“I met someone. Aviva.”
“Aviva?”
“Aviva Friedman.”
Jurgen paused. “She’s helping you?”
“We haven’t been apart since we met at Hudson’s and immediately got on her boat, a forty-foot pleasure craft.”
Jurgen said, “Aviva Friedman?”
“I have her in my power. If she doesn’t obey me I turn her over to the Gestapo. Jurgen, are you all right? What are you doing? Aviva deals in fine art. Wait a minute... What? Yes, I’ll tell him. Aviva wants you to come to Cleveland. You have to absolutely come when we get married. Aviva says I’m the smoothest guy she ever met, especially for a Kraut.”
“Aviva?”
“She has a bookstore that sells the wrong books, very old ones she wants to be rid of, sell the store if she can. I think I know about books. I intend to take over the store and try something new. Offer only mystery novels. Uh? What do you think?”
“I don’t read mysteries.”
“Then I won’t sell you any. Tell me what you’re doing.”
“He’s planning to marry a woman named Aviva Friedman.”
Honey said, “Yeah...?”
“Otto’s SS and she’s Jewish.”
“You’ll get over it,” Honey said. She knew he wanted to talk about last night. All right, she thought, do it . . . and said, “Jurgen, I had way too much to drink last night.”
“I did too-”
“We hardly had anything to eat.”
“You were different, Honey, than if you were only drunk, believe me.”
“I was nervous. Being with Carl while you’re hiding in the bedroom. I was exhausted, I think from the tension. I just didn’t feel like doing anything last night.”
“I’m not talking about doing it or not doing it,” Jurgen said. “If you don’t feel like becoming intimate in bed in the dark of night, all right, I understand. I don’t feel like perpetually doing it either. Certainly not more than several times a day since I first saw you.” He waited for her to smile and she did. “No, what I’m referring to,” Jurgen said, “you were a different person after Carl left, and I wonder why.”
“I don’t know why,” Honey said. “But we’re all right, aren’t we, you and I?”
Not wanting to make love-wasn’t that different enough? Otherwise, she wasn’t aware of how different she must have seemed to Jurgen last night and this morning, Honey thinking about Carl, Carlos Huntington Webster, whoever he was, watching her take her clothes off.
At first Carl couldn’t think of anyone he could tell.
Not Kevin. Not his dad, Jesus, no, not even on the porch having shots and beers. They were drinking tequila when he told his dad about seeing Crystal Davidson from time to time before he married Louly. His dad saying, “Crystal Davidson, you don’t mean to tell me. Emmett Long’s gun moll? Where do you see her?” He told his dad, when she came to Tulsa to shop at the department store. His dad said, “Does she act ladylike?” Wanting to know his boy got laid with some propriety.
Carl was in the hotel coffee shop having breakfast, his eggs scrambled with onions, fried potatoes and pork sausage, all of it doused with Lea & Perrins, a few small sweet rolls and black coffee. The waitress said, “I can tell you like that Wootsa-shy, huh?”
She was colored but sounded like Narcissa Raincrow, his dad’s common-law wife, bless her heart. He could tell Narcissa what happened. He’d been telling her things all his life and she’d listen without any attitudes or beliefs interfering. The way he heard their conversation:
“Here’s Honey, the best-looking girl I ever met, or the second best.”
“She look like a movie star?”
“Lauren Bacall. ‘You know how to whistle, Steve?’ Honey even sounds like her, her voice.”
“They call her Betty, her friends.”
“She takes off her blouse.”
“She’s wearing a brassiere?”
“It’s white. She puts her hands behind her back to unhook it and says...” Carl paused. “She uses an obscene word.”
The fifty-four-year-old Creek woman who looked somewhat like a heavy Dolores Del Rio said, “Which one, fuck?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s all right, you can say it.”
“She says, ‘Carl, do you want to fuck me on the sofa-’”
“Oh my,” Narcissa said.
“‘Or see if Jurgen’s in the bedroom? One or the other.’ And lets the bra slip off. Drops it on the floor.”
