Head Games (The Hector Lassiter Series)

by Craig McDonald

  As I too often am, I was really just trying to keep myself interested.

  I grinned, waiting to see what would happen next.

  Orson exploded in laughter. He slapped his fat thigh and rumbled, “Ah, by Christ, I do so love that bastard. I can’t imagine him dead. I’d like to see Hem again. To drink with him. I’d so love to drink with both of you — the three of us together a last time — me and you bastards dear.”

  Me too, maybe. But it wasn’t apt to happen in this lifetime.

  Bud started pressing Welles for more details.

  The crew was setting up Orson’s next shot outside, so color Welles expansive — no pun intended. Welles had time on his hands and an attentive audience taking down every damned word ... it all added up to some kind of bliss for Orson, I figured.

  I left Welles to his accidental interview and staggered out into the balmy Venice night, clutching the decanter of brandy.

  11

  I followed the scent of seawater to the ocean and found the beach.

  There was something shimmering and white out there. I walked out onto Orson’s truncated, faux bridge — little more than a jetty with rails, really — angling to get a better look.

  The effort was worth it. It was one of the extras, a pretty Mexican girl, swimming in her white bra and panties in the moonlight.

  I watched her for a while.

  Absent-mindedly, I shook out a Pall Mall and lit it up.

  The swimmer must have seen the flare from my Zippo. She immediately sank low, feet first, arms crossing over her breasts. She glared at me with the dark-eyed echo of my dead wife’s and dead daughter’s black Spanish eyes, long raven hair, now plastered to dusky skin. I muttered, “Pérdon,” and turned my back to her, ass to the rail.

  A few minutes later, she was standing beside me, her blue gingham dress clinging to wet curves. “That was not very nice,” she said.

  “I’m perhaps not a very nice man.” I smiled. “But tonight I wish that I was.” I offered her the decanter of brandy and she sniffed at it and then sipped from it.

  She eyed my cigarette. I shook one loose, put it in my mouth and did my one-handed Zippo trick, holding my own cigarette in my left hand. I pocketed the Zippo and took the cigarette from my mouth, gently placing it between her ruby pillow lips. She arched an eyebrow. “You are Héctor Lassiter, yes?”

  It wasn’t really a question. I nodded.

  “I recognize you from the photographs on the backs of your books.” My new friend shrugged. “And I’ve heard much about you from Miss Dietrich. She has been waiting for you. You’ll follow me, yes?”

  Forever, yes.

  I followed the pretty, dark-haired girl back across the beach, back across the movie set, down an alley to a trailer. I would have followed her to Galveston if she had led the way. I said, “What are you to the Kraut? Are you an assistant, maybe? Understudy, perhaps? Or something else?” I let that last hang there. Marlene, famously, wasn’t one to limit her options in bed.

  The girl smiled and knocked on the trailer door and stepped aside. “It was so nice to meet you, Mr. Lassiter.” I gently squeezed the Mexican girl’s arm. I said, “You got a name, hon’?”

  She smiled and shrugged: “It is not important.”

  “Not true. It is very important to me.”

  She smiled and slipped from my grip. “So nice of you to say so.”

  I watched her sway away ... this unnamed beauty. Her head was tipped back to feel the breeze across her long neck. She was smoking the cigarette I’d given her. I took a last swig of brandy and tossed the empty decanter under the trailer.

  The trailer door opened a crack — opened with a squeak. This dark face with chiseled cheekbones was peering at me; disarmingly dark hair and burning eyes. Marlene turned her head a bit; considered me through the cracked door.

  I was taken aback by her hesitation. It had been a few years, granted. We hadn’t crossed paths since Paris, during the liberation, staying in touch by phone. It had been a few miles and a few too many drinks, maybe. But, Jesus Christ, had I truly slid that much? I said, “Christ, Kraut, don’t you know me? I’m Hector Lassiter.”

  Marlene Dietrich smiled. She feinted a playful swing at my chin. She held her thumbs just like Papa had taught her to so she wouldn’t break them on impact. Gutturally, she said, “Ah, Hec, you look like hell, sweetheart.”

