“I do need a doctor,” he said. “I feel like my ribs are broken.”
“Could well be. If one of those suckers finds a lung, could be lights out for all time for you, hombre.” Just couldn’t help twisting that knife a bit. “How’d you find me this time?” If Young could tail me, I figured I must be losing my touch.
He groaned a little and said, “A fluke. I was at Vic’s for a drink. I happened to see your car and—”
“You tried to burgle that,” I finished for him.
“I’m quitting,” he said. His chin was quivering. “I swear it.”
I said, “You’re quitting what, exactly?”
“This project. This book about you. Not because it’s not my right and the public doesn’t have a right to know about you. Not because you’ve threatened me. But I am quitting.”
Arching an eyebrow, I said, “Why toss in the towel now?”
“Because these people around you are so terrible! My God, how do you go on living this life of yours? These terrible people hounding and harassing you? Chasing you? How do you stand it?”
Yeah.
And he said it without a trace of irony. Typical academic.
42
I left Duff and Marie at a hotel where I’d secured adjoining rooms. I’d hidden out in the same place earlier in the year. It held ghosts, but I knew it was safe.
While the ladies settled in, I tooled over to the Grand Central Market. I stashed my Bel Air in the Clocktower parking garage. Place was largely deserted at this hour, mostly empty spaces. I heard footsteps; figured I was being tailed. Then I realized it was the echo of my own skittish footfalls. Every shadow seemed nasty with menace, now. I have a strong imagination from the jump. It didn’t take much of that to imagine myself right back in Höttl’s chair in Paris, waiting to be dissected alive.
I hit an Italian restaurant and picked up three entrees to go and a couple of bottles of wine. I cabbed it back to the hotel. I rapped the door and said, “Don’t shoot, gals. It’s your favorite Texan.”
Duff saw the restaurant bags, said, “Perfect. I’m starved. We’ll have to wait a few minutes, however. Marie’s showering. Have to say, she’s pretty dejected, Hec.”
“That can be overcome,” I said, opening a bottle of wine. “Loathe as I am to do much more with film, I will suffer through in order to get Marie’s foot in the damned door. I’ll see we share a screenwriting credit, just as I said, and shiftless sort I feel as this goddamn wicked year winds down, I will see the words are really mostly hers.”
I kissed Duff and said, “But there’s something I need to know, sweetheart. Does that girl know she’s Höttl’s flesh and blood?”
“Yes,” Duff said, offering me a paper cup to fill with wine. “Since she was about twelve, I think.”
Duff sipped her wine. “Not bad, despite the paper cup. Look, I’m all for getting Jimmy here and having him and Marie disappear into Mexico, but I’m staying here with you. I saved you from Höttl once, and I have my own sources and skills. I can help you, Hec.”
I poured myself some wine. “I well know what you are capable of. And I agree up to a point. But I think we’re up against more than just Höttl in this mess.”
She gave me this incredulous smile. “Such as what? Neo-Nazis, or something? They’re mostly a joke.”
“Maybe those, too. But more even than that.”
“Who, then? What, exactly?”
“I’m still groping my way through on that front,” I said. “It’s more of a gut instinct than something I can point to. Höttl finding Marie in Ohio portends something bigger at back of this, I think. Grief you don’t need.”
“Well, when you have something firm on that front, then you can frighten me, Hector. Until then, we’re going to pursue this Armand Vargas or Werner Höttl together.”
“This could get very bad,” I said. “There’s real risk here.”
“That’s why you need me, Hector.” Duff smiled and kissed me. “I make you circumspect. I always have.”
The shower water cut out. I said, “Guess we can start preparing dinner.”
Duff said, “Don’t try and distract me. You haven’t agreed that I’m staying.”
“You noticed.”
She said, “I know all your tricks, Hec. Never forget that.”
Forget? Hell, I loved her for it.
***
Marie fiddled with her food more than ate it. After a time, she said, “You really think Höttl still wants me dead?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t ask me why that is still so after thirteen years. Originally, he claimed it was because he saw big things for himself in the post-War Nazi movement. I reckon he had visions of himself as a kind of neo-Führer, or the like. Hell, even Ezra Pound’s protégé, that nut John Kasper, hasn’t been able to make a go of it in that sorry role. Anyway, I guess this thing with you is just some kind of obsession for Höttl, kiddo. The mad bastard craves revenge.”
