Roll the Credits: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  Jimmy’s blue eyes narrowed. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “This man claims your ‘niece’ is his daughter, Detective. If that’s so, she should have been sent into his care upon her mother’s death.”

  “Höttl fucking tortured and killed her mother,” Jimmy said. “Jesus Christ, you dumbasses—”

  “She should have been assigned to him then, regardless of the circumstances of the mother’s death,” the stranger persisted. “But you, Lassiter and this Duff Sexton conspired to essentially kidnap Höttl’s child. If we’d known about all this in 1942, it’s entirely possible that child might have been returned to her natural father by agents of the U.S. government. As she’s now an adult, and since it appears she might possibly be at some mild risk from our asset, we will abstain from pursuing any legal punishments for you, Lassiter and Sexton. In return for that rather generous largesse, you’ll desist in your efforts to track or harm our man. You will content yourself with the knowledge he will be in no future position to harm any of you three, or to harm Miss O’Rourke.”

  Jimmy beat me to it. He snarled, “Look, boyo, your assurances don’t mean squat to me as they come from an unnamed son of a bitch working for a no-name agency.”

  “Put yourself in our position,” I said. “If it was you trying to protect an innocent—”

  “I’ve explained the situation as fully as I can,” Agent X said. “You’re both legally vulnerable. So is Miss Sexton. She could be arrested the second she crosses the border back into the United States. Yes, we know generally where she is, but Mr. Höttl does not, I promise you. We have had him overseas for some number of years, working in an intelligence role. During a changing of the guards, his value on that front was erroneously appraised down, so to speak. He took advantage of that time to come back here, to establish a new identity, and to begin to float a career in film. He also used the time, and some contacts he made in our government, to search for Miss O’Rourke, Miss Sexton and you, Lassiter.”

  He smiled and said, “We’re watching, now. You should take comfort from that. You can’t conceive of the reach or depth of our intelligence-gathering potential.”

  Oh, I figured I could. But I said, “And what? In the meantime, this bastard runs around with these lunatics who’ve styled themselves as latter-day Nazis?”

  Agent X shook his head. “We will be picking up Mr. Höttl in a few days and then he will be gone, as I said. The Nazis, as you call them, are a matter for local authorities Now, you three do nothing. Do that for two or three more days, and all of your problems with this man will be over. They will same as evaporate along with Armand Vargas slash Werner Höttl. Do anything else, and the price will be unthinkably high for you three. You’ll die in a prison the world doesn’t even know exists.”

  He must have thought that last was enough to cow us, because he left us then. Didn’t say goodbye, or even offer to pick up our check.

  Jimmy looked at me over the rim of his glass. His face was flush and his eyes were blazing. “So?”

  I emptied my own glass. “So it sounds like we have less than forty-eight hours to slay that Nazi son of a bitch.”

  47

  Alone again, Jimmy and I lingered over more drinks, mulling next moves. He said, “Let’s at least move to the bar, Hec. Can’t help thinking we were perhaps put at this particular booth for a reason.”

  “Given my recent history with listening devices earlier this year, I was thinking the same thing,” I said. “Bastards are probably bugging my Chevy as we sit here. Let’s find an entirely different bar.”

  We settled the check and then wandered outside. There was a tavern just across the street. An armless panhandler was propped up against the façade of our prospective new watering hole. I leaned down and stuck a five-dollar bill in his beggar’s cup. I said, “See that Bel Air over there?”

  He squinted back at me. The sun was at my back and he had no hands to shield his cataract-clouded eyes. He said, “The turquoise fifty-seven? I’ve been admiring it.”

  “You see anyone fooling with it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Gonna be here a while, pal?”

  “Till my ride comes at five,” he said.

  “We won’t be anywhere near that long. Watch her for me, would you? Just see if anyone fiddles with her. I’ll give you a Hamilton when I come back out.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Jimmy and I headed into the dank dark of the tavern. There were a couple of serious elbow-benders at the bar. We grabbed a booth near the jukebox. To thwart any handheld listening devices, I dropped coins for some new guy named Johnny Cash.

