The Great Pretender: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  Orson smiled. “If you truly think that, then you clearly don’t know this place’s history during prohibition. It’s connected to the sewers for quick liquor disposal and riddled with secret passages and hidden wine rooms. This establishment is a sieve, in that sense.”

  “Terrific news,” Hector said. “Try not to get lost in the sewers, then.”

  Hector found Cassie hanging up a pay phone. He held her hand as she stepped from the mahogany booth. “Go ahead and ask,” she said.

  He smiled. “How much did you volunteer?”

  Cassie let go of his hand. “Your secret is safe for now. I’m trying to buy us more time so I can talk you into doing the sensible—into doing the right thing.”

  “How are you doing that—buying that time for us, I mean?”

  “I said I thought you might have a hot lead on the location of the medallion. I could use some of your storytelling powers to fill in some details on that, I expect.”

  “I can help with that, as needed,” he said. “Fiction writers make terribly effective liars, I’m afraid. Thank you for keeping the confidence, honey.”

  “It’s probably a terrible mistake,” she said. “You hiding this medallion from our government certainly seems a terrible threat to me.”

  “Maybe,” Hector said, “but candidly, and certainly selfishly, I haven’t yet figured out a way to turn it over to you all if I ever even incline that way. Not to do it in any way that will save me future grief from the Germans, that is to say. Let’s face facts, darlin’. If I give you the medallion, the U.S. government is hardly going to take out an ad in the dailies saying something like, ‘We have it now, so Thule, leave poor Hector and Orson alone.’ Right?”

  “That is a problem for you,” she said. “Now that you say it, I can see it. Still, your arrogant, philandering friend is just one big advertisement for himself tonight, a huge target for kidnapping while you two are still viewed as possessors of the medallion.”

  “Seems to me your side can do something about that potentially,” Hector said.

  “As an American, my side should be your side, too, Hector. Anyway, I have tried to have the surveillance on Mr. Welles stepped up, through tonight at least.”

  “Good. And I’m working some angles of my own on the Orson front.” Hector paused and then said, “By the way, if you haven’t already gathered, I plan on spending the evening with him at the studio. You want to go with us, or…?”

  “With you, of course,” she said. “That’s where the action will be. I told you, I’m really no bodyguard and so not keen on the notion of sitting around with the Welles girls. I don’t want to spend my night cooling my heels with Virginia and Christopher and that ex-boxer turned bodyguard you’ve hired for them. Virginia and I? ‘Different worlds’ doesn’t begin to do it justice.”

  Hector said, “There’s time for one more drink maybe, then we hit the studio for prep work. Let’s go find Orson before he starts calling attention to himself by reciting Shakespeare or some damned thing to pass his time alone.”

  CHAPTER 16

  MESSAGE FROM THE HILLS

  Before they headed to the CBS studios, Orson threw Hector a nasty curve ball, uncharacteristically insisting upon going to the hotel “to say goodnight to my girls. I know you think we’re going to the studio and then the hotel after the show tonight, but that’s simply not the way it can be,” Orson insisted. “I have to get to the theater afterward to knuckle down and fix Danton’ Death. The whole future of the Mercury Theatre may well ride on how that play is reviewed by the goddamn critics.”

  “So it’s about posterity,” Hector said. “Is that really worth your life?”

  “Posterity?” Orson made a face. “Posterity is another form of worldly success. Jot that down, if you will, please, on a slab of marble. It’s about remaining commercially viable so I can continue to create. It’s about my career.” He studied Hector’s face and said, “It’s about providing for my family.”

  Reluctantly, Hector agreed to the insisted-upon side trip.

  At least, Hector consoled himself, his young selfish friend was evidencing some heartening family sentimentality.

  ***

  As Cassie and Hector sipped coffee and watched from a corner, Orson pushed his crew threw fragmented rehearsals, changing beats and shortening bits here, elongating silences there.

  At some point, as the Martians emerged from their ship and their faces were being described, Orson called out, “Dear God, this piece of shit is worse than shit! It’s corny, too!”

