“Screw it,” said Hank and he left the room. He wanted to leave the house, Mason or no Mason. But he would stay here, and not because he wanted to hear what that glad-handing bastard had to say. There was a chance the biggest little bastard of them all would return tonight. His Nazi pretty boy, his spy. His spy was dumb enough to think Hank too dumb to know who killed Juke. When he returned, Hank would be here. He wanted to kill the bastard, but knew he shouldn’t. He didn’t know what he would do to him.
The sun went down and Mick, Smitty and the others began to arrive, then a few johns. Hank sat with them upstairs but spoke to nobody. He slouched down in the armchair in the corner and glared at everyone between his open knees. They chattered away like a treeful of cemetery wrens at a funeral. Sash strolled over, as cool and aloof as ever, glanced nervously at the others and bent down to whisper to Hank about last night. He was terrified Hank might tell the others he had seen Sash in drag. Hank had no idea Sash had been on the boat. Sash talked with great importance about being arrested, fingerprinted and jailed before his “friend” paid his bail. As if Hank could give a fuck.
“Where’s the nelly houseboy tonight? That was him with you on the boat, wasn’t it? He still in jail?”
“How should I know?” They hadn’t heard, but Hank refused to share Juke’s death with any of these phonies. Juke’s death was his, and his alone.
Hank never moved from his chair, only looked up each time a new man entered the room. Smitty teased him from across the room, asked if it was that time of month. Hank cut his eyes at him and looked away. Mrs. Bosch was in and out of the room, bringing up customers and refreshments, quacking in her usual singsong as if nothing had happened. If she didn’t mention Juke, it was only because talk of death was bad for business, Hank decided. She gave him a sympathetic look during one of her rounds, then quietly ignored his brooding. The longer Hank sat, the more blank he felt. He didn’t feel like he was grieving for Juke or burning to kill Juke’s killer. Grief and anger were so tightly knotted together Hank felt neither. All he felt was hatred, and a desire to explode like a bomb, blowing himself and the house to pieces.
Mrs. Bosch returned with Mr. Charles, fat and debonair, great black bags under his eyes. With Mr. Charles tonight was a teacherly-looking gentleman with twinkling eyes and a bushy beard. There was a flurry of looks and whispers through the room when people noticed the man with the beard. Mrs. Bosch herself seemed particularly pleased with Mr. Charles’s friend. Her house was beginning to attract stars.
“He’s one?” Sash whispered in awe.
“He? Who he?” said Smitty.
“Don’t you know anything? That’s the Beard. In the movies? Woolley Monty.”
“Monty Woolley,” a customer corrected Sash. “Hmmm. Wait until I tell the girls.”
The famous man looked over the room, smiling in his beard as he shared a joke with Mr. Charles. He stepped over to the sofa, sat down and was instantly surrounded—Sash on his left, Smitty on his right, Lou sitting at his feet and eventually in his lap. Mr. Woolley chuckled at the boys and addressed them formally, like an uncle among nephews. He showed pleasure in being wicked only in the occasional glances exchanged with Mr. Charles.
Mr. Charles remained standing, looking disappointed that his usual man, Mick, was apparently off with another customer. Hank had gone up once with Mr. Charles, then left when the man explained what was wanted: Mr. Charles liked to be whipped. That was too strange, both cruel and silly, but the idea felt less strange tonight. Hank needed to hit something hard or he was going to go crazy. He stood up and approached Mr. Charles.
“Want me to beat you?”
Mr. Charles smiled. “My dear fellow.” He glanced at his famous friend, then led Hank into the corner. “I thought that wasn’t your cup of tea.”
“Shut up. Do you want it or don’t ya?”
“I like your attitude. Yes. Let’s give it another try.” He made a courtly bow to his friend across the room, proudly pointed out Hank to Mr. Woolley, then followed Hank into the hall. “Do you have any ropes or straps?” he asked on the stairs. “What kind of belt do you wear? Ah, one of those webbed ones with the metal tips. Never mind. You can use my belt.” Mr. Charles continued to talk once he was in Hank’s room, carefully folding his clothes. “You’re a big one. And you look mean. You look like a killer. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear you once killed a man.”
