Up in Honey's Room cw-2

by Elmore Leonard

  Carl said, “First he tells how he was blown off the Maine and held in the Morro for being a spy.”

  Virgil said, “Once that’s out of the way I tell how you shot the cow thief off his horse from two hundred yards, with a Winchester.”

  Carl said, “You remember his name?”

  “Wally Tarwater. I got all their names written down.”

  “I see him moving my cows I yelled at him.”

  “You were fifteen years old,” his dad said. “The marshals were ready to hire you.”

  “I could see he knew how to work beef without wearing himself out.”

  “Later on,” his dad said, “I asked if you looked at him as he’s lying on the ground. You said you got down from that dun you rode and closed his eyes. I asked did you feel any sympathy for him. Remember what you said?”

  “That was twenty-five years ago.”

  “You said you warned him, turn the stock or you’d shoot. I imagine all the cow thief saw was a kid on a horse. You said to me later on, ‘Yeah, but if he’d listened he wouldn’t of been lying there dead, would he?’ I said to myself, My Lord, but this boy’s got a hard bark on him.”

  Narcissa, who had nursed Carl for the first months of his life, placed the Mexican beers on the table and stooped to put her arms around his shoulders. Now she was touching his hair saying, “But he’s a sweet boy too, isn’t he? Yes he is, he’s a sweetie pie.”

  Finally they let Carl Webster step down as acting marshal of Oklahoma’s Eastern District and gave the job to a marshal from Arkansas, an old hand by the name of W. R. “Bill” Hutchinson. He and Carl had tracked felons together and shared jars of shine over the years, each knowing the other would be watching his back. Today in the marshal’s office was the first time Carl had seen him without a plug in his jaw, in there behind his lawman’s mustache. Bill Hutchinson asked Carl if he was sure he wanted to go to Detroit.

  “You know it’s still winter up there. I’ve heard they have snow in May.”

  Carl stared at the angle of bones in Bill Hutchinson’s face, the creases cut into the corners of his eyes. Marshals had told Carl he reminded them some of Bill Hutchinson, that same look, only without the old-time mustache the marshal from Arkansas favored.

  “I’m going after the Krauts,” Carl told him. “You can send me or I’ll take a leave of absence and do it without pay. If you want to send me, let me have the Pontiac and enough gas stamps. It’s the car I was using before I spent the past five and a half months sitting here with my feet on the desk.”

  “What else you want?”

  “Expense money.”

  “You know those officers up north are different’n us, their manner of doing things, the way they dress up.”

  “The agent I’m seeing is from Bixby, Oklahoma, if you know where Bixby’s at. Directly across the river.”

  “I imagine you’ll observe the thirty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit,” Bill Hutchinson said. “It shouldn’t take you more’n two, three days. Can you tell me where you’ll be staying?”

  Not till Kevin Dean found him a place.

  A thousand miles to Detroit from Tulsa through St. Louis, Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, head for Toledo following cars on the two-lane highways moping along at thirty-five, Carl wearing himself out looking to pass, not able to bear down until it was dark and he took the Pontiac up to seventy through Indiana farmland, a five-gallon can of gas in the trunk just in case. Carl left Tulsa at 6:40 a.m. hoping to make the trip in twenty-four hours, but it was eight the next morning before he was approaching Detroit from the southwest and going on nine by the time he was downtown looking for West Lafayette. Carl had a map in his head that showed him the general layout of Detroit’s downtown streets with marks indicating the buildings where the federal courts were located and a few hotels, in case Kevin Dean from Bixby hadn’t yet learned his way around. Carl turned onto Lafayette and came to the Federal Building, right where it was supposed to be, waiting for him.

  He let Kevin take him through the FBI office introducing him as the Oklahoma deputy marshal the Hot Kid book was written about, Carl shaking his head at Kevin sounding like his press agent. It surprised Carl these boys all seemed to know who he was.

  They had to wait a few minutes to see John Bugas, special agent in charge; he was being interviewed by a writer from the Detroit News. When he came out, a photographer trailing behind, the writer walked up to Carl standing in the hall and offered his hand saying he was Neal Rubin.

  “Did you know John Bugas was your biggest fan?”

  “You’re kidding me,” Carl said.

