The Great Pretender: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  Orson considered that, then picked up the book that Hector had brought along to read if he felt he needed moments of rest in his day. It was a French translation of a biography of Byron. He said suddenly, “Do you know the best service anyone could render to the arts, Hector? Destroy all biographies. Only art can explain the life of a man, and not the contrary.”

  “Forgive me, Orson, but where the Holy Lance is concerned, you sound like you’re wavering.”

  “Belief is an exhausting thing,” Orson said. “To really embrace a faith, one must make certain commitments, take the effort. When you were so sick, I watched Cassie working what she regards as her magic. I suppose I wonder if I can keep up the steps, the effort that possessing that spear seemingly requires.”

  Orson hesitated then said, “Sacrifice is a word I keep coming back to in relation to all this, and to your lover.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cassie told me the damnedest tale about a rite she participated in to stall Hitler and thwart some German cult called the Black Order,” Orson said. “Has she shared the story with you?”

  “With me? I’d be the last person she talk to about anything like that.”

  “Seems in the summer of 1940, near New Forest, a coven of British witches gathered as they have before to perform a rite to protect British sovereignty, only this time against Hitler’s forces. Cassie was a part of this rite, she told me. They all went out into the forest, nude and slathered with some strange oil, they all took some kind of mushroom and then danced in a circle holding hands… It seems to be utterly effective a human life had to be sacrificed. The oldest coven member volunteered himself for that.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Hector said. “Please tell me Cassie didn’t wield the blade.”

  “I wondered about that too… I asked, she didn’t answer, which, I suppose, in its way is an answer.”

  Hector just shook his head.

  Orson tried to make light of it. “Anyway, Hitler never invaded British shores, so the magic must have worked, yes?”

  ***

  As promised, Hector did everything he could to rush Orson through a hasty breakfast and on to the set.

  They were walking that way, toward the film crew’s next location, Hector checking over his shoulder now and then for one of the city’s far-too-scarce taxis.

  Orson said, “I still hate the way things are in the United States, even if I could go back today. Did you hear what the bastards did to the Josephsons? Leon was subpoenaed by HUAC. It destroyed their business. By all accounts, it’s still like a witch hunt back there. We’re the wise ones, old man, safely enjoying the fruits of the old world while home burns itself to pieces.”

  Possibly all too true, but Hector had also heard the Greenwich Village club in which he’d wined and dined Cassie their first night together had become increasingly leftist and overtly so, a vaunted hive for fundraising and left-wing firebrands, a watering hole for outright communists. He said, “It’s not the time to be loudly political back home, that much we agree upon.”

  Their footfalls fell like gunshots on the nearly empty, damp streets that wound between the tall, still-standing old buildings.

  Orson pointed at the skeletal silhouette of the great Ferris Wheel behind them. “We film there, you know.”

  “So I’ve heard from Mr. Cotten. He’s worried the dialogue is a little flaccid for that scene.”

  “And he’s right,” Orson said. “But don’t worry. I’ll think of something. When a director hires me, I try to stay out of their way in terms of my own directing impulses. Writing, contributing ideas, that is a different matter. You’ve been here quite some while, chasing your own ghost, so to speak. Have you ridden the thing… the big wheel?”

  “Nah,” Hector said, “not crazy about heights, remember?”

  “Yes, and me either,” Orson said. “My fear of heights is slightly milder than yours, I suppose. I managed okay filming that big ledge scene in the rain in Journey Into Fear, after all. A man was killed there the very next night. Slipped and fell to his death.” That put Orson in mind of something else.

  He said, “On this matter of your recently presumed death. It sent poor Marlene into a terrible state. I hear Hemingway went on a week-long drunk before he got word it was all a mistake. Anyway, this business of your imposter, it still fascinates me. I’m still thinking it would make for a remarkable film.”

  “Nothing too compelling there I can find yet,” Hector said. “Just some average man who was tired of himself, I suppose. Poor bastard rode my coattails right into a coffin.”

