Ruth felt an uncharacteristic urge to avert her gaze. Instead, she fixed him with the cold level stare, cheeks immobile, jaw set, which she had heard Mr. Love refer to, when he thought her out of earshot, as her "Otto von Bismarck look." An apologetic smile briefly creased the little Jew"s face.
Though he could not have known it (and never did learn for certain just what went wrong that day), Sammy Clay"s bad luck was to have arrived on the very afternoon when the bubbling motor of Ruth Ebling"s hostility toward Jews was being fueled not merely by the usual black compound of her brother"s logical, omnivorous harangues and the silent precepts of her employer"s social cla.s.s. She was also burning a clear, volatile quart of shame blended with unrefined rage. The previous morning, in New York City, she had stood with her mother, her sister-in-law, and her uncle George, on the sidewalk outside the Tombs, watching as the bus carrying her remaining brother, Carl Henry, off to Sing Sing disappeared in a thick cloud of exhaust.
Carl Henry Ebling had pleaded guilty and been sentenced, by a judge named Conn, to a term of twelve years for bombing the bar mitzvah reception of Leon Douglas Saks at the Pierre. Carl Henry, a fervent, dreamy, but never especially adroit or competent boy, had carried these traits with him into a pa.s.sionate and shiftless manhood. But the formless and badly dented idealism with which he had returned from the battlefields of Belgium, curdling in the long indignity of the Depression, had taken on new shape and purpose after 1936, when a friend had invited him to join a Yorkville social organization, the Fatherland Club, which by the outbreak of war in Europe had transmogrified or splintered off-she had never been able to follow it-into the Aryan-American League. While Ruth had never entirely agreed with Carl Henry"s views-Adolf Hitler made her nervous-or felt comfortable with her brother"s having taken such an active role in his party"s activities, she saw unquestionable n.o.bility in his devotion to the cause of freeing the United States from the malevolent influence of Morgenthau and the rest of his cabal. And furthermore, it ought to have been as clear to the judge, to the prosecutor (Silverblatt), and to everyone as it was to Ruth herself that her brother, who had insisted, in spite of his lawyer"s advice, on pleading guilty, and who much of the time seemed to be under the impression that he was a costumed villain in a comic book, was clearly out of his mind. He belonged in Islip, not Sing Sing. That the bomb her brother had made-in the shape of a trident, how could they not see the craziness in that?-had somehow managed to explode, injuring only him, Ruth blamed on the bad luck and fumbling nature that had never deserted her brother. As for the harsh sentence he had received, this she blamed, as did Carl Henry, not only on the workings of the Jewish Machine but, with an unwillingness that wrenched her heart, on her employer, Mr. James Haworth Love himself. James Love had, from the early thirties, been extremely vocal in his opposition to Charles Lindbergh, to the America Firsters, and above all to the German-American Bund and other pro-German groups in this country, which in speeches and newspaper editorials he typically characterized as "fifth columnists, spies, and saboteurs," attacks that had climaxed, at least in Ruth"s view, with the prosecution and imprisonment of her brother. Thus was the dull dislike that Ruth ordinarily would have borne for Sammy made keen by her suppurating detestation of his host for the weekend, of the way Mr. James Haworth Love conducted his affairs, both political and social. Witnessing this relaxation of the ban, unarticulated yet absolute, on the presence of Jews at Pawtaw, hitherto among the few traditions of his parents and empire-building grandparents that Mr. Love had continued to respect, seeing it as a final proof of the man"s shamelessness and debility, her heart rebelled. It would require only one further outrage to push Ruth into taking steps to alleviate the pressure that had been building in her breast for so long.
"Saw the smoke," Mr. Love barked. "Fires lit. Very good, Ruth. How are you?"
"I"m sure I"ll live."
