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

by Craig McDonald

  “A valuable asset, indeed then,” Nash said. “Too valuable to lose. The newspaper, I mean. This Rogers? He’s missing long?”

  “A few days,” Hoyt said. “Rogers’ house is abandoned. I take it as another bad sign.”

  “I know some newspaper folk back in Miami,” Nash said. “Our kind of newspaper people, if you get my drift. Malleable, that is to say. I’ll get one or two down here. We’ll get our newspaper up and running again, Rogers, or no. Agreed?”

  Grunts all around.

  Nash slapped a palm on the table. “Righty-o, then!”

  Mayor Winch said, “Word from my sources is the big man, Cornelius, has been scarce for several days, too.” The mayor’s brow furrowed. “Should I be worried, Nash?” The mayor pulled out a Cuban cigar. He offered another to Nash who accepted. “I ask,” the mayor said, leaning forward to light Nash’s cigar, “because Astor strikes me as reluctant to get too directly involved with us.”

  Nash took his time getting his cigar to draw, slowly turning it and sucking in his cheeks. It was maybe too much time, Hoyt thought. Finally, puffing smoke, Nash said, “You deal with me because Mr. Astor doesn’t fancy himself anything more or less than a businessman. He likes to keep his hands clean. Mr. Astor doesn’t face up to the fact that men like us, right here, are the ones who truly make things happen. We’re the ones who really get things done. Men who aren’t afraid to dirty their hands.”

  “Which doesn’t answer the question of where Mr. Astor has gotten off to,” the mayor said.

  “Well, Mr. Astor fancies himself a lady’s man, too,” Nash said, smiling wickedly. “He’s found himself some pretty young Cuban cooze. He’s drifted north with that bimbo. Traveling on his boat, Jolly Sally, to spend some time with her. Our only concern about that, gentlemen, should be that randy old codger doesn’t have a stroke or heart attack in the saddle, so to speak. Would be very bad to have him found dead, in flagrante delicto, right?”

  Denton Stokes, the real estate agent, said, “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Dead with a boner,” Sheriff Hoyt said. “At least in this context. Why do I sense you’re holding something back, Nash?”

  Nash looked up sharply. “Explain yourself. I don’t approve of your tone.”

  The cop lit a Lucky Strike. “That old bastard Astor—based on things the mayor and Dent have said—strikes me as squirrelly.”

  “It’s no revelation that the rich are often eccentric,” Nash said, checking his fingernails.

  “Eccentric ain’t the same as crazy,” Hoyt said. “Stakes are too high for us to have some senile codger in the mix. What if, in some horny throes, that daffy bastard gifts his Cuban whore with a critical Whitehead Street parcel or two? What happens to Buena Stella, then?”

  The mayor gestured at Nash with a cigar. “Blunter than I’d have put it, but then Mel’s like that—direct, that is. That said, Mel speaks to a point of real concern we all share. The other night, in the hotel lounge, Cornelius struck me as, oh, let’s call it a tad foggy.”

  “Foggy,” Nash furrowed his brow. “Foggy?”

  “Senile,” Stokes said. “You know, dodgy.”

  “Point is,” Mayor Winch said, “you’re our man, Nash. The one we deal with, the one we see. The one we can confer with directly. And candidly. Presumably, you have contact with Mr. Astor’s other backers back east. You have his proxy, so to speak.”

  “Don’t beat around the bush,” Nash said. “What are you asking?”

  Sheriff Hoyt leaned forward, eyes drilling into Nash. “The question is, if Cornelius Astor died tomorrow, if his ticker broke while sticking it to his Cuban slut, or maybe if he just fell off his goddamn boat and was lost at sea, would life go on so far as we care? Would it queer our pitch in any way?”

  Nash was evasive, eyes searching faces. “The short answer, under normal circumstances, would be no.”

  “That should be the only answer we need,” Sheriff Hoyt said with a feral smile. He said, “Confession time, then. Rest of us convened early. Before you arrived, we reached an agreement, Nash.”

  Nash shifted in his chair, frowning. “What kind of agreement?”

