“There’s really nothing to settle,” Hector said. “I’m not looking to lay down roots, Brinke. I’m still happily solo lobo. Except of course for my nights with you.”
They stepped out into the dusting snow.
They walked in silence for a while. Brinke broke it: “Hem’s the perfect red herring. I mean, if life’s events were playing out in one of my mysteries…or one of Estelle’s. Hem’s a good likely distraction — in terms of a false suspect.”
“Christ, don’t class yourself with that sorry bitch Quartermain,” Hector said.
“Harsh,” Brinke said. “You said ‘bitch’ like you intended an even cruder word.”
“Maybe. Besides, I go Hem one better in terms of the possible-perpetrator-by-propinquity stakes.”
“You’re going to have to explain that one to me,” Brinke said. “You’re talking like Gertrude Stein.”
Hector said, “Christ forbid. Okay. I mean the night or early morning that Natalie Champlin was murdered, I was crossing the bridge from the Right Bank — crossing the Pont Neuf — and I heard a scream.”
“A scream?”
“Yes, a terrible scream. Then I heard the ice over the river cracking…a splash.”
“You think you heard Natalie being murdered?”
“With all my heart.” Hector wrapped his arm around Brinke’s shoulders, pulling her closer. “There were footprints in the snow from the scene of the fall. They were spaced far apart, like the one who left them was running.”
“Could have been anyone’s footprints, Hector.”
“No, it was early morning, and I heard feet running away, and they were the only footprints in the snow. I thought about following them. The thing was, the footprints were going my way. They led right back to our neighborhood. But it was late, and I was very tired, and the snow began falling harder as I neared home. Eventually, the prints disappeared entirely before I could see where they led.”
“Male or female footprints?”
“There was no telling.”
“But definitely retreating back to our neighborhood?”
“No question.”
Brinke said, “Despite what you told that policeman Simon, I don’t want to let this go. The next one killed could be a friend. Or someone who matters even more to us.”
Hector pressed his gloved fingers to her lips. “That’s unlucky talk.”
“You’re right.” Brinke shook off his arm and squared her shoulders. “Hands off, now. We’re almost to your place. Time for me to walk like a man.”
“Right,” Hector said, smiling and shaking his head.
“What were you doing on the Right Bank that night, Hector?”
“Writing. I’m mostly a morning writer, but you know how sometimes you get on a roll? I did that evening. But you can’t write in cafés in the Left Bank anymore, you know that. Too many interruptions. Too many drink cadgers and food moochers. And you look like a poseur, even if you’re really writing. Across the river, that’s not the case. I found a little place on the Rue de Bourdonnais…reasonably priced wine and oysters. Quiet. A good place to write.”
“You should take me there soon,” Brinke said. “We could get adjoining tables. Might be the only way I’ll get any writing done so long as you remain a bewitching novelty.”
***
Brinke bit the side of her own hand, her ankles trembling against Hector’s.
A few minutes later she said, “Sorry…I have a terrible tendency to be loud.”
“Someday soon we’ll have to find a place where you can indulge that urge,” he said. “Maybe the Riviera.” He rubbed at the imprints of her teeth left in the heel of her hand. They were just starting to fade.
“That Riviera remark was for Alice’s sake,” Brinke said. “I don’t really want to go there. I have no interest in another tourist destination.”
Hector stroked her breasts. “Any place that does interest you?”
“South Florida,” Brinke said. “Key West, particularly. It’s said to be authentically bohemian, like Paris was in the good old days, but sparsely populated. Remote. Can only be reached by boat. They ignore prohibition there and live like they’re in a kind of hedonist’s nation-state. They swim naked on the beaches and have great seafood in abundance. A live-and-let-live kind of place. My kind of place.”
“I can’t square that remote Gulf island with Connor Templeton,” Hector said.
“It’s very ‘square-able’ with Brinke Devlin, writer,” Brinke said.
“You’re really getting tired of Paris?”
