The Great Pretender: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  Orson said, “Turns out Cassie has been living in Paris for several years. I heard about that a couple of weeks ago. Since then she’s been trying to lift the curse on me, at least to neutralize it. Now that you’re here too, well, it occurred to me she’d be a valuable and essential third partner in our quest to recover the Holy Lance. We’ll make it a three-way split of my good fortune, we three who’ve endured so much woe these past years.”

  Hector was very aware of the way Cassie was studying him, gauging his reaction to Orson’s assertion about how she was helping him with his “voodoo curse.”

  For his part, Orson said, “You two surely have some catching up to do. You should do that now.” He slipped a folded-over piece of paper to Hector. “Where I’m staying with the film crew. Call when you’re ready to start our search. That is to say, phone me there, but not before noon tomorrow. Figure we’ll all be wanting to sleep in tomorrow.” Only a little innuendo in the actor’s voice.

  They watched him go. Standing in that imposing house of worship, Hector said, “Should I infer you like him better this decade?”

  “Still not so much,” Cassie said matter-of-factly. “Not really.” A little beguiling shrug. “But now I somehow actually feel sorry for that man. And Hector, he does hold the key to finding the Spear of Destiny, after all.”

  A smile. “I’m delighted to see you again. I’m frankly surprised you’re on board with the hunt…”

  Hector smiled back. “Hell, me too.”

  ***

  The rain picked up as they took a cab back to her hotel, lodging paid for, or so she claimed, by Orson and the film crew of his black magic opus. “I’m a kind of film advisor, too,” she said, sitting next to him in the cab. Hector studied her profile in the dusky gloom. She was still beautiful, but her hair was now longer and straighter. He wondered about that—the result of chemical efforts to that end? The manifestation of increased efforts to blend in? He decided not to ask.

  The rain picked up. She said, “I’d ask if it’s been a crowded decade for you, but I’m still a reader, still a fan. So I feel as though I know all that.”

  “A lot of it is made up in the novels you know. I do have an imagination.”

  “You surely do. But remember too, I took a good look at both of your hands. I even did it a time or two at very long leisure, when you were asleep at my side.”

  Hector was taken aback by that. “Really? You actually did that?”

  A sheepish smile. “I did. I was infatuated with you back in the day. With you and your legend. And you were a worry, too. And that unbelievably long lifeline of yours? My God, I’ve yet to see anything ever to match it.”

  “Here we go again.” Hector remembered this time to check her left hand in the early going. He saw she returned the study of his naked ring finger.

  “The idea of Orson Welles privately holding the Spear of Destiny is insane to me,” she said. “Almost as scary as the lance falling into Hitler’s hands or Mussolini’s.

  “It’s hardly that bad,” Hector said. “I mean, Orson’s a liberal, maybe just this side of a communist, but despite some flickering political ambitions, the genius is just an artist in the end.”

  “Welles could lose the spear,” Cassie said. “That could be bad not just for him—the death curse attached to it—but for the world too, depending on who then assumed control of the Lance.”

  Hector just shrugged at that. He still thought it all crazy superstition. He said, “Tell me about your life these past years. Orson evidently kept tabs. To my shame, I didn’t. When did you come to Europe?”

  “Just after the war,” she said. “When the Nazis were gone, I came back. Some of my happiest days were there, old school days. I wanted to make Paris my home again. When I got to Paris, I quickly caught traces of your trail. Whispers about stuff you did with the resistance, with the OSS, in taking back Paris. Guess we just missed one another there. Probably just as well, I guess, as I hear there was another woman. Another marriage.”

  Rearview mirror stuff. Hector had married again about that time, to a good woman, but the wrong one in the end.

  He traced the pressed crease in his slacks. “Have to ask, is there then a Paris branch of that New Orleans voodoo shop?”

  A wistful smile. “Not quite,” she said finally. “I give card and palm readings. I play spiritual advisor. No potions and no spells. Well, some special efforts here and there, like present exertions for your sad-sack actor friend, but that’s a fraction of what I do these days.”

  Hector said, “Let’s talk more about that. You truly don’t believe Orson’s under some kind of curse?”

  “Again, I’m not comfortable talking much about this with you. I know which side you fall on regarding all things supernatural. Let me just say this. What Orson described to me about his time in South America, about this voodoo threat he believes he’s under, it is an accurate depiction of a certain kind of an all too-potent and real curse. And macumba are dark witches as you’d probably think of them. They are the kings of black magic.”

  She paused and took his hand. She looked at it afresh. He said, “The future’s that hand, yes?”

  “Like I said, I know your past.”

  “Anything change from what you’ve already seen coming for me?” They were slowing for a stop in front of her hotel.

  “Pretty much all is as I remember,” she said. She closed his hand and squeezed it. “God, I’ve missed you, darling. Your novels in the in-between time have been a comfort, hearing your voice in my head as I read your words, but of course it’s not like having you here in the flesh.”

  That last word resonated between them. “Let’s get dinner,” he said. He hesitated. “Should caution you to keep your distance though. Think I’m coming down with a scratchy throat. Maybe a cold. Hell, maybe something worse. Just feeling more run down than I can remember these past few days.”

