Head Games (The Hector Lassiter Series)

by Craig McDonald

  “None. Don’t torture yourself, friend. It’d be impossible. And for all anyone knows, some Mexican bandits or peasants may have found it long ago.”

  We finished rigging the maps to the skulls. We did a good and credible job. It looked close enough to the same strange bump I’d found on Villa’s real skull — just before I had stupidly torched that real fucking treasure map.

  Afterward, I made a phone call. Eighty-thousand American dollars had been deposited in my off-shore account. That would be Prescott Bush’s deposit for Pancho’s head. I spent a few additional moments on the phone and had the funds transferred to yet another Swiss account. Soon, Alicia and her grandmother would begin receiving their too-lavish monthly support checks.

  If Holmdahl kicked in his hundred grand, I’d pocket ten for expenses and split the rest between Bud and Alicia.

  Alicia was in the bedroom, reading my Key West novel. I packed up Pancho’s real head and drove to the post office. I boxed up the carpetbag nice and safe and covered it with lots and lots of tape. Then I mailed the bandit’s head to myself care of the hardware store in La Mesillia.

  If I didn’t die in the next twenty-four hours, I’d catch the head at the other end.

  I had special, sentimental plans for that rotting skull.

  When I returned, Bud was sitting out on the back porch, drinking a beer and scrawling away in a notebook. I said, “Sorry,” and moved to leave.

  “No, it’s okay,” he said. “It’s not the real stuff. I’m just playing around with notes about you — for the article about you for True.”

  “Well then that I will interrupt,” I said. I’d grabbed my own beer. What could just one hurt?

  We propped up our feet and watched the rain patter down as we sipped our Tecate.

  Bud said, “What do you see yourself doing after all this?”

  “I get the feeling what I want isn’t in the cards,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Bud admitted. “Maybe not right away, anyway. But if you get this behind you, get your health straightened out and stay away from the hooch and the blood, just do your work and be a square-john ... well, she might come around. It could really happen for you, you know.”

  I smiled and bit my lip. “What odds would you really give me on that?”

  Bud thought a moment, then said, “Sober and staid? I think sixty-forty.”

  “No shit?”

  “I may be an optimist,” he said.

  “Yeah, just like me.” It was quiet a while, then I said, “You ever hear of the Tarahumara Indians, Bud?”

  “No, sir.”

  “They call themselves the Rarámuri. They live in the Sierras, in and around Copper Canyon. The Spanish chased them up into the Sierras ages ago. What they mostly do is run — all day and all night. A few have entered races north of the border. They nearly always win — even running, as they do, in sandals made of rope and discarded tire treads. The Indians themselves don’t really even call what they do ‘running.’ They call it ‘foot throwing.’ They have a game they play with a wooden ball called Rarjíparo. I reckon it’s a little like soccer. But these games go on for days at a time. One day, I’d like to maybe take a train and see them; watch ’em play that game. Try and figure out how they can run so hard for so long.”

  There was thunder now, lightning.

  “I’ll leave you to your article.” I was proud of myself — I was walking away from a half-a-bottle of beer.

  Bud was starting to light up another cigarette. I said, “You should quit, before you really get hooked. Especially with your sugar problems.”

  “Probably.”

  “Really. I’m thinking of quitting myself. I’ve got morning phlegm issues you don’t want for yourself. And lung cancer? I’ve seen three friends go that way. That fucking disease is why God invented guns and hard palates.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Bud said.

  “That Zippo lighter you bought yourself... that inscription from my book ... you being ironic, Bud, or what exactly?”

  “Just a reminder and warning. I don’t ever want to whore.”

  Hell, me either.

  “I’ll see you later,” I said.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to go pick up my new eyeglasses,” I said.

  I did that. I hated them. But damn — now I could remember what it was like to really see. And Holy Christ — things looked even worse than I remembered.