“Très.” She stretched a little and sighed as his hand strayed down her body. “It’s very warm in Key West, all the time. Remember summers back home, Hector? I mean, when you spent the summer with a tan?”
“I’m from Galveston,” Hector said. “I remember sunburns.”
Brinke raised her head a little and pulled at the hair on his chest with her teeth that were a little gray from all the red wine they’d been drinking. She hesitated, then said, “Okay. Here it is, Hector. My full name is Alison Boyton Devlin. Brinke, as in ‘On the brink,’ is a nickname, but I like it much better than ‘Alison.’ I’m twenty-nine years old. My parents are Yvonne and Stewart Devlin of upstate New York. I came to Paris to study literature at La Sorbonne and because Daddy thought Europe would do me all manner of good. I dropped out of school quite a few years ago, but never left the city.”
Hector took all that in. He said, “You’re an only child?”
Brinke smiled. “You really have to ask? I haven’t seen my parents since 1922. Father and I are reduced to quarterly letters. Mother writes more often. She knows I’m Connor Templeton. Father doesn’t.”
Hector kissed her, stroking her back. He said, “You didn’t have to tell me any of that, Brinke. But thank you for doing it.”
Her fingers traced his lips: “Doesn’t mean we have to pick out rings, right?”
“Right.”
13
Hector woke up alone. Brinke’s side of the bed was still warm, but her clothes, once slung over a chair by his bed, were gone. Hector pushed up onto his elbows and saw a sheet of typing paper on her pillow. He unfolded it and read Brinke’s note, written in a bold, clean hand:
Dear Hector:
I really simply had to get some writing done, so I’m sneaking out before your “mother” can raise a fuss or you can stop me.
You should write, too.
Here’s my vision: We’ll meet at six across the river at Harry’s…make ourselves homesick for America at its bar, perhaps.
Later, but not too much later, I’ll be wanting French cuisine: des moules marinières, du homard…or perhaps des cuisses de grenouilles. Or something entirely else. It’s early yet, and I’m not sure of my own tastes at this hour. But you’ll find us the other restaurant…(someplace with une tarte tatin would put you in excellent standing).
That’s your task.
I’m leaving right now, before I let myself change my mind.
Kisses,
Brinke
Hector smiled and sighed and rolled out of bed. He dressed just to get warm, got a fire going, then checked his pocket watch. Not yet five A.M.
Using an old iron skillet and the fireplace, Hector prepared himself some black coffee outlaw-style, as he used to along the trail when part of the Pershing Expedition, chasing Pancho Villa.
He sipped his strong, bitter coffee and sat down at his typewriter and scrolled in a sheet of paper.
Hector didn’t know why he felt he wanted a title — particularly when he had no real idea or a plot for a potential crime novel. But he felt he needed something to give himself a foothold or emotional stake to drive on.
Brinke had left a newspaper folded by his typewriter…some short account of the poisoning of Charles Turner. Below it was a small advertisement for the Bal Nègre in the Rue Blomet.
Hector looked at the ad for a time, then, on some kind of instinct, he typed:
RHAPSODY IN BLACK
&n
bsp; by
Hector Lassiter
Hector looked at it for a moment, trying to think of some first line that might justify that title. One true sentence. That was always the goal. He and Hem had talked about the quest for one true sentence during countless late night, deep talk sessions.
He sipped some more of his café noir. Then, remembering some scurrilous rumors about current U.S. president Warren G. Harding, Hector recalled something that happened in Texas when he was a boy — something that had been the eventual undoing of a badass local lawman. Hector typed:
They killed Hale Jones for looking at a white girl. His killers hanged Hale from a light post with a piece of cut-down clothesline.
The man who tied the knot was Sheriff Billy Davis. The sheriff stood six-three and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. He was a defrocked Texas Ranger with notches carved into the butt of his Colt.
The girl Hale’s gaze had lingered too long on was Sheriff Billy’s stepdaughter, Twila…milk-skinned, blond, and busty.
