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

by Craig McDonald

  If you find this note before the police (I figure they’ve been through here, and moved on), you should destroy this letter if you intend to accept my offer of a meeting. You wouldn’t want it to be found and for there to be official company on that bridge.

  No more than I want to see any other nihilists when we meet.

  — H

  Hector read his letter over again. The danger was that Simon had men watching the building who might follow Hector, or search the magazine’s office to see what Hector had done during his time inside…underlings who might find his letter for Molly. Hector hadn’t seen any police watching as he’d broken in; he’d be equally careful in his leaving.

  Perhaps, owing to manpower considerations, Simon was having his men perform occasional sweeps of various likely locations at which to find Molly — her apartment, the magazine office…perhaps cafés Molly might be known to frequent.

  But if the police came back and found the letter before Molly did…

  Hector looked around again. Molly had left some toiletries on the table alongside all the submissions. Hector opened her lipstick. He rolled up the note and stuck it inside the lid. The lipstick seemed a place a male French cop — even a good one — wouldn’t think to look.

  Hector was startled by a sharp snap. He pivoted, gun out.

  He saw another mouse twitching in a trap…the copper wires crushing its skull as its rear legs kicked a last time or two.

  Hector looked out the window at the street…saw nothing out of the ordinary. He set the door to lock behind himself. As a last precaution, stealing a note from Brinke’s bag of tricks, Hector pulled loose one of his own hairs, wet it, and spread it across the door near the ground — half of the hair clinging to the door, the other half to the jamb.

  ***

  It was a wild notion, but it seemed to Hector one worth pursuing in the absence of alternatives. He stalked northeast to the Boulevard du Montparnasse. Hector pulled his hat low as he entered La Rotonde…checking faces.

  At a corner in the back, at his habitual table, he sat. His back was to Hector, but his face was reflected in a mirror — Philippe Martin, aka Jackson Starr, aka Victor Leek, aka Oswald Rook.

  Philippe sat with three black-clad men…young, saturnine, bleary-eyed…poets all.

  Hector took up a position by the bar — a place from which he could watch Philippe from under the brim of his hat and through the bottom of a glass. A waiter was taking the nihilists’ drink orders. The pass-through to behind the bar was just to Hector’s left elbow — the waiter would have to navigate around Hector to reach the bartender to fill the orders.

  The waiter moved to a second table to take more orders, then walked back toward Hector. As he approached, Hector fished out his wallet. He stopped the waiter and said:

  “Those four men who just ordered. They’re old mates of mine. I’d like to pay for their drinks, but make it a surprise before I go and sit with them. At least two of them have appalling tastes in brands. I’d like to upgrade their orders to some top-shelf stuff. What are they having this afternoon?”

  The waiter shrugged. “Nothing that stands much improving for three of them…beer.” He curled his lip, “In a pitcher.” Better and better, Hector thought. “The other, the blond one, he ordered a wine…rather undistinguished,” the waiter said.

  That would be Philippe — he exclusively drank red wine…bad red wine.

  “Appalling, as I said,” Hector said. “Improve the wine…indulge yourself. I’ll settle up as you come back through to deliver it.” The waiter smiled and moved to consult with the bartender. As he did that, Hector took the last of his morphine tablets and ground them together into chalk. He cupped the dust in his hand. Hector reached over the counter and grabbed a swizzle stick…palmed it.

  The waiter approached with his tray burdened with the pitcher of beer and a glass of Châteauneuf du Pape. He placed the tray on the bar and told Hector the price. Hector nodded, counted out notes with one hand and passed the francs to the bartender — dropping them before the waiter could grasp them.

  “Clumsy of me,” Hector said. The waiter stooped behind the bar to collect the bills that had fluttered to the floor. Hector dropped the ground morphine into the pitcher of beer and stirred it in quickly with the stolen swizzle stick. He smiled at the waiter as the man rose with the money he had retrieved. “Remember — a surprise,” Hector said. “Let them think they’re running a tab. It’s been a long time and I want to surprise them when I appear.”