Hank almost slugged him. He opened his fist and slapped the man across the face.
“Oh!” The man was overjoyed. “Here. Take my belt. And be careful about the face. Marks, you know.” He quickly finished undressing, then dropped down on his knees and clasped his hands together. Naked, he was as pink and plump as a baby. “Mercy!” he cried in a different voice. “Punish me, yes! I deserve to be punished! But please don’t kill me! Anything but death!”
Hank knew it was playacting, but he felt mocked and angered by the man’s fantasy. He snapped the belt across the man’s back.
“Yes! And spit on me. I deserve to be spit on.”
Hank’s mouth was dry. He hit the man with the belt again.
“Oh, yes!”
Hank worked his arm back and forth, whipping the man’s front and back. The pink skin turned red; the man’s breathing grew more excited. When he jumped up to scramble on to the bed, the bud of genitals under his belly had opened out. He lay face down on the bed and covered his head with the pillow. His body was heaped on the mattress like a block of fat.
“Anything now,” he called from under the pillow. “This vile, disgusting flesh.”
And Hank laid into him, listening for the crack of leather against skin, the moans from beneath the pillow. The flabby back and ass were criss-crossed with red stripes. Hank swung harder, wanting the stripes to break open, as if the man were his spy and he could whip him to death. The man wasn’t his spy and the belt was too wide to break the skin.
Then the moans sounded less like pain, more like fucking, and Hank felt a sudden warmth around his eyes. The man squirmed and moaned like he was fucking Hank’s bed. Hank thought of Juke. He was whipping Juke, beating Juke to death. He continued to swing the belt, less furiously now, while the warmth around his eyes spilled over. He was crying.
The man groaned louder than ever, and was still.
Hank stopped swinging. He used his free hand to wipe his eyes, but the tears continued to run. Juke was dead. He was grieving for Juke. Whether Juke was friend or lover or what, it didn’t matter now that the kid was gone.
The man tossed the pillow aside and rolled over, his face glowing. “I feel warm all over. Like you’ve peeled my body right off my soul.” He lay on his back, catching his breath, and saw Hank. “My dear fellow? Are you crying? I’m the one who should be reduced to tears. You’re supposed to be a cold-hearted killer.”
“Go to hell,” said Hank. He threw down the belt and ran from the room. He raced down the stairs to the ground floor and back to the kitchen. But the kitchen—the stove and sink where Juke had worked, the oilclothed table where they taunted each other—was not enough. He went to the pantry, which was Juke’s room, opened the door and turned on the light.
The pantry was a little bedroom. Mrs. Bosch hadn’t touched a thing yet. The room smelled of Juke. Hank stepped inside and sat on Juke’s cot. He sat there for ten minutes and let himself cry. Seeing himself in the mirror over the little table could not stop Hank from crying, or seeing the picture of Lena Horne clipped from a magazine and taped to the mirror. Juke had looked nothing like Lena Horne last night, except that both were colored. A pair of brown and yellow knob-toed shoes gaped on the floor.
He loved Juke. It had been difficult enough just liking the boy when Juke was alive. Hank could recognize love only now when Juke was dead. Love had been bound up with the grief and anger that paralyzed Hank tonight. The scene upstairs had released enough anger to give him room to grieve for Juke. Crying released enough grief for Hank to recognize love.
He breathed Juke—sweetish odors
of talcum and pomade, the harsh smell of the lye Juke used to conk his hair. Anger over his death returned, clearer now, as sharp and pointed as a knife. Hank was looking at a closed knife that lay on Juke’s table. It looked like some kind of straight razor. Juke must have used it to shave his legs only yesterday. Hank picked up the pale green handle. It was a gravity knife and Hank flipped the blade out with a twist of his wrist. The blade was filmy with soap. Both the curved and straight edges were sharp. The blade ended in a point. He closed the knife and stuck it into his blouse pocket. When his spy returned tonight—But Hank no longer believed his spy would actually come here. He could believe that only when he was too paralyzed to do anything but wait.
Hank went back through the kitchen and up the stairs to the second floor. They were as ignorant as he was about such things, but Sash might know.
