Head Games (The Hector Lassiter Series)

by Craig McDonald

  Those World War II and Korean War vets were starting to get long-in-the-tooth.

  Either way, it’s all gone away now.

  Kids are growing their hair and burning the flag and blowing up their schools. Women are burning their underwear.

  I don’t recognize the stuff on the radio as music. Whatever happened to Marty Robbins or Sonny James or Buddy Loy Burke?

  My Black Mask stablemates are all dead. Lester Dent, the most decent, the most civilized, of us, died of a heart attack in March 1959. Chandler died March 26 of the same year in California. Hammett went nuts and communist and clocked out in January 1961 in New York. Dash was destitute and eaten up by lung cancer.

  Ernest Hemingway, the Great Ape of American literature, shot himself in Idaho in the summer of 1961. Thank God we patched it up before he picked up that gun. Hem was old and sick and deprived everything he loved. When word reached me in July of that year that Papa had decapitated himself with his shotgun I fired up a Pall Mall with his engraved gift lighter and poured a second glass of Rioja and set it out for Papa’s ghost ... but he wasn’t thirsty that day. So I drank it for him. I understand why he took himself out. I understand it more every day. It’s a terrible kind of wisdom and it’s too late to do anything with it.

  My hands shake now and I don’t see too good.

  Diabetes and cataracts — they’re an unbeatable tag team.

  My caretaker — or fifth “wife” as she thinks of herself — sees to it that I’m deprived the cigarettes and liquor that would at least make these last days of mine maybe something like bearable.

  The bedsheet falls flat just below my right knee where my leg now ends. I’m getting the strong sense that the sawbones has designs on my left leg, too. Fuck him — I’ll shoot myself first. The old Colt lays loaded and waiting under my pillow. I’ll turn it on myself one day ... one day soon, perhaps.

  In the meantime, I think a lot about walking.

  It’s been ten years and a few months since all that bloody business with Pancho Villa’s head — another of my reckless whims that went very wrong.

  Emil Holmdahl died on April 8, 1963. Nearly 80, the old soldier of fortune was loading his car for a planned prospecting trip deep down in Mexico. Maybe he wanted to take another swing at our bogus map written in ammonia by Bud Fiske. Holmdahl suffered a massive stroke and died moments later. At least the bastard went out on both feet. The old head plunderer was buried in a crypt with his wife. I’m betting that tomb has got big strong locks and thick doors to keep the headhunters at bay.

  Prescott Bush is still on the right side of the sod — that fucker still gets around. He was born in central Ohio; he spent years in the hardware business in Missouri; he was senator from Connecticut from 1952 to 1963. No shocker here — he was a Yale University trustee. He’s since left politics and gone into banking back East. Word has it he’s grooming his sons and grandsons to follow the family path into politics. May your God help us all.

  Like Emil, I’d bet good money that Prescott will take exceptional steps to keep his bones intact when they finally plant the tight-assed bastard.

  Orson Welles never steered another film into port with his artistic vision intact. The suits and the beancounters dicked poor Orson at every turn, mutilated every movie he tried to make after Citizen Kane. He’s been reduced to voice-overs and guest shots on I Love Lucy — a talk show regular who performs dime store magic tricks for Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin.

  Marie Magdalena von Losch — Marlene Dietrich, the Kraut — she made one other real movie after Touch of Evil. That was Judgment at Nuremberg. It paled next to Orson Welles’ disfigured noir classic. She’s performing in nightclubs, but I don’t get around much anymore. So we talk on the phone, we exchange letters. She misses Papa and he dominates our conversations. The Kraut says, “It’s the friends you can call up at four a.m. that matter.” She and me, we never speak in daylight.

  Last night I couldn’t sleep and called her — she serenaded me to sleep with an a cappella rendition of “La vine en rose.”

  Luz Corral is still alive — holed-up in that big old house/museum full of Pancho Villa memorabilia. She claims she’ll live a hundred years. Stranger things have happened.

