One True Sentence: A Hector Lassiter novel (Hector Lassiter series Book 1)

by Craig McDonald

  Hem winked and said, “I saw. You’re off someplace with her?”

  “For a while, okay?”

  “Hell, I’d do it. She’s a dish.”

  “You know of her?”

  “Of her, yes. But not so much about her. But I can see all I need to know to understand why you’re leaving now, Lasso. Do that right now, before Molly sees. I’ll come up with some story for her and for Hadley.” Hem raised his glass and winked again. “Bang her once for me, buddy.”

  ***

  Hector shrugged on his leather jacket and was about to slip on his hat when Brinke took his fedora from him and put it on her own head, tipping the brim low.

  “It suits you,” he said. He led her out onto the wet street and looked around for a taxi. “Horse, or horsepower, Brinke?”

  A light snow was falling and the wind had dimmed.

  She shrugged. “Where do you propose to take me?”

  “Deux Magots…sit on the terrace maybe and watch the snow fall?”

  “Deux Magots would be quite fine, but inside, where we can eat and talk, too. So, I think we go by horse.”

  Hector waved down a taxi and said to the cocher, “Aux Deux Magots.”

  They were jostled back as the coach jerked into motion. It had been a while since Hector had ridden in one and he savored the hollow clop of the hooves on the slushed-over cobblestones. There was a heavy fur blanket rolled up on a shelf facing them. He spread that over them and Brinke snuggled closer and Hector wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “This is very nice,” she said.

  She watched a young man with a missing leg limping along outside in the snow, balanced on a crude crutch. “So many of them ruined,” she said. “You served?”

  “Sure. I was injured and ended up in Italy, driving ambulances.”

  “How badly injured?” He felt her hands on his legs under the blanket, squeezing to see that they were real.

  “I’m fine now.”

  Her hand strayed…he was surprised. She fumbled with the buttons, then her hand was there, warm and firm, moving slowly back and forth, stroking. “Just making sure everything is as it should be,” she said, smiling.

  He leaned into a long kiss. Her tongue parted his lips. She pulled away just long enough to say, “You know, you have a free hand, too, Hector.”

  Hector slid his hand under the blanket, letting it roam down Brinke’s flat belly and under her skirt as he leaned into another kiss.

  5

  Hector freshened their glasses of wine and helped himself to another oyster. He said, “So how, precisely, did you become Connor Templeton?”

  Brinke picked up an oyster and said, “I read a few dozen too many mediocre mystery novels and decided I could do better. So I wrote one. I put it away for a month, then read it again fresh and didn’t hate it. I sent it off to New York. They loved it, but thought it might a little too ‘bold’ to be written by a woman. It was strongly suggested to me such a book written by a woman expatriate might not fly in Boston, or anywhere else back home. My editor said it would likely move better — meet with much less resistance and scandal — if readers thought it was the work of some man of the world or kind of debauched gentleman rogue. So Connor Templeton was born.”

  “I’ve enjoyed reading them,” Hector said. “That’s no kind lie — they’re really quite swell.”

  Brinke took the last of the oysters from its bed of crushed ice…a few shallots tumbling from the shell as she raised it to her mouth. She tipped it back, then deposited the empty shell on the tray of ice. “God, but these are wonderful,” she said. Reaching for her wine, she said, “Let’s have some more.”

  “Let’s do that.”

  Hector ordered another dozen oysters and a second bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé.

  She said, “And you, Hector — are you working on a novel yet?”

  “Fitfully.”

  “Your stories are truly wonderful,” Brinke said. “I wish they’d let me write books that have the atmosphere and grit and gravitas of your stories.”

  “The stories are to live on,” Hector said. He drained the dregs from his glass, hesitating. He finally said, “The novel will be…well…”

  “More literary?” Brinke sipped her wine and said, “That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it? The world doesn’t need any more of those sorts of books, Hector.”

  He shrugged.

  “How much have you written, Hector?”

  “The same eighty or ninety pages…several times.”

  “Because you’re not following your passion.” Brinke reached across the table and took his hand. “Like I said, the world doesn’t need more books like Anderson’s or Ford’s or Fitzgerald’s. You need to write books that read like your stories. Do that, and I’ll bet you’ll have a manuscript in hand before false spring…and a sale before summer.”

