Forever’s Just Pretend: A Hector Lassiter novel (Hector Lassiter series Book 2)

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Forever’s Just Pretend: A Hector Lassiter novel (Hector Lassiter series Book 2) Page 11

by Craig McDonald


  23

  First, Hector replaced the blown fuse. Then he took the electrical cord, a length he’d cut from a cheap lamp bought at the hardware store, and shoved it into the metal tube. He closed over both ends with electrical tape to seal the cord inside.

  Hector slipped on a striped, long sleeve shirt and rolled the sleeves up to the elbows. As he was stepping into sandals, Brinke returned, dressed in shorts and a fisherman’s shirt and sandals. She held the baseball bat in her left hand, clutching to the grip with a handkerchief. Hector took the bat and said, “You going to be okay for five minutes or so? With that stiff still being on the porch, I mean?”

  “He’s past being of consequence,” Brinke said. “And I’ve got my roscoe, remember? You pitch that pipe in the ocean, and I’ll go find a phone. I’ll call the cops.”

  Hector said, “I think I’ll make that phone call, darling. With luck, I might draw our best man. Be better if we can see to it that Dix is the top cop on the scene. If he’s the man in charge to see this thing gets handled properly, it’ll go much smoother for us.”

  Brinke nodded. “Give me that pipe, then. I’ll destroy that evidence while you scare up Dixon.”

  Hector nodded, stepping out onto the damp porch. It was still raining, though hardly more than a warm drizzle now. Hector knelt down next to the dead man and arranged the bat in the man’s still stiff right hand, the one that had gripped the electrified metal pole. Hector rose and looked the scene over. “Is this convincing?”

  “Is to me,” Brinke said. “Some wedding night, huh?”

  “It’s far from over now,” Hector said. “After we wrap this up with the cops, we still need to see Beau. Have to get him caught up on events tonight.”

  ***

  As they entered the hotel, Brinke snagged Hector’s sleeve and nodded at the lounge off the lobby. Beau held court at a round table, entertaining several men. Suits and ties, all around. Hector recognized two of the men, and one of those was the salesman from Last Key Realty.

  Brinke squeezed Hector’s arm. “That man, the one with the thick glasses, I know him from the newspapers. He’s the mayor, Winch Mills. What in God’s name is your grandfather up to?”

  “Nothing up and up,” Hector said. “That tall man there next to the mayor? That’s Barnaby Nash, one of Beau’s old partners in the grift. Barn’ specializes in Big Store cons. I’ve never liked him. Never trusted him. Always figured he’ll eventually screw Beau.”

  Brinke reached out and turned his face toward hers. “Big Store? What’s that mean?”

  “Very large, elaborate and well-paying confidence games,” Hector said. “The most dangerous kind in that they’re so fragile and intricate. But when they come off, they’re very lucrative. Also nearly always devastating to the mark.”

  “Well, it’s a cinch we can’t crash that party,” Brinke said. She steered Hector toward the front desk. “Guess it’s best you leave Beau a carefully couched letter.”

  “Right,” Hector said. He asked the clerk for a pen and paper.

  “And then we head home, I guess,” Brinke said. She rubbed his back. “Confess I’m a bit wired after this dead man on our porch. My brain keeps turning over what might have happened but for me insisting you carry me into the house. I’m pretty edgy. And the cops are probably still all over our place. I hate to go home before they haul away the corpse on our stoop.”

  “Then we’ll go to Captain Tony’s,” Hector said. “We’ll have us a couple of deep drinks. Maybe Beau can catch up to us there. Doubt any of Beau’s new friends will be dropping by that place for a nightcap. Not dressed as they are. He might even risk seeing us in public at this hour.”

  “Sounds great,” Brinke said. She glanced back into the lounge. “Everyone’s smiling and laughing, Hec.”

  “For now they are, sure. Few nights from now, only one who’ll likely be laughing will be Beau.”

  “Golly, I sure hope that’s true,” Brinke said. She slipped her arm through his. “Let’s take the air.”

