“Crystal Davidson, you don’t mean to tell me. Emmett Long’s gun moll? Where do you see her?” He told his dad, when she came to Tulsa to shop at the department store. His dad said, “Does she act ladylike?” Wanting to know his boy got laid with some propriety.
Carl was in the hotel coffee shop having breakfast, his eggs scrambled with onions, fried potatoes and pork sausage, all of it doused with Lea & Perrins, a few small sweet rolls and black coffee. The waitress said, “I can tell you like that Wootsa-shy, huh?”
She was colored but sounded like Narcissa Raincrow, his dad’s common-law wife, bless her heart. He could tell Narcissa what happened. He’d been telling her things all his life and she’d listen without any attitudes or beliefs interfering. The way he heard their conversation:
“Here’s Honey, the best-looking girl I ever met, or the second best.”
“She look like a movie star?”
“Lauren Bacall. ‘You know how to whistle, Steve?’ Honey even sounds like her, her voice.”
“They call her Betty, her friends.”
“She takes off her blouse.”
“She’s wearing a brassiere?”
“It’s white. She puts her hands behind her back to unhook it and says...” Carl paused. “She uses an obscene word.”
The fifty-four-year-old Creek woman who looked somewhat like a heavy Dolores Del Rio said, “Which one,
“Yeah.”
“It’s all right, you can say it.”
“She says, ‘Carl, do you want to fuck me on the sofa-’”
“Oh my,” Narcissa said.
“‘Or see if Jurgen’s in the bedroom? One or the other.’ And lets the bra slip off. Drops it on the floor.”
“Oh, she’s smart. All right, big boy, what would you rather do, have sexual intercourse with me or take the German swine prisoner?”
“He’s not a swine, he’s a good guy. But say I did choose Honey. And he hears us.”
“You make a lot of noise?”
“He’s in the next room. The apartment’s quiet.”
“You want to give it to her, but not in the living room? Take her to a hotel.”
“This was yesterday. I didn’t take her anywhere. What do you think I did?”
“You been waiting a long time to catch the German. But there’s Honey pointing her ninnies at you. She take off all her clothes?”
“She lets her skirt drop.”
“She have on undies, a girdle?”
“A pair of white panties. Her thumbs hooked in the waist.”
“Ready to step out of them.”
“She waited.”
“For you to make up your mind?”
“You understand I had forced her to where we were.”
“’Cause you wanted to get laid.”
“’Cause I knew Jurgen was in the bedroom.”
“If he wasn’t you’d be in there with Honey.”
“I don’t know.”
“Listen, don’t tell me this story if you don’t tell the truth. Did you say you wanted to go to bed with her to fuck her, or to see if the German was in there?”
“I didn’t know he was, or I wasn’t sure of it till she said we do it on the sofa or we don’t do it.”
“So when you started out telling her of your passion, it was to get laid.”
“I guess it was,” Carl said. “But I didn’t get laid, did I?”
“Didn’t break your vow. You were lucky, uh?”
“I walked past the bedroom door and out of the apartment.”
“You didn’t say anything to the lovely naked girl?”
“I said, ‘It doesn’t look like it’s gonna work out, does it?’ She was smiling a little, her eyes were. She’s the type, she’s comfortable not having any clothes on. No, at this point she’s having a good time.”
“Did she say anything to you?”
“She said, ‘You give up too easily.’”
“Wait. How did she know you wouldn’t look in the bedroom?”
“She gave me a choice, one or the other.”
“But you didn’t jump on her.”
“I wanted to. I would’ve if Jurgen wasn’t there. I didn’t tell Honey but he saved me from breaking my word, something I’ve never done in my life, ’less I’m kidding when I give it and everybody, or most everybody knows I’m kidding. No, I took a vow when I got married and I haven’t broken it yet. So I feel I owe Jurgen one. He wants to run and hide, stay low till the war’s over, it’s okay with me. He saved me from breaking my word. I’ll tell my boss, W. R. Bill Hutchinson, I couldn’t find the two escapees and that’ll be that.”
Narcissa’s voice said, “Oh, is that right? But what if you run into Honey again and no one like Jurgen is around to save your pitiful ass?”
He tried to get hold of Kevin to return his car, phoning from his room. The FBI voice said he was out of the office, on assignment. Carl asked if Bohdan Kravchenko had been apprehended. The voice said that information was not available for release. Carl left word for Kevin to call him at the hotel.
He phoned Louly at the marine air station in North Carolina, proud of his semiclear conscience, ready to say “I’ve been too busy” when she asked if he was staying out of trouble. But Louly wasn’t available either. What he should do, get ready to take the train back to Tulsa.
The phone rang. He expected it to be Kevin or Louly.
It was Honey Deal.
“You want to see Jurgen?”
“Let me talk to him on the phone.”
“Carl, Vera called. She wants to stop by this evening and visit.”
“With Bohunk?”
“She doesn’t know where he is. He didn’t come back last night. She’s worried about him.”
“I can see her wringing her hands,” Carl said. “What time she coming?”
“About eight. Stop in and say good-bye to Jurgen.”
“Where’s he going?”
“He won’t tell me.”
“Show him your hooters.”
“They’re on ice for you, Carl. You know what happens when ice touches just the tips?”
Carl said, “You sneeze?” and said right away, “You know you’re hanging out with the wrong crowd.”
“I know it,” Honey said. “But I don’t feel the least bit subversive. Do you? Or you can get away with it but I can’t?”
“Something like that,” Carl said.
“Listen, stop by for a drink tonight. I promise I won’t show you my boobs.”
“But I’ll understand,” Carl said, “if you can’t help taking your clothes off.”
She said, “Wait a minute.”
He heard her lay the phone down on a hard surface and after that faint voices. Now she was back.
“Carl, turn on your radio. Roosevelt’s dead.”
It was the way she said it. Not, he died; he was dead.
Carl said, “You don’t think Walter . . .”
Walter heard the news in the Greyhound bus station in downtown Detroit over the public-address system.
