Print the Legend: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  That last left him reeling—he still didn’t believe it. Would Hannah actually steal his book from him? Christ, he had to get her back on her medications….

  He’d stormed out on Mary; raced back to the lodge to find Hannah.

  They had started going at it in their room at the lodge—bitterly tearing into one another.

  Hannah sensed how stupid it was to confront Richard in his present state. Surprising herself, she pressed ahead anyway…this enticing voice with a baritone, Texas accent echoing in her head: “But you’re married….”

  Damn Hector Lassiter, anyway. Still seething at Hector, Hannah directed her rage and wrath at Richard. But then, thinking more on Hector, she said suddenly, “Why don’t we talk about this in the bar, Richard.” She wanted witnesses for what was to come. Let Richard see, now, when it counted, she could play him the same way he’d played her in the early going—seducing her, drugging her…trying to turn her into little more than an attractive appendage.

  Richard hadn’t argued with that proposition of a trip to the bar, of course. He’d winked and grabbed his coat and said, “Let’s do that.” He’d get a few drinks in, fortify himself with the Giant Killer, then deal with this nonsense about Hannah writing his book.

  Now they sat across a table from one another, tearing at one another in whispers…surrounded by supping scholars and tourists.

  Hannah confirmed she was the one who was going to be writing Mary Hemingway’s biography. Richard sneered and said, “Good fucking luck with that, Hannah.” She sensed he didn’t believe her.

  He looked at her with this strange expression, then said, “You and your goddamn spider’s head…all your fucking spider eyes.”

  That’s what he truly saw, now: A hairy brown head covered with glistening black eyes. The walls of the bar were spinning, and he kept hearing dogs barking from the lobby. Jesus, but this was the worst and most sustained drunk of his life.

  Frowning at his strange stare back at her, Hannah played her trump card. Stepping into him, Hannah said, “And who exactly is Donovan Creedy to you, Richard? Hector says this Creedy is FBI and crooked, and Hector said—”

  Before he could check himself, Richard swung.

  Yes, that was it: Smash that monstrous spider’s face! Cave it in!

  There was a sharp smack and then Hannah was reeling backward, sent sprawling off her chair and onto the floor, tasting blood. Diners gasped. A few men—tourists, not scholars—grabbed Richard by the arms. An elderly man helped Hannah off the floor of the lounge.

  Hannah sat back in her chair, her mouth warm and wet. She held her hand to her lip then pulled it away and saw the blood there. Irresistibly, she saw Hector, looking at his own bloody hand after she had struck the elder writer in the mouth.

  “Get out of here,” she snarled. “Get away from me right now or I swear to God I’ll press charges against you.”

  Richard’s chin was trembling, his eyes wide. “Darling, I’m so sorry,” he said, pleading. The thing across the table had Hannah’s face again. His poor, pretty Hannah: Her face was bleeding. Her lip was swollen. She was whimpering. He tried to stand, intending to hug her to him. Men still had him by the arms. One of them said, “I’m of mind to take you outside and take you apart, you son of a bitch.”

  Hannah said, “Get out now, Richard. We’re through!”

  Richard hesitated, said, “I’ll go and get some ice for your lip. I’m so sorry, Hannah. I never meant to do that. I can’t bear having done this to you. Let me help you with your mouth.”

  She said it through gritted, bloodied teeth: “Richard, get…out…now.”

  Uncertain, Richard shook off the men holding his arms; he backed from the lounge, hands up in surrender. His knuckles still stung from the impact. He worried he might have broken her jaw; hell, he might well have broken his hand.

  He watched as more diners gathered around Hannah—one had wrapped some ice cubes in a napkin and pressed it to her face. Richard stalked toward the front door, hearing Hannah’s sobs behind him.

  ***

  Hannah held a wet towel to her mouth, staring at her battered face in the hotel room mirror. The bruise was already forming on her cheekbone; her lip was fat and cut. No teeth were loose, but her jaw ached.

  She tried to phone Hector, but there was no answer. She called Mary next—the only other person in Ketchum she knew and could turn to. Hannah told her everything.