“I don’t understand that,” Marie said.
“You don’t understand revenge?” I squeezed her hand and gave her this sad smile. “I surely do.”
***
My telegram to Jimmy was fired off. I rented a nondescript Ford, then headed back to the hotel.
I sat with a glass of wine, leafing through my address book and looking for sources who might get me some more information about Höttl. Most of my domestic OSS cronies were dead or retired and moved on to parts unknown.
Marie poured herself a cup of wine. She curled her legs up under her in a chair. Jo Stafford was crooning on the radio. Marie looked profoundly glum.
“I’m sorry for all this,” I said softly to her. “I swear I’ll do better for you. I’m so sorry this isn’t what it seemed.”
She sipped her wine; bit her lip. “Frankly, I was hoping you were very wrong about all this and you’d really cost me an opportunity. But this writer who was beaten by your car? These dead Germans? The notion this man is chasing me still, and that he really wants to kill me?” Marie hung her head. “I’m so damned tired of his shadow hanging over my life. So many years, and yet it seems so fresh in some ways. I want to hurt him back, Hector. I want to sour his life and make it last forever.” She searched my eyes. “Maybe someone should write a book about Höttl. I mean, look at the grief that someone’s desire to write your biography is causing you, and you’re a good man.”
Yeah, look at me, the good man.
I took her hand. “Tough for me to get my mind around it too—his still hunting you.” I smiled. “Yet in some ways, it doesn’t seem that long ago I pulled you out of that hole in the wall, this little wide-eyed darlin’ without a word of English. Seems not long ago at all we jumped off that balcony onto that mattress before the building exploded.” I kissed her forehead. “You remember any of that, kid?”
Marie shook her head. “Images, mostly. I remember Pancho from back then. I remember my time with him very clearly.” She smiled sadly. “He almost saw me through college, you know.”
That was a bit of a gut punch. I dearly loved that dog. So much, in fact, that I’d never permitted myself another.
Marie and Pancho. Two strays who’d gotten through that sturdy wall of my own construction back then. Chance meetings still sending out ripples fifteen years on.
Nothing is ever over. Not ever. In life there’s only one ending. You die; roll the credits.
“I really hope you’re still somehow wrong about all this,” she said again.
“Sure. Me too. But I’m not wrong, Marie. Two very dead Nazi-throwback Germans in Los Angeles says it all, honey.”
She sighed. “Uncle Jim is on the way, then?”
“I’ll know tomorrow. He’ll call me through a friend. Ex-boxer friend of mine who lives here in town. Packy will pass our messages back and forth. We’ll rendezvous at a little airstrip outside Bakersfield. ’Tween now and then, it’s just a matter of staying scarce.”
Marie said, “Won’t that ‘staying scarce’ cause you problems with Sam
Ford?”
“He’ll be livid,” I said. “But then Sam’s not the Webster’s illustration of dependable. That cyclops is an alcoholic and his habit’s getting’ stronger. I don’t know how much longer the suits will put up with Sam’s shenanigans.” I waved a hand. “Anyway, I’ll say it was a woman and case of whisky keeping me scarce. Sam’ll be forgiving if he thinks it was like that. He likes to kid himself we’re birds of a feather.”
I freshened our cups. It felt more than a little funny to be drinking with Marie. In nearly all ways, I really did still see her as that little girl cowering in her hole in the wall. But I owed her more. I said, “Duff says you brought along spec scripts you’ve written.”
“Yes.”
“We’ve got at least forty-eight hours, kiddo,” I said. “I’ve written whole scripts in half that time. Let’s see what you’ve got. Maybe see what script you and I can cook up together tonight.”
Marie beamed.
43
“Jaysus, things must be fuckin’ dire,” Jimmy said, looking around the car’s interior. “For you to be driving a fecking Ford? Must be frost forming in Hell.”