  ***

  They waited and drank until past midnight, but Beau didn’t show. Fairly drunk, Brinke hectored Hector into a moonlight swim. As they found their way in the dark back to their pile of clothes, Brinke, naked and slick from the sea, pulled Hector down on the sand and mounted him. Still drunk and slurring a little, searching his eyes, she said, “We need to be more careful now. You shouldn’t come inside me this time.”

  “Will do,” Hector said, hearing his drunkenness in his own voice. With all the liquor, he was a while climaxing. When he did, they were both so caught up in the moment Hector forgot to pull out.

  Later, with her fingers still knotted in the hair at the nape of his neck, after another apology from Hector for his recklessness, Brinke said, “Hush. It’s probably fine.” She kissed him and said, “I so love our life here together. I want it like this forever.”

  Hector said, “You said forever is pretend.”

  Smiling, lips to his lips, Brinke said, “I’ve been wrong once or twice.”

  24

  It was a dark cool room, thick with cigarette smoke and the smell of hops. Mel Hoyt spat tobacco into an old coffee tin. “This goddamn Lassiter and his lying goddamn mouth. I don’t know what Lassiter did, but a fucking young man like Karl Rush does not have a fucking heart attack.”

  Mayor Winch Mills said, “What else to say about that now? Doc Rourke says it could also have been electrocution. Maybe from the lightning during last night’s rain, though I didn’t hear any thunder myself.”

  “Lookit,” Denton Stokes, the realtor from Last Key, said, “it’d be ideal to have the Devlin property, but it’s a near-corner lot. We can manipulate the footprint to exclude Devlin’s parcel. Maybe put something undesirable up against her property line, just temporarily, to leverage a sale later. What I’m saying is, we don’t have to change our plans, not much, by excluding her lot. We took our shot, and now it’s too risky to try again against Devlin.”

  The sheriff made a face. “Now there you see! That’s another goddamn thing. That name Devlin. She told me they were already married. Maybe we could get ’em on a morals beef.”

  Mayor Mills waved a fat hand. “On this Gomorrah of an island? Dream on, Mel. This is Key West, not Boston. ’Sides, according to the papers, those two are legal now.”

  “I was there,” said Barnaby Nash. “Got roped into fill out the wedding crowd. They’re all married up now, nice and square.”

  “She’s one thing,” Sheriff Hoyt said. “Lassiter is something else again. I’m serving notice on you all now, that bastard is trouble for us.”

  Barnaby Nash cut off the end of a cigar and struck a match. “Why do you say that?”

  “He’s the type,” Hoyt said. “I can tell. You can see it in that book he wrote. And the stuff my guy learned about Lassiter and what he did over in Europe? I’m telling you all, he can queer this for us and for sure. We need to shut his business down, and I mean yesterday.”

  “You tried yesterday,” the mayor said.

  Barnaby Nash blew a smoke ring. “Let me see to Lassiter. I’ll assess his threat. Hell, I’ve got more to lose than any of you at this point. If I think he can queer our pitch, I’ll deal with Lassiter, clean and fast. And I swear I won’t deploy any gimps or screw-ups with bad tickers.”

  “You best watch your mouth,” the sheriff said, pointing a finger at Nash. “And what of the woman? What of this Devlin? Or, now I guess, Mrs. Lassiter? We really going to cede that property?”

  “It was our own fault,” Stokes, the real estate agent, said. “It was our own inattentiveness that cost us that parcel. Face it, Devlin slid in and bought that house out from under our noses with the help of goddamn Rose. But that’s done. I say we leave her be. Best take Rush’s death as an omen. ’Ticularly in case it was some kind of act of God.”

  The mayor snorted. “What the hell, Dent, you changing your way of living now? You gone off and found religion this late in life?”

  “I’m
just saying we took our shot and something very screwy happened,” Stokes said. “Something went really haywire. So I say that as regards the Devlin parcel, we cut our losses.”

  “Hell with that,” Sheriff Hoyt said. “I’m thinking on the matter of her some more. I’m thinking hard on the issue of that leggy bitch.”

  25

  Hector overslept and consequently broke his early morning writing routine. He awakened alone in bed. The sheets were kicked off and his head hurt from a mild hangover. Hector figured he must have been fairly drunk. Hell, he’d even slept right on through the clarion, morning screams of the island’s fighting cocks.

