The Great Pretender: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  Hector saw faint light glint on glass; saw the outline of a head and knew he’d found the sniper. But there was another man out there, one who seemed to be creeping up behind the man with the rifle. Hector thought about it. Their bored driver must have gotten curious and come looking. A chance?

  Hector said, “Is it true? Did you really kill a child because you truly thought it might save me in some crazy way? Please, tell me no.”

  Orson’s confiding of the killing of the old man to keep Hitler’s invasion of Great Britain at bay gnawed at Hector. She killed Germans the night they first met. The act of murder wasn’t a strange one to her, surely. But to sacrifice a child?

  Cassie started to speak, faltered… She looked to Orson. She said to the actor, “You remember all those years ago, on top of that crazy building, you spoke of Solomon? Faced with two women claiming to be the mother of the same child, you said the King suggested that babe be cut in half so each of the women could claim a piece of the child. When one cried out in horror, when she recoiled at Solomon’s unthinkable suggestion, he declared that woman the victor, you said. Then there is the tale of Alexander and the Gordian knot… That’s the tale that resonates for me more right now, Orson. Rather than fretting, racking one’s brain for an out, better to simply cut the knot.”

  As she spoke, Cassie had casually slid her hands into her pockets. One of those pockets exploded. A red bloom erupted from the forehead of the mysterious old German woman.

  The little man screamed out, “Helena! No!” He snarled something at Cassie in a language Hector thought might be Latin. For her part, Cassie suddenly looked liked she’d been shot. The little man laughed as Cassie began to cough. Hector saw blood on her hands—he wondered if she’d been hiding some tubercular condition from him.

  Hector quickly raised his gun and shot Maslak between the eyes. As he did that, he screamed, “Orson, Cassie, on the ground!”

  As Maslak fell, Klaus Fuchs’ eyes rolled up in his head and he fell to the ground too, like a puppet with cut strings.

  A single shot rang out.

  From the other side of the scrap yard came a call, “Hello there! It’s Viktor! Mr. Welles, this man with the rifle, he is… how you say, handled. Are you out there? Are you well, Mr. Welles?”

  Hector said to Orson, “You answer Viktor…” He fast crawled to Cassie, who was shaking and coughing up alarming amounts of blood—choking on it. Despite the cold, she was bathed in sweat. Hector rolled her over onto her stomach, trying to keep her from choking on her own blood.

  Orson said, “Old man, she’s burning up with fever, just as you were back in Rome when that little man put a hex on—” He hesitated and pressed a hand to Hector’s shoulder. “Cassie… I mean…”

  “I know what you mean, and don’t say anymore,” Hector said. “This is the flu or some virus she’s got, it’s running rampant all over Europe. Hell, she probably got it nursing me. Now she’s hemorrhaging inside from it. We need to get her to the car and to a hospital before she bleeds out or chokes to death. We need to do that before Viktor sees these bodies. You two will take Cassie to the hospital, get her treatment started. I’ll clean up here and follow fast.” Hector bent down and picked up Cassie—already unconscious—hoping he had the strength to carry her the distance. As it happened, Orson soon took over, then their driver.

  Orson said, “You should come with us now, you should—”

  “Look around you,” Hector said quietly to him as the moved Cassie into the back seat. “There are bodies to be disposed of. At least we’re in a scrap yard to begin with—we have that much luck on our side. Plenty of places to stash bodies. Plenty of garbage to hide the smell come spring.”

  CHAPTER 39

  I’LL NOT GO BACK

  Hector returned to the hotel dejected, exhausted. He had to walk nearly a mile before he finally found a taxi to carry him back into the city.

  When he reached the hotel, Hector took a fast and not nearly hot enough shower to clean off the dirt and blood from disposing of the corpses. After, he dressed, wandered downstairs and caught a cab to the hospital.

  Orson met him in the lobby, drawn and looking shell-shocked. He said, “I’m terribly sorry, Hector. It… well, the doctors can tell you more about what they think happened, but it spiraled out of control. Apparently she had some sort of pre-existing condition they think, and her fever was so high when we got here, at least a hundred–and-four. Her body just shut down. After such massive blood loss, there was nothing…”

  Hector blinked. He said, trying to fathom it, “Cassie is dead? She got sick and bled out that quickly?” It seemed impossible. She’d looked in bad shape as he placed her in the car, but…

  “Yes,” Orson said. “But we know that warlock, or—”

  Hector held up a hand. “Flu, Orson. She was hot to the touch before we ever got to that field, before that little bastard ever opened his mouth and uttered that damn incantation if that indeed was what all that Latin was meant to be. I just didn’t register it when I was in bed with her, distracted as I was. And goddamn me for that.”