  In another corner of the studio, very much to himself, actor Frank Readick was listening over and over to a recording of Herbert Morrison’s Hindenburg broadcast, prepping for his role as Johnny-on-the-spot newsman Carl Phillips.

  Poor “Carl” was destined to die in some field in Nowheresville New Jersey, some place called Grovers Mill, where the invasion from Mars was improbably slated to begin.

  It became clear as the run-throughs continued that Orson had set aside two roles for himself, that as narrator, and as astronomer Richard Pierson, the scientist left to wander a burned-out New Jersey and New York wasteland in the aftermath of the invasion.

  Orson leaned into the microphone, polishing his own opening lines for the night’s melodrama. “We now know that in the early years of the Twentieth Century, this world was being watched by intelligences greater than man’s own…”

  Hector glanced at a clock on the studio wall. Six p.m., eastern. Just two hours until broadcast time.

  Cassie whispered in his ear, “Seeing all this may ruin radio for me, you know. It’s like that line about newspapers and sausage-making. You know? You may enjoy eating it, but you do not ever want to see it made?”

  Hector thought about films, and how he regarded them since he’d become a scriptwriter and said, “Believe me, I get it.”

  A little man with glasses and a beaky nose tugged at Hector’s sleeve. He said, “It is Mr. Lassiter, isn’t it?”

  “Yes…”

  “You have a phone call. If you’ll follow me outside…”

  Hector trailed the little man to a small office off the control room. He realized Cassie was dogging his heels, one hand in her purse. He presumed she was clutching a gun.

  A pretty blonde with cat’s eye-frame spectacles and a rather daring neckline passed him the phone.

  Virginia Welles said, “Hector? Thank God it’s you. I’m so sorry, but your friend, Mr. Moreno? He became quite ill. Some reaction to room service shellfish, it seems. They swear he’ll be okay, but they’re about to take him away and we’ll be left quite alone and so…”

  “No worries,” Hector said. “Cassie and I are headed your way now. Traffic allowing, we should be there in thirty minutes. Sit tight and don’t answer the door for anyone but us. I’ll find someone else to watch you and then get back here to fetch Orson before the show’s end. This is nothing but a complication, honey. Nothing to fret over.”

  Hector hung up the phone and told the bespectacled blonde, “Please tell Orson something came up. Tell him not to worry, but Cassie and I will listen to the show from the hotel with his family. Tell him I’ll be back to get him here and to take him to the theater as earlier planned.”

  ***

  They seemed condemned to hit every red light between the CBS building and their most recent hotel. Their cabbie said, “What time have ya got, brother?”

  “Seven-twenty,” Hector said.

  “Good,” the driver said. “Don’t want to miss Charlie McCarthy tonight. That Mortimer Snerd is priceless, you ask me.”

  Hector thought this everyman’s assertion might well send Orson off a cliff. Any given Sunday night, Orson’s audience was a fraction of that garnered by Edgar Bergen and his coterie of wooden sidekicks.

  And then there was that other absurd aspect that set Hector’s head spinning: the idea of a ventriloquist performing on radio? Yet the more he thought on that, the more Hector figured it was probably some kind of accidental favor to Berg
en, whose lips visibly moved when he spoke for his dummies.

  By seven-thirty, they were still six blocks from the hotel. Cassie said, “We could get there faster on foot I think.”

  Hector agreed and paid their cabbie, left him sitting there alone in stopped traffic.

  ***

  Passing by the doorway of a residence room as they made their way down the street to the Welles’ family’s current hotel, Hector heard the overture music Orson had selected to open each broadcast of the Mercury Theatre on the Air, Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor by Tchaikovsky.

  CHAPTER 17

  THE PHANTOM VOICE

  Leaves chased discarded newspaper pages across Times Square as Cassie and Hector neared the hotel. A large group of men—most of them blond—were gathering outside. Hector stopped counting at a dozen.

  “This has become a disaster,” Cassie said.

  A hand suddenly on Hector’s shoulder. He spun, drawing down.

  “Whoa there, Hector!” A man in a black trench coat and hat said, “Friends, remember?”