  “I’ve got a strong immune system.” She pressed her palm to his cheek. “And I’m not hungry. Not at all. If you are, I’ll watch you eat.” A raw smile, too easy to read.

  Tracing the lines in his hand, she said, “Hector, I know what I want, and I want that right now. I’d have you in this cab, right here, even with that terrible little man driving us,” she whispered huskily in his ear. “What about you? Would you have me, right here, right now?”

  Hector whispered back, “I’d have you in bed, just as soon as realistically possible.”

  ***

  They’d started pawing one another in the elevator.

  Inside her room, with the door closed and hastily locked behind them, it was a scramble to strip down that resulted in a split hem up the back of her tapered skirt and some popped and lost buttons from his shirt.

  Frustrated by the intricate confusion of her silk under things and garter belt, he’d ended up tearing her panties to get her out of them, leaving just her stockings and belt—her sexy black garters—wholly intact.

  It made her somehow even more erotic to his eyes.

  ***

  She held her blood-encrusted fingernails up between their faces after, and said, “God, I’m so sorry. As if your poor back needed more damage.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve thought a lot about you since 1938. Thought about how it might have been if we’d tried to make a go of it.”

  “We were right not to try then,” she said. “It’s a little better now, at least in some places. Here in Europe, like we’ve discussed before. Still, I don’t think we could have had a family, even then. Not with a happy ending. Not with the war looming.”

  “You never married? Never had children?”

  “No and no,” she said. “Never found the right man. And… There’s something else you might as well know now, particularly after what you’d probably call our recklessness tonight. You see, I wondered, all those years ago, particularly after a couple of our other reckless moments during that crazy autumn a lifetime ago. There were no consequences from any of that, you know. No pregna
ncies, I mean. So I had some tests done later. Seems I can’t… you know.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Cassie wasn’t having it. “It’s probably for a good reason.”

  More fate and predestination—all that claptrap Hector couldn’t fathom or countenance. But he held his tongue. Instead, he stroked her breast; kissed her there, suckling. In time he worked his way up to her throat and found her mouth. He pulled back just long enough to say, “There is adoption, you know.”

  “Wouldn’t be the same for me,” she said. “I know that’s terrible, selfish even. But it’s how I really feel.”

  She traced the line of his jaw, his cheekbones. “I’ve wondered a lot about the child we might have had. It would have been a girl, I’m pretty sure.”

  He couldn’t help himself. “That more second-sight?”

  “More like simple intuition,” she said. “Still none of your own? Children I mean.”

  Hector said, “Nah. Just not in the cards. No pun intended.”

  “Just wait,” she said. “Your time is yet coming. Lucky for you, the clock doesn’t run out for men like it does for women, not like that.” Thinking of the time, she checked the wall clock. “And, now, I am positively starving for food. You take a lot out of a woman, though I doubt that comes as news to you, either.”

  “I could eat, too. Shall we dress and head down?”

  “Not on your life,” she said. “We’re going to continue destroying this bed. I vote for room service.”

  “After, are we really going to look for this silly relic with an eye toward claiming it? I’m on board, to use your phrase for the thrill of the chase — the lark of this crazy crusade to find the thing, but not to have and to hold, so to speak.”

  “I’ve already signed on for the ongoing search, Tex. But not to just gawk at it and walk away. As much as it can be a tool for terror, I believe it can be used for good, too. But still you don’t believe that, do you.”

  “Heathen I am—skeptic you know me to be—of course not. How could I?”

  “You may have held on to all your doubt in that way, yet you’re not the man you were in 1938, not at all,” she said, studying him.

  “How could I be?” He caught himself looking at his palms again. He closed his hands, made fists. “Ten years and another war. More scars. More ex-wives. Some might call it all more proof in the futility of all faith.”

  “But you?”

  “I said some might call it that.”

  She stared at her hands. “That’s almost funny. The world’s closer to tolerating the likes of us, at least in some places, but you? Why are you in Rome now, Hector? With everything I think I know about you, I know it’s not for this search Orson is intent upon continuing. Orson was thrilled to learn you were already here, so I know you didn’t answer some request of his to drop everything and run to Rome.”

  “No,” he said. “About that you’re right. I happen to be here for a search of a different kind. Meeting Orson here was a mere accident, just as you say. Or I believe it so.”

  He told her about his double.

  When he was through she said, “And people tell me my life is bizarre.” Cassie said, rested her chin on his chest, and said, “It could only happen to you.”

  CHAPTER 27

  THE CREEPER

  “Almost feels like second nature,” Cassie said as they moved around the hotel’s bathroom nude, sharing spigots and mirror space as he shaved and she applied her makeup. “Almost feels like we’ve always been doing this.”

  Or maybe it was just because both were practiced at sharing such intimate spaces with others, Hector figured more cynically. There were only so many variations on a theme, after all. He said, “Maybe we should have been doing just that.”

  “We’ve been over this already,” she said. “Anyway, I don’t believe for a minute you’d have missed the company of all the women you’ve known in the between time, and I mean more than just Duff. You come by your reputation as a lady man’s honestly enough. Besides, I earnestly think you need all of them—need us, since I’m of that legion of women—to feed your writing.”

