Head Games (The Hector Lassiter Series)

by Craig McDonald

  “So tell me more about this Skull and Bones bunch. What’s the capsule history there?”

  Bud fished around the bag and pulled out a short dog. He steered with his knees and used the seat belt handle to pry off the lid. Fiske drained half that sucker at a pull. “Serious kink, Mr. Lassiter,” he said, dragging a sleeve across his mouth. “They track back to 1832. They’ve got their own building on High Street — looks like a big-assed crypt. No fucking windows. They call it ‘The Tomb.’ The initiates pass around the same nicknames from class to class. Some of those names are pretty demonic sounding. Prescott’s son, George, a WWII hero, was a member. His nickname was ‘Poppy’ — admittedly not so Satanic sounding. President Taft was a member ... Henry Luce, too. It’s rumored the S&Bs are tied to the CIA and something called the ‘Trilateral Commission’; the NWO and the Illuminati.

  “They are initiated by two older members, one dressed as Don Quixote, the other dressed as the Devil. They bind their members to the order and secure their secrecy by making them strip down and lay in a coffin,” Bud said, pressing ahead in the face of my palpable skepticism. “The suckers then have to jack off to orgasm, describing in detail their sexual experiences while the other members stand there, looking on.”

  Jesus pleading, bleeding Christ on a crutch. “Well, if true, that’d breed some flavor of silence, I reckon,” I said. Suddenly, I was fiercely proud to have never finished high school. I said, “They sound too much like the goddamned Freemasons.”

  “They’re purportedly linked,” Bud said. “And some think the sexual confessions have more to do with eugenics than shaming the subjects. You know — useful for tracking bloodlines.”

  We were finally drifting into Navajo territory now. Mesas and buttes; cholla, burro weed strangler, fanwood, cottonwood, ironwood and smoke thorn; jackrabbits, Gila monsters, rattlesnakes and loggerhead shrikes. It was merciless, it was vast and it was unthinkingly beautiful.

  “Coming up on a crossroads. Where precisely are we headed, Hector? I mean, beyond, ‘Keep heading west, Bud.’ We still trying to keep this meeting of yours with Orson Welles?”

  “We’re still Cali-bound, Bud. Emil the head thief is still on the right side of the dirt — lives out in L.A. somewhere, according to Wade’s notebook. And I’ve got that film stuff to attend to, which makes all of this a business expense and thus deliciously deductible. I owe Orson a face-to-face ‘no’ on a project. See no reason we can’t double up on errands...settle things with Welles and maybe look up Emil.”

  Destination: Venice, California.

  9

  Eight hundred goddamned miles, give or take, from El Paso to the dubiously named City of Angels.

  In between: motels — not ho-tels, but mo-tels; small towns; county seats; old Victory gardens grown thick with weeds. White picket fences sandblasted gray by wind-driven red dust. Railroad depots. Greasy spoons and all-nite diners. Good coffee, bad coffee ... catastrophic coffee. But we drank it all, just the same, to stay awake for the long cross-country haul.

  Doughnuts; pep pills they sell to truckers at cash registers; sugar and more of that coffee, good, bad or indifferent.

  I’m really not what you could describe as a man given to nostalgia, but it seems more and more to me that the older things are, the better they were built. The ones who came before fashioned things to last. But in this age of laminated furniture and Naugehyde upholstery ... well, it all just seems to be winding down.

  Someday, I thought, staring out through the bug-splattered windshield, the highway system will wipe all this out — smother “the Mother Road” ... strangle Route 66 and the Old National Trail. It will all look alike then, whipping by at seventy or eighty miles per hour; you won’t see details, won’t see the citizens.

  The graveyards, the towns, the Victory gardens — hell, you’ll never see those. You’ll never fucking see ’em. One day, probably one day soon, they would fix it so you could drive from Seattle to the Jersey shore and never see an authentic city or civilian. I smoked my cigarette and shook my head. What will we have then? What will we be? I wondered this, gazing through the bug-splattered windshield of my Chevy as my poet/interviewer drove us through the darkening desert.

  I glanced over at Bud. He was sucking down his fifth or sixth cigarette by my calculation. And he was on his third beer. I shook my head at my own terrible influence.

  10

  Touch of Evil.

