Print the Legend: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  Hector was raising his hand to comb his fingers through her long flaxen hair when he caught himself and shook his head again, ruefully.

  As Richard and Mary parried, Hector sensed Hannah surreptitiously glance over at him to make sure he was watching the bickering pair. Then she reached for the crumpled piece of paper Hector had retrieved for her. She smoothed it out.

  Evidently startled by the paper’s contents, Hannah didn’t notice as Hector read over her shoulder.

  Hector arched his eyebrows. It looked like some kind of manuscript, written in Mary’s hand—script he recognized from Christmas cards and say-too-little letters sent in the wake of Hem’s death.

  And the “story,” it seemed to be this crazy and corrosive narrative about Hannah and Richard Paulson’s marriage. Holy Jesus—what was this piece of writing?

  Hector realized then that Hannah was staring up at him—that she had in fact realized he was sneaking a read. Her cheeks flushed. Hannah folded the piece of paper up and slipped it into her pocket.

  Hector figured it was even odds: she was pissed at him for reading this strange document Mary had written about Hannah and her husband, or she was simply livid at the document’s sampled content.

  Hell, probably it was both.

  Hector managed a smile and squeezed Hannah’s hand. He said softly, so only she could hear, “You and me, kiddo, we’re in a strange and lonely club here.”

  —Richard—

  Mary sipped her drink and smiled, showing no teeth. “Yummy.” The old widow frowned suddenly. In a confidential tone, she said, “Dick?”

  Richard said, “Yes?”

  “I have an important question for you, Dickie.”

  “Shoot,” Richard said with a slight slur.

  “Why are all of Papa’s would-be biographers men?”

  Richard could see where that was going: Mary was getting ready to raise the issue directly with Hannah—this notion Hannah should serve as his co-writer of Mary’s biography. Well, fuck that. And he’d not have that topic discussed in front of Lassiter. The thing to do, he decided, was take Hannah and go, now. Sooner he and Hannah left—sooner Richard got Hannah away from Lassiter’s wandering eye — well, the sooner the party would break up. Then Richard could return alone to work over the widow.

  —Creedy—

  In a modest home across the street from the Topping House, Creedy sat in the window of a darkened room, wearing headphones and scanning the Hemingway place with a pair of binoculars. His hiding place glowed with lights from the various listening contraptions that lined one wall of the room. A couple of silent technicians sat before the stations, twisting knobs and checking tape.

  Someone was leaving the Topping House.

  Creedy narrowed his eyes: It was Richard Paulson and his pregnant wife, already packing it in. What the hell was this? Based on what the taps had picked up, Richard still hadn’t gotten the goods.

  Had Richard even dosed the widow? Judging by the sound of Mary’s voice—that tell-tale manic edge—Richard had done that. But now the professor was departing, and more dumbfounding, leaving Mary in that doped state alone with Hector Lassiter. Fuck!

  He ground his teeth, staring at the Paulsons. Creedy snorted softly. Even though he often enough used women as cover, he detested that tactic in others—men who took women into the field with them. Fucking amateurs…

  —Hector—

  Hector licked his lips. He watched Mary carefully. Her voice was slower, duller. Her hands were trembling and she seemed to have developed this strange tic in her left thumb. She was covered in a thin sheen of sweat. He said, “So, Islands is definitely the next one? Don’t want to go for The Garden of Eden? Think I could get into that one.”

  “You read both manuscripts, such as they are, in Cuba,” Mary said, slurring, looking as though it was a struggle to keep her eyes open. Her eyelids were twitching now. “Which would you truly go for—not as a writer, but as a reader?”

  “The Garden of Eden,” Hector said. “It’s fresh. Hem was reaching there, moving from modernism into postmodernism.”

  “And who wants to read that shit?” Mary wrinkled her nose. “A writer writing about a writer writing? What the fuck is that? Where’s the film potential? Navel-gazing, that’s what that is. Masturbatory, self-mytholigization. No thank you. At least Islands has some action.”