“Oh, she’s smart. All right, big boy, what would you rather do, have sexual intercourse with me or take the German swine prisoner?”
“He’s not a swine, he’s a good guy. But say I did choose Honey. And he hears us.”
“You make a lot of noise?”
“He’s in the next room. The apartment’s quiet.”
“You want to give it to her, but not in the living room? Take her to a hotel.”
“This was yesterday. I didn’t take her anywhere. What do you think I did?”
“You been waiting a long time to catch the German. But there’s Honey pointing her ninnies at you. She take off all her clothes?”
“She lets her skirt drop.”
“She have on undies, a girdle?”
“A pair of white panties. Her thumbs hooked in the waist.”
“Ready to step out of them.”
“She waited.”
“For you to make up your mind?”
“You understand I had forced her to where we were.”
“’Cause you wanted to get laid.”
“’Cause I knew Jurgen was in the bedroom.”
“If he wasn’t you’d be in there with Honey.”
“I don’t know.”
“Listen, don’t tell me this story if you don’t tell the truth. Did you say you wanted to go to bed with her to fuck her, or to see if the German was in there?”
“I didn’t know he was, or I wasn’t sure of it till she said we do it on the sofa or we don’t do it.”
“So when you started out telling her of your passion, it was to get laid.”
“I guess it was,” Carl said. “But I didn’t get laid, did I?”
“Didn’t break your vow. You were lucky, uh?”
“I walked past the bedroom door and out of the apartment.”
“You didn’t say anything to the lovely naked girl?”
“I said, ‘It doesn’t look like it’s gonna work out, does it?’ She was smiling a little, her eyes were. She’s the type, she’s comfortable not having any clothes on. No, at this point she’s having a good time.”
“Did she say anything to you?”
“She said, ‘You give up too easily.’”
“Wait. How did she know you wouldn’t look in the bedroom?”
“She gave me a choice, one or the other.”
“But you didn’t jump on her.”
“I wanted to. I would’ve if Jurgen wasn’t there. I didn’t tell Honey but he saved me from breaking my word, something I’ve never done in my life, ’less I’m kidding when I give it and everybody, or most everybody knows I’m kidding. No, I took a vow when I got married and I haven’t broken it yet. So I feel I owe Jurgen one. He wants to run and hide, stay low till the war’s over, it’s okay with me. He saved me from breaking my word. I’ll tell my boss, W. R. Bill Hutchinson, I couldn’t find the two escapees and that’ll be that.”
Narcissa’s voice said, “Oh, is that right? But what if you run into Honey again and no one like Jurgen is around to save your pitiful ass?”
He tried to get hold of Kevin to return his car, phoning from his room. The FBI voice said he was out of the office, on assignment. Carl asked if Bohdan Kravchenko had been apprehended. The voice said that information was not available for release. Carl left word for Kevin to call him at the hotel.
He phoned Louly at the marine air station in North Carolina, proud of his semiclear conscience, ready to say “I’ve been too busy” when she asked if he was staying out of
trouble. But Louly wasn’t available either. What he should do, get ready to take the train back to Tulsa.
The phone rang. He expected it to be Kevin or Louly.
It was Honey Deal.
“You want to see Jurgen?”
“Let me talk to him on the phone.”
“Carl, Vera called. She wants to stop by this evening and visit.”
“With Bohunk?”
“She doesn’t know where he is. He didn’t come back last night. She’s worried about him.”
“I can see her wringing her hands,” Carl said. “What time she coming?”
“About eight. Stop in and say good-bye to Jurgen.”
“Where’s he going?”
“He won’t tell me.”
“Show him your hooters.”
“They’re on ice for you, Carl. You know what happens when ice touches just the tips?”
Carl said, “You sneeze?” and said right away, “You know you’re hanging out with the wrong crowd.”
“I know it,” Honey said. “But I don’t feel the least bit subversive. Do you? Or you can get away with it but I can’t?”
“Something like that,” Carl said.
“Listen, stop by for a drink tonight. I promise I won’t show you my boobs.”
