SO THE NEW WORLD was not as innocent as it claimed. A refugee from the Old World could not help feeling disappointed, but there was also a perverse sense of satisfaction.
It had begun with the first house, the one from the newspapers. The police noticed an uncommon number of sailors going to a house near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Nothing worse than sex crimes had been suspected when the police and Navy raided the place on March 14. Then the arrested servicemen began to tell tales of overly curious civilians with foreign accents, and a very important gentleman who frequented the house. By the time the story reached the newspapers, the house had become a nest of German spies, the important gentleman a senator from Massachusetts. The FBI became involved. Two weeks after the raid on the house in Brooklyn, the FBI and Navy coordinated a series of raids all over New York: stretches of Fifth Avenue, the Columbus Circle entrance to Central Park, homosexual bars, brothels and houses of assignation, anywhere homosexuals congregated. It was never clear whether they hoped to catch the Nazi spies, the senator from Massachusetts, or simply put a stop to so much immorality. War was new and people were desperate to do something, anything. Whatever the intention, the raids had put them in touch with that immorality, and today made them part of it.
Erich Zeitlin was still startled whenever he found himself including himself with “them.” He was an enlisted man and a foreigner. He stood between a filing cabinet and the window with closed venetian blinds, watched and listened and felt invisible. He knew “they” were wrong, but it wasn’t his place to tell them, or his country.
The Bosch woman sat in their crowded cubbyhole at Navy Intelligence, horribly overdressed, wearing a hat like half a skullcap covered with cloth flowers and a wide-mesh veil. She was like a widow trying to look beautiful when she spoke to the director of a bank. She wasn’t beautiful. She had a great, embarrassing blade of a nose, like the noses of Jews in German newspaper cartoons, only she said she wasn’t Jewish.
“I am zo happy it has been approved,” she sang. “I want zo much to do somethink for this country which has done zo much for me.”
Her Czech-German accent embarrassed Erich. Why did corruption in America have to speak in a foreign accent? Erich himself had been in America only three years, but he had gone to university in England. People often mistook him for English.
“I luf this country like you wouldn’t beleeeeve.” She lifted her veil to dab her painted eyes with the handkerchief she clutched. “We will do most wonderful work together, Doctor. I mean, Captain.”
“Commander,” Commander Mason gently corrected her.
Erich himself often forgot his superior was an officer now and no longer a psychiatrist. It wasn’t just the copy of Krafft-Ebing on the commander’s cluttered desk. Mason’s whole manner said civilian, professor, alienist. His khaki uniform needed pressing. He leaned back in his swivel chair, hands folded behind his head, gently smiling at the woman. Not even the presence of Sullivan, the man from the FBI, changed Mason’s comfortable air of intellect and sloth.
Sullivan sat at the end of the desk between Mason and the woman. He was a cold, fish-eyed man with a bulky Irish face and a vain little moustache across the bottom half of his upper lip. “We do not condone what you do for a living, Mrs. Bosch. But there is a war going on,” he announced, the phrase Americans forever repeated, as if needing to convince themselves. “And war makes strange bedfellows.”
The woman laughed. “You don’t have to tell me about strange bedfellows, meester. That is my business.”
Sullivan pinched his mouth tight, the thin moustache curling into a ball.
Mason chuckled with the woman and nodded. “I prefer to think of this as a marriage of convenience.”
Mrs. Valeska Bosch, late of Prague, late of Vienna, once a promising pantomime artist—Erich imagined her in a tawdry tableau vivant before he was born—ran a little house near the Hudson River docks. They had discovered her during their weekend of raids, and she had discovered them. After her arrest, while being questioned about suspicious characters among her clients, she had suddenly gushed love for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and told them that a Panamanian ship at Pier 37 was bound for Lisbon with a disguised cargo of ball bearings. She knew her world situation, knew where the ball bearings would end up, and was blunt in telling how she got her information. The night before the raid, a Swedish second mate mentioned it while he dandled a boy on his knee, comparing balls and ball bearings. People felt very free and open at her place, she said. There was plenty of information that could be had there, if the Navy were interested. She didn’t want money. She loved her country, hated Hitler and wanted to do her part in the war effort. Of course, if the Navy wanted a steady supply of information, they would have to protect her from the police, shore patrol and Lucky Luciano, who might be in prison but still had a hand in various doings along the waterfront. But she wanted to turn her little establishment, lock, stock and bed, over to Uncle Sam, so great was her patriotism.
