Hector said, “Important thing is, you don’t let that cocksucker mix your drinks anymore. Can’t let Richard get you hammered like he did the other day.”
“No….” Mary shook her head. She resented all this happening around her at Hector’s instigation. He hadn’t told her enough to make most of it make real sense. Yet there were bad things going on around her…things she didn’t quite grasp yet because they were still so strange and hidden. She knew she needed an ally—needed Lassiter’s help. But Mary hated her dependence on him.
Hector leaned in, kissed the top of her head. “Just do this, honey. Trust me, Mary—today’s the day we start to turn things around on these cocksuckers.”
Mary arched her eyebrows. “Who are these ‘cocksuckers,’ Lasso?”
He decided to risk it: “Various, but mostly, FBI.”
***
Hector held Hannah’s hand, steadying her as she carefully backed into Hector’s blue Bel Air. They were headed to the Ketchum airport.
Rueful, Hannah said, “You’d never know as recently as a year ago I was kind of an athlete.” She wished again Hector could have seen her when she was fit. It was foolish to nurse fantasies about being Hector’s woman—pursuing her writing as his lover, but she had restlessly been indulging such thoughts. He was a better, truer man than Richard. An accomplished fiction writer, too. But she was still bound to Richard by law. And in her present physical state? No way Hector could be attracted to her.
“I see it in you still,” Hector said. “Won’t be long now until you are again.”
It was raining and Hector clicked the windshield wipers up a notch. They were headed out to Hailey to pick up Hector’s friend—a retired Irish cop he’d met in Europe more years ago than Hector cared to calculate.
He said, “So, you and Mary spent a lot of time talking while I was writing. Any revelations?”
“Mary’s suspicious of Richard’s motives,” Hannah said. “She’s very suspicious.”
Hector shot her a look: “How so? What’s Dick done to prompt that?”
“Seems Richard’s been doing some things I wasn’t aware of…morbid things.”
Hector raised his eyebrows.
“He’s been requesting coroner’s reports. Talking to morticians.”
He checked the rearview mirror, then bit his lip. He said, “These coroner’s reports — they’d be about Hem’s death?”
She nodded. “And the mortician is the one who prepared his remains for burial.”
“Why is Richard doing this?”
Hannah said, “That’s what Mary wants to know, too.”
He reached across the seat and squeezed her hand, then put both hands back on the wheel and checked the rearview mirror again. “What does Hannah know about all that?”
Hannah sighed. Richard had staked everything—their life together, such as it was—on his morbid theory and what it might mean for his career. But she trusted Hector and said, “Richard has this crazy theory.”
Hector said, “About Hem’s death?”
“It’s very important to Richard’s career,” Hannah said. “I can’t tell you if you might—”
“What? Might tell someone else? Never. Now what’s Richard’s theory, Hannah?”
She hesitated, then said, “Richard thinks Mary might have murdered Papa.”
Jesus Christ: There it was again! Christ only knew what Richard—and Creedy’s—real endgame was, but it seemed predicated on the same theory that had brought Hector to Idaho—this suspicion that Hem maybe hadn’t killed himself. Hector saw Mary on the stairs again, crazed to look in the eyes, pointing that gun at him…screaming she had killed Hem. And Richard had heard it….
Hector nodded. “I’d be lying if I said I haven’t toyed with similar notions from time to time,” he said. “Maybe it’s because I write the things I write and always expect the worst of people in certain situations. But I have wondered myself in idle times. Something about that shooting, and about Mary’s behavior and the immediate aftermath, well, it’s never seemed right to me. Partly why I’m here—trying to spend some time with Mary and take my own soundings. Like to put these crazy thoughts to rest.”
Hannah was worried that Hector was warming to the notion of a homicide in ways that might threaten Richard’s “scoop.” She said, “You promised.”
