The Great Pretender: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  Orson looked around furtively, and said, “It’s true, isn’t it? That I can’t go back home yet?”

  Hector sighed and sat back in his chair. He felt some measure of blame for all that, rightly or wrongly. He lit a cigarette with his Zippo and considered the legend engraved there, “One True Sentence.”

  Call it the Holy Grail for writers of conscience.

  Hector said, “I’d advise strongly against a return just yet. The Dahlia stuff is still at fever pitch, nearly a year out, if you can believe it.”

  It would soon be, Hector realized then, exactly one year on January 15 since Beth Short’s bisected body was discovered in a field where Orson once staged magic shows in which he sawed starlets in half—another piece of odd but potentially damning evidence that had made Welles a viable suspect for the Short murder in some daffier LAPD officials’ eyes.

  “Then there’s the FBI,” Hector said, “HUAC. And those damned surrealists.”

  “Yes, what became of them, those killer artists and art collectors?”

  “Some are supposedly here in Europe and some in Mexico,” Hector said bitterly. “I keep an ear to the ground for them. Deal with ’em as I can. For me, it’s a marathon where those bastards are concerned, not a sprint. They’re an ongoing hobby.”

  “You’ve always had the focus and patience I seem to lack,” Orson said, contemplating his wine goblet and his reflection there, “even when it’s wasted on something as vulgar as revenge. Anyway, we wrap filming here sometime around early February, I expect. I may move on to Vienna for a time. There is a part Carol Reed is wanting me for there, though I know little enough about it just now. And there’s the final cut to prepare of Macbeth. I was just writing notes for an editing wire back home on all that. I think it’s important they understand the witches don’t really prophecy anything. The witches merely give Macbeth ideas that make things happen. Anyway, maybe I’ll get it better with Othello. I may do something with that play next, you see.”

  The thing Orson should do next, Hector thought, was to focus on finishing one palpably commercial project. He needed to do that and do it well. He had to do that to get back some of the luster and uncanny momentum he had enjoyed between the Panic Broadcast and the release of Citizen Kane.

  Contemplating his cigar’s glowing end, Orson said, “And you, old man? What precisely brings you to Rome now, after so many years of avoiding Italy?”

  “Hunting,” Hector said grimly.

  “Not hunting after one of those murderous surrealists?”

  “In a sense,” Hector said. “A performance artist of sorts, anyway. There’s this man who seems to make a living impersonating me. Bastard’s trading on my reputation and my good graces and credit, all the while chipping away at both in terms of his wake of broken hearts, unpaid bills and increasingly infuriating headlines.”

  “How very odd,” Orson said. “This man actually pretends to be you?”

  “Pretty much that simple. He seems to sleep with anything that moves and has all of my tastes in bars and restaurants, but no similar compulsion to pay his way like I do.”

  “This would make for a remarkable film,” Orson said, palpably warming to the concept. “It’s highly original, something really fresh, it seems to me.”

  Hector shook his head. “Maybe not so original as you think. Back in the day, when we were still talking, Hemingway went through something eerily similar.”

  That seemed to pique Orson’s interest even more. “How so? What happened with Papa’s double? What was he up to?”

  “Much the same thing as mine is doing,” Hector said. “Coasting on my name and good credit while bringing down my reputation on all fronts, including that of ladies—and I mean ladies only—man.”

  “Yes, but about Papa?”

  “It was about 1935, I think, the year of the Big Blow that hit the Keys, when it all came to a head for Hem. This guy claiming to be Ernest was staying at the Explorers Club, signing copies of Hem’s novels and generally cadging drinks and hotel rooms via Hem’s reputation. This false-Hem actually turned up in Chicago, Hem’s old town in his newspaper days, and kicked off a coast-to-coast tour of ladies book clubs, presuming to pontificate about Hem’s novels and bullfighting books, the African book and all.”

  “That’s amazing,” Orson said, clearly delighted. “Papa must have been positively made murderous by it. I mean this attack on him and his machismo.”

