MRS. BOSCH’S BOOKKEEPER CAME over Monday afternoon, as always, and spoke to her for a long time in her office. She called for her houseboy and sent him out to buy a Czech newspaper, which meant he had to go over to Union Square. Shortly afterwards, two electricians arrived at her door—Sullivan and another younger FBI man. They exiled Fayette to the kitchen and spent a long time up in his room. They hung a microphone on the ceiling up there—an enormous perforated metal sausage they disguised with a Chinese lantern—and ran a line that looked like the lantern’s electric cord down to the floor, along the baseboard and out the window. The line hung loose and uncovered down the outside of the house, then passed through the cellar door. There was only the furnace in the cellar, and no reason for anyone to come down here at this time of year. The ceiling was low. Sullivan’s partner, tall and gloomy, kept banging his head on the joists, but without so much as a curse or groan in response. The paw prints of a small dog or large rat ran across the uneven dirt floor. The place smelled like something had died down there.
When everything was set up, Erich was called down to listen in. “After all,” said Sullivan, “you’re the one who’s going to be using it.”
“Me? I thought that was your job.”
“You’re nuts if you think the FBI’s going to sit around listening to queers go at it.” He patted the shoulder holster beneath his overalls, his gun proof of who he was. “It’s not decent. No, we’ll set things up and tail anybody you want tailed. But we’re leaving the ear-to-the-keyhole business to you and your superior, thank you. We’re G-men, not peeping toms.”
Erich had hoped he’d be able to keep his distance during this phase. Maybe Mason would do all the listening. The commander had jumped so quickly at Fayette’s suggestion that Erich again suspected he was more interested in monitoring pathology than in catching spies.
He accepted the earphone and wire headband Sullivan handed him, placed it to one ear. There was only electric air, like the roar inside a seashell. Then, beneath the roar, as if deeper inside the shell, Erich heard Sullivan’s partner, who’d been sent back upstairs. The glum young man stood three floors above them and sang, “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.” The thing actually worked, dammit.
Afterwards, Sullivan and his partner explored the backs and alleys behind the house, finding a route between the slaughterhouse and high wooden fences that would get them from the cellar to the street without going through the house. Then, by going around the block, they could reach a spot opposite the front door in time to see the man after he left Fayette’s room. Sullivan replaced the red light over the front steps with a white one, so they could see what the man looked like before they followed him into the darkness.
Erich and Sullivan returned after dinner, accompanied by Commander Mason. Sullivan’s partner remained in the government-issue black Ford parked around the corner. Mason, out of uniform, dressed like a man who was going to putter around in his garden, was more full of himself than ever. He brought a folding canvas chair with him. With the others standing around him in the glare of a work light hung on a nail, Mason sat there wearing the headset, happily grinning at his ability to hear everything in an empty room upstairs. Nobody entered the room. After an hour, the mere idea of the thing was no longer enough for Mason. He began to get bored. He passed the headset to Erich and tried to talk to Sullivan about the mother Sullivan still lived with. Sullivan sat on a crate and played solitaire, laying the cards on the dirt floor at his feet. Each time the ceiling beneath the front hall creaked, Mason snatched the headset from Erich, but nobody ever entered the room. They heard doors and, once, they heard a bed collapse, but nothing in the room itself.
Shortly after ten, there was thunder in the distance, then a rattle of rain on the cellar door. The air crackled loudly in the earphone, turned into violent static and began to flick on and off, until the earphone went dead.
“Drat,” said Mason. “What if one of us poses as a customer, goes up there with Fayette and fixes it?”
“Sir,” said Erich. “The houseboy has seen me twice in two days. If he sees me tonight, he’ll get suspicious.” The thought of going inside made his stomach cramp up.
“Naturally,” said Mason. “I was thinking maybe I should go up.” The man was dying to see what went on in this house.
Sullivan bent over the open suitcase, fiddling with the batteries and vacuum tubes inside. “Outside line’s shorted out,” he announced. “The rain. Nothing we can do until we replace the connectors with ones that’re waterproof. You can go in there if you like, Commander. But won’t be a thing you can do tonight, unless you want to stake out the room from under that pervert’s bed.”
Mason seemed to consider that, briefly. Then he lost his temper. “Why in blazes didn’t you use the right thingamabobs to begin with?”
Sullivan remained aloof and remorseless. “It did not seem necessary.”
Mason glared at him, glanced at Erich, then the ceiling. They were trapped down here by the rain, with only their ideas of what might be going on upstairs.
“So,” said Mason, admitting defeat. “Let’s hope this spy, imaginary or otherwise, stays home tonight because of the storm.” Failure had brought out a little skepticism in the commander about the enterprise.