“Yes, I did,” Hector said, smiling. “I mean to keep my word. But you need to know I’m here for a number of reasons. One of those important reasons is to do what Richard’s doing—nose around a bit about the death. Hem and me were best of friends for many years. If something criminal happened to him, then I owe Hem my best effort at proving that. I owe his reputation that much. I mean, if I can move him from a suicide to a homicide victim, it could make a world of difference for his long game.”
She wrinkled her nose. “‘Long game’? What’s that?”
“The posthumous stakes. The literary reputation and the legacy. The long game.”
Hannah considered that. The notion of an artist taking the long view of their own career in such fashion hadn’t occurred to her, but now that Hector suggested it, it appealed to her, very much. She said, “Evidently you think Mary is capable of having shot Papa.”
“Maybe,” Hector said. “I think Mary is capable of many things; audacious things. But murder? I dunno. I just know Mary called me the morning it happened—the morning of the shooting. It was a strange call. She was under tremendous stress. But allowing for that, it was still a queer call. The aftermath was strange, too. Several other people received phone calls before the local cops were alerted. The family and friends more or less cleaned up the ‘crime’ scene. There was no real forensic examination of the scene before that. God only knows what evidence might have been wiped out. I mean, ‘evidence’ if it was indeed something involving foul play.”
“You sound like Richard.”
Hector shrugged. “Well, Dick may be right about this one thing.”
Hannah watched him a time and said, “You keep checking the rearview mirror.”
“This car behind us—it may be following us. Before you ask: It’s not my FBI shadow.”
Hannah shivered and Hector, misunderstanding, turned the car heater on. Hannah said, “I’m actually hot. Since the baby’s gotten close, I always seem too warm.”
Hector nodded, turned off the heat, and cracked the wing window on his side. “Don’t sweat this other—this fella who may be tailing us. We’ll leave him back there once we know one way or another. If he is following us, I’ll just try to get a look at the car and the plates. If I can get an identification that way, then I can deal with him in my own time. My first thought was not to lead this guy to the airport. But now I think I actually should do that. I think I want him to know there’s more muscle on the scene.”
“Okay.” She sounded nervous. Hector opted for a change-up—no more scaring the girl. He winked and said, “I’ve read your stories, darlin’. A couple are quite wonderful and ready to be published, just as they are. I don’t move in ‘proper’ literary circles, obviously, but I’ll do what I can to help you on that front. And I’ll pass the stories on to my agent if you’d like. Prepare my agent for a time when you have a novel to be shopped.”
Hannah was thrilled, but she said, “And the others?”
“I think what you have in the others are the pieces of that novel you’ve been fretting over writing,” Hector said. “I arranged them in some different sequences and found a narrative line through them. With some connective tissue—a few paragraphs you’d write here and there to bind them together, I think you’ve probably got the first quarter of a fine first novel.” He hesitated, then said, “What’s the vintage of those stories?”
“What do you mean?”
“How recently was all this stuff I’ve been reading written?”
“Last six months.”
Hector thought about that and said, “Well, it’s quite good. Stark and honest. And you can sure write, kiddo.”
Ha
nnah couldn’t stop smiling; she was delighted. She said, “Mary might want me to write her biography, too. She floated the idea a few days ago. She brought it up again this morning.” Hannah hesitated, then added, “She’s worried that Richard isn’t a finisher.”
Hector winced inwardly: Goddamn that old widow. He couldn’t stand the thought of Hannah putting her own writing aside for something as sensational as a piece of ephemeral and sensationalized nonfiction—something that would be gone from bookstore shelves in a few weeks and probably never even make it to paperback.
To set aside one’s true and passionate writing to be a kind of hired-gun biographer—little better than a ghost—was repugnant to Hector, and it was, he was sure, the wrong writing path for Hannah.
He said, “Even if it wasn’t your husband’s book you’d be hijacking, you’d never really consider doing that would, you, Hannah? You’re a fiction writer—just finding your feet. The other would be at best a distraction. At worst, it might be a maybe inescapable cul-de-sac.”
