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

subject’s appearance. “But he looks like he’d be a nice guy.”
    â€œFor a Nazi.”
    â€œThat’s how you see him?”
    â€œThat’s what he is.”
    Kevin broke a silence. “I got hold of Honey. You ask for Better Dresses on seven. Honey says like she’s reading it, ‘They’re for fashion-conscious Detroit women who shop with a discriminating eye.’ I told you, you remind me of her. We’re having lunch in the Pine Room on thirteen. She has no problem getting away. She said if we have time we might want to stop by the auditorium on twelve and see the War Souvenir Show.”
    â€œWhat kind of souvenirs,” Carl said, “stuff guys brought back?”
    â€œI imagine the usual,” Kevin said, “Jap swords, German Lugers. I knew guys where I was who bought Jap teeth off the natives. The fillings in the teeth made of steel.”
    Carl said, “I never fired a Luger.” He said, “Iron Crosses and swastika armbands you could get off of POWs without leaving the country. I never asked you,” Carl said, “were you in the war?”
    â€œIn the Pacific,” Kevin said, “till I tried to duck a Jap grenade. I saw it coming and thought of catching it and throwing it back, only I changed my mind, not knowing how much time there was and dove for a hole.”
    â€œWhere was this?”
    â€œNot too far north of New Guinea, an island called Los Negros in the Admiralties. You ever hear of it?”
    It stopped Carl.
    â€œYou were with the First Cav?”
    Now Kevin showed surprise.
    â€œYou read about us?”
    â€œI was there, ” Carl said.

Six
    Y ou know what you’ve become?” Jurgen said to Otto. “A pain in the ass.”
    â€œBecause I want to be German and speak our language and hear it?”
    â€œYou’re acting like a child.”
    Otto spoke only German to Walter, when Walter was here, and to the old couple who kept house and were afraid of him. They answered questions and that was all, they refused to carry on a conversation.
    Jurgen and Otto sat at the white porcelain table in the kitchen having their morning coffee.
    If he spoke German to Jurgen he got no response.
    Jurgen said if they spoke only English and tried to think in English, there would be less chance of their being caught. He said, “You want to go out. So do I. But if you intentionally speak German and pose the way you do, daring people to stare at you—‘Look at me, the destroyer of British tanks in the desert’—or whoever you are, they will. And if you attract attention to yourself, it won’t be long before you’re back in the camp.”
    Otto said, “You want English? Why don’t you fuck yourself?”
    â€œIt’s ‘ Go fuck yourself,’” Jurgen said.
    Two years in the war prisoner camp and now another kind of confinement, months in a house on a farm owned by Walter Schoen: the house standing for a hundred years among old Norway pines, an apple orchard on the property, a chicken house, a barn turned into an abattoir where cattle entered to be shot in the head by a .22 rifle. Otto wouldn’t go near the barn. Jurgen couldn’t stay out of it, fascinated by the process, three meat cutters who spoke German among themselves cutting and sharpening, cutting and sharpening, reducing the thousand-pound cow to pieces of meat.
    This morning Jurgen waited for Walter to arrive in his 1941 Ford sedan, a gray four-door with a high shine, always, anytime Jurgen saw the car. The Ford came through the trees along the drive that circled to the back of the two-story frame house that at one time, years ago, had been painted white. Walter came out of the car and Jurgen pounced on him.
    â€œWalter, it’s of the utmost importance that you drive Otto into the city. He wants to see for himself the destruction made by the Luftwaffe. If you don’t, Otto tells me he’s going to