The men all trooped up the steps, tossing their bright empty greetings in her direction, complimenting her on her hair, the style of which had not altered since 1923, her color, the smells emanating from the kitchen. She greeted them politely, with something of her usual wary wryness, like a schoolteacher welcoming the return from vacation of a group of smart alecks and cutups, and told them, one by one, which rooms would be theirs and how they could find them if they didn"t already know. The bedrooms had each been named by some early Love enthusiast after vanished local Indian tribes. One of the men, extraordinarily good-looking and with eyes the very color of the new Cadillac and a dimple in his chin, much taller and broader than any of the others, shook her hand and said that he had heard the most amazing things about her oyster stew. The spindly-legged Jew hung back, sheltering in the lee of the green-eyed giant. His only greeting to her was another crooked smile and a nervous cough.
"You"ll be in Raritan," she told him, having held back especially for him this smallest and most cramped of the third-floor guest rooms, one with no porch and only a fragmentary view of the sea.
He looked almost fearful at this information, as if it were news of a grave responsibility she had placed upon him.
"Thank you, ma"am," he said.
Ruth would remember afterward that she was troubled by a brief, mild emotion that lay somewhere between affection and pity for the little snub-nosed Jewish boy; he seemed so out of place among all these tall and sporting daffodils. She had a hard time believing that he could really be one of them. She wondered if he had gotten here by some kind of mistake.
Ruth Ebling could not have known how nearly her speculations on Sam"s status and position coincided with his own.
"Jesus," he said to Tracy Bacon, "what am I doing here?" He dropped his suitcase. It landed with a m.u.f.fled thud on the thick carpet, one of several worn Oriental rugs with which the creaking floorboards of Raritan were patchworked. Tracy had already left his bags down in his second-floor room, which, in a striking access of precognition by that Indian-loving ancestor, had been designated Ramc.o.c.k. He lay now across Sammy"s iron bed on his back, legs raised and crossed at the knee, arms folded beneath his head, picking with a fingernail at the peeling white enamel of the bedstead. Like many big, well-built men, he was an inveterate layabout who disdained physical exertion except in brief Red Grange bursts of frantic grace. He furthermore detested standing upright, which made his radio work particularly obnoxious to him; and he loathed being obliged to sit up straight. His inherent ability to feel at ease wherever he went was coupled powerfully with a bone-deep laziness. Whenever he entered a room, no matter how formal the occasion, he generally sought out a place where he could at least put his feet up. "I"ll bet I"m the first kike that"s ever set foot in this joint."
"I don"t think I"ll take that bet."
Sammy went to the little window, each of its panes smudged with a thumbprint of frost, in the narrow dormer that overlooked the back lawn. He cranked it open, letting in a cool blast of brine and chimney smoke and the rumblings and fizzings of the sea. In the last quarter hour of the day, Dave Fellowes and John Pye were way down on the beach, tossing a football with a certain grim fervor, in dungarees and heavy sweatshirts but with their feet bare. John Pye was also a radio actor, the star of Paging Dr. Maxwell, Paging Dr. Maxwell, and a friend of Bacon, who had introduced Pye to the sponsor of and a friend of Bacon, who had introduced Pye to the sponsor of The Adventures of the Escapist. The Adventures of the Escapist. Fellowes ran the Manhattan office of a member of New York"s congressional delegation. Sammy watched as Fellowes turned his back on Pye and took off down the beach, scattering white puffs of sand. Fellowes reached up, looking over his shoulder, and a short, accurate forward pa.s.s from Pye found his hands. Fellowes ran the Manhattan office of a member of New York"s congressional delegation. Sammy watched as Fellowes turned his back on Pye and took off down the beach, scattering white puffs of sand. Fellowes reached up, looking over his shoulder, and a short, accurate forward pa.s.s from Pye found his hands.
"This is so strange," said Sammy.
"Is it?"
"Yes."
"I guess it is," Bacon said. "I guess it must be."
"You wouldn"t know."
"Well, I... maybe the reason I don"t think so is that I always felt so strange, you know, before I found out that I wasn"t the only one in the world-"
"That"s not what I mean," Sammy said gently. He had not meant to sound argumentative. "That"s not what feels strange to me, kid. Not because they"re all a bunch of fairies, or because Mr. James Love the sock magnate is a fairy, or because you"re a fairy or I"m a fairy."
