Elmore Leonard - Up in Honey's Room

“I wouldn’t care if you were thirty-one,” Jurgen said. “You know I’m madly in love with you.”

She did, she knew it, but said, “Really?”

He was coming at her in his quiet way, not as quiet as Carl’s, but coming with love now and the next thing on the program they’d be back in bed. She did love making love to this boy who blew up British tanks and was tender and knew how to hold her. Still, she’d need time to quit thinking about Carl.

She touched Jurgen’s face looking up at her.

“I love you in my kimono, but you’d better get dressed.” She kissed him, nibbling his mouth and Jurgen gave signs of wanting a lot more.

“Darcy’s coming back,” Honey said.

“Don’t let him in.”

The boy full of love.

“Let’s save it for later,” Honey said and got him to go get dressed. She poured herself a rye, just a nip to settle her down.

If Carl wasn’t in the picture she could speed it up with Jurgen. She was already calling him Hun, Jurgen hearing it as hon . Hun and Honey. What a cute couple.

Carl. Not available but interested. Told her he did not want to fool around, have fun with a girl if she wasn’t his wife. If he could help it . He did say that. But was he leaving it open or being funny? She had to believe that once he saw her bare breasts he’d be getting pictures of them flashing in his mind and he’d be thinking about her, trying not to become involved but keeping a foot in the door. The poor guy. She should quit tempting him. Jurgen was younger, better-looking. She loved his tan lines, midthigh and around his hips. Jurgen was thoughtful and had tender feelings for her. Carl, he could be tender, he was patient. Jurgen was ready for sex at a moment’s notice. Carl, he had to be at least horny. She could walk off into the sunset with Jurgen. Except if he got caught and she was with him, she could be charged with treason. Carl was married to a marine who had killed two men, shot them on different occasions, once to save Carl’s life.

Was that how you won his heart, shoot somebody?

Darcy came in holding a light beige western hat in both hands and presented it to Jurgen, still in the kimono, saying, “I got this Stetson specially for my pard.”

Honey watched Jurgen take the hat into the hall by the bedroom and try it on in front of the mirror. She was surprised the hat was new. He put it on to rest straight on his head, then pulled it down a little more in front and stared at himself in the mirror.

“It’s the businessman’s range hat,” Darcy said, “the choice of Dallas executives. You understand I’m startin’ you out in less hat. You become a cowboy you can get one with a big scoop brim. You don’t, you got a hat you can wear anywheres and get nods of approval.”

“It fits him,” Honey said. “How did you know his size?”

“I told the colored guy at Henry-the-Hatter’s, ‘This boy is tough, has a mop of hair and he’s smart. I know he’s got a bigger brain’n me.’ I put this’n on, it come down to my eyes and I said, ‘Wrap her up.’”

But it wasn’t wrapped or in a bag or a hatbox.

“I like it very much,” Jurgen said, “thank you, amigo.”

“You could pass for American,” Darcy said. “She loosens up on you, stuff some toilet paper in there behind the sweatband.”

Honey was dying to ask Darcy how he’d swiped the hat, but was more interested in what Bo had paid him for the stolen car. “You said you’d show us what Bo gave you?”

“For my car,” Darcy said. “I got another just like it over at the Sears, Roebuck parkin’ lot.”

Honey said, “You already told us you have another car.”

Darcy said, “Here,” zipped open his jacket and brought a pistol out of the waist of his pants and held it up, “a German Luger, what officers have in the war.”

“They used to,” Jurgen said. “Now it’s the Walther, but you see Lugers. I had one since 1939 until the MPs took it from me.”

Darcy said, “You shoot anybody with it?”

“Not with a pistol, no.”

“This baby’s ready to fire,” Darcy said. “I told Bo to load her up and gimme a box of nines.” He said to Jurgen, “What would you say she’s worth?”

“I have no idea. There must be hundreds of thousands of them. They go back to 1908.”

“Bo says it’s worth five hunnert easy.”

Honey said, “What were you asking for the car?”

“Five hunnert.”

“If you got a dollar, you’d still be ahead.”

“I know I could get a good price for this gun,” Darcy said. “I ain’t about to pack it. My record, I get pulled over for a broke taillight I’m back inside.” He said to Honey, “Sunshine, how about if you hold on to my German Luger for me, till I get situated?”

Carl came in the afternoon to visit the murder scene, police cars filling the circular drive. Kevin said the Homicide people were calling it a triple now. “I told them the guy they wanted to talk to was Bohdan Kravchenko. He likes jewelry, doesn’t he? There’s a mess of Miz Taylor’s jewelry missing, according to the maid, Nadia-she’s from over in Central Europe someplace. And the doctor’s medicine cabinet’s been cleaned out.” He told Carl in the living room, “Here’s where the doctor was lying on his back, with his wife lying over him facedown, still holding the Walther.”

He told Carl the bodies had been removed to the Wayne County morgue downtown, a few blocks from 1300 Beaubien, Detroit Police headquarters. “They all refer to it as just Thirteen-hundred. They’re busy down there,” Kevin said, “homicide, major crimes, bomb disposal, firearms examiners.” Kevin grinned. “You ever hear of the Big Four? Four good-size guys, detectives, in a Buick sedan, two in front, two in back. They prowl the streets looking for trouble.”

Carl said if there was time he wouldn’t mind meeting these boys. “Sounds like they get right to the point with offenders.”

He phoned Honey while he had the chance and told her about the murder scene, they talked and he said he’d call her later. She said, “I may not be here.” Serious, not sounding like Honey the fun-lover or Honey on the make. He almost said, “Are you working for me or not?” But couldn’t tell what was wrong from her tone. Why get tough? He said, “You don’t want to help me out?” It moved her enough to say she’d be there.

He could go see her right now, ten minutes away. Seven Mile down to a block this side of McNichols, that everyone called Six Mile. Or cut through Palmer Park. He hung around the scene thinking about her, and his mind would wander to street names in Detroit; they had some good ones like Beaubien and St. Antoine, Chene, an old French town now full of war plants. Finally he told himself to quit fuckin’ the dog. Go on. Show you can be alone with the girl in her apartment and not tear her clothes off. It wouldn’t happen anyway, she’d have ’em off already. He thought, What if you went to bed with her . . . No, really, what if you went to bed and made love, but it was only to find out something or prove a point of some kind . . . Or, he thought, what if you just fucked her socks off and got it over with?

He followed Wellesley to Lowell to Balmoral in the Pontiac, winding through Palmer Woods with the big English-style homes and polite maids who told the homicide dicks going door-to-door, “No, sir, Missus says we never heard nothin’ last night.”

Carl came to Seven Mile and stopped. He could turn left to Woodward, take it south to Honey’s, or turn right and take Pontchartrain through the park. A car was in his rearview mirror. Stopped, the first car he’d seen in Palmer Woods, parked or moving, outside of cop cars today. Like it was waiting for him to make up his mind, a ’41 Model A Ford.