The Great Pretender: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  She pressed both palms to his cheeks and held his head up so he had to meet her gaze. “I’ll put that bigoted priest’s question to you again. Anything you’d care to confess, Hector? Will you do that while whatever secret you may or may not be keeping still can’t hurt me or someone else you care about?”

  He thought about it. Hector thought about it hard.

  Following some instinct he couldn’t yet explain, Hector said, “No. Not a thing, darlin’ Cassie. I’ve got nothing on earth to confess, presently.”

  CHAPTER 14

  TOMORROW IS FOREVER

  (Sunday, Halloween Eve)

  The Mercury’s Trick-or-Treat special fell on the Sabbath; it struck Hector as eerily appropriate, given events.

  Orson was holding court in a hotel banquet room over a massive breakfast buffet in a grand old ballroom, just twelve hours from becoming the most famous—to some, the most infamous—man in America.

  He was performing sleight of hand for Christopher and neighboring diners, tricks with coins, cigarettes, unused coffee mugs and wadded up balls of napkins. His daughter giggled and clapped hands at each trick as Orson beamed. “If you can fool a child, then you’re truly a magician,” he said to the room.

  Hector rose and tossed his napkin across his plate. “Excuse me for a couple of minutes, please.”

  Cassie scooted back her chair. “Where are you going, Tex? I should tag along.”

  “Huh-uh,” Hector said. “This is nothing sinister. I’m supposed to sign a contract for Brinke, tomorrow. Now I’m thinking I best get it done today, before Mr. Welles here has to show up at the CBS studios for his radio show. I just can’t miss this window, so I’ve got a call or two to make. Please put the arm on our waiter for me while I’m gone, won’t you? He’s just not diligent in terms of keeping the coffee coming and hot.”

  “Here, here,” Orson, who practically breathed coffee, boomed in accord. “More java!”

  ***

  Hector did head toward the lobby and its bank of pay phone booths.

  On the way he met his Soho artist; dowdy, dirty blond hair, but something intense and knowing there in her blue eyes. She handed Hector his fake medallion, its rim now etched with random hatch marks and an impulsively chosen starting point Hector had selected for a go-nowhere search—St. John in the Lateran and the Cloister. It was a choice Hector hoped just might run a Thule search party crazy until the end of time.

  Hector’s found-on-the-fly artist Bricky Callow said, “It’s acceptable?”

  “It’s better than perfect, darlin’,” Hector said.

  It was anybody’s guess whether Bricky’s knock-off was a correctly oriented to true north, but then Hector wasn’t yet fully committed to turning the ersatz medal over to the Thule.

  Doing that might buy him a year’s peace, or maybe just a few minutes if there was something that was also supposed to be there on the original that he’d missed. Either way, Hector figured, at some point the Germans would again come knocking at his and Orson’s doors once this latest deception became known.

  He paid Bricky for her work—perhaps overly-handsomely, based on her pleased expression. She said, “If you need more of those, I retained the molds and I could make a thousand or more. We could even mass-produce them. They’re kind of kitschy, don’tcha think?”

  It was possible he might need more at some point. Hector squeezed her arm and smiled. “I’ll get back to you on that. Thanks a million for the lightning turnaround on this, darlin’. You’re not only talented, but very sweet to do so.” She offered a cheek to kiss.

  Next, Hector called up his current editor to regain access to the real medallion. He also talked Peter Mathis into bringing the contracts for publishing Brinke’s books under her own name to the same location, intent on killing several birds with one stone.

  He was just hanging up the phone when Cassie slid an arm around his waist. “Still don’t trust me? Does it bother you the feeling might be mutual?”

  He kissed her forehead after she literally ducked his first effort to find her mouth, protecting her lipstick or their standing in the hotel—take your pick. She said, “Got your dates set up?”

  “My business appointments,” he corrected, “And yes, I do. I’ve now got one annoyed editor who’s angry to be dragged into the city and his office on the Lord’s day of rest and also one pretty miffed publisher for similar reasons. But as I represent money in both their banks, I figure they’ll soldier through it just fine. Orson still playing Houdini upstairs?”