  “Having such a man so drawn to your life rather than his own is just the price of living such a romantic existence as you seem to excel at doing,” Orson said. “This story still could be film-worthy, you know.”

  “Romantic? Anyway, I need to write the book first. You can option that.” Hector frowned. He took Orson’s arm and stopped him moving. Orson frowned back. “What’s the matter?”

  Hector waited, then said, “Nothing, I reckon.” They started walking again. “How did things wind up on that last film you were acting in? I hear they’re actually calling it Black Magic now.”

  “That’s right,” Orson said. “And a disaster? My God! Making that picture went from being merely an amusing train wreck to a truly catastrophic derailment that will probably end more than one career. Hopefully not mine, but almost certainly others. A stand-in was badly hurt after you left, a cameraman died of a strange heart attack. Then there were these absurd stories in the press that we were somehow vandalizing the Quirinale Palace, which got the Holy Roman Church whipped into a holy dander. The story was, I’d damaged an ancient door in the throes of some angry fit. Lies. All lies.”

  Orson waved a hand and said, “But enough of that tedium. Like all post-war cities, I hear this one is replete with fuzz palaces populated with these remarkable and beautiful women forced into prostitution to make ends meet.” He read Hector’s expression and course corrected. “Anyway, shall we test these claims?”

  “We certainly shall not,” Hector said, running a count in his head of Orson’s divorces, trying to remember if one was still pending with Rita Hayworth, or if it had been consummated.

  “Curses.”

  “You have a film to make,” Hector said. “I’ve got a feeling about this one. It could be huge for you. Anyway, you’re seldom alone, abroad or anywhere else. Don’t tell me you don’t have some woman here with you.”

  “With me, old man,” Orson said. “Yes, for the moment, she is with me. A comely and willowy thing called Katherine. But I don’t think this one has legs, so to speak. She might even be a studio spy. Lord knows she wouldn’t be the first.”

  Hector frowned and took Orson’s arm again. They stopped for a longer interval this time.

  Nothing.

  “You’re getting paranoid, old man,” Orson said. A smile. “But hard not to do that in this beautiful wreck of a city. Something really sinister yet seductive about this place.” His smile became uncertain. “Would you tell me, have you come over at last? After so many months with our delectable seer, after your close call, have you at last been swayed to her side of belief?”

  “Quite the contrary,” Hector said. “In the early going, Cass perplexed me by knowing things I’ve since learned are in fact in my FBI file. How the bureau got wind of some of this stuff I have no goddamn clue, but it is indeed in my file. Hell, if anyone’s a witch or a warlock, I suppose it’s J. Edgar or one of his minions. And I’ve watched you do mind-reader stunts before. You know how this kind of thing is done. Just a trick.”

  Orson bridled. “In a magic show, yes, it is merely a trick. But Cassie is something else, I believe that. What you’re claiming is absurd.”

  “You can’t really believe she can see the future, Orson.”

  “I can believe it, and that’s just for starters. And anyway, women hate magic as we men think of it. Magic isn’t for the ladies. They don’t like to be fooled. The very fact that this
one dabbles in the dark arts proves she’s legitimate, the real thing, not just a conjurer.”

  “I can’t even begin to argue with logic like that,” Hector said, exasperated. “Hell, it’s not even close to logic.”

  “Forget her knowing things about you then,” Orson said. “What about that resurrected Nazi, the one who nearly killed you both in that elevator in Rome?”

  Hector rubbed gloved hands up and down his arms briskly. Since he’d gotten sick he seemed always to be cold. He wondered if he should rethink his resistance to the Florida Keys. After all, Hemingway was long gone from there now. Bone Key was very much on all the tourist maps again, but Hector could perhaps again comfortably be a big fish in a small pond there. If nurturing his fame was an objective, it certainly made sense. He was still identified with the island in his readers’ minds. It was a canny next home, if he wanted to keep building his legend… while maybe drawing more suicidal moths like Andrew Parker to his destructive flame.

  If he wanted all that, if he could live with it, it could be a sound next step.