  Picture this: Venice, California standing in for wicked Mexico and the mythical border town of “Los Robles.”

  There used to be canals threaded through Venice, but they backfilled most of those bastards in ’29 when they knew the car was here to stay. Those filled-in canals sucked away nearly all the charm Venice ever held. Oil wells and cricket pumps were now in abundance.

  Welles was having a false bridge built — a phony gateway to the promised land of El Norte. The bridge was for Orson’s own death scene — a fat, tragic bastard floating out there dead in the muddy Rio Grande. A great bad man finally called home to Hell or Valhalla ... wherever all the great bastards finally go to be safely out of the way of the herd.

  The crafty auteur was shooting almost exclusively by night to keep the studio suits and the bean counters at bay.

  Orson’s directing of the picture resulted from an accident — an-honest-to-god mistake. Chuck Heston signed on as star because he erroneously thought that Orson was to direct the picture. When he learned otherwise, Moses threw around his weight — and secured weighty Welles the gig.

  OW had grabbed a hold of the job with gusto, still chafing from being fucked over Citizen Kane; fucked over The Magnificent Ambersons; Mr. Arkadin; fucked over The Trial and Don Quixote. You name it. He lost Rita Lady-From-Shanghai Hayworth to fucking Ali Khan. Christ, the luck of the Irish — all that getting fucked but never off.

  Once he was seated as director, over-eager Orson commenced upon an aggressive script rewrite. Heston’s gringo cop became a Mexican. Chuck dyed his thinning, sandy hair black and slathered on the skin dye. He grew a pencil-thin moustache — some greaser lip gravy that looked to have been lifted from Cesar Romero. Heston’s gravitas, it was hoped, would offset his falling-short makeup.

  Welles next cast busty and lusty Janet Leigh in some quasi-virginal/Joan of Arc role.

  Call it more gone-wrong casting.

  But Jesus, Leigh’s sure something to look at on screen. Her character’s handle? Well, that was “Susan Vargas.” And with those tight sweaters, she was a Vargas girl, okay.

  And Marlene Dietrich — my favorite Kraut — Welles had her playing a svelte, cigar-smoking Mexican madam with a mystery accent who drifts in and out of the picture in two or three key sequences.

  It all struck me as insane.

  But some others I trusted who had seen rushes swore to me that the picture cohered and sizzled at some oddball, gut-to-crotch level that bonded with truth. The visuals, always great in a Welles’ picture, were said to be stunning. And Welles’ rush-job-doctored script? That sucker was mostly cooking, sources said. On the other hand, the original material, a noir potboiler called Badge of Evil by “Whit Masterson,” wasn’t chopped liver.

  * * *

  Orson looked like shit. He had truly packed on the weight, but the special effects crew had added extra blubber — rubber cheeks and chins to make him a mountain. Captain “Hank Quinlan” ... that was Orson’s character’s name. Hank was conceived as a badly widowed, Borderland “bad cop” who got the job done and usually fingered — or more often framed — the right culprits. In the still-in-progress script, Hank was depicted as addicted to booze and candy bars — layering on more lard. He and Marlene/Tanya went back. Hank had a Jones for the madam, her and her “chili” ... a Hayes Office-fostered euphemism for her pussy.

  Orson was doing a salutary job of keeping everyone in a Mexican mood: the dirt-strewn streets were littered with blowing, rolling scraps of paper. Mariachi music, marimbas — couldn’t escape ’em. The crew was half Mexican and drunk on
Tecate beer Orson had had trucked in. Orson had always been the undisputed master of atmosphere and it all was working. Christ, I felt like I was on the back streets of TJ. I felt as if I should put the arm on that best boy yonder with his ducktails and untucked shirt draped over chinos and ask him for directions to the donkey show. It felt like there should be street peddlers not just present but prevalent — pushing contraband Spanish fly, hop and little hand-carved Don Quixote statues.

  Bud was just wandering around in a daze, taking it all in. For my part, I watched Welles at work.

  Orson was charging through this shoot. He was under intense pressure to bring it in on-time and under-budget; to try and erase his mostly undeserved reputation for cost overruns and spiraling-out-of-control production schedules.

