Beneath the breaths, there was a familiar distance to the voice. Hank squinted at the face beneath the hat brim.
The figure whipped off the hat and fanned his face with it. Circles of light flashed on a pair of eyeglasses that looked out at the street in a panic.
“Erich?”
19
ERICH LOOKED OUT AT the street, across the street, down at Fayette, then out at the street again. The man who just walked past had to be Rice. It was Erich’s first glimpse of Rice: American jaw, Hollywood nose, English eyes. Everything around Erich registered with a quickness and intensity he had never experienced before. It was overpowering, like omniscience. A man had tried to knife him and Erich had knocked the man out. He had saved a man’s life and the man didn’t know it yet. He had disobeyed orders to obey his conscience and the solitude was breathtaking.
“Why…? You’re with him?” said Fayette. “You Jew.” His right hand convulsed at his side, slapping the pavement. “You can’t be a Nazi.”
“Quiet. They’re still out there.”
The hand stopped slapping. “Who?”
“Sullivan’s men,” Erich whispered. “The FBI. We have to be very quiet. The man following Rice will go after him. There’s a man following you, but he’ll leave us alone so long as you don’t get close to Rice.”
“Who the hell’s Rice?”
Then Erich saw the knife out on the pavement beside Fayette’s white cap. That was what Fayette had been slapping for in the darkness. Even when he knew this was Erich, Fayette wanted to stab him. “Rice is your spy,” he said angrily. “The man who killed your friend. He wants to kill you next.”
“Not if I kill him first. Don’t get in my way, Erich, or I’ll kill you too.”
“Shut up and listen! There’s a man following you. If you get close enough to lay a hand on Rice, he has orders to kill you. Can’t you understand that?”
Fayette stared at the street.
Only a section was visible from the alley but, among the parked cars and darkened doorways across the street, were a dozen places where a man could hide. To Erich, every deep shadow seemed to be watching them.
“You’re nuts,” said Fayette. “Where?”
“Somewhere out there. Believe me. I wasn’t following you or Rice, so I wasn’t able to spot the people following you.”
“Who told you I was gonna be here? This Rice guy?”
“I’m not with Rice! I’m not with the FBI or anyone. I’m on your side, Hank.”
Fayette narrowed his eyes at him and rubbed his head with the butt of his hand.
“I’m sorry I had to hit you. There was no other way to get your attention,” Erich explained. “I’m disobeying orders, dammit. I’m not supposed to be here. I came straight here because there was nowhere else for me to go after I telephoned Mrs. Bosch. She said you were gone. I knew you were after Rice. I knew you knew that Rice came here because of that book of matches you found.” Erich was losing his patience: it was all so insufferably complicated. “Look, Hank. I’ll tell you everything once we get out of here. But we have to sit tight for a few minutes. It’s damn lucky for you I was here. Or you’d be dead right now.”
“Yeah? You think so?” Fayette gave his head a dog-like shake, then climbed to his feet before Erich could help or stop him. He stepped to the front of the alley, scooped up his cap and saw his knife. He snatched up the knife and looked at Erich.
The two-by-four lay at Erich’s foot, but there’d be no hitting Fayette a second time when he was ready for it. Erich kicked the piece of wood aside.
Fayette saw that, studied Erich and closed the knife. He held the closed knife in his fist and turned around to look at the street.
“Get back here,” said Erich. “You want them to see you?” He came up behind Fayette and grabbed him by the arm. It was like grabbing a tree.
“I wanna see if you’re nuts or not.” Fayette surveyed the street.
Erich hoped Fayette’s eyes were better than his, because Erich saw nothing. Then a taxicab pulled away from the entrance to the El Morocco and made a U-turn. The headlights raked across the storefronts opposite the club. They flashed across the doorway where a slouched hat darted behind a corner. Even Erich saw it.
“Somebody’s watching somebody,” Fayette muttered. He slowly stepped back, tapping his leg with the fist that held the knife. He lifted the fist and dropped the knife into his pocket.