"If you are," Bacon said with mock correct.i.tude. you are," Bacon said with mock correct.i.tude.
"If I am."
Bacon gazed at the ceiling, arms folded contentedly under his head. "Which you are."
"Which I might be."
In fact, the question of what a later generation would term Sammy"s s.e.xual orientation seemed, at least to the satisfaction of everyone who made up the party at Pawtaw on that first weekend of December 1941, to have largely been settled. In the weeks since their visit to the World"s Fair and their lovemaking inside the dark globe of the Perisphere, Sammy had, along with his strapping young paramour, become a fixture in the circle of John Pye, considered at that time, and for long afterward in the mythos of gay New York, to be the most beautiful man in the city. At a spot in the East Fifties called the Blue Parrot, Sammy had experienced the novelty of seeing men doing the Texas Tommy and the Cinderella, close, in darkness, though his weak stems prevented him from joining in the fun. Tomorrow, as everyone knew, he and Tracy were leaving for the West Coast, to take up their new life together as scenarist and serial star.
"So what is strange, then?" said Tracy.
Sammy shook his head. "It"s just, look at you. Look at them." He jerked a thumb toward the open window. "It"s that they could all play the secret ident.i.ty of a guy in tights. Your bored playboy, your gridiron hero, your crusading young district attorneys. Bruce Wayne. Jay Gar-rick. Lamont Cranston."
"Jay Garrick."
"The Flash. Blond, muscles, nice teeth, a pipe."
"I would never smoke a pipe."
"This one went to Princeton, that one went to Harvard, the other one went to Oxford...."
"Filthy habit."
Sammy wrinkled up his face to acknowledge that his attempts at rumination were being parried, then looked away. Down on the beach, Fellowes had tackled John Pye. They were rolling in the sand.
"A year ago, when I wanted to be around someone like you, I had to, you know, make you up. And now ..." He looked across the broad, sere expanse of the lawn, past Pye and Fellowes. A signature of foam scrawled itself across the surface of the waves. How could he begin to say how happy he had been, this last month or so, in the radiant focus of Bacon"s regard, how mistaken Bacon was in wasting that regard on him. No one as beautiful, as charming and poised and physically grand, as Bacon could possibly take an interest in him.
"If you"re asking me if you can be my sidekick," Bacon said, "the answer"s yes. We"ll get you a mask of your own."
"Say, thanks."
"We"ll call you, oh, how does "Rusty" sound? Rusty or Dusty."
"Shut up."
"Actually, Musty Musty would be more appropriate." When they were in bed together, Bacon was always sampling deep nostalgic drafts of Sammy"s p.e.n.i.s, claiming it gave off the precise odor of a pile of old tarpaulins in his grandfather"s woodshed back in Muncie, Indiana. Once, the location of the shed had been given as Chillicothe, Illinois. would be more appropriate." When they were in bed together, Bacon was always sampling deep nostalgic drafts of Sammy"s p.e.n.i.s, claiming it gave off the precise odor of a pile of old tarpaulins in his grandfather"s woodshed back in Muncie, Indiana. Once, the location of the shed had been given as Chillicothe, Illinois.
"I warn you...." Sammy said, head inclined menacingly to one side, arms jutting out to execute a couple of judo chops, legs coiled to spring.
"Or, given the state of your linens, young man," Bacon said, raising his arms to his face, already cringing, "maybe we ought seriously to consider Crusty." Crusty."
"That does it," Sammy said, launching himself onto the bed. Bacon pretended to scream. Sammy scrambled on top of him and pinned his wrists to the bed. His face hung suspended twenty inches above Bacon"s.
"Now I"ve got you," he said.
"Please," said Bacon. "I"m an orphan."
"This is what we used to do to wise guys in my neighborhood."