  “Come on back over here and I mean right now,” Mary ordered her. “I’ll have your room ready. If the son of a bitch has the brains to figure out where you are and comes after you, we’ll show ’em the business end of a .505 Gibbs—a real man-stopper. Hell, maybe that mick friend of Hector’s bunked out back can put Dickie down for us.”

  ***

  Mary and her “girl” had met Hannah at the door. The cabby carried Hannah’s bags in and Mary tipped him generously. Mary had already warned Jimmy off—consigned him to the guest quarters out back so she and Hannah could “commiserate” and share “…girl talk. So we can eat chocolate together and cry.”

  Grateful to be spared all that, Jimmy had happily complied.

  But now the conversation had taken a different tack: Mary had noticed Hannah wasn’t wearing her rings. Hannah confided her decision to divorce Richard. Mary intuited it: that the prospect of Hector maybe waiting in the wings emboldened Hannah’s impulses to shake free of her husband.

  Mary handed Hannah a tea laced with warm milk.

  “Ye’re terrific to take me back in like this. I can’t thank you enough.”

  Mary smiled. “Nonsense. I’ve been down this road, long before you. First Noel, then Ernest, when he was really bad. I’ve gone my rounds and been left standing to hear the bell. Someday, you’ll maybe do the same for another. Anyway, it’s an obligation one woman always has to another. Marlene talked me back into Papa’s arms before we were married and maybe that wasn’t a favor. Rest assured, I mean to see you don’t return to Dickie’s bed. I’ll do right by you.”

  “You don’t owe me any help.” Hannah hesitated, then said, “Hector offered to drive me back to Ann Arbor before all this. Hector could see it coming.”

  The widow snorted. “Bet he did offer.” Mary winked. “I like you, Hannah. And I’m serious about helping you with your writing; helping you get published. I’m also serious about you writing my story for me. If there must be a book out there about me other than my own, let it be yours. We have treaded the same path of thorns, thee and me. We’ve survived men plagued with similar demons.”

  Mary paused. “First Richard, and now Hector. I mean, you and Hector are getting romantic, aren’t you? Bet that old crime writer loves pawing on a sweet young thing like you.” Mary shook her head. “I’ve seen that before, haven’t I? I mean, the used up writer and his fresh-faced muse. Jesus Christ…”

  Hannah went cold all over. What the hell? And how’d Mary know about Hector and Hannah?

  Hannah said: “If I can track down my sister for bus fare, I’ll maybe go home to Ann Arbor and I can file the papers. Of course, there will perhaps be trouble about the baby,”—Hannah half-smiled and held up a hand as Mary looked about to speak—“but I know what you’re going to say: There’ll probably be no trouble about the baby on the custody front. Just perhaps in securing financial support from Richard.”

  “I wouldn’t have said so in so many words,” Mary said, “but yes, that’s about the size of it, from where I sit. You’ll have no problem with custody—not from that prick. And Dickie will pay—and I’m not speaking in the sense of alimony or child support. If you leave Richard alone, it’ll be sheer hell for him. Probably same as kill him. Men like him—like my husband—can’t be alone, not even for a minute. Not and maintain any equilibrium. It’s just not within their power. Loneliness fucking eats them alive. Back in ’fifty-nine, after some of the bad things in Spain, I tried to put some distance between Papa and me—just to save myself. Papa said I was doing it to drive him to suicide. He couldn’t stand t
o be without his woman that much. Just like Dickie, I suspect.”

  Mary snorted and lifted her glass. “And Hector? He’s truly dangerous.” Mary smiled, like the idea was just coming to her: “I’ll buy you that bus ticket back to Michigan myself, sweetie, just to get you safely away from both of them. Get you away tonight. Right now.”

  Hannah sipped her tea. “Hector’s not dangerous.” She looked at her own bruised hand; she wondered what Hector’s lip looked like now.

  Mary looked grave: “You haven’t heard the rumors about Hector and his last wife’s death?”

  Over the rim of her raised tea cup, Mary studied Hannah’s face. Mary said, “I forget sometimes that you’re so young. You don’t know people yet, really. You don’t know how this world works. Honey, Hector’s still suspected by many of having caused his fourth wife’s apparent drug overdose. Many people believe Hector murdered his wife.”

