Hold Tight (34 page)

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.

“I’m sorry, Juke. Forgive me. Ya gotta forgive me.” A voice was sobbing.

Erich found a pair of large bare shoulders shuddering beside him. He reached out and lay his hand on Fayette’s shoulder.

His touch didn’t seem to startle the man. Still trembling, Fayette slowly rolled over. He had one hand below his waist; he was masturbating.

“Juke, yeah. Thank you.” And he threw his free arm around Erich and began to kiss him.

Erich was too startled to resist. His mouth was suddenly invaded by a tongue. The body pressed against his was large and muscular. The weight and heat of it startled Erich’s mind awake. He was horrified, but his body seemed miles away, trapped in Fayette’s embrace. Mind watched from far away, just as Erich had listened from far away, in a cellar. Only this was his body. He used his tongue against Fayette’s, trying to get him out of his mouth without biting.

Fayette responded by pushing his tongue deeper, and ran a hand through Erich’s hair. His tongue and mouth abruptly jerked back. He stared and blinked, shocked to find Erich in his arms.

Erich’s mouth was full of saliva. He had to swallow before he could say, “You were having a nightmare.”

Fayette breathed like a man waking up. He touched Erich’s thinning hair again, trying to remember who this was. He looked as frightened as a child.

“It’s all right,” Erich whispered. He hugged Fayette as he would a child.

Fayette hugged back—and did not let go. His hands were all over Erich, his mouth in Erich’s again.

Erich flinched, then tried to give in. It was ticklish and strange: hands beneath his undershirt and inside his shorts. He tried to get into it, tried telling himself Fayette needed this and it would close the distance between them. He kissed back, but the face was gritty instead of smooth. He ran his hand down Fayette’s back, but the muscles beneath the skin were as hard as bone. There was a womanly softness just beyond the spine, but a few hairs sprouted there and Erich realized he stroked a grown man’s bottom. The strangest sensation of all was having so much muscle and bone, which could break Erich’s arm or neck, handle him with such passionate gentleness. Erich felt very small and pursy. With a woman, you were never conscious of your own body, only hers.

He was embarrassed knowing the hardness knocking his hip was Fayette’s erection, while his own penis was balled into his testicles. It was humiliating, but humiliation felt needed, necessary. He lifted his hips when he felt a hand tug at his shorts, then he pulled off his undershirt himself. He was naked with another man. He touched another man’s cock, held it a second and let go.

Hank pulled away from his mouth and Erich was relieved, as if a dentist had finally finished with him. But Hank was kissing his chest and belly—it was bizarre seeing a crude, masculine peasant kiss and nibble skin—until he was licking Erich’s privates. Erich was ashamed for Hank, catching him in such an unclean act, then ashamed of himself for becoming so small, soft and ticklish. It was painfully ticklish and he had to grit his teeth. He tried thinking of the woman from the other night, but definite whiskers bit beside the interminable nibbling, and the woman had been a complete stranger. Erich
knew
Hank Fayette, who had lost a friend and would lose his life because of what Erich and others had done.

Then it stopped. All touching stopped and Erich looked down.

Hank had raised his head to gaze at Erich. “You don’t want to do this,” he said.

“No. But you continue. Maybe you should try the other thing you do.” That frightened Erich as he said it, but it was preferable to using his mouth again—less personal, more painful and humiliating. It was humiliation that gave him what he needed. When Hank only looked at him, he tried rolling over on his stomach to show what he meant.

Hank was between Erich’s legs. He held the legs down so Erich couldn’t turn over. “You’re not queer, are you?”

“Sorry, no. Why should that matter?”

“You don’t like this, you won’t like being fucked. You don’t have to be queer to get it up for a guy, but…” He was looking at the genitals that were like a fat, wet snail. “How come you didn’t stop me?”

“Maybe I thought this would pay you back a little.” His emotions seemed sick when treated as reasons, but Erich continued. “Or you could pay me back for what I’ve done to you. Why should I have to like it?”

