The Great Pretender: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

“I don’t recall that and I could say the same of your wire to me,” Hector said. A new chill that had nothing to do with the autumn cold made him shiver.

  “This is very strange,” Orson said. “Clearly, we do need to talk more.” Orson smiled uncertainly and pulled the brim of his hat lower against the gales. Of the same, he said, “This wind… Still, not as bad as last month’s, I suppose. The remnants of that hurricane killed over five-dozen in the city and injured hundreds here. Whatever the reason for us being here together now, is there some good reason we’re at the top of this absurd building, in this ridiculous cold, old friend?”

  “Maybe, and it could be tied to this other little mystery about our respective wire communications,” Hector said. “My previous meeting was here, but I was also testing a theory. We can surely go inside now. Know of any restaurants close-by and with a fireplace?”

  Orson smiled and took Hector’s arm. “We’ll find such a place. It’s colder than a witch’s you-know-what up here. Maybe Billingsley’s Club Room, or Dickie Wells, in Harlem, we might find some delectably dusky female companionship.”

  Orson smiled and impulsively tousled the hair of an eavesdropping, equally red-cheeked boy. The child frowned, then looked like he might cry. His pretty young mother glared at Orson. For his part, Welles held up gray-gloved hands to show them both empty. He said in his most sonorous tone, “Now, watch out for the slightest hint of hanky-panky, good sir.”

  With raised eyebrows, Orson reached behind the boy’s ear and produced a quarter that he folded into the tyke’s trembling hands.

  All seemed to be forgiven.

  Smiling and shaking his head, Hector said, “Always with the magic.”

  Orson winked at the boy’s comely mother and said, “Always. Of course.” An at once cherubic and satanic smile spread across the actor’s face. He said, “I am, after all, a charlatan.”

  CHAPTER 2

  THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

  There was no fireplace, but the joint was snug and warm enough. Orson had taken Hector to Chinatown. After a whirlwind pass through a couple of shops looking for some joss sticks, they headed to this lately discovered haunt of Orson’s. It was a new, downstairs joint on Mott Street called Wo Hop’s. They lingered long over soup and their entrees, mostly sipping belly-burning tea to wash it all down.

  “Not what you expected, I’m fairly certain, but I do so love this place,” Orson said. “It’s got promise, don’t you agree?”

  “It’s more than fine,” Hector said. “I’ve lately been coming around to Chinese fare. And, frankly, this city’s Chinatown’s always fascinated me, much more so than Frisco’s.” He frowned, then added, “Japan on the other hand?” Hector grimaced.

  “Indeed,” Orson said, talking while wolfing down roast pork with oyster sauce. Hector and Orson were presently at extreme ends from one another on the political spectrum, but current conditions were such that, left or right, all Americans were skittish, anticipating being dragged into the European mess once again.

  Orson said, “I confide this only to you. All of that’s kind of what we’re hinting at with our next radio production, you see. The whole world, and America particularly, is desperately on edge, and yet, strangely complacent in the most vital sense. Unprepared. Tonight’s show—you must understand, it will be broadcast live Sunday night in finished form—it’s really about all of that. My—that is to say, the Mercury’s—Martians are just a kind of audience-friendly boogey-man. They are a stand-in for the Hun or the Yellow Menace, to use the popular, pulp magazine parlance for those two evil empires.”

  “Christ, don’t forget the Italians.” Hector forewent another sip of hot tea for some ice water. He broke open a fortune cookie and read to himself, “Run! Do that now!” Startled, Hector set fire to the slip of paper and tossed it burning into the ashtray along with the stub of his own still-smoldering Pall Mall.

  Frowning, spoon poised with a bowl-full of steaming egg-drop soup, Orson said, “Your fortune was that bad, was it?”

  Hector shrugged. “Queer, anyway. Been a disappointing and unsettling day on several fronts, not including the circumstances of us being together here, now. Even the fairly innocent stuff has rubbed me wrong of late. You know, I caught a discount matinee this morning just to kill some time. The Saint in New York. I frankly didn’t love it.”

  Orson blew on his spoon to cool his soup. “I saw that movie too, upon release. But only because the critics said the star was like some down-market version of me. How could I not see what they meant by that, yes?”

