The Great Pretender: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

Cassie pulled her gun and got it up under the reporter’s chin. “Start walking slick. You should probably squeeze the bridge of your nose, meantime. That’s a nasty break and I expect it’ll bleed like crazy for some time yet.”

  Hector redialed the number. He apologized for the interruption, said, “The scene here, right now, is simply crazy. Some reporter took the phone from me.”

  “You should find a better place to call from then,” the German said. Hector couldn’t argue with that logic. The man continued, “I am now aware of the radio program, of the panic it has caused. I am more convinced than ever you Amerikaners are absolute fools. Perfect dummkoffs.” A heavy sigh. “Anyway, call me again at midnight, precisely. Let’s see how things stand then.” A pause, then, “These are truly insane developments, Mr. Lassiter.”

  Hector said, “Jesus, pal, don’t get me started about all that.”

  ***

  By nine-thirty p.m., Hector was feeling murderous. He finally spotted the pretty blonde with the cat’s eye eyeglass frames and plunging neckline he’d met in the studio earlier in the evening, before what all the wags were now short-handing as “The Panic Broadcast” turned the world upside down.

  From what he could gather, the effect of the broadcast, the actual so-called panic, had been limited to some pockets here and there, neighborhoods or public places—churches, notably. It had not had the widespread reach first feared.

  Hector caught up to the sultry blonde and, flirting shamelessly, tried to gain passage upstairs to Orson. She smiled and said, “Sorry handsome, so sorry you weren’t told earlier. The reaction’s been just terrible, as you can see. As I’m sure you’ve heard if you’ve been down here anytime at all. Some of the cast hid in the ladies room for about an hour. We’re still getting bomb and death threats. Men calling and threatening to break Mr. Welles’ nose.” Hector caught himself massaging his now bruised fist.

  The saucy, four-eyed blonde looked around and then confided softly, “Mr. Paley is making his own threats against Mr. Welles.”

  “Believe it or not, this is a real emergency,” Hector said, taking the pretty woman’s arm and leading her to a quite corner. “There’s trouble involving Orson’s wife and daughter. So I really need to talk to Orson. I needed to do that at least an hour ago.”

  The woman fiddled with Hector’s tie, leaned into him a bit so their knees touched. Her perfume in his nose, her hand on his waist. “Again, sorry, but the lawyers and business people took Mr. Welles, Mr. Houseman and a few others and snuck them out the back just after the broadcast ended. They took them, as well as recordings of the broadcast and all the scripts they could gather up. There is already all kinds of wild talk about lawsuits. About calls for new laws by congress controlling all broadcasts going forward. I mean, gosh…” She stroked his cheek. “I’m pretty shaken… hate to be alone tonight.”

  Hector let that last pass. “Do you have any idea at all where they were taken?”

  “I wish I did.” She brushed his cheek and said, “You look like a man who’s had a long and hard day.” He smiled and pulled back from her. “Looking to be a long night, too,” he said, smiling, still flirting back, but just a little now, “but not the good kind.”

  He pulled out a fountain pen and a slip of paper. “I need your phone number darlin’, the one where you can be reached tonight.”

  That elicited a smile bordering on the carnal. “Of course.”

  Hector almost corrected the record then, but decided it was probably more efficient in terms of results if he didn’t.

  Besides, you never knew when or which way the world might take a crazy turn. He often found himself in New York for publishing reasons. He scribbled down the name of a hotel he intended to check into within the hour and handed it to her. “If you do manage to make contact with Orson, have him call me there. Please impress upon him there’s real trouble here for his family. Again, my name is—”

  “I’m already a fan, Mr. Lassiter. I read all your books, I do that just as soon as they come out. Please feel free to call me, even when this emergency is passed.”

  “You’re very sweet,” he said. “Going forward, it’s Hector, please.”

  “I’m Amanda.” Buxom, blond and blue-eyed; Hector figured the Thule would just eat curvy Amanda up.

  ***

  On the street, Cassie said, “That reporter is still bleeding like nobody’s business. You’ve got to teach me that punch. You ruined him with a single swing.”

