said, âmy gun goes in the glove compartment. I checked out of the office and stopped by the Mayo for a drink. You ought to move to Tulsa. That bar in the basement keeps right up.â
âWhatâd you do with the kid gangster?â
âTurned him over to Tulsa police. Theyâll look him up, see if his big nickel-plate is dirty or not. Vito Tessa, they can have him. Iâm leaving from here in the morning, six-thirty.â
âHow come youâre sure the two Huns are in Detroit?â
Carl and his dad were sitting in wicker chairs this eveningâin shirtsleeves but wearing their felt hatsâon the front porch of Virgilâs big California bungalow, the home situated in the midst of his thousand acres of pecan trees.
âWhat you want to ask,â Carl said, âis how I know theyâre still in Detroit, five and a half months later.â
They were talking about Jurgen Schrenk mostly, a POW from the Afrika Korps, tank captain and one of Rommelâs recon officers. Finally, 165 days from the time Jurgen and the other one, Otto Penzler, the SS major, broke out of the Deep Fork prisoner-of-war campâdrove out in a panel truck, the two Krauts wearing suits of clothes made from German uniformsâCarl was free to get after them.
This day he drove the forty miles south, Tulsa to Okmulgee to visit his dad, was the seventh of April, 1945.
Carl and his dad were drinking Mexican beer supplied by the oil companyâway better than the three-two local beer. Itwas part of the deal that let Texas Oil lease a half section of the property, the wells pumping most of forty years while Virgil tended his pecan trees and Carl, when he was still a boy, raised beef heâd take to market in Tulsa. Virgilâs home was a few miles from Okmulgee and across the Deep Fork stream from the POW camp.
âHeâs still in Detroit,â Carl said, ââcause he hasnât been caught, or weâd of heard. Jurgenâll get by, he speaks American with barely an accent. You have to know what words to listen for. I told you he lived in Detroit when he was a kid? He can talk like a Yankee or sound like heâs from Oklahoma, either way.â
âIâd see him,â Virgil said, âthe times heâd come with a work crew of prisoners. I swear they all looked like foreigners except Jurgen. I asked him one time was he thinking of setting fire to oil wells and storage tanks, see if he could perform acts of sabotage.â
âAfter you told him you were on the Maine .â
âYes, I did, a marine aboard the battleship the night the dons blew her up in Havana harbor, 1898, and set us at war with Spain. I told him there wasnât a destructive act he could think of that would compare to blowing up the battleship Maine .â
Carl said he got a kick out of Jurgen slipping out of camp every couple of months to get laid, spend some time with his girlfriend, Shemane.
âShe was a hot number,â Virgil said, âworked in a Kansas City cathouse. The next time sheâs seen sheâs driving by here in a Lincoln Zephyr.â
âLooking for Jurgen,â Carl said. âHeâd sneak out for a few days and show up at the OK Cafe, PW printed on the back of his short pantsâalways wore those Afrika Korps shortsâand wait there for the MPs to come get him. The last time he broke out weârecertain it was Shemane drove Jurgen and Otto to Fort Smith and bought âem their getaway car, a â41 Studebaker.â
Virgil said, âYou ever gonna arrest her?â
âShemaneâs mom was along for the ride. She raised hell with the agents bringing âem back from Arkansas. She said they were on their way to Hot Springs to take the waters and had not socialized with any Germans or ever would. I told the agents in Tulsa Iâd let Shemane think sheâs off the hook. Wait for her to leave her mom and go up to Detroit. She does, you