The Great Pretender: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  “I’ve been followed for days already that I know of,” Hector said. “Started near Casanova the other day and has never let up.”

  “Who’s following you?”

  “One man, or one I could see anyway. Thin and tall. That’s about it for now.”

  “How tall?”

  “Pretty tall,” Hector said. He let that stand.

  “This man, this giant,” she said, “he keeps his distance?”

  “So far he has,” Hector said, wondering where she was headed with this.

  Now that imminent separation was a stated thing between them, Hector anticipated some stepping up of her occult proclivities. She’d modulated them up to this point, Hector figured, but why bother to do that now that their parting was near? He wasn’t far off the mark, as it developed. He didn’t feel smug about guessing correctly about all of it; rather, it horrified him to see how deeply her odd beliefs truly ran.

  “It’s Rune Fuchs,” she said. “We both know it’s so. He’s keeping his distance right now because of the salt packets I’ve hidden in the lining of your coat, because of the granules of salt I’ve sprinkled in the cuffs of your trousers every morning.”

  Salt.

  “That explains all these little white spots I keep brushing off my knees these past months,” Hector said barely able to keep tones of ridicule from his voice. “These traces of white stuff I keep finding on window sills and at thresholds is at last explained.” He made no effort to hide his exasperation in the end.

  “Yes,” she said cooly. “I did it to protect you.”

  “This simple table condiment keeps this thing at bay, you’re saying.”

  “Yes, his kind.”

  “And to kill this thing? That requires salt, too?”

  “You must fill its mouth with salt, then sew shut its lips,” she said. “We’ll have to do that.”

  It was all Hector could do to play along. He said, “Doesn’t that present a pretty knotty puzzle in the execution? If salt repels these things, how in hell did you get close enough to one with more salt in order to kill it?”

  “They have rest periods,” Cassie said, not looking him in the eye. “There’s an hour or two at dusk when they’re inert. That’s when you can get close enough to do the deed.” She shook her head. “Please stopping looking at me as though I am the world’s biggest lunatic.”

  Best just to let that go, he figured. And yet…? Hector said, “You’d maintain there’s still a string-puller for this thing, right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m convinced that is still the little German man we saw in Rome, the midget. You can’t pass over ownership on a zombie—only the person who raised him can control Fuchs. I’ve been able to learn that little warlock’s name. He is Pavel Maslak. He’s Russian, not German, at least by birth. Seems to have once been affiliated with Rasputin.”

  “This Pavel looks way too young for that,” Hector said.

  “That’s another thing,” Cassie said. “Maslak’s birth date seems impossible. He’d have to be at least a hundred by now, yet looks thirty. They say he underwent some kind of rite of immortality and…”

  Hector tried to tune her out. They were at last again in sight of the Russian sector. A massive scarlet banner emblazoned with the image of Stalin loomed large on the horizon. Cassie said, “The wheel’s nice, but to have to see that face every day in order to reach the park? Too high a price to pay.”

  “Old Joe does look like Hitler but with more moustache and a stronger hairline,” Hector agreed. “At least a better barber.”

  “That’s a terrible joke.”

  “Everything seems a terrible joke these days,” Hector said.

  “Yes, but not the funny kind.”

  ***

  From the musician’s memorial, they pushed on to the front door of the Casanova Club. The next stop seemed to be the Weinhaus. The trail led from there back into the Russian sector and finally to the Prater Amusement Park.

  “Crazy and so appropriate that it ends here,” he said.

  “Not quite here,” she said. “There’s a last bit of information. And, anyway, I thought we were waiting for Orson to finish this.”

  “We are,” he said, “but what’s the last bit of data?”

  “Red, twenty-five,” she said. Shivering while looking around, she said, “What does that mean? Something to do with roulette, maybe?”

  “Doubt it,” Hector said. “Anyway, we need Orson before we can do anything with that last clue.”

  “He’s still really invested in this then? You made it sound like movie considerations trumped anything else for the man.”