Commander Mason was mad for strange, original schemes. As the commander’s one-man staff, actually his secretary, Erich had sat through the first interviews, even helped to draft the proposal, confident nothing would come of it. This was innocent and righteous America, not Austria or Hungary. Someone in the rear admiral’s office with less originality would kill the plan and denounce Mason for considering such a thing. Nevertheless, yesterday afternoon, word came down that the proposal had been approved.
The closed blinds were lined with daylight. Outside, men and women were enjoying the bosky air of a simple spring morning.
Mason brought his chair down and leaned both elbows on the desk. “Now, Valeska,” he said, as if to a patient. “As to our line of action.”
Mrs. Bosch lowered her handkerchief and proudly smiled with her long, red gash of a mouth. “I will come to you once a week and tell you everything I have been hearing.”
“Oh, no. Much too slapdash. And we can’t have you coming here regularly. You might be followed.”
Mrs. Bosch laughed and waved her big bony hand at him. She was too old for such a girlish gesture. “Oh, Commander. Who would follow meeee?”
“German agents,” said Sullivan.
“But agents do not come to my house. Only saay-lors.”
“One never knows,” said Mason. “But, for safety’s sake, one of our people will come to you.”
“Sounds goot.”
“And, just to make things easier for you…” Mason made it sound as incidental as possible. “I’m sure you have your hands full as it is, running your…business. But we’re asking you to take on a man or two of ours. As members of your staff.”
This was the part Erich found hardest to believe. It was bad enough the Navy would be consorting with criminals, and that Mason wanted the Bosch woman to change her place from a house of assignation to an actual whorehouse, providing not just a room but the catamites too. But Mason intended to order several enlisted men to become sexual criminals. “They” had become no better than the Nazis.
Mrs. Bosch bugged her eyes in surprise. “Are you crazeee? You want to have your men living in my house? Nobody lives with me but my houseboy, and he fetches boys when I need them. You talk about safety and suspiciousness. My boys and customers will get suspicious when I have men always there, never doing anything.”
“Oh, our boys will do anything your boys do. We have our nances, too, Mrs. Bosch.”
“You don’t need to tell me that. But my nances are different from your nances. Not every man can be a hooor.”
“We’ll choose carefully.” The papers Mason fingered on his desk were dossiers on the dozen or so possibilities.
“I do not like it. What if I say no?”
“Then the deal is off,” said Sullivan.
“What is wrong? You do not trust me?”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Bosch,” said Mason. “We trust you. We trust you completely. We only want to hear everything that goes on there. A trivial remark, something you might not notice despite your acumen, might be a matter of life or death to us. So we need our own man on the inside. Do you agree? I promise whoever we choose will meet with your approval.”
Erich stood in his corner and watched her. Part of the reason he was present today was so he could carefully watch Mrs. Bosch while the commander carelessly rambled, then give his reactions to Mason afterwards. Her long face looked very annoyed and sour. He hoped she’d say no. If she did, it might mean she wasn’t sincere, or even that she was a double agent. There was always that possibility with foreigners. Whatever the reason, it would end the whole unsavory business. She thought about it a long time.
“What about the money?” she suddenly asked.
“What money?”
“When I provide the boys, I take half of what they make. Your men will be taking business away from boys who pay me half.”
Mason broke into a grin that he shared first with the stony Sullivan, and then with Erich. “No need to worry there, Valeska. We won’t take bread out of your mouth. Our fellows’ll be on the government payroll. You can take a hundred percent of what they make, if you like.”
And Mrs. Bosch did like. “And it will be only one or two? You do not want to be sending me more?” She sounded ready to ask that Uncle Sam provide her entire staff.
