Print the Legend: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  “He’s my husband.” Hannah stared at her naked fingers. Time to test it and see if Hector was there for her in the fullest sense: “How can I truly avoid him? I mean, why should I do that, in your eyes? Apart from the obvious reasons?” With time and less bearing down upon her, she might have put that question better…a good bit more gracefully. Still, it was said, at last. Hector’s move.

  Hannah looked up from her hands; searched Hector’s face.

  He nodded slowly. Hector could see it —Hannah was asking him to take her on now. She wanted him to admit he wanted her.

  Hesitating a moment, Hector reached across and took Hannah’s hand. He ran his index finger’s tip across her bare ring finger. He said, “I’m so dreadfully sorry you’re having to cope with this. This should be a happy time for you now, darlin’. You should be home, resting and preparing.” Hector paused, then said, “Do you want to go home, Hannah? Get back to family and friends while you wait out these last days for the little one?”

  He hadn’t answered her question, he knew; he could see it in her face. Still…he was throwing her a rope.

  Hannah squeezed his hand back. “It’s almost tempting. I can’t stand to see Richard like this. And the idea of him dealing with Mary while he’s in this condition…?”

  “Right. The old dame’s not to be underestimated, even in her cups.”

  Hannah surprised herself: “Mary has designs on you, you know, Hector. I mean, I sense that’s true.”

  Hector raised his eyebrows. “Yeah? Jesus. Well, that’s not in the cards. Mary’s not my type by many miles.” He almost winced at his phrasing. Well, it could be taken a couple of ways.

  “She also said you’re going to help her rewrite Islands, even write a new ending for the novel.”

  “That’s not going to happen either, honey. Tampering with Hem’s stuff on that level—absolutely unthinkable. Especially for this writer. I’m focused on my own fiction. That’s all.”

  “Thank God. I didn’t believe Mary when she said it, but it’s good to hear you say it.”

  “Well, you think about this other offer,” Hector said. “I’ll see you get home, and I’ll see you’re cared for through what’s to come if you’ll let me. Then, when I get things handled here, I’ll maybe come see you and that little one if you’ll have me.” She could take that a couple of ways; granted them both some latitude. “Where is home again?”

  “Ann Arbor, Michigan.” Well, that’s where she lived with Richard.

  “Now there’s a place I’ve never been, which is increasingly rare. Need to rectify that.”

  Hannah smiled. It wasn’t all she wanted from Hector, but it was a start. He didn’t seem to rule out the notion of a life with her and her baby. She just needed to push him that further bit out on the limb—get him to say it, straight and clear.

  Hannah remembered then: She pulled out the slip of paper. She said, “I found this in my husband’s—in Richard’s—wallet. It’s that man you asked me about, I think. Creedy.” Hector’s startled reaction thrilled her—it made up, in a way, for having put that private eye on his tail. Or so Hannah tried to convince herself.

  Arching an eyebrow, Hector reached out and took the slip of paper from Hannah’s hand. He squinted at the writing there: At fucking last, an address!

  “Who is he, Hector?”

  He hesitated. “Have you talked to Richard about this?”

  “No.”

  Of course… “I…can’t tell you that then, darlin’. And more difficult, I urge you not to ask your husband about this man, either. With types like Creedy, just their knowing you know they exist can become a wicked problem for you.”

  “Unacceptable. I deserve more.”

  The young thing had spirit and grit—Hector had to give Hannah that.

  “Okay, darlin’, this much: Creedy is FBI, but of the very worst stripe.”

  She was visibly unsettled. “How would Richard know—?”

  “An important question, Hannah. But one you really better not put to Richard just yet. Give me a little more time to poke around this, okay, honey? Let me try some things first. You bide your time. Can you do that for me?”

  Impulsively, Hector scooted his chair around closer to hers. He took her hand again and she rubbed the back of his hand with her thumb. His body began to stir. Jesus, but he had it bad. He surprised himself by cupping a hand to her belly. He felt the baby stir inside her. She smiled at his smile. She almost told him then she had accepted Mary’s offer. But this didn’t seem quite the moment. She needed him to say he was hers, first. Or that she was his…either way.