  “That’s so in my book,” Hector said. “I think I care more about the state of his career—that Joe Cotten and I do—than Orson does himself. The Third Man surely should be his priority. Either way, I expect Orson will be with us for the last, for better or worse.”

  “When?”

  “Just as soon as we can make it happen,” he said.

  ***

  Orson met them in the hotel lobby, ruddy faced and exuberant. He clapped gloved hands and said, “Any luck with the rest of your search?”

  “Reached journey’s end, in the bleakest sense, I’m afraid,” Cassie said. “Unless you can make sense of ‘red twenty-five.’ Seems to be a final clue to the object’s location.”

  Orson frowned and said, “Roulette perhaps? Do they have working casinos here in Vienna these days? Did they ever have casinos here?”

  Cassie bit her lower hip and said, “I don’t know about before, but now? Seen no signs of that kind of entertainment. Doubt there ever was a gaming place like that at the amusement park, which is where the map officially ends, by the way.”

  Hector listened to them, watching as a tall, gaunt shadow insinuated itself on the glazed, etched glass of the hotel lobby’s large, decorative window. Backlit by a guttering, solitary streetlamp, the shadow seemed even more grotesque. Cassie and Orson’s backs were to the window and the sinister-looking shadow on the glass.

  Irresistibly tempted to test Cassie’s crazy remedies, Hector took a step toward the window and was startled to see the shadow fall a step back in concert. Surely it was a coincidence, Hector thought, yet unable to bring himself to take another step forward and watch for any subsequent reaction from the shadow.

  His friends looked at him with concern. Cassie said, “Are you feeling ill again?”

  Orson didn’t wait for an answer. He said, “You’re still convalescing. We should go to the dining room and get some food in you, old man. God knows I’m starving.”

  “You two go get us a table,” Hector said. “Order for yourselves. I’m going to take a fast shower and then I’ll be right back down.”

  She pressed her palm to his forehead. “You do feel slightly feverish.”

  “Simple shower will fix that, I’m sure of it,” he said.

  ***

  Just in case Cassie came up to check on him, Hector really took that shower, once more disappointed by its low pressure and the fact it never really got as hot as he desired. But then the city was partly in ruins, its infrastructure still compromised.

  He checked his fresh clothes for packets of salt or other Cassie-supplied occult accessories she might have placed in them. Finding none, he forwent his overcoat with its salt fortified lining.

  Salt-free, Hector rode the elevator back downstairs. The gaunt shadow was still out there. It seemed to be leaning against the street lamp, judging by the shadow’s posture. Hector wondered to himself if alleged zombies often struck Maurice Chevalier-like poses in the Viennese night.

  Careful to stay out of line of sight of the restaurant, Hector slid outside. Startled, the tall man leaning against the light post dropped his cigarette and reached under his coat.

  “Don’t.” Drawing first, pointing his gun between the man’s eyes, Hector said, “please don’t.” The man was about six-five, blond, blue-eyed and all too-familiar looking. Hector shook off a fresh shiver and said, “Your las
t name Fuchs?”

  “That’s right.” No surprise in that German accent, but this man’s accent was more cosmopolitan, even watered-down-sounding, than Hector remembered for Rune Fuchs.

  “Let’s have a first name,” Hector said.

  “Klaus.”

  Well, well.

  “You the last of three brothers, triplets I’m guessing?”

  A nervous nod. “Why do you care?”

  “Just indulge me. You the last son?”

  “Yes…”

  “Mother still alive?”

  “Yes…”

  “Then for the love of God, go home to her, kid. Don’t break your mother’s heart again. No point at all in dying for some goddamn fairytale like at least one of your brothers has done. You’re caught up in a fool’s pipedream. Hell, we both are. What do you say we both just stand down and each of us goes home?”

  Confused but grateful-looking, the tallish young German began to retreat, walking backward, then turning and running into the night.