He looked from the road to her face. Hannah’s eyes were skittish. She said, “No, of course not.”
Hector, nodded. “Writers all too easily can fall off the beam, sweetheart.” He looked around at the low buildings of the town they were now entering and said, “Not much of a place is it?” Hailey was like a smaller, downscale version of old Ketchum. “Ezra Pound was born here,” Hector said. “It’s along way from here, to poetry, Paris, and prison for supporting Mussolini, isn’t it? But we all have to come from somewhere. Ezra’s another writer who stepped wrong. Cost himself his career. Ezra’s long game got away from him in the worst way.”
“Did you know Ezra Pound?”
“Not like Hem, but yeah, we shared a few drinks. Shared some thoughts. He was a great poet, but a pretty sorry thinker…like all authors when they try to be political advocates. Ezra was also a terrible anti-Semite.”
Hannah said, “Trust the art, not the artist, isn’t that the saying?”
Hector reached across the seat again and squeezed her hand. He left his hand closed over hers. “That’s what they say, yeah. Probably a turn of phrase coined by some despicable, rotten creative type.”
She smiled, “Aye, makes sense.”
Hector took his hand away, shifted down, making an abrupt left turn. The car he was focused on seemed to hesitate, Hector thought, then righted itself and continued on down the main road through Hailey. Two other cars stayed tacked to his Bel Air’s tail, however. Damn it. Hannah said, “I couldn’t see much through the rain. Not sure what kind of car that is, and the license plate? I couldn’t see it.”
“Me either,” Hector said, angry. “Well, I’m not really sure if he was following us. But if he was, he broke it off for obvious reasons.”
“Not so obvious to me,” Hannah said.
Hector patted her thigh, then palmed the wheel, heading back up the road they’d come down from Ketchum. “There’s only one way back to Sun Valley, sweetheart,” Hector said. “He can pick us up again anywhere along that route. But he’s gone for the moment, so we can go to the airport and fetch my friend.”
“Tell me about this man,” Hannah said. “Who is he?”
“Fella name of James Hanrahan. A cop’s cop. And if you haven’t gathered by the name, another Celt.”
***
James Hanrahan was about six feet tall and carrying a few more pounds than he had the last time Hector crossed paths with the retired Cleveland detective. White-haired now, a bit tired looking, Jimmy still retained his Irish tenor—a brogue he ladled on thicker at strategic moments. Hands the size of hams. Jimmy had been fishing at the retirement cabin he’d recently bought in Montana.
Now Jimmy was stuffed into the back seat of the Bel Air and telling stories of the Great Lakes bootleg wars and Eliot Ness to Hannah, crazy tales of earlier escapades he’d shared with Hector, occasionally dropping in a few Gaelic phrases or words for Hannah’s benefit.
Interrupting his own reverie, Jimmy said, “You are aware of the three cars following us, Hector? Not a team effort, I might add. I think you’ve actually got three different tails.”
“Yeah,” Hector said. “One’s FBI—young fella named Langley who’s my shadow. The other is probably attached to this Creedy guy I was telling you about.”
Jimmy grunted, said, “And the third in the Impala?”
“Mystery man. The one that has me most wondering.”
“What’s the plan, then?”
“We get back to the Topping House…hunker down there, and I catch you up on events.”
“I’m not taking your money for this, Hector. I still owe you for—”
Hector cut him off. “Jimmy, your fee is being covered by the Hemingway estate, so live it up. God knows Hem always did.”
“Hemingway has been accused of communist sympathy, although we are advised that he has denied and does vigorously deny any communist affiliation or sympathy.”
— FBI Agent Raymond Leddy,
confidential to J. Edgar Hoover
CREEDY:
CUBA, 1947
Creedy had long ago succeeded in bugging Hemingway’s car. Now he was following behind along the twisting, wet road, hanging on every word:
José Luis Herrera, Hem’s longtime Cuban doctor, said, “Nobody we know—and all of us despise Trujillo—wanted any part of this plot for a Dominican Republic coup d’état, Papa.”