  “Even worse, before the cinema, I roamed some art galleries,” Hector said. “You know I collect in a minor way. Well, I stopped in at this place called the Julien Levy Gallery. Seems they’re preparing for a showing of works by Frida Kahlo next month. Not good.”

  Orson frowned. “What do you mean by that? What’s wrong with Kahlo’s works?”

  Hector shrugged. “My life has been rather lousy with Surrealist artists of late. Stuff I can’t describe and you wouldn’t believe. Anyway, just seemed another very bad omen. It’s been a rough year or two.”

  “I’ve heard you and Papa are on the outs,” Orson said. “What happened with Hem?”

  Hector shrugged. “Ernest walks in his own world presently. I wish him well. Anything else is rearview mirror stuff.” He scooped up another fortune cookie. There was no fortune inside this one. The author raised his eyebrows.

  Orson said, “Now what do you make of that? What on earth does that mean for you?”

  Still frowning, Hector said, “Aside from the fact I’ve been robbed? Maybe that my future’s all used up?”

  Orson wrinkled his nose and said, “Wouldn’t that be the hell of a statement?” Hector could tell his younger friend was dwelling on this strange development of being deprived a fortune in a fortune cookie, and also on Hector’s observation about it. Hector was doing that, too. He figured he could use that bit in some way in a novel or short story down the road. But the question in these awkward situations in terms of artists and shared, resonant experiences—every damned time, be it Hemingway, be it Orson Welles with an extra “e” or, hell, be it recently gone-south-of-the-sod Thomas Wolfe—was who would get there first?

  Their waiter, ancient, barely able to handle English, said, “All is good? More? You want check, mebbe?”

  “We want check, definitely,” Orson said, nodding at Hector.

  The novelist-screenwriter rubbed his jaw and said softly, “Sure, the check is mine.” He showed his empty cookie to the waiter and said, “I was shorted, brother. No fortune in this cookie.”

  “That very strange,” the old man said. A hopeful smile. “But mebbe you better off?”

  “Or maybe I’m not,” Hector said, holding up his wallet. Their waiter scurried off and came back with a handful of fortune cookies. Hector thanked him and skidded off some bills. The old man went to make change and Hector eyed the pile of cookies. He picked one at random and opened it up to read aloud, “Want to make someone disappear? Make them keep a promise.”

  Hector looked up to see Orson studying him. “That one’s surely better than the last?”

  “But still less than I’d hoped for,” Hector said after sharing it aloud. “Seems much more up your alley. I mean you being the amateur magician and all.”

  “Amateur?” Orson blew his nose. He said, “I still have the sniffles from being on top of the infernal Empire State. You said you had a specific reason for being up there in that goddamn cold and wind. What on earth was it?”

  “Testing a theory,” Hector said. “Figured only a man who was following me would trail me up there in this weather. I was right. Fella did.”

  Looking troubled, then starting to look around the restaurant, Orson said, “You’re being followed?”

  “Yeah, by that hombre over there in the black coat and hat,” Hector said. “The one who ordered only a pot of tea. The chain-smokin’ fella with the scar down his cheek. That’s the man for certain.”


  “So you confront him,” Orson said, “we find out what he’s up too, yes? See if perhaps he has something to do with our obviously fake telegrams to one another?”

  “Nah,” Hector said. “Like I told you, seems I’ve got all kinds of enemies this season. They run the range from crazy painters to disgruntled Feds.” He checked his watch again. “We head to the studio now?”

  “No, to my home, as I said before,” Orson said. “There, maybe you can help me edit the script for a final pass after we hear the rehearsal recording. You know how I love a last-minute polish.” That noted Welles smile—at once bemused, playful and challenging. “What’s the old line, and wasn’t Wilde who in fact said it? No work of art is ever completed, only abandoned?” Hector shook off another little chill. Orson rose and began to button his overcoat. “What about your sinister shadow, though?”

  “Figure we’ll lose him in traffic,” Hector said. “In this city, and with a few cab changes, shouldn’t be so hard at all to do that.”