  “Of course. He’s an exhibitionist. He lives for the acclaim—but you know that, and probably better than most, being his friend this long.”

  She hesitated, then said, “I know he’s juvenile, and I’ll concede he’s probably a prodigy, just as they all say. He’s also your friend. But I don’t really like him, and sense he sees his charm is wasted on me, to his chagrin.”

  Hector leaned against the phone booth, arms crossed. “The young man’s not to every taste, I concede that readily,” he said. “He drove the men who gave him his first big break back in that Dublin theater to epic distraction. Hell, he vexes me plenty and often. As to love? Orson has a favorite line on the subject. ‘It is difficult for love to last long, therefore one who loves passionately is cured quickest.’”

  “Grim.” Cassie tightened the knot in Hector’s necktie. “Passionate love or not, it’s the cavalier way he treats his own family that most offends me. So long as they’re fawning—playing audience—he’s engaged with them. Otherwise?” She shrugged sadly.

  “Sorry to say, I can’t disagree with any of that,” he said softly. He checked his watch. “Three hours until I play author-slash-literary executor. We better get back upstairs before Orson the Great gets in over his head and tries to saw some dowager in half or the like.”

  Cassie took his offered arm and said, “I hope you’re not expecting me to play babysitter to the wizard and his family while you do all that book stuff. At the end of the day, I’m not a bodyguard, even if I do have a gun and can put someone down with it at pointblank range. I’m really just a spooky academic. You’d do well to remember that, Mr. Lassiter.”

  Hector looked around to make sure no one else was watching, then leaned down to kiss the soft, dark down on the back of her neck. “My witchy egghead,” he said. “I know. You’re coming with me to my publisher’s, as it happens. So is Orson.”

  “And his family?”

  “You have friends who are more in that bodyguard line of work, don’t you? Aren’t they watching, even now?”

  “Quite likely,” Cassie said. “You’ve frankly got me in a difficult place now. If I don’t trust you, they less and less will come to trust me as I stay at your side. And I’m not sure the key men who are running the American side of this mess believe in the occult anymore than you do.”

  “It’s probably okay,” Hector said. “I know a guy who does do personal protection kind of stuff. It’s a side thing for him, but he’s formidable. I’ve engaged him, too. He should be taking charge of Virginia and Christopher about now. But I need to get up there and vouch for the hombre.”

  Cassie nodded and said, “About that little girl’s name. Why on earth did they call her Christopher?”

  Hector thought about it, searched his memory and admitted, “I haven’t a clue.” He urged her onto the wide and winding staircase up to the ballroom. “On the subject of family, Orson confided to me his grandmother practiced black magic. At least he claims it was so. I’ve come to regard Orson as something of a fabulist. Have you offered to read his palm?”

  “Lord, no,” she said. “He’s the conceited kind, anyway. Maybe he’s really descended from a witch as he told you. You know, I’d have loved to see that play that made his name—his so-called Voodoo Macbeth, but I didn’t have the money to come all the way to New York for that then. Maybe Mr. Welles even believes in what I do like you don’t. Even granting all that, he’s far too self-centered to doubt in his own will to power.”
/>   “The will to power,” Hector repeated. “That’s from Nietzsche, isn’t it?”

  “Believe that’s so.” Cassie smiled sadly. “That’s a writer who I do believe Hitler has read.”

  Hector checked his watch again. He once more thought about confiding to Cassie and Orson his discovery of the real medallion and his commissioning of a convincing fake. His FBI source had vouched for Cassie in every way that mattered.

  And yet?

  Mounting the long staircase, he assessed her again: Smart, beautiful, sensual, yet embracing of this occult nonsense he couldn’t countenance. But perhaps that last was to his discredit, he told himself.

  As they approached the ballroom, he took her hand and moved toward an adjacent sitting room. She resisted, said, “Your friends are this way.”

  “I know,” he said. “He’ll keep. I need… I want…” He faltered.

  She misunderstood his intent. “No way, lover. It’s a crazy time for it.”