Hank frowned, untangled himself from Erich’s legs and stood up. He stepped away from the bed, agitatedly running both hands through his hair.

Erich felt he had failed, which was a strange thing to feel when you can’t do what’s unnatural and immoral. “I’m sorry I interrupted you. If you want to go ahead and finish what you were doing…”

Hank stood six feet from the window, facing the gray light from the street, his hands on his hips. He looked like a Greek statue to Erich’s nearsighted eyes, with a badly chiseled face and an erection that hung like a faucet. “I dreamed you was Juke,” he said. “I was so damned happy to see him again. Then I woke up and saw it was you, and figured this was what you wanted from me all along.”

“I’m sorry, Hank. I don’t like men in that manner.”

“You don’t apologize for that. I don’t
want
you to be in love with me. So how come you want to do all these things for me? Not just the fucking, but all of it.”

“It’s very much what I told you. Principle. And guilt. Maybe loyalty. I feel an obligation to you, Hank. I won’t be able to live with myself until I discharge that obligation. In some way.”

Hank nodded, believing Erich this time, understanding him. “Yeah. Like the obligation I feel with Juke.”

“But you were in love with him. Weren’t you?”

There was a long silence, and a look, as if after an insult. Then Hank said, “Yeah. Only I was too chickenshit to admit it until after he was dead. But that’s got nothing to do with the feeling I owe him one. It just makes clearer what it is I got to do.”

The personal life was so much simpler than the principled life, thought Erich, and more dangerous. “Which is to kill Rice.”

“Uh huh.” He walked back toward the bed and sat down beside Erich.

Erich was instantly aware that they were still naked, both of them. After sex with a woman, he wanted to get dressed as quickly as possible, but he and Hank had not had sex. Their nakedness suddenly felt right to him.

Hank leaned over and whispered, “You won’t do anything to stop me, will you? You won’t warn Mason or the others what I’m doing?”

“No, Hank. Because I want to help you. Actually.” Erich heard himself and could not believe what he was saying. But as soon as he said it, everything became simpler. “I was their accomplice. I’ll be yours now.”

“You don’t owe me anything else, Erich.”

“No?” His declaration seemed to have come from nothing more than his need to stick with this until its conclusion. But, once said, his feelings of failure and doubt, his wish for humiliation or some kind of pain fell away. He wanted to throw himself into the fire, with Hank. “This isn’t for you. This is for me.”

“You’re already in deep shit. This is my fight. I don’t need your help.”

“You need another pair of eyes. I know I couldn’t kill a man”—he heard himself use the real word—“but I could at least keep you from getting killed. Until you get to Rice. I did that once tonight already.”

Hank seemed more stunned by the idea than Erich was himself. “I don’t know,” he said, almost angrily.

“You don’t trust me? You think I’m still on their side?”

“No. I trust you, Erich. I’m afraid you might only get in the way, only…How
did
you get the jump on me back there?”

“I was lucky,” Erich confessed. And he told how he had arrived at the El Morocco, spoken to the doorman, then gone up the alley to see if anyone in the kitchen had seen a blond sailor that night. He was halfway down the alley when he saw Hank arguing with the help. He hid in a doorway. “You walked right by me when you came out. Don’t you see? One man can’t see everything alone.”

Hank rubbed his head where the two-by-four had caught him. He almost smiled. “Okay then. It’s your funeral. But if that’s the way you feel—” He looked at Erich, hard eyes softening a little. “I know how I feel, and there’s no arguing with what a guy feels. All right then. You’re in this with me.”

There was no embrace or touch between the two men. They sat on the bed, as innocently naked as two Adams, breathing together, thinking together, bonded to each other by a desire that seemed—to Erich—very pure and American.