  Then I went to a tavern and borrowed a phone. I shared the rough outlines of my plan for the day to Agent Brown. I secured a promise that in exchange for helping Brown to “nail” his “partner” for J. Edgar, the fed would do what he could to keep the IRS off my back. I think in time he came to believe what was the gospel truth — that I wouldn’t be keeping all that blood money coming my way in the morning.

  Agent Brown also confirmed that Fierro had been questioned and released after I fingered him for being some kid-raping monster.

  Seemed the old man was now going under the name of “Jésus Martínez.”

  He was under surveillance, Brown said.

  Emil Holmdahl was under surveillance.

  My new house was under surveillance.

  So I said, “Anyone watching Prescott Bush?”

  I could hear Brown’s rueful smile in his voice: “Sure. Sure.” Then, “One more thing, Hector. Mark that skull you give Holmdahl in some way, would you? So we can know if somebody tries to swap heads later, yes?” We agreed I’d scratch an “x” in the right, remaining rear-most molar.

  He paused, then said, “It’s a shame, but I don’t think you’re going to get yourself a novel out of this one, partner.”

  “Not and not get indicted,” I agreed.

  34

  I returned to the wonderful little tavern I’d found near our new place.

  Some of my luck was running good. Buddy Loy Burke, my new favorite singer-songwriter, was back up there again, doing a wrenching version of “Canción Mixteca” — surely one of the most moving ballads of homesickness ever written. That guitarist by his side was just as brilliant as he had been the previous night.

  For two hours I listened and applauded and expanded on my story about Alicia. I knew now it would be my next novel. Perhaps my last really good one. I was tying it all around the head of a famous Mexican bandit.

  Three hours in, I again felt this hand brush across the back of my neck. Her timing, again, was perfect — I’d nearly emptied the well. I closed my notebook and stuck the pen in my sports jacket.

  She was holding a Tequila Sunrise she had ordered for herself. I ordered a double shot of tequila, a tall glass of water and some fish tacos to split with her. She gestured at the stage. “That song “Canción Mixteca,” it’s my favorite. He does it wonderfully, and with such soul. My grandmother used to sing me to sleep with that song.”

  “I think it’s my favorite, too, now. I love it.”

  Buddy Burke and his partner ended their set and took a break. Alicia sang to me the lyrics of “our” song:

  ¡Qué lejos estoy del suelo donde he nacido!

  inmensa nostalgia invade mi pensamiento

  y al verme tan solo y triste cual hoja al viento

  quisiera llorar, quisiera morir

  de sentimiento.

  ¡Oh tierra del sol,

  suspiro por verte!

  ahora que lejos

  yo vivo sin luz, sin amor

  y al verme tan solo y triste cual hoja al viento

  quisiera llorar, quisiera morir

  de sentimiento.

  She finished and smiled and shrugged.

  “You could make a living doing that,” I said.

  “Only for undiscerning gringos like you,” she said, chucking under my chin. Alicia was already slightly drunk. That bothered me, somehow.

  “Your Key West book, you bastard,” she said, “it broke my fucking heart.”

  I frowned. “You don’t talk like that. You don’t use those words.”

  “Y
ou do. Your women, in your books, often do.”

  “But you don’t,” I said. “Don’t start now.”

  “Maybe it’s time I did.”

  I pushed her drink away from her. “No, it isn’t.”

  “You’re going to try and die on me tomorrow, Héctor. I can tell. All your men die.”

  “You’re wrong. I don’t want to die. I have no choice about getting old. But I do about dying. This isn’t one of my books. I still have ... a few plans.”

  She looked up at me from under long black lashes. “I know that you do. We both know you do. But talking about your plans is the surest way to hear God laugh.”

  Alicia looked at her drink. She looked at the empty stage. She squeezed my hand. “Bud has found his own bar. He’s writing poetry there. He said not to wait up for him. So let’s go home. I know it bothers you, but tonight, I feel like feeling like one of those women you’ve written so much about.”

