“Marie’s plane land yet?”
“It’s due in half-an-hour. Why are you calling me?”
“Try not to be obvious about it,” I said, “but look around you, sweetheart. Anyone seem to be spying on you?”
Her voice, going tense, “What is going on, Hec?”
“Bloody trouble, darlin’. I think it’s all tied up with your visitor. When you get Marie, don’t collect her bags right away. Just beeline for a security guard and stay glued to that fella, heart of my heart. I’ll come there and fetch you two. I’m leaving now.”
“What’s happening?”
“Germans, Nazi types, followed me from your place this morning. They’re dead now, and not by my hand. Tell you more when I see you.”
***
Fifty-five white-knuckle minutes getting to the Los Angeles Airport. I burned twenty more minutes wandering the concourse, frantically looking for Duff and Marie.
I finally found them in an airport lounge, chatting up an elderly airport guard. The old dude wouldn’t do much good in a brawl, I reckoned, but his uniform and sidearm might cow a displaced German thug still finding his way in the States. I checked the guard’s badge and said, “Officer Lynch, my thanks for watching over my gals.”
He winked—a very grandfatherly guy. He said, “What kind of problems are stalking these lovely ladies?”
“Unwanted suitors,” I said. I hugged and kissed Duff.
This young woman seated beside her stood, smiled. The last time I saw Marie in person, she was fifteen and a little gawky, still wearing braces. I’d seen photos since, but they didn’t do her justice. She was dark and attractive, now. Hell, coltish. She had this charisma.
I pressed a hand to my chest, then hugged her. “Marie, you’re a heart-breaker.”
“So great to see you, Hector.” Smiling, she hugged me back, hard.
“You’ve gotten tall,” I said. To the old guard I said, “Any suspicious types around?”
He shook his head, setting his wattle to wiggling. “Not that I’ve seen.”
I took his offered hand. Old guy had a creditable grip. “Again, thanks.” I turned to Duff. “We’ll get Marie’s luggage, then—”
“The officer saw to that,” Duff said, smiling at him. She obviously had him in her hip pocket. “He radioed for Marie’s bags to be brought up. We’re all ready to go.”
“Then let’s do that.” I took Duff’s arm. “We’ll pick up your car later.”
The old security guard said, “I’ll escort you to your car.”
Hell, he did carry a gun. “That’d be swell,” I said.
41
Marie was squeezed into the front seat between us. After our dalliance in the back seat, guess neither Duff nor I could cotton to the notion of having Marie sit back there just yet. I turned down the radio on Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me.” Marie said, “What is going on Hector?”
I kept checking the mirror. Duff said, “That crazy biographer again? Or someone else?”
Marie said, “What crazy biographer?”
“Some academic is trying to write a biography about Hector,” Duff said. “It’s got Hec going crazy. Guy’s been following him, snooping around.”
“Makin’ my life a living hell,” I said. “You can’t imagine what it’s like having some would-be author with an axe to grind trying to tell your story.” I checked the mirror again. No tails for the moment.
“My meddlesome biographer aside, there is some real trouble, I’m sorry to tell you, Marie,” I said. “If I wasn’t afraid of you being followed back to Euclid, I’d put you on a return flight to Ohio this instant.”
Marie said, “Again, Hector, what is going on?”
I hesitated, said, “Understand, please, you were so young then. I don’t know how much your mother or uncle might have told you about this particular German—”
“Werner Höttl?” Marie put it out there, blunt like that. She looked from me to Duff and back again. “Hector, Höttl was kind of my personal version of the bogeyman. Uncle Jimmy used to show me pictures of Höttl he’d gotten from his spy connections made during the war. Jimmy would talk to me about the man’s scar. Unc wanted me to be able to spot Höttl in a crowd like that.” She snapped her fingers. Her nails were long and varnished. I still couldn’t adjust to her being grown up, a woman.
Marie veered into an Irish accent now, close enough to evoke something of Jimmy’s tenor. “Lassie, you ever see that devil’s face, you run! You run and get word to me. If that Kraut devil ever gets me, then you get word to Hector Lassiter. Hec will know how to handle the boyo and for certain. If Hec isn’t available, then you go to Ernie Hemingway.”
