Walter said, “Where do you come by this meat you deliver free of charge?”
“Out of pastures. I rustle ’em up.”
Walter asked Honey’s brother if he was aware of the rules and regulations imposed by the government on the sale of meat. How it has to be inspected and approved or they don’t put a stamp on it.
Darcy said, “Jesus Christ, don’t you see what I’m offering you? Fuck the government, I’ll get you all the meat you want to sell at whatever you ask, not what the government says to charge. You sell it without your customers having to use any ration stamps. Don’t you have German friends dying to serve a big pot roast every Sunday? Aren’t you tired of the government telling you how to run your business? Having days there isn’t any meat to sell?”
“You’re breaking the law,” Walter said.
“No shit.”
“You can go to prison.”
“I’ve been there. You want the meat or not?”
“How do you kill the animal?”
“Shoot her between the eyes with a .45. She throws her head, looks at you cockeyed, and falls down.”
“Are you serious?”
“Don’t the cow have to be dead before you skin her?”
“I could show you a way,” Walter said, “that doesn’t destroy the brains.”
“That mean we have a deal?”
It was tempting. Not only make money, take care of Vera Mezwa and Dr. Taylor. Send a few double sirloins to Joe Aubrey.
Walter said, “But I don’t know you.”
Darcy said, “The hell you talking about? We was brother-in-laws for Christ sake. I trusted you with my sister, didn’t I? You ever hit her I’d of come here and broke your jaw. No, me and you don’t have nothing to worry about, we’s partners. The only difference, you’re a Kraut and I’m American.”
Walter said, “Well . . .” and asked Darcy if he’d seen his sister or spoken to her lately, curious, wondering about Honey, what she was doing.
“I ain’t seen her yet or called,” Darcy said. “I’ll drop by sometime and surprise her.”
Walter said, “Oh, you know where she lives?”
Now the ones were here who needed his help the most, coming at the worst time. Or, was it the best time, if they were to play a part in his destiny?
The Afrika Korps officers walked in the shop and he knew Jurgen immediately from 1935, still youthful, smiling, the same beautiful boy he had known ten years ago. Walter wanted to put his arms around him-well, take him by the shoulders in a manly way, slip an arm around to pat his back. Ask why he had stopped writing after Poland. Ah, and Otto Penzler, Waffen-SS, of that elite group who chose combat over herding Jews into boxcars. He said to Otto, “Major, your bearing gives you away. The moment you walked in the door I knew you were Schutzstaffeln, ready to dispose of your suit, one I see was crudely made from a uniform.”
Walter stopped. He didn’t mean to sound critical of the suit, made under duress in a prison camp, and said, “Although I must say the suit did serve you. It brought you here undetected?”
They couldn’t stay in the rooms upstairs. No, on that day in October they entered the butcher shop he knew he would drive them to the farm and have to let them stay, of course, until they decided what they would do next.
Unless, fate had sent them here-not for Walter to help them. The other way around, for them to help him. Why not?
He could explain who he was and what he intended to do without giving the whole thing away. Tell them his mysterious connection to Heinrich Himmler and their roles in the history of the German Reich, their destinies. They knew Himmler’s destiny. By now he must have rid Europe of most of its Jews and was the Führer’s logical successor. Walter, meanwhile squinting at his destiny, knew he would not be dealing with the Jewish problem. The press here portrayed Himmler as the most hated man in the world. Even people Walter knew who were vocally anti-Semitic said it would give them an incredible sense of relief if the Jews would go someplace else. There was talk about sending them all to live on the island of Madagascar. You don’t exterminate an entire race of people. We’re Christians, the Jews are a cross we must bear. They’re pushy, insolent, think they’re smart, they double-park in front of their delicatessens on Twelfth Street-also on Linwood-and what do we do? Nothing. We make fun of them. Someone says, But they do make the movies we go to see. Well, not Walter. The last movie he saw was Gone With the Wind. He thought Clark Gable the blockade runner was good, but the rest of the movie a waste of time. Walter had better things to do, work toward becoming as well known as Himmler, perhaps even a Nazi saint. He had finally decided yes, of course tell Otto and Jurgen what you intend to do. They were Afrika Korps officers, heroes themselves. Tell them they are the only ones in the world who will know about the event before it happens.