  Another frown. Orson said, “But won’t it drive you positively crazy? I mean not ever knowing why he was watching you?”

  Hector just shrugged and said, “When do we ever know anything?”

  Brown eyes twinkling, Orson said, “Touché.”

  Together, they wandered back up the creaking stairs and out onto the twisted streets of Chinatown. Cursing in Chinese, a little woman two floors up rushed to pull laundry from the railing of a third-floor fire escape as the rain and wind whipped at her sheets and pillowcases.

  Orson took a deep breath and spread his arms. “Chinatown in the rain. Exhilarating, isn’t it?”

  “Sure it is, but now let’s find the first of what’s likely to be several cabs,” Hector said, very aware of the scar-faced man indeed dogging their trail.

  CHAPTER 3

  MURDER ON APPROVAL

  At last satisfied they’d shaken his shadow, Hector said to Orson, “Time to tell our cabbie our final destination.”

  Orson said, “You’re sure that we’ve lost him?”

  “Close to certain as I can be,” Hector said. “Let’s roll those dice.”

  ***

  Upon arriving at Orson’s place, they were greeted by his pretty young wife, Virginia, Irish—ivory-skinned and, by all accounts trickling back to Hector through channels, calamitously cuckolded by her precocious, only slightly older husband.

  It was their first meeting, and Mrs. Welles exuded an immediate and immense sadness that pierced Hector and made him actually hate his young friend, at least a little, in the sorry moment.

  Virginia Nicolson married then-nineteen-year-old Orson in 1934, two days shy of Christmas. They now had a seven-month old daughter, bewilderingly named Christopher.

  Virginia, perhaps with the hastening assistance of Orson’s increasingly feckless philandering, had more than shed her baby weight. She was very desirable in Hector’s eyes, yet she exuded boundless despair.

  Fair-haired Virginia said to Orson, “We’ve barely seen you in three days, darling. I can make sandwiches and the two of us…” Her lilting voice trailed off. Hector immediately began to formulate his exit line, feeling every inch the unwanted third wheel. But things didn’t go that way.

  “Make the sandwiches by all means and with haste,” Orson said curtly, pressing blunt fingers to his pretty wife’s lips. “I’m surely famished.” Hector couldn’t grasp how that could be after all that just-devoured Chinese grub. Smiling, Orson took Hector by the arm and dragged him to his den, where the younger man poured twin tumblers of whiskey. He handed Hector a cigar and a glass, then set about placing the wax disc with the “War of The Worlds” rehearsal performance on his CBS-furnished, state-of-the-art turntable.

  Soon enough, Virginia arrived with a plate of ham sandwiches and a glass of milk for herself. The three of them settled in to listen to the first-run of the Mercury Theatre of the Air’s next “classics adaptation.”

  The recorded rehearsal went at least in form much as Orson had described it to Hector. Roughly the first half of the radio play was structured as a breaking news event—purported coverage of an unfolding invasion by the planet Mars. But the melodrama was couched in familiar conventions of current radio journalism practice, with repeated interruptions of this damned band playing from the ballroom of a fictional Gotham hotel.

  In the end, the program was potentially bracing, but a bit too meandering, Hector thought. It wasn’t yet honed sufficiently to drive home the verisimilitude of an authentic and unthinkable unfolding news event. It sounded just a bit too polished, too studied.

  When the recording was complete, Orson asked, “Your thoughts, Hector. And, yes, by all the Gods, do be brutally frank. Art affords no room for diplomats, as we both know from hard-won experience.”

  Hector well knew Orson would certainly recognize a kind lie, so he said, “The first half, as it unfolds as an invasion, is terrific in concept. But it needs to be a bit more ragged. It needs more of an air of desperation and confusion. And it must be pared down. The thing is far too polished and stylized. When the mayhem is unleashed, it should be choppier, far crazier than it is now. And when it becomes just you in what I guess is the second act, wandering in what I suppose we’ll call the wasteland, well, that’s a tad of an anticlimax.” Hector shrugged. “But that second half is necessary of course. There’s simply no coming down from what you’ve all built in up front. It brilliantly paints itself into a corner in that way.”