The rain let up around midnight and they stumbled out through the alleys with their equipment to the car—the blind leading the blind, thought Erich.
Erich returned the next afternoon, the houseboy was sent on another errand, Sullivan fixed the line and Erich learned from Fayette that the man had not been there. When he reported back to Mason, the commander said he had a previous engagement that night and was leaving Erich in charge.
Tuesday night, Hank sat in the kitchen with Juke, eating Juke’s chicken stew. Mrs. Bosch took her dinner in her office, with a single glass of wine “for the stomack,” so Hank and Juke usually ate alone. Hank used to enjoy eating with Juke, his taunts and teases, even his calling Hank “po white trash” for covering everything with catsup and stirring it together into one pink mass. But Juke had been acting strange lately, pestering Hank when Hank wanted to give his full attention to the web of secrets thickening around him, or, when Hank wanted to talk, responding to his remarks with cold shrugs and sulky silence. It was as though, whatever Hank wanted, Juke would do the opposite.
Tonight, like last night, Hank was conscious of the men in the cellar, what they might hear, what they might think. It was like when he was a kid and felt God, or someone out there, watching and judging his every move. It made him worry he might be wrong about the swell being a spy. The wire getting fouled up the night before only gave him something else to worry about. Hank wanted to distract himself by swapping insults with Juke—“This chicken or some poor pigeon you snagged?”—but the boy refused to respond to the baiting.
Juke sat there, drawing figures on the oilcloth with his fork when he wasn’t picking at his food. From where Hank sat, the indented marks looked like valentine hearts. The boy rubbed each one out as soon as he drew it.
The back door was open and there were the usual smells of stewed garbage, river and chicken lime. It was dark now. Erich and the others should be arriving soon, or maybe they were already down there. They had no signals to let Hank know what was happening. He wouldn’t know if the wire worked or even if there was anyone down below listening until tomorrow, if Erich came by. It was like not knowing for sure if Jesus was real until you died and went to heaven.
Out in the alley, the steady hum of machinery coming from the docks was broken by a nearby clatter and bang. A garbage can had fallen over.
Hank listened. He watched Juke so hard that Juke looked up and paid attention to what he had heard.
“Just a cat,” said Hank, trying to undo the suspicion he had aroused. But he thought he heard a heavy suitcase knocking against a leg. The men were returning. “Or dog or something,” he added.
Then, on the raised railroad track toward the river, a train started up, couplings banging taut up and down the line, like a slow string of firecrackers. There was a rumble of empty boxcars and every other sound outside was buried.
“Dumb hick,” sneered Juke. “The city. Things are always bumping in the dark.”
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?
“So,” said the sailor. “You want to go on up?”
“Shortly. I want something to drink first.”
He expected the sailor to get it for him, to recognize who was master and who was servant here. But the sailor only said, “Nothing but beer. If you want something stronger, you’ll have to talk with Mrs. Bosch.”
“Beer will do,” said Blair, not making a move toward the table with the pitcher and glasses.
The sailor stood where he was, grinning and calculating at Blair.
Then the door opened and the colored boy entered with a bowl of chipped ice that he slammed on the table. “Suck on this,” he told the room, then wheeled around, and was almost out the door when he saw Hank with a customer.
The sailor was watching the boy. His smug confidence disappeared and he looked worried, uneasy.
The boy hung in the door. “Taking it slow tonight, aren’t you, Blondie? All this white dick’s getting mighty old.”
But the sailor didn’t tell the boy off or even laugh. He nervously turned his back on the boy.
“Lickorish!” hissed the boy, and he pulled the door shut.
“Crazy coon,” the sailor mumbled. “Pay him no mind.”
Blair thought Southerners hated coloreds, but the sailor seemed distressed by the boy, even frightened of him. Or maybe it was the mere suggestion of sex with a colored that disgusted the sailor. It disgusted Blair too, but to a Southerner it must be a fate worse than death. It would be as humiliating to a Southerner as sodomy is to a man. Blair wanted to humiliate the sailor.
“So. You said you wanted a beer?” The sailor seemed ready to get it for him.
“Not anymore. Let’s go up.” Blair knew he could not make his proposal in the presence of others.
“Fine by me. Time’s a’ wastin’.” He hurried to the door and opened it for Blair.
They started up the dark, creaking stairs and Blair waited until he reached the landing before he turned around and stopped the sailor. “This time, I prefer something different.”
“No skin off my nose.” The sailor stood a few steps down, so his face was level with Blair’s chest. “We can just sit up there and talk tonight. You don’t have to watch me do anything.”
“I want to watch you,” Blair said, smiling. “With someone else.”
