Head Games (The Hector Lassiter Series)

by Craig McDonald

  “I’m dying.”

  I nodded. “Probably. Why’d you try to kill me, son? Who are you working for?”

  “I need a priest.”

  Christ. One of those.

  “Not much chance of finding a padre around here at this hour,” I said. “But I’m Catholic, too, and I know the words well enough, I guess.”

  Well, I was a Catholic three-marriages-ago. I looked at Fiske and Alicia. “Anyone got a crucifix?”

  Alicia was wearing one around her neck. I handed it to the Mexican who kissed it with his bloodied lips.

  “Now,” I said, “you tell me who sent you after me, and why, and we’ll pray with you.”

  Not good — he was fading faster than I expected. I thrust my thumb into his shoulder wound, bringing him back a ways. Between screams he gasped, “Fierro. We were hired by Fierro, to help get el Jefe’s head.”

  I kept digging my thumb into his wound: “Fierro? Who is Fierro?” I pressed harder.

  He groaned, blood bubbling from his mouth with the garbled words: “Rodolfo ... Rodolfo Fierro ... el Carnicero.”

  The Spanish for “the Butcher.”

  “You fucking liar!” I ground my thumb in hard then and accidentally passed the bastard out. “Fuck!” Rodolfo Fierro — a dead legend. Long dead. He couldn’t be alive...

  Alicia, white-faced, was clearly upset by what I’d just done, what I’d just said. She put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed hard. “Did you hear what he said?”

  “Pretty clearly I did. You know of Fierro?”

  Alicia angrily shook her head. “No, not that, Héctor. He said, ‘We were hired...’”

  Oh yeah “we.” And just then, the second machine gun opened up on us.

  15

  Bud wrapped an arm around Alicia’s trim waist and rolled back around the corner of the loading dock with her — good thing for them the building was brick because the shooter tracked their path with a flurry of lead. Fragments of brick rained down on me. But my friends were safe. I crouched down behind some boxes filled with something I prayed was thick and hard. I aimed the first shooter’s discarded Thompson and fired back at the other machine gun’s muzzle flash. I held my thrumming machine gun with one hand. It was murder on my right wrist. With the other bandaged hand, I fished out the keys to my Chevy and lobbed them over my shoulder at Bud — all that twisting and exertion was almost too much for my Orson Welles’-splintered ribs.

  I hollered over the din of the roaring machine gun, “You two go get to my car, and pick me up at the end of the alley. While you do that, I’ll keep this bastard busy.” Then I remembered fabled Fierro, and said, “Bud, you see any old Mexicans, you shoot ’em. Don’t hesitate. God’ll sort ’ em out on the other end. No shit — shoot first.” I heard four feet beat pavement down the alley. God willing, I’d follow them soon enough.

  I squeezed off a couple of bursts then set the Tommy aside. I had no target, and no infinite supply of ammo. My situation wasn’t looking anything near the neighborhood of good.

  Groaning, I picked up the conked-out, wounded Mexican at my side. I propped him up and then lifted him up from cover and pitched him far and high as I could to the right. My ribs burned as I hurled him up and out.

  Several slugs tore through the Mexican and shredded his head and neck. I picked up the machine gun and rolled off to the left of my cover, deep into shadows. I rolled up against a pile of old discarded burlap sacks. I pulled the sacks over me and waited.

  The other shooter approached, crouched low, his gun swiveling side-to-side — a very cautious fellow.

  At six feet, I let loose on him, looking just to maim him — I sorely wanted to debrief the bastard.

  But it’s a tricky thing, firing for flesh wounds with a machine gun at close range. I hit him, but not squarely enough. Howling, he turned, drawing a bead on me. I had to let him have it then. I went for his upper body, but my would-be assassin lost his footing, dipping a bit. All those slugs I hurled his way decapitated him. There it was — another head, rolling there on the boardwalk, but much too fresh for our collection. I patted his torso down, trying hard to avoid all the spreading and spraying blood. No wallet and no papers to be found on this fella. Ditto on the first shooter. They were pro enough to leave all the incriminating or useful stuff elsewhere, just in case they were caught or arrested.

  They were nasty as hell — and hot, too, from all the firing — but I couldn’t bear to leave the twin Thompsons. I grabbed ’em up with a couple of drums left by the first shooter. Loaded down with firepower for Bud’s and my arsenal, I trotted down the alley.

