Up in Honey's Room Read online

  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 felt 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 back-seat 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 DETR OIT 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.

  Eigh t 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 blame
d 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 thirty- foot 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 people 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.

  Honey remembered Kevin telling her about it, but without the details, like why she had Carl's revolver. And something about Louly being Pretty Boy Floyd's girl friend? Honey was thinking maybe she should read the book about Carl.

  Kevin was saying, There was another guy Louly shot, wasn't there? Another bank robber?

  That was Joe Young they called Booger, Carl said, suppose to've been in Pretty Boy Floyd's gang, what he told Louly, but never was. Louly happened to be with Joe Young at a tourist court the time we showed up to arrest him.

  Honey thinking, Wait. She happens to be there with Booger?

  Carl was saying, He opened up on us, Joe not wanting to go back to prison. We answered and there was an exchange of gunfire. Louly's in there with him, an innocent party to what was going on. She saw she was liable to get shot, bullets ripping through the door and windows. While I'm trying to get the cops, local police, to stop firing, Louly pulled a revolver from her crocheted bag and shot Joe Young, put him out of his misery.

  Kevin said, She packed a gun?

  It was one Joe gave her. He'd told Louly he was gonna show her how to rob a bank.

  Honey thinking, Do you believe this?

  I told her, after, the Oklahoma Bankers Association was prepared to give her a five-hundred-dollar reward for putting her friend out of business. She said Joe wasn't ever her friend, but did admit she had a crush on Pretty Boy Floyd. Louly met him, she was still a kid, the day he married her cousin Ruby. Then wrote letters to him while he was at Jeff City doing time. She made up a story, that Joe Young stole her stepdad's Model A and abducted her, took her to the tourist cabin. I told her, stay with that and you won't go to jail. But then the newspapers got hold of it, 'Sallisaw Girl Shoots Abductor.' Reporters started talking to Louly, wanting to hear her story, and before you know it the headline was 'Girlfriend of Pretty Boy Guns Down Mad-Dog Felon.' After a while she got over it, tired of people thinking she was Floyd's sweetie, bothering her all the time.

  Kevin said, And you married her.

  Not till she grew up. Now she's a U. S. Marine teaching jar-heads how to shoot a Browning machine gun.

  You left off, you're still on the Duck, Kevin said.

  I hear the Nip coming through the growth, Carl said. I see an Asiatic face in a dirty cap appear above the gunnel. I shot him as he's bringing up his rifle. We thought he was by himself, but now there's another one aiming a rifle at me, his face pressed against the stock. I shot him about a second before he fired and it threw him off. I got hit in the leg 'stead of between the eyes.

  That got you home?

  By then I'd served my country and had a tattoo and a Purple Heart. He said to Kevin, They must've given you one of those.

  Yes sir, I got a Heart. After that I was invited to attend FBI training.

  That's all, they didn't give you a medal?

  Not for ending up in a VA hospital.

  They gave me a Navy Cross, Carl said, for doing the two Nips. I think because nothing was going on at the time, the island, you keep telling me, being secured.

  Carl missed Kevin's helpless look. He'd turned to Honey Deal. I can't wait to hear you tell me about Walter.

  She liked his eyes and the way he was looking at her that had nothing to do with Walter. She said, If you all are through telling war stories, why don't we order? I have to get back to being a salesgirl, put on my smile.

  Carl said, I was hoping we'd have time to talk.

  She said, I could meet you after work for a drink, and saw a gleam come into his soft brown eyes.

  Carl said, Tell me when the last time was you saw Walter. The day I walked out, November ninth, 1939.

  You think about him?

  Hardly ever.

  You want to go with me when I see him?

  It stopped her. She saw Walter staring, he opens the door and she's in his life again. He looks stunned. Well, confused.

  Really? Honey said, wanting to smile but held off. What would I do, introduce you?

  I think you'll make him nervous, Carl said. I'll get him talking, ask him questions. You watch, jump in when you think he's lying.

  Kevin said, I'm there too, aren't I?