  “I’ll think on it.” She hesitated, then held out a vial. “I also found this in Richard’s coat. Do you know what it is? Looks like some kind of medicine, but it seems strange there are no labels.”

  Hector looked at the vial, opened it and examined the dropper. Sniffed the contents. It looked like the same rig Richard had used to slip something into Mary’s drink. He said, “Richard’s not on any medication you know of?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then I’ll just hold onto this, if that’s okay.”

  “I surely don’t want it.”

  “I’m going to hang around the lodge here a bit,” Hector said. “Still have the Hemingway room for a time yet. I’ll stay close here until you make up your mind about getting back to Mary’s or going back to Michigan. For the next few hours, you’ll be able to find me through the front desk.”

  Hannah smiled, said, “Okay.” He felt her leg press against his.

  They sat there, looking into one another’s eyes, still holding hands.

  ***

  Heading into the lounge to look for Richard Paulson, Donovan Creedy instead spotted Hannah and Hector there at their table.

  Before they could see him, Creedy turned his back to them and slipped on a pair of specially constructed sunglasses with built-in mirrors for watching people behind you.

  Creedy spied on them there, holding hands and smiling at one another. He thought, So, it’s like that between them.

  Dick Paulson was just taking it up the ass from every direction, wasn’t he?

  Watching Hannah and Hector together, the way they held hands and stared into one another’s eyes, Creedy’s mind began turning in a new, dark direction.

  “Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.”

  — Meg Chittenden

  29

  TURNABOUT

  Despite Hector’s cautions, Hannah couldn’t risk leaving Richard alone for long. She slipped down the hall to speak with her husband. It immediately flared into another argument:

  “I swear to you Richard, it was the same man. Unless, of course, you are simply trying to gaslight me. Is this mystery man doing this at your instigation?” Hannah wasn’t sure why she said that—she just blurted it out. Then she realized that, after her talk with Hector, she’d come to think Richard maybe really meant her harm in some way.

  “Oh, Christ.” Richard shook his head. “I would never. Jesus. I don’t doubt you, darling. Really, I don’t. Truth be told, I saw a guy who looked like that a couple of times in Boise. I suspect he’s just an academic. Another scholar skulking around after what I’m after.”

  Hannah thought back. She hadn’t seen the stalker since the day Richard left. There had been the car behind Hannah and Hector on the road to Hailey, but they never saw a face. Today Richard had returned, and so had their shadow.

  Yes. She could accept the theory that Richard was the target of the man’s surveillance. “Okay,” Hannah said. “I think he did follow you out there. But please: I know you scholars are a cutthroat bunch, but all this skulking around and spying? I don’t accept that for a second.”

  Richard shook three aspirins loose from the bottle. Hannah snatched them from his hand. “No. These won’t do you any good with your insides bleeding
as they are. Cope with the headache you gave yourself—more incentive to quit, aye?”

  Her husband nodded feebly. “You’re right. I’ll tough it out.” Hannah sighed: Sure, that sounded convincing. He stood up and walked unsteadily to the window, gazing glumly down at the grounds, searching the trees. “I agree, he’s probably…something else. But what is he? I haven’t a clue.”

  Hannah nodded. Of course now she had also put a spy on Richard’s tail. Still, this other—their original watcher—she could maybe still do Richard a last favor on that front. Maybe she could help him solve that mystery before she exited his life.

  Hannah thought about Hector and what he might do now. “You could do something to make me feel better about all of this, Richard.” She flipped open his suitcase and dug around for the camera he had packed with the intention of taking shots of the Topping House and other Papa landmarks that might prove useful later in the drafting of his book.

  Richard Paulson kept his back to his wife, still staring out the window. “Whatever you want,” he said. Hannah didn’t hear much conviction there.