  He pressed a hot towel to his face. With a muffled voice, he said, “What’s all this about so many other women? You don’t still have access to my FBI file? Do you really know stuff about the past ten years beyond what I’ve elected to confide?”

  “Just have access to your hands these days,” she said. She stroked his freshly shaven, still-warm cheek. “You truly loved some of those women since. I’m sorry they didn’t last, those love affairs.” Some of the women either, he thought.

  “You’ve still not told me much about that part of your life in the time since.”

  He watched as Cassie weighed her words. She finally said, “Haven’t exactly been chaste, if that’s what you mean. But not in love, either. Never in love. Not like you were.”

  That old whore regret—she and Hector were too well-acquainted. He wrapped his arms around Cassie, gathered her close to his chest. “Let’s not screw this up this time.”

  She drew the back of her hand across his cheek again. “A man who favors a close shave. No surprise in that either. Let’s take this new round as it comes. Enjoy this time together, whether it’s a just few days or longer. Tell me, where are you living now?”

  “Still have that little place in Key West, but I mostly rent it out for money still,” he said. “I live in New Mexico, right on the Rio Grande, or, as the Mexicans call it, the Rio Bravo. Having said that, I lately find myself thinking a lot about Paris. And about the days there before I was me, so to speak.”

  A funny smile. “When you were unknown, you mean,” she said, “before you were someone that a crazy man might feel compelled to impersonate? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes,” Hector said. “Everything you’ve said.”

  “Could you live in Paris again?”

  “Yes,” Hector said after hardly any time at all, surprising himself. “I really think I could now. The time there during the war was… good. Maybe I could reinvent myself. Be the writer I thought I’d be when I was there when I was young and learning. Reaching more than I feel that I do now in my writing.”

  “I don’t believe you’ve ever stopped reaching. You’re not the kind.” Cassie pressed her cheek against his bare chest. The hair there tickled her nose. “You really mean that, don’t you? About starting over some day?”

  “With all my heart,” Hector said. “If I ever find the courage to do it.”

  “But it’s not there for you just now?”

  “Not now, not yet, no.” He tried to make a joke of it, to lighten the mood. He said, “Hell, first I have to stop this other joker from being me.”

  Her teeth teased her lip.

  She leaned in, kissed his cheek, once, again. Her fingers traced his lips. She kissed his other cheek. She bumped foreheads with him and said. “I ordered up some food. “You want something in your coffee, or do you prefer it black?”

  ***

  “Your books are sadder now, darker,” Cassie said. “The dialogue is not as, well, it’s not as glib as it once was, not like in your earlier books.”

  “Afraid you’re not the first to say it.”

  They were walking along Via Frattina in a still-drizzling rain, window shopping under a big, shared umbrella.

  “If it truly is darker, my stuff more serious, it’s just a function of age and a life lived I reckon,” he said. He studied her reflection in the glass of a couture shop’s window. “God but you’re still a beauty,” he said. “Stuff like that was designed for a pretty body like yours.”

  “But not for a bank account like mine,” she said. “You’re such a con artist in some ways. Always the silver-tongued devil.”

  “Nah, I’m not like that, but my granddad is,” he said. “He can make you believe anything.”

  A shift in tone of voice, drifting from his right arm to his left, taking that arm instead, she said, “We’re being followed, again. I d
o hope you’re armed, again.” She hadn’t watched him dress this one time and so she wasn’t certain about any weapons he might be carrying. He felt her checking under his left armpit. She whispered, “Thank God,” as she felt it suspended there.

  He checked the reflection in the glass again. The man was of average build, maybe six-feet, even. The stranger was clean-shaven, likely fortyish. Something there in the way he moved—the man didn’t seem Italian or even European. There was something distinctly American about the stranger, just based on sight and comportment.

  Hector said, “I’m thinking G-Man, specifically FBI. They’re of a piece in their sorry way. Or Hoover’s sorry way. Doesn’t make much sense, though. They don’t have jurisdiction out this way, not a spit’s worth.”

  “So what do you want to do about him, if anything, Hec?”

  “Just leave him be for now, I think,” Hector said. “If we decide on anything else, and if it means using a gun, I’m not sure the ending would be a happy one for me. Not here, not in this place.” He’d bought a gun cheap on the black market, just in case things with his double got rowdy. In case he ran into any other old friends.

  “Probably too true,” she said.

  Sirens in the distance, an ambulance. Cassie asked, “Do you still have trustworthy FBI friends? Someone you could call to check on that man behind us?”

  “Maybe, but I feel like I’ve burned many FBI bridges this past year, partly thanks to my actor friend. I kind of helped Orson escape the bureau’s clutches last winter.”

  Cassie wrinkled her nose, said, “HUAC? Orson’s in that kind of trouble?”

  “That and some other kinds, I’m afraid,” Hector said.

  “And you?”

  “Trouble nearly always, it seems, manages to find me. But not with HUAC, not for me. I’m good there.”

  Cassie was even more alarmed looking after hearing that. She said, “Oh God, you didn’t inform, did you?”