  * * *

  We sat on the steps of her trailer, passing back and forth a bottle of Spanish red wine — it was too sweltering to go inside.

  I took a swig, then handed the bottle back to her. “I may look like ‘hell,’ but you look stunning, Mar.”

  Marlene smiled and sipped the wine.

  In vino veritas:

  She said, “You’re a mess, honey. But you’ve had a wicked year. I’m so sorry ... so very very sorry ... for your ... for your loss. I know what Dolores meant to you.” Dolores ... my daughter. The Kraut was right. So many months since I’ve heard my daughter’s name spoken aloud, but my little girl had become my world in the too-short time that she was alive. Marlene sent my baby girl stuffed animals and music boxes. I could feel my composure slipping.

  I took the bottle from Marlene’s dyed hand and drank deeply of the wine. I smelled something from her trailer. I checked my Timex. “Christ, Kraut, you been cooking something this late?”

  “Perhaps.” She smiled and stroked my cheek. “How are you doing Hec? Really?”

  “Surviving. Writing. Drinking. Certainly there’s been too much drinking. And not enough writing. Just trying to keep myself interested. You know me — you embrace whatever keeps you in the game.”

  “You sound like Papa. ‘First one must endure.’” Her mentioning Hem like that...I knew it was a set-up for the resumption of a twenty-year refrain: Patch it up with Hem, please.

  I remembered a line Hemingway wrote Marlene in a letter. She told me she’d adopted Hemingway’s casual aside as a personal philosophy. I repeated it to her: “The trick is not to ‘confuse movement for action.’ That said, Hem’s going to have to call me, darling. He owes me the apology, you know.”

  Marlene reached into her pocket. She pulled out this little dark thin cigar. I fired her up with my Zippo. “My God,” she said, “you two are like warring brothers. And about equally star-crossed. And maybe equally doomed. You should call Papa, Hector. Fix it, please, before it’s too late for both of you.”

  “My God, darling, when did you become a fatalist?” Welles’ script rewrite made it clear: Dietrich’s madam was also a fortune-teller. I Bogied my cigarette and extended my right palm. “Wanna read my fortune, Kraut?”

  Marlene searched my failing blue eyes. Her eyes glistened. She blew two perfect smoke rings and smiled sadly. “I’m not sure how much future you have left, Hector. I think maybe you’ve already spent your future, my love.”

  I heard something on the other side of the trailer. I put my finger to my lips and then ducked down. I searched the darkness on the other side of her trailer. Two legs and some kind of a stick were silhouetted over there. I crouched down and rolled all the way under Marlene’s trailer.

  I tucked my arms around the back of the spy’s knees and heard this rumbling, “Shit!”

  Then this mountain fell on me.

  The mountain was followed by a pen and a notepad that smacked me in the face.

  It was fucking Welles, spying on us — actually taking notes. I couldn’t get my big hands around his bigger neck, but I was sure trying too. Orson’s nails scratched the backs of my hands, drawing blood. Marlene had her arms around me, pulling at me. “Stop it, Hector. Stop it you two!”

  Welles had his hands up in surrender, smiling crookedly and laughing at me.

  My fucking ribs hurt. It felt like the enormous bastard might have cracked a couple falling on me. I struggled up with Marlene’s help, one arm wrapped around my ribs. “You cocksucker!” I kicked Orson once ... and couldn’t tell if I hit fat or special-effect’s padding. So I kicked him again. But to no d
iscernible effect.

  “You and me,” I said to Welles, “we’re through.” I walked as Marlene stooped to help Orson to his feet. The Kraut and a forklift might get the job done.

  I heard Orson’s resonant grumble at my back: “That bastard. Who does Lassiter think he is? That fucking degenerate drunk and wife killer! You hear me Lassiter? Who do you think you are? I’m Orson Welles!”

  He screamed this last at my back.

  I heard Marlene say to Welles, “Stop it you fool. What does it matter what you say about him? He’s a man ... that’s all.”

  12

  I was limping down the thirsty canals of Venice when this arm slipped through mine. The Mexican girl who favored near-naked moonlight swims smiled, then sighed as she saw the bloodied backs of my hands. “Come with me,” she said. “I’ll clean and bandage those for you.”