  There were sirens in the distance now. I could hear ’em better as I put some buildings between me and the muted roar of the ocean.

  Thank Christ and Bud Fiske. My beautiful blue and white Chevy was sitting there like Trigger, or Rocinante — or maybe Siete Leguas, Pancho Villa’s legendary doomed mare.

  Alicia opened the passenger door and slid over to make room. I tossed the Thompsons on the floor of the backseat and swung in, the pretty Mexican girl sandwiched between Bud and me. I smelled her perfume and dark hair, her sweat and fear and vibrancy. She smelled like Mexico.

  I told Bud, “Cops are on the way, so drive slow and easy and like we own the place.”

  He did.

  I checked my hands — they were shaking badly. Alicia took my left hand in hers and squeezed, careful to go easy on the Orson-inflicted cuts across the back of my hand. “You are unhurt?”

  “From that particular fray? Yeah.”

  “And the other men?”

  I shrugged and rooted around my sports jacket’s pocket for my cigarettes. “Día de los muertos time back there, darling. I’m no Tracy Richardson, but I can hit some things with one of those choppers.” I jerked my head in the direction of the machine guns in the back seat. “Papa and me used to use them on the Pilar to kill sharks.”

  Two California Highway patrol cruisers whipped past us then, headed to the place we’d left. The cops’ cruisers were the same make and model as my own — ’57 Chevrolet Bel Airs — but black with white doors and roofs, blue sirens screaming.

  “We’ll let things cool down, then see you get back to the set,” I told Alicia.

  The wind through the open windows fingered her raven hair. She shrugged. “It wasn’t much of a job. You have all those connections with Hollywood; I say you owe me a real film role, Héctor.”

  “It’s a deal, sweetie,” I muttered, unlit cigarette dangling from my lips as I looked for my Zippo. “I’ve got a picture for you in mind,” I said, hand still fishing around for my lighter. “Sam Ford’s the director. And we’re filming in Mexico. He owes me large.” Ah, my old Zippo. I fired her up and lit my Pall Mall. Soon as it was going, Alicia appropriated the cigarette. I got a second coffin nail going. She took that one from my lips and stuck it in Bud Fiske’s mouth. Three’s the charm: I got to keep the third one. But the girl took my old Zippo from me. She turned it until the dash light fell just so. She read the engraving aloud:

  To Hector Lassiter:

  ‘One true sentence.’

  — E.H.

  Key West,

  1932

  “What does it mean?”

  I took my Zippo back. “Something from an ex-friend you’ve been lately reading. A kind of shared credo. I remember it. Not sure he does anymore.” I felt the weight of twin gazes from Bud and Alicia.

  Astute Bud went for a change-up. “This Rodolfo Fierro, or ‘el Carnicero’ — what’s his story?”

  I looked to Alicia. I was curious to see how much she knew of her country’s revolutionary history. She exhaled a thin stream of smoke and tipped her head back on the seat. It was very tight up front. I stretched my left arm along the seat’s back, fingertips brushing her bare shoulder. The tactile contact could be interpreted as an accident. “His story,” the Mexican girl said, “is supposed to be over. He is supposed to have died, something, I believe, like forty years ago.” She smiled apologetically and it felt
like she scooted a bit closer to me. “I don’t know the details.”

  But I did. Legends passed along the dusty, sweltering trails during the Pershing Expedition.

  Rodolfo Fierro was Pancho Villa’s chief assassin. Fierro is the Spanish for “iron,” and Rodolfo was certainly that. He was also a full-fledged psychopath ... a stone cold killer of epic proportions. He was born in El Fuerte, Sinaloa in some unknown year. He was gaunt, cold-eyed and often leering. The diseased fucker favored Stetsons — a fact that made him more the asshole in my eyes.

  After a rout of the enemy at San Andrés, Villa once ended up with several hundred inconvenient prisoners. Supplies were running low and bullets were precious. It was “take no prisoners” time. But there was the vexing issue of those precious bullets. Fierro struck a bloody balance. He arrayed men in rows of three, according to height, best it could be arranged. He made some men squat and made some others stand on tiptoes. He ordered them to embrace one another ... to press bellies to backs. He killed three men with a single shot ... over and over...