“We have to get you out of here,” said Erich. “Back to Mrs. Bosch’s.”
“I’m not going back there.”
“No? Somewhere else then. It’s too dangerous here.” Erich was afraid Rice might reappear any minute: there’d be no way of stopping Fayette. He had to get Fayette off the street. “My hotel then. You can spend the night there.” Maybe a few hours off the street would be enough to cool Fayette down, along with Erich explaining everything to him.
But Fayette already seemed cool, unnervingly calm as he stood looking at the street and thinking. He seemed not to have heard a word Erich said. “Let’s go,” he announced and struck off, marching out of the alley and up the sidewalk.
Erich had to run to catch up with him. “What the hell are you doing, Fayette?” He thought Fayette might march across the street and confront the FBI man in the doorway. But they matched toward the club, past the doorway, and Erich pulled down the brim of his hat on the side that faced the street, although they would learn this was Petty Officer Zeitlin sooner or later.
Fayette opened the door of the last taxicab in the line of taxicabs parked along the curb. “Get in,” he told Erich.
The driver said, “There’s cabs ahead of me, buddy.”
Fayette reached into his pocket and Erich thought he was going to pull a knife. “Here’s ten bucks. Just get us outa here.”
“Yes, sir.” And the cabbie tossed his newspaper aside and started the engine.
Erich watched as they pulled away and in the frame of the rear window saw a man run out from the doorway, look after them and raise his arm for help.
“Once around the block,” Fayette ordered the driver.
“No,” said Erich. “The Sloane House. Near Penn Station.”
“I’m paying, mister. Once around the block. I just gotta see where he is,” he told Erich. “And see if I can see who’s tailing him.”
Buildings and corners slowly pivoted on their right as they drove around the block. All Erich could do was think hard, willing Rice off the street. There was no sign of Rice. They approached El Morocco again and Erich spotted Sullivan himself talking to the doorman beneath the canopy, showing him something, his badge perhaps. Maybe Rice had gone around the block and into the club.
“There. See him?” he told Fayette. “You remember him visiting the house? Just drive past,” he told the driver. He leaned back and drew Fayette back with his hand, so they were both away from the window when the canopy and Sullivan swung past. “Do you believe me now? They’re everywhere. There’s no telling how many others there are, sitting in parked cars or…” Erich looked in the rear window but no headlights followed them, yet.
“They’re protecting him,” Fayette muttered. “They’re protecting him from me?”
Erich repeated the directions to the Sloane House. “I’ll explain it all when we’re alone.” He nodded at the driver to make it clear why they couldn’t talk about it yet. But Fayette did not look at all curious or confused. He sat very still, his mouth and eyebrows moving ever so slightly, a man who moved his lips while reading.
Suddenly, Erich was able to think beyond the immediate present. It wasn’t at all the way he thought it would be. He was saving a man’s life, yet he was angry with the man for refusing to appreciate that. He had not expected to be received like a hero, but he did expect something resembling gratitude, comprehension or trust. Fayette rode beside him, burning alone.
Erich had only gotten as far as Trenton that afternoon when his relief gave way to guilt. It was as though he’d grown so accustomed to guilt he felt
guiltier feeling guiltless than he ever had when he was genuinely culpable. Culpable innocence was terrible. If only he hadn’t been alone in a train full of hooting, skylarking soldiers and sailors, every one of them reminding him of Fayette, he might have made it to Washington. Or if an FBI man had accompanied him the entire trip. Freedom was the worst of it, when all authority was in your head, yours as well as theirs. His relief and calm began to feel unearned, cowardly, poisonous. It was too much like what he felt over all he had been spared in Austria solely because he was the son of a useful man. It was absurd to want to suffer, but the suffering imposed by others was preferable to the suffering imposed by your conscience, which you experienced alone. Erich stepped off the train in Philadelphia and boarded the next train bound for New York.
