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

by Craig McDonald

  Two boats remained in slips, the one Hector and Brinke had spent the day on and a slightly larger one. Hector said, “What of those two yachts?”

  “Gone in an hour or two,” Beau said, smiling. “Got plans for those boats.”

  “Wonder what will become of the club,” Brinke said, watching the abandoned yacht club recede from them. “It is a beautiful place.”

  “It’ll resume decay, likely,” Beau said. “Posh as it is—was—it was a damn bad place to build a club like that. On Key West, it might well have thrived. But on that Key? No money and nothing to bring money there.”

  “Always with the money,” Brinke said.

  “Always,” Beau said, as if it should be obvious.

  Brinke thought about that, then said, “I don’t think I can wait until we get back to Key West, Beau. I want to know what’s going on with you and real estate back there. What’s the rest of the plan?”

  Beau went below and returned with a champagne bucket and some glasses. As he stepped onto the deck, the rain kicked up. Ducking low, he slid back into the cabin. Hector climbed down from the flying bridge to steer from inside the cabin until the storm subsided.

  Brinke was already turning on lights in the cabin. She grabbed a blanket and sat down on one of the benches, wrapping up in the throw. Beau handed Brinke a champagne flute and then closed the door to the deck, shutting out the thrashing rain. He poured champagne for Hector and for himself, then Beau settled in beside Hector to watch his grandson pilot the boat through the storm.

  “Children, here’s the story on those seventy plats,” Beau said. “I picked up first options, then before I had to pay a cent on those parcels, my people, led by Barnaby Nash, went out and recruited those investors who became your wedding party. They put up payments that essentially covered my payments for the plats.”

  “Right, so you said,” Brinke said. “But now they own that land and you don’t. I can’t see how they don’t get soaked, here.”

  Beau smiled and held up a hand. “You’re getting too far ahead. Back up a second. The question to ask, is why would seventy people rush to buy those parcels from me? Parcels that have sat vacant and unpurchased since the 1923 fire. Why want ’em now?”

  “Okay,” Brinke said, “pretend I just put that very question to you. What made that land suddenly so attractive?”

  “Buena Stella,” the old man said. “That’s the thing that turned the tide on that land.”

  Hector said, “And who, or what, is Buena Stella?”

  “Five years back, in Galveston Bay, they built ’em a beautiful and swanky resort area,” Beau said, “big hotel and surrounding shops and apartments. I watched that sucker go up. Watched the excitement and the domino development effect it had on that portion of the Bay. And it’s a beautiful piece of architecture. Stunning. Set my mind to working all kinds of ways, watching that unfold.” Beau paused. “And then a notion occurred to me. What happens to all the renderings? The schematics? Blueprints? Not just elevation drawings, but the wiring and plumbing schematics, all the detail work? Is it just filed away in some county office and forgotten? Stuck in some architects’ portfolios, pieces and parts?”

  “You bought up all the blueprints,” Hector said, “didn’t you?”

  “For a song,” Beau said. “Then I found myself someone to slightly doctor ’em. To change that Galveston resort’s name to Buena Stella on all the paperwork and renderings. Been holding ’em in reserve for just the right opportunity.”

  Brinke said, “So you used these drawings to hook the people back in Key West, using these very real blueprints that look like a million dollars.”

  “Two million, actually,” Beau said. “But yes, I used them to hook and then to land those crooked city fathers, to get me some breaks up front on those seventy parcels and to sway them, and those Key West investors who now hold options on the land.”

  “So how do these investors get their money back?” Brinke sipped her champagne, then held the glass up for a refill. “How do they get that money back, plus interest, as you promised?”

  Beau shoved the bottle back in the ice bucket, then sat down and tipped his chair back, swiveling around to face Brinke. “Here’s where I address Mase’s earlier and frankly unworthy concerns about whether I’m spreadin’ myself too thin.”

  Hector glanced over. “Pray, tell.” The boat was beginning to pitch as the sea roughened.

  Beau lit a cigar. “My activities here make me necessarily absent back on Bone Key. My being missing, by now, has caused consternation. Particularly since, by this time, the city fathers will have learned the land that Buena Stella will sit on is now under the control of seventy or so members of the Bone Key’s unwashed masses.”

