And immediately thought, Turn it around. Take Mr. Aubrey to Dr. Taylor's.
Bo U-turned on Jefferson beginning to rehearse what he'd do, ring the doorbell and say, Doctor, I'm very sorry to bother you . . . Mr. Aubrey desperately needs to use the toilet. We're on our way to Walter's. I'm afraid he's just a bit tipsy.
Just a bit he hoped he could keep sleepyhead on his feet.
Dr. Taylor was wearing a maroon smoking jacket with black silk lapels and wide shoulders over his shirt and tie, the doctor still dressed. He stepped back from the door, his right hand in the pocket of his jacket. Bo recited his lines and Dr. Taylor said, Yes, the powder room's right there.
Bo got Aubrey inside and closed the door, Aubrey wanting to know, Where'n the fuck are we?
Bo told him, You have to piss, understand? Stand over the toilet and take out your dong and aim it. Wait. Mr. Aubrey, will you please fucking wait, you're pissing all over the floor. There was no way to stop him now; he should have sat him on the toilet. Bo said, Lean over it with your hands on the wall, so you don't fall and hit your head. He stepped out of the powder room and closed the door.
Dr. Taylor, waiting for him, his hand still in his pocket, said, It's a shame you didn't come alone. I have a rare cognac we could sip while we continue our talk.
The man was of no interest to Bohdan, his thoughts or his inclinations, the way he gave signs of intimacy but then seemed to lose his nerve. Bo said, Do you have a gun in your hand?
Dr. Taylor smiled bringing it out.
You're very observant.
A Luger? Bo said.
No, a Walther P38, Dr. Taylor said. In the thirties it took the place of the Luger as the German military pistol. I do have a pair of Luger 08s that date back to the first war and, if you can believe it, an MP40 Maschinenpistole.
Bo said, A Schmeisser?
Dr. Taylor smiled at him again. Where did you get that, from a comic book? Americans can be very ignorant. They call it a Schmeisser, but Hugo Schmeisser had absolutely nothing to do with the design or creation of the weapon, nothing.
Bo said, May I see the Walther?
The doctor extended it holding the barrel.
Be careful, it's fully loaded. The safety is on the left side of the slide. It's on.
Bo shifted the P38 to his left hand. He raised the hem of the gray cashmere and brought out his Walther PPK from the band of the girdle he was wearing as sort of a holster and now had a pistol in each hand, his Walther not looking anything like Dr. Taylor's Walther.
I see we both hold dear the law of self-preservation, the doctor said. Do you know how many times my life has been threatened? Do you think I would dare answer the door at night without a pistol in my hand?
How many times? Bo said.
In letters I receive in the mail. In notes I find, here and at my office. In phone calls I'm talking about actual threats against my life. Some might be from the same person, it's difficult to tell. One of the recent letters said, 'I am a little guy in that I am short, but I have a big gun. Quit spouting off about Jews or you will pay with your life.'
How interesting, Bo said, he tells you he's short.
Yes, isn't it strange? The doctor said, Oh, I see you're still wearing your skirt. You're so chic, but at the same time you make a delightful Buster Brown.
Bo said, Thank you, Doctor, with a coy smile and bounced his hair.
He had decided how he would do the job.
He slipped the PPK again into the girdle beneath his skirt and could feel it against his tummy, Bo turning to the powder room with the doctor's P38 in his right hand now. He snicked the safety off, opened the door, and shot Joe Aubrey in the back of the head, bam, and saw part of the white wall spewed red before he could close the door again.
The doctor stood rigid in his maroon silk smoking jacket, his eyes stuck wide open, his eyes raising then to the sound of a woman's voice calling from upstairs.
Michael?
Bo looked toward the staircase. It would be the doctor's wife, though he didn't see her yet, the upstairs dark.
Answer her, Bo said. Aren't you all right?
The doctor called out, I'm okay, Rosemary.
Bo saw her now, a pale nightgown coming out of the dark, her hand sliding along the round banister, Rosemary joining the party, and Bo revised how he'd finish the job. She reached the bottom of the stairs and saw him in the lamplight. Now he turned, extending the pistol, and shot Dr. Taylor in the chest, shot him through the chest, a china lamp behind him shattering as his wife screamed and Bo shot him again.
Now she'll throw herself on his body and wail in anguish, Bo thought, the way the women of Odessa wailed running to the wall, their men lying dead and the fucking Romanians eyeing the women as they walked away. But this one has not had the experience of people killed by gunfire. She seems unsure if he was alive or dead. Really? A nine-millimeter parabellum slug having torn through his chest? Two of them. What did she expect him to do, sit up? Ah, now she crept to her husband lying on the floor and went to her knees saying his name, crying, confused.
Bo stepped over to hunch down next to her and could see into her nightgown the way she was crouched, so-so breasts hanging limp. He touched her shoulder, then brushed her hair from the side of her face, telling her in a soft tone of voice, He's dead, Rosemary. Now he placed the muzzle of the Walther against her temple, turned his face away and shot her through the head.
