Up in Honey's Room

Two

Honey’s intercom buzzed while she was getting ready to go to work. The male voice said hi, he was Kevin Dean, a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation; he’d like to talk to her about Walter Schoen. Honey said, “You all are just getting around to Walter? I haven’t seen him in five years.”

Kevin Dean said he knew that, he still would like to talk to her. Honey said, “He didn’t do anything subversive then that I know of and I doubt he has now. Walter isn’t the real thing, he pretends he’s a Nazi.”

She buzzed open the door downstairs and put her flannel bathrobe on over her bra and panties, her hose and garter belt. Then paused and said, “Hmmmm.” Took off her bra and the bathrobe and slipped on an orange-colored kimono with red and ochre trim to be more comfortable.

It was a morning in late October 1944, America at war nearly three years. In the Philippines again since yesterday.

Honey was a buyer now in Better Dresses at Hudson’s, moving up in her world from a flat in Highland Park to a one-bedroom apartment on Covington Drive, a block from Palmer Park where she’d learned to ice-skate in the winter and play tennis in the summer. At night she would hear the streetcars on Woodward Avenue turn around at the fairgrounds and head back six miles to downtown and the Detroit River.

She had returned home only once since leaving Walter, late last year taking a bus to Harlan County for her mother’s funeral, dead of respiratory failure, Honey with a twinge of guilt standing by the casket, the daughter who’d left home for the big city to live her own life, meet all kinds of people instead of coal miners and guys who cooked moonshine. She did ask her sister-in-law to come to Detroit, stay as long as she wanted, and Muriel said as she always did she’d think about it.

Well, since Honey was in Kentucky anyway, she might as well hop a bus over to Eddyville and see how her brother Darcy was doing in prison. My Lord, he actually seemed quieter and listened for a change. Or was it seeing Darcy sober for the first time in years? He had taken prison courses to finish high school at age thirty-two and no longer acted bored or like he knew everything. He’d grown a mustache and actually did resemble Errol Flynn a little. She told him, “You do,” and Darcy said, “Oh, you think so?” He’d have his release pretty soon but wasn’t going back to digging coal. “You’ll be drafted,” Honey said, “if they take ex-cons.” He grinned at her the way the old Darcy used to grin, sure of himself, saying he had learned meat cutting and planned to get in the meat-processing business, make some money and stay out of the army. Honey thinking, Maybe he hasn’t changed after all.

Then this past August she got a phone call out of the blue, Muriel wanting to know if she’d seen Darcy.

Honey said, “He’s here in Detroit?”

“Somewhere around there. I gave him your number.”

“Well, he hasn’t called. What’s he doing up here, working in a plant?”

“How would I know,” Muriel said, “I’m only his wife.”

Honey said, “Jesus Christ, quit feeling sorry for yourself. Get off your butt and come up here if you want to find him.”

Muriel hung up on her.

That was a couple of months ago.

Kevin Dean came in showing his ID, quite a nice-looking young guy who seemed about her age, Honey thirty now. He said he appreciated her seeing him, with the trace of a down-home sound Honey placed not far west of where she grew up. She watched him gather the morning paper from the sofa and stand reading the headline story about the invasion of Leyte, his raincoat hanging open looking too small for him. She saw Kevin as a healthy young guy with good color, not too tall but seemed to have a sturdy build.

“I have to fix my hair, get dressed, and leave for work,” Honey said, “in ten minutes.”

He had his nose in the paper, not paying any attention to her.

“If Walter’s all we’re gonna talk about,” Honey said, “let’s get to it, all right?”

He still didn’t look up, but now he said, “We’re back in the Philippines - you read it? Third and Seventh Amphibious Forces of the Sixth Army went ashore on Leyte, near Tacloban.”

“That’s how you pronounce it,” Honey said, “Tacloban?”

It got him to look at her, Honey now sitting erect in a club chair done in beige. She said, “I read about it this morning with my coffee. I thought it was pronounced Tacloban. I could be wrong but I like the sound of it better than Tacloban. Like I think Tarawa sounds a lot better than Tarawa, the way you hear commentators say it, but what do I know.”

She had his attention.