  “The resurrected Thule is just another bit of misdirection—if not premeditated,” Hector said. “I’ll confess I stewed about that one a while. So I did some digging and learned something. As a magician, you should appreciate this. Turns out that Rune Fuchs, whom I killed definitively, I maintain—killed with a shot between the eyes—”

  “Yet when we saw him again in Rome, there was not so much as a scar,” Orson cut in. “But then they can do miracles with mortician’s clay.”

  “But they didn’t need any miracles for that one,” Hector said. “You see, Fuchs was a twin. I’m convinced that Günther Fuchs was the man we saw in Rome. The one with the bum eyes and a bullet proof vest that I shot into, over and over.”

  “You keep telling yourself that,” Orson said. “Cassie insists it was a living corpse that attacked you in that elevator. An animated cadaver who tore out some old man’s throat with a dead, clutching hand. Cassie insists on all of that, and I agree. I’m sorry, old man, but I do stand with her on all that.”

  Hector took his friend’s arm and held a gloved finger to his lips to shush the actor. Orson whispered, “You have no sense how truly hard it is to stay still when one is dieting on Benzedrine, old man.”

  Hector said, “Shh!”

  Footfalls in the distance. Heavy and uneven. More like the echo of a giant’s stagger.

  Orson said, “You have a gun, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “Then we confront him?”

  “I’m not that chipper, remember,” said Hector. “I say back to the hotel for me, lousy as it is with its lobby-lurking international spies and abundant skeleton keys. That’s for me. For you, it’s a hotel-called-for taxi to take you to set. You okay with that?”

  “I’m much more than fine with that, Hector. Next time we meet, do ask me about how I improved on Graham Greene, by the by.”

  “Greene’s considered one of our great current writers,” Hector said. “How can you mock him?”

  “Oh, come now, Hector. The goddamn pantheon is a perfectly legitimate shooting gallery.” A wicked smile. “Anyway, your cue, old man, your trick to remind me of the anecdote about how I out-greened Greene, will be to mention, yes, a cuckoo clock.”

  Hector said, “This Benzedrine you’re living on… that’s crazy. It’ll kill you dead in time.”

  “Don’t be a goose, everyone is using it,” Orson said. “Hell, Carol’s living on the stuff so he can oversee all three units. Tired as you are, you should take some of mine. Get some of the old energy back. Stuff does wonders. Judy Garland swears by it.”

  ***

  Alone again, Orson safely deposited in a taxi, Hector wandered the streets a while longer, watching to see anyone who might be following. Very soon, he again caught sight of a tall, gaunt silhouette—he had a brief glance of a giant, then lost him again in a swirl of sunlight and shadow.

  He bit his lip, dwelling on the other uncovered fact he’d not shared with Orson, the one that undermined his explanation for that tall, terrible man back in Rome whom Cassie insisted was a walking dead man.

  Hector was truly certain he had successfully killed Rune Fuchs. He was also certain that Rune indeed had his twin, the one named Günther. Having established that to his satisfaction, those same sources also insisted that Günther Hess could not possibly have staged that elevator attack back in Rome.

  Purportedly, Günther had been killed in a car crash with another man’s wife in 1946.

  Staring down the street behind him, Hector weighed all that.

  If the brothers Fuchs were twins, maybe there was a third man—a triplet? It must surely be so. It was Occam’s Razor, after all—embrace the simplest, most obvious solution for it is almost certainly the one that is true.

  Certainly it was easier to subscribe to a trio of murderous brothers than black magic and corpse resurrection.

  CHAPTER 35

  THREE OF A KIND

  Hector found Cassie dressed to go out, eager to escape the confines of their hotel. The phone rang. To Hector’s chagrin, it was some reporter, wanting to talk about the mysterious and dead ersatz Hector Lassiter.

  “I’ve been moving around the city, talking to men and women who knew the man,” the reporter said, only a little innuendo dripping from his voice on the word knew. He raced on, “I’d like to get your take on it for my article. I mean, it can’t be coincidence you’re here, Mr. Lassiter, or I’ll call you Hector, yes? I assume you came here to conduct your own investigation?”

