Elmore Leonard - Up in Honey's Room

“What is it?”

“He won’t say. He’ll tell us tomorrow night, here. He’ll bring that loudmouth from Georgia if he flies up. I called Dr. Taylor, told him he’d better come. Keep up with what’s going on.”

“I hope Joe Aubrey can’t make it,” Bo said. “The weather has him socked in. No, he takes off. Fuck the weather, he’s a ferocious, two-fisted little fellow and no storm is going to stop him. But it does, he crashes and burns to death. Wouldn’t that be neat?”

“Except he’s taking the train this time,” Vera said. “The one I’ve been thinking about is Dr. Taylor.”

“He doesn’t say a word,” Bo said, “as his eyes silently move over us, missing nothing.”

“He doesn’t speak very much at a meeting. But he could be talking to the Federal Bureau. I think if he has to,” Vera said, “the doctor will tell on us rather than go to prison. Or have his sentence reduced.”

“What would you like me to do about it?”

“I’ll let you know tomorrow night, after I watch these people. See if I like any of them.”

“See who has money to give us,” Bo said. “We know the loudmouth could spare some. You could vamp him, give him one of your lines.”

“No, I couldn’t. His cologne makes my eyes water.”

“Mine too. I thought it was Joe’s breath. Get him to write you a check for German Relief, the starving people of Berlin, made out to cash.” Bo squirmed against Vera to lay his cheek on her breast. “Tell me when you’re out of money, I’ll go stand on the corner.”

“Don’t say that. Please.”

“Six Mile and Woodward Avenue, partway up the first block. Catch some trade going home to the suburbs, where the people with money live.”

Vera took Bo’s jaw in her hand and turned his face to look at her and see the judgment in her eyes.

“Never, ever, tell me what you could be doing when you’re not with me. I don’t want to hear it. You understand? Not even kidding, or I’ll cut you loose.” She kept looking at him, their faces close, and kissed his mouth, Vera gentle now, her voice soft saying, “You understand? You’re my love. I want to feel you belong to me, no one else. Be nice to me,” Vera said, “I’ll make you happy. I’ll let you wear my black sequined dress tomorrow night.”

Bo twisted around to sit up.

“You mean when your spy ring’s here?”

“It’s up to you,” Vera said.

“The black with sequins?”

Carl phoned Louly every week at Cherry Point, North Carolina, the marine air base, so he wouldn’t have to write letters. He’d listen to her get on a subject like marching, how marines loved to march and had their own snappy way of calling cadence, more like sounds than words, not making any sense. She said, “Why is marching so important? In boot you march everywhere you go. Even now, visitors come up from Washington, congressmen, we’re out on the parade passing in review, doing right and left obliques, to the rear march, showing the visitors, goddamn it, we’re marines.”

Louly sounding like a dedicated jarhead.

“We even marched a lot,” Carl said, meaning the Seabees. “You’re in the service, it doesn’t matter which one, they march your ass off. I think it’s to get you doing what you’re told on the beat. You’re in combat, you get ordered to move, you don’t stop and think, you move.”

So his wife would think he was as Semper Fi as she was.

Toward the end of the conversation Louly would say, “You staying out of trouble?”

Carl would say, “I don’t have time to get in trouble. How about you?”

“We stay in the barracks we play hearts or read. We go out, we have a few beers and listen to gyrines try their dopey lines on us. The officers who’ve been in combat think they’re hot stuff and act real bored. I tell them my husband’s shot more people who wanted to kill him than any of you, without even leaving Oklahoma.”

“What about the two Nips I got? On an island supposed to be secured?”

That time Louly said, “Don’t worry, I tell them about your scoring a couple of Nips.”

He’d feel good after talking to Louly. Her enlistment was up in the summer and he’d tell her he couldn’t wait to have his sweetie home. He’d start looking for an apartment in Tulsa.

This time, talking to him in Detroit, Louly said, “You staying out of trouble?”

He said what he always did about not having time, but with pictures of Honey Deal flashing in his mind, Honey wearing her black beret, in the car and at dinner, Honey’s eyes on him as she sipped her dry martini, straight up.

Louly said over the phone, “I love you, Carl,” and he said, “I love you too, sweetie,” remembering not to call her honey.

There were two anchovy olives in Honey’s martini.

She said, “I take one of the olives in my mouth, like this, crush it between my teeth and sip the ice-cold martini, the silver bullet. Mmmmmm.”

He said, “They get you feeling good in a hurry.”

“Yes, they do.”

“If you aren’t careful.”

She said, “Even if you are.”

Her eyes smiling at him.

He dropped Honey off at her apartment after they had supper. She thanked him. Hoped she’d see him again sometime. She didn’t ask if he wanted to come up.

See?

She was fun to be with, that’s all. She flirted a little bit with her eyes, certain things she said, but that didn’t mean he’d ever go all the way with her. He had a good-looking wife who’d shot two men in her time and taught twelve hundred gunnies to love their .30-caliber Browning. Louly was all the girl he had ever wanted, and had sworn at the time to remain faithful to her. He had no intention of ever committing adultery with Honey. If that’s what she was game for and it looked like it might happen, Honey being what you’d call a free spirit, with bedroom eyes and that lower lip waiting there for him to bite, the girl acting like there was nothing wrong with free love.

Carl told himself there was no possibility of his ever going too far. Even if he’d be seeing more of her now. Pretty much every day, now that he’d lost his guide to Detroit, Kevin Dean reassigned to bars blowing up.

He phoned Honey from the FBI office where he’d spent most of the day. She sounded busy but calm answering questions thrown at her by salesgirls, sounding like she was in charge over at Hudson’s Better Dresses; so all he said was his plans had changed and he would like to talk to her about what they’d be doing. He could give her a ride home after work, save her taking the streetcar.

Honey said, “Carl, you’re my hero.”

He said, “Shit,” once he’d hung up.

At the hotel cigar counter he picked up a copy of the Detroit News and went through the paper until he found Neal Rubin’s column. Carl saw the heading and said “Jesus Christ” out loud and then read about himself.

What’s America’s Ace Manhunter Doing in Detroit?

There is a remote chance you know why Carl Webster is

known as “the Hot Kid of the Marshals Service.” It was

the title of the book about him that I reviewed for the

News ten years ago. I liked the book, but can’t for the life

of me remember why he’s called the Hot Kid.

The question now is, what’s Carl doing in Detroit?

He works out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. In a column last year that

I called “America’s Most Famous Lawman,” I told of Carl’s

specialty: going after German prisoners of war who have

busted out of camp and are on the loose. Carl is an expert

tracker, our Ace Manhunter.

That’s Deputy U.S. Marshal Carl Webster in the

photo, taken in the lobby of the Detroit FBI office. He’s