Print the Legend: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  “Ah, yes, the fucking spies. We’d meant to do something about them, hadn’t we?”

  Papa thought they were FBI, but he was crazy.

  Mary knew better—knew they were not Feds sneaking around her house.

  No…scholars—that’s what the cocksuckers were.

  Rival publishers, critics and would-be-biographers, all of them angling to usurp her role as literary executor.

  Hemingway hunters.

  Bastards. That’s who they were!

  If he weren’t dead, Papa would fetch a shotgun—get the drop on the maggots. Blow ’em to hell!

  Well, she could do that well enough herself, now. Papa had seen to that. “I know how to use a gun,” she said aloud, this dark smile on her face—a rare smile that showed teeth. “I’ll get my gun and I’ll kill your asses!”

  —Creedy—

  Donovan Creedy leaned into the listening station’s speaker; his heart racing to hear the widow’s death threat. The bugs weren’t state of the art—planted as they were before Hemingway’s death—but they were good enough to hear Mary’s ranting now.

  Creedy wet his lips; there was no denying the drug had a tendency to provoke subjects to violence…sometimes to extreme irrational behavior. Early test subjects—men and women with mental capacities far exceeding those of this drunken widow—had hurled themselves from high-rise windows rather than continue taking the ride. They had beaten their heads against walls until they suffered fatal brain hemorrhages.

  Standing at the window with his binoculars, Creedy cursed softly, wishing he had some kind of cameras inside the Topping House…some way of seeing the action.

  A car turned into the driveway of the Topping House. Probably the maid, Creedy figured.

  But, no, it was Richard Paulson—driving erratically, driving fast…slamming on the brakes and sending the rental car into a gravel-spitting stop. Creedy began pulling on his coat. Perhaps the professor had some gumption after all.

  —Richard—

  Frantic, furious, Richard sat in the car in the driveway of the concrete house, scanning his notes. He’d driven back to the lodge too fast…driven in silence, seething. Hannah’s attention seemed to be split between watching Richard, watching the road for Richard, and restlessly toying with some crumpled scrap of paper she kept taking from her pocket and then putting back.

  Once they’d reached the lodge, he’d hustled Hannah to their room, grabbed his sheaf of notes and a flask, and bolted back to the rental car. Wild-eyed, Richard read a few more notes to himself, trying to find the right buildup to posing the Big Question.

  He realized he felt dizzy…strange. He took a slug from the flask, but that didn’t seem to help anything. He felt loose-tongued…a little sleepy. And he realized his thigh was wet. Jesus, had he pissed himself?

  He looked at his crotch and saw a stain over his right pant’s pocket. Richard thrust his hand in his pocket and found the stopper had come loose from the vial. His eyes grew wide. The man had said to be careful with the stuff—that there was some indication it could be absorbed through the pores. Jesus, he’d dosed himself with half a bottle of the stuff, maybe!

  His heart was racing and his tongue felt too big. It was hard to swallow. But he couldn’t leave things as they were!

  Richard took another shot of whiskey, then hustled out of the car to resume his interrogation of the widow—to get his all-important answer.

  —Mary—

  Mary moved to the upstairs gun cabinet—restocked and locked now that Papa was safely dead. Oh my! Did she actually say that last out loud? She was pretty sure she had. “Well…no shame in speaking the truth,” she said. “Of course not.”

  Her heart was still racing; she was still sweating. She drained her gimlet, then mixed another. She realized she was reciting mixing steps aloud.

  What was this oral dysentery that had suddenly seized her?

  Mary took a sip of her fresh cocktail, then began to sing old songs in French and Italian—tunes and ditties she and Papa sang together in better times. No more tipping the spies to her plans if she just kept singing: All the while, she searched for the key to the gun cabinet.

  Oh, that’s right: it was on the chain draped around her neck, that was it!

  She patted her chest, feeling for the contour of the chain and key under her sweater. No, wait, that was the document room key she wore around her neck for safekeeping.

  But, goddamn it, that key was missing too!

