mâché. He swung the rod again.

  “Whatta ya got in your hand?”

  “What hand?” He swung again, trying to feel in his fingers the hit of the rod into a body. The rod was so heavy he felt nothing. “You scared now?”

  The white dress retreated a step. The red fingernails reappeared. “No.”

  “Don’t move or I’ll shoot you.” Holding the gun on the boy to keep him at bay, he swung more wildly, hit nothing, swung at the darkness above the dress, hit something hard. Feeling that, he increased his strokes, wanting to feel it again and know he could hurt the boy. The boy never cried out and he had to swing harder. The rod hit the cinder block wall with a clank he felt in his shoulders.

  The dress had dropped down to cower at the base of the crates.

  Blair prodded him with the rod. “Get up, boy. Get up or I’m pulling the trigger.”

  A radiator gurgled, then was silent.

  Blair poked harder, until he had the sickening thought the rod had pierced the marshy body. He jerked the rod back. He backed away, out from behind the screen of crates, then turned and took the rod to the front of the car. The motor was still running, the headlights still on. He inspected the rod in the glare of one headlight.

  It was veined and ribbed, a length of steel rod used to reinforce concrete. There must be co
nstruction nearby. The tip was only rusty, the rust turning bright red two inches down the rod. More red was spattered over his black hand—it took Blair a second to remember he was wearing gloves—and his coat sleeve.

  He went back under the shed roof. The dark was darker than before. He kicked around with his shoe until he kicked something soft. He bent down, touched a soft heap and a hard surface. The heap felt enormous in the darkness. He stuck the gun back in his pocket and felt his other pockets for matches. His valet service left extra books of matches in all his coats. He found a book, removed a glove and struck a match. A face flared up on the floor, scowling, with one eye open, the other crushed shut. The expression changed when Blair moved the match back and forth. He moved the match down the body. There was no sign of any puncture from where he had poked the body with the rod. The right sleeve was bent in a fantastic manner, as if the arm had extra elbows. The match burned down to his fingers and flickered out, without Blair feeling anything.

  He had killed the boy, it seemed. And his first response was regret that it had happened so quickly, without time to savor the act. He lit another match so he could look again. The right side of the face was collapsed and bloody. Satisfaction began to set in. He had killed a man. How many other men shared that rare experience? He passed the match to his gloved hand so he could touch the face with his bare fingers. The blood welled up like a slow, warm spring. He could almost hear the blood. He scooted back a little to keep his shoes out of the puddle on the clay.

  Blair carried the steel rod out to the automobile. He proudly wrapped it in the New York Times he had on the front seat, then laid the bundle on the car floor. He wanted to save the weapon, even show it with the blood to Anna as proof of his strength, but he knew he had to get rid of it. He went back beneath the roof, struck more matches and checked for evidence. The colored boy lay there in his white dress. A queer had been killed and the police would treat it as perfectly natural. Blair suddenly realized it was the perfect solution. He had killed the boy; he could kill the sailor. Even if the police arrested him for espionage, they could prove nothing when the only witnesses to his loose talk were dead. Glorying in the deed, he knew it was the right thing to do, and that he could do it again. The murder had put him in touch with his true power.

  When he returned to the car, he pretended to redo his fly, as if he had stopped here only to relieve himself. But there was nobody to see him. The street was utterly deserted. He climbed into the car and drove away, loving himself more deeply than he had ever imagined possible. The second kill would be even finer, because he would plot and anticipate it. He would hunt the sailor, catch him alone and kill him.

  17

  THE FACE LOOKED FRESHLY washed, but there was a gray bloom to the skin, like mold on chocolate. The eyes were closed, the thick pale lips slightly parted. It seemed to be two faces: angular adolescent on the left, a plump baby on the right. The baby’s face was blue-black and shiny, where the skin had swelled up over the caved-in bone. There were black patches of dried blood beside the temple and right eye. The hair pulled back from the forehead kinked in slight zigzags. Juke’s face had been through so many metamorphoses it was difficult to tell if this was another, or an entirely different person.

  “Can you identify him?”

  “Oh my Gaaawd,” sobbed Mrs. Bosch. She had a handkerchief out but only clutched it in her fist while her wide eyes ran with tears. “The poor, poor boy,” she murmured. Erich had never suspected her to have so much feeling.

  Fayette looked down at the enameled metal table. Jaw working from side to side, he lifted a heavy hand and, with surprising gentleness, touched the swollen skin. Then, more bluntly, he stroked the neck, touched the bare shoulder, touched at the body through the sheet and, delicately again, ran his fingertips over the spot where the genitals would be.

  Erich stepped back. He was an intruder here. He could not have felt more ill at ease if he had killed the boy himself. Fayette had telephoned the Sloane House first thing this morning to say the police had asked Mrs. Bosch to come up to the city morgue and identify a body: Negro, male. Juke had not returned last night. In the cold electric light, in a tiled room like a hotel kitchen, Erich watched Fayette and Mrs. Bosch confront the death of their friend.

  “Yes. It is him,” said Mrs. Bosch. “Our leetle troublemaker. Who could haf done such a thing to that boy?”