  I obediently let myself be led along. I muttered, “Guess you saw all that.”

  “I saw the fat pig spying. And what happened after, yes.”

  I smiled and shook my head. “Because you were spying, too. Yes?”

  She smiled back ... and I was a goner. She said, “Just so.”

  She led me to her modest room located a couple of blocks from the movie set. I asked, “You live here?”

  “Just for now ... while we film. I’m an extra. And assistant to Miss Dietrich.” The Mexican girl smiled and arched a black eyebrow. “And that title — ‘assistant,’ I mean — is all that I am to her,” she said.

  Well, well. “I’m so glad,” I said. I lowered myself gingerly onto her couch, my ribs burning.

  The girl returned with a bottle of Merthiolate. She used the little glass wand bound to the rubber-stopper lid to slather the red, stinging medication on the fingernail scratches furrowed across the backs of both of my mangled mitts.

  “I still don’t know your name, sweetheart.”

  She pressed the adhesive bandages in place and then helped me off with my jacket. “Me llamo Alicia Vicente.”

  I let that roll around my mouth: “Alicia. Lovely name.” She unbuttoned my shirt and put out her hands to help me up. She squeezed my ribs, feeling and probing through my undershirt.

  I winced a couple of times as she found the spots that hurt most. “You a nurse?”

  “I’ve had some training,” Alicia said, brushing her black hair back behind her ears. “But my grandmother thought with my looks...”

  “Abuela was right.”

  Alicia smiled knowingly. “I don’t think they’re broken Héctor ... probably only bruised. But if so, they’ll hurt almost like they are broken.”

  “Don’t suppose you know anything about diabetes?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

  “My friend thinks I might have it. I thought you could maybe confirm his diagnosis. And I should probably find him. He’s bony. If Welles were to fall on poor Bud, well, it would be a slaughter.”

  Alicia helped me back on with my shirt and jacket. “Other than some of the old pachucos Mr. Welles has hired to play thugs, we don’t have much fighting on the set. Not ’til you arrived, anyway.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s all too often the way when Héctor is in the room.” I smiled as I caught myself pronouncing my name with my new friend’s Spanish inflection.

  She smiled back. “I will help you look for your friend. And try to keep you out of harm’s way.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, but why would you do that?”

  “You strike me as a man who needs looking after. Your luck is running dark tonight.”

  “I met you.”

  Her shoulders rose and fell. “On balance, your luck is running dark. You need looking after.”

  “You and my skinny friend are gonna get along great.”

  13

  Couldn’t really go back to the movie set — didn’t want to confront Orson or Marlene again.

  Bud was a Midwest boy, so I wagered he was maybe walking the beach, taking in the Pacific by moonlight. Or perhaps he’d found himself one of the Mexican working girls who were camp-following the film crew ... with any luck, he wouldn’t get rolled after his roll with her.

  Alicia’s arm was linked with mine, the creaming waves almost licking our feet. I wasn’t quite old enough to be her grandfather. But I was within limping distance. I looked at my bandaged hand and muttered, “Christ, I feel like Robert Cantwell.”

  “I know the book you speak of. I just read it. Miss Dietrich has been forcing copies of Papa’s books on me. She thinks maybe I could play Maria in a television production being worked on of For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

  Alicia’s thick black hair swung almost to her ass ... her long hair tapering to a point just above her tailbone. “You’d have to cut off all of your hair for that part,” I said. “That would be a mortal sin.”

  My new friend smiled and shook her head. “She’s a stupid girl — Maria in The Bell. In the book, you know?”

  “I know. I agree.”

  “Papa cannot write good women,” Alicia said. “Not in romance, anyway ... not in the novels. They are almost all daughters and whores. The women in some of his short stories, however, well, they are different.”

  I couldn’t resist: “Ever read my books?” A wicked thing, a writer’s vanity.

  “A couple. Miss Dietrich has been giving me those, in the past few days, too. You don’t write stupid girls like Maria or that countess mooning over old Col. Cantwell. But you do write about a lot of putas and scheming women.”