Talk around town was Twila was barren from a third and badly botched abortion.
Hale hadn’t yet turned ten.
Hector read it over. He wasn’t bowled over by it. It read like journalese, he thought. But maybe something was lurking in there. He wrote until half-past-ten, when his landlady lightly kicked his door with her toe. Her hands were full with a breakfast tray. “I heard your machine and didn’t want to interrupt,” she said. “But a man has to eat and it is getting very late.”
He thanked Germaine and took the tray and settled down to breakfast…hungry and tired. Hector shook out the newspaper and began skimming it, looking to see if anyone else had been murdered overnight.
***
The café was getting noisy and Hector was thinking of leaving.
Hands over his eyes. “Guess who?”
He recognized her scent — lilacs. He was aware of a sudden knot in his stomach. Hector said, “How are you, Molly?”
“You’ve been scarce, Hector. I was beginning to worry you’d gone the way of some little magazine editor.”
“It’s been bloody, for sure,” Hector said. Change-up time: “How’s Philippe?”
She took her hands from his eyes and plopped down across from him. “Fine.”
Molly looked drawn and a little thinner. There were dark rings under her violet eyes and her blond hair was tangled — as it if hadn’t seen a comb or a brush for at least a day and a night and another day. Hector figured maybe Philippe was somewhere recuperating below the belt if Molly’s appearance was any indication. Molly just didn’t look so virginal to Hector anymore. That made him a little sad.
Hector said, “Buy you a drink?”
She nodded and caught a waiter by the arm: “Du vin rouge.”
Hector watched her…wondered how she had found him. Hector had brought his morning’s output with him in typescript in order to go over it and perhaps to write a bit more, longhand. Then he had picked the most out-of-the-way, underutilized café within easy walking distance of his apartment…someplace he figured he could write and revise, unmolested.
“Where have you been keeping yourself, Hector?”
He didn’t want to lie outright to her. He’d get found out, eventually. He always did. And crowded as it was, their little corner of Paris was too small a place to hide a love affair. Hector said, “I started a novel. I helped Hem out of a jam. And I did get caught up in some aspects of these killings. Gertrude Stein was trying to recruit me and some other similarly disposed writers to poke around. Several of the victims were close friends of Gertrude’s.”
Molly nodded distractedly and pulled out a cigarette case. “That last sounds crazy,” she said. Hector had never seen Molly carry cigarettes of her own. Frowning, he pulled out his box of matches and struck one with his thumbnail and held it out for her. Watching him shake out the match, she said, “You’re not smoking, Hector?”
“Not right now.”
Molly said, “I didn’t know Gertrude had ‘close friends’ beyond Alice.”
“Well, yeah, I get your drift. And you’re right. I should have said, they were publishers of Gertrude’s stuff.” He looked Molly over again. A phrase from back home came to mind: Rode hard and put away wet. He said, “What have you been doing with yourself, M?”
Molly hesitated, then said, “My God, over there — I think that’s Léon-Paul Fargue!”
“Fargue?” Hector shrugged. “Who’s that?”
Molly scowled. “The poet, Hector… Fargue.”
“He’s famous?”
“He’s wonderful.”
Hector turned a little in his seat to look at the poet. Fargue was stocky and his dark thin hair was combed in long strands plastered across his white scalp. He had a dark beard and mustache and wore glasses. The stub of a burned-out cigarette dangled from Fargue’s lips as he dug through a briefcase resting on his table.
“He’s not writing,” Hector said. “Go and introduce yourself before he starts.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Then I’ll introduce you.”
“You don’t even know who he is,” she said.
“He’s really big?”
“They call him the ‘Poet of Paris.’ He has so many honors, I can’t list them.”
Hector thought about it, then pulled out the small notebook he carried and tore out a fresh sheet of paper from the back. He handed it to Molly along with his fountain pen. “Here, write a note to him. We’ll send him some wine as an overture.”