  Hannah screwed a long lens into her battered old camera. “Take a book, a notebook or whatever you feel like—reading or writing. Take a long walk around the grounds, maybe up Sun Valley Road to the memorial.”

  He turned his head on side. “Why?”

  Hannah loaded the film. “Camera safari.”

  “Jesus pleading bleeding Christ. Who do you think you are now—Nancy fucking Drew?”

  “Here’s some important advice: Indulge me, Richard. Or lose me tonight.” She stared at his back a long time, then said, “I have options, Richard. And I’m thinking hard about them.”

  She savored his flinch…then felt guilty for enjoying his reaction.

  ***

  Hector sat alone in the lounge, staring at the slip of paper and vial Hannah had found among Richard Paulson’s things. He slipped them back in his pocket.

  Time to chase this other lead now: time to pay a visit to Donovan Creedy.

  He took another sip of his drink then frowned at the reflection in the mirror behind the bar. He was flanked by four youngish men in matching black suits. Hector swiveled around on his barstool, reaching for his pocket to retrieve his roll of nickels.

  The four men were on him too quickly. They grabbed Hector by the arms and hauled him off the bar stool.

  One of the men said harshly, “You’re with us, now….” Hector’s mind immediately went to that kidnapping of Richard Paulson by the FBI storm troopers. He was swarmed by visions of hypos…of professional torturers and interrogators.

  As other patrons looked on slack-jawed, the quartet manhandled Hector from the bar. Unable to reach his gun, or even to resist the younger, stronger men, Hector said, more frantic than he wanted to hear himself sounding, “Someone, please call the cops?”

  The other diners and the fucking second-string bartender just looked at Hector, open-mouthed, watching him get hauled away.

  “Be regular and ordinary in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

  — Gustave Flaubert

  30

  PURSUIT

  Richard Paulson set out on foot, sweating, unsteady on his feet, trudging along the roadside toward the Hemingway Memorial—a small, creek-side obelisk crowned with a bust of Papa. A plaque contained words Hemingway had written in eulogy for a dead Idaho friend:

  Best of all he loved the fall

  The leaves yellow on the cottonwoods

  Leaves floating on the trout streams

  And above the hills

  The high blue windless skies

  …Now he will be a part of them forever

  Good words. But by all accounts from those who would best know, Hemingway hated fall most of all the seasons.

  Hannah gave Richard a fifteen-minute head start, then headed back out to their new rental car. Though it was chilly, she cranked down the windows. She drove a short distance up Sun Valley Road and pulled onto the shoulder. A couple of gleaming black foals shouldered up to the fence, watching her. They snorted and shook out their manes, then dipped heads back to their grazing.

  A man was following Richard: trailing the professor by perhaps seventy-five yards. His build, his bearing—in Hannah’s estimation, the man was their shadow.

  She checked the camera again, made sure the car doors were locked, and shifted gears, rolling past the man at a brisk forty mph.

  Checking to see there were no cars in front or behind, she u-turned and pulled over to the right side of the road a few feet in front of the man. Hannah shot two quick pictures, then rolled her window nearly up, yelling to the man through the crack: “Now you leave us alone, or I take these and go to the police!”

  The widow-peaked stranger frowned and took a quick step toward Hannah. She gunned the engine, squealing away from him. She drove four-tenths of a mile and turned around again, blasting back past the man at speed. She skidded up alongside Richard and ordered him in.

  “Got it,” she said proudly.

  He shook his head. “Feel better for it?”

  “He is following you again, isn’t he Richard?”

  Richard shrugged weakly, then he nodded. “Can’t deny that now.” He shivered suddenly—pointed to some ponies loping along a fence line. “Jesus, did you see all those purple monkeys riding those camels?” He shuddered again: Hannah suddenly had a dragon’s head.

  Hannah gave him this look and said, “What in God’s name have you been drinking?”

  “Men are not suffering from the lack of good literature, good art, good theatre, good music, but from that which has made it impossible for these to become manifest. In short, they are suffering from the silent shameful conspiracy…which has bound them together as enemies of art and artists.”