  “Just throw everything you own,” Hector said. “Feel the punch coming up through your feet. It’s really that simple.” On a hunch, Hector flagged down a cab. He asked they be taken to West 41st Street, to the Mercury. After all, Orson had insisted he had to make a dress rehearsal before night’s end.

  There they found a theater troupe whose emotions ran the spectrum from shocked to angry. One actor said, “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen the news ticker on Times Square myself. Goddamned Orson! I swear he could fall into an open sewer and come out clutching gold watches. I’m convinced of that. That monster’s uncanny luck…” Cassie looked liked she agreed with all of that.

  Hector put the arm on several thespians. Not one had heard a word from Orson or Houseman since the broadcast ended.

  As Hector and Cassie left the theater, a strapping, too familiar German blocked the path to their waiting cab. His accent was different than that of the German on the phone—the one for whom the Panic Broadcast’s effects had confirmed his already low estimations about the worthlessness of all Americans.

  Hector nodded and said, “Rune, I take it by now you know what’s happened tonight, because of the broadcast?”

  “I know, yes.”

  “The lawyers or the feds seem to have Orson,” Hector said. “He’s not at the studio and not here. And wasn’t I calling you people at midnight, by agreement? I hope the Welles women are still in good and safe hands.”

  Hector had at last decided on a course of action. The only one, really, for a nonbeliever, which he truly considered himself. He was at last fully prepared to surrender the real medallion to the Thule in return for Virginia and Christopher.

  Then things took an unexpected turn.

  “What are you talking about,” the tall German said, scowling. “We don’t have any girls.” Rune eyes narrowed, something clicking. “Ah. So, it must be true. There is a facture in our ranks. You’re saying someone else, obviously German, has taken his family from Welles?”

  Hector casually slipped his hands in his overcoat’s pockets. “What’s the matter, Fuchs, are you confessing there’s a little uneasiness amidst your crazy coven? Friction between the Thule and, what’s that other name some of you truck under, the Vril or some such?”

  The big German smiled and said, “The Vril may have the women, but I certainly have you,” a glance at Cassie, “and this dirty-blooded witch.” He reached under his coat with his right hand. Hector didn’t hesitate. He fired the gun in his pocket from its low angle. Scratch one more overcoat.

  A bloom between his eyes: the giant German looked startled, then toppled over, blood spreading out fast from whatever was left of the back of the man’s head. With a shaking hand, the man clawed at his necktie’s knot a last time.

  Footfalls. Maybe some trick of the eye: Hector thought he saw this tall figure running away. As the running man passed under a light, Hector could have sworn it was the very man who now lay dead at his feet—it truly looked like Rune Fuchs running from the site of his own murder, looking back over his shoulder, wide-eyed and snarling.

  A couple of pedestrians screamed. Hector waved his fake badge, calling for order even as he urged Cassie into their taxi.

  Hector pushed his gun up behind the cabbie’s ear, snarling, “You drive on!”

  The cabman said, “Which way? Drive to where?”

  “Anywhere that isn’t here,” Hector said.

  CHAPTER 21

  CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

  At eleven p.m., his hotel room phone rang
, startling him. Hector scooped it up. Voice racing, obviously high on adrenaline, caffeine and lack of sleep, Orson said, “Amanda gave me your latest location. Hector, my God, what’s going on? I can’t reach Virginia. You’re missing, and can you believe this night? This is the wildest kind of luck—a real career changer, almost certainly. Old man, Hollywood will surely coming knocking, now! That is if the lawyers don’t sink us first. When Hollywood does call, I want you standing shoulder-to-shoulder with me. With your storytelling skills and my own not inconsiderable—”

  It would never happen. As Hector had previously indicated to Welles, he had sometime ago read his young friend’s contracts for writers. Welles’ devil contracts required that all actual authorship be obscured by legally-binding agreement; all writing credit contractually was bestowed exclusively upon Orson Welles.

  The concept deeply offended Hector.