  But Mr. War-of-the-Worlds-Panic-of-1938 was not happy with three key scenes he was to film in the next couple of days. Two of those were new scenes; the other was a reshoot. All of them featured Marlene/Tanya — “Hank’s” ex-lover — who doesn’t recognize too-fat Hank the fateful night he first returns to her place.

  Welles couldn’t get the words right in the scene. It wasn’t cooking between him and the Kraut. Orson had been friends with Marlene for years. But he’s never got her in bed ... same as Hemingway.

  But Orson had somehow learned that I had bedded the Kraut. He wagered I could bring some resonant dialogue to the table.

  His proposition offended me.

  But I owed him a favor. Ten years on, and he’d finally called in his marker. So I felt I owed him at least a face-to-face “no” — even if his request did cross too many lines. If Marlene ever found out what he was asking of me — what he was trying to exploit — well, Orson would likely shed some weight at Marlene’s hands I’d wager, and muy pronto.

  Some stooge guided Bud and me to Welles.

  That Voice — like thunder in a cave. Orson intoned, “Hector, my old friend. You made astonishing time.” I eyed Fiske — sucker was instantly star-struck.

  Orson patted my cheek. “You must have driven like a bat out of hell, Hec.”

  I slapped my poet/interviewer/sidekick on the back. “My batman. Drives like a dream. And writes the same. He’s the fella you should be hitting up for script doctoring.”

  Orson glowered. One didn’t rewrite Welles. No, His Eminence would grudgingly brook feedback. Some of that input He maybe deigned to entertain ... and some of that He even might implement. But sans credit — Christ, go ask Herman J. Mankiewicz or Graham Greene if you doubt me.

  The coastal night wind kicked up some strategically scattered newspaper pages. One smacked Orson on his big rubber cheek. He said, “Let’s go inside and talk, old friend.” Orson had fucked up his leg somehow; he was leaning hard on a cane. Ever resourceful, he was exploiting it for the role, and it worked. And my God, did he ever look huge — like a blue whale with a seven o’clock shadow. He was stuffed into a rumpled, tan suit that a family of five could live in and never cross paths.

  We moved inside. Welles doffed his boxy Stetson and lit up a cigar nearly as thick as Bud Fiske’s neck. “Can you believe Bogart is dead?” He said this over his shoulder.

  “No,” I said, “I can’t. Across the river from my place, all the Mexican women are tearing their hair over Pedro Infante.” The Mexican matinee star and his famous moustache had recently gone down in an airplane — the third crash the actor had suffered in his risk-taking life.

  The goddamn whorehouse set that Orson had whipped up was almost too perfect. It was the sitting room from a border bordello ripped from my horny imagination. Welles, in the Voice, rumbled, “You aren’t still playing with that cock piece for Sam Ford, are you?”

  Bud frowned — probably tripping on “cock.” I thought that Bud maybe thought the picture for Ford was something that it was not ... perhaps figured me for scripting skin flicks.

  No. For six months, I’d been sweating various drafts of a film treatment of a pulp novel about cockfighting: Rooster of Heaven. I was doing it for the famous, one-eyed director.

  I shrugged. “As a matter of fact I am. And I’m humping against a deadline for my publisher ... some introductions owed for a couple of other authors. And some other things, too.”

  Orson waved a dismissive and meaty hand. “Surely you could stay a couple of nights here, Hector. We’ll drain pitchers of sangria and eat good Mexican food and talk frankly and maybe you can help me out a tad. We must do right by Marlene. I know you’ll agree with that. She’s come out of retirement for this one, just for me. If she knows you’re writing for her — helping me to write for her — well...”

  That sounded suspiciously like an honest-go-God co-writing credit being hinted at. At that point, I figured Orson must be desperate.

  Then some flunky flounced in without knocking first. He was holding a severed head in his hands.

  I felt my legs go weak; Fiske went white.

  The stranger handed the head to Orson who held it up and turned it, then muttered something that sounded Shakespearean through the sudden buzz in my ears.

  Then I saw — it was a mock-up of actor Akim Tamiroff’s head. In the rough script I’d been sent, the poor bastard with a bad wig had gotten himself strangled. The head was a prop for his death scene, replete with bulging eyes and a lolling tongue. Damned fine workmanship. Orson thought so, too. He rumbled to the special effects man, “Perfect.”

  The bastard left, beaming, holding the toy head.