  Juárez brought another slaughter. It was a similar situation: Several hundred prisoners were being held in a corral. Fierro was feeling “sporting.” He had a table set out. He had an array of guns loaded and spread out on that table. Several men stood by him to reload his empties. Fierro told the prisoners any man who cleared the fence at the back of the corral before Fierro could shoot him would go free. At day’s end, Fierro’s hands were cramped and bloody. He was seen soaking them in a horse trough. No Mexicans had cleared the fence that day. There were high piles of bodies with holes in their backs, left swelling and rotting in the Juárez sun.

  At the battle of Tierra Blanca, 1913, Fierro, on horseback, allegedly overtook a Federalist train. He hopped on board and single-handedly killed the entire crew. A railroad man from way back, Fierro stopped the train — and earned a heady field promotion from Pancho Villa.

  But even el Carnicero’s luck couldn’t hold. His alleged end was almost too poetic to be accepted as true.

  Autumn, 1915: one of Pancho Villa’s lieutenants, Tomás Urbina, something like a bastard brother to Pancho, stole a cache Villa’s gold and silver — the treasure whose location was allegedly recorded on a map hidden in Pancho’s severed head.

  Villa and company rode out to confront Urbina and company. Villa got sentimental and weepy — for a time. Suddenly, always-mercurial Villa turned on a dime. Pancho said, “Shoot him.” Fierro was always eager to comply with a directive like that. Fierro dragged the execution out though — maiming Urbina with surgically administered shots. Then Fierro and his crew loaded their horses with bars of recovered gold and silver and rode off in pursuit of Villa.

  Accounts differ regarding what happened next. One story has it that Fierro, horse heavy with bullion, drowned attempting to cross a rain-swollen stream outside Nuevo Casa Grandes. Others said he went down in a quicksand bog, screaming for help as his own men watched him sink down to hell, leaving only a hat floating on a bog.

  Either way, in mid-October of 1915, Rodolfo Fierro disappeared from history.

  Bud shook his head. “Jesus Christ. If the old bastard is alive, he’d be, what, around 80?”

  “Probably thereabouts,” I agreed.

  The young poet nodded. “And Fierro’s chasing Pancho’s stolen head?”

  “Why not? Everybody else seems to be.”

  “So what’s next?”

  I shook loose another Pall Mall. My luck truly seemed to be improving — I get to hold on to this one, too. “We head up to L.A. — Van Nuys,” I said. “I think it’s time to have a colloquy with Mr. Emil Holmdahl, the mercenary and head thief.” I squeezed Alicia close. “What about it, darling? Up for a road trip? I leaned around to get a better look at Fiske. I said, “How’s about you, Bud ... you balk at a three-way split?”

  Fiske smiled. It was all hypothetical to him it seemed. “What the hell, Hector? Sure. But it’s tough to divide an even number by an odd one.”

  “We’ll even it out from my end,” I promised.

  Alicia shook her head. “These crazy men after you seem prepared to do anything. I think the only way I might be safe for now is staying with you two.” She narrowed her eyes and said, “But what is this of heads ... of stolen heads?”

  I smiled. “We’ll get back to that. Right now, we’ve got another, more pressing concern.” I spotted a truck stop. There were perhaps four dozen tractor-trailers, idling in the night with their running lights on. “Pull in there,” I told Bud.

  I rolled out, wincing as my ribs crack again. Bud sidled up beside me. “What’s wrong?”

  “That slaughter back in Venice,” I said, “ it got me to thinking. How did those sons of bitches find us?”

  Bud nodded, going white. “Yeah ... how did they do that?”

  Moaning, I slipped off my sports jacket and handed it to Bud. I popped the hood ... checked the trunk ... nada and nada.

  I was feeling around the left rear wheel well when I felt this strange bump. I tugged hard at it and loosened this ... device. I pulled hard against the magnet wedding it to the chassis. Bud whistled low as I held it up to the parking lot light — a black box with a chrome antenna sticking out. Bud said, “What in God’s name is that thing?”

  “Some tracking gizmo I’m thinkin’,” I said.

  “Yeah. Who put it there?”

  I smiled at Bud and said, “Some asshole from El Paso, maybe. Probably working for Prescott Bush — the alleged spymaster.” Yeah. Prescott ... who clearly didn’t know he was maybe employing stooges who also worked for Fierro. Or maybe Bush had actually unwittingly employed the Butcher. Which shows you what that fella, as a spymaster, apparently knew.

