Up in Honey's Room Page 4

  This one, standing on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, said, You Carl Webster?

  Yes, I am. Tell me who you're related to.

  You killed my brother.

  The third one to come along with a dead brother. Carl said, You mean the one use to beat the shit out of you when he felt like it? Which one was he?

  Luigi Tessa.

  Jesus Christ, Lou Tessa the backshooter. Carl shook his head. You know he ambushed me? Right here as I'm going in the hotel? You could've busted me from behind yourself, but you want to do it face-to-face, uh? There's hope for you, boy. What's your name?

  Why you want to know?

  So when I tell what happened here I can give your Christian name. Who you were. Carl freed the button holding his suitcoat closed and said, Wait a minute. I never killed your brother, he went to prison.

  Where he got the chair, the kid gangster said. It's the same as you killin' him.

  Listen, Carl said, you don't want to shoot me. He held his suitcoat open wide with both hands. You see a gun on my person? Carl dropped his arms, his right hand sweeping the coat aside to bring out the .38 revolver from his waist, hard against his spine, and put it on Lou Tessa's brother, telling him, Now you see it. Lay your left hand on that cannon you're holding and eject the loads till the piece is empty. You pause, Carl said, I'll take it to mean you want to kill me and I'll shoot you through the heart.

  Virgil, Carl's dad, said, I thought you liked a shoulder holster.

  I'm not gonna wear it driving. I get in the car, Carl said, my gun goes in the glove compartment. I checked out of the office and stopped by the Mayo for a drink. You ought to move to Tulsa. That bar in the basement keeps right up.

  What'd you do with the kid gangster?

  Turned him over to Tulsa police. They'll look him up, see if his big nickel-plate is dirty or not. Vito Tessa, they can have him. I'm leaving from here in the morning, six-thirty.

  How come you're sure the two Huns are in Detroit?

  Carl and his dad were sitting in wicker chairs this evening in shirtsleeves but wearing their felt hats on the front porch of Virgil's big California bungalow, the home situated in the midst of his thousand acres of pecan trees.

  What you want to ask, Carl said, is how I know they're still in Detroit, five and a half months later.

  They were talking about Jurgen Schrenk mostly, a POW from the Afrika Korps, tank captain and one of Rommel's recon officers. Finally, 165 days from the time Jurgen and the other one, Otto Penzler, the SS major, broke out of the Deep Fork prisonerof-war camp drove out in a panel truck, the two Krauts wearing suits of clothes made from German uniforms Carl was free to get after them.

  This day he drove the forty miles south, Tulsa to Okmulgee to visit his dad, was the seventh of April, 1945.

  Carl and his dad were drinking Mexican beer supplied by the oil company way better than the three-two local beer. It was part of the deal that let Texas Oil lease a half section of the property, the wells pumping most of forty years while Virgil tended his pecan trees and Carl, when he was still a boy, raised beef he'd take to market in Tulsa. Virgil's home was a few miles from Okmulgee and across the Deep Fork stream from the POW camp.

  He's still in Detroit, Carl said, 'cause he hasn't been caught, or we'd of heard. Jurgen' ll get by, he speaks American with barely an accent. You have to know what words to listen for. I told you he lived in Detroit when he was a kid? He can talk like a Yankee or sound like he's from Oklahoma, either way.

  I'd see him, Virgil said, the times he'd come with a work crew of prisoners. I swear they all looked like foreigners except Jurgen. I asked him one time was he thinking of setting fire to oil wells and storage tanks, see if he could perform acts of sabotage.

  After you told him you were on the Maine.

  Yes, I did, a marine aboard the battleship the night the dons blew her up in Havana harbor, 1898, and set us at war with Spain. I told him there wasn't a destructive act he could think of that would compare to blowing up the battleship Maine.

  Carl said he got a kick out of Jurgen slipping out of camp every couple of months to get laid, spend some time with his girlfriend, Shemane.

  She was a hot number, Virgil said, worked in a Kansas City cathouse. The next time she's seen she's driving by here in a Lincoln Zephyr.