  “To put it mildly,” Hector said. “The thing that really got Hem’s goat, just as you figured, was the fact this double was seducing young men as Hem. The rumors that stuff started of course, nearly drove Hem off a cliff and they dog him still, I hear. Rumors and whispers Hem is actually homosexual. Eventually, this imposter became so brazen—or so believing in his own deception anyway—he actually turned up at Ernest’s boyhood home, even confronted Hem’s mother there.”

  “What happened to this fake, fairy Hemingway?”

  “Eventually, he was caught up with and found out. Turned out to be the dissolute and perhaps dangerously crazy son of some naval admiral. A real psychopath, Hem insisted. I think he ended up in the crazy house for all day.”

  Orson took that in. “So your double is here, in Rome?”

  “Italy anyway, last trace I had. Seemed to be heading this way. Yet I seem to have hit a wall here, in this city.”

  “Sorry, Hector, but it is truly good luck for me—I mean your being here, whatever the circumstances driving it. But one important question first. Are you currently married or something?” A sad smile, “Or are you, to use a term you’ve used before, between the wars?”

  “I’m presently unattached,” Hector said carefully, “although why you would care baffles me.” Hector did wonder about that.

  “Coming to that now,” Orson said. “You see, now with the real war over, and now that you are here, we can at last do what we might have done nearly a decade ago if circumstances had only been different.”

  Hector said, “You’ve lost me, young man. What might have been different ten years ago? I’m at sea, old pal.”

  Orson looked around again, then reached into his pocket. He placed his hand on the table. When he withdrew it, a familiar bronze disc lay there.

  This knot in his stomach; a fast-percolating seethe. Hector said, “So you lied about losing the phony medallion all those years ago.”

  “About that, yes, old man. About that, and about throwing the real disc from atop the Empire State. Simple sleight of hand facilitated by a sleeve extractor secreted in my palm. That’s the reason I wanted to go back home that night before the big broadcast. I wanted to fetch some prestidigitation items to facilitate the medallion’s disappearance. I’ll confess to having already settled on a course of action before I went home. The metal disc that went off the building was the fake you had prepared of course—sure you’ve already figured that was so. This is the real item, I assure you.”

  Orson’s eyes sparkled. “It was simply too valuable to lose or throw away, Hector, you know that in your heart. And you also know my nature, my love of magic. Now, Mussolini is at last gone. The fascists are all but routed. All the key superstitious Germans are dead or on the run to South America or some such. Even Uncle Sam has moved on from his fleeting preoccupation with the occult. The Spear of Destiny can be ours now, old man. We won’t use it as despots would, to rule the world, but merely to improve our luck as artists, yes?” A delighted smile. “A genuine treasure hunt! An actual quest for us latter-day knights errant! How can you possibly resist?”

  The actor wet his lips. “I frankly meant to do it alone these past weeks, but it still scares me a bit and it involves a good deal of moving around which I can’t always manage with my present film obligations. All of that, and perhaps travel to places buses and cabs don’t go. I still can’t drive myself, you see and so…” A smile and a shrug. Orson, Hector could see, was measuring his reaction to all that.

  Hector sensed Orson knew he was losing Hector’s attention and patience
, maybe even losing his favor. Orson had said he wanted to go home that long ago night to see his family, playing to the novelist’s sentiment. Now this revelation that it was merely to fetch some sleight-of-hand rig? That palpably galled Hector. Goddamn Orson anyway.

  That famous smile again. “This will be a great adventure, Hector. At very least it will be that. A kind of heroic quest as I said, like… Like, yes, just like something out of H. Rider Haggard or the Arthurian myths. A novel for you, surely, and a film for me.”

  Hector sat there with his wine glass in one hand and cigarette in the other, contemplating the bronze disc and feeling this mounting sense of dread. He didn’t believe in premonitions any more now than he did ten years before, Hector told himself, yet this escalating sense of menace and terror was undeniable.