  Eskin “Bud” Fiske: poet, sometimes country music lyricist, outsider writer. Screenwriter, raconteur, essayist, busker. Pop culture celebrity. He turns up in cameos on dumbass TV comedies and talk shows. I caught him on that loopy Bob Conrad TV series the other night, The Wild Wild West. It was some outlandish episode starring Bud and his Rat Pack buddies Sammy and Peter Lawford — JFK’s debauched brother-in-law.

  Good ol’ Bud — son of a bitch can still turn a hell of a phrase when he’s pressed too.

  Alicia ... I sometimes lose an evening staring at the one photo I have of her. She’s well ... her and her children.

  So it ends here. I can hear my Brit’ “wife” now, speaking with this journalist come to interview me. It’s likely my last interview. That suits me just fine.

  I switch off the shortwave radio — a mariachi station I seem to be parked on these days. The last tune was by a woman singer performing Rita Arvizu’s “Ejercito Militar.”

  “Wifey” is reading my last scribe the riot act now — no booze, no coffin nails.

  Holy Jesus: Another trip down memory lane for some goddamned reporter looms. Thank Christ it’s the last.

  My tale of Pancho Villa’s head, the last true tale I’ll ever spin, ends here.

  So it’s adios, partner ... vaya con dios.

  To better days.

  Maybe we’ll see you down some other world’s road, buckaroo.

  2

  Dia De Los Muertos

  Excerpted from The El Paso Herald Post, dated Wednesday, November 1, 1967:

  MYSTERY AUTHOR FOUND DEAD

  IN BIZARRE MURDER/SUICIDE

  ———————————

  Journalist suspected of slaying

  last of the great Pulp writers

  —————————————

  By Russell Hardin

  Herald Staff Writer

  NEW MEXICO — Celebrated crime novelist Hector Mason Lassiter was found shot to death in his own bed yesterday afternoon.

  The body of Lassiter and that of his presumed slayer were found by the author’s wife, Hannah Lassiter, and their housekeeper, Carmelita Magón. The two women found the corpses when they returned from a brief shopping trip near the couple’s home in La Mesillia, New Mexico.

  Lassiter’s presumed killer is Andrew Nagel, a Chicago-based freelance journalist who’d driven cross-country to interview the famous mystery writer for a magazine article.

  Sheriff Dave Duhan said Lassiter, who had recently undergone the amputation of his right leg as a result of complications from diabetes, was found dead as the result of a single gunshot wound to the stomach.

  Lassiter’s suspected slayer, Nagel, age 22, apparently killed himself with a single shot to the head from the same weapon: a vintage, 1873-model Colt Peacemaker.

  “It’s a real museum piece,” Sheriff Duhan said. “The gun belonged to Hector Lassiter, who often slept with the revolver under his pillow for security, according to his widow. We suspect that Nagel wrestled the gun from Lassiter and gut shot him with it, then turned the Colt on himself.”

  The sheriff said there were signs of a fierce struggle; the remnants of several broken cosmetic bottles were scattered across the bed and an adjacent nightstand.

  “It’s frustrating,” Duhan said, “because there are some tantalizing potential clues that have been lost to us.” Those clues, he elaborated, would likely have come from a tape recorder found with the two bodies. The reel-to-reel recording machine belonged to the journalist and appeared to have been running for some time.

  Any possibility of recovering any conversation, or any sounds of the struggle and shootings, was “erased” when the gun was twice turned on the tape machine, the sheriff said.

  Despite doctor’s orders
to the contrary, and strict instructions from Mrs. Lassiter, the journalist appears to have shared several cigarettes and a bottle of liquor with the ailing author.

  The door to the bedroom/murder scene was found locked from the inside when Mrs. Lassiter and her housekeeper returned home.

  Two mysterious initials were also scrawled in blood above the author’s bed: “E.Q.”

  Sheriff Duhan said that several handwritten letters sent to Lassiter by fellow author Estelle Quartermain — a British mystery author, whom, ironically enough, is famed for her own so-called “locked-room” mysteries — were found by the victim’s bedside. Perhaps significantly, Nagel had interviewed Dame Estelle Quartermain several weeks before soliciting the interview with Hector Lassiter.

  Sheriff Duhan refused to comment on any possible connection, or to divulge the contents of the letters. Repeated calls to Dame Quartermain went unreturned.