Because he wore a petty officer’s service cap, nobody asked to see his orders. Because there were more civilians than servicemen on this train, the world felt less like an armed camp—a man could feel good following his own conscience. But conscience felt imaginary now that Erich was in the thick of it. Conscience seemed as much a luxury as the taxicab carrying them across town. Every decision only led to the next dangerous choice. He doubted he could save Fayette, or even help Fayette save himself. You can sacrifice everything without helping anyone. But Erich had committed himself. He was in this to its conclusion. He only wished he did not feel so alone in what he was doing.
They arrived at the Sloane House. Fayette stood in the lobby, studying every face that walked past. The hotel was full because of the Fourth of July weekend. There were already servicemen sleeping on the leather sofas in the lobby. The desk clerk didn’t object when Erich asked if his friend could spend the night in his room. He asked for a cot, but all the cots were taken. “Your room does have a double bed,” the clerk reminded him. He called Fayette over to sign the register before Erich could warn Fayette not to use his real name. Fayette already knew: he registered as “A. Cooper.”
Erich’s room became painfully small when Fayette entered it, like a prison cell for two men. Erich’s uniform lay on the bed where he had thrown it the instant he got back from Philadelphia. He gathered the uniform up, but Fayette remained standing, as if he intended to stay only a few minutes.
“Sit down,” Erich told him. “You want a cigarette? A drink? I think I have some Scotch. A birthday present from my father.”
Fayette shook his head and remained standing. “So how about it? This Rice guy killed Juke and wants to kill me. Mason and them are more concerned about protecting Rice than protecting us. What gives? They’re using us as bait?”
When you believe the world’s against you, the connections come easily. Erich sat in the chair and told Fayette about Rice and Juke, Rice and the FBI, the uses of Rice. At first, he tried to make it as simple as possible, but Fayette kept jumping ahead, or jumping backward. He understood it all too quickly. He paced a little, then finally sat on the bed. He took it all in with a coolness that was disturbing. He showed no emotion, no surprise, not even when Erich told him Mason intended to send him to a mental hospital if he survived, because Mason assumed he was mentally defective, an imbecile.
“An idiot? Yeah. I been an idiot all right. I believed them up and down the line. No wonder they thought I was simple-minded.”
But Fayette’s large silences no longer seemed like evidence of stupidity or even innocence. He was like a cowboy in a Western, or a poker player, or a man with many secrets. He gave no sign of what he intended to do with the information Erich gave him. He barely acknowledged Erich as anything but a voice, never looked at him, not even when Erich insisted on his objections to this business from the very start or when he admitted his complicity. Erich seemed to mean nothing to him.
Erich finished and Fayette was silent for a long time. He sat with his shoulders pitched forward, his elbows resting on his thighs, chewing as if he had a mouthful of gum. Then he looked up at Erich, blue eyes staring through the squint that had grown permanent. “So what puts you on my side all of a sudden?”
It sounded like an accusation. “I decided it was wrong. I decided I couldn’t consent to it any longer.”
“But you’ve jumped ship for me. Why?”
Even now he didn’t trust Erich, and Erich didn’t know what to say except, “It was something I had to do if I wanted to live with myself.”
“You don’t like men, do you, Erich?”
He knew what Fayette meant. “No.”
“Do you like me? Just a little?”
“Not at all.” Which was true right now for any meaning one gave the question.
“You’re not doing this cause you’re in love with me in some way?”
“No. I’m doing it because of what I believe. You have nothing to do with it, Fayette. Personally, I mean.”
Fayette said nothing, showed nothing. He seemed to play poker with every secret Erich shared with him, but his silence here felt like skepticism.
Erich wondered if there was something to gain by lying to Fayette and claiming he was like him. Instead, he said, “There’s nothing else for me to tell you. So. What should we do?”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna hunt down Rice. And kill him.”
“Haven’t you heard me, Fayette? They’ll kill you!”
“I don’t care. So long as I kill Rice first.”
It was like trying to reason with a falling rock.