“One or two will suit our purposes,” Mason said firmly. “Then you agree?”
She agreed, fervently. Her patriotism returned; she spoke of how proud she was to give of herself. She had nothing to hide at her house and would welcome Mason’s boys with open arms, so long as they fit in and gave her a cut. It was left that, sometime next week, Mason would get back in touch with her, someone would be chosen to serve as liaison between her house and Mason, and they would send her the new men, whom she could inspect at her leisure. She stood up, swore her devotion one last time and departed.
“What a depraved woman,” said Sullivan, closing the door behind her. “Opportunistic foreigner. Patriotism, my eye.”
“Of course.” Mason put a scuffed shoe on his desk and adjusted his sock and garter. “Erich? What time’s the first interview with our…people?”
“Eleven o’—” Erich caught himself. “Eleven hundred, sir.”
“Quite right. If you’ll excuse us, Daniel,” he told Sullivan, “there’s some paperwork I have to take care of. Thank you for coming by. After all, this is your show too.”
“It wouldn’t be if I had any say in it,” Sullivan snarled. “We’re going to hell in a handbasket, if you ask me.”
“An open mind, Daniel. We must keep an open mind. I’ll keep you informed of all further developments. Goodbye.”
Draping his trenchcoat over his arm, Sullivan muttered goodbye and went out the door.
“Irish Catholics,” sighed Mason. “The most repressed blood bound up in the most repressive religion. What a redundant combination.”
Erich adjusted the blinds and let a little more light into the room. He didn’t like the FBI man either—Sullivan was vulgarly moral—but right now such bullishness seemed more human than Mason’s cheerful insouciance.
“Let’s just hope he doesn’t foul up this gift from heaven.” Mason leaned back in his chair again, folded his arms across his chest and gloriously sighed. “The beauty of it. A bordello for inverts and spies. Release the sexual desires a man has to keep hidden, and all his other secrets tumble out after.”
The first interview was in fifteen minutes, but Mason had wanted to get rid of Sullivan only so he could think aloud, toss thoughts at his subordinate. Erich was used to this. Mason had asked that Erich be assigned to him ostensibly because he needed someone who knew German. The real reason was that Erich was from Vienna and Mason assumed he knew all about Freud. Mason thought Freud was a charlatan, but it was no fun mocking the man in the presence of people who didn’t know what you were talking about. Erich regretted the assignment. He had gone to the trouble of getting waivers and permissions to enlist because he hoped to forget himself in the Navy and learn to stop thinking.
“We’re on to something,” Mason gloated. “There’s no telling what might come of this. Clandestine sexuality as a conduit for clandestine intelligence? Once again, my hat is off to the Germans. We never would’ve thought of it on our own.”
Erich pretended to look at the folders he’d picked off Mason’s desk. “I doubt they did it as deliberately as we’re doing it,” he said softly.
“No. I suspect these German spies, whoever they are, only stumbled upon this homo whorehouse and found it so useful. But that’s the way it’s always been: the German proposes, the American disposes. Good old American know-how.” He suddenly glanced up at Erich. “Am I only projecting unconscious doubts of my own, as your Dr. Freud would say—or do you have reservations about our scheme, Erich?”
Erich tapped and tamped the folders together before he laid them back on Mason’s desk. “I do, sir. Now that it’s been approved.”
“Really? I never would’ve guessed,” said Mason admiringly. “You’re certainly adept at hiding your feelings, Erich. So. Do you object on practical grounds or moral grounds?” The commander sounded only curious and playful.
“Practical. You’re involving your—our government in something corrupt. Prostitution and criminal sexuality. Sir.”
“Sex. Of course,” said Mason. “You people of Leviticus,” he chuckled. “You’re positively Bostonian.”
Erich refused to be baited. “My reservations have nothing to do with prudery. I’d feel the same way if we were consorting with gangsters.”
“Mrs. Bosch is hardly a gangster.”
“She’s hardly my maiden aunt, either.” Actually, she reminded Erich of a maiden aunt, the one now safely interned in England. “All I mean to say, sir, is that we’re involving ourselves in something dangerous. We could harm the men we send to this woman.”
