Up in Honey's Room by Elmore Leonard Read Free Book Online

said, “my 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€œWhat’d you do with the kid gangster?”
    â€œTurned him over to Tulsa police. They’ll look him up, see if his big nickel-plate is dirty or not. Vito Tessa, they can have him. I’m leaving from here in the morning, six-thirty.”
    â€œHow come you’re sure the two Huns are in Detroit?”
    Carl and his dad were sitting in wicker chairs this evening—in shirtsleeves but wearing their felt hats—on the front porch of Virgil’s big California bungalow, the home situated in the midst of his thousand acres of pecan trees.
    â€œWhat you want to ask,” Carl said, “is how I know they’re still in Detroit, five and a half months later.”
    They were talking about Jurgen Schrenk mostly, a POW from the Afrika Korps, tank captain and one of Rommel’s 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 camp—drove out in a panel truck, the two Krauts wearing suits of clothes made from German uniforms—Carl 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 company—way 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 he’d take to market in Tulsa. Virgil’s home was a few miles from Okmulgee and across the Deep Fork stream from the POW camp.
    â€œHe’s still in Detroit,” Carl said, “’cause he hasn’t been caught, or we’d of heard. Jurgen’ll 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 he’s from Oklahoma, either way.”
    â€œI’d see him,” Virgil said, “the times he’d 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€œAfter you told him you were on the Maine .”
    â€œYes, 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 wasn’t a destructive act he could think of that would compare to blowing up the battleship Maine .”
    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.
    â€œShe was a hot number,” Virgil said, “worked in a Kansas City cathouse. The next time she’s seen she’s driving by here in a Lincoln Zephyr.”
    â€œLooking for Jurgen,” Carl said. “He’d sneak out for a few days and show up at the OK Cafe, PW printed on the back of his short pants—always wore those Afrika Korps shorts—and wait there for the MPs to come get him. The last time he broke out we’recertain it was Shemane drove Jurgen and Otto to Fort Smith and bought ’em their getaway car, a ’41 Studebaker.”
    Virgil said, “You ever gonna arrest her?”
    â€œShemane’s mom was along for the ride. She raised hell with the agents bringing ’em 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 I’d let Shemane think she’s off the hook. Wait for her to leave her mom and go up to Detroit. She does, you