  He heard the screen door slam, then, a few minutes later, he smelled coffee. Hector heard cupboards open and close. When it came to noise, rusting hinges from all the salt water were a universal issue on the island. Brinke slipped into the bedroom with a serving tray. She lifted her own coffee cup and a dish containing a couple of chocolate-filled croissants and sat them on the table along her side of the bed. She passed the tray to Hector. “The rest is all yours. Have the morning papers, too. You look like hell, by the by.”

  “Might have been better to let me escort you on your shopping trip, particularly given events,” Hector said. “Still, this might be the best breakfast ever.”

  Brinke shrugged off her purse. She reached in, pulled out her Navy Colt and slipped it under her pillow. “I can usually handle myself. You know that.” Her dark eyes narrowed playfully. “You’re aren’t going to be the hovering kind of husband, are you, Hec?”

  Hector held up a hand, “Sorry.” Brinke pulled folded up newspapers from her purse and threw them at the foot of the bed. As Hector settled in with his coffee and croissants, Brinke shucked off her shorts and shirt. She slid naked between the sheets, plumped her pillow, and put on her reading glasses. She began pouring over the paper between bites of her pastry and sips of coffee. She groaned. “Oh, God, can you believe this?”

  She read aloud:

  Police Doubt Dead Man

  Is Key West Clubber

  By Mike Rogers

  Staff Writer

  Sheriff Melvin Hoyt is contradicting other sources within his department regarding the mysterious death of a man last night and that man’s possible ties to the crime wave attributed to the so-called “Key West Clubber.”

  Karl Dale Rush, 28, of Miami, was found dead on the porch of a private residence on Green Street at eight p.m. Wednesday night.

  Rush was found sprawled on his back, a baseball bat clutched in his right hand.

  Coroner Paul Rourke said Rush apparently died of cardiac arrest, though the coroner allowed, “Mr. Rush’s age argues against such a cause of death.”

  Rourke also noted the state of Rush’s body might also indicate the man had suffered exposure to a severe electrical charge. “It was raining which would have enhanced conductivity,” Dr. Rourke said. “It could have been an isolated lightning strike.”

  Brinke rolled her eyes. Hector sipped some more coffee, said, “So far so good, as far as I’m concerned. Better to let the bastard’s death be perceived as an act of God.”

  “That’s not the most annoying part,” Brinke said. “It goes on to say Hoyt’s more or less writing off Rush’s connection to the Clubber crimes. The sheriff claims he has reason to believe Rush is at best a copycat.”

  “That’s certainly bad news for this island’s women,” Hector said. “That means the bastard is trying to keep his options open. After the way the arsons and rapes have been coupled by the cops and the press, they can’t afford to retire their bogeyman.”

  Brinke scowled. “Who is ‘they’ to your mind?”

  “I do have a theory about that,” Hector said. “I have this notion elected officials, realtors and that reporter are in cahoots, and I mean down deep and dirty. Maybe not even above killing to realize their aims.”

  “Okay,” Brinke said. “In cahoots to what end?”

  “Gelt. Bloody money from shady land development.”

  “I’ll confess now I’ve had similar thoughts,” Brinke said. “And, I guess, given his guests the other night at his hotel, so clearly does Beau.”

  “Seems so,” Hector agreed.

  “Three of us deducing the same thing breeds confidence, in terms of the rightness of our conclusions,” Brinke said. “But I don’t like Jack Dixon’s prospects for holding onto his job.” She hefted the second newspaper. “Not after his quotes given to this competing rag. Dixon directly contradicts his crooked boss in this article. That’s salutary, but it’s not at all politic.”

  “That said, Jack should be runnin’ the show,” Hector said. “He should be sheriff. Let’s make a note of when the next election for county sheriff is. I’m no political animal, darlin’, but even I’d campaign for Dix.”

  “We really need to knuckle down, Hec,” Brinke said. “Beau’s leaving us in the dust.”

  “We’ve had other tasks,” Hector said. “Not to mention taking that bastard out last night on our porch.”

  “Well, I thought that last was some kind of accomplishment until I read this article Rogers has put out there,” Brinke said. “I was looking forward to quitting looking over my shoulder. But now? Now I think there’s still a killer out there, just like you said.”

