Up in Honey's Room (3 page)

“He has a plane, a Cessna?”

“Yeah, he'd fly up and spend a few days at the Book Cadillac. He always stayed at the Book. One time he was there, Joe said he was at the desk registering, he looked up and could not believe his eyes. He said, ‘You know that dude nigger Count Basil? Wears that kind of skipper cap so you think he has a yacht? He's walkin' around the hotel lobby bold as brass. What was he doin' there? He couldn't of been stayin' at the ho-tel.'”

Kevin said, “Who's Count Basil?”

“He meant Count Basie. Joe doesn't know the ‘One O'Clock Jump' from ‘Turkey in the Straw.'”

Kevin looked at the notebook page he held open.

“Did you know a Dr. Michael George Taylor?”

“I don't think so.”

“He might've come later,” Kevin said, looked at his book again and said, “No, he was at the rally in New York. Though I bet Walter knew him from before.”

“That rally,” Honey said, “a sports arena full of all these boobs
sieg heil
ing everything Fritz Kuhn said, this thug in a uniform standing in front of a giant portrait of George Washington. He led the crowd in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and then talked forever, saying President Roosevelt was part of the international Jewish banking conspiracy. I remember Joe Aubrey calling FDR Frank D. Rosenfeld and the New Deal the Jew Deal. That's what the whole thing was about, blame the Jews for whatever was wrong with the world.”

Kevin said, “But you don't remember a Dr. Michael George Taylor. An obstetrician, he has quite a large practice here, a lot of German-American women.”

Honey shook her head. “I don't think so.”

“He studied in Germany a few years,” Kevin said, looking at his notebook. “He thinks the Nazis have the right idea about the Jewish problem. He says their methods are extreme, yes, but they do the job.”

“How did you learn that?”

Kevin was still looking at his notes. He said, “Dr. Taylor is a friend of Vera Mezwa and a frequent visitor. On one occasion he told her he would be willing to do anything, whatever he could, to further the cause of National Socialism, even if it meant incarceration or even his death. He said, quote, ‘The
world would be a far better place for my children to live'”—Kevin looking at Honey now—“‘under the guidance of the firm Nazi philosophy.'”

“He sounds like a bigger idiot than Joe Aubrey.”

“They're his words, what he believes.”

“You tapped the phone?”

Kevin shook his head. “We didn't get it that way. I'll tell you something else. Dr. Taylor supplied Vera with amedo pyrine. You know what it is? One of the ingredients you use to make invisible ink.”

“The German officer,” Honey said, “unfolds the blank sheet of paper, looks at it and says, ‘Our Vera has a beautiful hand, no?'”

“I'm serious,” Kevin said, “these people work for the German Reich.”

“How'd you find out about the invisible ink?” Honey waited, watching him. “I won't tell anybody, Kevin, I swear.”

He said, “We've got somebody on the inside. And that's all I'm saying.”

“If I guess who it is, how about, just nod your head.”

“Come on—I'm not playing with you.”

“Is it Vera's housekeeper? What's his name…?”

“Bohdan Kravchenko. He's a lightweight, but there's something shifty about him.”

“What's he look like?”

“Blond hair like Buster Brown's, we think is dyed.”

“He's queer?”

“Possibly.”

“You turned him around,” Honey said, “didn't you? Brought him in for questioning and used a sap on him, got him to talk. Does he give you good stuff?”

“We don't hit people,” Kevin said, “when we're asking them questions. What I'd like to know, was Walter close to Fritz Kuhn.”

“Walter would talk about Fritz and his eyes would shine. We got home from the rally in New York, I was ready to leave him. But once he found out Fritz had swung with about fifteen thousand from the rally proceeds, Walter changed his tune. He was quiet for a while, I think confused.”

“Did Walter know Max Stephan?”

Honey said, “Jesus, Max Stephan. That whole time he was in the paper—it seemed like every day for months—I wondered if Walter knew about the German flier. What was his name, Krug?”

“Hans Peter Krug,” Kevin said, “twenty-two, a bomber pilot.” He opened his notebook. “Shot down over the Thames estuary. Sent to a POW camp in Canada, Bowmanville, Ontario. Escaped and reached Detroit eighteen April 1942. Found a skiff and paddled across the Detroit River with a board.”