Hemingway said, “I know. Goddamn it, I know all that.”
“Any support was bad enough, Papa, but to write personal checks for your financial contribution to this scheme? That was loco. When they get their hands on those checks…?”
Hemingway said, “Damn it, José, I know. I’m going to New York, just as you’re urging, aren’t I?”
José said: “They’re holding the plane, Papa. We should just make it.”
Hemingway called out louder, “A little more gas, Juan.”
“In a few months,” José said, “perhaps things will quiet down and you’ll be able to return unmolested, Papa.”
When they reached the airport, Hemingway swung out of the car, grabbed the suitcase René had hastily packed for him, and trotted across the tarmac with his slight limp.
Removing the headphones from his ears, Creedy stepped from the commandeered equipment shed and moved between Hemingway and the plane.
Yelling above the sound of the propellers, Hemingway said, “I’m in a hurry, Agent Creedy.”
The FBI agent smiled meanly, gnawing on a toothpick. “Bet you are. That was a pretty crazy scheme, Papa, this writing a personal check to fund the overthrow of a banana republic and doing it from the shores of still another banana republic. And what you’ve done, you goddamn nigger-loving dabbler: Trujillo was doing good work, keeping those darkies down.”
“Yeah,” Hemingway said. “Killing ’em by the thousands. Him and his machete-toting death squads.”
“Better to let them kill each other, I say. How drunk were you when you decided to draft that check, Papa? You really put your foot in it this time, Papa.”
“I need to get on that plane, Creedy,” Hemingway said. “We’ll take this up another time.”
“I know you need to make that plane,” Creedy yelled. “That’s why you suddenly have passport issues. Maybe you can catch the next plane, once these concerns over your travel documents are hashed out. I mean, if the Cuban authorities don’t get here first. They will, you know.”
Hemingway said, “Don’t do this, Donovan. Let me go, Agent Creedy.”
“Fuck you, Papa.” Creedy smiled. “Notice you still don’t have a new novel out. What’s it been, ten years? My fifth comes out next month.”
“Good for you, asshole. Really, Agent—please don’t put me to the test now. Trust me when I say that neither of us wants me pushed that far.”
“That some kind of threat, Papa?”
Hemingway shrugged. “Your words, Agent, not mine.”
“Come on back to the terminal with me, Hemingway. We
need to check that passport.”
A crewman was standing in the doorway of the plane, yelling and waving for Hemingway to board…pointing at his watch.
“I really need to get on that plane now. You really need to let me do that.”
“Fuck that.” The FBI agent took Hemingway by the arm. “Let’s go now.”
Hemingway bit his lip, then took the agent’s hand from his arm and cast it aside. “Just remember, Donovan, whatever comes of this, you pushed me to this admission. This is on your head. I’m sure the Director will see it that way, too.”
“Pushed you to what?”
“I know what you Bureau boys think of me—that I’m some dissolute, left-leaning novelist who’s spent too many years abroad. But I was a journalist. In some important ways, I’m still that journalist. I have skills. I’ve covered crime, wars and revolution. Interviewed presidents and despots and fiends. I know how to find things out, when I really want to know them.”
“What’s your point, Papa?”
“Years ago, I told you about Hoover’s missing birth certificate. Sucker suddenly surfaced when Hoover was forty-three. Well, I heard more. I know about Hoover’s parentage now. Tell him that.”
“What does that mean? What about his parentage?”
Hemingway smiled. “Give Hoover my message, and then if you’ve got balls under those seersucker pants, you put that question to him. You ask J. Edgar who his parents were, Creedy. Now, are you going to make me miss that plane? If so, I’m going to get chatty about Hoover’s lineage with the world press that’ll flock my way when the Cuban police hold me for that other ‘banana republic’.”
Red-faced, Agent Creedy stepped aside. “Get on that damned plane, Hemingway. But you’re right—you really don’t know what you’ve just done.”
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