  “Of course.” The waiter had his tip — that was all he cared about.

  Hector ordered a scotch and soda from the bartender for himself, then drifted off to a table to wait.

  ***

  Twenty minutes passed. The three beer-swilling nihilists were slumped back in their chairs…mouths agape. One actually looked dead. Hector had no real sense of what kind of dosage he’d delivered to the men through the tainted beer…eight or nine tablets’ worth, Hector guessed. Maybe more.

  Philippe was looking around furtively…trying to grasp what was happening. His back to Hector, the nihilist shrugged on his coat.

  Hector slid out of his table and exited La Rotonde. He sidestepped to the right of the café door. He stood there with his cigarette pack and lighter cupped to his face, his hat pulled low — his features all but obscured.

  Moving quickly, Philippe exited the café and veered left.

  Hector followed.

  They walked on awhile, then Philippe ducked down an alley. Hector followed as closely as he dared. The alley angled off and Hector edged around the corner. Philippe was standing in the middle of the alley, prying open a sewer lid. Hector guessed it must be some eventual access point to Les Catacombes.

  Grunting, Philippe got his fingers under the edge of the heavy iron lid, beginning to raise the manhole cover. Philippe did the lifting with his legs, though Hector wasn’t sure at what risk a castrated man would be for sustaining a hernia.

  When the lid was about an inch off the ground, and all ten of Philippe’s fingers were under its edge, Hector padded up behind Philippe.

  Hector slid his good leg between Philippe’s wide-apart legs. Hector slammed his foot down on the sewer lid, crushing all ten fingers and parts of Philippe’s hands under the heavy iron lid. Hector heard bones crack, then Philippe was gasping for air, working up to a scream. Hector pistol-whipped Philippe into unconsciousness, then set about freeing the unconscious man’s mutilated hands.

  ***

  Philippe awakened upside down, dangling from a fire escape by his own belt, its end wrapped tight around his ankles and tied off to the rusted iron staircase zigzagging up the back of an abandoned building.

  They were close by a printing shop and the clack of the Linotypes was deafening, even through closed doors.

  Hector was reasonably certain any screams for help would go unheard. Philippe seemed to grasp that, too. He leapt straight to denials: “What the hell are you doing, Hector? Have you gone mad?”

  Hector pulled up a discarded crate and sat down. “Drop the outrage, Philippe. And drop the phony French accent — though I’ll allow, it’s been a good one. But you’re from Illinois. You’re real name is Jackson Starr and Molly is your sister, Lenore. I’ve seen the newspaper pictures of you and Molly — ‘the survivors.’”

  Silence.

  Hector said, “And now you’re quiet. I’ll take your silence as confirmation. I met your would-be doppelgänger, of course — Nobodaddy. You come up with that one in your cups?”

  “What are you going to do, Hector?”

  “I want to kill you,” Hector said. “And I should do that. Slowly and painfully. If it weren’t so cold, you’d be hanging there naked now. You know, like your stand-in had me hanging down in those caverns I assume you were trying to escape to a few minutes ago. I know those hands of yours must hurt, but I owe you a good deal more pain than that. But, given what you’ve lost, and how, I suppose torture isn’t much of a threat to you. Not like it’d
be for another man. After all, you lack that which might most effectively be used to motivate a man under torture. But, fortunately for me, there’s more than just yourself at risk. There’s Molly.”

  Philippe said, “Leave her out of it, Lassiter. So far as our folks, Molly had nothing to do with that fire.”

  “And what of these recent murders?”

  “I did it all for her, at least at the start. But she didn’t know that…not until you and that whore Devlin told her. Molly couldn’t break in here as a writer, just like me. I gave up trying to place my poetry long ago. My fiction? People laughed at it. You know how it is — mocking you for your pulp magazine writing, same as me. Yet we’re the ones who could sell our stuff. I shifted to painting for a time because I could at least make a few francs doing that and be respected for the work, like it somehow mattered in the way my fiction didn’t. But Molly held on to the dream. She spent hours writing her little poems, only to be paid in copies of the few magazines that accepted her work. I could hardly bear to see her suffer rejection after rejection. She was constantly giving money she couldn’t spare to these damned ‘publishers’ in hopes they’d reciprocate by publishing her poems more frequently. Then, when she reminded them of her financial support, they’d blather on about how it was a ‘meritocracy’…well, fuck them!”

