Elmore Leonard: Up in Honey's Room

“Determined to change him,” Kevin said.

Honey sat up to look past Kevin. She said, “There’s his market,” and sat back again. “With a sign in the window, but I couldn’t read it.”

“Announcing no meat today,” Kevin said. “I passed it on the way to your place. So, you thought you could change him?”

“I wanted to get him to quit being so serious and have some fun. Maybe even get him to laugh at Adolf Hitler, the way Charlie Chaplin played him in The Great Dictator . Chaplin has the little smudge of a mustache, the uniform, he’s Adenoid Hynkel, dictator of Tomania. But the movie came out after I left.”

“You think he saw it?”

“I couldn’t get Walter to listen to Jack Benny. He called him a pompous Jew. I said, ‘That’s the part he plays, a cheapskate. You don’t think he’s funny?’ No, or even Fred Allen. We were at some German place having drinks, I said, ‘Walter, have you ever told a joke? Not a political cartoon, a funny story?’ He acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about. I said, ‘I’ll tell you a joke and then you tell it to me. We’ll see how you do.’”

Kevin Dean was looking straight ahead grinning. “You were married then?”

“ Ja, I’m Frau Schoen. I tell him the one, three guys arrive at heaven at the same time. It’s been a very busy day, during the war, and Saint Peter says, ‘I only have time to admit one of you today. How about whoever has experienced the most unusual death.’ Have you heard it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“The first guy tells how he came home unexpectedly, finds his wife in bed naked and tears through the apartment looking for her lover. He runs out on the balcony and there’s the guy hanging from the railing, twenty-five floors above the street. The husband takes off one of his shoes and beats on the guy’s hands till the guy lets go and falls. But he doesn’t hit the pavement, damn it, he lands in a bushy tree and he’s still alive. The husband, furious, grabs the refrigerator, drags it out to the balcony and pushes it over the railing. The fridge lands on the guy in the tree and kills him. But, the exertion is too much for the husband, he has a heart attack and drops dead. Saint Peter says, ‘That’s not bad,’ and turns to the second guy who wants to get into heaven. This one says he was exercising on his balcony, lost his balance and went over the railing. He’s a goner for sure, but reaches out and grabs the railing of the balcony below his apartment. Now a guy comes out and the one hanging twenty-five floors above the street says, ‘Thank God, I’m saved.’ But the guy who comes out takes off his shoe and beats on his hands gripping the rail till he falls. But he lands in the bushy tree, he’s still alive, his eyes wide open to see the fridge coming down to blot out his life. Saint Peter says, ‘Yeah, I like that one.’ Turns to the third guy who wants to get into heaven and says, ‘What’s your story, amigo?’ The guy says, ‘I don’t know what happened. I was naked, hiding in a refrigerator . . .’”

Honey paused.

Kevin laughed out loud.

“He think it was funny?”

“He didn’t smile or say anything right away. He’s thinking about it. Finally he asked me which of the three guys did Saint Peter let into heaven, and where did the other two have to wait, in limbo? I said, ‘Yeah, limbo, with all the babies that happened to die before they were baptized.’”

“Why didn’t he get it?”

“He’s managed to stick his head up his ass,” Honey said, “and the only thing he sees up there are swastikas.”

This sweet girl talking like that. Kevin said, “I’m never sure what you’re gonna say next.”

“I tried one more joke on Walter,” Honey said. “I told him the one, the guy comes home, walks into the kitchen with a sheep in his arms. His wife turns from the sink and he says, ‘This is the pig I’ve been sleeping with when I’m not with you.’ His wife says, ‘You dummy, that’s not a pig, it’s a sheep.’ And the guy says, ‘I wasn’t speaking to you.’”

Kevin laughed out loud again and looked at Honey smoking her cigarette. “You like to tell jokes?”

“To Walter, trying to loosen him up.”

“Did he laugh?”

“He said, ‘The man is not talking to his wife, he’s talking to the sheep?’ I said yeah, it’s his wife he’s calling a pig. Walter said, ‘But how does a sheep understand what he’s saying?’ That was it,” Honey said. “There was no way in the world I’d ever turn Walter around. It was a dumb idea to begin with, really arrogant of me to think I could change him. But you know, I realized even if he did lighten up the marriage would never last.”

“There must’ve been something about him you liked,” Kevin said, “I mean as a person.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” said Honey in the black beret nodding her head. “Something more than his accent and his stuck-on glasses, but I can’t think of anything it might be. I was young and I was dumb.” She smoked her cigarette, quiet for a time before saying, “That year with Walter did have some weird moments I’ll never forget. Like when he’d aim his finger at me, pretending it was a gun and cut one.”

Kevin said, “You mean he’d pass gas in front of you?”

“In front of me, behind me-”

But now they were coming to Seward and he had to tell her, “Here’s the street where Jurgen Schrenk and his mom and dad lived in the thirties. The apartment hotel’s in the second block.”

“The Abington,” Honey said. “I had dinner there a few times-they have a dining room. This guy I knew always stayed there. He said he’d walk five blocks south to the General Motors Building on the Boulevard, and walk back with a signed contract in his briefcase.”

“What kind of contract?”

“I don’t know, he never told me exactly what he did. He was from Argentina and had something to do with Grand Prix auto racing in Europe before the war. He always called cars motorcars. He’d stay at the Abington in a one-bedroom apartment that had a tiny kitchen. If there were twin beds he’d pull down the Murphy bed in the living room. He was a little guy, very slim, but liked big beds.” Honey said, “You know, I remember reading about Jurgen and the SS guy escaping. It was in all the Detroit papers.”

It brought Kevin back, his image of Honey and a suave type of guy who looked like a tango dancer gone from his mind.

She said, “Jurgen might be the same boy Walter told me about, or he might not. Walter did write to someone who was in the war. I remember he got a letter postmarked from Poland in 1939, but Walter never said anything about it. By that time we were barely speaking.”

“Jurgen Schrenk was in Poland before going to North Africa, according to the marshal in Tulsa. The guy who swears Jurgen’s here, hiding out.”

“You said he’s famous?”

“A book was written about him, all kinds of magazine articles, a long one in True Detective . The book, Carl Webster: The Hot Kid of the Marshals Service , came out about ten years ago.”

“Have you read it?”

“Yeah, I got hold of a copy-it’s good. Carl’s been in some really tight situations. I’ve talked to some agents who know him, they all say he’s the real thing. He’s shot and killed at least a dozen wanted felons, or otherwise known bad guys like Emmett Long and Jack Belmont.” Kevin paused. “No, it was his wife Louly who shot Jack Belmont. She shot another bank robber too, but I forget his name.”

Honey said, “His wife goes with him, he’s after bad guys?”

“They were unusual situations. Louly was related to Pretty Boy Floyd’s wife, and for a time everybody thought Louly was Floyd’s girlfriend.”