  Cassie was taking a quick shower. Hector took advantage of that fact to step in harder at his younger friend. “Goddamn it, Orson, put aside the career stuff for now. The Germans have your family—they’ve taken them hostage. They attacked Cassie and Virginia after a citywide search. They got away with it in a crowd because everyone in the Harlem church where they were hiding was on their knees, praying for their lives that your goddamn invented Martians wouldn’t kill them with their crazy heat rays. How that’s for irony, kid?”

  Hector heard Orson wet his lips. He heard Orson whistle, lowly. He said, “That’s terrible. Terrible. And I am ordered into a meeting with attorneys in ten minutes. I’m under armed guard, Hector. The lawsuit threats alone are immense. At nine in the morning, I have to meet the world press. After that, if I’m not in irons, I swear that I am yours, old man. I’m certainly yours. But right now, I simply don’t have my own liberty.”

  He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Hector said, “My God, your family, your wife and little girl, they’re in deadly danger.”

  “I know, old man, so don’t take that tone. I’m in misery to know this. But you must understand, I’m quite under lock and key now and by a corporation. Both Houseman and I are hostages in our own right. It was the merest luck that Amanda—the sultry blonde with glasses and endless stems who is terribly smitten with you, by the way—got word to me that you all were in some trouble. I see now the trouble is mine old man, and my stomach—already in knots—is now in an agony of turmoil knowing my family is in real jeopardy. Do buy me a little more time as I know only you can, yes, Hector? Use all your cunning to make sure they’re not harming my girls. At noon tomorrow, I can meet you. Meet them. Meet whoever.” A pause, while he assumed Orson checked a watch or a clock. “Why it’s almost tomorrow already.” Another long pause, then Orson said, “I assume it’s your intention to surrender the real medallion in trade for their safety?”

  “Of course,” Hector said. “In exchange for your family’s safety. I don’t believe in any of this infernal mumbo jumbo, anyway, you know that. The goddamn Germans can choke on this goddamn chunk of silly metal for all I care. They can take this silly ass spear—if it even really exists—and they can jam it up their collective ass, sideways.”

  Orson snapped back, “What about those of us who might believe, at least even a little? You went to Spain. You saw! You would really surrender this terrible weapon to the fascists, Hector? What would all our lives be under the thumb of these monstrous Germans then? We should liberate the spear. It’s like a Grail Quest…a once-in-a-lifetime adventure.”

  Some aspect of that argument did reach Hector. At very least, it could be grist for a novel. But with Orson’s wife and child held hostage, the window on crusades and quests seemed truly closed.

  Hector said, “Your family is being held by these so-called monsters right now, Orson. You goddamn be where I can find you and easily. I’ll try to talk the Thule or Vril into a rendezvous at noon tomorrow if I can, damn it all. We’ll make it the observation deck of the Empire State again. Plenty of security there and no way for them to effectively run if things should go crosswise at their instigation. That fact alone should encourage some restraint on all sides. They bring your family and they leave with the hokey medallion. It’s really that simple as I see it.”

  “I don’t think it’s that simple at all, old man, not a bit,” Orson said. “But you’re right of course. We have to do whatever is necessary to save Virginia and Christopher.”

  Hector stared at the phone, wishing he could make himself believe Orson meant that last. It was delivered with all of the conviction of some of the young thespian’s toss-off radio acting—Orson was literally phoning it in from Hector’s perspective.

  The novelist’s wristwatch indicated he had thirty minutes before he had to talk to that other German, the one holding the Welles women—presumably, the more formidable Vril.

  ***

  Negotiations didn’t go well.

  As Hector haggled with the new German on the phone, trying to convince him of the precariousness of Welles’ own current predicament—of the reality of his unavailability until sometime in the afternoon—there was a knock at the door. Cassie, presuming it was their late order for room service food and drink, opened the door wide.

  A gun was pressed to her chest. She was jerked out into the hall by one arm.

  The German on the phone said to Hector, “Stay still, Lassiter! I know where you are. I desire more leverage. Don’t attempt to follow my people. I’ve ordered my man to shoot the Rhineland bitch if you do anything in this moment. You remain on the line with me and continue calmly planning our rendezvous. You will do that, yes?”