  “You could be right. And it’s not as though I’m trying to give those men you mention a run for their money in the short fiction department.” Hector got a cigarette and plucked a matchbox from the ashtray between them. “And you can’t eat copies of little magazines, which is what they seem to pay you with here in Paris.”

  “That’s right, and even if you could eat them, you’d find the fare getting spare given recent events around here.”

  “What? You mean the killings?” Hector bit his lip and said, “What do you make of those? I mean, as a fellow crime writer?”

  “You’re the crime writer…I’m a mystery writer.” She smiled and shrugged her shoulders and ran a hand back through her thick black bangs, ruffling them. “It’s pretty hard to say, isn’t it? Perhaps some disgruntled, hungry author whose story got rejected one too many times? Some perturbed poet? Or maybe it’s just some other little magazine editor, hell-bent on thinning the competition.”

  Their second plate of oysters and bottle of wine arrived. Hector went through the usual nonsense about the cork, Brinke smirking all the while at his obvious irritation to have to go through the motions with the sommelier.

  Hector downed another oyster, chasing its coppery passage with more of the dry white wine. He said, “As we’re paid writers, and not in those rarefied literary stakes, the only thing I’m reasonably sure of is of our mutual innocence. In this matter, I mean.”

  Brinke smiled and said, “Yes. But one was murdered in his bed. He was naked, too. Apparently murdered in his sleep, based on his expression. Or his lack of one. Or so a friend of a friend of a friend of an inspector tells me.”

  “Hadn’t heard that nuance,” Hector said. “Does tend to cast things in a certain light regarding that particular murder, doesn’t it?”

  “Exactly.”

  They were making short work of the portugaises. As she again helped herself to the last of the oysters, Brinke said, “What time do you have, Hector?”

  He fished his jacket’s pocket for his watch. “Seven. You have someplace else you need to be?” He tried to hide his disappointment.

  Brinke said, “Gertrude’s, around eight. Can’t really beg off. You’ll escort me, of course.” She smiled. “Won’t you?”

  It had been a while since Hector had ventured into Stein’s salon. “Of course.” He poured some more wine in Brinke’s glass. He said, “Five francs says Alice still has a mustache.”

  Brinke said, “That’s hardly a wager.”

  6

  They took another horse-drawn taxi to Gertrude’s salon off the courtyard at 27 rue de Fleurus.

  During their second taxi ride of the night, they mostly kept their hands to themselves.

  Hector said, “Does Gertrude know that you write? And what you write?”

  Brinke turned to face him. “Okay, it goes like this: Gertrude is a fan. So Gertrude knows. Sylvia and Adrienne know. And now you know. You won’t tell anyone, will you, Hector?”

  “Only if you promise not to tell anyone that Sylvia is squirreling away copies of Black Mask.”

  Brinke extended a gloved hand to shake and said, “Secret sharers.”
<
br />   ***

  Normally, Hadley would have been consigned to the far corner — the wives’ portion of the salon. There, Alice entertained the wives between hurling sharp, fast, and intrusive questions their way and eavesdropping on Gertrude’s conversations with various painters, writers, poets, and playwrights who’d come to pay tribute to Miss Stein.

  But because Hadley was an excellent pianist, Miss Stein had evidently decided to allow Hadley to provide background music for the evening. Hadley was playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata…one of Hector’s favorites. Hem, looking surly, stood alongside the piano, a wineglass clutched in his hand. He smiled broadly as he saw Hector and said, “Tonight all roads lead to the House of Pretension, eh?”

  Hector cast his leather jacket on a chair piled high with coats and helped Brinke off with her fur coat. She was still wearing his hat. He briefly introduced Brinke to Hadley and Hem. Leaning in close to Hem’s ear, Hector said, “Molly didn’t come along, did she?”

  “Off dancing with her painter,” Hem said quietly back. “She seemed sorry you’d left. Philippe seemed bothered by her reaction.” Hem fetched a couple glasses of Gertrude’s homemade black currant liqueur and handed them to Brinke and Hector. Gesturing at the floral arrangement atop the piano, with a crooked smile Hem said, “Lasso, what’s better than a dozen roses on your piano?”