Sash sat alone. The man with the beard had chosen someone else.
“You ever heard of a place called El Morocco? You know where it is?”
“Of course I’ve heard of it,” Sash said snootily. “I’ve even been there. It’s in the East Fifties near the Third Avenue El. What’s it to you?”
“None of your business.” Hank checked his pockets. He had the money and the knife. He left the room without saying goodbye to Sash or the others, people he felt he’d never see again. He went down the stairs, shouldering his way past Mrs. Bosch, who came up the stairs with a customer who wasn’t his spy.
“Hank,” she called after him. “You going somewhere?”
“Out!” he shouted.
“You are to wait for Dr. Mason! I am not to let you leave!”
“Screw Mason!” He unlocked the front door and threw it open. He tore down the steps to the curb and darkness, his feet stamping out the shadow of a sailor cast across the cobblestones by the open door. He hurried into the pitch-black square.
“Get back in here, Hank Fayette!” shouted Mrs. Bosch from the door, her voice echoing across the square. She stood there exasperated, heaved her shoulders and slowly closed the door.
The square was so dark Hank felt he was floating, felt he stood still despite the rapid clack of his shoes breaking the silence. The streetlight up a narrow street on the far side of the square bobbed in the distance without getting closer. It was like being dead, it was so still; or being watched, but that was his memory of the giant Coca Cola boy painted on a building somewhere overhead. Blood and adrenalin spun through him while time stood still. He walked faster, trying to catch up with the hurry he was feeling. He broke into a run.
He ran up the narrow street and past the streetlight, shoe slap and breathing burning up his impatience. He stopped running when he came to a street where there were people and splashes of light. It was Fourteenth Street. Hank walked east, past men playing dominoes on upended milk crates, past knots of drinkers gathered outside bars. A drunk stumbled into his path and Hank shoved him out of his way. There was almost no traffic in the street or he might have hailed a taxicab. A black automobile motored alongside Hank for a moment and sped off—a horny fool looking for a sailor.
Several blocks across town, beyond Union Square, Hank found the station for the Third Avenue El, a cuckoo-clock house on stilts. Standing upstairs on the open platform, he had time to look at the civilians in their shirtsleeves and cotton dresses, and feel apart from them. This was the first time he had gone out into the world since he entered the house. Racing uptown, he looked out the train window at the third-floor windows outside and saw plain people in kitchens and living rooms going about their lives as if everything were sweet and fine. Hank had never hated the world the way he hated it tonight. He loved Juke. He had not loved him alive but he would love him dead. By killing his killer.
He descended the stairs to the street. He asked a fish-mouthed man at a newsstand how to get to the El Morocco, then walked beneath the long, thick cage of the elevated track that covered Third Avenue. Wartime was a good time to kill a man, he decided. Shop windows were dimmed and there was little motor traffic. The cross street he turned down had no trestle overhead, but the streetlights were off because of the brownout and the street still felt like it was covered with a dark roof.
A canopy ran from a well-lit doorway to the curb. The name was printed on the canopy: El Morocco. A wide doorman in khaki stood out front, rocking on his heels. Hank walked past him to the door. The pavement beneath the canopy was zebra-striped, like the matchbook Hank had found.
“Hey, hey, bub.” The doorman pressed his hand against the door, keeping Hank from opening it. “Where ya think you’re going?”
“I’m looking for someone. I’ll be right out.” He wanted to see if his spy were here, then wait for him outside.
“Sorry, friend. No enlisted men. You won’t find no friend of yours here, especially if they look half as bad as you do. You been on a tear all night? Good night, Mr. Rubirosa, Miss Johnson,” he said, opening the door for a giggling couple in evening clothes, still using his large body to keep Hank from stepping around him.
Without noticing either the doorman or the sailor, the couple laughed their way to the taxicabs that lined the curb.
“See,” said the doorman. “Nothing but swells. Go have a good time with your own people. You don’t have the bread for a joint like this.” He spoke like he’d been turning away sailors all night.