  Hector said coldly, “What other choice do I have?” Hector told him of his plan to meet on the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

  The German said, “Why that idiot place? It will be cold, windy. It will be—”

  “It will be safest for all of us,” Hector cut in. “It’ll keep us all honest and well-behaved, as I figure it. There is nowhere up there to run. Same problem with clean and safe escape if evil intentions should come into play. I figure we just all have to play nice up there, high above the unwashed masses, up high with the shivering tourists and gawkers and no clean and easy means of flight except over the side and down. So, do we agree it’s a date at the ceiling of the world?”

  ***

  Hours later, Hector stood glowering, arms crossed, as Orson jousted with the press, seeming at once earnest and calculating in a pale suit and askew tie, sporting unruly hair and the wisps of that little boy’s first beard. Orson somehow managed to be simultaneously glib and defensive under the bright lights. Orson emphatically insisted he never envisioned his Sunday night broadcast as anything other than crackling good entertainment.

  “Of course, we are deeply shocked and deeply regretful about the results of last night’s broadcast,” Orson said.

  Some scribe asked if there shouldn’t be some law to prevent anyone repeating Welles’ hoax. Orson said, “I don’t know what the legislation would be. I know that almost everybody in radio would do almost anything to avert the kind of thing that has happened, myself included.”

  After twenty or so minutes, Hector caught Orson’s eye, pointed at his watch and nodded at the door. Visibly reluctant to leave the center ring of reporters, Orson held up a finger at Hector, signaling for more time.

  The novelist lost all patience then. He called out, “Turn your goddamn cameras off, now! This press conference is fucking over!” His raw profanity would ensure compliance, he knew. Hector shouldered through surly reporters, photographers and cameramen. Hector took Orson firmly by the arm, jerked him into his wake. “Come on, l’enfant terrible. At least this one time, you’re going to damn sure be on time.”

  Orson resisted Hector’s pull as they exited the room of reporters, still shouting questions at the retreating radio star. Welles huffed, “Where are we going, old man? I deserve to know that much. I deserve to know exactly what you’ve agreed to, what you’ve committed me and my family to.”

  Hector bit hi
s lip. He explained the rendezvous plan in more detail.

  Orson railed again at the prospect of any time to be spent atop the Empire State. “My asthma, old man, remember? My infernal asthma. You always forget it. Anyway, you must wait long enough for me to recover my coat and hat.”

  ***

  Eyes nervously checking the rearview mirror, vigilant for tails, Hector drove them on through the chilly streets of New York City in another stolen car.

  Staring straight ahead, moping, Orson said, “Where’s your witchy girlfriend now, Hector?”

  “She’s a hostage, too. Collateral, so to speak, in exchange for saving your family. She should be with Virginia and Christopher by now. They took Cass from me at gunpoint at the hotel. At least your family has her with them.”

  “Hardly as though she’s protection or real comfort for them,” Orson sniffed. “She’s just a fellow hostage, isn’t she now? I mean, really, old man, you’ve hardly distinguished yourself as a protector these past hours. Your girlfriend, either.”

  Hector began to lose his temper. Orson saw and tried to head it off. “Just stating facts without judgment, Hector. Don’t get defensive. Judge not lest ye bore the audience, yes?”

  Hector took out his mounting anger at Orson by gripping harder at the wheel, laying on a little more gas.

  Growing more nervous—a man who hated cars and had never himself learned to drive—Orson demanded, “Enough posturing—what’s our real plan, Hector?”

  His mouth was dry; his hands shaking. All of it from too little sleep, water or food. Hector said raw-voiced, “We play it straight, as I’ve said all along. The medallion in trade for safe return of your family. And now for Cassie too.”

  “You’d really give the Nazis all this power? This terrible weapon? I doubt Cassie’s conscience would countenance that.”

  “Don’t forget Cass first got into this for the money, as a job,” Hector said. “At least at first she did that. And yes, I mean to do this to save not just her, but to rescue your wife and little girl. Anyway, you can’t truly believe this fable about this old spear—even if it somehow did come in contact with Christ Himself, if there even ever was such a person. You can’t really believe it could have any special power.”