  Mayor Winch ground out his cigar. “Staying with our blunt talk, Mel is going to eliminate Astor. Astor is unstable. Old man is probably sliding into dementia. We have too much at stake to let him maintain a continuing role in this. Mel will see to Astor. You’re going to see that Lassiter is taken care of. Then we’re going to deal with just you on Buena Stella, here on out. We’ll sweeten the pot for you out of Astor’s end.”

  Nash wet his lips. “Perhaps you didn’t hear me,” he said. “I said Mr. Astor’s needed participation would be expendable under normal circumstances. We no longer enjoy those happy circumstances.”

  The mayor frowned. “What about these circumstances makes me think you think things aren’t normal now?”

  Nash fidgeted with his cigar, unable to make eye contact. “I’d hoped to have a better handle on things before we had this discussion.”

  “I’m not liking the sound of this at all,” the mayor said.

  “There’s been a complication,” Nash said carefully.

  The real estate agent leaned forward, brows furrowed. “What kind of complication?”

  “Mr. Astor is a populist. Unbeknownst to me, this past Wednesday, Mr. Astor held a public auction. All of the lots in the Whitehead Street project are now under option by nearly six dozen new parties.”

  Hoyt looked on the verge of suffering his own stroke. “Astor fucking sold our land?”

  Nash bowed his head. “That’s essentially right.”

  The other men leaped back as Hoyt flipped over the table and hurled himself at Nash, getting his hands around the man’s throat. The mayor recovered first. He pulled out a gun and pushed it up hard behind the sheriff’s ear. “Stand down, Mel. Do it now, goddamn it, or so help me I’ll lay you out cold!”

  Seething, the sheriff threw Nash across the broken table. Hoyt snarled, “This fucker has sold us out! Shoot him!”

  Nash was gripping his side, trying to get his breath. “I didn’t know until my secretary processed all the paperwork and gave me carbons this morning. The options have been filed and notarized. This all happened before I knew about it to try and stop it.”

  “So what do we do now?” The mayor kicked over a chair. “What the fuck do we do?”

  Nash struggled to his feet. “I have a notion about that. We buy out the investors. Pay ’em back their money and a little extra to sweeten the pot.”

  Stokes shook his head. “Against what they stand to make once we build that resort? They’d be crazy to sell.”

  “That’s just it,” Nash said, rubbing his side. “We cancel Buena Stella. We’ll give these new owners some nonsense about the coral bed and our engineers’ insisting it can’t support structures of the height we envision. Those parcels have sat largely dormant since the twenty-three fire. Even with Florida’s land boom, they weren’t moving until Astor came in with his plan for Buena Stella. If those plans are canceled, these new investors will see the writing on the wall. They’ll see that their new property will just sit there again, but now they’ll be the ones paying the taxes on it with no income from the other direction. They’ll sell, for certain. We pay some money now to buy up that land, get it entirely under our thumbs knowing we’ll make it back, and much more, on the back end. That’s our solution.”

  Hoyt was flexing his hands, wanting to hit something. “Back end?”

  “When we have the properties secured under our exclusive ownership, we simply announce we’re pushing ahead with Buena Stella, after all,” Nash said. “Folks back east, the real money men, the fat-cat sports fishermen who’ll pay us to live in that resort, the ones who’ll underwrite construction, won’t have to know any of this has happened.”

  “I don’t like it anymore than you fellas,” the mayor said. “But I don’t see another way. We’ll have to start consolidating resources, liquidating assets, get
ting the cash together. It’ll be tight short-term, but once we get moving, we can have our own auctions, maybe. Infuse some moneys that way.” The mayor chewed his lip. “Hell, we’ll just dip into the city coffers to help cover losses in the meantime.”

  “See, this kind of shit is just what I feared with that crazy old man,” Hoyt said. “Christ knows what he’s doing right now, as we sit here jawing. All of which means, now more than ever, Astor has to be taken out. Are we at least agreed on that much?”

  Nash rubbed his stomach. He nodded with the other men, said, “I’m forced to concur.”

  Sheriff Hoyt said, “Where is Astor? Where do I find this geezer and his boat?”

  “He’s returning to Key West shortly,” Nash said.