  Brinke’s brow furrowed. “Won’t that make those city fathers at least a little bit angry at you, Beau?”

  “They’ll be murderous, sweetie,” Beau smiled. “Particularly since our last night together back there—me and the Key West Cabal, as I call ’em—that last night out with them, I acted decidedly non compos mentis.”

  “So how does that play out?” Brinke asked. “I mean your feigned senility and the fact that all that land the cabal has been killing to make available is now out from under their thumbs?”

  “Firstly, I have a confederate among the vipers,” Beau said.

  Hector winced. “Holy Christ, not Barnaby Nash? Please say it isn’t him, Pap.”

  Beau scowled at Hector. “Mr. Nash, Brinke, by now will have confirmed for the Cabal that I’m slipping. And, consequently, he will have sold me down the river.”

  “Sold you out how, exactly?” Brinke licked her lips and stretched an arm across the back of the cabin window to steady herself against the boat’s roll. “You really think they’ll be murderous?”

  “They will want me dead, no question of that,” Beau said. “To recover Buena Stella, the Key West Cabal is going to have to pony up serious cash to buy out those seventy options.”

  Brinke said, “And why would those seventy investors sell? I mean, why should they do that for anything less than a small fortune?”

  Beau said, “Barnaby and our confederates have quietly gone to those investors in advance of the cabal’s word of my dementia and informed them my deteriorating mental condition has undermined any prospect of Buena Stella reaching fruition. By the same token, he’s warned them against the fire sale you hypothesize. Told them to settle for no less than their original investments, plus twelve percent. My apparent death will further destabilize the development.”

  “And the Cabal members think they’ll recoup that sum they pay the Key Westers via East Coast investors and rents levied against rich tenants,” Brinke said. “I get it now.”

  Beau smiled. “Those East Coast investors are where I make my money. The operation here, such as it is, what with seed money, and hired help and paying out those local investors, well, that’s break-even stuff, at best. I’ll make my money on those Fat Cat bluebloods back east.”

  Hector, getting a bit worried about the weather, said, “And this bit about you ending up dead?”

  “Human nature being what it is, the Cabal will be wanting me killed before I can engage in any other demented whim that threatens their bank rolls.” Beau waved a hand. “Take a good look around, my children. Figure this time tomorrow, this pretty craft will be kindling.”

  Hector swiveled around. “What in Christ’s name are you talking about?”

  “There’ve been wires flying to and fro, my boy,” Beau said. “Transmissions between that Key we left and the one where we’re bound. Sheriff Hoyt means me dead, sonny. He’s personally going to see to that when I get back to Key West.” Beau looked at Brinke. “Or so Barnaby, who our Mase doesn’t trust, kindly warns me.”

  Brinke sat up straight. “So how in God’s name do we protect you, Beau?”

  “You don’t,” Beau said. “Hoyt’s going to succeed in slaying me, children. Or he’ll think he has. When you run a game of this scale, often as not, yo
u want to leave the playing field with yourself presumed posthumous. It neatly negates retaliation. To that end, I may need to take you up on that guestroom for a couple of days. Need to stay close to the action, but safely out of sight once I’m a corpse.”

  Brinke said, “And Consuelo?”

  “Would you mind her moving in with me?” Beau smiled crookedly, blushing for the first time in Hector’s memory. The old man said, “I mean, having Connie think me dead, that would just be cruel, wouldn’t it?”

  Hector said, “Cruel, yes, very. So, done. You’re both in. What’s the next move?”

  “Someone obviously has to die in your grandfather’s stead,” Brinke said. She turned to the old man. “Isn’t that so, Beau? Sheriff Mel’s going to demand a body. So somebody has to die.”

  “They do and they don’t,” Beau said.

  “Now you’re just being a tease,” Brinke said. She worried the old man might have something planned that would make her hate him, that Beau might actually kill somebody else to furnish a corpse.

  Beau smiled. “Not a bit. No worries about the body, sweetie. I’m no killer.”

  “I’m going to miss that great hotel room of yours,” Brinke said.

