Hold Tight (19 page)

Hank breathed again, then realized Juke had just insulted him, like his old self. “We can’t all be city slicking queens,” he joshed back.

“Least you know where you stand with a queen.” Juke jabbed at his food. “I saw your friend the bookkeeper sniffin’ around here today. Again.”

“Him? He’s no friend of mine. He was here talking to Bosch again.”

“You two looked close as thieves Sunday.”

Hank laughed, badly. “Hell, boy. That man doesn’t know me from Adam’s housecat. He was just being nosey about what goes on around here.”

“Then how come you go tight as a drum when I mention him? And I get sent out of the house every time he comes by?” Juke looked at him, squinting one eye as if he were trying to see around a corner. “You and him and Mrs. Bosch are up to something. Don’t tell me you’re not.”

“We’re not. You’re nuts, boy.” But Hank couldn’t look at Juke. He was uncomfortable having to lie to the boy, having to turn his friendliness on and off. He tried to turn it on with an old joke. “You’re just jealous of me and the four-eyes.”

“Shit.” Juke curled his lip over his yellow teeth and sat back in his chair. “Pig-fucking cracker. Dumbass asshole.”

Hank grinned, relieved to have Juke taunting him again.

“Dirt-eating Willy Cornbread. Look at you. Just sitting there, smiling like a fool. Nothing I say means shit to you. Cause I’m just a nigger, ain’t I?”

Hank lost his grin. This talk was different. “You’re no nigger, Juke.”

“No? Then what do you call this?” He pinched the tea-colored skin on his arm. “Greasepaint?”

“I mean, I don’t think of you as a nigger.”

“Then what do you do think of me then? You sure don’t think of me as a man.”

“I do.” An effeminate man but—“A young man. Colored.”

“Colored. Yeah. You can’t never forget that, can you?”

“I forget it. Sometimes.” Which was true, only Hank didn’t know if that was good or bad. Juke could be so screwy he became nothing but Juke; his being colored seemed only incidental.

“Prove it.”

“How?”

“Fuck me.”

Hank’s mind stopped and he saw the boy—flat nose insolently raised, pink lower lip curled out like a dare—looking at him.

“Or suck me. Or let me suck you. Or even kiss with me, cracker.”

“You’re razzing me again, aren’t you?”

“You suck and fuck anybody and his brother here. But you never dream of laying a lily-white hand on me.”

“No. Cause they’re customers. You’re a friend. And we’re…”

“
Different.
Yeah. See, you can’t forget I’m just a nigger. You ain’t no friend of mine. I’m just something you kill time with between white dicks.”

“You
are
feeding me a line,” Hank insisted. “You said yourself you don’t like white men.”

Juke’s furious look suddenly turned cold and stony. His fork tapped the table. He hissed at Hank through his teeth. “Dumb whore,” he said. “You think I want to sport with you? You think that’s what I’m talking about? Shit.” He exasperatedly rolled his head around his shoulders, as if squirming loose from the idea. “No, baby. I’m just testing you, proving to you what you think of me. Which is shit. We ain’t friends. We ain’t nothing. You’re just using me and I won’t be used anymore. I don’t even want to eat with you anymore.” Juke jerked his chair back and stood up. “Dumbass whore,” he said. He marched into the pantry where his cot was and slammed the door behind him.

The boy was going crazy, Hank told himself again. But he really felt he had been behaving badly around Juke, running hot and cold with the boy. If only he could explain himself to the boy, tell him why he was here and why he had secrets, then Juke should understand. But that was too dangerous. It was safer to consider bedding with a darky to reassure the boy, although Hank couldn’t picture Juke naked and the boy himself said he wasn’t interested.

The doorbell out front rang and Juke didn’t stir from his room. Before Mrs. Bosch could holler for Juke, Hank went out and answered the door. It was only Smitty and Sash, Sash carrying two new records in their paper sleeves.

“Hey, look at the new houseboy,” said Smitty. “You gonna start wiggling your fanny and sucking watermelon, sailor boy?”

Hank kept his fist at his side and said, “Shut the fuck up.”

Out in the alley, on the way in, Erich saw the open kitchen door above the fence and Fayette chatting with someone at the table, probably the houseboy. Erich watched, wondering how much Fayette had told the Negro, and walked into a garbage can.