  Recuperating, I smiled and gestured at the bar. “This stuff real, Orson?”

  “You know me too well, Hector. Yes. Always the transcendent verisimilitude — the result of studious attention to a thousand small and seemingly insignificant details. Always that, yes?”

  “Always. Yes.” Fuck.

  I picked up a decanter and tugged out the stopper. I sniffed. “Brandy?”

  Welles smiled. “Perhaps. Probably. My stomach is too sour for Scotch these days.”

  I poured three glasses and passed ’em around. “Frankly, I’m not sure Marlene and me are talking anymore.”

  The Kraut and me had recently fallen out over a mutual “friend.” Hemingway. Orson knew and understood this, I figured. He, too, had had a fight with Hemingway, a real honest-to-God brawl with Marlene, my beloved Kraut, standing as witness.

  Orson chuckled in resonant baritone. “I’ve heard about your gaffe from Miss Dietrich. You’re not showing enough concern over Papa’s plane crashes, it seems.”

  Bud looked puzzled; Orson caught it. Ever the eager instructor, he explained, “Papa — you, know Hemingway, lad. Papa went down in back-to-back plane crashes in Africa in, was it ’53, or ’54?”

  I shrugged, muttered, “Search me. Haven’t talked to Hem’ since 1937, anyway.” I caught myself rubbing my jaw.

  Orson pressed on: “Papa’s never really recovered from the crashes. He’s in steep decline now. Marlene wants Hector to patch it up with him. They were fast friends down in the Keys. Birds — of prey — and of the same feather.”

  Enough of this. I took a shot of brandy and slicked back a cowlick. “You had your own falling out with Ernest,” I said to Orson. “Did you two ever really patch it up?”

  Scenting a scoop, Fiske pulled out a notebook and pen. He sat down next to Orson. That did it for me — this could go on a good while. I’d heard this story before. I started playing around with this old pianola in the corner. Orson looked over at me and said, “It’s so old, it’s new again.” It sounded like he was reciting from something. Then damned if it didn’t start playing, and my favorite tune, too, an old Celtic air, “Tramps & Hawkers.” It was evocative source music for Welles’ Hemingway tale.

  Orson’s Voice: “Ernest had assisted in the filming of a documentary about the Spanish Civil War, lad,” he said to saucer-eyed Bud. “Propaganda against the fascists. Fund-raising stuff, really. Hemingway wrote the film’s narration. I was to read the Papa-penned material. But it went on too much, I thought. Too melodramatic. It needed a trim to be more lean and masc
uline ... you know, in the vein of the stuff by Hemingway that we all so revere.”

  The legend went something like this. During a screening, Ernest had made some snide remarks about Orson’s delivery. Ernest allegedly said that Orson sounded “queer,” or some such. Hemingway probably had a point, there.

  Welles said that it was impossible to read the words Ernest had written, that they were written for the page, not the screen. Welles probably had a point, there.

  Orson continued as Bud scribbled away. “Hemingway couldn’t get past my direction of the Mercury Theatre,” Orson said, turning down his mouth. “He thought me some kind of avant-garde, theatre faggot. So Ernest said to me, ‘You fucking effeminate boys of the theatre, what do you know about real war?’”

  “So you swung on him,” Fiske guessed.

  “No, no dear boy. He’d have killed me. I played to him. Mincing, complimenting him on his size and strength. The situation swiftly degenerated. And oh so precipitously — chairs and, finally, punches were thrown. All of this struggling was silhouetted against the backdrop of scenes of warfare in Spain. A real Hieronymus Bosch moment. Marlene saw it all. It was quite marvelous really — two guys like us fighting in front of these images representing people in the act of struggling and dying. We ended up toasting each other over a bottle of whiskey.”

  I shook my head and poured some more brandy. “Tell Bud the rest, Orson. You two didn’t leave it that well. Hemingway later ended up doing that narration. They scuttled your work ... old friend.”

  “Yes, well...”

  Not sure why, but I felt like needling Mr. Mercury Theatre. “I heard Hemingway’s version from John Huston,” I said. “Hem told John that every time you used the word ‘infantry’ — Hem’s words, not mine — that you sounded ‘like a cocksucker, swallowing.’”

  This could go either way, I figured — Orson coming for me with his cane, or...?