  Jimmy returned with a couple of beers. He said, “Been cogitating, Hector. Despite this boy’s baffling government shield, he’s very thick with this Freddie Brown and his band of nouveau Nazis.”

  “Right…”

  “So let’s give the sons of bitches a taste of their own medicine,” Jimmy said. “After witnessing that melee you engineered in the desert several years back—you know, in Fifty—I know you’re not adverse to authoring real-life mayhem of some bloody scale.”

  Yes, 1950 in the deserts of Mexico, that had been some bloodbath.

  I arched an eyebrow. “What are you thinking?”

  Jimmy smiled broadly, wiping off a beer-foam moustache with the back of his hand. “Blitzkrieg, boyo! Hit ’em fast and hard and leave ’em bloody. Take no prisoners. There’s not an innocent in that crew, so far as I’m concerned. They deserve our worst.”

  “If we’re going to do that, and I think it is the only way to do it, then we’re going to need more hands on deck, I said.”

  Now Jimmy’s smile ebbed. “Yeah. Goddamn it, there isn’t enough time for me to call in favors from fellas back home.”

  “I can maybe pull a few hombres together, but it’s going to be a pretty ragtag team,” I said. “I mean really motley. And most of ’em are going to be bought help.”

  Jimmy winced, said, “I can probably pull together a couple of thousand bucks, but more than that—”

  I shook my head. “Nah, we’re not talking that kind of compensation,” I said. “Ragtag, remember? We’re looking at doling out quantities of rotgut booze. Maybe some working girls.” I waved a hand. “Don’t sweat that aspect of it, it’s my freight to pay.”

  I looked at my barely touched mug of beer. Never did care for the stuff. What inspired Jimmy to order it? Jim and I always seemed to be of the same school of thought when it came to booze. If you’re going to drink, drink. I said, “I’m going to go get a proper whisky, then burn my pocket change giving my address book a workout. See what kind of crew I can muster.”

  Jimmy said, “If it comes down to the endgame, which one of us gets the privilege of killing Höttl?”

  Smiling, I searched Jimmy’s eyes, then decided he wasn’t joking. That wiped the smile off my face. I said, “We both have good reason for killing that man, Jim. Maybe we best just make it a fast-draw competition.”

  48

  It was dusk. Jimmy looked up at the Hollywood sign looming over us. “Picturesque place for a meeting, Hector.”

  “Getting out here made it harder for the Feds to follow us, if they really are watching us closely now. We can at least make ’em earn our arrests, sí?”

  Jimmy stamped his feet and rubbed his arms. I could see his breath when he spoke. “Getting goddamn frigid now that the sun’s down.” He gave me this long, appraising look. “We’ve not had time for much other than Höttl talk since my plane touched down. These last couple of years of yours haven’t been kind to you.”

  I squeezed his shoulder. “Please don’t, Jim. I’m just starting to come out on the other end and okay, now. Talking about it is just going to stir it all up.”

  “You lost a wife and a child, Hector. Either one of those is a body blow that can crush a man, and you’ve sustained both.” Jimmy had been present down there in Mexico when I met my late-wife Maria. He’d been friend enough to try and warn me off her in the e
arly going. Of course, I didn’t take heed.

  Then, much later, troubles with Maria that Jimmy had sensed up front ended up costing us our only daughter, my poor, ailing Dolores.

  I checked my watch. “Really, leave it be, Jim, I’m beggin’ you. I’ve just reconciled myself to the fact that 1957 is not going to be a banner year—not anymore than fifty-six was. But hell, maybe 1958 will be terrific. And 1959? It might be passing wonderful.”

  “Okay, Hector. But if you ever change your mind… Maybe if you find yourself having some dark night of the soul down there in your desert hellhole when it’s too late for the bars—”

  “You’re the one I’ll wake up, buddy, I swear it.”

  There was the sound of an engine moving through the fog-bound hills. “That’ll be Duncan,” I said. “He’s an ex-Marine. Works as a stuntman, now. He’s an utter hellion and the dirtiest fighter you’ll find in greater Los Angeles. A kind of living weapon.”