“The ends justify the means, Mr. Zeitlin?”
“Sometimes,” Erich admitted. “But here the ends are so nebulous.”
“You think so? You don’t think our elusive Mr. E. and Mr. K. are going to rise to our bait? It takes a thief to catch a thief? Or, in our case, it takes a sui generistic ‘H’ overt to catch a sui generistic ‘H’ overt.”
This was an important part of the scheme, one they hadn’t revealed to Mrs. Bosch. They hoped to catch the homosexual spies who had frequented the house in Brooklyn.
“I don’t know, sir,” Erich answered after a long pause.
“Well, I don’t know either,” said Mason. “And, quite frankly, I don’t really care. Because there’s no telling what else we might stumble on. The coming and goings of an underworld we know nothing about. The secret lives of family men and politicians. A peephole on the rich, sexual underside of everyday life. Along with the necessary tidbits about neutral cargoes. No, Erich, our search for these spies is only our jumping off point for a venture into the unknown. And a bone to throw to the unimaginatively literal minds in the rear admiral’s office, and our colleague, the G-man.”
The commander’s ulterior motives were worse than Erich had imagined. “What we’re doing is only an excuse for voyeurism?”
He hadn’t meant to be so blunt, but his superior only smiled.
“Voyeurism? But that’s what we’ve been doing all along. Intelligence is only voyeurism with a higher purpose. What makes this project different from the others is that our higher purpose has not yet declared itself. But that’s science for you. You cannot predict in advance what will or will not prove useful. You must keep an open mind.” Mason looked up at Erich and narrowed his eyebrows at him. “Is that what disturbs you about our project, Erich? It’s awakened the voyeur in you?”
“Not at all, sir.” He was suddenly angry and knew he couldn’t show it. “I have no interest in these people, prurient or otherwise.”
“No trace of curiosity? Not even a hint of ‘Peeping Tom’ you’re reacting against?”
“If I’m reacting, it’s against something I fear is pointless and compromising.” Why couldn’t he work for a superior who expected him to obey orders, nothing else, instead of a bloody psychiatrist?
“I believe you,” said Mason. “Yes. You’re a good man, Erich. Principled, objective, incorruptible. Sit down, please. Just for a moment.”
Erich warily sat in the chair opposite the commander. It still smelled of Mrs. Bosch’s lilac and talcum. Mason’s flattery worried him.
Mason brought his chair level and folded his hands together on the desk. “It is, as you said, a most corrupting situation. We need someone incorruptible. To serve as liaison between myself and this place.”
Erich stared. “Me?”
“You’re perfect. Intelligent. Incorruptible. You speak German and French. You have that smooth, jaded, European worldliness: too proud of your sophistication to open yourself to new experiences. No fear of you developing undue interest in any dirty doings, is there?”
Was Mason only mocking him? Erich had assumed they would use Sullivan or a junior officer for this.
“Yes. I think I’m right. I will make you our go-between.”
“Sir. I don’t feel qualified. I know nothing about that life. And I have doubts about the whole project.”
“Your lack of sympathy guarantees your disinterest. And your ignorance—well, this war is going to be an education for us all.”
“But Doctor, I mean, Commander—”
“I can’t imagine why you’d refuse, Erich. Unless you have fears about yourself ‘going native.’”
Erich froze.
Mason was smiling to himself. It was the perfect, psychological argument. He had Erich cornered.
“No, sir. I like women.” He didn’t know what else to say.
“I never suspected otherwise. Then you’ll accept the assignment?”
Erich sighed. “If that’s your order, Commander Mason.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll come up with a good cover for your visits. You won’t have to pose as a customer. That could get sticky,” he laughed. “Maybe we could say you were Mrs. Bosch’s bookkeeper. You do look like a bookkeeper, Mr. Zeitlin.”
Erich knew that. There was nothing naval about his stubby body, his round, baby-fat face and round-rimmed glasses. He filled his uniform no better than Commander Mason filled his. Middle class Viennese Jews had no military tradition for Erich to draw from. His Navy whites only made him feel the distance between who he was and who he was supposed to be. He suddenly wanted to close the distance by sounding like a good subordinate.