  Orson wasn’t having it. He said, “Old man, we should really get you some help from another like Cassie. That little man said if you killed him you would inherit his—”

  “Say one more word about any of this occult bullshit,” Hector said, “And I’ll put you on your ass, Orson, friend or not.”

  Orson nodded and said, “Either way, she’s gone, old friend. We need to see to what comes after, now.”

  Hector nodded slowly. He said softly, bitterly, “Yes… all the usual loose ends.”

  ***

  Later that evening, Hector set up shop in a corner booth of the hotel lounge with whisky, notebook and a pen. He wrote until the shadows grew long, including the one cast by his bottle of whiskey that moved from the left to the right side of his table’s top as the hours rolled along.

  “Hector, are you okay?”

  Orson sat down across from him. He looked from the bottle to Hector’s notebook and presumed to ruffle some of the pages. He whistled low at the sea of ink staining sheet after sheet in the notebook. “The dam has broken eh, old man?”

  “It would seem,” Hector said, massaging his stiff and sore right hand.

  “Cassie truly loved you, you know that, don’t you?”

  “Think she really killed a baby to try and save me?”

  “Suppose we’ll never know,” Orson said. “I choose to believe she didn’t.”

  “You choose to believe,” Hector said. “It all comes to down to that crazy reaching for or running from faith in the end, doesn’t it?”

  Orson said, “What exactly do you believe in, old man?”

  “Tonight, I believe I’ll have another drink. Tomorrow? Then I’m going to get myself some travel arrangements made. I’m going home. How about you, Orson? After Britain, will you maybe brave the waters back in the States?”

  “Of course not,” Orson said. “I have certain baggage there, don’t you remember?”

  “Of course. Sorry.”

  Orson wet his lips, said, “Hector, you really shouldn’t be alone tonight. Let’s burn the midnight oil. Tomorrow I film my death scene in those cursed sewers. Come with me, watch us at work. After, we’ll have a great dinner—on me—and I’ll send you safely on your way back to Lady Liberty’s ample yet lamentably milk-dry teats if that’s truly what you crave.”

  ***

  They stayed on in the hotel lounge until breakfast, greeting dawn with a stomach-bursting breakfast and a bottle of vintage champagne.

  As they finished with the last of their pastries, moving on to a second bottle of champagne, a small, balding man approached their table, cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Lassiter?”

  “That’s right,” Hector said. “What can I do for you, Mister…”

  “I am Theodor Forst, what I guess you might call a solicitor where you come from.”

  “Mr. Forst, what can I do for you?”

  The little man b
owed and handed Hector a small, heavy box. “Just sign for this. This is yours now, sir. Since she came to Vienna some time ago, a Miss Cassandra Allegre arranged that if she didn’t call me every night at eight o’clock in the evening—if she ever failed to do that—then the very next morning, I was to see you were delivered this box. Last night, I receive no such phone call.” A nervous smile. “I hope all is well with Miss Allegre.”

  Hector said nothing about any of that.

  The little man handed him some papers and said, “To acknowledge your receipt, sir, just as I said…”

  Hector scrawled down his signature and stared at the box as the balding little lawyer took his leave.

  Tenting his fingers under his chin, Orson said, “You know almost certainly what that is, of course.”

  “Of course,” Hector, more than a bit buzzed, said. “What else could it be? You want the damned thing? You know I couldn’t care less about having it, of course.”

  Orson still staring at the box, wet his lips and said, “I’m being quite honest, you know. I want no part of it now. It seems to me truly a cursed thing to have to carry the Spear of Destiny through whatever remains of life. It’s a kind of albatross to my mind.”

  “You know my sincere thoughts on all of that nonsense, too,” Hector said.

  “So what then, old man? Hector, what do we do with this accursed relic? Leave it here on the table? Toss it in some garbage can?” Orson rapped his fingers on the tabletop and said, “Or do we sell it to the highest bidder and see to our retirements in that way?”