  Hector half-smiled. “No, it’s not what you’re thinking. No time for doing that properly now, you’re right. This isn’t about sex. I need you to show me what you can really do, sweetheart. Not just vague talk of long lifelines or the like. Not anything that might be drawn from some goddamn FBI dossier. Can you—well, dazzle me? Hell, terrify me if need be.”

  Cassie gave him a worried look. “I don’t like this, darling. I have a feeling giving you what you say you want now could cost you more than either of us is prepared to face up to.” She wrapped her fingers around his neck, gripping hard and looking him in the eye. “I’ve seen it happen before, so I know. There’s nothing more harrowing to behold than an atheist confronted with undeniable proof of God. And being given proof of what you must surely regard as the Devil?” She shook her head, searching his pale blue eyes.

  “I know enough to know there’s supposed to be black and white magic,” Hector said. He thrust out his hand. “You said you don’t serve the Devil.”

  Cassie said, “No, that’s the hand to see your future. No proof to be had there, not immediately. Give me your other hand if you’re really sure about risking this—your other hand shows me your past. Presumably stuff that couldn’t be in any file. The stuff you maybe hide even from your own memory, best you can.”

  She took his offered hand and examined it for a time, brows knitted. She finally said, “My God, Hector. The things you’ve survived, endured…”

  He still wasn’t buying in but said, “What’s that other line from Nietzsche? That which does not kill me makes me stronger?”

  Still looking stricken by what she saw in his hand, Cassie brushed a dark comma of hair back from his forehead. She kissed him hard, wrecking her own mouth, then pressed her forehead against his chin. “You’re truly sure you want me to do this to you?”

  “Entirely.”

  She looked him in the eye. “You tried to kill your father. You shot him when you were still a child, though it appears not without good reason.”

  Hector felt like he’d been gut-punched. His straying mother’s death at his father’s hands was public record. So was his father’s eventual execution by the state. But Hector’s role in the bloodshed that terrible morning was not on the books or told in any of the papers at the time. It surely couldn’t reside in some government file.

  Grafton Lassiter had tumbled to the fact that Hector’s mother was in love with another man.

  Hector’s father—a world-class son of a bitch—shot his mother in the face, killing her instantly. Little Hector, still just a boy, heard the fatal shot and grabbed a shotgun. He fired off one barrel at his old man, nearly severing the son of a bitch’s left arm and pocking his father’s face with stray shot.

  But his father recovered; his arm was nearly healed when the state put Grafton down.

  Hector’s maternal grandfather convinced the law his daughter had gotten off a shot at her crazy husband before she was killed herself. In the face of Grafton’s claims to the contrary, the court accepted Beau Stryder’s account of events.

  In the end, only old Beau and Brinke Devlin, now thirteen years dead, knew the truth. And now here was Cassie, the bronzed white witch, who had somehow evidently seen the sorry truth in his hand by some means Hector couldn’t comprehend, much less countenance. Surely the truth of the shooting must have found it’s way into some file Cassie had gained access to. It had to be that way, right?

  She hugged him hard. “My God, the look on your face. I’m so sorry my love. I’m so sorry. I knew this was a calamitous mistake.”

  “I asked for it,” Hector said, not liking the fear and uncertainty he heard in his voice. “I asked you for undeniable proof of your power and now I seem to have it.”

  Cassie was still holding him hard in her arms. Cheek pressed to his chest, she asked, “Why now? Why this moment for this question?”

  “To help me decide something,” he said.

  “To help you decide what?”

  “Let’s wait until we have Orson with us. I’ll explain on the way to my publisher’s office. You go fix your mouth. I’ve got to see to Virginia and Christopher’s bodyguard, first.”

  CHAPTER 15

  MASQUERADE

  Hector signed his and Brinke’s new contracts and retrieved the real medallion from his publishing house’s vault while Orson and Cassie loitered in the lobby.

  Peter Mathis said, “This had to be done on Sunday, Hector? It had to be?”

  “Afraid it must,” Hector said. “I might have to hit the road back west tonight in something of a rush. Back west or to some other points to parts unknown. A cloud of dust and hearty Hi-Ho Silver.”

