Elmore Leonard - Up in Honey's Room

“Didn’t Joe Aubrey go home with Walter? That would be three of them in Walter’s Ford.”

“I don’t know, really. I had already said good night to my guests. They could stay and talk if they wished.”

“Maybe Aubrey went home with Dr. Taylor.”

“He might have.”

Carl said, “Who did Jurgen go home with?”

Vera was smoking a cigarette, at ease. She said, “Poor Jurgen. I understand for five and a half months no one can find him, and the Hot Kid arrives. Tell me, what does it mean to be a hot kid?”

“You start out being lucky,” Carl said.

“Twelve times,” Vera said, “you were lucky with your pistol, shooting criminals?”

“What you do with a gun isn’t luck,” Carl said. “I’m talking about, in the line of duty having chances to look good, like you know what you’re doing.”

Vera liked that. She smiled at him. “The newspapers write the story and you become a hero.”

“Once you get a name,” Carl said, “and somebody writes a book about you, you get referred to a lot. A clerk in a store stops a robbery. They might say he made a lightning fast Carl Webster move and brought up a revolver. Last month I was interviewed about escaped prisoners of war like I’m an expert on it. They call me ’cause my name’s familiar. Let’s see what Carl Webster has to say. It was a piece in Newsweek .”

“I saw it,” Vera said. “‘The Hot Kid’s War.’ Did you like what they wrote?”

“The writer and I got along pretty well.”

“Your wife I see is a marine?”

“A gunny. Louly teaches firing a machine gun from a dive-bomber.”

“Of the dozen people you’ve shot and killed in your career, were any of them women?”

“None. They were pretty much all wanted felons, bank robbers. One a cow thief caught in the act, but I don’t count him.”

“Why is that?”

“I wasn’t a marshal yet. If you’re counting people I shot in the line of duty.”

“Do you ever regret taking their lives?”

Carl said, “Does Joe Foss regret shooting down twenty-six Zekes? He flew a Wildcat in the Pacific.”

Vera said, “Yes, of course, why would it be different? Though I imagine Joe Foss never sees the faces of the ones he kills.” She said, “Forgive me, I’m making conversation.”

Bo came to the sofa looking only at Vera to say there was a call for the deputy marshal. “In the den,” he told Carl, still looking at Vera, and turned away.

Carl said, “Was he asking you if it was okay?”

“You must have said something he didn’t like.” Vera waved her hand. “He wants you to follow him.”

It was Kevin Dean on the phone.

“You’re talking to Vera?”

“I’m looking for Honey,” Carl said standing by the desk, shelves of leather-bound sets of books behind him, books he thought of as decoration, never opened.

Kevin said, “She doing you any good? I haven’t seen her since I was reassigned. You have trouble calling her Honey?”

“No,” Carl said. “Do you?”

“I did at first. In fact I still have trouble. It’s what you call your wife or your girlfriend. Anyway, listen, the reason I called, Dr. Michael Taylor, one of the useless spy ring guys, was shot and killed last night. It looks like his wife Rosemary did it with a Walther P38 and then used it on herself, blew her brains out. The cleaning woman said the gun belonged to Dr. Taylor. She came this morning surprised to see the car still in the garage, the doctor hadn’t left to go to his office, and found them in the living room.”

Carl was thinking, If Kevin had trouble calling her Honey, it meant he hadn’t gone to bed with her yet. He said, “The maid called the police?”

“Right away. Detroit Homicide got on the scene. One of the guys in the squad knew about Dr. Taylor being pro-Nazi, a member of the Bund back in the thirties, arrested on a misdemeanor, demonstrating in front of a synagogue. Homicide’s keeping us up on what they find.”

Carl was looking at Bo standing in the doorway, his back to Carl by the desk.

“Something else,” Kevin said. “They’re positive a third gunshot victim was in the lavatory, shot in the back of the head. They found traces of blood the shooter tried to clean up but did a half-assed job, so the evidence techs went over the entire lavatory and found bone fragments and brain tissue in the drain.”

Carl told Kevin to hold it a minute. He said to Bo, “Sweetheart, instead of listening to the conversation, how about getting me a cup of coffee?”

Bo walked away without saying a word.

“Maybe the doctor,” Carl said, “was in the can when she popped him.”

“Taylor was shot in the chest. It was someone else.”

“Who’s missing?”

“Joe Aubrey.”

“His plane’s at the airport?”

“It never was. He took the train this time. He’s having work done on the Cessna, in Atlanta.”

“Where’s Walter?”

“At his farm this morning.”

“Alone?”

“That German couple’s there. I asked the woman, she answered the phone, if anybody came home with Walter, she said no.”

“You know Honey crashed the spy party.”

“I heard, yeah. You believe it? I’ve been trying to get hold of her, but she hasn’t been home or at work all morning.”

“You still pickin’ through bomb damage?”

“I’m on the homicide now. You want to look at the scene, I’ll take you.”

Carl said, “Is there any reason to believe the third one might be a woman?”

Kevin took a moment to say, “I don’t know. I think they all assume it was a guy. But the wife, say she caught him with another woman.” There was a silence. “No, if the wife did it, the other woman’s body’d still be there. I’ll find out and let you know.”

“Or the third one,” Carl said, “was the other guy she caught her husband with? But where did he go?”

Kevin said, “You’re not thinking it could be Honey.”

“Vera said Walter drove her home. I don’t have any reason to believe Vera, but I do. I accept her lying about Jurgen.”

“Well, Walter’s at the farm. I spoke to him for a while. In the surveillance report for last night, Walter arrived with most likely Joe Aubrey, but it was hard to get a positive ID. They know Walter because of his car. Surveillance says he left with a man and a woman.”

“You call him before or after you knew about the homicides?”

“After I went to the scene. I called him from there, asked him who he drove home. He said Honig Schoen. He dropped her off at her apartment. I said, ‘Walter, there were three people got in your car when you left the meeting.’ Walter said, ‘You have a photograph of three unidentified people standing by a car at night somewhere?’ He said whoever saw us was mistaken or lied. His wife was his only passenger.”

“That’s what he called her?”

“Which, his wife or his passenger? I asked if she was at the farm with him. Walter said no. But she promised to spend time with him today.”

“She told him that?”

“Walter said he would see she kept her verd.”

“So we know what she’s doing now,” Carl said. “She’s hiding from Walter.”

Vera hadn’t moved from the sofa. Sitting with her again Carl thought of giving her knee a pat for no other reason than having the war in common, on different sides but they’d feel the same way about it. He said to her, “You think the war’s done anyone any good?”

“I’ll say no one, because I’m too tired to think of something that sounds wise, or enigmatic. Or stupid.”

“What do you want to do when it’s over?”

“Try not to be noticed.”

“You worried about people telling on you?”