  Hector said, “So what then? Big brother punished the publishers by killing them?”

  “That. And I tried to get Molly her own magazine. That was my solution. I thought about buying one for her. She and I discussed it. I figured those magazines couldn’t be making any money, so the asking price for one should be nominal. I mean, really — how much could it cost to take one of those rags off one of these prissy, pretentious bastards’ hands? But these artistic types had grandiose expectations in terms of sales prices. Each one saw it as their chance to cash in. Idiots.”

  “You might just have started your own magazine,” Hector said.

  “That was the follow-up plan, at one point,” Philippe said. He shook his head. “I’m getting dizzy — the blood is all going to my head. Will you cut me down?”

  “Cope, cocksucker. So why didn’t you just start that magazine and spare some of the little magazine editors’ sorry lives?”

  “Thinning the herd first, you could call it. Then, what do you know? That crazy lesbian bitch went and plucked Molly out of the ranks and all but gave her a magazine to run — an established magazine, one with what Molly called ‘a fine track record.’ Everything was great. Except for you…filling Molly’s head with stories about this shadow poet who was heading Nada — Victor Leek, my alter ego and screen in the event the police ever decided to come after Nada.”

  “Molly didn’t know you were Leek? Didn’t know you were the ringleader?”

  “Molly just thought I was a fellow believer. She never heard of Leek. I kept the name from her…to keep her safe in case anything happened to me.” He shook his head again. Hector figured the blood flow probably was a real problem — the man’s face and ears were bright red. Philippe said, “You filled Molly’s head with all these notions that Nada was behind the killings,” he continued. “Molly was clueless about what was really happening. Until you started telling her all this stuff about Rook, or Leek. You and that goddamn whore — the two of you, seducing Molly…Lenore. And after Molly nearly killed herself for you last Christmas? You can’t imagine what it’s been like for me, Lassiter, watching her hopes rise and fall again…over you and her prospects for a life with you. Over that damned magazine she’s been given. Jesus, that she nearly killed herself for you once…and may yet do it again? She’s truly the only thing in this empty black world that matters to me. What she sees in the likes of you…”

  Hector sighed. “Yeah, there’s no accounting for tastes.” A petty shot…Hector already regretted it. He lit a cigarette, stood, and stamped his feet to shake off the chill. “So you swear that Molly has killed no one?”

  “No. Never.”

  “What about this business the other night, with the dynamite?”

  “A last shot at bringing all you fools down together — clearing the way for Molly and Intimations. Leave her as the only show in town.”

  “Where’s Brinke? What have you done with her?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I figured to blow her to hell with you.”

  Hector looked around the debris-strewn alley. He picked up a piece of wood, about the length of a baseball bat. Hector hefted it, then feinted a swing at Philippe’s shins. Philippe said, “No, don’t do that! I saw in the papers about her disappearance —about Devlin’s things being found in the river. But we didn’t do that. I didn’t do that. I just hope you didn’t drive Molly to it with your sick games. Devlin was no threat to us without you prodding her. That was my reading of the situation. I figured if you were dead, Devlin would ease off. So we did nothing to her. That’s the fucking truth.”

  Hector raised the plank again. “Where do you want the first one?”

  “We didn’t do anything to her, I swear, Hector.”

  “Do you really think it’s possible that Molly—?”

  “Hell no. I mean, I don’t think so. Jealous as she was of you two, Molly was kind of fond of that tramp. Molly said so, and I believed her. I didn’t fucking do anything to Devlin. I swear it, Lassiter! If you’re going to kill me, just do it now. But don’t hit me with that thing. I didn’t have her snatched.”

  “Then who the hell did?”

  “I don’t fucking know!”