  “Charming,” Jimmy said. “What’s his compensation for undertaking this bloody task?”

  “The body count you suggested,” I said. Thinking of what Sam Ford had observed about Hollywood name changes, I said, “Duncan’s current name is one he chose for himself, like Hollywood types are given to doing. Real name is David Ebner, born in Berlin. The Nazis took a hell of a lot from the man. He’s still avenging all that.”

  Jimmy grunted. “A Jew, eh? Good. That makes this all extra-personal for him.”

  “Acutely so,” I said.

  “And in that, he sounds a solid choice for the team,” Jimmy said. “Who else?”

  “Guy who’s supposed to be riding along with Duncan is Will Buchanan. Will is former OSS. He was part of this special unit of movie-types our side used to fox the Germans. Wild Bill assembled this crew of sound engineers who used audio equipment in theatre to make the Germans think the forest was thick with allies, for instance.”

  “You joking?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “It was all smoke and mirrors. Strategic deception, so to speak. Guys would put out cardboard or inflatable tanks and aircraft that cast convincing shadows to fool air surveillance by the Luftwaffe. I used to write scripts for radio chatter, myself. Stuff that’d play nonchalant and sound like guys shooting the breeze, but let slip little false intelligence about troop movements and the like. Get the Germans focused on place ‘A’, while our guys were really racing to place ‘H.’ Like that.”

  “This Buchanan guy, he’s good?”

  “Buck is a pro, on- and off-screen. His specialty is explosions. He got his start in Spain with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade blowing up the real items—railroad tracks and bridges and such. Here in L.A., he just blows up little models of those sorts of things. The occasional car for the odd film noir. Stuff for war pictures.”

  Jimmy chuckled and stretched. “He another of your Hollywood name-changers?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But not for racial or ethnic reasons.”

  “What, then?”

  “Like I said, Jimmy, he was in Spain. One of those ‘premature anti-Fascists.’ Only way he gets work in this town is using this other name.”

  Jimmy said, “God, I loathe this city. Everything in it is a falsity. The notion of Marie working in this town, or worse, living in it? It sets my skin to crawling.” Jimmy gave me this long, hard look. “What about you, Hec? That an adopted name? Are you really Hector Mason Lassiter?”

  I said, “To the bone.”

  ***

  Twenty minutes later, my two remaining recruits arrived—my boxing pal, Packy Thompson whom I would quietly be paying out of pocket, and another member of the OSS strategic deception team, Barney Nettles. Barney was one of those sound wizards I’d told Jimmy about. He was short, thin and wan. Something almost ghostly about Barn. Wasn’t too sure what technical boon he could bring to this table, but he was good with a gun, which would almost certainly be a benefit going up against a militia, as we seemingly were going to do.

  We were huddled inside Will’s special effect’s van, trying to keep warm and talking strategy, variously quaffing coffee, or booze from various thermoses and flasks.

  Duncan, aka David Ebner, said, “I’ve been eyeballing the place most of this afternoon. It’s a converted pole barn deep in the sticks. It’s in a kind of mini-hollow. It’d probably be in the flood plain anyplace with real water. Strategically, it’s bad for them, because they’re essentially in a basin. We have nearly 360-degrees of high ground. Place is ringed with trees on three sides and there is a road approach from the rear into the woods. I say we go in that way, slow and quiet as we can. The hillside mounding and the trees that side should cover the sound of our coming.”

  Will, our demolitions expert, was about five-five and barrel-chested. He turned to Jimmy and I. “Guess the main question here is, what’s our primary objective?”

  I sure knew what I was prepared to do, but I let Jimmy say it. He did so with gusto. “Lads, the objective is to kill a single man,” Jimmy said, measuring reactions. “I mean put him down good and bloody for all time.”

  Jimmy weighed each man’s expression. Evidently encouraged by what he saw, Jimmy said, “He’s an escaped Nazi torturer and child-killer named Werner Höttl. He was chief stooge for Klaus Barbie in Lyon, France—the so-called ‘Butcher of Lyon.’ We confirm that Höttl is in that bunker-cum-church, and then we will make him dead.”