  Hannah was reeling now. This void looming under her—she could hear her pulse in her ears.

  Mary bit her lip: She almost felt sorry for Hannah now; felt a little bad for the terrible expression she’d put on Hannah’s face. Well, the job was done, at least. She’d nipped that potential love affair in the bud, and good.

  The widow moved to console Hannah as the young woman’s chin began to tremble; as Hannah’s shoulders quaked. Hannah was sobbing into the hollow of Mary’s crepey neck.

  Stroking Hannah’s back, Mary said, “We’ll get you on that bus home to your family tonight, sweetie, I promise you that, Daughter. Then in a few weeks, when things are calmer, once Richard and Hector are behind you, then you and I can start writing my biography. Fuck Richard Paulson. Fuck Hector Lassiter, am I not right, Daughter?”

  ***

  Hannah was still weighing fleeing Idaho by Greyhound. The stuff Mary had said about Hector—it couldn’t possibly be true. Hannah thought about it, then dialed Harry Jordan, her private investigator. The man answered on the third ring. He said he hadn’t gotten anything of interest on Richard yet, but he did have some juicy dirt on Hector Lassiter.

  As he shared that intelligence, Hannah got the sense it was drawn from the same magazine articles she had read in the local library. She felt a little taken.

  And there was nothing, so far, about any suspicion of Hector having murdered his fourth wife.

  But then the private investigator told her something just about as bad: “This Lassiter is shacked up in his room right now with woman named Patricia Stihlbourne. Dark…pretty. Some kind of scholar. She was all over him in the hallway on the way to his room. Clearly an item. He’s surely the ladies’ man they all say.”

  Hannah hung up the phone, desolated. She wandered, dazed, to the sitting room. Mary was there in her chair, drinking a gimlet and browsing over The Paris Review. Hannah said, “I would appreciate that bus ticket home, Mary. I would be very grateful for it.”

  “Even doubtful accusations leave a stain behind them.”

  — Thomas Fuller

  35

  FRAME

  Hector keyed himself back into his room. The place was gloomy—the shades still drawn. The sheets and bedspread were a tangle, but the bed was empty. He called, “Hey there. Still about, Patricia?”

  Frowning, he flipped on the lights and pulled back drapes, squinting in the resulting savage light.

  Strange: Patricia’s clothes—her dress and saucy under things—were still slung carelessly across the back of a chair.

  The bathroom door was closed. There was no sound of the shower running. Hector rapped lightly once with knuckles, said, “Tish, sweetheart? You okay?”

  Scowling, he tried the door. The knob turned. The room was dark. He opened the door wider and flipped on the bathroom light.

  Patricia was naked in the tub, her eyes wide and empty. Her right arm was outflung—needle scars on her forearm. A hypo and vial rested on the closed toilet lid. The bathtub was filled with water. There were myriad, nearly melted ice cube floating in the bath water.

  Hector was reeling—seeing spots.

  Then this gruff voice, behind him:

  “Hands up, then turn around slowly, Lassiter.”

  Several Ketchum cops crowded the bathroom door, their service weapons pointed at Hector’s heart.

  The elder, stockiest cop—the leader—said, “We’re placing you under arrest.”

  Hector said it anyway: “On what fucking charge?”

  The lead cop said, “That poor bitch’s murder. What else?”

  BOOK FIVE:

  FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

  “Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start.”

  — Ernest Hemingway

  36

  TILL DEATH

  Richard stood at the creek’s edge by the Hemingway Memorial, looking at Hem’s bust there to avoid meeting Creedy’s angry gaze.

  His phone had been ringing when Richard reached his room at the lodge. It had been Creedy ordering him out for this rendezvous. Wanting to stall, Richard had claimed his rental car had engine troubles.

  “Then walk here, Richard,” Creedy had said. “But get your ass here.”

  Richard had walked to the Memorial…trudging along the shoulder of the road, head down and hands in pockets, surveying the sorry wreck his life had become these past few days.

  Richard sighed and rested his hand on Hemingway’s bronze head.

  Creedy shook his own head. “A tragedy for you it’s come to this, Richard. But you failed me, and worse, you tipped my hand to a very dangerous man. Compromised my plans. So your usefulness to me is at an absolute end.”

