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 me
at’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.
“I asked if you read Mein Kampf. ”
“I didn’t, and you know why?”
She was leaning toward the mirror putting on lipstick, the kimono on Honey in the mirror hanging open and he could see one of her breasts, the nipple, the whole thing.
“Because it’s so fucking boring,” Honey said. “I tried a few times and gave up.”
He saw her looking in the mirror at him, holding the lipstick to her mouth, and saw her move the kimono enough to cover the breast.
She said, “I don’t think you’d like it.”
“I wouldn’t?”
“The book, Mein Kampf.”
Three
They drove south down Woodward Avenue from Six Mile Road in a ’41 Olds sedan, property of the FBI, Honey looking at shop windows, Kevin waiting. Finally he said, “You and Walter started seeing each other and before you knew it you fell head over heels in love?”
Honey was taking a pack of Luckys from her black leather bag, getting one out, and using a Zippo she flicked once to light the cigarette.
“That’s what happened,” Honey said, “I fell in love with Walter because he’s such a swell guy, kind and considerate, fun to be with.” She handed the cigarette to Kevin, a trace of lipstick on the tip.
Now she was lighting another, Kevin glancing at Honey in her trench coat and black beret, pulled low on her blond hair and slightly to one side, the way girls in spy movies wore their berets. Honey was a new experience for him.
She said, “The whole time we talked, you know you didn’t once call me by my name? Which one do you have a problem with, Honey or Miss Deal?”
He was aware of it and said, “Well, if I called you ‘Honey’ it would sound like, you know, we’re going together.”
“My friends at work call me Honey. I’m not going with any of them. The day I was born my dad picked me up and said, ‘Here’s my little honey,’ and loved me so much I was christened Honey. The priest said, ‘You can’t call her that. There’s no St. Honey in the Catholic Church.’ My dad said, ‘There is now. Christen her Honey or we’re turning Baptist.’” She said, “You want to know something? Walter never asked where I got the name.”
“Did you tell him?”
“We’re coming to Blessed Sacrament,” Honey said, “where Walter and I met. It was after eleven o’clock Mass. Yeah, I told him but he didn’t make anything of it. He called me Honig, if he called me anything.”
“You took that as a good sign, meeting at church?”
“I think it was the only reason Walter went to Mass, to meet a girl with golden hair. He stopped going once he had me, and I stopped since we were living in sin, not married in the Church.”
“You believe that, you were living in sin?”
“Not really. It was more like living a life of penance. I’ll tell you though, I did like his looks, the way he dressed, his little glasses pinched on his nose, he was so different. I’d never met anyone in my life like Walter Schoen. I think I might’ve felt sorry for him too, he seemed so lonely. He was serious about everything and when we argued-we argued all the time-I’d keep at him, whatever we were talking about, and it drove him nuts.”
“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 yo
u.’”
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.”
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