  “Good,” Hoyt said. “And just to see there are no more screw ups, and to give you a bigger stake in a happy outcome of all this, you’re the one that’s going to kill Lassiter, Nash. I don’t want you farming that hit out. I want a blood bond between us, to keep me thinking you’re to be trusted. Knowing you’ve got some to lose, something more than money? Now that’s what I call peace of mind. So you kill Lassiter, personally, Nash. Agreed?”

  “I hear you,” Nash said, looking a little sick.

  30

  Brinke lay naked on the deck of the boat, sunning. Hector had pulled the craft a ways out to sea so nobody could just stumble upon them as they made love in the open air, or as Brinke baked herself naked in the morning sun. Brinke had a record on: “Why Did I Kiss that Girl?” Watching her from the flying bridge, Hector checked his watch. “Figure we have about two hours before Beau comes looking for us,” he called down to her.

  Brinke nodded. Because of her black sunglasses—all she had on other than her rings—Hector couldn’t really read her expression. “I’m pretty torn, Hec,” she said, rising to turn down the music. She stretched back out on the deck and smoothed on some more suntan lotion, glistening and brown in the sun. “Part of me wants to get back to our Key, to straighten things out there and make those bastards pay for what they did to Rose and all the others.”

  Hector smiled, aroused watching her. “And the other part of you?”

  “The other part of me wants to live naked on his boat until I’m brown as a wallet and the money and the rum run out.”

  “I frankly like most of the last option better,” Hector said.

  “Me too, but the guilt about all the other is starting to settle in,” Brinke said.

  “Guess it’s a good thing we head back tonight, then,” he said. Hector climbed down the ladder and then slid off the cabin roof onto the deck. He slipped off his shirt and fetched a couple of cold beers. He opened them and then lay on the deck next to Brinke. Hector said, “What guilt, by the way? Guilt about not being back on the Key while it burns down around us?”

  Brinke shook her head. “Guilt about this shakedown of Beau’s, actually. This scam we’re a party to. All these soon-to-be-swindled yacht owners.”

  Hector folded his hands behind his head and crossed his legs at the ankles. “You’ve seen the boats we’re bringing in. They’re rich men’s toys. And likely as not, these boats are on the block because the owners already have next year’s model on order. Beau’s so-called victims probably aren’t hurting.”

  “I suppose,” Brinke said, sipping her beer. She stroked his leg with her calf. “And like I said, I hate to end this decadent idyll.” She looked around them. “Maybe I should have bought a houseboat for us instead of that cottage.”

  “It is harder to strike at people lost out on the Gulf somewhere,” Hector said.

  “And there’s no shrubbery to hide murder weapons inside,” Brinke said. “Can’t be ambushed on a boat. Yep, would have been perfect,” she said.

  “At least until hurricane season,” Hector said. “Houseboats are great for lake or river living, but not here on the Gulf. The storms down this way are downright personal. September of the year I was born, across that way to Galveston? Hell of a hurricane.” He shrugged, said, “Anyway…”

  “Well, we need a boat of our own, Hec. The past couple of days have convinced me. I want to explore every Key. I want to get down to the Dry Tortugas. Want to tour Fort Jefferson. See where they held that doctor who treated John Wilkes Booth.” She rolled over on her side and propped her head on her hand. “And I need to get back over to Cuba. Really need to soak up more atmosphere for my novel. I’m running too much on imagination, this book. Need to see some of the seedy places I couldn’t venture into without a strapping, Colt-toting escort.”

  “Maybe next weekend,” Hector said, feeling drowsy from the sun. “Beau swears he’ll have turned Key West upside down by then. He’ll have run out all the rats.”

  “I’m still trying to figure out how that can be,” she said. “Particularly without bankrupting all his investors.”

  “I pressed Beau again for more explanation,” Hector said. “Beau swears he’ll lay it out for us when we get back home.”

  “Yeah, home.” Brinke reached over and stroked his chest. “Part of me feels like I should have been reading the papers or listening to the radio to see what’s been happening since we left there. But I’m playing ostrich, instead, I guess. I used to live for this intrigue. Striving to mount some clandestine crusade to set something or other right. Then you walked into that church. We made those vows in that same place we made love. Now I just want to loaf and write and eat and drink and keep making love with you. That’s all. That’s all I want, all I want to do. Forever.”