  Hector said, “Like I told Hem back in ’fifty-nine when I read the manuscript, it’s too close to To Have and Have Not. Harry Morgan and old Tom Hudson’s ends are too near the same, point for point. Hem was chewing his cud.”

  “That’s why I want you to writing a new ending,” Mary said, winking.

  Hector rubbed his jaw, and said. “I thought what the two of us were going to do was edit what Hem left us, not write new material. Wouldn’t be anything like Hem’s book if we presumed to do other. Would it?”

  “We have to be realistic, Lasso,” Mary said, waving a sluggish hand. “You read A Moveable Feast in manuscript and you said you’ve read the final version, too. I had to do quite a bit of work, there. That I could do. But Islands needs some machismo to bring it up to snuff. You know the milieu, Lasso. You know sports fishing. You did some rum and refugee running, according to Papa. You’ll make it perfect.”

  She smiled. “But what I’d really like your help with is my book. My memoir. Those bastards at Papa’s old house are giving me guff. Say what they’ve seen needs drastic editing. I’m willing to let you help me polish and smooth it out. And, with your publishing connections, I know you’ll help me get a wonderful deal somewhere else.”

  Jesus Christ….

  Hector said, “I thought Paulson was here to write your life story with you.”

  “That’s my biography Richard’s working on. I figure the market can really only bear a biography and a memoir about moi. So I’m cooperating on an authorized biography to control that, then I’ll have my book with the true gen. Freeze out the other cocksuckers.”

  “Ah-hah. Well, I’m a fiction writer, not a memoirist.” Hector knew some critics who might argue that. Either way, he didn’t want to appear to dismiss Mary’s notion out of hand quite yet — not until he know more about this goddamn lost chapter. And he’d be damned to hell before he’d ever rewrite another writer, least of all Hem. Hector said, “What about other things left by Hem? There’s something about the last safari, isn’t there? The plane crashes?”

  Mary shook her head. Her eyes closed, she said, “The Green Hills of Africa didn’t sell in its first incarnation. Why expect the reheated version to do any better?”

  Softly, Hector said, “Is the objective to enhance Ernest’s reputation, or to sell books?”

  “Both. But the latter, first.”

  “Oh.”

  Jesus… Hector saw it now, clear and terrible: Hem’s entire long game was balanced on the head of a pin. Mary was mucking around with Hem’s leavings. Creedy skulking around the edges toward some unknown end. This damn professor with his mysterious drugs. People inserting doctored manuscripts into Hem’s cache of real leavings….

  Hector feared for Hem’s posthuma, now.

  Hector sipped wine. He decided to toe out there, just a bit. Trying to keep the anger from his voice, he said, “Heard there was more of Feast than you published and even more than I read. Heard Hem actually had a chapter written up on me.”

  “Wonderful,” Mary said, smiling. “Truly wonderful portrait of you. I left it out because it was so fond. Didn’t marry up with the tone of book. But I have plans for it.” She narrowed her eyes. “How’d you hear about it?”

  Hector wasn’t particularly sensitive to protecting Carlos Baker, but he did feel an obligation to shield Dexter. He said, “There are no secrets where writers and projects are concerned. You know how many letters Hem wrote; often corresponded in his cups. He mentioned it in one and that mention got mentioned and so on. I got word through channels.” He watched Mary—she seemed unconcerned:

  “I’ll get you a copy when I get
a chance,” Mary said dismissively. “You’ll love it.” Her head dipped once, like she’d nearly dropped off. Whatever Paulson had slipped the widow was finally firmly taking hold. Slow-acting stuff. Or perhaps the scholar had under-dosed her.

  Hector said, “Heard Hem was toying with a novel about me, too.”

  “He made notes,” Mary said thickly, waving a hand again. “He never got going on it, or, if he did, I never found evidence. I’ve got all there is. Short of there being something in some vault, or safe deposit box in Cuba that I know nothing about, it doesn’t exist, Lasso. Sorry.”

  Hector believed her. He sighed: That, at least, was a load off. He said, “Too bad. Might have been good fun.”

