Comfort to the Enemy and Other Carl Webster Stories by Elmore Leonard

Author:Elmore Leonard
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Series - Elmore Leonard, Crime
ISBN: 9780061735158
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-09-27T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Tutti and Frankie Bones

Shemane took a sip of her martini, placed it on the cocktail table and picked up the Tulsa paper, the World.

NAZI CHIEF ESCAPES DEATH IN BOMB PLOT

Shemane said, "Mom, the paper you're reading is three months old." The edition about Hitler escaping death and FDR accepting the nomination for a fourth term; she laid it on the stack of newspapers between them on the sofa.

Her mom was holding her martini and reading a Sunday edition's Society page. On her lap and on the sofa she ha d t he World as far back as summer, even older ones in her room, Gladys keeping up with the Tulsa money people, once her neighbors. She didn't know how the paper got to Okmulgee, but there it was on the front stoop every morning. Shemane watched Gladys in her green velvet with the emerald necklace and rings, always her rings, her veined hand reaching for the cigarette in the silver holder resting in a silver ashtray.

"It's gone out.

Shemane had on a nifty black jersey this evening with a scoop neck, no jewelry. She said, "Let me have it," flicked a silver lighter to get the joint going again, took a deep draw through the holder and held her breath saying, Mom? Here, take it."

She had read about the attempt to assassinate Hitler, one of his guys, Goring--no, it was the naval guy, Doenitz saying, "by a clique of mad generals. Jurgen knew about it, he said Hitler was crazy, not the generals, one of them being Field Marshal Rommel, Jurgen's all-time hero. She had read only a couple weeks ago Rommel had died of injuries received last July in France when his car was strafed by a Spitfire and went out of control. Jurgen said, "He takes all that time to die of injuries? He was a war hero, loved by the German people. It's why they couldn't hang him." His voice quiet then saying , "They made him take poison."

He said it during his last visit, the two of them on the sofa. She put her arm around him and brushed his hair from his forehead and kissed his cheek telling him she was so sorry, kissing and patting him and touching his hair.

Her mom thought Jurgen was a nice polite boy because he said yes ma'm and no ma'm. Shemane and her mom hardly ever talked about the war. Her mom would see a photo of Franklin Roosevelt in the paper and say Alvin called him a Communist Jew-lover. Gladys had grown up in Tulsa society, was snatched off a country club dance floor by Alvin Morrissey, who married her to get into Maple Ridge and make oil contacts. By the time Shemane was 12 she knew her dad was fooling around; she'd go through his things and find letters from girls, girls' names in his address book and rubbers in his billfold. She told Jurgen she told him just about everything because he liked to listen

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