  Looking for Jurgen, Carl said. He'd sneak out for a few days and show up at the OK Cafe, PW printed on the back of his short pants always wore those Afrika Korps shorts and wait there for the MPs to come get him. The last time he broke out we're certain it was Shemane drove Jurgen and Otto to Fort Smith and bought 'em their getaway car, a '41 Studebaker.

  Virgil said, You ever gonna arrest her?

  Shemane's mom was along for the ride. She raised hell with the agents bringing 'em back from Arkansas. She said they were on their way to Hot Springs to take the waters and had not socialized with any Germans or ever would. I told the agents in Tulsa I'd let Shemane think she's off the hook. Wait for her to leave her mom and go up to Detroit. She does, you got Jurgen. She doesn't, they weren't as nuts about each other as I thought. I said to one of the U. S. attorneys, 'What're you gonna bring her up on, sleeping with the enemy? You want to charge this poor girl, who's gone to bed with some of the most prominent criminal defense lawyers in America?'

  Virgil said, Is that true?

  Pretty much. I'm counting on Jurgen sticking by Otto, doing what he can to keep him under wraps. Some of those heavy-duty Nazis, the SS guys, refuse even to learn English. Otto's SS, but he's tricky. I have a hunch he can get by pretty well in English. Jurgen still might have a time getting him to quit clicking his heels in public, get him to slouch and say things like 'how they hangin' ?' Unless Otto's got too much of a Kraut accent to take him anywhere. But I think the main reason they're still in Detroit, Jurgen has friends there, people willing to help him out.

  Hiding him, Virgil said.

  Or they got Jurgen a new identity, birth certificate, and 4F card. He might even have something working he thinks is fun, while he's teaching Otto to speak American. Jurgen told me one time the Escape Committee, the hard-ass Nazis that run the camp inside, wanted him to study blowing up an ammunition dump they heard about, out in the country south of McAlester. Jurgen telling me about it shows what he thought of the Committee. He said, 'Even if I could blow it up, this place in the middle of nowhere, who would hear the explosion?' He's saying, What good would it do? Working some kind of sabotage now, this late in the war, makes no sense at all. The Battle of the Bulge was Germany's last full-out assault. They pushed off the sixteenth of December with a thousand tanks and by the twentieth of January they had a hundred thousand casualties and lost eight hundred of the tanks. We lost a lot of good soldiers, but we pushed the Krauts back to where they'd started, pretty much done. It was their last assault but, boy, it cost us.

  Virgil said, If the war over there ends pretty soon, what happens to Jurgen and Otto?

  I take 'em back to the camp. The Committee's had prisoners killed, ones they saw as weaklings pretending they're faithful Nazis. Had 'em hanged in the washroom to look like they committed suicide. Jurgen said in a statement he left with the camp commander, he and Otto had to get out of there or they'd be the next ones strung up. In the meantime the Committee guys have been sent to Alva in the western part of Oklahoma, the camp where they keep the thugs, the super-Nazis.

  By now, Virgil said, you must have this Detroit FBI agent in your pocket.

  He's a good guy, Kevin's helping me out. He's still new, doesn't know he's not supposed to talk to strangers, like marshals.

  You tell him there's a book written about you?

  Kevin says it wasn't in the library so I sent him one.

  You started out, you musta had a hundred copies. How many you got left?

  I still have some. I call Kevin, 'You find my Krauts yet?' Five months they've been looking, no luck. They're working to get the goods on a Nazi spy ring and have different ones under surveillance. I asked him where the sp
ies got their secret stuff, from the paper? He said I sound like a girl he's been talking to, Honey Deal. She was married to one of the Detroit Nazis for a year, divorced him in '39. Kevin says Honey's single, good-looking and smart, keeps up on the war that impressed him without having anybody in it to worry about. Kevin has our sheet on the two guys, so he knows Jurgen lived in Detroit at one time and should have friends that are still around. Kevin said, 'Fourteen years old when he went back to Germany, in '35.' He says Honey Deal thinks there's a good chance her ex-husband knew him. Walter Schoen. Kevin said they asked Walter about him. All he did was shake his head.