He used her nightgown to wipe the Walther clean and placed it in Rosemary's right hand, pressing her fingers to the grip. He noticed the diamond on her left hand, an impressive stone he believed he could twist from her finger. It occurred to Bo he could take whatever the doctor had in his billfold. Look in the bedroom for jewelry, cash, objects of value the doctor must do well in his practice, a house this size.
Except he hadn't planned it to look like a robbery.
As soon as he saw Rosemary coming down the stairs he set the scene. She finds her husband and Mr. Aubrey doing nasty things with each other in the powder room. She has suspected her husband and now catches him going at it with Mr. Aubrey, shoots them both in a blind rage and turns the gun on herself.
He thought about it for several moments.
She's consumed with a feeling of unbearable shame. Would the police see that?
Or she can't imagine spending the rest of her life in prison. Or she's insane. Or whatever way the police would see it, looking at the evidence.
What was the evidence?
Bo was thinking he'd have to take their clothes off. Dress Mr. Aubrey and now undress him, without getting bloodstains on Vera's skirt. At least unzip their flies. What was Mr. Aubrey doing? He had to piss. Bo hears him saying to Rosemary, You're being a foolish girl. I'm going to piss and be on my way.
How did he get here?
He must have come with the doctor.
Yes? The police arrive and they see Rosemary has killed her husband and Mr. Aubrey. The police pose motives to explain why Rosemary, with her drooping dugs, is the killer. Why, why, why. Stuck with looking for her motive. Never seeing this as a robbery. Or even thinking of robbery as a possibility.
What he should do, give Vera a call.
In case he's overlooked something.
He would tell her he changed the plan. He wanted to tell her, proud of the way it worked out, improvising as he went along. Call her and get it over with. You changed the plan. Aubrey is not buried in a cornfield. You decided to take care of the doctor too. Vera, you know he'll fold under FBI pressure. I thought, since I'm out running errands anyway . . . Tell her, The moment I saw Rosemary descending the stairs in her see-through nighty, I was inspired.
Make it sound easy and Vera will love it.
Vera was under the covers, the phone in bed with her.
She said, Wait. Start over. Bo, I was sound asleep. You're at Dr. Taylor's?
Listening to him, not once interrupting, she began to push herself higher on the pillows bunched against the headboard. By the time Bo, winding
down, was describing his action as inspired, Vera was sitting up in bed smoking a cigarette. Before she said a word she reminded herself, You need him.
Bo, I love it.
I knew you would.
You could be a playwright.
You know I've always wanted to write.
But you can't leave Aubrey there.
It stopped Bo in his tracks.
Why? It doesn't work without Mr. Aubrey. He's the other man. But as soon as he's found dead, the check he gave me is worthless.
Yes, but who knows when that will be?
Rosemary has a maid who comes every day.
Go to the bank early, as soon as it opens.
Bo, I'm making it out for fifty thousand. I'm not going to deposit the check of a man who was murdered the day before. What if I move Mr. Aubrey?
I don't know, Vera said.
He gave you the check and went home to Georgia, as far as anyone knows.
I'd still be afraid of it.
Even if he's in the river, never to be seen again?
I don't know. She needed to think about it and said, There's still Dr. Taylor.
I could drop him off too.
Give me a minute, Vera said. She slept naked and got out of bed this way, chilled as she went to the tea cart that served as her bedroom bar, poured a slivovitz and drank it down; poured another and brought it to the bed with her.
If the doctor isn't there, and his wife is found dead A suicide, Bo said.
Yes, but the police will suspect her husband killed her. Where is he? Has he fled? Bo, leave the doctor where he is. It's much simpler if Rosemary killed him and killed herself. Vera finished the slivovitz and lighted a cigarette. Have you ever had a conversation with Rosemary?
I've asked her what she'd like to drink. She says, 'Oh,' and acts flustered. 'Do you have white wine?'
Vera said, I doubt if anyone who knows Rosemary will believe she killed Michael. But, I suppose that can be said of most women who kill their husbands. She's a timid soul. I can't imagine her firing a P38 or even knowing how.
The doctor also has a couple of Lugers, Bo said, and that bullet hose, the MP40 machine pistol.
There was a silence as Vera smoked her cigarette and imagined the scene in the doctor's house. Finally she said, Bo, listen. I want only the doctor and Rosemary there. Who knows why she killed him. It will be announced on the front pages of Detroit papers, Wife Murders Her Husband the Doctor. After that, stories will be about the doctor's politics. What is he? An enemy alien born in Canada, a former member of the Bund and alleged member of a German spy ring. We won't know if the police suspect murder. They'll talk to neighbors, the doctor's hospital associates, his nurses, perhaps some of his patients, and before long they'll ask us how we happen to know Dr. Taylor.
Only socially, Bo said, he's so much fun.
But if Aubrey's body is found in the house, Vera said, it becomes a much bigger story because Aubrey's an infamous celebrity. They'll write entertaining features about his Klan activities, perhaps the only Nazi Grand Dragon in America. The investigation can go on forever, newspaper columnists offering theories. More light is cast on us as enemy aliens and the Justice Depart- ment is forced to take action. We'll be indicted, charged with acts of sedition, if not plotting to overthrow the government. We'll be offered a bond we can't possibly afford, and sit in a federal prison for months awaiting trial.