  Hector frowned, then recognized Special Agent Edmond Tilly. The fed had seven men backing him up. Putting away his gun, Hector said, “Friends? Not so sure about that. Collaborators, anyway. You’re with her?” He nodded at Cassie.

  “Not with her side like you mean, more like collaborators to use your word,” Tilly said. “More like we’re with who she is with, but same sides, yeah. All with Uncle Sam, in the end.”

  “You do see you’re also outnumbered,” Hector said.

  “I have ten more in the lobby,” Tilly said.

  Hector shot Cassie a look. She shrugged. He sighed and said, “Is this arrival of the cavalry your doing, Cass? Given the Thule contingent here, clearly you were justified sending up a flare if that’s indeed what you did. He turned back to Tilly. “The Welles family okay?”

  “My men say so, at least for the moment,” Tilly said. “But that crowd there is clearly headed up to make it very much otherwise, don’t you think?”

  “Seems a safe bet,” Hector said. “So what then? You all shoot it out in the lobby? That would almost certainly end in a slaughter of civilians.”

  Tilly pointed at three men standing off from the group of Germans. “No, you’ll go up with that trio of mine. Go in through the back door of this building. My guys will explain why you go that way on your trip there. Either way, you all get up there quietly and grab the Welles women while me and my boys help those Germans cool their heels down here.”

  Hector quickly agreed, hoping he could lose the three FBI men on the way back down.

  Slipping his gun into his right hand coat pocket, Hector said to the trio of FBI agents assigned him, “Follow us, boys. Let me knock on the door when we get up there, okay? Do it wrong—” a lie “—and you must might get shot.”

  ***

  The agents, holding up badges, led Hector and Cassie through the kitchen—raising eyebrows and drawing glares from hotel cooks and servers.

  “All those German in the lobby…” Hector said. “Hell, the stairs’ entrance is right next to the lobby’s elevator bank. How do we get up there without being seen?”

  “No worries,” one of the agents, a smallish slope-shouldered man with mouse brown hair said. “There’s a special service elevator that comes right off the kitchen.” The agent waggled eyebrows. “That’s why this joint’s a favorite for local politicians who are looking to tryst. It was designed to speed room service delivery, so to speak. They say old Joe Kennedy himself paid to have it put in place, so when he was in town he and—.”

  Hector said, “Save the rest, pal. I already despise that crooked cocksucker.”

  One of the other agents held the elevator door. He said, “It’s a small elevator. Maybe the dame shouldn’t—”

  “You stay then,” Cassie said to the man, heading into the cage first. Hector followed. As the door closed on them in the cramped little elevator, Hector said, “You want the sixth floor. Having said that, where exactly does this door open on the other end?”

  Furrowed brows. “Uh, not sure,” the small, lead agent said. “Somewhere equally out of sight, no doubt. Some maid’s quarters, maybe. It is a service elevator, after all.”

  The doors opened and a heavily accented German voice said, “Ah, the lift is here at last!”

  The three FBI agents were still at the front of the cage. Two were shot in the face before their guns cleared their shoulder holsters. The door was now fully open. Three armed Germans were on the other side. One had a hand on Virginia Welles’ arm.

  Virginia—wild-eyed, terrified—was holding tightly to Christopher.

  Even as the two FBI agents fell, Hector made a cold calculation. He put his Florsheim to the back of the still-standing Fed and kicked him into the arms of two of the three, heavily-armed Germans.

  Hector shot the third—the one manhandling Virginia—between the eyes. To her credit, Virginia deftly managed to get her little girl’s face turned toward her bosom, sparing Christopher the sight of the carnage resulting from Hector’s shot.

  Shifting aim, Hector pulled the trigger twice more, hitting the second Thule in the throat and then the chest. Cassie put the last of the German’s down with a single shot.

