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

by Craig McDonald

  The sheriff crept out onto the decaying pier and poured gasoline onto the Jolly Sally’s deck, sloshing it toward the cabin door. The stench of gas was strong and Hoyt feared the old man might smell it and react before the sheriff could get the fire really going.

  So Hoyt hefted the second gas can and slung it at the cabin door. He took aim with the flare gun and fired at the gas can laying on its side up against the cabin door.

  The resulting explosion blew Hoyt off the pier and twenty yards out to sea.

  When he surfaced, cursing, Hoyt’s face and hands were stinging. Hoyt saw the boat was fully ablaze. He saw the silhouette of a burning body through one of the cabin windows. The old man had never even had a chance to stand up. The man in the boat’s cabin was a charred blackness—a briquette in a hat. Hoyt figured Astor was likely killed by the initial explosion’s concussion.

  Plumes of black smoke twisted up into the sky, threatening to draw gawkers and eventually a fire crew.

  Hoyt’s ears were still ringing as he staggered onto shore. Gulls were reeling overhead. Hoyt realized he couldn’t hear the birds. He couldn’t hear the crack and pop of the yacht fire. He puts his hands to his ears. When he took them away his fingers were slick with blood. His face hurt and his fingers stung where they’d touched his ears. He held out his hands; they were livid red and already blistering. He felt his face again. All of it hurt and the flesh felt puffy and blistered. He couldn’t feel his eyebrows anymore. Hoyt’s lungs burned as if he’d breathed deeply of that first blast of fire. His chest and throat hurt with each ragged breath.

  Watching from behind the trees, Beau ground out his cigar and slipped off his white jacket and Panama hat. He raised the Peacemaker he’d borrowed from Hector, watching the sheriff. Hoyt was screaming obscenities and crying in pain. Hoyt’s face was badly burned. Some of the burns looked permanently disfiguring to Beau’s untrained eye. Hoyt’s nose and ears were bleeding. His hair was scorched back at least three inches from his natural hairline.

  Beau figured it would be sometime before the sheriff could risk showing his face in public. Even wearing a hat and sunglasses, his wounds would be conspicuous enough to spark difficult questions around the Key.

  Hoyt kept pounding at his ears, too, leaving Beau to think Hoyt was left deafened by the blast, at least temporarily. Served the dumbass right, Beau thought. Spilling ten gallons of fuel and firing a flare gun at the puddle at pointblank range? How did that come to seem like a good idea to Hoyt? Bastard was lucky he wasn’t atomized by the explosion. Hell, a pelican flapping high overhead had been killed by the blast’s rising shock wave. The bird now lay dead and burning on the ship’s flaming bow.

  Beau sighted in with his grandson’s big old Colt on the sheriff’s forehead. He was sorely tempted to pull the trigger—to put the son of a bitch Hoyt flat on his back for all day. And godddamn, with the cocksucker’s apparent injuries, it would probably be an act of mercy. Hoyt was on all fours now, spitting up blood.

  As he’d assured Brinke, Beau was no killer. Seventy years of ducking, dodging and conniving had taught him that much about himself.

  But he should do it this time, he thought.

  Every instinct told the old man that.

  Beau wished he had allowed his grandson to come along after all. Mase would shoot the son of a bitch, no question of that. Mase wouldn’t leave one for seed—selfish thinking but true. That boy wasn’t averse to spilling evil blood, not one lick. As Mase was given to pointing out, he’d been made a state sanctioned killer during the Great War. It was a dubious privilege Mase seemed sometimes loathe to surrender in peacetime.

  Hell, it’d taken little Mase to put the bullet in Grafton Lassiter that Beau should have seen to delivering himself. Goddamn Grafton: another man Beau knew he should have put down but couldn’t find the gumption or edge to engage when there was still time. That grievous hesitation or failure of nerve cost Beau his daughter and remained a haunting weight he would shoulder to his ever-closer grave.

  Left alive, what might Hoyt still cost Beau or some other who mattered to the old grifter? Hoyt was a murderous son of a bitch the world would be well shed of, no arguing that.

  Beau’s fingers twitched against the trigger of the old Colt. His flesh was damp with sweat. Beau tried to will himself to pull the trigger, searching for his edge.