Sammy pursed his lips and allowed a long strand of saliva to dangle downward, tipped by a thick bubbled bead. The bubble lowered itself like a spider on its thread until it hung just over Bacon"s face. Then Sammy reeled it back in. It had been years since he had last attempted the trick, and he was pleased to discover that his spittle retained its viscosity and he his pinpoint control of it.
"Ew," said Bacon. He thrashed his head from side to side and struggled under the weight of Sammy on his wrists, while Sammy dangled the silvery thread over him again. Then, abruptly, Bacon stopped struggling. He looked at Sammy, level, calm, and with a dangerous glint in his eye; of course he could have freed himself easily, if he so desired, from the puny grip of his lover. His look said so. He opened his mouth. The pearl of spit dangled. Sammy cut the thread. A minute later, they lay naked beneath the four piled blankets on the narrow bed, disporting themselves in the precise manner that Dr. Fredric Wertham, in his fatal book, would one day allege to be universal among costumed heroes and their "wards." They fell asleep holding each other, and were wakened by a smell, comforting and maternal, of boiled milk and salt water.
A number of fragmentary accounts survive of the events that transpired at Pawtaw on the sixth of December, 1941. The entry in James Love"s journal for 6 December is characteristically terse. It notes that Bob Perina had gained eighty-two yards for Princeton that afternoon, and gives details of the menu and highlights of conversation at dinner, with the rueful annotation "in rtrspct mr trivial than usl." The guests, as always, are identified by their initials: JP, DF, TB, SC, RP, DD, QT. The entry ends with the single word DISASTER. Only the absence of any entry at all for the following day, and the preoccupation of Monday"s entry, when there was so much else going on in the world, with a visit to his attorney, give any further hint of what transpired. Roddy Parks, the composer, in an entry in his famous diary, supplies the name of another guest (his lover at the time, the photographer Donald Davis), and agrees with Love that the princ.i.p.al subjects of conversation at the table were a large exhibition of Fauvist paintings at the Marie Harriman Gallery, and the king of Belgium"s surprise marriage. He also notes that the oyster stew was a failure and that Donald had remarked earlier in the afternoon that something seemed to be troubling the housekeeper, whom Parks calls Ruth Appling. His account of the raid is nearly as terse as Love"s: "The police were called."
A check of the report filed by the Monmouth County sheriff supplies the name of the final guest that weekend, a Mr. Quentin Towle, as well as a rather more detailed account of events that evening, including some insight into the impetus that sent Ruth, at long last, to the telephone. "Miss Ebling," the report reads, "was exaspirated [sic] [sic] by the recent imprisonment of her brother Carl and happened in a bedroom to stumble upon a comic strip book of a type which she held responsible for many of the brother"s mental problems. At this point, having identified the author of said comic strip book as one of the suspects, she determined to notify the authorities of the activities taking place in the house." by the recent imprisonment of her brother Carl and happened in a bedroom to stumble upon a comic strip book of a type which she held responsible for many of the brother"s mental problems. At this point, having identified the author of said comic strip book as one of the suspects, she determined to notify the authorities of the activities taking place in the house."
It is interesting to note that in spite of the emphasis, that night and during the course of the largely inconclusive legal proceedings that followed, on the role of the comic book in triggering Ruth Ebling"s act of retribution, the only guest at Pawtaw that evening for whom there is no existing arrest record is the book"s author.
Sammy got drunk at dinner for the first time in his life. Drunkenness came over him so slowly that at first he mistook it for the happiness of s.e.xual fatigue. It had been a long day, one that had left a bodily imprint in his memory: the chill outside the Mayflower that morning as they waited for Mr. Love and his friends to pick them up; the elbow in his ribs, the roar and ashy smell of the Cadillac"s heater, the sharp shaft of December air blowing in through the car window on the way down; the burn of a shot of rye he accepted from John Pye"s flask; the lingering mark of Bacon"s teeth and the imprint of his thumbs on Sammy"s hips. As he sat at the dinner table, eating his stew and looking around him with an expression he knew, without anxiety, to be a stupid one, the day enveloped him in a pleasant confusion of aches and images like the one that overwhelms someone on the verge of sleep who has spent the entire day out of doors. He sank back into it and watched as the men around him unfurled the bright banners of their conversation. The wine was a "37 Puligny-Montrachet, from a case that had been the gift, Jimmy Love said, of Paul Reynaud.