  Mrs. Lassiter also refused to speak with the Herald. There are as-yet-unconfirmed reports that she is engaged in a bitter legal dispute concerning her late husband’s estate. Lassiter’s will, according to attorney Hobie Meed, left the bulk of his estate, including the home in La Mesillia, to his client, former actress Alicia Vicente, and her three children. A second home, located in Key West, Florida, was left to Hannah Lassiter.

  When contacted for a comment about his death, longtime Lassiter friend Marlene Dietrich, famed German-born actress and chanteuse, said simply, “He was a hell of a man. What more than that can I say that would matter a damn? When you’re dead you’re dead. End of your story.”

  Another longtime friend, noir poet and Hollywood Squares regular Eskin “Bud” Fiske said, “Hec was the last great one ... the last true writer of the old Black Mask school. I hope they have enough room in Valhalla for the magnificent (expletive deleted).” Fiske then added, somewhat cryptically, “And I find it very significant that some hophead from Yale took Hector out. That doesn’t go unnoticed by me. And I mean to look into that a bit more myself. ‘Prescott’ will know what I mean.”

  Fiske resisted repeated requests by this reporter to elaborate on his rather bizarre statement, or to explain to whom the name “Prescott” referred.

  Sheriff Duhan, however, did confirm that a syringe and heroin were indeed found among Nagel’s personal effects recovered from the Lassiters’ guestroom. He also confirmed that both of Nagel’s forearms were covered with old and new needle scars. “He was a longtime and frequent heroin abuser,” Duhan said. The sheriff also confirmed that Nagel was indeed a Yale graduate, “Although I frankly fail to see what that has to do with anything,” Duhan said.

  Funeral arrangements are being determined.

  Hector Lassiter was pre-deceased by a toddler daughter, Dolores, who died of complications of a congenital heart defect in April, 1956.

  His fourth wife, Maria Lassiter, died of an apparent heroin overdose in New Mexico on May 13, 1956.

  3

  La Cabeza de Héctor Lassiter

  Excerpted from The El Paso Herald Post dated Saturday, November 1, 1970:

  AUTHOR’S GRAVE ROBBED

  AND CORPSE MUTILATED

  ...Local authorities are continuing the investigation into the robbing of crime novelist/screenwriter Hector’s Lassiter’s grave on Halloween night.

  The grave was found uncovered and the coffin pried open. The body of Lassiter was found partially exposed and decapitated. The head of the famed author — the victim of a bizarre murder three years ago to the day — remains missing.

  Authorities say they are baffled...

  BOOK THREE

  —

  1970:

  THE

  WASTELAND

  1

  Bud Fiske, speaking.

  Perhaps local authorities really were baffled.

  But I wasn’t.

  And I owed Hector.

  I’d spent too many years away from my friend after the late 1950s. Always meant to get down to that big, old, beautiful and sad hacienda in New Mexico. But my own career was taking off then.

  So I delayed.

  I procrastinated.

  I figured, There’s always tomorrow.

  But one day there isn’t — just a string of successive, unsatisfactory todays and mounting yesterdays that mean to bury you.

  Hector and I stayed in touch, exchanged letters and phone calls. We sent one another inscribed first editions of our respective works.

  Hector floated some of the script work he no longer had the heart or stamina for my way and got me through some lean times.

  Then I became a kind of half-assed pop culture celebrity, waxing while Hector waned.

  I became a second-string Rat Pack member.

  I scored voice-overs on Underdog, frequent guest shots on Carson and Merv Griffin, Laugh-In gags and The Hollywood Squares. And that fucking cameo on The Wild Wild West with Bobby Conrad, Sammy Davis Jr. and that whack-job Peter Lawford — the fucker who clawed out my right eye at the series’ wrap party in 1969.

  When Hector went down under Nagel’s gun in 1967, I almost went after the Skull and Bones right then. But there were enough odd, attendant angles to stay my hand. The stuff with Estelle Quartermain vibed something very close to credible. Maybe the junkie journalist really did take Hector out as a result of unfathomable loyalty or fucked-up fealty to the daffy old Brit mystery maven.