  Hector said, “On the door of the restroom stall where Brinke tried to hide from her attacker, Brinke wrote an ‘M’ and a ‘W’ in lipstick.”

  “I’m not following you, Lassiter.”

  “Your sister’s initials. MW for Molly Wilder. The same clue you laid with that woman dressed in white on the hill at the cemetery during Lloyd Blake’s funeral, doling out her hints about ‘Margaret W.’”

  “Are you insane? I’m not following any of this, Lassiter.”

  “No? What about Jeremy Hunt? That silly stuff with his dead fingers twisted into Ms and Ws? What was your rationale for pointing suspicion at your own sister time after time? What about that note you left with all those dead women’s bodies, referring to the ‘queen’?”

  “I left no note. A poem, yes — I still dabble for my own amusement — but I left no note.”

  “A similar note was left on Hemingway’s apartment door, threatening his child,” Hector said.

  He raised his broken hands, shook them at Hector. “I didn’t do that, either. Nada has become more for me than the ruse it started out to be. It’s of paramount importance to me — a thing that can give life purpose in a universe threatened by a dead God. Something to focus on and that speaks to our ruined, lost generation. I saw Hemingway as an important conquest, or recruit, if you must know. You too, at one point. Around the Left Bank, you two are regarded as comers. Drawing you two into my movement would lend it legitimacy. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about with all this stuff about initials and women in white… And Jeremy whatsis — who’s that? We didn’t kill anyone named Jeremy…let alone do anything to anyone’s fingers.” That seemed to remind Philippe of his own fingers. He held his hands up before his face, swallowed hard and said, “Jesus Christ! What have you done to me?”

  Hector raised the board again. He feinted a blow at the man’s face, but didn’t connect. He threw down the board. “For Christ’s sake, Philippe, what have I done to make you think I’m this stupid?”

  “I’m telling you the truth, Lassiter. I wouldn’t frame my own sister, even as a bluff, which is the only thing I can figure you figure. That’s harebrained…could backfire and leave Molly — Lenore — holding the bag for everything I did to help her. Jesus, I’m not a monster. I love my sister too much to put her at risk that way.”

  Hector was incredulous: “Oh, you’re a monster to be sure — all those prostitutes you slaughtered…”

  “I can’t apologize f
or that…or explain it. If you lost your—”

  “I’m not interested in that. Not beyond stopping you from ever doing it again.”

  “What, then? You’re going to turn me over to the police, Lassiter? Going to risk letting me tell them about what you did to me in this alley? I don’t think the French authorities are going to cotton to some unhinged Texan running around Paris playing vigilante. Even against someone like me. I don’t believe you’re going to turn me over to the authorities. I—”

  Hector heard something around the corner — it sounded like the report of a pistol…a bullet perhaps striking brick. Hector held his gloved fingers up to his lips to silence Philippe. Hector drew his Peacemaker and edged around the corner…walked a ways down the alley.

  Then Hector heard something that sounded like a second shot. Between the traffic echoing down the alleyway, and the roaring Linotypes, it was hard to be certain. But Hector limped as quickly as he could back to Philippe.

  The nihilist hung limply from the fire escape, a single bullet hole between his eyes.

  His gun raised, Hector spun…looked around him. The rear access door to a building across from where Philippe was hanging was now open. Hector thought about running into the building to search for the shooter. Instead, he ran back down the alley.

  PART VI

  jeudis

  (The Second)

  38

  Hector walked slowly down the Rue Vavin, checking alcoves and recessed doorways — looking for any of the faces in the photos sent him by Aristide Simon…looking also for black-clad men…looking for Molly. Sometimes he found himself thinking he might catch a glimpse of Brinke.

  Then Hector did see a familiar female face.

  Estelle Quartermain was leaving Hector’s building.

  Hector trotted as best he could across the street with his still tender ankle and the stitches in his thigh.

  The British mystery writer was just climbing into the back of a horse-drawn cab. Hector caught the door as she was closing it. She glanced up sharply. Hector smiled and said, “Hello, Estelle. Were you looking for me?”