  — Henry Miller

  31

  DARK DESIGN

  The men dragged Hector through the lodge. Hector said, “Who are you—FBI? CIA? Do you hombres actually mean to try and kill me?”

  They burst through a set of doors and manhandled Hector down a narrow hallway. “Whatever Creedy’s offering you, I’ll—”

  The men threw Hector through another door and an old man grabbed him by the arm. The old man said, “Thank Gawd!” He then led Hector through another door and into a large room. Dozens of Hemingway scholars sat there in chairs, staring at him.

  Christ: the goddamn speech! He’d lost track of time….

  Hector managed a smile to the crowd as another scholar at the lectern facing the room said, “Ah, just a few minutes late, but here he is, our keynote speaker, Mr. Hector Mason Lassiter!”

  Applause…some two-fingered whistles.

  Hector swallowed hard. He still hadn’t prepared a single note. While the academic read an introduction, Hector straightened his jacket, shot his sleeves, then put on his game face: He was just going to have to riff. He looked back into the wings where the four men in black suits stood. No way they were scholars or academics.

  Hector searched the faces of the obvious scholars sitting before him. There was Rebecca Stewart with her blond beehive and askew eyes, right there in the front row, smiling at him. Hector winked at her, then frowned: sitting next to Becky was Donovan Creedy.

  Hector’s stomach kicked. He looked around the audience and saw some other men wearing too-nice suits—definitely not academics. Creedy might just be trying to unsettle Hector. Or he might actually intend some kind of on-stage assassination bid…. Maybe take a shot at Hector like Presidents John Garfield or Teddy Roosevelt. Like Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak in Miami; like JFK in Dallas. Right: put a bullet in Hector before a crowd and then hang the dirty deed on some junkie scholar or the like—some brainy nut ostensibly bent on taking out “the last man standing of the Lost Generation.”

  It was a plausible scenario. Too fucking plausible if Creedy was the plotter.

  Hector ran his fingers back through his hair and nodded to applause as he approached the lectern.
There was a pitcher of water and a single glass there; a microphone set too-low that Hector fiddled with—raising the mic to buy some time to think.

  In his life, Hem had given one significant public speech—at a shindig to drum up support for the Spanish Civil War. Hector had been there in the back of the hall, watching. Hem had sweated through the address, looking intensely at his prepared speech, failing to cast his voice out there very loudly in the early going. At the outset, Hem was all flop-sweat and fumbles.

  Hector had never given a speech in his life. He found he had butterflies now. With a hand less steady than he would have the world see, Hector poured himself a glass of water. As he filled his glass, he said, concentrating on projecting his voice, “Hem once said that at it’s best, writing is a lonely life….”

  Hector let his words hang there, wondering where he was headed with that.

  Watching Creedy watching him, Hector raised the glass to his mouth. Creedy was smiling now.

  Hector hesitated. Of fucking course: The cocksucker had probably laced the pitcher with some more of his poison. He looked at the glass, then back at Creedy. What would it be in there? LSD? Some other vile potion that would blow out Hector’s frontal lobe; leave him some ranting, sweating, and twitching madman, fulminating in front of these goddamn academics?

  Yes. That was the plan—he could see it in Creedy’s face. The sons of bitches meant to spike Hector’s water and turn him into a raving loon. And when the question and answer session came after Hector’s rantings? Well, Christ only knew what questions Creedy and his black-clad minions would put to him with that tongue-loosening poison coursing in Hector’s system and all these so-called scholars looking on.

  Smiling back at Creedy, Hector emptied the contents of the glass back into the pitcher.

  Trying not to distract himself by focusing on those black-clad men—distracting himself, watching them, and all-the-while waiting for a possible retaliatory bullet, now that he’d tossed the water—Hector instead decided to pick his audience. Hector spotted Patricia Stihlbourne and smiled at her. She’d taken some trouble with her long black hair; put on some make up and a dress that showed off her figure. Very comely indeed. He decided Patricia would be his focal point. His good-luck charm against Creedy and Company.