“I knew I was gonna pay for it,” said Fayette. “Thought I’d pay for it in prison or the electric chair, but I can pay for it on the street. Those people aren’t so smart. I can outsmart them and get Rice before they get me. Be easier now that I know Rice is stalking me.”
Instead of preventing murder, Erich had made murder a certainty. “Rice is a spy. And a killer. They know he’s a killer. If you get out of the way, Fayette, they’ll arrest Rice when they’re finished with him. He’ll be tried for Juke’s murder as well as for espionage. Let him go to the electric chair. Alone.”
“It’s not the same thing as me killing him.”
And Erich understood him perfectly, better than he understood his own motives. Crude emotions, Fayette’s morality was as obvious as hunger.
“I ain’t asking you to join me, Erich. This is my business and nobody else’s. You shoulda stayed on that train to Washington.”
“No. I had to do something.”
Fayette looked at him, unsure what to make of that. Then, “I’m going back to Bosch’s. Where Rice can find me and I can get him.”
“Nobody’s getting anybody tonight, Hank. Spend the night here.” He could at least keep Fayette off the street for a few more hours.
“Yeah. I could do that. Keep the G-men guessing for tonight maybe.”
“Yes.” But Erich assumed Sullivan’s men would have no trouble tracing them to the Sloane House. “You take the bed. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
Fayette’s poker face was replaced by an angry stare. “What’s the matter? You want to save a homo’s life but you’re afraid to sleep in the same bed with him?”
“No, I just thought…” What had he thought? “Of course. It’s big enough for both of us.” Fayette didn’t trust him. Maybe sharing the bed would prove to Fayette that Erich was to be trusted. “You should take a shower though.” Erich was going to share a bed with a murderer and he was concerned that the man smelled bad? Everyday life forced its way into the damnedest places. “A shower should cool you off, make you feel better.”
“You think a shower’s gonna change my mind?”
“Not at all. You look terrible, Hank. You look suspicious. You can use my razor tomorrow.”
Fayette stood up and looked at himself in the mirror over the dresser. “Yeah,” he said and began to undress. “I stick out like a dipped sheep.”
“I wonder if my shirts might fit you,” Erich suggested. “I know my trousers won’t, but your whites make you awfully conspicuous.”
“Yeah. You’re right. Have a better chance of shaking the G-men and getting Rice if I
was in civvies.”
Erich only intended to gain Fayette’s trust, but when he heard himself helping Fayette he realized something in him wanted Fayette to kill Rice. “The soap and towels are by the door.” He waited until Fayette had a towel around his waist and was going out the door before he looked at him again.
Erich undressed, carefully folding his clothes as if they were all that mattered to him. He turned out the light. There was a little light through the open transom over the door, but not enough to feel embarrassed. Erich hated being seen in his underwear. Not even boot camp or barracks life had accustomed him to American immodesty. It was strange to think about that now. He went to the window and pulled up the shade. As always, the city smelled as if there’d been a fire somewhere.
There was a fire escape outside the window and an impression of prison bars. Erich looked down at the street two stories below. He expected to see another slouched hat already down there, but he saw only the usual gaggles of sailors and women going in and out of the tavern where a neon Popeye in the window slugged Bluto in slow-motion jerks, again and again. If they arrested him now, Erich should be happy. He had done what he could, told Fayette all there was to tell. But Erich didn’t feel finished with this yet.
He heard the door open and close behind him, then the clomp of a body on the bed. When he looked at the bed, he saw Fayette stretched out in the shadow against the wall. He lay on top of the sheets, insultingly naked, his back to Erich.
Modesty was superfluous now. Erich lay down by the edge of the bed, as far as he could get from Fayette. Fayette breathed against the wall. Despite everything, he was already asleep. Erich folded his arms across his chest and looked up. The light from the transom stretched across the ceiling. He thought about getting up to lock the door.
Erich awoke with a start. Rice had gotten into the room and was struggling with Fayette. The bed was trembling. There were half-strangled breaths.
Hold Tight Page 26