  After the contracts were signed, Hector secured a horse-drawn coach and rode around Central Park while confessing to his friends his recovery of the true medallion.

  Cassie, eyes flaring, said, “You have it now? Can I see it?”

  “You could, but I don’t have it on me,” Hector lied. “That would hardly be good strategy with all these Germans running amok, now would it?”

  In truth, the fake medallion was in the left-hand pocket of his gray wool suit jacket, but the real article was in a small pouch he’d secured to his right leg, just below the knee. “It was in my publisher’s safe. I put it, boxed, in the hands of a courier. Another friend should be placing it in a locker in Union Station soon. I’ll arrange delivery of the key for that particular locker to myself before night’s end.”

  “I come to think it should probably remain lost—the spear, I mean,” Orson said in his most portentous baritone voice. “At least it should remain missing until the world calms itself one way or another. If the Spear of Destiny is indeed in fascist Italy, getting in there to find it, and getting out again with the spear?” Orson shook his head, his brown eyes glistening. “Both tasks strike me as insurmountable.”

  Hector looked to Cassie. “Your thoughts?”

  “The risks of obtaining the spear in Rome are real and obvious enough,” Cassie said. “At least for us or anyone like us. But last time I checked, Italy and Germany were allies. The medallion should at least be in our government’s hands to prevent those others from laying hands on the real spear. The risks are real, just as I said, but so are the rewards for our side. And if the spear remains in play, doesn’t it strike you the world may never be calm enough to recover it otherwise, or worse, that it may simply be too late for our side to make use of it?”

  She took Hector’s hand. “Think hard on all that.”

  “Oh, rest assured that’s about all I’ve been doing,” Hector said. “I’ve done little else since laying eyes on that damned thing.”

  ***

  They stopped for a late lunch before Orson set off to the studio for the Mercury’s Halloween broadcast of The War of the Worlds. Hector settled for Orson’s favorite joint, 21, on West 52nd Street. He did so despite the demand that he wear a tie in order to be permitted entry.

  Cassie had excused herself to the phone. Orson poured himself more wine and said, “She’s possib
ly calling in the Marines, you know. Or J. Edgar himself.”

  “Possibly,” Hector said. “It was a calculated risk. Here, take this. Keep it in your pant’s pocket until I tell you otherwise.”

  Hector passed Orson the false medallion, wrapped in a silk handkerchief.

  “My God,” Orson said, quickly placing the packet in his pocket. “Is this what I think it is?”

  “Yes and no,” Hector said. “The images on the front and the back are exact copies of the original, but they are about six-degrees out of proper phase to one another. You see, Christ’s head on the real item points to true North. The hatch marks you’ll find on the rim are supposed to measure precise distances between map points. On the real item, they presumably do just that. In this case, however, they’re randomly assigned. This medallion might make an interesting paperweight, but it’s no treasure map.”

  Orson said, “Eventually, whether it’s Uncle Sam or the Germans—even these so-called Thule—this will be seen through as the hoax that it is, you know. The trick will probably be discovered and sooner rather than later.”

  “Probably so,” Hector said. “It’s mostly just a gambit to buy you time until I can figure out a way to deal you and I out of this farce, forever. In the meantime, think of that metal disc in your pocket as a one-use-only escape hatch. As we’ve agreed, tonight particularly, you’re an easily acquired target coming and going from the studio. If you run afoul of Germans this evening, if I’m not there to help you, that’s when you use that disc as needed to get them off your back.”

  Orson nodded. “What do you intend to do if caught? Do you have a copy of your own?”

  “Seems too risky we might both have to pony up the disc tonight,” Hector said. “That would just underscore a hoax. As to plans tonight, I mean to stay glued to your side until the broadcast is over and you’re safe and sound with family somewhere. On the other hand, Cassie and or her employers may have other things in store for me.” Hector checked his wristwatch and rose. “Going to go see if I can scare her up, in fact. So sit tight. There’s only one way in or out, so no worries on that front.”