  The last of the FBI men, sprawling among the dead Thules, snarled, “Lassiter you son of a bitch! I’m going to—”

  Hector cut him off with a wagging finger, “Language, Agent. A child and ladies are present. I’m certain Mr. Hoover wouldn’t approve.” As he said that, Hector pulled out his display handkerchief, shook it loose, then gestured at his own forehead and left cheek. Ashen and dazed, Virginia accepted the handkerchief and wiped the blood from her face in the places he had indicated.

  Hector a extended a hand and reluctantly helped the last FBI agent to his feet. “Easy, brother,” he said. “At least we’re all still drawing air. Your compadres never stood a chance, you know. You all should have done your homework on where the elevator deposited us.”

  A familiar voice from a distant radio: “…the gas to be hydrogen and moving toward the earth with enormous velocity. Professor Pierson of the observatory at Princeton confirms…describes the phenomenon as (quote) like a jet of blue flame shot from a gun (unquote).”

  The disgruntled FBI agent said, “Shut up, Lassiter. “You’re not in charge here anymore. You’re just—”

  Another gunshot. The agent staggered, clutching at his back, then fell. The second man whom Hector had shot turned his trembling gun hand toward Hector. Cassie put the man down.

  Hector heard the opening strains of “Stardust” from a distant radio, then a scream.

  Through clenched teeth, Cassie said, “This elevator’s no good option now, the stairs, either.”

  Hector dabbed at a last droplet of blood on Virginia’s cheek and said to the ashen actress, “Darlin’, please tell me you still have your room key on you.”

  ***

  Back in the Welles’ hotel room, reloading her gun, Cassie said, “Hec, I don’t call this progress. All of them will be soon headed to this room, if they aren’t already on their way up.”

  Hector thrust his forty-five drown his waistband at the back. He set to work at a window latch. “So we’ll leave by the fire escape. Not likely they’re guarding that.”

  “Brilliant,” Cassie said.

  Hector said, “More like tragically necessary. I’m no fan of heights.”

  ***

  Hector pushed down the ladder from the second floor to ground level. It banged against the concrete with far more noise than he’d anticipated.

  Christopher ended up wrapping her arms tightly around his neck as he made his way down the ladder. Police lights splashed one end of the alley. Cassie said, “Like it or not, we’re going to have to exit where we came in, close by the hotel’s main entrance. Let’s just hope they’ve all at last gone into the lobby.”

  Hector said, “You three wait here. I’ll see to getting us some kind of wheels.” He handed the little g
irl back to her mother; Victoria was still looking stricken.

  “I’m not feeling good about taxi cabs,” Cassie said. “Mr. Hoover’s crew isn’t building confidence on my part, and the FBI can trace a cab like nobody’s business.”

  “Exactly why I mean to hijack a car,” Hector said. “I want my hands on the wheel going forward. When you hear two short blasts on the horn, you all come runnin’.”

  ***

  Cassie said, “Two following us. Gray Olds and the black Chrysler Royal.”

  “Right,” Hector said. “Traffic’s just heavy enough to make out-horse powering and losing them an impossibility.”

  That frustrated him. The Chevrolet coupe he’d taken at gunpoint seemed to have some real horsepower but no room to run.

  Hector said, “Police stations, secret sanctums or Superman, I’m open to suggestions, ladies. We need strategies or some close-by outside help.”

  “Harlem,” Cassie said finally. “At least these monsters on our tail will stand out there again, like the other night at the club.”

  Not much, but it was something, Hector figured. He course-corrected accordingly, awaiting better options.

  As they headed toward Harlem, Cassie fiddled with the radio.

  A voice—that voice—“This is probably a meteorite of unusual size and its arrival at this particular time is merely a coincidence.”

  Christopher said, “That’s daddy on the radio! It is, it is!”

  CHAPTER 18

  THE POWER OF THE MIND

  Hector managed a tight smile in the rearview mirror at the girl’s mother. Victoria said to her daughter in a strained voice, “Yes, but daddy’s just acting dear, he’s pretending to be someone he really isn’t.”

  Turning that statement over in his mind in ways no child could comprehend, Hector weaved in and out of traffic, extending their lead on their pursuers for a time, then losing ground—and then losing some more—in a flurry of horn-blasting increments.