“Yes, sir. How often will I go to this place, sir?”
“Once or twice a week. It depends on what kind of information starts turning up. You won’t have to live there, Erich. We’ll have our plants for that.”
Maybe he could go in the mornings, when nothing was happening, and not see anything but Mrs. Bosch and their men. Only what kind of men would they be dealing with? Maybe they wouldn’t be able to find men suitable for this house. There was still that possibility. Erich turned hopeful.
“Eleven hundred, Commander Mason.” He pointed at his wrist-watch. “Our first men should be waiting outside.”
“Quite right. Yes. This should be interesting, for both of us. The first lesson in your education, Erich.”
“Yes, sir,” Erich replied, turned sharply and stepped outside.
The corridor felt reassuringly sane and proper. Teletype machines were heard through open transoms, firing out good, conventional war-related reports. Navy Intelligence had temporary quarters in an old office building near Wall Street. Large, oak-paneled rooms were divided up by drab, beige, plywood walls. Brass light fixtures from the twenties remained, and an occasional portrait of a man fat with money. A beautiful Wave swiveled her hips down the corridor and two ensigns nudged each other as they watched her glide past. Erich noticed how attractive she was—the tight skirt gave her a fanny that stretched down the backs of her legs—then shuddered to think he felt obligated to find her attractive.
But he liked women. He genuinely did. He wasn’t comfortable with American women yet—you could never be sure which class they were from and what liberties you might take—but that would come in time. His discomfort with this business had nothing to do with fears about himself. He loved women as much as he loved music, and concentrated on music now only because that was what was most familiar in this alien world. He should know better than to let Commander Mason’s nonsense intimidate him.
A moment passed before Erich noticed the six sailors scattered over the wooden pews in the front office. Mason had scheduled them in batches, which Erich thought unsafe. But the men didn’t fraternize with each other. Most of them shouldn’t know each other, but they still sat apart, as if they knew why they were here and didn’t want to be seen together. They looked awfully young. Erich took the sheaf of orders they had left with the yeoman at the reception desk and called the first man. He looked like any other sailor, not at all effeminate. A little guilty, but no more guilty than any enlisted man on his way to see an officer.
The interviews went quickly. Erich began to think his hope might be fulfilled. None of them were good potential prostitutes.
Their names had been chosen from lists of men charged with homosexual activity. Some were up for court-martials; others had spent time in the brig and were back on active duty. Navy regulations were not clear on the subject; it was left to the discretion of each commanding officer whether a man should be discharged, imprisoned, or scolded and forgotten. The Navy was too busy with the war to concern itself with combing out sexual undesirables.
Nobody admitted to being homosexual. Mason invited confessions by claiming he saw nothing immoral about it—which was true; he thought it a form of mental illness—but there were no takers. Some admitted to homosexual acts, but always under extenuating circumstances. One was drunk; another needed five bucks to take his girl to dinner; a third was homesick and Father O’Connor had been so kind and he didn’t want to hurt the chaplin’s feelings. Others wouldn’t admit to having done anything. How could they know it was a pansy bar, said the three who’d been picked up in a raid on the New Amsterdam. “I thought it was U.S.O.,” said a sailor who’d been arrested at the house outside the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
There were several men from the house in Brooklyn, all still in their dress blues. They had been transferred off their ships and kept in New York to testify at the trial of Gustave Beekman, the man who ran the house. Now that the trial was over, the Navy didn’t know what to do with them. Mason hoped he’d be able to use at least one of these men. They might be able to recognize Mr. E. and Mr. K. and, better yet, they’d be familiar with whorehouses. But these men were as denying and evasive as the rest.
“What a bunch,” grumbled Mason after the short, feisty sailor who said he went to the house in Brooklyn only because his buddy dragged him there. Earlier, they’d spoken to the buddy, who said it was the short sailor who dragged him. “Either they’re compulsive liars or just plain stupid. Either way, we can’t use them.”
“What are we hoping to find?” asked Erich.