But what do they have on us? Bo said. Nothing.
Bo sounding confident for her benefit. Vera knew him, his poses, his attitudes he could turn on and off. By now she could anticipate his reactions. If the FBI came for Bo, he'd run.
She said, What would you do if they came to arrest you? Run, Bo said. Have it already worked out how we'd do it. I know they won't be after me without you.
She wanted him to mean it and murmured into the phone, This is when I need to feel my lovely boy against my body and whisper things to him.
Dirty things?
What I want him to do to me.
You're giving me what Americans call a boner, Bo said. Stay in bed. I'll be home as soon as I dump Mr. Aubrey.
The way we planned it.
Yes, bury him.
He's quite bloody, his clothes?
I suppose. I shot him and closed the door.
You have to put him in my car, don't you?
I can wrap him in a blanket.
Bo, don't take anything.
I won't.
Perhaps the Lugers. But you understand it isn't to look like a robbery.
Leave the Schmeisser?
The doctor called it that?
I did. So he'd think I'm an oaf.
Bring the Schmeisser if you want. Anything else?
Be sure to clean the powder room.
Vera had learned that if she screamed at Bohdan, sometimes only raised her voice, he'd sulk. He'd stop talking to her and she would have to wait for him to get over his funk or let him wear one of her cocktail dresses. She loved Bo; she did. When they were having fun in bed or on the floor or the stairway and Bo's mind was set on giving her pleasure, she adored him. This lovely boy from Odessa who killed with ease having seen hundreds and hundreds of people gassed, shot against walls, shot with pistols against their heads, hung from streetlights, locked in rooms and burned alive, all of it a part of Bo's coming-of-age. She would ask him, Will you always love me, Bo? And he would tell her she was his life, his reason for living.
She wished she'd had more time to spend with Jurgen, another lovely boy, at first thinking he might be a bore or a tragic figure after North Africa, instilled with war, and she would have told him to wake up, we've all been to war. But he was never tiresome. He let you know he was alive, happy to be in America, and he was inquisitive. He accepted her being a reluctant German agent and in another day or so they could have been in love. At least lovers.
But along came Honey, the cheeky Sieg Heil girl, not Honey Schoen, Walter's ex, Honey Deal. She had taken Jurgen away and by this morning would have eaten him up. Vera liked Honey from the moment she walked in the house, she sounded so American. I'd marry Carl in a minute, but he's taken. Or when she said, I act a little like I'm on the make, but I'm not after him to leave home. Honey just wanted to have fun. She thought Bo was cute.
Vera loved the way Americans spoke in their different accents and the expressions they used. One of her favorites was on the make, which meant flirting. She loved Honey saying, You think he's a shit-kicker till you look in his eyes. Telling so much in a few words about the federal policeman, Carl, the one Honey had her eye on.
The day they arrived in Detroit she told Bo, We are going to listen to people, the way they pronounce words and the slang they use. We are not from the South or New York City, we live in Detroit and speak the way they do here.
At that time Bo said, I have one. 'So is your old man.'
So's, Vera said. So's your old man. You hear the difference? It's a rebuff.
Bo was a natural. He liked to imitate people on the radio, Walter Winchell, Gabriel Heatter, Jack Benny. He could do Rochester. Vera laughed because he was funny and she loved him, this boy who told her she was his life.
But if the time came he had to make a choice, give her up or go to prison?
He'd give her up.
In the courtroom Bo would gaze at her with tears in his eyes he could do that, cause his eyes to fill and testify for the prosecution. Bo would create for her daring acts of espionage, and the newspapers would make her a star, World War II's Mata Hari, without citing a single reference to what Mata Hari did for the Kaiser. Or did she spy for the French? Vera wasn't certain, perhaps both, but knew she was better-looking than the Dutch woman huge thighs but no tits whose stage name was a Malay word for eye of dawn.
If offered the same choice, would she give up Bo?
Regretfully.
Though it would never come to that. Or Bo in a courtroom testifying against her. She would shoot him first.
Love in a time of war had only moments.
But awfully good ones.
Even Aubrey wasn't that bad.
Chapter Twenty-Two.
Carl's dad phoned at 6 a. M. waking him up. How you like De-troit? All right. It's big. They say it's our third-biggest city, but I heard Philadelphia was.
It don't mean a thing to me, his dad said. How's the ho-tel? They'd go through this until his dad came to the reason he was talking to Carl long-distance.
A guy called last night saying he was a buddy of yours and wondered where you were. Narcissa talked to him.
What's his name?
Vito Tessa.
Jesus Christ.
No, I said Vito Tessa. His dad being funny.
Didn't the name sound familiar? He's the kid gangster with the big nickel-plate and the zoot suit, the jitterbug, the night before I left.
The one, his brother's Lou Tessa?
Yeah, it's another one of those brother things. What'd Narcissa tell him, I'm in Detroit, uh? Or you wouldn't of called. Yeah, I guess she did. And where you're staying.
Up in Honey's Room Page 15