She started to speak and Hector said, “My treat.”
Molly agonized for several silent minutes over her note. Hector was grateful for her distraction. She finally capped Hector’s pen and folded the note. Hector summoned the waiter and ordered the wine and asked the note be included. He slipped his fountain pen back in his shirt pocket.
Hector checked his watch. It was only one. He said, “I have to be somewhere in a bit.”
Molly looked panic-stricken. “You start this, and then abandon me?”
“That’s a little strong —‘abandon.’ He’ll come over and thank you. Or, if he’s truly some Grand Man, this Fargue fella will summon you to bask in his presence. Either way, you’ll get to interact a bit. Maybe strike up some rapport that will help you professionally.”
“It’s not about that,” Molly said, eyes flashing.
It was always about that, for all of them — any writer on the Left Bank expected it of another writer. It was the game. But Hector said, “I know you’re not like that, Molly, so don’t look at me that way. I’ll stay fifteen minutes…it’s truly all I can afford.”
“Where do you have to be?”
“Need to check in on Hem,” Hector said. “Like I said — he had a scare.”
“What happened?”
“Ever hear of François Laurencin?”
She nodded. “Certainly…the editor of Benchmarks. I read he was hit by a car yesterday.”
“That’s right. Or maybe he was pushed under one. Hem was with François when it happened.”
“Lord, that’s awful.” She licked her lips, watching Fargue again. “Hem saw it happen?”
Watching her watching the poet, Hector said, “In the sense of the car hitting Laurencin? Yes, Hem saw that. But Hem didn’t see how it happened…or if it was made by someone to happen.”
“Oh God, he’s waving.”
“What?” Hector turned and looked over his shoulder. “Oh, you mean Fargue.” He stood up and folded up his manuscript and stuck it in his coat’s interior pocket and then put on his leather jacket. Offering her a hand, Hector said, “Come on, Molly, I’ll walk you over to him. But then I have to go. Can’t stay for chitchat or for more than introductions.”
Molly seemed genuinely starstruck, so Hector introduced her — as a “fine young poet” — and then briefly introduced himself. Molly said to the elder poet, “You must get very tired of people like me bothering you all the time like this in cafés and restaurants and…”
Hector rolled his eyes and excused himself.
Once he was out in the cold rain, Hector trotted along the street and around the corner to the Boulevard du Montparnasse to lose himself in the crowd in the event Fargue gave Molly a brisk dismissal.
The rain was shifting to sleet and it stung as it struck his face. Hector ducked into a church and took a seat in a back pew. He watched a few candles being lit, then pulled out the beginnings of his novel and uncapped his pen and went back to work.
He reread the opening of his novel. It simply wasn’t working. Maybe he could adapt it for a short story someday. But it wasn’t the opening of a novel — not of a crime novel or any other kind.
But for some reason he couldn’t let go of the title.
Staring up at the cross, Hector thought of his life in Paris and the events of recent days.
He thought about Brinke…her dark hair and eyes.
Physically, Brinke Devlin was the embodiment of a femme fatale.
In his notebook, Hector wrote:
RHAPSODY IN BLACK
By
Hector Lassiter
Then he wrote:
Nick Holt first met Alison Wilder in a café at six o’clock on a Friday night. By six-thirty, Nick had agreed to kill a man for her.
Hector read the sentences over a few times. He wrote another couple of sentences behind them.
A priest passed by Hector, nodding. Hector smiled and nodded back, then wrote the next sentence of his first novel:
Alison was a busty, beautiful brunette — a leggy looker to put a bump in a bishop’s robes.
That last might be too much. It bounced too high off the page, maybe, Hector thought, smiling as he read it.
Then again…
He’d worry about revision later, he told himself…after he had his first full draft in hand.
14
“How’s life as an editor?” They were walking along the boulevard du Montparnasse and it was drizzling — a soft freezing rain.
One True Sentence: A Hector Lassiter novel (Hector Lassiter series Book 1) Page 8