O
N SATURDAY MORNING, JULY
4, 1942, the world was united in war. The Russians admitted the Germans had taken Sebastopol, or what was left of it. The Afrika Korps had caught up with the British army inside Egypt, outside the town of El Alamein. The Japanese began construction of an airfield on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, intending to cut the Allied supply route to New Guinea. In Washington, the Joint Chiefs of Staff debated the merits of Operation Sledgehammer, the 1942 invasion of France, against Operation Torch, the invasion of Morocco and Algeria championed by the British. There was another claim by the Polish Free Government in London, reported in the back pages of the New York
Times
, that the Nazis were randomly killing Polish Jews.

American officials looked forward to a safe Fourth of July. Fireworks were banned in most cities and traffic on the nation’s highways was expected to be slow due to gasoline rationing, the tire shortage and the Government’s request that defense workers forego the holiday. The sun rose in Maine, made its way down the cloudless Eastern seaboard and the telephone rang in a room at a motor lodge on Long Island.

“Mr. Thomas Blair Rice? I am a friend of your friend. We want you to take care of that sailor so you can see us again. You are intending to wait for him outside that house near the docks today?”

Blair said he was. He was too asleep to be surprised someone else knew what was happening. His sailor had vanished into thin air the night before.

“Then I must tell you he is not there today. He spent last night at the Sloane House on West Thirty-fourth Street. If you go now, you can catch him before he leaves.”

“Who is this?” Blair realized the voice had a foreign accent. “Is this Anna’s father?”

“Anna? Anna’s father? No. But a friend. Have you spoken with Anna recently?”

“Of course not. She refuses to see me because she thinks I’m being followed.”

“You will see her soon. I promise you. She sends her best. Goodbye for now. There is no time to talk.” Click.

Blair was overjoyed. Anna had not abandoned him after all. He was a bit disturbed to learn the other spies knew where he was—he assumed he had shaken them along with the police—but it was good to know he was not alone. A network of spies looked after him; a vast net of eyes and ears still connected him to Anna. He dressed quickly, paid his bill and left for the city.

Anna Krull came down to the lobby of the Martha Washington Hotel. It was Saturday, a day she often spent with her father. Sometimes they rode back and forth on the Hudson River ferries on Saturdays, her father taking snapshots of Anna posed against the rail—destroyers and merchant ships directly behind her. She hadn’t seen Simon in four days and missed him painfully this morning. She missed Blair, too, but Anna couldn’t remember him without hating herself for letting desire separate her from a loving father.

She was dreading another anxious, purposeless day when she noticed the poster beside the desk clerk’s window:

FOURTH OF JULY RALLY!

STARS! MUSIC! BONDS!

NOON AT TIMES SQUARE.

That was right around the corner from the Lyric Theater. In a crowd at a war bond rally, she could lose the man or men following her, slip into the Lyric and see her father. He worked on Saturdays now. She would be very careful. If she suspected for a minute someone was still following her, she would walk right past the theater and nobody would be the wiser.

She returned to her room and put on her makeup and her prettiest day dress.

Hank shaved and put on Erich’s white dress shirt. The sleeves were too short, but he rolled them up. The tail was long enough to be tucked in only in the front and his neck was too thick for him to button the top button. Still, it made him look like a dumb, innocent civilian. He put Juke’s knife in the pocket over his heart.

Erich put on a necktie, coat and hat. That way, they wouldn’t look as if they were together. The FBI knew who Erich was, but Rice didn’t. Hank watched Erich get ready and suffered second thoughts. It felt very different when there was another person along—less simple, less pure. It made you more conscious of what you were doing. And yet, Erich had made it clear this was going to be more complicated than Hank had thought it would be. His instincts would not be enough. He needed a cooler head and a second pair of eyes to get this done. His chief fear about Erich was not that he might betray him—not after last night—or fail him in the clutch. His chief worry was that Erich was too green to be a party to murder, too naive. He didn’t know what he was getting into, and Hank felt responsible for him. He would ditch Erich at the final moment and kill his spy alone. Until then, he could use Erich as a thinking, talking bird dog.