  Through channels, I heard dirty secrets about the letters written by Quartermain that were found by Hector’s bed, about Hector’s “crude” annotations on the letters, indicating he’d bedded a drunken Dame Quartermain at a party many years before — shaming her husband and embarrassing the “Queen of the Locked Room Mystery.”

  So I waited.

  I watched.

  I came to think Nagel’s Yale credentials were just some spooky coincidence.

  And, hell, you know what? They may be.

  But then the rotten cocksuckers broke into the Orogrande graveyard and hacked off my best friend’s head.

  Then I knew.

  And then I went for them.

  2

  It’s raining hard in Connecticut tonight.

  I’ve dialed around the radio and found myself a country station. Buddy Loy Burke is crooning now. He was Hector’s favorite singer/songwriter and it’s maybe an omen — a cover of “Ghost Riders in the Sky.”

  The roads and sidewalks are slick with a thick layer of sodden leaves. The “Tomb,” the gray, imposing sanctum sanctorum of the dumbass Yale Skull and Bones Society, squats sinisterly under bare-limbed trees and forked tongues of lightning. It looks like a high-end mausoleum.

  I pull over two blocks past their HQ. Before heading in, just in case things get rough, I take out my glass eye and put it in a small velvet pouch on the passenger’s seat. I tug on my despised black eyepatch. I only hope to hell I don’t have to shoot anyone. I’m still adjusting to the one eye — my compromised depth perception plays hell with my pool game and marksmanship.

  This time, I know some more things about this “secret society” of “Bonesmen” than we knew in 1957. Getting that information cost someone dear. (Look for a Skull and Bones member, class of ’66. He’s got two black eyes and a new limp, tall, horse-faced, too much hair — like Andrew Jackson’s latter-day, sour-faced love child, maybe.)

  Inside The Tomb, they run things five minutes ahead of the rest of the world.

  For the record, Jesus, I do so hate this dipshit, secret handshake stuff.

  Thursdays and Sundays they gather in the “Firefly Room” for dinner at 6:30, their time.

  So now I wait outside, wearing a black slouch hat and draped in a long black great coat that obscures the sawed-off .410 underneath. I have a holdout derringer tucked up my right sleeve and two chrome-plated .45s thrust down my waistband. It’s a little after 8 now in the real world. They don’t drink in the Tomb (some stupefying prohibition that even Yale’s myriad and chickenshit hard-partying secret societies observe), so by 8:15 p.m. (their time), they get thirsty and go wan
der off campus to get plastered.

  Dinner’s breaking up. I let a few Bonesmen pass by. Then I grab a lone straggler. I press my shotgun to his belly: He checks my face; looks like maybe he half-ass knows me from somewhere, but can’t quite place me. (Goddamned Hollywood Squares!)

  He’s perhaps foxed by the eyepatch. And in these environs, that wicked black patch makes even me look like some flavor of bad ass.

  I explain, tersely and quietly, what I want — to be escorted to the “Trophy” room where they keep Geronimo’s skull. Where they would have put Pancho’s noggin. Where I’m sure they have squirreled away Hector Lassiter’s stolen head.

  Dig this shitty, spooky ambience — Jesus, so dark; like some frat boy’s vision of Anton LeVay’s West Coast fuck pad.

  I hear voices up ahead in what they call “the Inner Temple,” or room “322.” I hear a young man’s twang. I duck in, steal a glance at the speaker, and duck back. The voice comes from a guy with big ears and a medium build and Texas accent. He’s emphatic. “This is just diseased,” the young guy says. “Christ, what the hell is the fascination with this sick stuff? What a bunch of major-league assholes you all are.”

  An impatient, older voice now: “Quiet, Temporary. We asked you back for this because your grandfather couldn’t travel and this is important to him — as you well know. And your poor father. How in hell could he lose that senate seat to fucking Lloyd Bentsen? He must be devastated. I know that I am.” A pause, then, “You know, Temporary, what Villa’s head meant to Mog. This drunken scribbler Lassiter cost us another chance at acquiring Villa’s head. It was important for a member of your family to be here for the installation ceremony. Even if it is only you.”