The sailor looked at him, then looked up toward the top floor and over the bannister to the floors below, only there was nobody in sight. “Yeah?”
“Yes. You and the colored boy.”
It had all the effect Blair had hoped for. The smirky, blockish face looked confused, then blank, then horrified, then blank again. “Shoot.” The sailor tried to grin. “You serious, mister?”
“There’s fifty dollars in it for you.”
The sailor hesitated. “Nyaah. Let’s just talk tonight. You like talking, remember?”
“No. I don’t feel like talking tonight. It’s you and the colored boy. Or nothing.” Blair was so bent on humiliating the man, he didn’t care if he learned what he had come here for tonight. Or perhaps he could shake up the sailor so badly he could learn everything. Blair was amazed at what he was doing. He must be drunk.
There was still a look of watchful calculation in the sailor’s eyes, but his face was slack and numb. His tongue rolled around the inside of his mouth, as if there was a terrible taste there. “Fifty dollars?” he muttered.
“To be split with the boy as you see fit. Although I expect a colored would jump at the privilege of doing things with a white man for free.”
“I don’t know. What if he says no?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” It would be wonderfully cruel to hear the sailor ask a nigger to go to bed with him.
“You’re serious? This is really what you want?”
“We all have our odd peculiarities. Maybe this is one of mine.”
The sailor stood very still, wheels turning inside his head. He suddenly leaned over the bannister and hollered, “Juke! Hey, Juke! We need you!” He turned back to Blair. “He mighta gone out.”
“Call again.”
The sailor did. There were footsteps down below and the boy’s black hair and white eyes appeared in the narrow slit of the telescoped stairwell. Blair thought the boy’s straight hair made him look like a monkey wearing a toupee.
“Oh. It’s you,” the boy answered.
“Can you come up a minute, Juke? There’s something we have to ask you. Please?”
“Oh, yeah? What could you want from me?” But the boy started up the stairs.
“We’ll go to your room,” said Blair. “This kind of business should be transacted in private, don’t you think?” The humiliation that had already begun with “please” would be even sharper when observed in close quarters.
The sailor resumed his walk up the stairs, then stopped and said, “No. We can ask him here.”
“Oh, no. People might hear us. I have my reputation to think of.” As if he cared what these lowlife degenerates thought of him. “Come along. You don’t want to make me cross and lose your fifty dollars, do you?”
That fifty dollars actually seemed to give Blair complete power over the sailor, because, disgusted as the man was, he nodded and trudged on up the stairs.
“Come along, boy,” Blair called down. “Time is money.”
The sailor opened the door to his room and nodded Blair inside. He hesitated a moment, then entered, whistling as soon as he stepped into the room, walking into a corner and out again, whistling to himself as if terrified.
Downstairs, Erich was thinking about the celibacy of Brahms when he heard the tuneless whistling just below his ear. He pulled the headset on, adjusted the hard earphone and listened.
Sullivan looked up from his gun, now laid out in pieces on the cloth at his feet. “Our good fairy’s got a customer?”
“No. I mean, yes,” said Erich. “But not just any customer. He gave the signal.”
“Damn.” Sullivan stared at the pieces of his gun. He began to screw things back together. “Well?”
“Nobody’s talking.” Erich heard footsteps, then a straining chair, then another string of whistled notes.
“Maybe there isn’t anybody,” said Sullivan. “What if your fairy’s up there alone and he does different voices. Maybe he’s up there with Charlie McCarthy.”
Erich raised his hand to silence Sullivan. Someone else had come into the room. Someone began to speak.
“Uh, close the door, will ya. Juke? I told him what you were gonna say, but this man here wants to ask you anyway.”
Erich recognized Fayette’s voice, edged with static like a news broadcast from across the ocean. What was the houseboy doing up there?
“Yeah? What didja want to ask me?”
The boy sounded as sassy as ever, but, without seeing his face, Erich didn’t think he sounded especially Negro, at least not like Negroes on the radio.
“It’s not my responsibility to ask. That’s your prerogative, sailor.”
The third voice was cool and measured, as precise as an Englishman’s, but with the faintly nasal flatness of Americans. It did not sound like the voice of a spy. All Erich could picture was the kind of overaged young man you saw portraying youths on the New York stage.
Nobody spoke for a moment, then the houseboy said, “Been getting piss-elegant, Blondie? Oh, but darling, that paper lantern doesn’t do a thing for this room. You have to turn off the light and turn on the one in the lantern.”
Erich went pale.
“They’re queering off already?” said Sullivan. “You’re gonna make yourself sick if you listen to everything. It’s gonna make me sick watching you listen.”
Erich pressed the cup of the earphone hard over his ear, as if listening could stop the boy from giving them away.