“That sort of answers my question,” I said, half-smiling at her impression of Jimmy.
“Uncle Jimmy was always running spooky scenarios by me,” Marie said. “He’d take me for long drives and get me lost and say, “Now, imagine I’m Werner Höttl, and you escape from this car somehow. What do you do in those first moments you’re shed of him?”
God. I’d thought when we got Marie out of France we’d delivered the child from darkness. Apparently, Jimmy had kept the specter of that Nazi monster front-and-center for little Marie in all the years since.
A part of me could see Jimmy’s side in doing that. Hanrahan was a terrific cop who’d spent his life chasing monsters, including decades pursuing his own personal demon, the Cleveland Torso-Slayer. So far as Höttl was concerned—my own personal demon, and Marie’s too—I’d not delivered on my end back there in Europe. I’d failed to kill Höttl. Consequently, Jimmy wanted to keep Marie safe, whatever the cost. He meant to prepare her for any eventuality.
But Christ, I wanted the kid’s life in Ohio to be sunshine and honey.
Duff said, “Hec, Marie and I have had some time to talk. She knows about all of it.”
Marie said, “I also know about what Höttl almost did to you.”
One thing still wasn’t clear to me. Had anyone told Marie that Werner was her real father? I surely didn’t want to be the one to accidentally drop that bombshell on her.
Duff said, “Now, what has happened, Hector?”
I sighed and said, “Two men followed me this morning from your place, Duff. There was a chase. The one shot his partner, then turned the gun on himself. The gun was a Luger. The two men had false identifications. They were stupid enough to carry their real papers on them. They were German. They were also packing a copy of Mein Kampf . That and the gun makes ’em throwbacks, to my mind. Die-hards, I guess you could say.”
“And from that you make the leap to Werner Höttl?” Duff leaned around Marie, searching my face. “Question their reading tastes, sure, but—”
“It’s my strongest instinct.” I cracked the wing window to let in the smell of the resuming rain. “The man they were working for was registered in the Biltmore Hotel under my name.”
I felt Marie shiver against me. Duff probably felt it, too. She said, “You confronted this man?”
“Just his empty room,” I said. “But he made a phone call from that room I sorely need to follow up on.”
I checked the rearview mirror again. “The good news is, for the moment, we’re free of tails. Probably because our friend, the other Hector Lassiter, has had his ranks unexpectedly thinned this morning.”
Smiling at Marie, I said, “Does your uncle let you drink?”
She shook her head. “He probably wouldn’t approve, but I am twenty-four. I make my own wicked choices now.” This pause as she read my expression. “Don’t worry, it wouldn’t be my first drink.”
“We’ll find a good place, then. Plot our next moves.”
***
We headed over to Wilshire and Trader Vic’s for some Mai Tais. When you’re paranoid, there’s nothing for distraction like crazy Tiki décor and island ambience.
Recent rum shortages had forced a change in the classic recipe: Duff and Marie seemed fine with that. Always the purist, disappointed, I switched to something with tequila.<
br />
I left them with their drinks and hit a payphone, patting some nastily sneering, hand-carved Tiki god on his potbelly for luck. I called the studio and found Sam Ford in his office, waiting for me so we could go to lunch. He was miffed when I told him I couldn’t make that date with him and Rock Hudson.
Sam swore he hadn’t received a call at eight p.m. last evening, the time indicated on the Biltmore’s phone records. Sam said, “I had a woman here, Hec. So I had that cocksucking phone off the hook.” Then Sam veered. “Rock and me will probably be migrating to some bars after lunch. Maybe the Frolic Room. Check back here if you get free and I’ll leave word with the front office what our libational itinerary looks like. Rock’s really looking forward to meeting you. He’s a fan, goddamn it.”
Christ. I shook out a cigarette and fired up with my Zippo. I said, “You sure Rock is right for the part of Hank?”
Sam, cagey now: “What could be wrong?”
“He’s tall, good-looking, most women claim,” I said. “But word is, he’s more than a tad light in the loafers.”