  Will wet his lips. “That I can do easily enough, with the right stuff.”

  Jimmy said, “And you can obtain the right stuff?”

  “Hell, I possess it,” Will said. “But doing it for sure my way will vaporize that building and break big branches off a lot of those trees. If it’s a stormy day, and there’s enough air pressure over that basin, the shockwave could break windows for a few miles in every direction.” He paused and said, “And anyone else in that building when it blows will obviously be just as dead as this goddamn German will be.”

  Will paused again. Now he searched faces. “I’m told there might be two-dozen men bunking in that place, any given day or night. We okay with racking-up that kind of death toll?”

  I anted up first. “I’ve got a durable conscience where these types are concerned.”

  Duncan, dark hair, dark eyes, grim-faced, said, “They are Nazis, one way or another. So to hell with ’em. Let ’em die bloody. It’s unfinished war business, that’s all.”

  Jimmy crossed himself and said, “Amen.”

  Packy was the only one of the guys who was in this for the money. He was a minor local celebrity, so I could forgive him any cold feet. He said, “Christ, didn’t realize we were going to total war with these Kraut-lovers.” He looked at his hands. They’d administered their share of carnage, sanctioned and otherwise. He said, “Still, the last show cost me two nephews on those goddamned European beaches. The idea of these cretins trying to start that Nazi stuff up here just won’t do.”

  I slapped his back and said to Barney, “And you, old pal? This maybe more than you want to sign on for?”

  He shrugged. “If we were going to storm that place, and do this hand-to-hand, I’d tell you all to go and fuck yourselves,” Barney said. “But if we’re just going to H-bomb them, well, that sounds a worthy enough task. This Höttl does sound like unfinished business from the last war. Maybe even qualifies as a civic duty. How do you propose to blow those losers up, Willie?”

  Will nodded, said, “What’s this building’s architecture?”

  Duncan drew a picture in the air with his index finger. “Rectangular. Very cheap construction. Strategically, I mean from the standpoint of an assault, it’s a killing jar. Only two doors and those are up front. One’s a garage door; the other just a standard door, opens in.”

  Will nodded. “Windows?”

  “None at all,” Duncan said.

  Will considered that. “We want them to barricade in there then, which it sounds like they’ll need to do if we shoot at ’em.”

  “Absolutely,” Duncan said. “They haven’t e
ven dug fox holes or made any kind of cover for themselves around the perimeter of that joint. For would-be storm-troopers, they haven’t prepared the site at all for combat.” He sniffed. “Amateurs.”

  “Probably because they envision taking the war to the world,” I said. “Instead, it sounds like they’ve built for themselves an accidental Alamo. Great news for us.”

  “Here’s what I advocate,” Will said. “We go in as Duncan proposes. Then we push a truck around to the front of that joint. We start the engine on the truck at the last moment. I can rig a pretty elementary radio-control steering gizmo to work the truck’s gas and steering wheel. We’ll load the truck with the explosives. Then we’ll roll the truck down there and up against the garage door of that place and blow it. Even if they survive the actual blast or resulting fire, the shockwave alone will kill everyone within a couple of hundred yards of that building. Turns your insides to jelly, like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  Barney said, “I can ring the place with some speakers. We’ll use some of the tapes from old days to convince them they’re surrounded and pinned down by numbers so they stay in that shack until we atomize it.”

  Jimmy said, “You can pull all this together before morning? We don’t have much time left to get this done.”

  Affirmative nods all around. “Now,” I said, “we just need some way of knowing that Höttl is in there before we do the deed.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard,” Duncan said to me. “A man looking like your description of Höttl was in and out of there several times while I was scouting. He came out three or four times over the course of two hours to relieve himself. Enlarged prostate, or something like that, I should think. He was constantly pissing.”

  “Christ, I hope he does have plumbing issues,” I said. “I wish Höttl every misery, and that seems a fine one. Good then. We wait to see him take that last piss. When Werner heads back in after siphonin’ the python, then we’ll fix his prick for all time.”