  Hector had warned Beau the old Peacemaker had a hair-trigger. The gun went off, quite suddenly, and Beau flinched as he felt the trigger’s tension change and the kick. A clod of sand sprayed up behind Hoyt. The sheriff didn’t react at all. It was then Beau knew the dirty sheriff was left deaf by the boat’s explosion.

  Hoyt stood, staggered a step or two more, then collapsed. If he couldn’t shoot Hoyt as he was standing, Beau knew he’d never do the job when the man was out cold.

  And Beau couldn’t risk being seen alive by Hoyt or the others who would surely soon make the scene, drawn by the boat fire and that big black plume twisting skyward in the sultry Gulf wind.

  Beau looked at the sheriff a last time. Hoyt had fallen close to the tide line. Maybe the encroaching waves would do what Beau couldn’t bring himself to do—drown the son of a bitch. Call it an act of God if it went that way.

  That prospect was surely a faint breath of comfort.

  36

  Hector stacked his typed pages in a wooden box to the right of his typewriter. He lit a cigarette and poured himself a couple of fingers of Cuban rum and splashed in a little warm Coca-Cola. It was his reward for a good morning-into-afternoon’s output. Hector heard a key in the door. He pulled back the drape and peeked through the picture window at the porch. Beau was fiddling with the lock. His grandfather looked a bit drawn, even flustered. Hector called out, “Ease up, Pap, I’ll let you in.”

  He opened the door and squeezed his grandfather’s shoulder. “You okay?”

  “Sure, Mase. I’m fine.” The old con man wasn’t convincing this once.

  Hector said, “And Cornelius Astor?”

  Beau put his hand over his heart, trying to act nonchalant and full of bonhomie. “Gone to his reward, just as planned. A real honest-to-Odin Viking funeral.”

  “You leave a body to be found?”

  “Also as planned,” Beau said. “Wouldn’t be convincing without a corpse, Mase.”

  Hector made his grandfather a rum and cola, extra deep. Hector said, “Too much to hope that Hoyt is standing in for the late Mr. Astor?”

  Beau took a deep swallow of his Cuba Libre. He said, “Christ, Mase, you overestimate my skills this once.” He drained his drink and handed it to Hector for a refill. “Hoyt is still alive, I think. He’s badly burned from nearly blowing himself up trying to blow me up. Seems deaf as a stone, and maybe for keeps. But I left him out cold out at the tide line. Retching blood and having pissed his own pants. Hard and far as he was thrown by the blast, I suspicion Hoyt’s innards are more than a might jellied.”

  Hector said, “Think he’s still there?”

  “Now don’t you go and think like that, sonny,” Beau said. Remembering, he reached under his white coat and pulled the big old Colt from his waistband and handed it to his grandson butt first. “Thanks for the loan of the Peacemaker. Wish I had the stomach to use it.”

  Hector said again, “Think he’s maybe still out there?”

  Beau shook his head. “Don’t even offer, sonny. Don’t dwell on it. I’ve done enough of that for both of us. Besides, if Hoyt goes missing or turns up dead, it might poison the game. That might send his friends for a loop. This way, if Old Mel survives, he’ll at least look like a screw-up of the first water.” Beau drained his second drink. “Hell, maybe his dirty buddies will take Hoyt out when they see how badly he bungled my assassination. Makes him seem positively butter-fingered.”

  Hector stuck his Colt in the center desk drawer. He said, “So who exactly is dead back on that boat Hoyt torched?”

  Beau slipped off his jacket and hat. He draped them over a chair. “That guy you electrocuted
out on your porch the other night? Well, Karl Dale Rush’s cadaver went missing over at the county icehouse last night. I had his body stolen from the morgue. Old Karl’s beyond caring and so he was my stand-in with a white wig. The new Cornelius Astor. You already burned Rush from the inside-out, Mase. This is just evening out the damage, in a way.”

  Hector said, “Won’t Rush’s body’s disappearance raise a lot of questions?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Beau said. “And that’s all thanks to you, sonny. That little act you ran by the coroner a few days ago, playing a state investigator looking into the state’s funeral homes because of missing bodies in Tampa, that was a happy accident I could truly build on. Something I could use to my own ends. Lest he lose his license, that Key West mortician-cum-coroner is going to be like a clam about that missing body. And hell, based on what you’ve told me, I don’t think he’ll be sharp enough to recognize Rush when the body rolls right back through his place in a couple of hours, looking like a burned up log.”