Watching the mirrors, I said, “Yeah, you know me, always a Chevy man. And I guess anyone looking for me would know that, too. Hence, this sorry heap. Make any friends on your way out here?”
Jimmy frowned. “In Ohio, yes, but not German friends. Or I don’t think so, at any rate. You know, Cincinnati is lousy with Germans, but Cleveland, not so much. They’d tend to stand out there.” He paused, said, “These looked like government boys, to me.”
I was incredulous. “What, like East German government?”
“No, Hector, nothing so fanciful. More like our government.”
That made me wince. “Christ’s sake,” I said. “How’d you shake ’em?”
“Took ’em on a road trip to Chicago and lost ’em in the Loop. I flew out of the Windy City to St. Louis. Small planes and short road trips from there. Made good time. The day I can’t shake a goddamn Fed’s tail is the day for me to fold my hand.” Jimmy jacked a thumb at his own breastbone. “I’m ‘Kevin O’Day,’ by the by.”
“Seems to have worked, Kevin. I’m not seeing anyone back there.”
“That’s what you can expect to see when I’m shaking a tail.”
“Right.”
Jimmy was grayer, a bit heavier. His breath seemed to come a bit shorter. He seemed a few years older than his real age. But it was good to see him and a real relief to have him at my side. We’d come through so many crazy, odds-against-us onslaughts over the years that Jimmy’s mere presence buoyed my optimism for coming safely through the other side on this escapade.
He said, “We’re going to exploit this moment of safety, Hector, and no arguing on this one. We’re going to send Marie to Mexico with Duff. Just the two of them. Then you and I are going to ferret out this son of a bitch and speed him to his dirt nap.”
I cracked the window and primed the Ford’s cigarette lighter, steering with my left hand and fishing my right pocket for my Pall Malls with the other. “You able to find anything official on Armand Vargas?”
“There is no such animal,” Jimmy said. “Somebody didn’t take the effort to set up even a token false identity to support that alias. Smacks of a rush job. Or hubris.”
I tapped ashes out the window. “Of course I’m all for slaying this son of a bitch. But you said you thought our government might be tracking you here. If they’re tangled up in this, well, it makes things… complicated. Killing him may rain down chaos on us.”
Jimmy said, “Bum a cigarette?” He rarely smoked the few times I’d seen him since the last war. I passed him my pack. He said, “I’ve done some sleuthing these past years. I haven’t learned what’s really going on, not deep down, but I do know that some arm of our government is still shielding, even protecting, Höttl. Hell, all the dead ends my inquiries have run up against are enough in themselves to point up some official agency is running interference.”
“You’re scaring me, Jimmy.”
He smiled and shook his head. “Why should I be the only one?” He looked at the cigarette smoldering in his meaty fist, made a face, then pitched it out the window. “We have to get it done this time, Hector, whatever the ramifications. We have to do that. Höttl must die.”
“We’ll find a way to see to that need,” I said. “But you’ll likely have to arm-wrestle Duff to decide who goes to Mexico. She’s adamant she and I are going to hunt Höttl.”
“Duff’s a scrapper,” Jimmy said. “She’s a hellcat, and that’s why I want her guarding Marie way down south. But think what that bastard was prepared to do to you in Paris when he had you to himself. Are you prepared to put Duff at the same risk?”
Checking rearview mirrors again, I said, “Of course not. Hell, I don’t want to put you in that danger, either. Frankly, I’m frightened enough for myself in this. That said, I think I should maybe do this alone. Let me kill the bastard and assume the risks.”
“That some more of your Gary Cooper, world-patent solo lobo bullshit?” Jimmy turned his mouth down. “No, boyo, you need a strong right arm.” He gave me this look as I was looking him over again. He said, “Stop eying me that way, Hector. I may not have kept myself in your fighting trim, I may not have your tough and immortal Texas-Stryder genes, but I can fight this battle through to the end, boyo.”
“So be it.” I cracked my window wider. “But you have to convince Duff. I took my shot at that task and failed badly.”
“You don’t have my charms, Hector. Nor my dulcet tones. It’ll go down like honey coming from me.”