  The only trouble, Carl said, if you're with us Walter's already told you he's never laid eyes on Jurgen and Otto, and he'll stick to it, realizing it's why I'm talking to him. I want to edge around the two Krauts and take him by surprise, get him admitting things before he knows it, while Honey stares and has him fidgeting. But what you can do for me, Carl said, find out if Walter's at the butcher shop or the farm.

  Honey watched Kevin, the poor guy not knowing whether to cry or act like a cool federal agent. What he did, he stuck to the job saying to Carl, You don't know where anything is around here.

  Honey said, I know where the butcher shop is. Give me the address of the farm and I'll see Carl gets there.

  All right, fine, Kevin said, looking at Carl, if that's how you want to do it.

  Taking it like a man, Honey thought and looked at Carl, wanting to say, We work pretty well together, don't we? What she said was, Are we having lunch or not?r />
  Carl ordered the chicken potpie.

  Kevin asked the waitress if he could have the Canadian cheese soup and, let's see, a club sandwich, toasted, no mayonnaise?

  Honey was hungry but chose the Maurice salad for now. She saw herself with Carl until he went back to Oklahoma.

  Chapter Nine.

  The elevator stopped twice on the way up to let people crowd on, Otto and Jurgen pressed against the back of the car by the time they came to thirteen. Otto waited while people in front of them walked off the car with some purpose, knowing where they were going, but not the two old ladies in front of him. Otto saw the wide-open entrance to a restaurant, people at rows of tables that reached to windows showing sunlight, Otto thinking he would like a table back there to look out at the city, the streetcars, the crowds of people, uniforms among them but not that many. They called this city the Arsenal of Democracy. Oh, really? He saw nothing to tell him these people were at war. Jurgen had gotten off and Otto saw him now standing with the hostess. The two old ladies made it out of the elevator and came to a stop and Otto stopped. He saw Jurgen looking over the room of tables with the hostess pointing her pencil, a good-looking woman, her hair done . . . Jurgen turned and now he was looking this way at the elevator, then holding up his hand to tell Otto Halt, Jurgen shaking his head. Otto turned and stepped in the elevator again.

  Jurgen had seen someone he didn't expect to see, didn't want to see, and that was enough. He was coming now, his face, his expression, telling Otto nothing. Now he was stopped by the two old ladies in front of him, Otto watching from the elevator as the door closed and the Negro girl at the wheel turned the handle of the circular control and said as the car rose, Fourteenth floor. Beauty salons, Hudson's Americana Salon and the Executive Barbershop. Employment office, employees' cafeteria, and the J. L. Hudson Company hospital.

  Otto said to her, Where are the books?

  On the mezzanine, tables and tables of books, nearly all by American authors. This was acceptable to Otto, he believed Americans wrote the greatest variety of readable books found in any language, all kinds of novels by authors who kept you turning pages. One of his favorites, about the confident gentleman who addressed his friend as old sport. He also liked the author who used a blunt way of writing his stories set in Spain and Africa, not North Africa, East Africa, where the tall, handsome American on safari with his wife had bolted like a rabbit in the face of a full-grown wounded lion coming at him. He and Jurgen had both read the story while in the Oklahoma prison camp. Jurgen didn't understand the wife turning on the poor man, insulting him to his face. Because he proved himself a coward, Otto said. Jurgen said, But it wasn't his job to kill lions. Otto remembered saying, What does the white hunter with the cold blue eyes tell him? 'In Africa no woman ever misses her lion and no white man ever bolts.' Otto liked the woman using her husband's cowardice as an excuse to sleep with the white hunter, Robert Wilson, who brought a double-size cot on these trips, anticipating the strange behavior of American women. Otto liked the guns too, the white hunter's big-bore .505 Gibbs, and the 6.5 Mannlicher the wife used on her husband once he had redeemed himself and she realized she had lost him, shooting Francis Macomber two inches up and a little to one side of the base of his skull. He called her Margot. Otto would see himself having a drink with Margot, smiling, toasting her with his glass.