  Before Hector could respond, Brinke chuckled and said, “Tulips on your organ.”

  Hem roared and squeezed her arm and said, “God, I like this one. Please don’t fuck it up, Lasso.”

  Hadley, frowning, still playing the piano, said, “I don’t get it: ‘Tulips on your organ’?”

  Hector leaned down and kissed her cheek. He said softly, “Hash, think T-W-O. Now, new word, ‘lips.’”

  Hadley thought about that, silently mouthed it, and then blushed.

  Smiling, Hector sensed this presence — looked over, then down. Small, skinny Alice, who stood just four-eleven, nodded up at him. “It’s been some time, Mr. Lassiter.”

  “It has, Miss Toklas.”

  “Who invited you?”

  “I’m escorting Miss Devlin.”

  “Ah.” Alice smoothed her freshly dark hair. Hector checked her top lip. No effort to dye the thin hairs there. Alice wore her hair in a style similar to Brinke’s, but as much as the cut looked dashing and sexy on Brinke, the hairdo looked frumpy and severe on skinny, birdlike Alice.

  Helping herself to one of the visitandines heaped on a plate positioned on the piano, Alice said, “I suppose it was inevitable you two would become…associated.”

  Hem, sensing Hector might say something precipitous said, “Think of the good-looking kids these two might produce, eh?”

  Alice despised children. Just days before, she had gritted her way through the request that she, along with Miss Stein, consent to be Hem’s son’s godmothers. She’d agreed, Hem figured, only because Gertrude had been so delighted by the prospect.

  Hector sipped the belly-warming, vodka-strong liqueur. He would have settled for the vodka, neat. He said, “That’s one lovely frock, Alice.”

  Alice smiled uncertainly and nodded and said, “I think Miss Stein is summoning you.” She smiled thinly at Brinke. “I mean, both of you.”

  Hem handed Hector a second glass. “What’s this?”

  “Single malt. Figure you’ll need it, Lasso.”

  Hector deposited his mostly full glass of sweet liqueur on the piano and Brinke took his arm. Hadley segued from Beethoven to Erik Satie’s 1ère Gymnopédie.

  Hector said softly to Brinke, “You never know how this is going to go.”

  Gertrude’s long, graying hair was pinned up. Her face looked a bit leaner, but the rest of Gertrude’s body was as large and as ponderous as ever. She sat hulking in her chair under a portrait of herself painted by Picasso. She wore a long, striped scarf bound loosely around her neck and a tight-fitting floral print jacket. She seemed to be posed in the manner of the portrait hanging behind her.

  “There is my cinema star,” Gertrude said, remaining seated but beaming up at Hector. She was always commenting on his dark looks. He kissed her hand. Gertrude gestured at Brinke with her other hand. “And my other star is here, too. And like stars, your mutual gravities have drawn you together, is that not so?”

  Hector looked around at the numerous paintings adorning the stained walls: Cézanne, Manet, Picabia, Gris, Gauguin. It looked as though Gertrude might have parted with a few other paintings that Hector remembered hanging during his last visit. But the walls were nevertheless heavy with paintings, in some places arrayed four or five rows high. The sitting room looked like a museum, and the antique chairs and couches were arranged backs-to-walls so that no matter where a visitor sat, they were confronted with rows and rows of paintings.

  Gertrude gestured to an occupied chair: a poet fled to make room for Brinke.

  Gertrude said, “Hector, are you mourning for Woodrow?”

  Hector scowled and said, “Woodrow?” He thought a minute, and then said, “You mean Woodrow Wilson?”

  The American ex-president had died a few days before.

  Hector said, “No. Particularly not after old Woodrow got me sent to Mexico to chase Pancho Villa. Good to know the pinch-faced, patrician politician is safely on the other side of the dirt. He said he so-hated war, then dragged us into the war to end all wars.”

  “No serious man should place his fate in the hands of a man who wears pince-nez,” Gertrude said. Then, “He died on my birthday, you know.”