  “This is mad talk, you know that,” Hector said. And yet? The idea of this strange treasure chase did appeal to some part of Hector. The spear meant nothing to him, of course, but the challenge of finding the thing? That was something else. And Orson was right of course, there likely was something in all of this to feed a novel or a screenplay.

  “Maybe, but what’s truly crazy is having the medallion here, in the very city in which its purpose lies, and not trying to do something with it,” Orson said. “You can’t deny the appeal of that. You really can’t, you know.”

  Hector thought about that. Despite his own pressing quest for “himself,” he couldn’t deny the quirky appeal of making a little time for this other hunt—couldn’t dismiss the prospect out of hand.

  CHAPTER 25

  THE BLACK MUSEUM

  They were roaming the streets of Rome, huddled close under umbrellas and continuing their debate about the medallion and its possible use to try and recover the Holy Lance of Longinus.

  “Lord knows I have my flaws, my character defects, of course,” Orson said. “Yet those flaws are the very ones I’ve always had. They are a part of my nature. But until 1942 or so, I was able to triumph in any field I turned my attention to—the stage, radio. Film too, at least in that first going, at any rate. Despite these flaws of mine, I once triumphed in every at-bat I enjoyed.”

  Hector stepped wide to miss a puddle. Orson blustered on through, succeeding in splashing the novelist’s pants legs while wetting his own shoes. “It all went to pieces for me with that mess in South America, old man. My great regret and my first unfinished masterpiece, you know. My film I would have called, It’s All True.”

  “You really blame that movie for your run of bum pictures?” Hector scowled. “You’ve never talked about that before.”

  “I’ve come around to the realization increasingly, but in its most potent form relatively recently,” Orson said. “You see, old friend, I was intending to segment the film in discrete sections. One of those vignettes was to include a portion focused wholly on Voodoo.” A cautious smile. “That inspiration was partly thanks to you, old man. You, or rather to that delectable young woman you were irrigating around the time of my Mars scare. You remember Miss Allegre.”

  Of course Hector remembered Cassie. He’d wondered about her from time-to-time in the years since. And, Jesus, irrigating?

  “She sparked my interest in White Witchery,” Orson said. “I studied up a bit on all that after making your lady-friend Cassie’s memorable acquaintance. Voodoo, VouDon… Tarot and palmistry. It had always been there in the back of my mind of course, because of my grandmother, sure, but also because Cassie brought it all to the forefront again and with such convincing force. Anyway, I began to work on my film treatment of all that. The project—as all of It’s All True seemed to do—continued to spiral out of control. At some point, it seems I somehow offended a particular voodoo priest. You see, I arranged with great difficulty to film an actual voodoo ceremony. We had protracted conversations with the head of the group, this doctor, and an advance payment was arranged. But someone at the studio was fired. Terms changed. As old film hands, you and I both know how these things go, but this voodoo doctor didn’t understand any of that, none of the vicissitudes of the cinema, not at all.”

  Hector found himself watching Orson now and so nearly tripped over some street urchin for lack of looking ahead. He excused himself to the child, gave the boys some coins, then said to the actor, “Where on earth are you going with this?”

  Orson watched his own feet. “I had to tell the doctor the film was canceled. The witch doctor told me this was deeply offensive, and that he and his group took it very badly. I said I was very sorry, and I was all of that. But that didn’t spare me a voodoo curse, old friend. For years, I’ve toiled under nothing less than that witch doctor’s curse. It sounds crazy to you, I’m sure. Hell, it’s crazy to me, or at least to some stubbornly blind Western part of me. But there it is.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Hector said. “That’s insane. You must see it.”

  “No,” Orson said. “Why must you call it insane? It’s as sane as any other belief, as any other expression of faith.”

  “Voodoo? You dare call that crap a faith?”

  “Yes, Hector. You see, a curse was put on me, and on my film. It’s why despite all my efforts to the contrary, It’s All True will likely always be the one film of mine that is never seen by the public. Since the curse, I’ve lost…” Orson looked for words, then settled on, “I’ve lost my Zen archery range, can’t you see that?”