  “Perfect,” Hector said. “You’re right, he can’t say a thing. Very nice. Very deft.”

  Beau held up his empty glass. “That’s me all over on a really good day. I could use another drink. Maybe after I clean up, though. Consuelo leave a shopping bag around for me?”

  “Poke’s on kitchen counter, by the coffee pot,” Hector said, making himself another drink. “What’s in that bag, anyway?”

  “My new face,” Beaus said. “And no jokes when you see it in a bit, Mase.”

  Hector smiled and crossed his heart, sipping his Cuba Libre.

  ***

  Hector was laying in a hammock, reading a collection of short stories. Hector was fifty pages in when Beau emerged from the house. He was wearing a guyabera shirt and white shorts. Beau had shaved off his moustache. He’d also touched up his hair. It was now light brown with silver wings over each ear. Beau squinted at the harsh sun. He pulled on some black sunglasses. “I’ll be damned if I’ll be crawling into some hidey hole,” Beau said. “Need to have some mobility, hence the new persona.”

  “Looks good,” Hector said. “Really. Shaves off decades. I’ll start introducing you around as my dad.”

  “Not older brother?” Beau shook his head. “Don’t date me by assigning me an age, and don’t call me kin around these parts. Not yet anyways. Not until this game is done. For now, I’m Jimmy Ray Gordon, man of leisure and gentleman beachcomber.”

  “You look the part,” Hector said. He raised his sunglasses to squint up at his grandfather without their tint. “But you do need to get a little sun on that upper lip. Can’t remember a time you haven’t had a moustache, Jimmy.”

  “Not since Hector was a pup,” Beau said. “No pun intended.”

  Hector rolled out of the hammock. “Take a load off, Beau. Rest up. I’ve got a date to keep.”

  “But Brinke’s with Consuelo,” Beau said. “You ain’t already stepping out on my Brinke, ’cause that’d be crazy, given the one you’ve landed. And I’d surely beat you for it. Ain’t doing that, are you?”

  “It’s not that kind of date.” Hector handed the short story collection to Beau. “Here, take a load off and expand your mind.”

  Beau said, “One of yours?”

  “No, a friend’s book. Fella back in Paris.”

  Beau slipped into the hammock and stretched out. He looked at the cover. “In Our Time. Any good?”

  Hector said, “Figure you’ll tell me after you finish.”

  “Got any beer around this place, Mase? In this heat, beer’s the only thing to hit the spot.”

  “Got some contraband Hatuey.”

  “I’ll take two bottles.”

  “Done.”

  “Oh, and Mase, who are you meeting?”

  “Your old pal—the one I like—Conrad Vogel.”

  “No kiddin’? You’re meeting him somewhere out of the way, I hope. Vogel’s still in the game, still playing a vital part. You remind Conrad he needs to be discreet and stay in character.”

  Hector smiled. “I’ll hassle him to that end for you, no sweat.”

  37

  Miguel sat in the bathtub with the door closed and the shades drawn.

  Sacred darkness.

  But the quality of the dark was different from that of night. His headache persisted in this blackness. He had drained and refilled the tub at least three times and scrubbed his skin raw, but Miguel figured if he could see in the dark, he would still see blood in the bath water. He just couldn’t come clean.

  He thought about the three women he had killed. He couldn’t figure out why he could still remember the three from last night. Why could he remember every bloody, wrong detail and every stomach-knotting sensation from last night, yet he couldn’t remember any of the women who had come in the weeks and days before last night’s killing spree?

  And his memories of the most recent three and how they’d struggled to stay alive and what he had done to them despite their pleas? Those memories were terrible, all but unsupportable.

  When would it become fun again? When and where would he find the enjoyment he must have previously taken from his wicked work in order to have continued to do it for so long?

  The baseball bat rested against the sink. He had brought it into the bathroom with the intention of cleaning it.

  But now he thought differently. He’d let the blood linger on the bat. He wouldn’t need it much longer, he’d all but decided that.