  I imagine, Virgil said, you want to talk to this guy yourself.

  I've been thinking about it, and his ex-wife, Honey. I asked Kevin if he thought Walter Schoen was attractive to women. He said, 'You think Heinrich Himmler is? That's who Walter looks like.' What I wanted to know was why a smart, good-looking girl from East Kentucky would care to marry him? Kevin said, 'Honey thought she could change him, turn him around.' I said, 'Hell, that's what all women try to do.' He said she told him marrying Walter was the biggest mistake of her life, so far. I'll get with her first, Carl said, then Walter Schoen. Kevin talked to his boss and he talked to the Bureau office in Tulsa, and they vouched for me, so I can do pretty much what I want.

  Since the Hun was a friend of yours.

  He could be, once the war's over. I hope he stays alive.

  Chapter Five.

  Narcissa Raincrow, Virgil's common-law wife of thirty-nine years, called out supper was ready and served them fried chicken and rice with gravy at the round table in the back part of the kitchen. Narcissa, fifty-four now, had been living here since she was sixteen, hired to wet-nurse Carl when his mother, Graciaplena, died giving birth to him. This was in 1906. Virgil had married Grace and brought her here from Cuba after the war with Spain. Carl was named for Grace's father, Carlos. Narcissa, unmarried, had delivered a child stillborn and needed to give her milk to a newborn infant. When Carl first brought his wife, Louly, to the house he told her that by the time he'd lost interest in Narcissa's breasts, his dad had acquired an appreciation, first keeping her on as housekeeper and cook, finally as his common-law wife. Virgil thought she looked like Dolores Del Rio only heavier.

  Narcissa said to Carl eating his chicken, I got a letter from Louly you can read if you want. I write her, she always answers my letter.

  Carl said he talked to her on the phone every week.

  Virgil said, You tell the FBI agent your wife's a marine?

  I tell everybody I meet, Carl said, Louly's a gunnery in- structor at a marine air base. Shows recruits how to fire a Brown- ing machine gun from the backseat of a Dauntless dive-bomber without shooting off the tail. Louly's having all the fun. He misses the war, Virgil said.

  He would still be in it, Narcissa said, he wasn't shot that time. She said to Carl, You lucky, you know it? And said, Virgil tell you the FBI man called?

  I tried him, he was gone for the day, Carl said, busy with his chicken and rice. I'll see him tomorrow.

  How come he asked for Carlos Webster?

  Carl saw his dad stop eating his supper to watch him.

  I told Kevin I was Carlos. I'm thinking of using it again while I'm in Detroit.

  Nobody's called you that since you were a boy, Virgil said. Or up to when you joined the marshals and they started calling you Carl. You'd tell 'em you're Carlos and come near having fist-fights over it till your boss calmed you down. You recall why you wanted to stick with Carlos?

  Carl said, 'Cause it's my name?

  Still a smarty-pants, Narcissa said.

  You were wearing it like a chip on your shoulder, Virgil said. You know why?

  I know what you're gonna say.

  'Cause a long time ago that moron Emmett Long took your ice cream cone and called you a greaser. I told you he couldn't read nor write or he wouldn't be robbing banks.

  He said I was part greaser on my mama's side, Carl said. I told him my grammaw's Northern Cheyenne and asked him if having Indian blood made me something else besides a greaser.

  Narcissa shook her head saying, Don't you want to hug him?

  He told you it would make us breeds, Virgil said, me more'n you. Six years later with a marshal's star on your person, you shot Emmett Long for insulting your ancestry. That's how I tell it to the soldiers in the bar, the ones from the camp they got the Huns in. Then I say, 'Or did the hot kid of the marshals shoot the wanted bank robber for taking his ice cream cone?'

  The soldiers buy the three-two and the shots, Narcissa said, holding a cold bottle of Mexican beer in each hand. He tells one story after another and comes home looped.

  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 De-troit.

  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.