  “In that order? Sex comes last? That could be a problem.”

  “I mean it, Hec. I don’t want to do this other anymore, the sleuthing I mean. Or I don’t think I do. Maybe I’m deluding myself with all this. You know, wanting a house, being a wife and maybe having a child with you. Maybe I’m running some kind of confidence game on myself with all that.” She sighed. “Yet it doesn’t feel that way to me, not at all.”

  “You started it up again here, the sleuthing, if you’ll recall.”

  “Right,” Brinke said. “So I’m stopping it.”

  “Really?”

  “I really do mean it. Time to invent my fiction again, like I did when I started.”

  “Great. Then let’s close cases when we get back to our Key. We’ll let Beau do his thing, and we’ll bow out. Live that quiet life until they throw dirt over us.”

  “You can really do that, Hec? Just be a quiet, solid citizen? You can leave the rest just to the written page?” Brinke sounded dubious.

  Hector said, “It’s never been my way, this thing you do. It’s been your life and the fuel for your fiction, honey. If it hadn’t been for you and Gertrude putting boots to my backside, I’d never have poked my nose into that bloody affair in Paris last February. I still rue doing that and have the scars crisscrossing my back to prove it. And Molly? Well, Jesus Christ. But for the fresh wounds on my back about this time last year, maybe she’d be alive still.” He sighed. “So, yes, let’s just be like the rest. Let’s be stay-at-home types. Lazing during the afternoon heat. Let’s leave the cops’ sorry work to the cops.”

  Brinke said, “I bet it’s cold in Paris tonight.” She smiled. “Or I guess it’s mid-afternoon there.”

  “But probably still cold enough,” Hector agreed. “Probably raining, too. Or sleeting.”

  Brinke suddenly pressed her palm to Hector’s cheek. She turned his face toward hers. Her coal black eyes searched his pale blue. “Something I really should have told you long before this. I don’t think I can have children, Hector. It might be dangerous to even try. It scares me to even contemplate rolling those dice. I guess I’m a coward that way. Too attached to myself.” She pressed her forehead to his. “I know it’s late to be admitting this. Selfishly late. But it’s the way things are. Does that matter to you? Not having children of our own, I mean? Because, if it does, I do understand. I’ll let you go if so, and you can find—”

  He pressed his fingers to her lips. He said, “The two of us is plenty.�
�

  “We could adopt, Hec.”

  “If you want to, sure. But all I need is you, Brinke.”

  “Really?”

  “Truly,” Hector said. “I swear it’s so, darlin’.”

  31

  Beau surprised them with his announcement they would be returning to Key West in one of the boats he’d swindled from its owner.

  “I’m holding onto this sucker,” Beau said, pointing at a small, but opulently appointed yacht christened “Jolly Sally.”

  “I don’t remember this one having that name,” Brinke said.

  “Well, of course given events here, terms of purchase and what not, it had to have a new name,” Beau said.

  Hector said, “Isn’t it bad luck, renaming a boat?”

  Beau waved a hand. “No room for worry. Couldn’t keep it without a new name. So this is it. Stop trying to borrow trouble, Mase. Worry is a waste of the imagination. Now get in there and steer. I’m going to watch you play pilot. Have to pick up some of these seafaring skills to use my new boat. Going to be useful for visits with you two living across the Gulf.”

  Hector checked the sky. It was black out there, and the storm front was rolling their way. “We really better get underway, pronto. Looks like we’ll be racing a hell of a storm to dock in Key West.”

  “Thought it was looking ominous,” Brinke agreed. “Can smell the rain on the wind.” Hector’s gaze lingered on Brinke. It was strange to see her in clothes. It felt strange to him to be wearing clothes and to feel long pants against his legs, their cuffs brushing his ankles. He’d been naked or in shorts since the wedding. Brinke was right—he was in danger of going native. Tan lines were a memory and Hector’s hair had faded closer to auburn than it’s usual chestnut.

  Beau helped him cast off ropes, then Hector backed her out and idled away from the yacht club. The boating facility was dark now, empty again. A few of Beau’s cronies had made off with some of the fixtures to pawn or sell for salvage.