“You’ll come to the part, General MacArthur wades ashore a few hours later and says over the radio to the Filipinos, ‘I have returned,’ because he told them three years ago when he left, ‘I shall return,’ and here he was, true to his word. But when he waded ashore, don’t you think he should’ve said, ‘We have returned’? Since his entire army, a hundred thousand combat veterans, waded ashore ahead of him?”

Kevin Dean was nodding, agreeing with her. He said, “You’re right,” and took a notebook out of his raincoat and flipped through pages saying, “Walter was quite a bit older than you, wasn’t he?”

Honey watched him sink into her velvety beige sofa. “Your raincoat isn’t wet, is it?”

“No, it’s nice out for a change.”

“Have you talked to Walter?”

“We look in on him every now and then.”

“You’re wondering why I married him, aren’t you?”

“It crossed my mind, yeah.”

“Being fourteen years older,” Honey said, “doesn’t mean he wasn’t fun. Walter would show me a political cartoon in his Nazi magazine, the Illustrierter Beobachter, sent from Munich he got a month later. He’d tell me in English what the cartoon was about and we’d have a good laugh over it.”

She waited while Kevin Dean decided how to take what she said. “So you got along with him.”

“Walter Schoen was the most boring man I’ve ever met in my life,” Honey said. “You’re gonna have to pick up on when I’m kidding. You know Walter and I weren’t married in the Church. A Wayne County judge performed the ceremony in his chambers. On a Wednesday. Have you ever heard of anyone getting married on Wednesday? I’m saving the church wedding for the real thing.”

“You’re engaged?”

“Not yet.”

“But you’re seeing someone.”

“I thought you wanted to talk about Walter. What if I asked if you’re married?”

Having fun with him. She could tell he knew what she was doing and said no, he wasn’t married or planning to anytime soon. Honey wanted to call him by his first name but pictured a guy named Kevin as a blond-haired kid with a big grin. Kevin Dean had a crop of wild brown hair Honey believed he combed in the morning and forgot about the rest of the day. She knew he packed a gun but couldn’t tell where he wore it. She wondered if she should call him Dean, and heard lines in her memory, It was Din! Din! Din! You ’eathen, where the mischief ’ave you been? Left there from a ninth-grade elocution contest. And saw Dean in the sofa waiting for her to say something.

An easygoing type. He might not be her idea of a Kevin, but that’s what he was. She said, “Kevin, how long have you been a G-man?”

See if she could find out how old he was.

“I finished my training this past summer. Before that I was in the service.”

“Where’re you from?” Honey said. “I hear someplace faintly down-home the way you speak.”

“I didn’t think I had an accent.”

She said, “It isn’t East Texas, but around there.”

He told her Tulsa, Oklahoma. He went to school there, the University of Tulsa, graduated midyear right after Pearl and joined the cavalry.

Making him no more than twenty-five, Honey at least five years older than this good-looking boy from Oklahoma. She said, “The cavalry?”

“I went to language school to learn Japanese, then spent the next year with the First Cavalry Division in Louisiana, Australia, and New Guinea, training for jungle combat, the kind they had on Guadalcanal. I made second lieutenant and was assigned to the Fifth Cavalry Regiment, the one J. E. B. Stuart commanded before the Civil War. He was always a hero of mine, the reason I joined the First Cav, not knowing we’d be dismounted in the Pacific theater. You know the Stuart I’m talking about?”

“You told me, Jeb Stuart.”

“Shot through the lungs at Yellow Tavern, the war almost over. Do you have a hero?”

“Jane Austen,” Honey said. “Where were you in the Pacific with the cavalry?”

“Los Negros in the Admiralties, two hundred miles north of New Guinea, two degrees south of the equator. Destroyers dropped us off and we went ashore twenty-nine February of this year, to draw fire and locate enemy positions. I was with a recon unit so we were the first wave. We wanted an airstrip on Momote plantation, thirteen hundred yards from the beach, sitting in there among rows and rows of palm trees, coconuts all over the ground.”

Honey said, “Were you scared to death?” at ease with him, able to say something like that.