***
I left Jimmy, Duff and Marie with Chinese takeout and then found a payphone three miles from our hotel.
Aiming to keep the call too short for a trace—Jimmy’s fears about government participation in protecting Höttl from us had me casing every angle—I propped my Timex up on the top of the payphone.
Sam said, “Rock’s out of our film, I guess you’ll be happy to know. Those homo rumors about him got back to the Front Office. They hear Hush-Hush is pokin’ around. If I ever find out you had something to do with any of that, Hector—”
“I’ve got bigger fish to fry, frankly, and those rumors on Rock have been out there for a while,” I said. “Discreet he is not. Anyway, Rock was all wrong for the part. How about going after Sterling Hayden? He really was a vet, and he’s even taller than Hudson. The Viking God’s about half-wrapped, but I’m friends with the crazy, magnificent son of a bitch and have this soft spot for the guy.”
“That commie son of a bitch? Not in my fuckin’ picture,” Sam said. “Hec, I need you in tomorrow. Need to touch base with you on some script things. Armand has some logistical questions for you. Thought we could discuss ’em over lunch.”
That got my attention. “Did he? Armand really going to be there, too?”
“Not clear to me. What the hell is it with you two? For two guys who’ve never met, you two seem to spend a lot of time thinking about one another. After this Hudson thing, well, I don’t want any surprises. You haven’t gone homo on me, have you, Hec?”
“Uh, no,” I said. “Have you actually talked to that bastard Vargas?”
“Finally, yes.”
It came out as a snarl: “Is he German?” I winced a little at the acid in my voice.
Sam sounded just a tad taken aback. “He’s got some kind of accent, but I ain’t a damned linguist, Lassiter. German, French, Eye-talian? It’s all Greek to me.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow at ten,” I said. “By then, I may have a better handle on my schedule. Maybe I can do a late lunch, Sam. But only if Vargas comes.”
“You sure you ain’t queer for him? I asked Armand if he’s queer, and he nearly had a conniption.”
“Just get him there,” I said.
I racked the receiver and scooped up my watch. A car was idling across the street. It looked more than a little like some flavor of Fed sled.
44
Everyone was irked at me for getting them up so early. I’d roused our crew at three-in-the-morning, arguing it would be a hell of a lot harder for anyone to follow us to Bakersfield if we were the only car on the road at that crazy hour.
We made the run in record time.
But now the pilot was bitching, too.
When he finished cursing me to wander off and fetch another cup of coffee, Duff pulled me aside and said, “This sleepy-eyed air ace, he’s really good? He looks old.”
“Lee is old… and an old friend,” I said. “We met in Mexico, during the Punitive Expedition, when I was following Black Jack hunting Pancho Villa. Lee used to fly for Villa during the revolution, here and there. He’s a forgotten man and a friend I’ve been out of touch with long enough to make him likely incorruptible in terms of selling us out on this tight a timetable. Lee’ll get you two to Mexico, safely. That said, don’t tell him precisely where you’re headed once you touch down, just in case. When this is over, Jimmy and I will come down there and fetch you two.”
I kissed Duff and hugged her tightly to me. “Please don’t take any risks, darlin’. Lay low, stay away from other Americans and keep Marie on a very short leash. To my mind, she’s not nearly paranoid enough for someone so squarely in Höttl’s sights.”
Duff kissed me back and said, “Keep Jimmy close by you, too. You aren’t going to have me to pull you out of that torturer’s chair this time, you know?” She shook her head. “I still feel I should be the one staying here to keep you focused. You and Jimmy together seems a little like fuses and dynamite.”
“Jim and I have always come through just fine together. He ever tell you about another little girl, Cleveland, the Ohio mob, and us back in 1950? Talk about outnumbered and outgunned. Yet here we are.”
“Somehow that tale got by me,” Duff said. “You stay safe so you can tell me about it next time we meet.”
“Scout’s promise.”
Duff traced my lips with her fingertips. “I’ve been thinking hard about us,” she said. “Maybe we could just live in sin. Marriage somehow makes us boring. I think I even miss the desert. Certainly do miss the house.”
Roll the Credits: A Hector Lassiter novel Page 23