The only ones if he didn’t count Joe Aubrey in Georgia, his friend in the restaurant business who owned a string of Mr. Joe’s Rib Joints, all very popular down there. Though lately Negro soldiers from the North were “acting uppity,” Joe said, coming in and demanding service, and he was thinking of selling his chain. Joe had an airplane, a single-engine Cessna he’d fly to Detroit and take Walter for rides and show him how to work the controls. Walter had come to consider Joe Aubrey his best friend, an American who never stopped being sympathetic to the Nazi cause. He would fly up to Detroit and take Walter for a spin, fly around Detroit, swoop under the Ambassador Bridge and pull out over Canada and Walter would say to his friend Joe Aubrey, “What a shame you aren’t in the Luftwaffe, you’d be an ace by now.” Joe Aubrey thought he knew what Walter had in mind, but no idea how he’d pull it off. The prospect got him excited.
“Goddamn it, Walter, I can’t wait.”
What was today? The eighth of April. Twelve days to go.
Seven
They came out the side door from the kitchen, Jurgen saying, “I told him you’ll go mad and run away if you aren’t let out of the house.”
“The confinement is worse than the camp,” Otto said, “Walter so afraid someone will recognize us. I don’t see how it’s possible from the photos in the post office.”
“I told him you want to see what our bombers have been doing.”
“What I want,” Otto said, “desperately, is to leave this place and find something to do until the war ends. And I would like to speak German, which you refuse to do, you have become so American.”
“You talk to Madi and Rudi.”
“Yes, about chickens.”
“Ride in front with Walter, he loves to speak German.”
“Walter doesn’t converse, he makes speeches. He says the greatest all-out attack in the history of modern warfare, the Ardennes Offensive, was stopped. What they call the Battle of the Bulge. Yes, we were pushed back, but it does not mean we are defeated.”
Jurgen picked it up saying, “Not as long as the fire of National Socialism burns within us.”
“Walter says ‘burns within our breast.’”
“He thinks we might want to see an exhibit of war souvenirs at Hudson’s, a department store downtown.”
“Guns and samurai swords?”
“The usual stuff Americans bring home to show they were in the war. Or what they bought off someone if they weren’t. Helmets with bullet holes. Maybe you’ll see your Iron Cross the Yank took from you. Walter said he’ll drop us off and pick us up in a couple of hours. You know by now,” Jurgen said, “Walter’s a coward. His claim to fame, he looks like Himmler.”
“And takes himself seriously,” Otto said. “He snaps on his pince-nez he becomes the lunatic’s twin brother. Walter is as mad as Heinrich but not as naughty. He wants so desperately to be a real Nazi and I can’t help him.” Otto said, “Jurgen, I have to get away from this place.”
They walked to the back of the house, Otto in his new double-breasted gray suit, his homburg cocked at a conservative angle, the suit and hat Walter’s gifts to him. Jurgen wore a tweed jacket that had cost Walter thirty-nine dollars, the f
elt hat he got for six-fifty.
There he was by the car, gunmetal gray shining hot in the sun, the Ford sedan always polished. What Jurgen was wondering as they approached the car, how he might get a duplicate key to the ignition. Though in an emergency he could hot-wire it.
From Farmington, in Saturday small-town traffic, Walter turned onto Grand River Avenue, telling them in German the road was a straight line southeast to downtown Detroit, twenty-two miles to Woodward Avenue and the J.L. Hudson Company. From the backseat Jurgen looked out at miles of farmland, pastures, and planted fields not yet showing a crop, the Ford rolling along at thirty-five miles an hour. Gradually there was more to see, filling stations and a few stores, now used-car lots as they passed Eight Mile Road, the city limits, while Walter explained meat rationing to Otto, in German.