  “Well, Papa was in bad shape, even in early ’fifty-nine, when you saw him.” Mary offered her empty glass and Hector rose to mix another. Out of practice in terms of serious drinking as he was, he was fairly convinced Mary might drink him under the table…even with whatever drug Paulson had slipped her in the mix. Hector made Mary’s next gimlet a good bit milder than the last watered-down drink. Mary didn’t seem to notice: she sampled it and smacked her lips and said, “Dee-lish.”

  He lit another cigarette for her and Mary said, “After you left Cuba in ’fifty-nine, and after Spain and his birthday party, Papa went downhill, fast. He became crazy as a coot. There was nothing really getting written then. Papa made plenty of notes and had grand plans, but nothing came of them.”

  Hector decided to risk it: “Look, Mary, I’ll confess that, through channels, I’ve seen that lost chapter on me. It’s goddamn bogus. I want to know from you how it came to be typed up, and, let’s call it augmented.”

  “Bogus? Augmented?” Mary shook her head. “You’ve had too much to drink, clearly.”

  “Not at all. I knew Hem. There’s stuff in there that he wouldn’t write. That he didn’t write. I want to know more about the provenance of this so-called lost chapter, Mary.”

  “You’ve lost me, Lasso. If you’ve seen a copy—a true copy, then you must have seen Papa’s handwritten notes in the margins. We found it in Paris on the way back from Africa, after the plane crashes. It was among other drafts of Papa’s he’d left in trunks stored in the basement of the Ritz. It obviously passed beneath Ernest’s eye—he made those notes about surrealism just a couple of years before he died. Seems to me your quarrel must be with Papa. Good luck getting answers from him.” Mary said suddenly, “Save money, Lasso! Stay right here tonight.” Mary pulled something from under her sweater—a necklace or charm of some kind—and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger.

  “Appreciate that, but the conference is covering my expenses at the Lodge,” Hector said firmly. “I aim to soak those sorry longhairs for every cent I can.”

  “Well that can’t last long,” Mary said. “Not more than a couple of days, right? This project we’re undertaking, this could take many months. So….”

  “We’ll see,” Hector said. He started looking around the room now—looking for documents, manuscripts. Given Mary’s clear deterioration, he was well past the need for subtlety—Mary was clearly going down fast and hard. We’re not through with this other, he thought. We have a hell of a lot more to talk about regarding this matter of the lost chapter and where it came from. How it came to pass from Hem’s scrawl on some slips of paper lost thirty or so years ago to a fresh document off a typewriter.

  Mary sleepily veered again: “I watched you so closely watching that girl. Studying her…especially after she told you she’s a writer. What did you think of Hannah?”

  “Mrs. Paulson?” Hector shrugged. “Pretty. But I didn’t really get to take her measure.”

  “Well, mess that she is to settle for Dick, I wouldn’t be surprised if she could do a better job with my biography than her so-called award-winning husband,” Mary said, her eyes closed now.

  He looked around the room, looked for manuscript pages. Hector had come back around to his original intent: he needed to find and destroy that original of the lost chapter.

  Hem’s posthuma was already becoming muddled and mauled in Mary’s hands. Hector would be damned if he’d contribute to any of that with some piece of writing altered by Mary— or worse, some unknown party—being credited to Hem. There seemed to be a line of old friends, family and hangers-on ready to feast on Hem’s corpse; Hector would have no part in any of that.

  He glanced again at Mary. Her eyes were open again, but glassy—like she didn’t even see him, now. She was muttering under her breath, some tune in pidgin Spanish he couldn’t make out.

  He drifted away from her—glassy gaze didn’t track him. Hector bit his lip, then headed upstairs to commence his search.

  —Creedy—

  Donovan Creedy hung on the dim sounds of Lassiter moving from room to room within the Topping House—passing through the rooms they’d been able to bug, anyway.

  He’d heard Lassiter send the maid off at Mary’s “direction” for fresh bottle of Gordon’s and Dewar’s—using that simple but effective subterfuge to have the place to himself for a time.

  Occasionally, Creedy could see the author pass by a window. He heard doors open and close…drawers pulled open and slid shut. The crime novelist seemed to be conducting a very thorough search of the Hemingway house.