  “Hell, me too. And I suspect Connie will miss it as well,” Beau said, frowning. Then he smiled. “But I won’t be paying that damned grandiose bill. Not a stingy penny. By now, hell, the tally must be beyond obscene.”

  “I don’t like this,” Hector said. “What if Hoyt gets lucky or doesn’t play to your timetables? What if he decides on something other than taking you out while you’re on your boat?”

  Beau waved it away. “Got my man on the inside, I told you, Mase. There will be no pesky surprises.”

  32

  Barnaby Nash cast a cigarette off the pier. “God, I hate this goddamn island,” he said. “The heat and the damned humidity. The bugs. I thought Texas was one step short of hell, but this place?”

  “Ain’t all that different from Corpus or Galveston,” Conrad Vogel said. Vogel was tearing up slices of bread and tossing them in the water, watching the gleaming tarpon feast on the morsels. “So how exactly does this play, Barn?”

  Nash said, “I don’t have direct access to all we need. Not yet. I have no firm grasp on all the strings in terms of the off-island investors. So at first we do things to plan. We let Hoyt blow up that boat. That puts me in the catbird seat with the local yokels, just as Beau has planned.”

  “Let the con play out, you’re saying?”

  “For a ways, sure,” Nash said. “Then we put a gun to Stryder’s head in a place of our choosing. Somewhere we can be persuasive as we need to be. We’ll get what we need to take over the game and collect the cash from the big honchos back east and leave Beau’s body for the Feds. We’ll give ’em their dead legendary con man to brush off the heat and we’ll retire in style. Let Beau’s undoing be a first feather in J. Edgar Hoover’s cap, maybe.”

  “What about the boy, Mase Lassiter? He’s never liked you, Barn. Mase gets any sense you double-crossed Beau, and he’ll come after you. After us. You know that. Hec’ll slay us.”

  Nash took a breath, looking down at the swarming tarpon, he said, “I’m going to see Hector dead. I have to now anyway, as part of the con. I have to gain face by killing Hector.”

  “You’ve never killed anyone, Barn. You don’t have the stomach for more than the jaw work,” Vogel said. “You’re not muscle, and you’re sure as hell not a killer.”

  “That’s why I need you to do it for me,” Nash said. “Or at least to help me. You’ve always been the muscle in Beau’s operation when it’s been needed.”

  “Which is to say next-to-never,” Vogel said, clearly angry.

  “This is our one shot,” Nash said. “We’re never going to get another score like this one. I don’t have the facility or the knack for planning the Big Con, and neither do you, pal. And Beau’s getting old. He sees this as his last big touch, the one to go out on. Where does that leave us? I’ll tell you exactly where. A year from now, we’ll be selling fake lightning rods and bogus paint jobs in Dogdick, Texas, just like we were when Beau found us back in ought-eight. We’ll be running the Pigeon Drop in El Paso and scrambling for nickels with roofing scams. That’ll be our fuckin’ sorry excuse for lives. Short games and chump change.”

  “But Christ, Nash, killing Beau? Little Mase?”

  “Nah, we do this, Con,” Nash said. “We have to. And you can get close to ‘little’ Mase like I can’t. He’s always liked you like he’s never liked me, just as you pointed out. You’ll get Hector out for drinks. I’ll join you when he’s a bit tight and maybe at least a little amiable. That’s one thing in his favor – Hector has never been a mean one in his cups. We take Mase out before we make our play for Beau.”

  “What?”

  Nash said, “We take Mase somewhere and put him down. We’ll haul what’s left of him out in a boat and drop him overboard with some lead in his belly. Wire an anchor into his torso to keep him down while the sharks and jewfish finish what’s left.”

  “That’ll be your contribution, then,” Vogel said. “I ain’t guttin’ that boy. Hell, I’ve known Mase since he was just a tot. I like Mase, I like him fine. I’ve been like an uncle to that lad.”