Jurgen was thinking that if Otto insisted on leaving, he should go with him, keep him out of trouble, if that was possible. Or, if he wanted to go, let him, and stop worrying about him. But first, at least try to convince him he should stay here to wait out the war. He did hear what Walter was telling Otto when he stopped thinking and paid attention.
How the United States produced 25 million pounds of meat a year, the armed forces and their allies, England and Russia, getting eight million pounds of it, leaving 17 million pounds for the 121 million meat eaters in America, and it amounted to two and a half pounds a week for each meat eater, counting a child and a person who was ill as half a meat eater. Walter said, “The motto butchers must live by is ‘Sell it or smell it.’ Meat goes bad. If you hold out meat for good customers and they don’t come in? Throw it away. You have to sell meat on the basis of first come, first served. But if we have enough meat that everyone in America can have two and a half pounds a week, why are there meat shortages? Because when German U-boats torpedo and sink ships carrying meat, hundreds of thousands of pounds of it going to the war in Europe, they then have to send more. And where do they get it? From the seventeen million pounds meant for butcher shops and I put a sign in my window no meat today. The government won’t reveal that German U-boats caused the meat shortage, it’s a military secret. It becomes a mystery to the meat eaters. They cry and complain ‘Why is there no meat for us? Why are we giving our meat to the Russians?’”
He told Otto, “Go to a high-class restaurant or a nightclub and order a steak. Don’t faint when I say it will cost you as much as seven dollars. You believe people will pay that much for a porterhouse steak? They do, because so many are making money working in war plants. Some of them eat out three times a day. You can buy black market meat almost anywhere. A chuck roast with a ceiling price of thirty-one cents a pound? Maybe you pay seventy-five cents a pound if you must have it. Pay the price, you don’t have to give the butcher stamps from your ration book. People don’t think buying black market meat is a bad thing to do. It was the same during Prohibition, people drank illegal alcohol because it wasn’t the business of the government if they drank or not.”
Jurgen said, “What happens if you get caught selling meat on the black?”
He saw Walter look at his rearview mirror.
“The government penalizes you, makes you stop doing business for a time, thirty days, sixty days. If they want, they can put you out of business until the war is over.”
Walter spoke to Otto in German, to Jurgen in English.
He brought them all the way on Grand River Avenue, stopped for the light at Woodward where downtown was waiting for them: crowds crossing both ways in front of the car, people waiting at the curb for buses, in safety zones in the middle of Woodward for streetcars, and Walter said in English, “There is the J.L. Hudson Company over there, I believe the world’s second-largest department store. Notice it takes up the entire block. When the light changes I’m going to drop you off over there on the corner, where you see the clock above the entrance to Kerns, another department store, though it doesn’t compare to Hudson’s. Exactly two hours from now I’ll come by. Please let me find you waiting there, if you will. Under the clock.” He said to Jurgen, “Go in Hudson’s and ask where is the war exhibit show. You ask, please, not Otto. All right?”
They strolled among cosmetic and perfume counters, hosiery, costume jewelry, women’s gloves and belts, coming to umbrellas now, across the aisle from men’s neckwear and suspenders, and Jurgen stopped. He said, “There,” looking up at the poster on the square white column that rose above the counter where neckties were displayed. Now Otto was looking.
BE SURE TO SEE
THE DETROIT NEWS & J.L. HUDSON’S
WAR SOUVENIR SHOW
In the Auditorium on the 12th floor!
“Aren’t they proud of themselves,” Otto said in German, “showing what they took from our comrades lying dead.”
Jurgen turned his head to see a salesgirl in Gloves and Belts watching them. She couldn’t have heard Otto, but someone would if he kept ranting in German.
“You know how to say pain in the ass?” Jurgen said. “It’s how you’re still acting. If you don’t want to look at war souvenirs, tell me in English. I don’t care if I see them or not.”
“I would like a whiskey, a big one,” Otto said, “and to dine in a good restaurant. My needs are simple.”