Hank pleaded with the doorman, even offered him money, but it was no good. He finally let loose with what he was thinking—“Draft-dodging lard-ass. That ain’t a real uniform”—and walked away before he pulled a knife on the man. There had to be another entrance to the club, a side door or delivery entrance.
At the end of the club’s white front was an alley, the iron gate there wide open. Hank glanced back at the doorman and ducked into the alley. He heard band music, muffled voices and tinkling glass coming from the narrow windows overhead. The alley ended in a loading dock and a bright steaming kitchen inside an open screen door. Men sat on the dock, peeling shellfish and smoking cigars. A dozen bottles, an inch or two of wine in each bottle, stood at their feet, and mounds of thin, pink shells, like fingernails.
“No. No handouts. Get lost,” said a Mex-looking man when Hank went up to the door. “Get lost,” he repeated, shooing Hank off with a short knife curved like a spoon.
“I’m looking for someone. It’ll only take a minute.”
When Hank tried to push past, all the men jumped to their feet, jabbering in a Spanish like no Spanish Hank had heard in Beaumont. They shook short knives and gutted lobsters at him.
He backed off, lifting his hands to show he meant them no harm. “I’ll be right out. Honest.” But there was no reasoning with people who spoke a different language.
Hank turned and went back up the alley. It didn’t matter if the man was already here or not. Hank would go out front and watch for his spy from across the street. Coming or going, Hank would catch him, if it took all night. He knew in his bones his spy would come here, knew it the way you know you’ll find rabbits on certain mornings when you’re hunting.
Hank peered around the corner to see which way the doorman was looking. The doorman spoke to a man in a cap and painted necktie who seemed to be out of breath. They were fifty feet away, but the light was good beneath the canopy. The man took off his cap to smooth his hair. Hank recognized him. It was his spy.
The doorman nodded respectfully and pointed down the street in Hank’s direction. His spy looked, but it was all shadows here and he couldn’t see Hank watching him. He slipped a bill into the doorman’s hand and, instead of going into the club, started toward Hank, slowly, as if uncertain where he was going. He kept patting his right coat pocket.
Hank stepped back. It was miraculous, like God sent the spy so Hank could kill him. He took the knife from his pocket and flipped it open. He let the hand with the knife hang at his side. He would wait until the man was very close before he stepped out, would walk into the man before the man knew what was happening and jam the knife under his ribs.
&
nbsp; He threw down his cap and peeked out again. His spy had stopped thirty feet away to stare at something across the street. He resumed walking, still looking across the street. Hank ducked back and listened. There were two girls out there but they were walking in the other direction. Hank listened for the footsteps approaching him. He loosened the grip on his knife, tightened it again. He was very calm, very steady.
“Drop the knife or you’re dead.”
The voice came from behind him. Hank swung around, the knife flying up to slash the voice. He glimpsed the silhouette of a hat before something whizzed at his ear and there was a blinding flash inside his head. He heard no gunshot before the pavement hit his face.
Blair stopped again when he heard a bang and clatter around the corner. When silence followed, he continued walking. He glanced at the alleyway as he walked past and saw a pair of upended shoe soles being dragged into the shadows. He promptly looked away, as if he had caught a man urinating. Somebody was rolling a drunk, he decided and kept walking. He had to catch up with the sailor that Mike the doorman said had gone around the block. He hadn’t tailed the sailor across town, on to the El and off again to let himself be scared off by someone else’s crime. The city was going to the dogs. Blair tried to distract himself from his nervous alertness by savoring the irony of his sailor wanting to visit Blair’s favorite club.
When Hank opened his eyes, the alleyway was upside down. A man hung by his feet in front of him, a stick in his hand.
“Go ahead. Beat me to death, too,” he thought.
“Quiet,” the figure whispered, as if Hank had said the thought aloud.
Hank felt a jagged pain and saw the empty patch of street outside the alley. He was ten feet further from the street than he remembered being. Slapping the cement with his hand, feeling for the knife, he twisted around to see his killer.
The figure dropped the stick. It bonked like wood. The figure was breathing heavily, like a man about to faint. He suddenly knelt down. “Sorry,” he whispered. “Are you all right?”
Hold Tight Page 25