  “It’s pulp fiction sweetheart. I don’t do romance.” I gave her a good once over and a smile. “Though you ... for you I could give it a try. I’ll rechristen you ‘Paloma’ and we’ll call the book Across the Rio Grande and Into the Cacti.”

  She smiled and wrinkled her nose. “That is terrible.” She slipped her other arm through my arm, lowering her head and watching our feet. Her black hair cascaded in a veil that covered her face from my view. “Last night, I finished The Land of Dread and Fear, Héctor.”

  My most recent book ... written in a fever dream of guilt and liquor and whoring along La Frontera in the weeks following my family’s death. I got too cute with it: tried to “subtly” use a love affair between my border agent and an unwed Mexican mother to mask a meditation on U.S. and Mexican relations. Not sure I pulled it off. And the guard ends up alone and old and dying.

  Alicia said, “The girl, the young mother in your book? Marita Sánchez? She seemed quite real to me.”

  I stopped, turned, brushed the glistening black hair back from her face and kissed her forehead. God, the sweet young scent and promise of her. “If I sell the movie option of that book,” I said, “I’ll make it a contract stipulation that you play Marita. Deal?”

  She gave this the smile it deserved — the book was far too dark. It could never be a movie. “I’ll hold you to it,” she said with mock gravity. She got my act ... and that made me want her more.

  Then the gunfire started.

  There was this flare of light from the pier — sixty, maybe seventy yards away. That distance and the dark were all that saved us from being cut to ribbons by the first volley. I pivoted, getting myself between the shooter and Alicia. Then we ran.

  14

  The sand kicked up around our feet as the slugs dug in at the tideline. All that moonlight on silvered water made us silhouettes — too-easy targets. Running inland though, well, that would take us closer to the shooter — and off the hardpacked wet sand that was easier to run on.

  I checked that distinctive flash flare from the muzzle. It was a Thompson submachine gun. I was sure of it.

  I wrapped my right arm around Alicia’s shoulders. With my left, I somehow drew my Colt and fired at the machine gun’s muzzle flash. The flash jittered — the shots started going wide of us. I must have actually hit the bastard. But how badly? I shot again at the flare, but it was a long way away and a guess. And my Colt’s muzzle flash let the bastard get a better bead on us. A skiff lay abandoned at the tide line. I d
ragged Alicia with me behind it, then rolled half atop her. I switched gun hands and chanced a look over the boat’s hull. Strange ... the machine gunner was firing straight up and over his head. I almost pitied the bastard when all those slugs come raining back down.

  Sudden silence — no more gunfire.

  A familiar voice called, “Hector, you okay out there?”

  Bud Fiske. Bless him! “Shooter’s down Hector — the coast is clear.”

  I smiled and stood, waving. I brushed off sand and extended my right hand. Alicia took it and I pulled her up to me. I helped her brush sand from her dress ... felt muscled thighs and hips through the thin fabric. Her eyes searched mine. Reluctantly, I said, “We best get up there ... make sure my friend really has it all in hand.” I slipped my arm around her waist as we slogged through sand. She wrapped her arm around my waist.

  We climbed the steps up to the pier. Bud was standing there, looking like the world’s most rickety Texas Ranger in his white hat. He had one wingtip pressed to our attacker’s throat and Wade’s .45 leveled at the bastard’s right eye. “I gotta get you some lizard-skin boots to go with that hat, Bud,” I said.

  The Tommy gun was laying several yards away. I picked it up to add to our arsenal of liberated weaponry. As I rose with it, my ribs cracked again. I walked back and squatted down next to the shooter, Mex-style — hams on heels. The shooter had taken a slug in the shoulder. I guessed that that slug was one I had fired. There was blood pooling under him, much lower down. Probably hit in the back. That would have been Bud’s shot. Back-shooting — now, that ain’t cricket. Not ever. But then Bud was not a professional. And he was outgunned. And hell, he saved me and Alicia — who at that point I was thinking might well be the next Mrs. Lassiter.

  There was blood at the corners of the shooter’s mouth — some more running from his nose. Lung shot, probably. He wouldn’t linger long like this. The gunner was maybe thirty. High-country Mexican ... some Indian in there. Maybe Tarahumara in the mix. “You got a handle, boy? You speak English?”