  Frantic, Mary returned to her favorite chair…shoved her hands down the cracks between cushions—searching. Fruitless. She toddled upstairs—drunkenly bumping into walls—and searched her bedroom for the two vital keys.

  Goddamn it! Where were they? Where was the document room key? Had she left it in the doorknob of the room?

  Maybe….

  She staggered back downstairs, clutching tightly to the banister so she wouldn’t fall—maybe break a hip—then wandered through the kitchen. She saw the key to the gun cabinet there on the ledge over the kitchen sink—just where it was the morning Papa used the key to get at his shotguns that fateful July morning.

  Mary selected a Mannlicher and slid in a couple of shells with practiced skill.

  Papa had seen to it she was a crack-shot.

  She’d killed a lion in Africa. Heh, killed more than one “lion,” hadn’t she?

  Another funny smile….

  Tiptoeing down the stairs to the storeroom where she now kept Papa’s most precious manuscripts under lock-and-key, she saw that the storeroom door was ajar.

  Damn spies. Damn scholars. Mary smiled—this time she remembered to keep her mouth shut; no more words.

  They were trespassers now, and she knew the law: Cross the threshold into my house unbidden and I can put you down! She bit back a giggle.

  She peeked through the cracked door.

  The spy’s back was to Mary; he hadn’t heard her approach. Well, he wouldn’t, would he? That was another gift from Papa—the predator’s light foot…the stealth of the professional hunter. Of the professional killer.

  She narrowed her eyes: It was Lassiter!

  Lasso hadn’t even said yes to her offer to help her with Islands and her memoir! He hadn’t signed contracts or confidentiality agreements. Yet here he was, rooting through THE PAPERS. So Lassiter must be up to no good —bad as all the others! Worse!

  So, it was like that: Fucking Judas!

  She could empty one barrel into Lassiter’s head and the other into his waist—cut him in half, twice. After all, Lasso was trespassing…burgling her house and possessions. No Idaho jury would convict her.

  Mary’s finger twitched at the twin triggers. She sighted in on Hector’s back as he rooted among the manuscripts.

  The manuscripts….

  Her manuscripts!

  Goddamn Hector Lassiter to hell!

  Damn him for meddling with her manuscripts. And what a fool Lasso was to bother with these when she had the best story of all to tell—one true sentence that would trump all these piles of Papa’s abortive efforts. She had a sentence in her head that would be heard ’round the world.

  Mary smiled as she aimed the shotgun at Hector Lassiter. It would be a shame to send Hem’s one, true, lasting friend to his grave before Hector could hear Mary’s one true sentence—the best sentence of all.

  She hesitated.

  The heavy front door was scraping open. Whoever it was wasn’t polite enough to wait to be knock or be invited before barging into her house. Or, they didn’t even care to conceal the fact that they, too, were there to rob her blind.

  Mary bit her lip; sensed motion behind her. It was the scholar, Paulson, standing at the top of the stairs, watching Mary watching Hector. Richard’s eyes widened as she wheeled around and pointed the shotgun at his gut.

  —Creedy—

  He’d begun running down the stairs as soon as he saw Paulson head for the front door of the Topping House. He bolted onto the lawn and sprinted across the street, running
up the hill to the Topping House.

  Everything was going sideways now, or threatening too. One casualty could be covered. On the other hand, faking three deaths by gunshot from a deranged widow would be hard, but it might be necessary if Mary really drew down on Lassiter or Paulson.

  Hell, the professor was no real threat, but Lassiter? He was known to pack a vintage Colt and had a reputation for being pretty liberal with its use. If Mary got the ball rolling by taking down Lassiter, well, that would maybe change things.

  If that happened, Mary might even spare herself Creedy’s “suicide” treatment. Instead, he’d just give her a stiff drink from the doctored Jim Beam bottle in his pocket—filled to the brim with all it would take to make Mary sing whatever song he planted in her head before the stuff wrecked whatever vestiges of sanity remained in that daffy head.