“First off, real homosexuals who are trustworthy. I thought we could start with the homosexuals who said, ‘Yes, I’m a homosexual.’”
“What if they don’t exist, sir?”
“They exist. The Navy tries to screen them out, but I’d assumed a few would’ve slipped in.”
Erich went out and called the next sailor. It was another man still in his blues, who’d been in the brig until last week and missed the seasonal issue of whites. But he wasn’t from the house in Brooklyn. His papers said his name was Henry Fayette and he was charged with resisting arrest during the raid on the Bosch house. Erich looked at him, watching for signs of depravity, but the man only looked like a big, blond, dumb peasant. When he stepped into their office, he stood there for a moment and looked around, before he eased his back and shoulders into “Attention” and saluted Commander Mason.
“Seaman Fayette, sir.” His Southern accent reduced his name to one syllable, a cross between “fat” and “fate.”
Mason told him to sit down, make himself comfortable. Erich returned to his observation post between the window and filing cabinet.
“Henry,” began the commander. “May I call you Henry?”
“Whatever you want, sir. Although my friends call me Hank.” He sat there stiffly, forearms resting on the tops of his thighs, big hands hanging between his knees. He glanced at Erich, the blinds, the bookcase to his right, needing to see where he was before he could give his full attention to the officer in front of him. Most men noticed only the officer.
“Then Hank it’ll be. No need to be formal here. And everything you say is strictly confidential, Hank. Do you have any idea why you’re here?”
“Something to do with that house I was at? And my slugging the Shore Patrol. People keep asking me about that house, but I’ve told what little I know. I was only there that once.” He glanced at Erich again.
Erich tried to make himself look stony and unresponsive.
“I’ll tell you about it, too, sir, if that’s what you want. But I really wish everyone would finish with me, so I could get back to my ship. I feel funny sitting out the war like this.”
The man seemed unaware that he’d done anything wrong, but Erich was skeptical about such ignorance. American enlisted men could be as cunning as servants, disguising their cunning as obstinate stupidity.
Mason began to ask his questions. His confidence was unshakable; he didn’t seem to notice that this was another one from whom he’d get nothing. Fayette kept mulishly coming back to his desire to return to his ship and shipmates, until Mason said he’d see what he could do for him, just to get on with the questioning. He offered Fayette a cigarette.
“Thank you, sir. Don’t mind if I do.”
Mason lit it for him with his gold lighter. “How do you like girls, Hank?”
Fayette drew on the cigarette and exhaled. “They’re okay. I suppose I’ll marry one someday.”
“Then you’re not a homosexual?”
Fayette looked at the slim cigarette in his thick fingers. Then he glanced back at Erich, curiously, almost amused, one enlisted man sharing with another his distrust of an officer. The glance annoyed Erich, as though it suggested a conspiracy more personal than rank.
Mason, too, glanced at Erich, but only to share his new interest in this man: he was the first not to deny immediately that he was a homosexual. “You do understand the word, don’t you, Hank?”
Fayette sighed impatiently. “Yeah, well, lots of people have been asking me that lately.”
“We can forget about them. This is something completely different. Nothing you say goes outside this room, Hank. I promise you. It won’t be used against you. In fact, the sooner we learn all there is to know about such a unique fellow as yourself, the sooner we can get you back with your shipmates, Hank.”
“Yeah? Really?”
“Yes. So, Hank. You’ve had sexual relations with men?”
“Yeah.” As if it were a matter of no importance and he was expecting more dangerous questions.
Mason sat up, slowly, so as not to betray his excitement. He picked at Fayette’s sheaf of papers. “Uh, you’ve had sexual relations with more than one man?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you enjoy it?”
Fayette looked blank for a moment, then broke into a grin, a big, imbecilic grin. “If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t do it. Sir.”
The answer shocked Erich. And the grin. Maybe the man really was as ignorant as he seemed.
Mason was smiling now, to keep Fayette talking. “You talk about it, Hank, as though you think there’s nothing wrong or strange about it.”
“Well, I find nothing wrong with it. But I know other people do.”