The empty can banged over, clattering like the bass end of a piano. Erich and Sullivan froze.

A train began to bell its way out of the yard by the river. Nobody had come to the kitchen door. Erich breathed again and resumed walking.

“Clumsy kike,” Sullivan whispered.

Of course, thought Erich. He had presumed Sullivan hated him for being a Jew, and now he knew.

They carefully lifted the cellar door, tiptoed down the steps into the damp darkness, closed the door, struck a match and found the worklight. The cellar was suddenly bright and grim. The bricks in the foundation were old and uneven, arranged into long, wiggly lines by cement as thick as daub. The wall looked almost medieval in this country where everything was usually so slick and new. Erich stood there, wondering what kind of family had lived here a hundred years ago when the house was built, while Sullivan knelt at his suitcase and set things up. Even without Commander Mason present tonight with his psychology, Erich felt they were posting themselves inside somebody’s Unconscious.

“Wild goose chase,” Sullivan muttered, passing Erich the headset. “I bet you a week’s salary this fella isn’t going to show tonight. If there is such a fella.”

“Maybe.” Erich disliked Sullivan enough to want the man to be wrong. He believed Fayette’s well-dressed Fascist existed, but wondered if the man was actually a spy, or if he would return to the house tonight or this week. Erich wore the headset like a collar around his neck. The hard plastic earpiece became uncomfortable when pinched against his ear too long and he could hear the faint room noise well enough without having to drown himself in it.

Erich sat in the canvas chair Mason had left behind, and waited. He had brought a book with him tonight—
Jews Without Money,
purchased to acquaint himself with American Jews—but he was reluctant to pull it out in the presence of someone who had called him a kike.

Sullivan sat on a crate, took off his jacket and took a yellowed roll of chamois cloth out of the inside pocket. He unrolled the square of cloth at his feet. There was a toothbrush, a tiny screwdriver and a can of lighter fluid inside. He unsnapped the shoulder holster and brought out his blunt revolver. He lovingly turned it in his hands a few times before he popped it open and emptied the bullets into his palm. “Wild queer chase,” he mumbled, taking the toothbrush and stroking the bared drum with the bristles. “Consorting with criminals, when what we should be doing is locking those people up for good. Or castrating them. If they’re not going to use their reproductive organs the way God intended, they have no business using them at all. Never wrestle with pigs, you only get dirty.”

“Your gun,” said Erich. “Have you ever had call to use it?”

“Affirmative. There’s been times when this little sweetheart was all that stood between life and death for me.” Broken open, the revolver looked like only another gadget, such as a can opener.

“Then you’ve actually shot people?”

“No. It’s never been necessary to fire it at anyone,” Sullivan said, without a trace of embarrassment. “But I could, if the situation required it. It’s a vile, nasty world out there. I’m surprised you don’t carry a gat.”

The ostentatious expertise, the slang from the movies—Erich recognized it was all a show for his benefit. He was glad he didn’t carry a side arm. Not only did the responsibility frighten him, the associations repelled him. In Europe only brownshirts and other thugs carried firearms. Over here, guns were an emblem of manhood. Erich could not understand this American language of masculinity, where isolation, silence and guns were more important than family, money or education.

“How far did you get in school?” Erich asked. “Just out of curiosity.”

“I have a college education,” said Sullivan, gazing at Erich, suspecting an insult. “Mr. Hoover insists we have a degree in law or a certificate in accounting.”

“You studied law?” This dense anti-Semite who tried to talk like a tough?

“Accounting,” Sullivan announced. “But just so I could get into the Bureau. Don’t think I’m some pencil-pushing milquetoast, because I’m not.”

“Of course not.” Erich suppressed a smile. It was almost funny. By American standards, the uneducated sailor upstairs, idiot or not, was more of a man than either Erich or this armed accountant who lived with his mother.

The thin line of moustache along Sullivan’s upper lip suddenly looked strange to Erich, as if it had been painted there with mascara. Erich winced. Just being in this house was addling reality. He hoped the suspect would come soon, while reality was still salvageable.

The taxi prowled the side streets behind Pier 59, Blair in the back taking nips from a silvered flask of Scotch and looking for the house. There was one house in roughly the same position to a square as the house from Saturday night, but Blair remembered the house having a red porchlight and this house had a white one. But it had to be the house. Blair knew he was procrastinating.