"So, when are you two leaving?"
"Tomorrow," Bacon said. "Arriving Wednesday. I have an appearance. Someone from Republic is supposed to be coming on the train at Salt Lake City with my costume so it can be the Escapist who gets off in L.A."
There followed some prolonged teasing of Tracy Bacon on the subject of tight pants, veering amid general amus.e.m.e.nt into the question of codpieces. Love expressed his satisfaction that Bacon would be able to keep doing the Escapist on the radio, with the broadcast originating in Los Angeles. Sammy sank deeper into his Burgundy-fueled reverie. There was a faint disturbance in the air to his back, a murmur, a m.u.f.fled cry.
"But won"t they miss you at your cartoon factory?"
"What"s that?" Sammy sat up straight in his chair. "I think someone"s calling you, Mr. Love. I hear someone saying your-"
"I"m truly sorry to do this, Mr. Love," said a clear flat voice behind Sammy. "But I"m afraid you and your ladyfriends are under arrest."
A brief rout followed this announcement. The room filled with a bewildering variety of sheriff"s deputies, policemen from Asbury Park, state highway patrolmen, newspaper reporters, and a couple of vacationing G-men from Philly who had been drinking in the Fly Trap, a roadhouse in Sea Bright favored by representatives of coastal New Jersey law enforcement, when the word went around that they were going to flush a fairy nest out at the beach house of one of the richest men in America. When they saw how large and powerfully built many of the fairies appeared to be, not to mention how surprisingly ordinary-looking, they suffered a moment of hesitation during which Quentin Towle managed to slip out. He was later caught on the county road. Only the two big men put up any resistance at all. John Pye had been raided before, twice, and he was tired of it. He knew that in the end it would cost him, but before he could be subdued, he managed to b.l.o.o.d.y the nose of one sheriff and break a bottle of Montrachet over the head of a second. He also smashed the camera of a photographer who sold to the Hearst papers, an act for which all of his friends were later grateful. Love, in particular, never forgot this service, and after Pye was killed in North Africa, where he had gone to drive an ambulance because the army would not take h.o.m.os.e.xuals, saw to it that Pye"s mother and sisters were provided for. As for Tracy Bacon, he did not give the question of fighting or not fighting the police a moment"s thought. Without revealing too much of the true history that he had so a.s.siduously labored to erase and reconst.i.tute, it can be said that Bacon had been falling afoul of the police since the age of nine, and defending himself with his fists since well before that. He waded into the writhing knot of nightsticks and broad-brimmed hats and cowering men, and began swinging. It took four men to subdue him, which they did with considerable brutality.
While Sammy, too drunk and confused to move, watched his lover and John Pye go down in a sea of tan shirts, he was engaged in a fierce struggle of his own. Someone had gotten hold of his legs and would not let go, no matter how hard Sammy kicked and flailed away at whoever it was. In the end, however, his attacker got the best of him, and Sammy found himself dragged down under the table.
"Idiot!" said Dave Fellowes, his eye closed and his nose bleeding from where Sammy had kicked him. "Get down."
He forced Sammy to crouch beside him under the table, and together they watched the boots and bodies thudding against the carpet from beneath the lacy hem of the tablecloth. It was in this ign.o.ble position that they were found, five minutes later, when the two vacationing FBI agents, schooled in thoroughness, made a last sweep through the house.
"Your friends are all waiting for you," said one of them. He smiled at the other, who took hold of the collar of Fellowes"s shirt and dragged him out from under the table.
"Be right there," said the other agent.
"I know you will," said the one who was taking Dave Fellowes away, with a harsh laugh.