  “It’s Mister Lassiter, and it would seem a safe enough assumption under normal circumstances for my being here, yet you might be surprised,” Hector said. “Tell me what you’ve learned about this character who would be me.”

  “This other Hector—the other Mister Lassiter—was said to be charming… if vexing,” the reporter said. “Also very passionate and very, very articulate. ‘Boyish’ is a word that comes up over and over to describe him. ‘Very American’ is another term that’s been used.”

  Given more time, Hector would have indulged the journalist, maybe even tried to coax some contacts from the scribe so Hector could conduct his own debriefing of these people who had run up against the false Hector—who had come to spend time with shadowy Andy from Steubenville, Ohio.

  Still the newspaperman could perhaps be useful. While he was presumed dead, Hector had been given accidental quarter by foes old and new—given recuperation time by Thule and Vril.

  Now resurrected, Hector decided to try and defuse local interest in himself—and, by extension, in his friends. He decided to try and do that with a dab of volunteered intelligence.

  “This is on the record,” Hector said. “Please tell your readers I’ve been years in Europe, mostly, as a war correspondent and post-war novelist… and sometimes journalist,” he said. “I’m here right now largely by accident. Just a stop-over and a weigh-station on my way home. Been too long away from the good old U.S.A.”

  He felt Cassie’s gaze on him. He gripped the phone harder. “No,” he said in answer to some question she couldn’t hear. “I truly miss America, despite some current concerns back there… Expatriate? In the early 1920s that label might have fit me. I was in Paris then, part of that Modernist scene, surely enough. But I am, first and last, what I am and have always been. I’m an American.”

  Cassie listened as he completed his impromptu interview. For his part, as he spoke, Hector saw Cassie and himself from outside, figured they made a fine image for some Hopperesque painting: two people, sexually intimate yet worlds apart, standing in a hotel room in coats, hats and gloves, one talking on the phone to a stranger, but also talking to that intimate stranger in the hotel room with him. Hector was calculatedly using the reporter to say to Cassie all the things he couldn’t bring himself to put directly to her.

  Hector at last hung up the phone, then sat down on the foot of the bed, a bit weak in the knees. His stomach was upset and he pressed
a gloved hand to his belly. Cassie took a seat at the hotel room’s writing table, her own gloved hand resting close by Hector’s long-languishing portable typewriter. There was a thin layer of dust on its keys. Deplorable, he thought.

  She said, “So you’re truly going home for certain?”

  “After the holidays,” Hector said. “I have to get back there, I see that now. Have to get in touch with the ground there again in order to find my voice. I’m convinced of that. And I do want to see for myself what it’s become like since the war. Guess I just miss home.”

  Home hung there in the silence between them.

  “You could come with me,” he said. “We could spend Christmas in the Keys.”

  “I could, but it’s not home for me anymore, if it ever truly was.” Cassie stood and smoothed her skirt. “I can see you’re not feeling well. I suppose we’re not going out after all.”

  “No, I want to go out, I just presently feel…” Guilty was the word he couldn’t put out there.

  A sad smile. Cassie said, “Please don’t look so gloomy, Hector. I’ve studied your hand more than I suspect you ever have. I came in to all of this long ago knowing how this ended for us, believe that. I knew I was never going to grow old with you, that I wasn’t going to be the woman who maybe one day will come to rue that extraordinarily long lifeline of yours.”

  He tried to lighten the mood, to play along. “You saying you know who that poor woman is?”

  “Of course. Pressed, I could perhaps even give her a name.”

  Hector quickly held up his hand, palm toward her. “Please don’t.”

  ***

  Hector tripped on some uneven cobblestones as they made their way to the Strauss monument in the Stadtpark, what proved to be the first location indicated on the second, smaller bronze medallion.

  She said, “Are you tired again already? Feeling weaker?” Cassie offered him her arm.

  He took it but said, “I’m fine. Just all the busted pavement giving me grief.”

  “We’re being followed, you know,” she said. “Are you up to trouble if it finds us?”