  Creedy stood in the entryway of the Topping House, weighing options. He could see Richard’s back —could see the scholar was trembling. Creedy decided: He backed out through the front door and scrambled around the side of the house, pressing his face to the glass of the storeroom window for a view of Lassiter. If Hector was going to die, Creedy wanted to witness it.

  —Mary—

  The scholar’s visible terror made the widow smile:

  Yes, you scholarly prick—you should fear me! That’s the look I want in your eyes, always: fear!

  Mary lowered the gun and put a bony finger to her lips, shushing Richard.

  Let’s not do anything hasty, old girl, Mary told herself. Let’s first determine if Paulson and Lassiter are in league together. There’ll be time later to shoot one or both, after all. Now there’s all the time there is….

  —Hector—

  It was slow and careful going. Hector carefully refolded each tossed-off note written in Hem’s hand; carefully put each manuscript back in its allotted slot or envelope. After many minutes of searching—stopping here and there to savor a sentence or paragraph of Hem’s that still displayed the old magic…evoking forty years of friendship, fights and late-night, deep talks over deeper drinks—Hector found the original of the lost chapter about himself. He also found a couple of other pieces of his he’d never hoped to see again—unsigned short stories from the old days that had most certainly been in Hem’s stolen suitcase…evidently confused by Mary for things Hem had written.

  What the hell was going on?

  How could Hector’s own long-ago stolen manuscripts end up variously on the collector’s market and in the Hemingway basement? What the hell?

  Cursing softly, Hector kept digging. He wasn’t finding everything he’d lost in Paris in 1922, but he found several pieces; some of those had notes scrawled in the margins in what looked like Mary’s hand—notations to “Save this for first collection of Papa’s uncollected short stories,” or, more disturbingly, “Change character’s name to Nick Adams for eventual Adams’ anthology.”

  Jesus Christ—he couldn’t have his stuff being foisted off as Papa’s juvenilia. Jesus….

  At last satisfied he had everything that was his own, Hector dug a bit further and found a much longer manuscript involving Cuban politics that, at first glance, seemed to Hector to be potentially damaging to Hem in a very different way: The manuscript made Ernest look like some flavor of swooning Fidelista—a Castro apologist.

  His back to the door, Hector stuck the manuscript pages in the waistband of his slacks at the back, hidden under the tails of his sports jacket.

  Hector turned, and his stomach kicked.

  Mary stood behind him, a shotgun pointed at his head. Her hands were steady; her eyes were wild. Behind her stood Paulson, his eyes at once wide and hateful.

  Her voice hoarse and thick from the booze and the mystery drug, Mary said, “Ask me, goddamn you! Ask me what you both want to know. Go ahead, Lasso…professor—ask what you all want to ask me!”

  Raising his hands, Hector remembered the first time he’d seen Mary—there on the tarmac of the Havana airport in 1959. He’d thought her a bit dizzy, then. Now, he wondered if long exposure to Hem—particularly in Ernest’s last, crazed days—had somehow compromised Mary’s tenuous sanity. Had she come to thrive on Hem’s pain and mercurial temperament? His anger and his irrationality? Hector licked his lips, thought, And, if she did, does she miss it all so much now she’d tried to recapture it by actually shooting me?

  He glanced over her shoulder at Richard. Had the professor hit Mary with more of the stuff—driven her into this frenzy? Maybe. Or maybe he’d been at the stuff himself, for Richard looked as crazed as Mary—sweating furiously, and strangely flushed. Mary and Richard’s pupils were the size of dimes. Richard was staring at the back of Mary’s head like he might bore through her skull with his angry, horrified gaze.

  Oblivious, Mary stared down the double barrels at Hector, the shotgun unwavering. Her cheeks twitched, as if some force was controlling her, trying to fight its way out, and it was pretty clearly winning.

  Mary said, “You don’t even have to say a word, I can see it in your eyes.

  “Did I kill the old bastard? Goddamn it!

  “Yes!

  “Yes, I did.

  “I killed Ernest!”