  Hector lit another cigarette. He said, “What kind of curse is this you think you’re under? How do you know it even happened?”

  “It was hardly subtle,” Orson said. “Quite the opposite, really. A macumba cursed my project. He drove a long steel needle with a red piece of wool tied to it through the entire script. He left it like that for me to find. The project was positively done for after that, old man. And me with it. It’s never been good since, you know. Never. And I still don’t know what I did to have evidently offended the macumba.”

  Hector cast down his cigarette; it sizzled in a pool of standing water. Neon glowed in the same rippling puddle. He said sourly, “So what, the Spear of Destiny is your corrective? Your panacea?”

  “Why, yes,” Orson said, “Exactly that. And I want you to be a part of this. I certainly wouldn’t cut you out of this, you know that, old man. Together, as always, we proceed. We’ll share in my good fortune.”

  Hector just laughed. “I want no part of this shared fortune aspect,” he said. “First, I still don’t believe in any of this mumbo-jumbo. Even less now than then, if possible. Secondly, even if I did buy any of this horseshit, I’d be a fool to join in on this silly gambit in terms of having or holding even a part of the spear. You do remember the rest of the myth, don’t you, Orson? You remember about what happens if you claim the spear and then lose it as every fucking person in history eventually has?” Hector raised his eyebrows in inquiry.

  “Death, terrible death, yes, old man, I know. But we all must die sometime, of course. What’s that line from Shakespeare that Papa so loves? ‘Every man owes God a death,’ that is it, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s close enough,” Hector said. “That is bloody well in the sorry ballpark. But there’s dying in your sleep and there’s dying bloody and crying out to your mother or God. I know which I prefer.”

  “But still you’re dead after all that, old man. You’re still dead and dust. And we’ve walked far enough.” Orson whistled for a cab. Taking Hector’s arm he said, “Simply too far to continue on foot, especially with this cursed weather.”

  Orson gave Hector this hangdog look. “So you’re not in old man?”

  “I didn’t say that exactly,” Hector said. “The quest aspect appeals to some part of me. No saying if we found the spear, we have to do anything with it, you know. We could just take a long good look at it and leave it there.”

  “So you’re saying you’re still not with me.”

  Hector shrugged, smiled. “It’s crazy as all hell, but I’m not exactly firm on the next step of that other hunt I’m on. So I reckon I might s
pare a couple of days to tag-along with you. Hell, how many times do you get to go on an honest-to-God treasure hunt?”

  ***

  They rolled to a stop before the imposing St. John in the Lateran and the Cloister.

  Hector said, “Why in God’s name are we here of all places?”

  Orson beamed. “You declare yourself a skeptic,” a taunting smile, “but I come to believe you may well actually have second sight of your own kind, old friend. This place is practically a museum as much as it’s a church. It’s also something else. You see, according to the wondrous medallion in my pocket, this place you arbitrarily chose years ago to make the Nazis start their search if they ever gained possession of your false seal? This place is in fact the actual starting point for our very real search!”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Not this time, Hector. No, old man, you somehow unerringly seized on the real starting point for our quest when you were manufacturing your bogus metal map all those years ago.” He held up a gloved hand. “But hold on, for there’s much more. We’re going to go inside now. We’re going to do that and then we’re going to see if I might yet surprise you again.”

  CHAPTER 26

  SYMPTOMS OF BEING THIRTY-FIVE

  The actor and the author entered the soaring nave of the chapel with all its arches and ivory and gilt; its reaching and grasping marble statuary.

  A woman was standing with her back toward them, looking up at the altar.

  Hector had this shock of recognition. He said softly, “Cassie? Really?”

  She turned and smiled. Those dimples. Those pale gray eyes. “So good to see you again, Hector.” The war years and their rationing, or perhaps something else, had conspired to make her look thinner. She wore a tailored suit and carried an overcoat coat folded over one arm. He noticed that coat also covered her hand. Hector wondered if she might not be armed for their reunion.