Elmore Leonard - Up in Honey's Room

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.”

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 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.”