Elmore Leonard - Up in Honey's Room

Kevin said, “You’re having fun, aren’t you? Jurgen’s dad was a production engineer with Ford of Germany. He brought his wife and the boy along when he came here as an adviser on speeding up Ford assembly lines. Henry thought Hitler was doing a fine job getting Germany on its feet again. Jurgen’s family made their home at the Abington Apartment Hotel on Seward. I think they were here two years, Ford Motor paying expenses.”

Honey said, “How old was Jurgen?”

“By the time they left”-Kevin looking at his notebook again-“he would’ve been-”

“About fourteen?”

“Fourteen,” Kevin said and looked up.

“You talk to Walter about the escaped prisoners?”

“In the past week we’ve talked to most all of the names on our watch list of Nazi sympathizers, including Walter. He said he’s never heard of Jurgen Schrenk. How’d you know he was fourteen?”

“I guessed. ’Cause Walter was fourteen when he came here,” Honey said. “Or the way he used to tell it, when he was brought here against his will. We’re at the Dakota Inn one time having a few, Walter said he attended a going-away party in this bar a few years ago. To honor a family going home to Germany after living here awhile. I don’t remember how long exactly or the family’s name, or if Walter said anything about the dad being with Ford. Walter was hung up on the kid. He said, ‘Fourteen years old, the boy goes home to a new Germany, at the most glorious time of its history. I was fourteen, I was brought here and taught to cut meat.’ ”

“That’s how he said it?”

“Pretty much word for word.”

“This was before the war.”

“I think he met the boy about 1935.”

“If Walter missed Germany so much, what was stopping him from going back?”

“You know how many times I asked him that? He’d say it was his destiny to be here, so he shouldn’t complain.”

“What’s that mean exactly, his fate? There’s nothing he can do about it?”

“It means there must be something important he’s destined to get involved in. I said to him, ‘You don’t want to go down in history as a meat cutter?’”

“You picked on him like that, didn’t you, and he always thought you were serious.”

“Tell me who you think he looks like,” Honey said. “I don’t mean a movie star.”

Kevin said, “The first time I opened Walter’s file and looked at his picture? I thought, Is this Walter Schoen or Heinrich Himmler?”

“Tell him he looks like Himmler,” Honey said, “Walter nods, lowers his head and says, ‘Thank you.’ Did you know they’re both born the same year, 1900, on the same day, October seventh, in the same hospital in Munich?”

Kevin stared, not saying a word.

“Walter believes he’s Himmler’s twin brother and they were separated at birth.”

“He tell you why?”

“Walter says he and Himmler each have their own destiny, their mission in life. We know what Himmler’s is, don’t we? Kill all the Jews he can find. But Walter-I don’t know-five years ago, still hadn’t found out what he’s supposed to do.”

“He isn’t stupid, is he?”

“He knows how to run a business. His butcher shop always made money. But that was before rationing. I don’t know how he’s doing now.”

“Last summer,” Kevin said, “he bought a farm at auction, a hundred and twenty acres up for back taxes, a house, a barn, and an apple orchard. He said he’s thinking about going into the home-kill business, have a small slaughterhouse and sell as a wholesaler.”

“He got rid of his butcher shop?”

“He still has it. But why would he get into meatpacking? It seems like every day you read about a meatpacker going out of business. The problem, shortages and price controls, the armed forces taking a third of what meat’s available.”

“Ask him,” Honey said, “if he’s a traitor to his country, or he’s selling meat on the black market and making a pile of money.”

She pushed up from the sofa and headed for the bedroom telling the special agent, “I’ll be ten minutes, Kev. Drive me to work, I’ll tell you why I married Walter.”

Kevin walked over to Honey’s bookcase and began looking at titles, most of them unknown to him, and saw Mein Kampf squeezed between For Whom the Bell Tolls and This Gun for Hire . He pulled out Adolf Hitler’s book and began skipping through pages of dense-looking text full of words. He turned to the short hallway that led to Honey’s bedroom.

“Did you read Mein Kampf ?”

There was a silence.

“I’m sorry-what did you say?”

He crossed to the hallway not wanting to shout and came to her bedroom, the door open, and saw Honey at her vanity.

“I asked if you read Mein Kampf . ”

“I didn’t, and you know why?”

She was leaning toward the mirror putting on lipstick, the kimono on Honey in the mirror hanging open and he could see one of her breasts, the nipple, the whole thing.

“Because it’s so fucking boring,” Honey said. “I tried a few times and gave up.”

He saw her looking in the mirror at him, holding the lipstick to her mouth, and saw her move the kimono enough to cover the breast.

She said, “I don’t think you’d like it.”

“I wouldn’t?”

“The book, Mein Kampf .”

They drove south down Woodward Avenue from Six Mile Road in a ’41 Olds sedan, property of the FBI, Honey looking at shop windows, Kevin waiting. Finally he said, “You and Walter started seeing each other and before you knew it you fell head over heels in love?”

Honey was taking a pack of Luckys from her black leather bag, getting one out, and using a Zippo she flicked once to light the cigarette.

“That’s what happened,” Honey said, “I fell in love with Walter because he’s such a swell guy, kind and considerate, fun to be with.” She handed the cigarette to Kevin, a trace of lipstick on the tip.

Now she was lighting another, Kevin glancing at Honey in her trench coat and black beret, pulled low on her blond hair and slightly to one side, the way girls in spy movies wore their berets. Honey was a new experience for him.

She said, “The whole time we talked, you know you didn’t once call me by my name? Which one do you have a problem with, Honey or Miss Deal?”

He was aware of it and said, “Well, if I called you ‘Honey’ it would sound like, you know, we’re going together.”

“My friends at work call me Honey. I’m not going with any of them. The day I was born my dad picked me up and said, ‘Here’s my little honey,’ and loved me so much I was christened Honey. The priest said, ‘You can’t call her that. There’s no St. Honey in the Catholic Church.’ My dad said, ‘There is now. Christen her Honey or we’re turning Baptist.’” She said, “You want to know something? Walter never asked where I got the name.”

“Did you tell him?”

“We’re coming to Blessed Sacrament,” Honey said, “where Walter and I met. It was after eleven o’clock Mass. Yeah, I told him but he didn’t make anything of it. He called me Honig, if he called me anything.”

“You took that as a good sign, meeting at church?”

“I think it was the only reason Walter went to Mass, to meet a girl with golden hair. He stopped going once he had me, and I stopped since we were living in sin, not married in the Church.”

“You believe that, you were living in sin?”

“Not really. It was more like living a life of penance. I’ll tell you though, I did like his looks, the way he dressed, his little glasses pinched on his nose, he was so different. I’d never met anyone in my life like Walter Schoen. I think I might’ve felt sorry for him too, he seemed so lonely. He was serious about everything and when we argued-we argued all the time-I’d keep at him, whatever we were talking about, and it drove him nuts.”