Now Sam was being extra careful with word choices. “So what?” It sounded like Sam was lighting a cigar on his end, probably to buy himself time to think about his phrasing. He said, “Hector, there’s what we are, and there’s the image we project. In life, only the last really matters, and that’s particularly true in the movie business. Perception is reality.”
“Until Confidential and Hush-Hush knocks down that projected or perceived image,” I said. “Hell, Hedda Hopper might go after Rock, like she did with Cary Grant and Randy Scott.”
“Ain’t gonna happen here,” Sam said.
I said, “Yeah, well. Quick change of subject: Have you ever met Armand Vargas? In the flesh, that is to say?”
“Nah, just corresponded, like I said the other day.”
“Not even a phone call?”
“Nada,” Sam said.
“Know anybody who has met this cat?”
“Some front office-types who’ve employed him as a director of photography claim to,” Sam said. I could hear the frown in his voice. “Why do ya ask?”
“Armand seems a mystery man,” I said. “Have a feeling that handle’s an alias.”
“What’s that matter? Goddamn movie business is full of folks who’ve changed their names. Rock—hey Rock, what’s your birth name?” I could hear another voice mumble something. Sam again: “There, you see, Roy Harold Scherer, Jr. of Winnetka. So in this town, it’s gotta be Rock Hudson, right? Anyway, I want to get you two together, so you can take his measure and tweak the dialogue to Rock’s cadences and the like.”
“Fine, we’ll arrange it,” I said. “Next time you talk, have the names of two or three guys who’ve met this Armand Vargas. I want the description of this fella.”
“Anything in particular you’re looking for?”
“A very nasty scar down the right side of his face would be a dandy start.”
***
I slid into the booth and sipped my cocktail. Watching her over the salted rim of my glass, I said, “Marie, honey, how’d you choose this film as the one to wet your feet in the business? Earlier this year, I was in Venice, California, with Orson Welles on the set of a film that would have been a real experience for you—Marlene Dietrich, Chuck Heston and Janet Leigh.”
“It was a contest,” Marie said. “I got this letter sent to me at school. The movie was to be one chosen at studio discretion. It was just a wonderful stroke of luck it turned out to be a film you two were attached to.”
“Very lucky,” my ex said softly. “Almost an embarrassment of riches in terms of luck.” Her gaze drifted to me. Duff gave me this, You say it, Hector look.
“Yeah,” I said, toeing out there. “In my experience, luck simply doesn’t run that rich, honey.” Toying with my glass, I said, “Was there a particular name associated with this contest, Marie? Is there a contact name you can call to mind?”
“It was all handled by mail,” she said.
Jimmy must have loved that. It should have had all his warning signals buzzing. But it was the kid’s dream and she was probably indomitable. And as Duff had said, the fact I was here with Duff on the receiving end would likely “mollify” Jimmy, just as it seemingly had.
Duff said, “What exactly do you suspect, Hector?” Although I sensed she now shared my own fears about all this, Duff was playing fence-sitter to some extent, keeping a foot in Marie’s pond in case we had to go good-cop, bad-cop on the darlin’.
“It’s this Armand Vargas angle,” I said. “Armand, the man who recruited you for this film, Duff. The mystery man who recruited me. The man Sam Ford hasn’t laid eye on yet. Nobody I can find has ever seen this Vargas character, and I’m not finding anything on him in terms of a filmography. It’s like Vargas just materialized in the past few weeks.”
Maria put it out there, cold again. “You think Vargas is really Höttl? That’s what you think, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Höttl’s been missing for thirteen years. It’s possible he’s established himself in Hollywood under some other identity. Los Angeles is lousy with German film directors who fled the Fatherland ahead of the war and Hitler’s increasingly heavy hand. Höttl could blend in, in that sense. This Vargas alias, if it is one, might be an identity cooked up just for the three of us, to draw us all in for a killing stroke.”
I stirred my straw around in my drink. “Regardless of who he really is, Vargas is trouble. These dead Germans who chased me this morning had a slip of paper for someone staying in the Biltmore Hotel. That someone’s initials are A.V. This same A.V. placed a call to Sam Ford’s place last evening.”