He should have come Sunday night, when his desire for Anna was so strong and clear it would have carried him through his doubts. He had meant to come last night, but had delayed leaving his apartment for so long that when it began to rain, he could tell himself nobody would be there. Tonight he was using a little Scotch to fortify his memory of Anna. He took another nip and told the driver to return to the first house, the one with the white light.

When the cab coasted to a stop, Blair knew it was the place. He paid the driver and stood on the dark sidewalk after the taxi had driven off. The flask was still in his hand, so he raised it to his mouth one last time. It was empty. Was he drunk? If he was drunk, he should come back another night when his mind was sharper. But Blair knew how small the flask was. His lightheadedness was more fear than alcohol, although there was nothing for him to be afraid of. He was going to watch a man masturbate, nothing more.

He slipped the flask over his heart and rang the bell. The door was answered by a colored boy without respect or manners. He listened coldly to Blair’s introduction, then directed him up the stairs with an insolent twist of his head. Indignation replaced Blair’s nervousness. Under different circumstances, he would see to it that the boy was fired.

The room upstairs was smaller and meaner than Blair remembered, more shabby-genteel than sordid. He had nothing to fear from something so far beneath him. A few young men lounged about like stray cats. A few older men leaned over them, as if examining the upholstery on the furniture. Toscanini’s Beethoven played preposterously on the phonograph. Poor Beethoven.

Then Blair saw his sailor. Even he was more common-looking than Blair remembered. The image of the naked man thrashing on a bed had grown so large in Blair’s mind that he was expecting a marble giant. Uniformed and vertical, the sailor was a bit taller than the others, but hardly demonic. He stood in the corner, listening to a short man with florid hand gestures and an eyepatch, sleepily nodding at the man, until he saw Blair. The short man turned to see what the sailor was seeing. Painted on the man’s black eyepatch was a startling blue eye.

Blair coolly nodded at the sailor, then pretended to look around the room. He did not want to see the sailor naked again.

Hank hurried across the room. “Hey. If it isn’t my old buddy. Good to see you again.” And he slapped his spy on the back.

The blow was so hard it took Blair a moment to realize he had been touched by the sailor, and he didn’t want to be touched. “Yes. Good evening,” he said, looking past the sailor to the two boys squabbling over the phonograph.

“I was hoping you’d be back,” said the sailor. “Fine time we had us the other night.” His confident friendliness was almost insulting.

“Yes,” said Blair. “I enjoyed talking with you. I wanted to talk some—”

The painted eye was suddenly beside them.

“Excuse me, suh,” the man with the eyepatch told Blair, “but Ah saw this fahn speciman fust.” He reached up to clasp the sailor’s shoulder. “Ah don’t want to sound greedy, but Ah was under the impression Ah was next on his dance card.”

“Sorry, bub. But this here’s an old friend of mine. We haven’t seen each other in a coon’s age. Have we, friend?”

The sound of two Southern accents and the smell of liquor on the short man’s breath made Blair feel all three of them were drunk. He couldn’t take his eye off the painted eye, blue brushstrokes on black and larger than the man’s real eye.

“In that case,” said the man, “would you care to make it a pahty?” He smiled and raised his eyebrows at Blair. “The three of us, Ah mean. You’re a rather fahn speciman of manhood yourself. Be an honor for me just to watch, even.”

Blair’s stomach almost turned itself inside out.

The sailor burst out laughing and threw an arm around Blair. “Thanks, but no thanks, old buddy. My friend here’s a mite on the shy side. Three’s a crowd. You understand?”

“Pity,” said the man. “Wahl, no use making a fool of mahself chasing after this boy. Maybe you’ll leave some for me when you’re through.” He politely nodded to Blair and departed, looking for unattached men.

The sailor withdrew his insultingly intimate arm. “Got rid of him, didn’t we? Yup, want to have you all by my lonesome.”

It was humiliating enough to be treated by these people as though he were one of them, but it was worse having this pervert condescend to him. Even the sailor’s friendliness sounded condescending and fake. There was a calculating look in his eyes—he was already thinking of the money—that turned his overdone smiles and words into mockery. How could anyone who had done what this man had done in Blair’s presence think he was better than Blair?