  Hector scooped up the box and thrust it in the pocket of his overcoat. He freshened his and Orson’s champagne flutes. “As to this thing’s fate, I suppose we await inspiration.”

  CHAPTER 40

  IF IN YEARS TO COME

  Hector stood in the stinking, steaming sewers under Vienna, feeling truly warm at last, watching Orson—strike that, watching a mortally wounded “Harry Lime”—try and crawl up a winding iron staircase to escape his gun-toting former best friend the hack author and all of the sewer police pursuing him.

  Somehow, the final interaction between Joe Cotten and Orson Welles wasn’t quite pleasing director Carol Reed.

  During a brief break, Orson took Hector aside and whispered in his ear. The novelist was very aware of the British director watching them.

  Fifteen minutes later, Orson was again sprawled on that iron staircase. The thrust of the scene was such that Orson was supposed to give a faint but meaningful nod to his old friend Holly—strike that: to actor Joseph Cotten—an indication that Joe’s subsequent shooting of Harry, or Orson, should be perceived as a kind of mercy killing.

  When the moment came for Orson to send his subtle signal to Joseph to pull that trigger, this time, Orson looked instead to Hector. As he had been directed, the author held up the unopened box left him by Cassie. He raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  Orson, puppy-eyed and contrite, gave Hector the subtlest of nods.

  Hector didn’t hesitate. On the actor’s nod of approval, he flung away the box that was so precious to so many, the thing that and had cost unknown numbers of lives. He cast the medallion into the fast rushing, fetid sewer water.

  Carol Reed, visibly moved by Orson’s take this time, raised a hand to hold the moment, then said softly, “Cut and print. That was bloody marvelous, Orson. That was absolutely and truly goddamn transcendent, you magnificent bastard.”

  THE END

  IT’S

  ALL

  TRUE

  Reader Discussion Questions

  1. Orson Welles (Head Games, Toros & Torsos) returns in this novel and at much greater prominence. If you know the other Lassiter novels featuring Orson, did this one change your attitudes about Welles in any way? If so, for better or worse?

  2. Did you bring any notions about Orson, the artist or man, to this novel? If so, did your opinion about him harden or soften because of The Great Pretender?

  3. What about the younger Orson Welles do you think so strongly draws Hector to the budding actor/director?

  4. Orson and Ernest Hemingway are Hector’s primary historical sidekicks across the series. Do you see any significant similarities between Orson and Ernest? What are their key differences?

  5. This is the first Hector Lassiter novel to incorporate elements of the supernatural. How do you feel about that mild shift in direction?

  6. The Spear of Destiny or Holy Lance was indeed coveted by Hitler and the Thule Society. Do you posit any belief in the spear’s story and alleged power?

  7. What do you make of key Nazis’ obsession with the supernatural and their noted quest for certain religious artifacts?

  8. Did you recognize a certain real-life supernatural aficionado and Nazi inspiration near the novel’s climax?

  9. Hector and Orson come to a shared decision about any further questing after the Spear of Destiny under the streets of Vienna. Do you agree with their handling of the problem of the spear?

  10. The next Hector Lassiter novel, Roll the Credits, continues to explore the world of cinema and the rise of Nazism. What are your hopes or expectations for that novel?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Craig McDonald is an award-winning author and journalist. The Hector Lassiter series has been published to international acclaim in numerous languages. McDonald’s debut novel was nominated for Edgar, Anthony and Gumshoe awards in the U.S. and the 2011 Sélection du prix polar Saint-Maur en Poche in France.

  The Lassiter series has been enthusiastically endorsed by a who’s who of crime fiction authors including: Michael Connelly, Laura Lippmann, Daniel Woodrell, James Crumley, James Sallis, Diana Gabaldon, and Ken Bruen, among many others.

  Craig McDonald is also the author of two highly praised non-fiction volumes on the subject of mystery and crime fiction writing, Art in the Blood and Rogue Males, nominated for the Macavity Award.

  To learn more about Craig, visit www.craigmcdonaldbooks.com and www.betimesbooks.com

  Follow Craig McDonald on Twitter @HECTORLASSITER https://www.facebook.com/craigmcdonaldnovelist