  Quite cold now, Hector shivered again and rubbed his arms. He watched as Klaus passed by a stooped, heavyset woman and her child. The kid was holding the strings for a dozen or so helium-filled balloons in his tiny hand. The two must be returning from the amusement park after a chilly day’s work, Hector thought. Jesus Christ, trying to sell balloons in that near abandoned carnival in this weather? Talk about optimism.

  The woman seemed legless drunk, unable to find sure footing. She stutter-stepped, then staggered back. The child offered a hand, trying to steady his dumpy, drunken mother. Hector’s heart went out to the kid.

  Holding hands, the child and the woman pivoted, walking the other direction, following Klaus into the cold night.

  A worried, honeyed voice behind him, said, “Darling?” Cassie said, “My God, Hector, are you still that hot? Do you want to give yourself pneumonia?” She held out his overcoat. He turned and she helped him on with the coat. He was grateful for its warmth, salt-packet fortification be damned. Sleet began falling, tinkling on glass windows and windshields and stinging their eyes. Cassie slid an arm around his waist and steered him back toward the hotel entrance as the ice collected in their dark hair.

  She said, “Orson and I have racked our brains, trying to figure it out—you know, ‘red twenty-five.’ We’re frankly stymied.” Her hand was unusually warm in his. She smelled a little of fever herself.

  “I’m not,” Hector said. “Frankly stymied, I mean. I knew before we left the amusement park what it means. Pretty sure I’m right, anyway.”

  CHAPTER 36

  VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED

  Whether morning, afternoon or at what in Scotland would be called the gloaming, Vienna presently always seemed to be shrouded in gray fog.

  Orson had thrown some fresh fit about his day’s filming of The Third Man, once again balking at having to run around in the city’s vast and smelly sewer system.

  “I again stressed my asthma,” Orson said. “It has the virtue of being true, of course. They’re feverishly working on sewer sets back in London. Whatever the case, I can hardly miss the denouement of our quest now, can I?”

  “Don’t you dare hurt your career by playing the prima donna,” Hector said.

  “I was far from the only one who objected to going down into that stinking, over-warm and terrible place, far from it. My God, the stuff floating by in the water that the crews are standing in—neither of you would do it, either. So I have a day, maybe two, for our search. We need to get moving, to use that precious time.” Orson popped an anti-acid pill into his mouth. “That is to say if all of our hearts are still in the search.”

  Once again, Hector found himself wondering at Orson’s devotion to the crazy cause.

  ***

  “There’s something terribly depressing about a bombed-out carnival,” Cassie said as they reached the park. “Prepared to share your theory?”

  “Soon,” Hector said. “Let’s take a ride on the wheel.”

  Orson said, “But you don’t like heights. And I’m not crazy about them, as we both know. Bad enough I’ll have to film here quite soon.”

  Hector paid an attendant. “There’s a difference between being up high in an airplane, or in a car like this one, contained, more or less, a difference between all that and standing on top of the Empire State, which rather terrified me. Looking over the edge—hell, my legs were shaking. Years living in Paris, and in and out many times since, yet I’ve never set foot on the Eiffel Tower for that very reason.”

  An old woman and her shy child—the boy kept his head down so they could only see the top of his head—approached their wooden Ferris wheel car, painted garish red like all the others. “May we join you?” the woman said in a thick German accent. “There seems plenty of room,” the woman said in her guttural English.

  Hector said, “Sorry, but we need to be alone. Plenty of other cars and no crowds, right?” He closed the door of their car, then, put off balance by the sudden movement of the wheel, he sat down awkwardly on a bench.

  Cassie and Orson remained standing, still steady on their feet. The actor said, “I haven’t that much time, you know, old man. Why are we riding Ferris wheels?”

  As they continued to climb, approaching the top of the wheel, all of ruined Vienna opening up before them, Hector pointed toward the forward facing window. He said, “The car in front of us—observations?”