  Licking his lips, Richard sighed deeply. He’d misunderstood what Creedy meant. Richard smiled and said, “So I can go?” Jesus, was this booze buzz ever going to subside? Creedy had a wolf’s face now. Maybe Hannah was right about taking the cure.

  “You’re going to go, yes,” Creedy said. “Going to go to that place from which there’s no coming back. The ‘undiscovered’ country.” Creedy clapped his hands, said, “Boys?”

  Three black-clad men slid out from behind the trees, looking like living shadows in the trees’ late-afternoon shade. Wild-eyed, Richard began backing into the creek—the only direction of retreat—until his back was pressed to the Hemingway monument. Richard said, “This isn’t funny anymore, Donovan.”

  “No, funny is the last thing this is,” Creedy said. “You’re a loose end and a sloppy drunk, Richard. So there’s only one thing to be done with you. Don’t struggle and we’ll make this go quickly.” Creedy smiled meanly: “Just close your eyes, Dick; think of Papa.”

  “You can’t do this,” Richard said, his chin trembling. He felt something wet and warm on his thigh and realized this time he had indeed pissed himself. Jesus. “You’ll be found out, Creedy,” he said. “Please, listen to me. Please!”

  Richard remembered then, saw a slim chance: “My wife knows about you, Creedy! She knows because this crime writer she’s mooning after, this Lassiter, knows too! If they know, others may, too. Killing me won’t solve anything.”

  Creedy shook his head; curled his lip. “You’re some sorry piece of work, Professor. Now I have to kill your wife and child, too! What a shit you are, Richard. Goddamn you for making me do this to them.” He waved at one of the men: “Do it. Make it hurt for him now.”

  Screaming, Richard turned to run up the opposite creek bank, but he caught a fist in the face: a fourth black-clad man had come up behind him. The man grabbed Richard by the scruff of the neck and kicked the backs of Richard’s legs, collapsing him. His attacker then drove Richard’s face against a slick rock.

  Bone cracked and Richard screamed again, cupping his hands to his bloodied face. He felt a deep, unnatural depression in his forehead above his right eye and began to whimper. Then he began to retch.

  The man forced Richard’s face into the fast-running stream and held him under with a foot against the back of Richard’s neck until the scholar’s legs stopped their kicking.

  Creedy tossed
a half-empy bota bag of cheap wine to the man holding Richard under and said, “Put this over his shoulder. Scenario: He was drunk. He fell. He drowned. The end.”

  Not waiting for the last of it, Creedy stalked back up the trail toward his car hidden in the high weeds on the opposite side of the road.

  Jesus, to have to kill a pregnant woman….

  That was just about the worst and too-pat piece of “irony” life could throw at him in this sorry, messy affair. So, of course, life did just that.

  But… There was another way to look at this. Hector Lassiter and Hannah were lovers, or on the verge of becoming so.

  Creedy smiled and thought, Recontextualize it—change the camera angle, so to speak. This having to kill Hannah Paulson and her baby, it isn’t irony. It’s symmetry. The fearful kind. Hector Lassiter took Victoria and her baby from you. Now you take Hannah Paulson and her baby from Hector Lassiter. Revenge. Yes, that’s the way to look at it. That’s the way it truly is.

  Viewed in this new true light, well, Creedy figured he might even relish killing Hannah Paulson and her child.

  Hell, it might even erase the other memories darkening his mind now—his killing of Patricia Stihlbourne, for one.

  With her pretty, chiseled features and long blue-black hair, Patricia reminded Creedy more than a little of his beloved Victoria.

  As his men had subdued Patricia in the bathroom of the Hemingway suite—holding her prisoner and covering her mouth as Creedy administered the fatal shots of heroin—Patricia’s beseeching eyes all too vividly reminded Creedy of Victoria’s terrified expression so many years before.

  “The coroner will find ink in my veins and blood on my typewriter keys.”

  — C. Astrid Weber

  37

  PLOT HOLES

  Hector glanced at Jimmy—the retired Cleveland detective was sizing him up now with cops eyes. He’d been allowed one phone call. Rather than playing roulette with some local-yokel lawyer, Hector had called Hanrahan.