Print the Legend: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  ***

  Creedy’s car was easy enough for Hector to find: standard Bureau issue.

  Afterward, he walked back into the diner and took up his seat across from Donovan Creedy.

  Hector tossed the empty sack at the agent, spilling a few remaining white granules onto the table between them.

  Frowning, Creedy picked up the empty Domino Sugar bag. “What’s this?”

  “What’s left,” Hector said. “The bag’s contents are in the gas tank of your jalopy.”

  The agent looked incredulous: “You poured sugar in my gas tank?”

  “All of it. Some bird seed, too. Kid’s stuff, I know. But effective all the same. Just to make sure you don’t follow us when we leave here in a few minutes,” Hector said. It was all about buying time—time to get back to Idaho and Mary…to take the next step to secure Hem’s literary legacy from further tampering by Creedy. He said aloud, “And further to that end….”

  It was one of his oldest moves, but still effective: Hector slammed his heel down on top of the agent’s foot. As Creedy howled and banged his knee into the underside of the table, Hector reached across, grabbed Creedy around the back of the head and slammed his face into the tabletop.

  Smiling his apology to the ashen-faced diner owner, Hector threw a Hamilton on the table, said to the proprietor, “For your trouble, buddy. When he comes to, he’ll likely want some ice for what’s left of that nose.”

  BOOK SIX:

  HOW IT WAS

  “I am as I am

  And not as Papa wishes

  Is it my fault

  That I am so?”

  — From a song by Mary Hemingway

  44

  COLLABORATORS

  Upon seeing Mary again, Hannah was seized by the notion Papa’s wife might be capable of drinking Papa under the table if he still lived.

  Hannah had been with Mary for less than an hour, and the elder widow was already draining her fourth cocktail.

  Mary’s lemon-tinted hair was scraped back this morning, and the hairdo revealed large, just-short-of-comical ears. She looked badly hungover and a bit thinner than she had the last time Hannah had seen her: the eyes sunken into deep-set orbits. The high, sinisterly slashing cheekbones and jutting chin had grown prominent to no good effect. The arching crow’s-feet that nearly latticed Mary’s sunken eyes to her big ears were always there now—not just when she smiled her closed-mouth camera smile.

  The widows had arrived in Ketchum within an hour of one another. Thinking Mary was perhaps tired from the long journey from her New York penthouse back to Ketchum, Hannah suggested a nap before they started interviews: “We could maybe both have some luck so that just when you wake up, Bridget will be conked out again like she is now.” The baby was resting in her travel bed in the next room.

  The old widow smiled. “My, she looks just like you—not an iota of Dickie in there. And it’s all right if we start right away: I’m not really tired enough to sleep, and I’m eager to get underway. Well, after a drink, I’m eager to start. Tell me you’ll please have something this time.”

  Hannah chewed her lip. She had used the breast pump before coming over out of deference to Mary: Hannah feared breast-feeding in front of the elder widow might spark bad memories of Mary’s near fatal attempt at child-bearing. There were three bottles of breast milk stashed in Mary’s refrigerator. Hannah figured she could likely metabolize whatever she drank before Bridget would require a “source” fill-up.

  “Och,” Hannah said, arching an eyebrow and putting on a pan-loaf accent. “A wee dram. And that’s truly all.”

  “That’s my lassie. What’s your preferred poison, sweetie?”

  “How about a glass of wine? Preferably red.”

  Mary beamed, reaching for her pack of Kents. “Great. I’ll have one too. I think we’ll make it a nice Barolo. Something Papa used to favor.” A hovering maid scurried to draw the cork before she was asked.

  “I was going to put you up here, but we’re still reopening the house and there’s some painting to be done,” Mary said. “I’ve got you a room at the Best Western—okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hector with you?”

  “Aye. My wheelman as he calls himself. I think it’s gangster language.”

  “I’ll get him a room, too. As he’s working for me as well, right?”

  Hannah smiled. “I think Hector’s seeing to his own lodging.”

