Elmore Leonard - Up in Honey's Room

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?”

“Doing 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.

"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.”