  Orson, dejected said, “You hate it, in other words.” He looked to his wife. “You too?”

  Hector shook his head. “I don’t hate it at all. It’s still compelling as hell. Just more conventional when it turns to straight up melodrama after the news treatment drops out.”

  Orson looked as though he’d been stabbed. But there was still time to fix it before Sunday night’s live broadcast, and they both knew that.

  And, in the end, Orson was enough the honest artist to accept Hector’s assessment. False praise would kill their friendship, Hector had known that from the start.

  “Please stay on tonight, and we’ll tackle the editing together,” Orson said. He smiled at Hector and Virginia. “After, I’m sure we three will find some mischief for ourselves.”

  Hector was uncertain what Orson meant by that last, but he was pretty sure he didn’t want to find out. As he grew older, Orson seemed more the libertine to the increasingly circumspect Hector. Or maybe the brash, randy actor was just looking for someone to begin assuming responsibility for his unwanted wife.

  “No way,” Hector said. “I’ve got more than a few years on you, kiddo. Need my beauty sleep.” He nodded at Virginia. She held out an ivory hand and Hector kissed it. He pointed at Orson’s pretty wife and said, “Besides, you’ve got every reason standing right there not to burn the midnight oil playing radio wizard. Hell, this Sunday is just an hour of one night of another year, right? This program a mere holiday toss-off for the kids?”

  Orson glowered. Then he snapped his fingers. “I forgot. I’m supposed to meet Houseman at midnight, at the Mercury. Still another project we’re trying to whip into shape against the clock. This one for the stage.” Hector wasn’t sure he believed his younger friend. Probably, he decided, Orson was more likely off to the arms of some other inamorata of the moment. They were all ballerinas these days, or so Hector had heard.

  Somehow, Orson managed to get on his coat and hat and actually preceded Hector out the door.

  Awkwardly standing there at the threshold after Orson had deftly bolted, Hector held his hat in both hands and shrugged. “That young man never seems to rest. Long as I’ve known him, he’s been like some vaudeville performer—rushing from one trembling pole to the next, trying to keep spinning all these crazy plates he’s set in motion.”

  Virginia smiled sadly. “As good a description for it as any, I suppose.” She pulled Hector’s coat’s lapels closed and appraised him, standing very close. He could smell her perfume, some heady, musky scent. She said, “Orson lat
ely has a favorite saying that I don’t like at all.” Falling into a feminine impersonation of the grandiose Welles’ voice, his wife said, “Human nature is eternal. Therefore, one who follows his nature keeps his nature in the end.” She shrugged and said, “You’re very different from all his other friends, you know, Mr. Lassiter. At least far different from the ones I’ve been allowed to meet.”

  Her lilting voice continued to beguile Hector. He was also intrigued. And he was made more than a bit uncomfortable by her sudden familiarity in adjusting his coat. He said, “How so? Oh, and you please call me Hector going forward.”

  “There’s a calmness about you, Hector,” she said. “I’m not sure how else to say it, but that you seem very… you seem deliberate. You seem steadfast, despite the charisma you have. Focused is maybe the word I’m looking for. A word I don’t associate with my genius husband. You just don’t seem afraid to be still for a time.”

  “Former friend of mine was fond of a phrase,” Hector said carefully. “Hemingway cautioned always against the danger of confusing movement for action.” A smile. “Or maybe I’m just lazy by nature.”

  “Your ex-friend’s words seems fine ones to live by,” she said. “Anyway, I don’t believe you and lazy are acquainted, not for a second.” Virginia squeezed his shoulder and said, “I hope we meet again, Hector. You’re a wise and good influence on Orson, I think. He’s much calmer around you. So please know you are always welcome here.”

  Hector smiled and said, “Then I hope we cross paths again soon.”

  “I do, too.”

  He kissed her hand a last time, then found his way back down onto the street.

  Outside the Welles’ building, Hector shook out a fresh cigarette, got it going, simultaneously looking around for a cab. Nada.

  He thought about it, then decided to walk at least a little ways back in the general direction of his hotel. Hell, maybe he’d even go the full distance if no hacks for hire presented themselves in the brisk and breezy interval. He could use the exercise.