  “I surely hope that didn’t cast a pall over your happy day,” Hector said.

  Gertrude smiled, “Not at all. We have no politics.”

  “At least ‘Double W’ lingered longer than Lenin,” Brinke said.

  Gertrude shrugged her heavy shoulders. “If you call that living…after the stroke, I mean. They say Wilson’s wife was secretly president for the longest time.”

  Behind them, Hector overheard a couple of painters arguing: “Non, it is Breton’s creation. He calls it ‘Surrealism.’ He calls it pure ‘psychic automatism.’ It’s truer than true. Beauty will be convulsive, or not at all. It’s far beyond. Far beyond the beyond of Dada. Miro is doing some interesting things with all that, even now.”

  It made Hector’s head hurt to hear such talk.

  Gertrude said, “I spent a wonderful morning at Shakespeare and Company reading Connor Templeton’s Blood Oranges. Then, I read this remarkable little story called ‘A Life in the Week,’ by my wondrous, handsome Hector.”

  Hector slipped out his pack of cigarettes, smiling thinly. Goddamn Sylvia, again. He was proud enough of the story. It might even have been publishable in a little magazine. That is, if Hector had wanted to give it away.

  But having Gertrude, the queen of all gossips, knowing about his stories and reading them?

  And to have Gertrude talking about his work here in her salon?

  Feeling a little sick inside, Hector struck a match. Watching him, Brinke opened her purse, pulled out a long, thin cigarette case, and selected a thin brown cigarillo. She bent into Hector’s still lit match.

  He shook out the match and then leaned over Gertrude to deposit the match in an ashtray. Hector realized Alice was close by again. Alice was always on the watch —assessing the motivations of all those around Gertrude. Alice moved quickly to undermine or destroy those who might threaten her position of primacy with the Great Woman.

  Brinke edged a little closer to the fireplace. “I’m very ready for summer,” she said, her back to the crackling fire and her arms and fingers spread to savor the heat.

  Hector wondered if Brinke was deliberately moving the conversation away from their work.

  Gertrude shook her head. She said, “The summer will be no better. Better there be no summer. Certainly not with the Olympic games. And the spring will bring only that which the summer will be. ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius,’ That’s the motto they’ve chosen for the Paris games. The games will ruin the summer and the
summer will ruin the spring.”

  Hector shrugged. “Latin, or whatever that is, is Greek to me.”

  Brinke said, “It means ‘Swifter, Higher, Stronger.’”

  Gertrude pursed her thick lips and said, “More like ‘Crowded, common, and unremarkable.’” Gertrude looked across the room to the “wives’ corner” where Alice was again seated. She said, “We shall go to Spain in the summer.”

  Maybe Hector would, too. He could spend July following the feria. Maybe he could persuade Brinke to be his traveling companion. He was a bit unsettled at how attached he’d already become to her. He thought of Hem’s remarks about children. Brinke didn’t strike Hector as the marrying kind.

  Gertrude returned to her line of inquiry: “It was really a wonderful story, Hector, despite its sordid milieu and that woman. Really quite fine in its raw, pungent way.”

  Mystery and crime fiction were guilty pleasures for Gertrude. She had given Hector copies of Marie Belloc-Lowndes’s thrillers to read when he had first arrived at her salon. She’d later urged the same books on Hem, who had also loved them. Gertrude maintained that one should read only the very great works of literature, or that which was “frankly bad.” She seemed to lump Brinke’s and Hector’s efforts into the latter category. Gertrude called her favorite mystery writers “mystifiers.”

  Leaning forward, her big forearms resting on her massive thighs, Gertrude said, “I’m surprised but quite delighted that you are here tonight, Hector. This is serendipity of the best kind — you and Brinke both being here.” She waved across the room to the wives’ table and Alice leaned over and said something to the young woman sitting across from her there. Sotto voce, Gertrude said, “That young woman is Estelle Quartermain.” Brinke looked up sharply. Oblivious, Gertrude said, “Estelle writes mysteries, though more of the puzzle variety. Do you know her work?”

  Hector frowned and shrugged. “I don’t read many mysteries. Connor Templeton’s excepted, of course.”