  “Wooden construction,” Orson said. Then, the light bulb moment came. In his most sonorous tone, Orson said, “Each car on this Ferris wheel is painted bright red.”

  Cassie chimed in, “Red, and each one is numbered! The one before us is number one. So we need to ride number twenty-five next. That’s the answer, isn’t it?” Her excitement, at least, reached Hector, regardless of its silly, superstitious cause.

  “That’s the answer, I’m convinced of it,” Hector said. “But there is a complication, I’m afraid, one that may well make recovery of the spear impossible.”

  CHAPTER 37

  COMPULSION

  They were starting their second revolution, Orson said, “Why impossible, Hector?”

  “The war’s to blame, as it happens. At least, I think so.” Hector lit a cigarette with his Zippo, keeping his back to the window. “When we get off this damned thing, if you count the cars, you’ll see there are only fifteen. The wheel, the whole park, suffered bombing damage in the war like so much of this city. Before the war, there used to be thirty cars.”

  Orson shivered. “Where are the other fifteen cars, old man?”

  “Some were blasted to hell and gone. Including maybe the very one we seek.” Hector looked at the glowing end of his cigarette. “The rest I’ve learned are in a kind of junkyard of cast-off bombing debris. There’s some field on the outskirts of town full of blasted statuary and discarded carnival attractions—the ones not a total loss from the bombings.”

  Cassie said hopefully, “And car twenty-five exists there?”

  “We’ll know in an hour or so, if we’re still firm on really doing this,” Hector said. He’d decided now to test further for some possible second thoughts about all that on Orson’s part. The actor rubbed his arms and then sat down next to Hector.

  After a time Orson said, “I’ve lost some of the zeal for having the Spear of Destiny, I must confess,” Orson said. “Partly it’s simply getting older I suppose. Also, the reality of its possible proximity and starting to think about the logistics of moving the damned thing around, place to place, from film set to film set. Working in Europe, as I seem always to be doing these years, the thing would be, I fear, burdensome, like Dorian Gray’s cursed portrait. And what exactly is the definition of losing the Holy Lance? If it is in some villa in Rome, and I’m back in the States, is my distance from the thing an inadvertent death sentence? I doubt we get a rule or instruction book with the thing when we find it.”

  “That’s the other thing to discuss before we close this out,” Hector said, relieved they were again approachin
g the ground, if only fleetingly. “You’ve always talked of a three-way split,” Hector said to the actor, “but seems to me only one person can truly possess the thing.”

  Orson sat up a bit straighter. “You’ve always said you don’t want a part of it, even after recovery, old man.”

  Hector said, “And Cassie?”

  “Suppose I always figured we’d work that out if it became necessary,” Orson said.

  Cassie, still standing, holding onto an overhead rail to steady herself, said, “And now it seems your interest is waning too, Orson.”

  “Or my fear—at least, my circumspection—is growing,” Orson said. Their cage was climbing again, its last revolution, actor and writer both hoped.

  “Then so far as a split of some kind, there’s maybe no issue after all,” Cassie said. “You help me recover the Holy Lance, and I’ll assume all the consequences that ensue.”

  Orson shook his head. “The risk under those circumstances would certainly be worse for all of us, I fear. Truman already dared to use the atom bomb, and our next president is almost certain to be Eisenhower. My God, think about the implications of putting a weapon like the Spear of Destiny into the hands of a five-star general elevated to president.” The actor raised his eyebrow. “Tell me, could me make a more calamitous mistake?” A strange smile.

  “On the other hand,” Orson said, “Look how everything came out for Germany and for Mussolini. And anyway, as artists, I think Hector and I would both agree adversity breeds creativity. Suffering fires the muse. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five-hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cukoo clock.”

  Cassie shook her head. They had nearly reached the top of the wheel for the last time. “I don’t work for the government anymore, largely thanks to you two,” she said. “The Spear of Destiny isn’t going to fall into the hands of any politician, I swear.”