  Tonight, when the true dark settled and the pain in his head subsided, he’d go looking for Consuelo.

  Maybe he’d also go looking for that woman from last Christmas Eve, the one he’d had his eye on when he had his stupid accident. What was her name? Brinke? Twinke?

  Anyways…

  He’d look for those two, and take any others he happened across along the way.

  After he’d done all that he could, he’d walk down the middle of Duval Street, bloody bat in hand.

  He’d walk down that busy street against traffic until someone called the cops to come and the police cut him down in a flurry of lead. Put out the sorry light for keeps.

  Sweet darkness.

  38

  “You do this a lot? Just like this? And nobody sees?” Nude, Consuelo floated on her back, stroking her way back toward the shallower water where she could stand. Her feet settled on the bottom and she was in the water up to her chin. Anyone who happened upon them might still think she was wearing a bathing suit. Consuelo smoothed back her damp dark hair.

  “I do this nearly every day,” Brinke said. “More often than not, since he arrived, I do this with Hector. Probably others do the same here, but I’ve been doing it since Christmas and haven’t seen anyone. Or maybe this is just established as my time.” Brinke treaded water, glistening nipples and knees rippling the sparkling surface. “And, as I say, nobody has ever happened by.”

  “It’s a wonderful break from the heat,” Consuelo said. “But look over there, that’s a storm forming way out there. Coming this way, likely. We should probably dress and head back to your place.”

  “Storm’s headed to sea I think,” Brinke said. “Or is it that you want to get back because you’re worried about Beau? I’m sure he’s fine, Connie.”

  The young woman shrugged. “Maybe he’s okay. What makes you so sure?”

  “If Hec was willing to stand aside, I have to think Beau can see to himself,” Brinke said. “Hector dotes on that man and would never see Beau put at risk. The fact Hector stepped back from whatever stands to happen today leads me to believe Hector knows that his grandfather can handle himself just fine.”

  “Logically, yes, that all seems true enough,” Consuelo said. “But I’m also turning into one big brown prune being in the water so long. I’m going to go dry off while’s there’s still a little sun left to do the job. Hate to walk home in wet clothes.”

  Brinke said, “I’ll follow you shortly.” She rolled over onto her belly and began paddling farther out to sea.

&
nbsp; Checking the shoreline a last time, Consuelo carefully made her way ashore, crouched low, her arms crossed over her breasts. The young woman stretched out on a grassy patch in the spotty shade of an old banyan tree. The sultry breeze was already beading the saltwater on her damp, brown skin. Consuelo began wringing out her hair in soggy lanks.

  Brinke was a tiny shadow on the gunmetal horizon, just a hint of motion from elbows and feet now and then.

  As the sun dried her, Consuelo squinted at a distant silhouette staggering in the sun. She picked up her clothes and began to cover herself. The figure dropped to its knees, then arms hangling loosely at its sides, fell backward onto the sand.

  She finished dressing and slowly crept toward the body on the beach.

  There was a rustle behind Consuelo.

  Brinke said, “My God, I think he’s dead.”

  “He looks terrible,” Consuelo said. “I wonder what happened to him. Who is he?”

  “Pretty sure he used to be the sheriff in these parts,” Brinke said, arms crossed to cover her breasts.

  39

  “Have another drink, Mase.”

  Hector held up a hand. “Thanks, Con, but I don’t drink like that anymore. And not for a long time. More than had my fill tonight.”

  “Was a time when you was a kid,” Conrad Vogel said, “a time just before you ran off after that spic bandit with Black Jack, when I thought you might get professional with your elbow bending.”

  “Those were rough years,” Hector said. “That whole period between about age eight and fifteen? A hard dark ride for a kid.”

  “You mean after your daddy and what he did to your Ma?”

  “That,” Hector said. “Sure. What else?”

  “You had us though,” Conrad said. “You had your grandpa and me. Three of us had plenty of good times as I recall.”

  “It was great when Beau was around,” Hector said. “But Beau had his various women. And he always had his other…we’ll call ’em enterprises. Looking back, I expect Beau likes to think he was around for me a good bit more than he really was. Hell, I saw much more of you, Uncle Con.”