  “He’s looking forward to meeting you. I asked him if he’d read the book about you and John said, ‘Every word.’ He asked me if I’d read it. I said, ‘John, I reviewed it for the News and sent you my copy.’ That was ten years ago and he’d forgotten where he got it. I asked him what the Hot Kid was doing in Detroit. He said he thought you were just visiting. But I’m betting you’re after some wanted felon or escaped convict, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t want to give anything away,” Carl said, “and spook him. Have him take off on me.”

  “You know what my favorite part was? When you out-gunned that Klansman Nestor Lott, Nestor pulling his pair of .45 automatics. He was an oddball, wasn’t he?”

  “He was a snake,” Carl said.

  Neal Rubin looked at his wristwatch.

  “I got to get going. I’m meeting Esther Williams for lunch at the Chop House and have to change my shirt.” The one he had on looked like it was from Hawaii. He said, “Pick up the News tomorrow, I’ll have something in my column about you.”

  Carl wasn’t sure that was a good idea, but the writer and the photographer were already heading down the hall.

  Kevin told John Bugas Carl had only left Tulsa yesterday in his car and was here first thing this morning. John Bugas didn’t seem impressed. He asked Carl why he thought the two escaped POWs were still in Detroit, assuming they did come here.

  Carl gave his stock answer. “ ’Cause Jurgen Schrenk used to live here and there’s no word they’ve been picked up.” He told John Bugas his office had done a good job finding Peter Krug, the escaped Nazi flier, and sending the traitor Max Stephan to Atlanta.

  “Nice going,” Carl said. “I think someone on your enemy alien list is helping out Jurgen and Otto, but isn’t showing him off the way Max paraded the Luftwaffe guy around. I think they’ve found themselves a home and are waiting out the war.”

  The writer had said Bugas was looking forward to meeting him, but Carl didn’t get that feeling, Bugas standing at his desk since they’d entered the office, like he was waiting for them to hurry up and leave. John Bugas wished Carl luck, shook his hand again, and said if he located the POWs, let this office know and they’d decide how to handle it. “Call Kevin, he’s your guy.”

  Carl thought he was handling it, but didn’t say anything.

  In the hall walking toward the lobby, Kevin said, “He might not’ve acted like it, but he was anxious to meet you. Yesterday he told me to get you accommodations at the Statler or the Book. He said, ‘We want to show this man our respect.’”

  Carl said, “He did?”

  “When we started talking on the phone,” Kevin said, “I didn’t know you were famous. I reserved a room for you at the Book Cadillac on Washington Boulevard. Across the street and down a couple of blocks you come to Stouffer’s, the best cafeteria I’ve ever been in, even better’n Nelson’s Buffeteria in Tulsa.”

  This boy from Bixby was working out better than Carl could’ve hoped. Carl said, “But this place doesn’t offer chicken-fried steak, does it?” and kept talking. He told Kevin he’d check into the hotel and sleep for a couple of hours. “Call Honey and tell her we’re having lunch at her store and would like to have her join us. She won’t have to put on a coat.”

  “What if she can’t make it?”

  Carl said, “Why not?”

  “I mean what if she’s busy?”

  “Doi
ng what? Tell Honey we’re expecting her there.”

  “What time?”

  “Say one-fifteen. Have her tell you where we’re gonna meet.”

  Kevin ducked into an empty office to use the phone.

  The News photographer was taking pictures of the display case that showed some of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives. He stepped aside with his big Speed Graphic as Carl approached the display. Carl nodded to the photographer, an older guy in his fifties.

  “You finished here?”

  “I got time. Go on and look if you want.” Every one of the mug shots was familiar to Carl; he knew all the names from the photos. Jurgen and Otto were here, escaped prisoner of war heading each of their wanted dodgers. A flash of light hit the glass covering the display and Carl turned to the photographer lowering his four-by-five.

  “I see my picture in the paper,” Carl said, “you’re in trouble.”

  “I got you from behind,” the photographer said, “someone looking at the bad guys. There’s no way you could be identified.”

  Carl said, “You through here?”

  The photographer said, “I guess so,” and walked out toward the elevators.

  Kevin came in a few minutes later.