“Walter's name was never in the paper,” Honey said. “So I assumed he wasn't involved. You understand this was three years after I'd left Walter.”

“But you knew Max Stephan?”

“He was a jerk, as pompous and stuck on himself as Walter, and crude. But this was before Max was charged with treason.”

She knew the details: how Krug dropped in on Johanna Bertlemann, a Nazi sympathizer who used the German Red Cross to send canned goods, cakes, clothing, to the POWs at Bowmanville. Krug had copied her address in Detroit off a package she'd sent to the camp. Johanna introduced him to Max and Max took him around to German bars and clubs before sending him off to Chicago. Someone snitched. Krug was picked up in San Antonio on his way to Mexico and Max was arrested.

Kevin said, “He told the agents who arrested him he thought Americans were ‘frightfully stupid.' He said he visited some of our major cities, Chicago, New York, and was rarely questioned or asked to show his papers.”

“Part of everyday life in Germany,” Honey said.

“But to convict Max Stephan of treason,” Kevin said, “they'd need two eyeball witnesses. Or, get Krug to tell how Max helped him. But why would he? All he's obliged to do is identify himself.”

“But he did tell on Max, didn't he?”

“The U.S. attorney sneaked up on him with questions that put Krug at ease and made him look good. How did he escape from Bowmanville. Why did he come to Detroit. Krug said his purpose was to get back to his squadron. He was talking now. He said yes, he knew Max Stephan. He told the whole story, how he said no when Max offered to get him a prostitute. He described everything they did during a period of twenty-five hours—before he realized he'd given Max up. And he said
we
were stupid. Max was found guilty and sentenced to hang, the date, Friday, November thirteenth, 1942. But FDR commuted the sentence to life. His home is now the federal pen at Atlanta.”

“What happened to the pilot, Krug?”

“The Mounties came and got him. He's back in Bowmanville.”

“I read about German POWs escaping,” Honey said, “but most of them turn out to be funny stories.”

“They're picked up in a couple of days,” Kevin said, “walking around with
PW
painted on their work clothes. Or they get hungry, miss three squares a day at the camp, and give themselves up.”

“So it's not a problem.”

Kevin said, “Except I've got a guy calling me, a U.S. marshal—” and stopped.

Honey watched him bring out a pack of Chesterfields and hold it out to offer her one. The good-looking special agent seemed right at home on her sofa. Honey took a cigarette and leaned over him for a light, saying, “You look so comfortable, I hope you don't fall asleep.” Close to him, Kevin trying to keep his nose out of Honey's orange, red, and ochre kimono. She sat on the sofa now, the middle cushion between them.

“You've got a federal marshal calling you?”

“From the Tulsa office, yeah. He asks for me by name since I'm the one spoke to him the first time he called.”

“He knew you from home?”

“Actually,” Kevin said, “I'm originally from Bixby, across the river from Tulsa. I don't know this marshal but I'd heard of him and I find out he's famous. Law enforcement people respect him, so you listen to what he has to say. He makes remarks the way you do, with a straight face. Anyway, he had the Bureau office in Tulsa send us additional information about the two escaped POWs. They're from a camp near Okmulgee, Afrika Korps officers, one of them a major in the SS. With the information was a statement from the Tulsa marshal saying he knows one of them from lengthy conversations and observing him for a time.”

“Which one,” Honey said, “the SS guy?”

“The other one.” Kevin checked his notebook and Honey laid her arm along the sofa's backrest. Kevin looked up saying, “The marshal claims he knows the guy, and knows—doesn't just have reason to believe—he
knows
they came here when they escaped.”

“To Detroit.”

Kevin looked at his notebook again. “The SS major is Otto Penzler. The other one is Jurgen Schrenk, a young guy, twenty-six, a tank commander with Rommel.”

Honey said in her way, “Don't tell me Jurgen lived in Detroit before the war. What did his father do?”

She let Kevin stare as she drew on her Chesterfield, raised her face, and blew a thin stream of smoke before saying, “Why else would he come here from a prison camp? He must have friends.”

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.