  “Of course.” A smile Hannah couldn’t read, but it wasn’t a friendly smile.

  The maid handed Hannah her glass of wine. “Cheers,” Hannah said and raised her glass.

  Mary ignored her, said: “Papa’s old friend Maury said you made it by.”

  “Yes,” Hannah said, her tongue’s tip tingling from her first sip of wine in months. Strong stuff—oak, smoke, and cinnamon. Sublime. Hannah hefted her glass of wine. “It’s been a while. Wow.”

  Mary shook loose a cigarette. “He’s doing fine? Maury, I mean.”

  “Seems to be. Claims he is working on his own memoirs.”

  “He told Papa the same thing in 1953.”

  “I hope he finishes. One good book about a life like his is certainly something to want to see finished, however long it takes to get it right.”

  “Sure. It’s taking me more time than I expected to write mine.”

  Hannah smiled.

  “I frankly need you to be quicker. What with two unofficial biographies on Papa coming—one written by a man who I can already tell hates me—and the bullfighting and edited Garden books coming out eventually…well, I could easily be eclipsed by all the hullabaloo that will ensue about Papa. I really need to get out there in the forefront, pronto.”

  “Of course,” Hannah said.

  “You have Dickie’s manuscript—what there is of it?”

  “Aye,” Hannah said. “The authorities here boxed it and sent it to Michigan with his other things.”

  “I’m sorry about what happened, by the way. I never would have wished him dead. Not for your sake, or your little girl’s. Daughters need daddies. I’m sure you’ll find a man to stand that duty. Some handsome young fella.”

  Hannah smiled.

  Mary smiled back. “Are you doing okay? Living with it, I mean?”

  Hannah knew that she didn’t have to tell Mary a self-destructive husband’s death could come as a nearly welcome respite—a blessing in deadly disguise. Hannah shrugged. “I’m fine. In my heart, I know that Richard did it to himself. These things happen. What else is there to say?”

  Mary expelled a thin stream of smoke. “Indeed.” A strange smile—a rare one showing teeth. “Do you speak any Spanish, Daughter?”

  “Just French. A good bit of Gaelic.”

  “Sic transit hijo de puta.”

  Hannah frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “He will be missed,” Mary said, smiling crookedly. “There is another good one, too: “Dame acá, coño que a los mios los mato yo!”

  Hannah frowned. “What does that one mean?”

  “Give it to me, damn it, I kill my own!”

  Hannah stared at her hands. “Oh,” she said…suddenly a bit afraid.

  Mary shrugged and drew on her cigarette. “Before we leave this sad subject, is there much there? Much you can use? Of Dickie’s manuscript, I mean.”

  Hannah shook off a chill. “Maybe. There are about two hundred handwritten pages. Nearly all of your early biography is set in first draft. Most of the 1940s, after you met and married Papa, are there, too. The 1950s are laid out in note form. Richard’s structure for the book seems pretty sound as outlined. His and my prose styles vary a good deal, however. I’ll have to rewrite extensively.”

  “Honey, it’s always like that,” Mary commiserated. “God, the rewriting I had to do on Papa’s last stuff—I can’t tell you.”

  Hannah shivered again.

  Mary groaned. “Gawd, what I had to do to prepare
A Moveable Feast. I hate to tell you.’’

  “Heavy lifting, huh?” Hannah felt her own jaws tighten and wondered if Mary noticed.

  “Had to throw out Papa’s sequence for the chapters to make the thing flow the way I wanted. That caused continuity problems that I had to fix. And his titles for the book…?” Mary rolled her eyes. “My God, how awful those were. His final choice for the thing was The Eye and the Ear. Can you imagine that in lieu of A Moveable Feast? Truly?”

  “No.” Hannah couldn’t.

  “Still…it’s nothing compared to the work necessary to finish Islands in the Stream.” The elder widow sighed. “What else? Anything there to indicate Richard had everything he needed to finish?” Hannah met Mary’s gaze—the old widow searching her face for any sign of a lie. “I ask,” Mary continued, “because Richard made it pretty clear that night before, well, you know, that we were finished. He said he had the perfect ending. I keep racking my brain to remember what I might have said in our last interview that would have given it to him.”