Jurgen said, “Don’t move,” and walked over to the counter where the girl sold gloves and belts.
Otto watched him talking to her, the girl wide-eyed to show she was listening and would answer his question, Otto thinking he could use a girl like that to give him a bit of comfort, smile and touch his face with her hand, tell him she would do anything for him, anything at all. He had not been with a girl in more than two years, since the Italian girl in Benghazi.
Jurgen was coming back. Otto waited. Jurgen said, “The dining rooms are on the thirteenth floor, the Georgian, the Early American, and the Pine Room. Take your pick.”
Eight
Honey could not believe the way the two of them kept talking, paying no attention to her: Kevin Dean the FBI agent and Carl Webster the U.S. deputy marshal, older but not that old, facing each other across the table and talking about an island in the South Pacific, Los Negros, where it turned out they’d both served but not at the same time: Kevin with the First Cavalry, ashore only two days when he was severely wounded by a Japanese grenade; Carl in the navy with a Seabee outfit, Construction Battalion Maintenance Unit 585, when he was shot, twice, and blamed Kevin for leaving two Nips hiding in the bush.
Honey sat facing the entrance to Hudson’s Pine Room, full of shoppers having lunch. For a while she turned her head from one to the other as they talked back and forth. Now she found herself looking more at Carl, an old pro with a gaunt face who wasn’t even forty.
Kevin said, “I don’t see how you got shot, the island was secured.”
Carl said, “You know what a Duck is? Not the one you eat, the kind you drive. She goes on land or water, looks like a thirtyfoot landing craft with tires. We’re coming back from the supply depot on Manus, the main island, with stores and a hundred and fifty cases of beer. We take the Duck into the water for forty yards and we’re back on Los Negros. A minute later there’s rifle fire, four shots coming out of the bush and I’m hit. Right here in the side, the fleshy part, the first time in my life I was ever shot. The two guys with me hit the deck. One of ’em, George Klein, had fallen in love with Lauren Bacall the night before watching To Have and Have Not on a sixteen-millimeter projector. It’s the picture Lauren says to Humphrey Bogart, ‘You know how to whistle, Steve?’ If he wants her for anything. ‘You put your lips together and blow.’ The other one aboard the Duck, a fella named Elmer Whaley from someplace in Arkansas, me and Elmer were sucking on Beech-Nut scrap during the trip. I got hit and like to swallow the wad of tobacco. I remember I said, ‘Boys, it’s dense growth out there. We have to wait for the Nip to come to us.’”
Kevin said, “You were armed?”
“We had carbines with us.”
“In case you saw Japs?”
“Your pe
ople told us the island was secured and we believed it. No, we brought the carbines along for fun, fire off a few rounds. The only trouble, our weapons were up in the bow. We couldn’t get to ’em without showing ourselves. But for this trip I also had my .38, the one I’d been using in the line of duty for the past seventeen years.”
“The .38 on a .45 frame,” Kevin said, “the front sight filed off.”
“Filed down so she’d pull like she was greased.”
“That was in the book. The same gun,” Kevin said, “your wife used to shoot Jack Belmont that time he was stalking you.” He said to Honey, “Remember I told you about it?”
She said, “I think so,” not sounding too sure.
“I looked him up,” Kevin said. “Jack Belmont was on the FBI’s most wanted list in 1934.” He said to Carl, “He’s the one his daddy was a millionaire?”
“Oris Belmont,” Carl said, “sunk wells in the Glenn Pool south of Tulsa and came up a multi-multimillionaire. Jack Belmont was harum-scarum from birth. He tried to blackmail Oris for having a girlfriend. That didn’t get him anything, so he set one of his dad’s storage tanks afire and Oris had him sent to prison. Jack came out of McAlester and started robbing banks, show his dad he could make it on his own. Why Jack had it in for me I’ll never know, but he came to my dad’s place near Okmulgee stalking me. Jack got to where he was aiming a .45 at me, I’m not even looking, and Louly, bless her heart, shot him three times.”
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