Head Games (The Hector Lassiter Series)
Page 25
Hector was startled to see that an acquaintance had been murdered...found stabbed and left propped in a doorway of a vacant shop on the Rue de Moussy. Death had come from a single puncture to the heart, probably administered with a long stiletto, according to the report.
Hector sipped his coffee, added a little more cream and sipped it again. There would be no shortage of suspects for the murder, Hector figured.
Hell, most of the young writers on the Left Bank — Hector excepted — had good reason to want Murray Panzer dead.
Murray had come to Paris from Greenwich Village in ’21, a trust fund intellectual with heady notions of starting a literary magazine. He kept his overhead down by paying his hungry contributors in extra copies of his magazine...in itself not an unusual practice. Paris was lousy with little magazines that did the same — “little reviews” and chapbook periodicals filled with drivel Hector couldn’t read.
But Panzer, it had recently been learned, had been reselling his unpaid contributors’ stories to other, paying publications in Spain and Germany...passing the material off as the work of writers whom Panzer invented pen names for, and then pocketed the money. Panzer’s subterfuge had been found out by Constance Wright...a poet who’d been traveling with her lover in Berlin and who had found her own poem featured in Der Querschnitt — but now allegedly the work of a poet named “Gwendolyn Roquelaure.”
Several of the literary writers and poets of the Left Bank were bitterly calling for Panzer’s head.
Ernest Hemingway had not been among those burned, but he could vividly imagine himself having been one of those taken in. Hem had insisted that Hector should join him in a “visit” across the river to Panzer’s apartment on the Rue Coquillière: “We’ll knock him back on his ass, Lasso. Get a little money back for ours.”
“No way,” Hector had replied. “And I only write for paying markets, where they find other ways to screw you.” Hector was forever taking shots for writing for the crime pulps back home, for “whoring” as some other young writers put it.
Hector had decided to use it to his advantage for once. “But at least I get paid in currency for my stuff,” he’d told Hem.
“Well, someone should sure do something about that thieving son of a bitch,” Hem had said, frowning.
Hector finished with the newspapers. He saw nothing about a body having been pulled from the Seine. He dressed to go out — pulling a cable-knit sweater on over his undershirt, shirt, and the sweatshirt he’d already put on. He shrugged on his big leather jacket with the fleece lining. He pulled on his leather gloves and scooped up his chocolate brown fedora.
It was cold on the street and exhaust from the cabs roiled in the chilly wind. The snow had hardened and it crunched under Hector’s work boots.
“Lasso, wait up!”
Hector turned and saw Hem running toward him...running with that limping, shambling run of his caused by a weak, reconstructed knee. Hem was dressed in layers, like Hector — sweaters over sweatshirts, a scarf and black fisherman’s cap and gloves with the fingertips cut out. Hem was four or five days unshaven and his clothes smelled of peat fire. “Where are you headed, Lasso?”
“Sylvia’s...figured to browse awhile.”
“Me too. Walk together?”
“Always,” Hector said, “But just a minute.” He rested his gloved hand on Hem’s shoulder to steady himself, then raised his right leg and fished around under the cuff of his pants. Hector pulled the silver flask from his boot and smiled. “For the cold walk.”
Hem beamed and accepted the flask and took a swig as they crossed the Rue d’Assas. “Gotta get myself one of these,” he said, handing the flask back. “And Pernod...that’s sure the right stuff for a morning like this.”
Hector took a swig and slipped the flask in the pocket of his leather jacket. He took his off his glove and fished loose a cigarette and a match and got his smoke going. They were headed north on the Rue Guynemer, skirting the gardens. Hector slipped back on his glove and said, “See where somebody punched old Murray’s ticket?”
Hem was surprised by that. Hector then told him about what he had read. When he finished, Hem said, “That’s two, then. Hear word they found Lloyd Blake dead in his bed yesterday. His throat had been cut.” To stay warm, Hem was trading punches with his shadow on the passing walls; with his reflection in the storefront windows.
Lloyd was another of the little magazine publishers. He’d taken on several investors recently to try and keep his little magazine going — much of it money taken from aspiring or struggling writers who couldn’t afford to be underwriting little magazines. When he’d apparently garnered all the “contributions” he was apt to obtain, Lloyd had announced he was shutting down the publication after all.
Rather than refunding the money taken from his contributors, Lloyd had instead upgraded his living quarters and begun hanging out with a smarter set on the other side of the Seine. Or so the gossips claimed.
Hector said, “Seems the literary life is suddenly becoming bloody.”
Stopping his shadowboxing, Hem smiled and said, “Couldn’t have happened to two better prospects, though. You can’t disagree with that.” He reached into Hector’s jacket and took out the flask. Hem took a drink and raised the flask and said, “Farewell to that son of a whore.”
Hector accepted his flask back and took a swallow. “To both the dead sons of bitches,” he said.
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One True Sentence
Craig McDonald
ISBN 978-0-312-55438-5