  I looked around but saw no obvious spies. I slapped the tracking gizmo on the bottom of a tractor-trailer with Idaho plates. Let the cocksuckers chase that bad boy. Bud grinned, said, “I hope they like Boise.”

  I slapped his back, smiled. “They do,” I said, “and they’ll be the first.”

  16

  We made Los Angeles at dawn. My blood sugar was off again, and my vision was fading fast. Alicia had fallen asleep long ago, her head curled into the hollow of my neck. “Let’s get some breakfast,” I said to Bud. “We need to be sharper for this old bastard Emil. We really need to be on our game.”

  I treated them to the Aero Squadron — a kitschy restaurant tricked up to look like a bombed out European palace, packed with military memorabilia. It had been a few years, but it was frozen in time. It was a pricey breakfast, but God, was it ever worth it.

  As Alicia and Bud finished up, I scooted to a pay phone. I dialed up Jack Webb. Laconic cocksucker owed me at least one favor. And the LAPD owed Webb many more favors.

  Someone had left their L.A. Times in the booth. As I waited to leave a message, I flipped the paper over and scanned it. There was a banner headline about the Brooklyn Dodgers maybe moving to L.A. According to “staff writer” Cooter Wrye, in New York, there was talk of lynching Walter O’Malley. Plans were afoot to place the stadium in Chávez Ravine. Holy Jesus. So much for American’s favorite pastime. When the ball clubs are for sale to the highest bidder and can be moved around like house trailers, what’s left of the game to love? Bastards had even found a way to fuck up baseball for me.

  I left my message for Webb and headed back to the table.

  One hour and several Bloody Marys later, I was summoned back to the phone. Jack spilled. Well, he laconically spilled ... telegraphically giving up the goods.

  Seemed that Emil’s wife, Elizabeth, had died a few months ago. Holmdahl was currently living with his stepdaughter. Mr. Dragnet shot me the address. “Now you owe me one, cocksucker,” he said.

  “You ever get down south, you can collect.” There was an implied “asshole” on my part there at the end.

  “We got a line on Emil,” I said, rejoining Fiske and Alicia. She’d freshened up, brushed the wind tangles from her black hair. That lipstick she sported ... Scarlet Seduction, maybe? Sh
ould be called that. I swung in the booth close to her; felt her hip pressed tight against mine.

  Bud watched me scoping Alicia. Lad probably felt like a third wheel. I made a note to myself: I gotta buy this kid a woman.

  Bud said, “Holmdahl must be as old as dirt, too.”

  Too?

  I let that one pass. Maybe Bud was thinking of Rodolfo, the Butcher. “Yeah,” I said, scowling in spite of myself. “He’d be seventy-five or upwards. But he remains in the game. He’s tied up with some real estate deal in Punta Banda now, down San Diego way.”

  “We’ll call ahead?” Bud said.

  I waved a dismissive hand. “Why warn? Let’s ambush the old campaigner,” I said.

  I checked Bud’s dusty, beat wingtips. “But I want to hit a Western outfitter first. Get you a proper pair of boots to go with that hat. Holmdahl’s a horseman. Let’s play to his sentiment for days gone. I’ll do the talking, you’ll just be like Tonto — if Tonto was a cowpuncher.”

  Alicia had spent a couple of hours the night before, captive to a bunch of Holmdahl stories. She said, “‘Sentiment?’ It doesn’t sound like this Mr. Holmdahl has much of a heart, Héctor.”

  “Naw, he really doesn’t,” I agreed. “But now he’s getting up there and he may have old regrets that make him weak in some important places. And he lost his wife recently. Maybe that weakened him a bit, too.”

  She searched my eyes. Her hand brushed my cheek and she shook her head. “So we go now?” She smiled — a bittersweet, Scarlet-Seduction smile. I suddenly had the feeling she and Fiske had been talking about me in my absence ... maybe talking about presumed regrets and recent losses of my own.

  “Huh-uh,” I said. “Not now. Now we go to bed. We’re all beat-to-the-wide and look road-ragged. We’ll stop and get you a couple of new outfits when we get Bud his boots. Then we’ll find a good hotel. Grab some sleep and showers — bath for you honey, if you prefer. We’ll see Emil mañana, maybe. We need to be at our sharpest for that negotiation. This old bastard Emil doesn’t draw a breath without thinking three moves out.”