Elmore Leonard - Up in Honey's Room

“I moved her hair aside.”

“With the Walther?”

“No, the tips of my fingers. I was gentle with her. But she saw me, so I had no choice.”

“You’re very good at what you have to do,” Vera said, laying her hand on his shoulder. She had been harsh with him and didn’t want Bo to sulk, waste her time acting hurt. She stroked his hair saying, “To make you feel better, we have Joe Aubrey’s check for fifty thousand dollars. If I can put it in an account and make withdrawals within a few days, we’ll have our going-away money.”

“And we can amscray out of De-twah,” Bo said. “Can I lay my tired head against your tummy-tum?”

Vera took his face in her hands and brought his cheek against her body. “What we don’t want to happen, they find Aubrey before we amscray. Can you imagine the interrogations we’d have to survive? Two of my alleged aides found shot to death?” She said, “That won’t happen, will it, Bo?”

“That’s not the problem,” Bo said and waited for Vera.

She said, “There is always a problem, isn’t there?”

“Walter could tell them I was to drive Mr. Aubrey out to the farm but we never arrived. Or as Kevin Dean would say, ‘We never showed.’ That girl Honey Deal will say, ‘Oh, that’s right, Mr. Aubrey. Didn’t he go home with Bohdan?’ That fucking marshal, you know what he called me? Bohunk.”

“I wondered what he said to you. Honey thinks you’re cute.”

“She does? Well, Jurgen’s with her now.”

“Having him for breakfast,” Vera said. “The girl’s a man-eater.”

“The FBI will ask him, ‘Was Aubrey in the car with you?’ Jurgen will say, ‘No, he vasn’t.’”

“Jurgen doesn’t speak that way. But they left with Walter before you put Aubrey in my car. They can’t be certain you took him any where.”

“Do you want to leave it to chance?” Bo said. “Maybe the police will find out I took Aubrey to see the doctor and maybe they won’t. Meanwhile, Vera wets her panties every time the doorbell rings.”

Vera said, “God,” weary of this war business, “all the dead we’ve seen.”

“Don’t give up on me now,” Bo said. “What’s a few more?”

At least three. Four, with any luck.

“All right,” Vera said, “when the police say to you, these other people told us you drove Aubrey to Walter’s. If you didn’t go there, where did you take Mr. Aubrey? What will you say to that?”

“I’ll say, ‘Where in the world did they get that idea? I didn’t take Mr. Aubrey anywhere. By the time he left the party I was in bed.’”

“So how did he get to Dr. Taylor’s?”

“How should I know?”

“But you were here with everyone. What kind of arrangement was made if Walter didn’t take him?”

“Give them my theory?”

“If it makes sense.”

“Well, the way I see it, Dr. Taylor and Mr. Aubrey had a thing going and made plans to meet somewhere after the party was over. Say, at a bar on Woodward or maybe in front of the cathedral, only a block away. Dr. Taylor picked up Aubrey and took him home so they could monkey around in peace, tease each other, and the doctor’s wife Rosemary-I always thought of as a very sweet woman-heard them giggling, crept downstairs, caught the two old dears kissing and shot them with her husband’s Walther. Then, so ferociously distraught by what she did, pressed the pistol against her temple and kapow, took her own life.” Bo, still looking at Vera, said, “Her breasts were so-so.”

Vera said, “‘Ferociously distraught?’”

“Enormously depressed to learn her husband the respected doctor is a sissy.”

“Where did she get the pistol?”

“She knew her husband was a scaredy-cat and kept it in his smoking jacket when he was downstairs alone at night.”

“How do you know that?”

“Rosemary told me one time. Or, she brought the pistol from upstairs.”

“You’re wearing the smoking jacket he had on?”

“This is a different one.”

“So they say to you, ‘If Mr. Aubrey wasn’t there this morning, what happened to him?’”

“I say, ‘How should I know, I’m not a detective.’”

At Vera’s Jurgen was quiet, he was pleasant, he was a cute young guy in a sport coat. Honey brought him home, turned on a lamp, and he was an escaped prisoner of war standing in her living room. Maybe because Jurgen seemed at home in Vera’s formal setting and Honey had never imagined a German soldier in her apartment. German soldiers were in the newspaper. Jurgen trusted her, had come willingly, and now she wasn’t sure how this was going to work out. Arrange for Carl to see him tomorrow. They talk, maybe have a drink, and then what? Jurgen says auf Wiedersehen and Carl lets him walk away? After coming a thousand miles to get him? Or will he handcuff Jurgen and take him back to Oklahoma? What he’s been dying to do for months.

And Jurgen will think you set him up. Lured him here for Carl. Telling him Carl can’t touch you. Telling him to take your word, it was good as gold. Sounding like a nitwit, Little Miss Sunshine, when she was a little girl and the world was perfect except for her brother Darcy being in it, living in the same house. Or telling Jurgen it was safe because right now it was like being in the eye of a storm.

She’d be nice to Jurgen, not too nice but nice, and ask him if he was hungry, if he’d like a drink, if he wanted to listen to the radio or one of her records; she had Sinatra, Woody Herman, Buddy Rich, Louis Prima and Keely Smith.

“You don’t have Bing Crosby? ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’?”

“I never cared that much for Bing. I have Bob Crosby and the Bobcats and my all-time favorite, Billie Holiday doing ‘Gee, Baby, Ain’t I Good to You.’”

“What about Bob Wills and Roy Acuff ?”

Honey was already singing in a hushed voice, making it sound easy, “Love makes me treat you the way that I do, gee, baby, ain’t I good to you,” and said, “You like hillbilly music, uh?”

Jurgen said he started listening to Grand Ole Opry in ’34, when he was here with his family.

He was comfortable with her. Didn’t say a word about Carl coming to see him. Never mentioned his name. He believed what she’d told him, that he was safe with her, didn’t have to worry about being grabbed and hauled back to Oklahoma, and it made her feel like a traitor, not sure at all now what Carl would do.

“There was another Tulsa marshal,” Jurgen said, “I met at the camp, Gary Marion. He turned in his star because he missed the rodeo and he’s back competing.”

“Rides bucking broncos?”

“Rides homicidal bulls. The day I left the camp-”

“The day you escaped?”

“I got a letter from Gary he wrote while he was in Austin ro-deo-ing. That’s what he called it. Gary was never a trail-driving cowhand, but he wore the hat and rode bulls on the circuit.”

“You want to be a bull rider when you grow up?”

“I have no plans to grow up. I had thought of being a cowboy and wear the hat and the boots, but if you can compete-ride wild horses and killer bulls for eight seconds at a time-you don’t have to be a ranch hand, a working cowboy.”

“And you get to wear the hat, and the boots like Carl’s,” Honey said. “Carl looks more like a cowboy than any cowboy I’ve ever seen, and he doesn’t wear the hat.”

She brought Carl into the conversation without thinking, pictures of him prowling around in her mind, but Jurgen didn’t pick up on it. He said, “Your brother’s giving me one of his hats.”

“I hope it fits,” Honey said. “Darcy has a tiny head.” She looked at her watch and then at Jurgen, both of them on the sofa now. “It’s late. I’m ready for bed.”