“You bet I was scared, but you’re with all these serious guys sharpening their trench knives. On the destroyer taking us to the drop-off that’s what you did, sharpened your knife. Some of the guys had brand-new tattoos that said death before dishonor and you start to think, Wait a minute, what am I doing here? What you don’t want to do is throw up or wet your pants. Right before you go in is a tricky time.”

“Well, you made it.”

“I made it with metal frags in my back. The evening of the second day a Jap threw a grenade I saw coming and it took me out of the war. I never did get to ride with the cavalry. But I got a Purple Heart out of it, an honorable discharge and a visit from the Bureau. They came to the VA hospital and got around to asking if I’d like to be an FBI agent, since I’d finished college, had taken accounting and spoke Japanese, sort of.”

“So they send you after German spies,” Honey said. “Tell me, does Walter still live in that house on Kenilworth? He’s rigid about his appearance, but he sure let the house run down, never put any money in it. He was saving up for something.”

“He turned the floor above the market into a small apartment.”

“He isn’t married, is he?”

“Not since you left him. There is a woman who might be his girlfriend, Countess Vera Mezwa Radzykewycz.” Kevin looked at his notebook. “Born in Odessa, in the Ukraine. She claims she was married to a Polish count, killed leading a cavalry charge against German panzers.”

“You and the count,” Honey said, “a couple of cavalrymen.”

He saw her smile and looked at his notes again. “Vera came here in 1943 and leased a home on Boston Boulevard. She has a young guy, Bohdan Kravchenko, also Ukrainian, cooks and keeps house for her.”

“If Vera lives on Boston Boulevard she’s got money. Walter’s interested in her?”

“They see each other.”

“The countess climbs the stairs to his apartment over a meat market?”

“Most of the time it’s at her place.”

“Why do you think she’s a spy, because she’s keeping company with Walter?”

“I’m not telling you everything we have on her.”

“But she was married to a Polish count, a war hero?”

“There’s no record of the count as an officer in the Polish Army. That’s the cover they made up for Vera. We believe she was trained by the Gestapo, was given money and credentials and came on a ship to Canada as a highly respected Ukrainian refugee. Vera moved to Detroit and gives lectures to women’s groups, tells them how awful it is to live under the Nazis, no shampoo, no cold cream. We’ve got her down as a possible enemy alien.”

“Doing what?”

“Gathering information about war production.”

“The Germans don’t know we’re making bombers?”

“Now you’re acting smart.”

“What I’m asking,” Honey said, “is if you think what Vera sends the Germans does them any good.”

“It doesn’t matter. If she’s working as a German agent, the U.S. attorney will bring her up on the charge and put her away. It doesn’t matter if her information helps the enemy or not.”

“What about Walter?”

“He’s been a U.S. citizen since he was fourteen. If he’s involved in anything subversive it’s an act of treason. He could hang.”

Kevin looked at his notebook and turned a page, then a few more and stopped. “How about Joseph John Aubrey?”

Honey shook her head.

“Lives in Griffin, Georgia.”

“Oh, Joe Aubrey, yeah,” Honey said, “owns restaurants. He was big in the German-American Bund at that time. Walter met him at the rally they had in New York.”

“Madison Square Garden,” Kevin said, “1939.”

“Walter brought me along thinking I’d be impressed by all the fans Fritz Kuhn had, the American Hitler.”

“Over twenty thousand,” Kevin said, “they filled the Garden. You met Joseph J. Aubrey, talked to him?”

“You don’t talk to Joe Aubrey, you listen to his rant or walk away. Joe was an active member of the Bund and a Grand Dragon of the Klan. Bund get-togethers he’d say, ‘Heah’s some more of the dirty tricks international Jewery is doin’ to spread Commonism.’ That’s what he called it, ‘Commonism.’ At Klan rallies he’d say, ‘We gonna have integration, nigger kids and our white children goin’ to the same school-’”

“Over his dead body,” Kevin said.

“You’re close. Joe said, ‘When they pry my hands from my empty rifle and lay me to rest in the cold ground.’ Joe Aubrey never shuts up. He got rich in the restaurant business promoting finger-lickin’ barbecue.”

“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 heiling 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.

“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.”