  “These are the same shots,” Carl said, “on file at the camp. I told Jurgen one time he looked awful, like he was waiting for the end of the world. He said becoming a prisoner of war was dreadful at first. That was the word he used, dreadful. He said what you have to do is turn the idle time to some advantage. Learn a language or how to do something constructive. I said, ‘How to escape and meet girls?’ He could slip out of the camp anytime he wanted. He said what he meant was learn a trade. Learn to work on automobiles, leave the camp and get a job at a garage.” Carl said, “I think the reason you haven’t been able to find him, that’s what he’s doing, working somewhere, a veteran back from the war. Who’s going to ask him what side he was on? He figures out how to fit in somewhere and nobody notices anything alien about him.”

  Carl continued to stare at Jurgen behind the sheet of glass. “The shots don’t do anything for him.”

  “At the end of the trail,” Kevin said. They were typical mug shots, taken at the low end of the subject’s appearance. “But he looks like he’d be a nice guy.”

  “For a Nazi.”

  “That’s how you see him?”

  “That’s what he is.”

  Kevin broke a silence. “I got hold of Honey. You ask for Better Dresses on seven. Honey says like she’s reading it, ‘They’re for fashion-conscious Detroit women who shop with a discriminating eye.’ I told you, you remind me of her. We’re having lunch in the Pine Room on thirteen. She has no problem getting away. She said if we have time we might want to stop by the auditorium on twelve and see the War Souvenir Show.”

  “What kind of souvenirs,” Carl said, “stuff guys brought back?”

  “I imagine the usual,” Kevin said, “Jap swords, German Lugers. I knew guys where I was who bought Jap teeth off the natives. The fillings in the teeth made of steel.”

  Carl said, “I never fired a Luger.” He said, “Iron Crosses and swastika armbands you could get off of POWs without leaving the country. I never asked you,” Carl said, “were you in the war?”

  “In the Pacific,” Kevin said, “till I tried to duck a Jap grenade. I saw it coming and thought of catching it and throwing it back, only I changed my mind, not knowing how much time there was and dove for a hole.”

  “Where was this?”

  “Not too far north of New Guinea, an island called Los Negros in the Admiralties. You ever hear of it?”

  It stopped Carl.

  “You were with the First Cav?”

  Now Kevin showed surprise.

  “You read about us?”

  “I was there,” Carl said.

  Six

  "You know what you’ve become?” Jurgen said to Otto. “A pain in the ass.”

  “Because I want to be German and speak our language and hear it?”

  “You’re acting like a child.”

  Otto spoke only German to Walter, when Walter was here, and to the old couple who kept house and were afraid of him. They answered questions and that was all, they refused to carry on a conversation.

  Jurgen and Otto sat at the white porcelain table in the kitchen having their morning coffee.

  If he spoke German to Jurgen he got no response.

  Jurgen said if they spoke only English and tried to think in English, there would be less chance of their being caught. He said, “You want to go out. So do I. But if you intentionally speak German and pose the way you do, daring people to stare at you- ‘Look at me, the destroyer of British tanks in the desert’-or whoever you are, they will. And if you attract attention to yourself, it won’t be long before you’re back in the camp.”

  Otto said, “You want English? Why don’t you fuck yourself?”

  “It’s ‘Go fuck yourself,’” Jurgen said.

  Two years in the war prisoner camp and now another kind of confinement, months in a house on a farm owned by Walter Schoen: the house standing for a hundred years among old Norway pines, an apple orchard on the property, a chicken house, a barn turned into an abattoir where cattle entered to be shot in the head by a .22 rifle. Otto wouldn’t go near the barn. Jurgen couldn’t stay out of it, fascinated by the process, three meat cutters who spoke German among themselves cutting and sharpening, cutting and sharpening, reducing the thousand-pound cow to pieces of meat.

  This morning Jurgen waited for Walter to arrive in his 1941 Ford sedan, a gray four-door with a high shine, always, anytime Jurgen saw the car. The Ford came through the trees along the drive that circled to the back of the two-story frame house that at one time, years ago, had been painted white. Walter came out of the car and Jurgen pounced on him.