“That doesn’t bother you? That other people think it’s wrong?”
“No. Some people think it’s wrong to drink liquor, but that doesn’t stop others from drinking it.”
Erich decided the boy must be feebleminded, an idiot. Nobody with normal intelligence could be this innocent. And the commander had lied to the poor creature and was leading him on. It seemed unfair.
“Hank? Have you ever wanted to dress up in women’s clothes?”
“No, sir. Can’t say that I have.”
“Hmmm. And your family? What do they say about this?”
“I never had a reason to talk to them about it. Not something I had to talk about with anybody, until this stuff.”
“Your officers never said anything?”
“No. Why should they? I never wanted to do anything with them.” He laughed, glanced at Erich, then stopped laughing.
Erich tried to relax, tried to hide what he was feeling. He was only a fly on the wall here. He should not let his presence affect what was happening.
“But you did things with your fellow enlisted men?”
“No, sir. Or nobody on my ship.”
“Ah. Then with them you felt you had to keep your desires to yourself?”
“No. Not really. They knew what I liked, my friends anyway. They just thought it was funny. I never did anything with them, so why should they care? I did it at boot camp a few times and can’t tell you what a mess that made. Some guys got upset, a couple got jealous, one guy got into a fight with me because I wouldn’t promise myself to him and nobody else. That taught me to keep my hands to myself, until I was off by my lonesome.”
“Your shipmates only found it funny? Nobody ever taunted you or picked on you because of your desires?”
“No, sir. They like me and I like them. They make jokes about it, but we all find each other funny. I mean, in my section we have me, a dago, a Jew-boy, and a mick. Also, I’m bigger than they are. They know I could flatten them, so they take me as I am.”
The boy was definitely feebleminded. Erich cringed when he heard homosexualism put on the same level as being Italian or Jewish. More shocking was that the Navy had accepted such an obvious imbecile, regardless of his sexual misconduct. It wouldn’t matter to an imbecile whether he had sex with a woman, a man or an animal.
Mason asked more questions about Fayette’s sex life. It was as though he too had recognized the man was a mental defective and unqualified for this project, but was mining him for pathological data. Fayette had his first sexual experience at fourteen, with a farmhand, outside Beaumont, Texas. Since then he’d had sex with truck drivers, hobos, a Bible salesman, assorted roughnecks, a school teacher and most of the people at a Civilian Conservation Corps camp. He reported his sexual history without shame or pride, only surprise that an officer wanted to hear about it. He hesitated when Mason asked for technical details—Erich began to think of excuses for leaving the room—but went ahead and gave them, saying in effect that he was willing to do anything the other guy wanted; it was of no matter to him.
“Uh, Commander.” Erich tapped his watch. “Sixteen hundred. You have four more people to see today, sir.” If Mason wanted to study this case, he could do it on his own time, without Erich having to be present.
“What? Oh, yes. I was forgetting. This has been fascinating, Hank. ‘More worlds than are dreamt of in your…’ But, there is the matter at hand.” Mason cleared his throat and sat up straight. “You want to get back to your shipmates, Hank. I presume you feel a great duty to them, and to your country.”
“Yes, sir. I enlisted to serve my country, not to sit locked up in New York City.”
“What if I told you that you could serve your country, and your friends at sea, by staying in New York a little longer and doing what you like to do?”
“Pardon?”
What was Mason doing? Erich had mentioned the time so they could finish with this poor soul and see the others. Surely he didn’t intend to use this man.
But that was what Mason intended. First, he told Fayette not to mention this to anyone, that many lives depended on his keeping this a secret. Then he told him that the Navy wanted him to live for a couple of months in a homosexual brothel. He gave him the more practical version of why: the search for two possible Nazi spies. “Only for two, maybe three months. Until we catch these two men. Afterwards, we’ll get you back on your ship. Are you willing to do that for us?”
A normal man would respond to the proposal with shocked disbelief or outright laughter, but Fayette only sat there, thinking it over. “I don’t know, sir. It’s like nothing I ever expected. Me serving my country by having my jollies? And I’ve never done it as a whore, not regularly. That might feel funny.” He looked down at the floor and dug at one ear with a finger while he thought it over.