“But I’ll understand,” Carl said, “if you can’t help taking your clothes off.”
She said, “Wait a minute.”
He heard her lay the phone down on a hard surface and after that faint voices. Now she was back.
“Carl, turn on your radio. Roosevelt’s dead.”
It was the way she said it. Not, he died; he was dead.
Carl said, “You don’t think Walter . . .”
Walter heard the news in the Greyhound bus station in downtown Detroit over the public-address system. He missed the first part of the announcement, the bus-schedule voice saying, “It is our sad duty to inform you that at three thirty-five this afternoon”- Walter waiting to hear where the bus was going, thought, Three thirty-five? Knowing it was almost six, looked up at the clock and saw he was right. Now he listened and heard the public-address voice say:
“Death gave the sixty-three-year-old president of the United States short notice. At about one o’clock this afternoon, in the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia, the president felt a sudden pain in the back of his head. At the time he was having his portrait sketched in preparation for a painting. At one-fifteen the president fainted, never to regain consciousness. At three thirty-five p.m. Franklin Roosevelt died without pain of what his doctor called a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Funeral service for the president will be held in the East Room of the White House . . .”
That was enough for Walter. He got up and walked over to the ticket window, the PA system sounding as though it was starting over again.
“Today, April twelfth in Warm Springs, Georgia, death took Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president of the United States, and left millions of Americans shocked and stunned.”
Walter turned in his ticket to Griffin by way of Atlanta and was given his refund. He began to wonder if any of the people at Vera’s the other night, when they heard of Roosevelt’s death would immediately say, “My God, was it Walter?” Or would they say, “My God, it was Walter.” Remembering his determination. Vera comes up to him. No, first Honig. She touches his face and asks in her soft voice, “Walter, how in the world did you do it?”
“My dear,” he would say, “you don’t believe his brain hemorrhaged?”
“Yes, but what caused it to do so?”
They’ll consider he used some type of poison and he’ll tell them, “Believe what you want.”
“He must have used poison.”
“But how was it administered?”
“He couldn’t have done it. Walter is still in Detroit.”
“Walter’s clever. He sent it.”
“What?”
“Let’s say a cake. Delivered to the Little White House bearing the name of the president’s lady friend, according to Joe Aubrey, Miss Lucy Mercer. Oh, that Walter is clever. Even if the president has a food taster like kings of old, a cake said to be from Miss Lucy Mercer would arouse no suspicion. The president has a piece while having his portrait sketched, takes several bites and slumps in his chair in a coma. The time, one-fifteen, as he finishes his lunch.”
It was the kind of cloak-and-dagger plot Vera would think of. Or something like it. He could hear Vera say, “By whatever means the president met his end, you can be sure our Walter made it happen. We are not surprised at the cover-up, the White House saying his death was of natural causes. I doubt that Walter will ever reveal how he brought it off. For as long as he lives people who know this cunning fellow will offer their own theories and each will ask, ‘Is that how you did it, Walter?’”
His reply would remain, “Believe what you want.”
Twenty-seven
Honey had an apron on over the bra and panties she wore straightening the living room, picking up newspapers, emptying ashtrays, dusting here and there with a feather duster, showing off in front of Jurgen on the sofa with Life, his favorite magazine. He could not believe she had saved every issue since Pearl Harbor, 163 copies of Life in the storage room, seven missing consecutively from the winter of 1942.
She astonished Jurgen. She was always her own person, a jewel, a diamond in the rough that was her own style of rough, listening to Sinatra’s “Ill Wind” and saying “Fucking effortless” in her quiet way. He wondered what happened to her in the winter of 1942, when he was in Libya. He loved her. He would be in wonder of her for as long as he lived, Honey dusting in her underwear, arching her back to aim her pert rear end at him. He had told Honey he would become a bull rider on the rodeo circuit. “You know from the radio how they announce the contestants? ‘Now here’s a young cowboy name of Flea Casanova from Big Spring, Texas.’ Soon you’re going to hear, ‘We have a young cowpoke now name of Jurgen Schrenk from Cologne, Germany. Jurgen’ll be atop a one-eyed bull full of meanness name of Killer-Diller. Ride him, Jurgen.’” He told Honey, “The first-place bull rider at the Dallas Rodeo-it’s in Life magazine-made seventy-five hundred dollars for staying on three bulls for eight seconds each. I rode a Tiger in North Africa. I can ride a bull.”