  Those drunken eyes, searching hers… Hannah sipped her wine. “Richard must never have had a chance to write it all down—his first draft simply trails off inconclusively, sometime around middle-1960, I guess.”

  Mary sighed heavily. She laughed softly to herself. “That’s…too bad.” She shook her head, showing teeth in her smile. “Well, damn. Oh well. Guess I’ll just have to keep trying to remember what got said that last night. I have a pretty good memory, you know. Better than average.”

  Hannah smiled encouragingly. “I’m sure.”

  Mary said, “Not like Papa’s—his may have been photographic. Well, at least until they hit him with the juice.”

  “There’s a sucker born every minute…and two to take him.”

  — Wilson Mizner

  45

  SHELL GAME

  Creedy stood on a hill overlooking the Topping House, snarling into a radio as he watched it all unfold below him with binoculars. The first truck had rolled out, filled with boxes he presumed to be Hemingway’s manuscripts: He’d heard Hector and Mary arrange the move over the phone the previous night—heard through this new handheld listening device that could pierce even concrete walls.

  It was a big truck, and Creedy’s trailing crew had no trouble picking it up on the road out of Ketchum. Then, about five minutes later, a second eighteen-wheeler had rolled up to the Topping House. More loading was undertaken—it was far too much truck for too little job; no way Hemingway could have produced so much paper.

  And yet….

  He had to have that truck followed, too, didn’t he?

  Now Creedy was watching the seventh truck being loaded and he was flat out of minions.

  Cursing, Creedy ran to his own car and slammed a fist against the dash; no choice, he’d have to follow this truck himself.

  Clearly, it was a game Lassiter was playing—but Creedy had to play along; had to try and get access to those boxes in order to plant the damning materials for Hoover. Creedy had to find the right truck.

  ***

  Through his own binoculars, hidden in a copse of trees, Hector watched Creedy pull off in pursuit of the seventh dummy truck. Each of the rigs was headed off down a different path, paid by Mary to drive empty cardboard boxes several hundred miles to several plats of nowhere.

  Satisfied there was no more surveillance, Hector picked up his own radio.

  It took Hector and his young poet friend less than five minutes to load all of Hem’s manuscripts into a black, ’65 Pontiac Bonneville convertible.

  Hector handed a long thermos to Eskin Fiske and slapped his back. “God’s speed, Bud: it’s a long way to Cleveland, I know. But Jimmy will keep this stuff safe there, hidden at the Western Reserve until Mary picks the library to safely and permanently catalogue and store it all. Give Hanrahan my best.”

  Bud said, “Can I read this stuff when I get there? I mean, think what I’m hauling….”

  Hector squeezed his young friend’s arm. “Go to town, Bud. Savor the good stuff.”

  There was some nice irony in all this: Now, with all these authentic documents of Hem’s Photostatted on Hector’s nickel and headed to some highbrow library somewhere, well, now all those critics and “scholars” who so plagued Hem during life would become Hem’s armor, in a way. Afforded access to all the Hemingway leavings that Mary had, they’d be able to step in and wave a finger at the things Mary might otherwise dare to tamper with—they’d keep the little bitch’s hands effectively tied. Hector felt good.

  ***

  The Director said, “You seem to become ineffectual and butter-fingered when this Lassiter is in mix, Agent Creedy. Still, this business of the seven trucks…it is almost amusing. Almost.”

  “Let me cancel Lassiter. Now. I’d pay you for the privilege, Sir.”

  “No. I’ve elected not to do that, yet. The materials that Hemingway was holding over me—and, by extension the Bureau, for I am the Bureau, after all—those materials are still presumably in Lassiter’s hands, but we don’t know where. Lassiter has proven himself unexpectedly formidable in thwarting my will. We will wait until we have some opportunity to force the information from Lassiter in a fashion at once elegant and undetectable. We’ve been patient this long. We have to wait for the tide to turn the Bureau’s way, which is to say, my way, as it always does.”