The G-man, down on one knee, gazed in at Sammy with mock tenderness, as if trying to lure a recalcitrant child out of hiding.
"Come on, sweetheart," he said. "I won"t hurt you."
The reality of the situation had begun to penetrate the fog of Sammy"s drunkenness. What had he done? How could he possibly tell his mother that he had been arrested, and why? He closed his eyes, but when he did, he was tormented by a vision of Bacon going down under a tide of fists and boot heels.
"Where"s Bacon?" he said. "What did you do to him?"
"The big fella? He"ll be all right. More of a man than the rest of you. You his girlfriend?"
Sammy blushed.
"You"re a lucky girl. He"s a good-looking piece of beef."
Sammy felt a strange ripple in the air between him and the policeman. The room, the entire house, seemed to have gotten very quiet. If the cop was planning to arrest him, it seemed to Sammy as if he ought to have done it by now.
"Myself, I"m partial to darker types. Little guys."
"What?"
"I"m a federal agent, did you know that?"
Sammy shook his head.
"That"s right. If I mention to those eager pie-hats out there that they ought to let you go, they will."
"Why would you do that?"
The G-man glanced over his shoulder slowly, almost in a parody of a man checking to see if the coast were clear, then scrambled in under the table with Sammy. He put Sammy"s hand on the fly of his suit pants.
"Why indeed," said the G-man.
Ten minutes later, the pair of vacationing federal agents were reunited in the foyer of the house. Dave Fellowes and Sammy, pushed along in front of their respective champions, could hardly look at each other, let alone at Ruth Ebling, who was supervising the cleanup efforts of her staff. The bitter taste of Agent Wyche"s s.e.m.e.n was in Sammy"s mouth, along with the putrid sweet flavor of his own r.e.c.t.u.m, and he would always remember the feeling of doom in his heart, a sense that he had turned some irrevocable corner and would shortly come face-to-face with a dark and certain fate.
"They"ve all gone," Ruth said, sounding surprised to see them. "You missed them."
"These two men are not suspects," Fellowes"s agent said. "They"re merely witnesses."
"We need to interrogate them further," said Agent Wyche, not bothering to disguise his amus.e.m.e.nt at his own implicit meaning. "Thank you, ma"am. We have our own vehicle."
Sammy managed to raise his head and saw that Ruth was looking at him curiously, with the same faint air of pity he thought he had spotted there earlier that afternoon.
"I just want to know this," she said. "How does it feel, Mr. Clay, to make your living preying off the weak-minded? That"s the only thing I want to know."
Sammy sensed that he ought to know what she was talking about, and he was sure that under ordinary circ.u.mstances he would have. "I"m sorry, ma"am, I have no idea what-"
"A boy jumped off a building, I heard," she said. "Tied a tablecloth around his neck and-"
A telephone rang in a nearby room, and she stopped. She turned and went to answer it. Agent Wyche yanked Sammy"s collar and dragged him to the door, and they went out into the burning cold night.
"Just a minute," came the housekeeper"s voice from within. "There"s a call for a Mr. Klayman. That him?" him?"
Afterward, Sammy would often wonder what might have become of him, what alley or ditch his broken and violated body might have ended up in, if his mother had not telephoned the house at Pawtaw with the news that Thomas Kavalier had died. Agent Wyche and his colleague looked at each other, their expressions no longer quite professionally blank.
"Aw, shoot, Frank," said Fellowes"s agent. "How "bout that. It"s his mom." mom."
When Sammy came out of the kitchen, Dave Fellowes stood slumped against the doorway, an arm over his red, damp face. The two G-men were gone; they had mothers of their own.
"I need to get back to the city right away," Sammy said.
Fellowes wiped at his face with his sleeve, then reached into his pocket and pulled out the key to his Buick.
Although the traffic was light, it took them nearly three hours to get back to New York. They did not say a word to each other from the moment Fellowes started the car until he dropped Sammy off in front of his apartment.
16