Honey looked over her shoulder so her butt was still aimed at him. “I knew a boy on the circuit was injured one time,” Honey said. “He’d write on a notepad to tell me how hungry he was, his jaw wired shut till it healed.” Now she was dusting the bookcase, dabbing the feathers at the shelves.
“I forgot to tell you Eleanor wasn’t there when he died. She was in Washington. Roosevelt had a full schedule today, planning to attend a barbecue where country fiddlers were going to play for him. So he wasn’t thinking about dying, was he? You like hillbilly fiddles? I don’t. At all. Did you know Roosevelt was president longer’n any of the others? Since 1933. He was sixty-three years old.”
Now she was taking a book from the shelf, holding it toward him so he could see it was Mein Kampf. “Never read and no longer a conversation piece,” Honey said, and tossed it in the cabinet she opened, beneath the shelves.
Jurgen said, “Isn’t that where you put Darcy’s pistol?”
She stooped to bring out the Luger. “Right here, I want to ask you about it.” She laid it on a bookshelf and moved to her record collection in another part of the cabinet. She said, “One of the radio reports said Roosevelt was sitting in an armchair and seemed comfortable when, the guy said, ‘A piercing pain stabbed at the back of Roosevelt’s proud, leonine head.’ You think Roosevelt had a head like a lion? I thought he was suave with his cigarette holder, but never thought of him as leonine. Now Truman’s president.”
She stood up with a record and put it on the Victrola. “He’s a Kansas City politician they say plays the piano. We’ll have to see what we have here, Harry S. Truman. I doubt he’ll make much noise.”
The record came on and Jurgen said, “What is that?”
“Bob C
rosby.”
“I mean that instrument.”
“Bob Haggart whistling through his teeth while he strums his bass.” Now she was singing, “‘Big noise blew in from Winnetka, big noise blew right out again.’”
“What’s the name of it?”
“‘Big Noise from Winnetka.’ What else can you call it? The drummer’s Ray Bauduc, with his wood blocks and cowbells. Ray’s fun.”
“You know him?”
“I mean the way he plays is fun. I did meet him one time I was in New Orleans. Had a drink with him.” Honey picked up the Luger from the shelf and brought it to Jurgen on the sofa. “I think Darcy said it’s loaded, if I’m not mistaken.”
“He did,” Jurgen said as Honey let herself fall into the sofa close to him. He was fooling with the Luger now, pulled up on the toggle that exposed the breech and a nine-millimeter cartridge ejected. He added the cartridge to the magazine, popped it back inside the grip and handed the pistol to Honey. “Loaded, ready to fire,” Jurgen said. “Is there someone you’d like to shoot?”
“Are you kidding?” Honey said, raising the pistol and closing one eye as she aimed at the mirror in the hallway to her bedroom. “I wouldn’t hesitate to plug Hitler, I ever had the Führer in my sights.”
“You don’t want to see him tried for war crimes?”
“What if he gets off?”
“You’re not serious. He’ll hang, if he doesn’t kill himself, which is a distinct possibility.”
Honey lowered the pistol and raised it again saying, “What about Walter’s look-alike, Heinrich Himmler?”
“The world will celebrate for days when he’s hanged.”
“If I had a choice,” Honey said, “Hitler or Himmler? I’d pick Himmler. Kick him in the nuts as hard as I can before I shoot him.”
Honey lowered the pistol again. This time she jammed it straight down between the sofa cushion she was sitting on and Jurgen’s.
“Boy, am I tired.”
“Why don’t you take a nap?”
“I have to go get booze. I think Vera likes to get smashed. Especially the way things are going.”
“I think she handles it well.”
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