“I shouldn’t need to tell you that by working for us you’ll also be working for your shipmates, Hank. We believe one of these spies is the mastermind of a spy network providing U-boats with information that’s enabled them to wreak havoc on our convoys. We nab him and we save lives, possibly your friends’ lives.”
Erich had grown accustomed to lying, but it seemed criminal to lie like this to an idiot.
“No. I can see that,” said Fayette. “I want to help, only…a whorehouse? Kind of like that place where I was arrested?”
Mason glanced at Erich, realizing that Fayette already knew the Bosch house. Maybe that would change the commander’s mind.
But Mason said, “Kind of. Only that was more a house of assignation, wasn’t it? This one should be more organized, and you’ll be living there. Be just like living in a barracks, I imagine. I think we can arrange that you’re paid a bonus while you’re there. Not combat pay, of course, but something commensurable.”
Fayette didn’t notice he was being bribed. “That’s no mind,” he mumbled, frowning at something happening inside his head.
“And we’ll transfer you back to your ship as soon as possible. Otherwise, there’s no telling what the navy might do with you. There’s been talk of making an example of the people picked up in the sex crime raids.”
Fayette didn’t recognize he was being blackmailed. “I’m sorry I’m so slow in getting used to this. If you just order me to do it, I’ll get used to it soon enough.”
“Well, we can’t just order you, Hank. We have to have your permission.” The rear admiral’s office had at least insisted on that much. “But it’s not a decision that has to be reached today. All we need to know is that you’re interested. We might find someone better qualified and not even use you.”
“I’m interested. I’m definitely interested,” Fayette muttered. “I want to help you, only…No, I’ll get used to the idea.”
“Good,” said Mason, thanked him, said they’d be in touch with him and told Erich to show the man the door. Then Mason took on a look of boredom and began to write.
Fayette stood; Erich had forgotten how large the man was. But Fayette didn’t seem dangerous. He appeared unsteady, confused. Only at the door did he remember to salute. He looked at Erich before he stepped out to the hall; he had the ghostly blue eyes of an infant. It was unnerving, like finding a child’s eyes in the face of a dog. Erich quickly closed the door and turned around.
And Mason let himself go. “Hot dog!” he cried, slapping his desk with both hands. “We found one!”
“Yes, sir.” Erich went back to the filing cabinet, although there was nothing for him to do there. With his back to the commander, he said, “But isn’t the man an idiot? An imbecile or moron or whatever the medical term is? Feebleminded.”
“Yes, yes, he does show imbecilic tendencies. But I was looking at this.” He held up Fayette’s papers. “Semiliterate, but he scored high on oral tests. He has the moral awareness of a donkey, but that’s not important to us. An idiot savant. Thank God. I was beginning to think we were going to have to turn to the prisons.”
“Then he is mentally deficient?” Erich was shocked to hear he was right, as though he’d been hoping he had misunderstood the American sailor.
“He has to be. No other way someone could be so unaware of how sexually sick they are. But it’s a godsend. I realize now that this was exactly what we were looking for: a sick man who didn’t know he was sick.”
“But…a man like that has no business in the Navy. Shouldn’t he be in a mental hospital?”
“Which is exactly where I intend to send Hank. Once we’re done with him.”
I am only an enlisted man, thought Erich. I am a foreigner, I have no right to judge what is right or wrong here. But the dishonesty of this business, and his own helplessness, disturbed him. They were exploiting a child.
“That’s the way it is,” said Mason. “Nice, personable fellow like Hank, no telling who might hear about our escapade if we sent him back to his ship. No, we’ll send him to a good hospital, where he’ll be happy and they can treat his homosexuality. Psychosurgery, electroshock treatment: science has made incredible advances in helping people like Hank. And there, nobody will believe the stories he tells.”
Erich stood up straight. “Yes, sir. Very good, sir.” He almost clicked his heels, he was so intent on losing himself in rank, protocol, the larger purpose of the war. He owed nothing to that American stranger. His one loyalty was to the war.