  Nash leaned into his companion. “So you’re out? Is that it? You know I’m right, Con! We don’t have futures if we don’t hijack this operation while we have a window. It’s the last big score and I say let it be our score, not old Beau’s. Hell, this game is close to collapsing under its own weight, anyway. Beau’s playing too fast and loose across way too big a canvas. Nobody’s ever dared a game this large and rambling. We need to get it reigned back in and the best way to do that is to give the big boys here on the Key just what they only think they’re getting, one dead old rich man. We leave Astor blown to hell on his new big boat, so far as they know.” Nash took a slice of bread from Vogel, tore it in half and tossed the two pieces in the water. “Hell, you don’t see that old geezer gettin’ us no big boats from that other game he’s running, do you? Where’s Beau’s loyalty?”

  “No, no, he surely hasn’t done that,” Vogel said. “This with Mase, though—I don’t want to shoot him, and I ain’t cuttin’ Mase’s throat or belly.”

  “Won’t have to,” Nash said. “I don’t care if Mase does hate me. I watched him come up, too. I like him good enough, even if it isn’t mutual. I don’t want to slaughter Hec. I’m not cruel.” Nash reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a vial. “That’s why we’ll use this. It’s a poison. Stuff is very fast, and not so painful, I’m promised. Mase’ll think he has appendicitis or something, for about three minutes. Then it will be over. What passes for a mortician on this island here? He won’t find it before he plants the boy.”

  Vogel shook his head. “Can’t believe we’re going to do this. Us and Beau, we go back, near on for all time.”

  “A long ways to be sure,” Nash said. “So long that there’s no prospect of any forward, anymore. Not with Beau. You know that’s so. That’s why we do this.”

  “Hell of a way to part company after all we’ve shared,” Vogel said.

  Nash stared at Vogel. “You’re not up to this? Even after all I’ve said?”

  “I’m fine,” Vogel said bitterly. “Like you say, I’ve always been the muscle. The scale-tipper when a play queered. My hands ain’t been clean in decades so don’t fret about my conscience becoming a thing. It’s you I’m worried about, Nash. I fear you losing your belly for this.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” Nash said. “I know the way it is. This is the last big score. This is our last good shot to make real money. The stakes are far too high for you and me to let this one pass us by.”

  CRAZY FROM THE SUN

  “I suppose it is much more comfortable to be mad and not know it than to be sane and have one’s doubts.”

  —G.B. Burgin

  33

  Miguel checked the wall clock: half past nine. The sun should be lo
ng down. He massaged his temples with dirty-nailed fingers. He struggled up out of bed and then stood up, nearly falling over from the ensuing head rush. Groggy with sleep, he carefully parted the blinds.

  Darkness.

  Thank God. Light, any natural light—any at all—triggered paralyzing headaches. At least that had been true since last Christmas. Since he fell drunk and banged his head on the urinal behind Frankie’s Saloon. He didn’t remember the accident himself. Ones who saw the fall filled him in later, laughing and slapping thighs.

  When he’d come to, the sun had been rising and they figured he’d been out at least five hours. None of them had thought to fetch a doctor as he lay there. They were too busy drinking and celebrating Christmas. He’d awakened with a knot the size of a softball on the top of his head, dead center, about four inches back from his hairline. A hell of a night for certain. He’d had his eye on some recent island arrival. A tall, black-haired beauty named Brinke or Twinke. Something like that. The booze was flowing with all that island Yuletide cheer. The cooze had been so fetching.

  Had it been worth it?

  Not since he’d taken that fall, he didn’t think so. Not since he nearly bashed in his own skull because of some puta he never even gotten to touch.

  The headaches began the day after the accident. Pain beyond description and the inability to long sustain a coherent thought. He’d lost his job at the cigar factory inside a week. Miguel couldn’t abide the morning-into-afternoon light that seemed so harsh and that sparked such pain. The noise of the newspaper reader was like a hammer in his head as his once-sure hands fumbled with the tobacco leaves.

  By week two, he’d begun to figure out that shifting his body-clock, staying up nights and away from the goddamn sun, gave him marginal relief the island sawbones seemingly couldn’t. But that schedule shift cost him. Yes, it took plenty from him. It put him out of phase with the rest of the world and made a standup job impossible.

  The head injury cost him Consuelo, too. She said he had changed. She said he’d gotten dark and gotten mean. She said he scared her.