  ***

  They stood there in the cramped space, Hector at the lowest level, still in Mary’s sights. Mary stood on the lower step; Richard just a bit above and behind her. Mary’s words echoed off the walls. Hector and Richard were still absorbing the confession.

  Mary had said it with fierce pride. Hector felt weak in the knees; actually feared for himself.

  The damned scholar was scribbling her crazed admission down in his notebook now, even as Mary’s finger twitched against the first trigger.

  It was all fucking insane.

  Hector thought, I’m really going to die now, just like this. Jesus Christ!

  The widow’s whole body was shaking, now. She pitched forward as if to force the shotgun barrels up against Hector’s head before blasting him into oblivion.

  For a fraction of a second, Hector wondered what the headlines would say: something about “Hemingway friend killed feet from where Papa died”…probably make him look like he’d died in imitation. Fuck’s sake!

  Then Mary’s eyes rolled back in her head. The widow fainted.

  Hector caught the shotgun before it hit the ground—before it could accidentally discharge.

  The shotgun now in his hands, Hector looked up and saw the scholar staring at him, frozen in his tracks. Hector struggled against his own adrenaline—to have come so close to annihilation at Mary’s hands…. He looked again at Richard. Fucking scholar had heard all of it. Now what was Hector going to do with this goddamn scholar?

  ***

  Richard was trembling. He had it — had the confession he’d come seeking from Mary! But my God, the way she said it…it was a darker, more operatic admission than he’d ever imagined getting from the widow. And Lassiter had heard it, too. Goddamn it!

  Seeing the gun in Hector’s hands, perhaps thinking the crime writer might turn it on him, Richard Paulson screamed and ran back up the steps.

  Hector cursed. As the front door slammed behind the fleeing scholar, Hector examined Mary…she was wide-eyed and twitching. She looked like a junkie on a very bad trip, actually foaming at the mouth. Well, things had certainly turned a dark fucking corner, now, hadn’t they?

  BOOK FOUR:

  MEN AT WAR

  “The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people.”

  — Graham Greene

  14

  MINION

  The two men faced one another across the table. Stepping outside himself a bit, Richard saw it like this: They were both men used to being listened to. People hung on their words, and they were both information gatherers. But as a professor, Richard relied on the Socratic method of interrogation—pose a question and inspire an answer. The man across the table from him came at the craft of confrontation from a behavioral model, and the other man was, well, he was m
ore than a bit of a thug.

  Richard knew he was completely out of his element.

  Cowed and beaten down, Richard flinched as Creedy leaned into him across the small pub table, his voice low and menacing: “You’re disappointing me, Richard. You said after you got what you wanted—your confession from Mary to Hemingway’s killing, after you got this material for your precious biography—Mary blacked out. The maid was away. You had the place, and this Lassiter, same as to yourself. The door to the manuscript room was unlocked. The thing to do was to beat Lassiter to that shotgun—blow him to hell, fulfill your mission in the document room, then leave them both there. Let the local police sort it out. They would have believed Mary Hemingway shot Lassiter. You’d have gotten away clean.”

  No, Richard thought. It wouldn’t have happened like that—even if he had been capable of killing Lassiter, and he knew he wasn’t. And Hannah knew Richard was headed back there to the Topping House. There’d be no explaining it satisfactorily to his wife. And hell, with his luck, some neighbor would see his return…or see his departure.

  And anyway, Richard has his admission of murder from Mary—he couldn’t risk that with his own arrest, or her possible murder by this man or his helpers. And now Richard had seen that trove of papers…stacks of Hemingway manuscripts, letters. A mother lode. He wanted to get back there, to comb through it all. To buttress Mary’s stunning admission with a trove of new Papa revelations. To that end, Richard had started to create some operational latitude for himself. He’d lied to Hannah and told her he was off to Boise earlier than he actually planned to leave. Had gotten a second hotel room and stocked it with some good wine, notepads and pens. He’d do the same to this man — tell him he was needed in Boise while he plotted his own way back into that manuscript room in the Topping House.