  Creedy could also hear Mary making strange clicking noises with her teeth…muttering under her breath and occasionally calling out short, sharp obscenities.

  —Hector—

  In a bedroom he presumed to be Hem’s, Hector found a makeshift office and a wooden shelf with slots filled with manuscript pages. Hector recognized several of those drafts. They were all Hem’s…various versions of Feast. But nothing Hector recognized as his own.

  Continuing his search of the house, Hector found a locked door that seemed to be a storeroom.

  When she’d lost control of her hands, Hector had retrieved Mary’s dropped cigarette from her lap before it could burn her or set her skirt on fire. As he ground it out, the key on the chain around her neck had tangled in the button of his sports jacket.

  On a hunch, Hector crept back up to Mary. She was staring at her empty glass, muttering, “I’m dry, goddamn it, I’m dry!” He made another gimlet, then picked up a pair of scissors. He approached from behind her shoulder, standing behind her chair. As he let his fingers trail affectionately across the back of Mary’s neck, he lifted the thin gold chain and slid it between the scissor blades. He then handed Mary the fresh drink over her shoulder. “Here you go sweet,” he said. As she took it with a trembling hand, he cut the thin chain and then, pretending to pat her breastbone, caught the falling key. He said, “Need to get a fresh pack of smokes from my Chevy, honey. Back in a jiffy.”

  He was just going to have to make his remaining search a fast one.

  Mary seemed focused on her booze…focused on the cover of a copy of Field & Stream on the table next to her.

  Holding his breath, Hector tried the key in the storeroom lock; heard this click and felt the knob twist full.

  Hector looked around the storeroom—more of Papa’s precious shotguns and rifles in their racks…myriad boxes of shotgun shells and cartridges.

  And more slotted shelves filled with more manuscript pages.

  He left the storeroom door slightly ajar so he could hear the maid’s return.

  Hector slipped on his despised eyeglasses and began combing through Hem’s unpublished works.

  Given the urgency the moment demanded, he was surprised to feel this funny surge of affection just to see Hem’s handwriting again—that downward sloping, cursive hand of Hem’s that never stopped looking like a schoolboy’s ciphering, even in the late 1950s when Hem was near the end, sick and struggling with those novels he couldn’t finish.

  Hem’s holographs also pierced Hector in very a different way. Hector’s first and last drafts tended to be pretty close, in sum. Somehow, for whatever reason, Hector’s prose nearly always struck pay dirt on first pass.

  It was clearly diffe
rent for Hem—strikes and word and paragraph insertions running vertically up the borders of the page and onto the backs of some sheets. Revisions, excisions, and additions all over the place. The difference in their compositional styles was critical to Hector’s search for false documents:

  Hector looked for the least fretted-over pages, figuring those were most apt to be his own.

  —Mary—

  Mary realized, quite suddenly, she was on fire. She was sweating, thirsty…her heart racing. She narrowed her eyes: was that dust on the coffee table there?

  It was.

  Useless hired help. Seething, Mary called for her maid. No answer. She was alone in the house. She vaguely remembered having had company, but she must have been mistaken about that. Hell, even the hired help was gone.

  Goddamn her maid, anyway. Dammit!

  Mary struggled up and then bustled to the kitchen for a damp rag. She’d dust the place herself! Sweep, too. “Goddamn useless hired help!”

  She realized then she was talking aloud all this time. Well, so what? She was alone, anyway. Mary smiled and winked at her reflection. “Nobody around to call us buggy.”

  Wringing out the wet rag, Mary noticed some cabinet drawers cracked. Those cupboard doors were never left open.

  “Someone’s here,” she said aloud to herself. Of course: They would be here again.

  More spies.

  Eyes, always watching…. Lurkers, skulking around, inside and outside the Topping House.

  Her own eyes darting, watching for shadows or figures moving past doorways, Mary made herself a fresh gimlet. A heavy pour on the gin and some missing steps in the preparation: She couldn’t tell from her first sip. Mary began dusting, frantically and spottily, wiping down surfaces between sips of her gimlet and grousing out loud about her missing maid and all those spies running around her house, now.