“Well, that is damning,” Duff said. “More than a bit chilling.”
Marie was more resistant. “If this is some kind of plot, it doesn’t make sense to me,” she said. “First, how could he find me back home? And if he could, why not strike at me there?”
I picked up a souvenir matchbox, struck one and lit up another Pall Mall. “It makes sense for Höttl to let you reach here if he wants it all—all three of us here to take down at once, maybe. Some sweeter form of revenge in his mind. As to how he found you in Ohio? Well, that does baffle me. And it makes it harder to know what to do next. If he did find you there, you going back home now, which is my strong impulse, doesn’t truly solve anything.”
Marie crossed her arms on the table, chin out. “Then you don’t want me on the set?”
“Hell, I’m not going back to that set under these circumstances,” I said. “And I’d handcuff Duff to a post if she tried to go there. This is all hinky and also getting bloody.”
“So what would you have me do?” Marie looked from me to Duff. “Do you agree with him?”
“I do,” Duff said. “Darling, Hector and I can get you on a set anytime, and Hector can likely do more for you than that given his own screenwriting credentials and connections. But this, now? Two men are dead and this stuff about Armand Vargas is more than disquieting. I’m scared for myself now, let alone the threat to you and Hector. So, yes, I have to agree with Hector. This all feels orchestrated to some bad end.”
“I’m so sorry, kid,” I said. “Duff’s right, I’ll make it up for you, in spades. This is merely a dream’s delay, not a denial. I’ll get you back out here myself, and we’ll make a good movie together, not some potboiler like this one. You’ll help me with the script, and I’ll get you a screenwriting credit, and soon.”
Marie hung her head. “But now?”
“Now, for this moment, I think we’re safe if we stay away from the studio, away from Sam Ford and away from any direct phone contact with your folks or Jimmy,” I said. “The next step is for me to tuck my Bel Air away in a parking garage somewhere. I’ll rent a beater car with something under the hood, then telegram your uncle. We’ll shack up in some hotel for a couple of days to wait.”
“To wait for what?”
“For your uncle to use his cop tricks to get out here without
a tail,” I said. “Then I’m putting you and Duff on a plane with Jimmy to Mexico for a little southern R and R while I close out business here with Armand, or Werner… or whomever.”
***
In the near dark of Trader Vic’s parking lot, I tripped over something bunched up alongside my Bel Air. A groan: it was a person sprawled on the ground.
I knelt down and turned the man’s face into the light. He’d been badly beaten this time. An arm was broken. Duff and Marie were looking over my shoulder. “Who is he?”
“My would-be Boswell, biographer Fenton Young,” I said, disgusted. I drew my gun. Once again, it seemed Young had run afoul of someone looking for me. If so, they might still be lurking, watching. I said, “You girls get in the back seat, quickly.”
I pinched Fenton’s earlobes to bring him around again and then helped him to his feet. “Let’s get you in the front seat,” I said. I folded Young into my Bel Air, then slid in behind the wheel.
I got us on the road fast, the Colt resting on my lap in easy reach. So far, nobody seemed to be following. My biographer was whimpering and clutching his belly.
“Okay, Young,” I said. “I’m taking you to the hospital. You’ve lost at least two teeth and I think your left arm is broken. Who did this to you?”
Groaning, really milking it, I thought, he choked out, “Nazis!”
I shot him a look. “Come again? Actual Germans?”
“No, Angelinos, I think,” he said through bloody teeth. “But they dressed like Nazis. I mean, they wore armbands with swastikas. They ran away, stopped beating on me, when some men came out of the restaurant.” I glanced back and saw Marie’s wide, frightened eyes in the rearview.
“And they were looking for me?”
“And for a woman they said is with you.” Young tried to turn around in his seat then, to look back at Duff and Marie.
“Huh-uh,” I said, pressing a hand to his bruised cheek and turning his head forward. “Eyes forward, egghead. Otherwise I’ll drop you on the street here, and I won’t even brake first.”
Roll the Credits: A Hector Lassiter novel Page 22