  “They won’t try anything here again, not right at our place anyway,” Hector said. “I don’t care how far the fix is in. Having Rush turn up toes on our stoop, and then having something else happen at our home? It’s too much to explain away, even with the local law and newsman working hand-in-glove.”

  “So my question stands, darling. What next, Hector?”

  “It is a might tricky,” he said. “We don’t want to do anything that could ball up Beau’s gambit, whatever the hell that might be. Wish he’d let us in at least enough to know where not to tap around.”

  “But he won’t, and so here we sit, cooling our heels,” Brinke said.

  Hector drained his coffee and reached for his cigarettes. “Know what I really don’t like? That reporter buddy of yours, Rogers. As long as he’s out there to color and twist the facts to push Hoyt’s and the town fathers’ line and lies, we’re just going to keep banging our heads against a wall. Beau is right, darlin’. Perception is reality.”

  Brinke thought about that. “The reporter’s a slimy little worm, don’t get me wrong. But at bottom, Rogers is pretty harmless. He’s no killer.”

  “He certainly is a killer of the truth,” Hector said. “That fragile thing he’s murdering brazenly. Since he’s a journalist, it’s so much more the atrocity.”

  “What do you propose, then?”

  “Rogers is the voice of record, bought and paid for,” he said. “This other newspaper, the one Dix is quoted in, it seems okay?”

  “Seems independent, if that’s what you mean,” Brinke said.

  “Great. Get yourself a contact point for the editor of that other rag.”

  Hector slid out of bed, heading toward the bathroom. “I’m gonna grab a shower, then go see about getting to know this scribe Rogers, the bought-out son of a bitch. It’s past time to shut that man’s business down.”

  Brinke slid into the shower with Hector. “You’re not going to really hurt the poor wretch are you, Hec? Not going to rough him up too much? I loathe him, too, but he’s a milquetoast.”

  Hector slathered soap on Brinke’s bronzed back. “Won’t hit him with my fists, if that’s what you mean. And I’m certainly not going to actually kill him. You should probably have some coffee at the ready for when I get back, though. This is going to take some drinks, and I do not want another hangover tomorrow.”

  Brinke took the cake of soap from Hector and went to work on his scarred back. It was her first good look at them and the pattern of wounds made her shudder. It might have been her, if the world had turned differently. Still, she said, “This wifey thing is just not going to stand.”

  Hector rubbed water from his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “This i
mplied scenario that Brinke sits home and brews coffee while Hector goes about his nefarious drunken business and old Beau Stryder does whatever it is Beau Stryder does.”

  “I didn’t mean to make you feel like a prop,” Hector said. “I’m just groping for an angle here, and you’re already known to that reporter. You know he’s probably still bitter you snuck out on him. Son of a bitch is probably nursing a grudge.”

  “Maybe. And, anyway, I want to go at Hoyt,” Brinke said.

  Hector bit his lip. That prospect he didn’t like at all. He said, “Define go at Hoyt.”

  “I’d just talk to him, as a concerned citizen,” Brinke said. “Brace him, but subtly. I’d engage him in the guise of a woman very scared because a neighbor who lived two-doors-down and who looked very much like me got herself assaulted and killed a couple of nights before a baseball bat-toting stranger turned up dead on my front porch.”

  “I don’t like the notion of you alone with that bastard,” Hector said. “It’s crazy.”

  Brinke was adamant. “And that’s too bad. You said it yourself: the risks are too high for them to come back at us directly. And I’ll call at his office during business hours. I’ll hardly be alone with Hoyt. Chances are, your new best friend Dix will even be there.”

  26

  Mike Rogers was sufficiently drunk that Hector could finally nurse his own liquor.

  After five or six tequila shots, Rogers was convinced Hector was his spiritual brother. Playing to that notion, Hector wrapped an arm around Rogers’s shoulders. He said, “Mikey, you can pay a bunch of money, trying to finesse one of those women at the bar into your bed, or you can cut to the chase, pay much less gelt and get a far better return on your investment from what we’ll call a carnal professional. You simply need to embrace the concept of fair exchange of trade, buddy. You can put up a good deal less money than those women at the bar will cost you in the long run and get a little professionalism in the proposition.”

 

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