  “Walter, it’s of the utmost importance that you drive Otto into the city. He wants to see for himself the destruction made by the Luftwaffe. If you don’t, Otto tells me he’s going to run away and look for it himself.”

  Walter frowned. He did it all the time, no matter what you said to him, he frowned.

  “But there have been no air raids here.”

  “In the prison camp,” Jurgen said, “Otto listened to the reports on shortwave radio from Berlin. They open the program with Der Blomberger Badenweiler-Marsch and then report on the latest bombing forays on American cities, war plants too, by the Luftwaffe.”

  “It could be true?” Walter said.

  “Not unless bombers can cross the Atlantic Ocean and return without stopping to refuel,” Jurgen said. “But Otto believes it. You know if he leaves the house by himself he’ll be picked up within a matter of hours. He’ll tell the police he’s SS and demand they treat him with military respect. You realize Otto’s not familiar with the independent ways that Americans have. He’ll become arrogant and tell them he escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp, bragging about it, saying it was easy, nothing to it. Saying he has German friends here. Walter, he’ll give you up the same way the Luftwaffe pilot gave up the man who helped him and was convicted of treason, Max Stephan. Otto could give you up without realizing what he’s doing.”

  Walter Schoen, more dedicated to the Reich than Jurgen would ever be, said, “Your comrade is an SS man, one of Himmler’s men of honor with a pedigree, his family pure Aryan going back for centuries. There is not even a remote possibility Major Penzler would ever betray a German soldier. Let me say also, you sound very American when you speak. More so than I, and I have had to live here more than thirty years.”

  Jurgen said, “Let me explain something to you about Otto. He joined the SS because at the time he felt it was an honor, it gave him position. Not because he wanted to be a guardian of racial purity, or to lead a crusade against the Bolsheviks. That’s something he told his SS fellows. But, he has said more than once he never took the political indoctrination seriously. I believed that of him. He managed to hook up with Rommel and quite possibly was the only membe
r of the Waffen-SS in North Africa. During the time in Oklahoma he never posed or put on airs. He commanded panzers and was known as the Scharfrichter, the executioner of British tanks. Walter,” Jurgen said, “what Otto wants right now is to feel once again a sense of war. It’s what he is, a warrior. He wants to relive the excitement of crushing Poland. He wants to see buildings the Luftwaffe destroyed on its raids. You say it hasn’t happened, you’re still waiting for the bombers. I don’t know, maybe he needs to bludgeon some poor wretch and kick him senseless. He might do it because his frustration has brought him to the point of going mad. Then he’s arrested, and talks and talks. I’m hoping a drive into Detroit will relieve the tension, expose Otto to the way Americans live and he’ll see how much we are alike.”

  Walter Schoen was squinting again, confused. “You believe that’s true?”

  Something strange was happening during the past six months: people coming to Walter for his assistance.

  First Rudi and Madi, both seventy-five, good Germans but destitute, left with nothing when their home burned to the ground. It was in the Black Bottom, the Negro section of Detroit. Rudi said it was Negroes who set the house afire to make them leave. Madi said it was Rudi smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey until he passed out. Walter had no choice, they were family, Madi his aunt, one of his father’s sisters. He drove them out Grand River to the property he had bought at auction and told them they could live here and provide for themselves, raise chickens, plant a vegetable garden, see if the apples in the orchard were worth selling. Walter said he would see them once he got his home-kill business going and would be here to supervise the butchering.

  He was working on the barn, fashioning the interior with chutes and hooks to become an abattoir, paving the floor and putting in drains, when the next one appeared, Honey’s brother, my God, coming in Walter’s market, extending his hand over the counter and saying he was Darcy Deal.

  “I always wanted to meet you, Walter, but that goofy sister of mine cut out on you before I got the chance.” Darcy saying, “I know your trade, Walter. As soon as I got my release from prison, where they stuck me for making moonshine and where I learned to cut meat, I got this idea and come directly to you with a moneymaking proposition. You ready? I bring you all the meat you think you can sell and give it to you, no money up front. What are you paying now for beef, around seventeen dollars a hunnert weight? What I deliver won’t cost you nothing. I bring you steers stripped of their hides and bled out, packed in ice. All you do is cut steaks and sell ’em and we split the take down the middle.”