  “Anyone who conceives of writing as an agreeable stroll towards a middle-class lifestyle will never write anything but crap.”

  — Derek Raymond

  46

  THE WRITER’S CURSE

  Hannah finished situating Bridget in her bed in the back seat of the Bel Air, then slid in front with Hector.

  She said, “Why didn’t you come in?”

  “Had another task to see to,” Hector said.

  Hannah looked back over the seat at her sleeping daughter. She said, “I’m sorry about the baby every morning. Seems two and five are her hungry times.”

  “I’m sorry for you having to get up at those crazy hours.” Hector was dimly aware of Hannah rising from their bed around two the past several mornings to answer her daughter’s hunger cries. The five a.m. awakening was just fine with Hector: It was the very hour Hector rose every morning to write. He simply spent that first hour feeding the baby a bottle until she fell asleep.

  He’d maintained a second hotel room in which to work in the early mornings. Hannah, more of a night owl and an evening writer, took the spare space over while Hector and Bridget slept.

  He steered into the lot of the hotel complex Mary had found for Hannah. It was clean, but unremarkable. Hector had been toying with checking back into the Sun Valley Lodge and sneaking Hannah and Bridget in with him.

  Hector looked around the parking lot and saw no green Impala. He carried Bridget, still sleeping, upstairs and waited for Hannah to place the travel bed on the hotel room’s second bed. She propped a pillow on either side of the travel bed to keep it from rolling to the floor. She closed the drapes and kicked off her shoes as Hector tucked Bridget in. Over her shoulder, Hannah said, “She should sleep for an hour or two…plenty of time.”

  Hector, distracted, toying with the phone—looking for another bug—said, “Time for what, darlin’?” Then he smiled as Hannah’s blouse slipped to the floor.

  ***

  Hector, still trying to catch his breath, said, “Soon as you come to your senses and want to call an end to this new wrinkle in our relationship, darlin’, it’s important to me that you know that you can do it with no worries about my feelings being hurt.”

  Hannah licked her lips and scowled, her breasts heaving with her own pants. “Why in God’s name would I want this to end? You still think this is wrong, I can tell. But you’re not enjoying being with me?”

  “Oh, God, enjoy isn’t the word.” He shook his head. “Kid, do you really know how old I am?”

  “It’s irrelevant,” Hannah said. “Let’s not talk about this. Or about how long it may or may not last. C
an’t we just enjoy the moment?”

  Hector smiled. “I tend to enjoy my life in retrospect. Never seem able to settle for being satisfied in the moment. Then, later, measured up against some later moment’s unsatisfactory ‘present,’ well, then I see how good I had it earlier and savor what I had or experienced before.”

  “What a terrible way to live,” Hannah said. “That’s disturbing…and sad.”

  “You’re not the first to say it. I think it’s the writer in me. The writer’s curse.”

  “I write and I don’t live like that.”

  “Guess you’re blessed.”

  Hannah shook her head. “Well, try to live in this moment, aye?”

  He smiled. “Aye.” His fingers trailed down her long back. He stroked her coccyx. “I surely don’t deserve you, Hannah.”

  “I don’t want to talk like that, either.”

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “New Mexico: Tell me about this place where you live now, Hector. I’ve never seen the desert. It sounds so lonely. Can we visit your house…Bridget and I?”

  Hector kissed her then, long and slow. He said, “Just visit?”

  “Writing is hard work and bad for the health.”

  — EB White

  47

  A PURSUIT RACE

  Mary phoned to beg off the morning’s scheduled interview. She said she might feel better in the afternoon. Mary’s voice was slurred and she came off as mildly disoriented. Twice, enigmatically, Mary called Hannah “Scrooby.” Mary must be drunk, Hannah thought, because she should expect for Hannah to know the truth: that Hector was dominating the widow’s late morning into early afternoon.