  The pink, piggish assistant who might be German but was probably Irish pushed his way between Fayette and the wheeled table. He tossed the sheet back over the face and rolled the table back toward the refrigerated closet. The wall was lined with identical closets and doors. A bare foot with a white sole stuck out from under the sheet. The paper tag wired to the toe fluttered like a moth.

  “We’ll need a statement,” said the police sergeant and led the way upstairs. Mrs. Bosch clung to Fayette’s arm, sobbing and going on about the poor, poor boy. Erich followed, studying the billed cap in his hand—he was in uniform this morning—as if the gold insignia pinned there might prove or disprove the Navy’s involvement in this death.

  “Name of the deceased?”

  “Alpheus Cooper. But efryone knew him as Juuuk.”

  They sat around a desk in a room full of desks while the police sergeant typed it all up on a tall typewriter like a Model T car. On the desk were a neatly folded white dress, a pair of nylons and a brassiere with hemispheres of cork sewn into the cups. Mrs. Bosch did all the talking, answering the questions—the boy’s arrest record, his time in her employ, the whereabouts of his family—and asking what happened. The boy had been bludgeoned to death sometime the night before. His body was found early this morning, outside a poultry butcher’s a block from the Bosch house. Erich watched Fayette, trying to see how he reacted to the information. Fayette sat there like a statue, staring past the sergeant. The sergeant seemed to know nothing of the mass arrests the night before, or the exact nature of Mrs. Bosch’s house. Mrs. Bosch was dressed as an innocent hausfrau this morning.

  “Cooper was a transvestite, a homosexual?”

  “I do not know of these things, officer.” Mrs. Bosch glanced at Erich.

  The sergeant explained that the boy had been found wearing the dress and “gay deceivers” now on his desk. The police assumed he had been prowling the waterfront, had propositioned a man, then was beaten to death by the man when he discovered the Negro was male. The sergeant asked what was Erich and Fayette’s connection with the deceased.

  “They are my friends,” said Mrs. Bosch. “Here in my time of need.”

  “I was Juke’s friend,” said Fayette, angrily.

  The sergeant glanced at Fayette’s uniform, without noticing the slightly soiled cuffs and elbows. “I’ve got a boy in the service. Army Air Corps. As servicemen away from home for the first time, you boys are probably getting your first taste of a place like New York. There are certain elements you have to steer clear of. You probably have no idea the kind of sordid life you exposed yourself to by knowing this Negro.”

  “You going to find his killer?”

  “I got to be honest with you, son. Hardly a night goes by without some homo getting himself killed. We look into each case, briefly. But there’s not much we can do. And the general feeling is these fellas had it coming to them. Take my advice. This friend of yours was bad news. Forget him and be more careful in the future about the company you keep.”

  Erich frowned at Fayette, trying to stop the outburst he thought was coming.

  Fayette breathed deeply and surveyed the busy room. He abruptly stood up. “I want to get out of here.”

  The sergeant said he was free to go, but he needed Mrs. Bosch a minute longer.

  “Will you not wait for me, Hank? I am not wanting to go home alone.”

  “I’ll wait for you outside,” Fayette snapped. He marched furiously through the room, hands rubbing his hips in a vain search for pockets.

  Erich asked for permission to leave, then went after Fayette.

  He found him pa
cing the steps out front, in the long shadow of the police building. It was still early and the sidewalk was full of seersuckered Americans on their way to jobs in the gaudy Viennese-looking buildings that surrounded City Hall. Fayette saw Erich, came up the steps and motioned him over to a fluted granite column.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Hank. I know he was your friend.”

  Fayette stood behind the column and looked down at Erich. “We know who did it, don’t we?”

  “We don’t. The police are right. A boy like that might offend anyone. There’s no telling who may have met and killed him last night.”

  The blue eyes stared coldly.

  “I’ve thought about it,” Erich admitted. “Your man had no motive for killing the boy, no reason to believe the boy was involved in this. But the chief argument against it is that the man’s being watched by the FBI. He could not have killed the boy without being seen and stopped by whoever was tailing him.” Erich believed everything he said, but he was so accustomed to lying to Fayette that all beliefs sounded untrue the moment they were shared with the sailor.

  “Maybe he lost his tail.”

  “Maybe. But we don’t know that yet, do we? Let me speak to Mason this morning. The FBI can tell us where your man was last night.”

  “No. I know in my bones he did it. Rich little bastard,” Fayette angrily muttered. “It’s our fault. It’s my fault, for taking that crazy kid into my bed that night. He had no business getting killed.” He slammed his head against the pillar. “Jesus. That crazy little nigger kid.” He sounded close to tears, but his eyes were bone dry.

  “Stop talking like that. We don’t even know if he did it!”

  “Oh, yeah? You were right about one thing, jewboy. You can’t be too suspicious.” He folded his arms across his chest, tightly, locking his fists in his elbows. “I trusted Mason and the rest of you to know what you were doing. But we’ve gone and got that kid killed by a loudmouth bum. If that bastard comes back to the house, I’ll kill him with my bare hands.”