  35

  Alicia was twitching in her sleep ... lost in the throes of some semi-gentle nightmare, I reckoned.

  I shook her just enough to shift the patterns of her dreams, then I pulled the sheet up around her and slipped from our bed and showered and shaved and started coffee.

  This morning, this one time, I vowed not to write anything.

  Bud had been up for hours — already showered and shaved and revising his early morning’s work.

  As Alicia bathed, I called my Swiss bank. The hundred-thousand dollars had been deposited by Emil Holmdahl or his associates. Probably the latter. Part of me suspected that Emil had his own car trunk filled with heads. Soon the blackest of black markets would be flooded with Pancho Villa skulls. Either way, it worked for me, or more precisely, for mine — the cash was safely in hand. I again transferred the funds, then closed out the account into which Prescott Bush and Emil Holmdahl had made their deposits.

  I loaded my Peacemaker. I also had a derringer in the cuff of my right boot. That last wouldn’t do much, but you never know when even a dainty holdout might give you an edge.

  Bud had his inherited .45 tucked down in his waistband at his back. He was learning.

  Alicia was not feeling well. Probably her first bad hangover — a result of my exerting more bad influence. She also complained of a sore throat. I suggested she stay home. She resisted and it was just as well — I wanted her in sight, where I could look after her. As a “compromise,” she brewed a thermos of chamomile tea. Bud ran to the corner to buy her a little bottle shaped like a bear and filled with honey that she could take along to mix with the tea.

  While they finished packing, I told them we’d likely not be in position to return to this place; told them just in case to pack everything they couldn’t bear to abandon. Then I went into the garage and I opened the trunk of my Chevy and went about preparing the arsenal that Bud and me had amassed over the past several days. Afterward, I arranged the heads in their respective bags in a very deliberate sequence.

  Once all that was prepared, I walked to the corner liquor store and bought a silver flask and a bottle of single malt Scotch. I filled the flask and tossed the rest of the bottle. I tucked the flask into the cuff of my left boot, just in case.

  We loaded into the car and we drove to Hollywood Boulevard. I palmed into a space in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

  Emil Holmdahl was already loitering there, his bony ass parked on the rear fender of his ’56 Rambler station wagon. To all appearances, he was alone.

  I climbed out, smiling. “I got your deposit,” I said. “Thanks so much for that.”

  As I’d instructed, Alicia and Bud remained in my Bel Air. But Bud had one of the Tommy guns resting at his feet. I opened the trunk and pulled out the first carpet bag in the line. I quickly closed the trunk and moved around to the front of my car. I rested the bag on the hood of my Chevy and opened it. “Here it is,” I said to Emil Holmdahl. “Your fucking map is in the right eye. But you know that.” I offered him a pair of tweezers. He smiled and accepted them. Then he did what I had always expected him to do — the cocksucker pulled a gun on me. Two Mexicans had also stepped up, either side of my car. They had on long coats but each pulled those back to give us all glimpses of the sawed-off shotguns they were hiding under those conspicuous black dusters.

  Then this other old Mexican came stroding out of the theatre. He grinned at me like a mustachioed death’s head.

  “Hey, Fierro,” I said, trying to steady my quaking knees. “How’s tricks, hombre?”

  He spat on my boot.

  I said to Holmdahl, “You said you and Fierro had reached a Mexican standoff so to speak...looks more like a rapprochement. Hell, a partnership.”

  Emil smiled. “Like I told you, Lassiter, my enemy’s enemy....”

  I shook my head. “Jesus, the two of you working together...there really is nothing you won’t do for money, is there, Emil?”

  “Look at you, Lassiter,” Emil said. “Trying to act tough and cool, like one of your characters. But you ain’t fooling me. You look more dejected than a four-dollar whore on nickel night.” Emil Holmdahl handed the old Mexican the bag with the head. The soldier of fortune said, “Little feller, he’s got the big underbite. Looks real to me. What do you think?”

  The Butcher grunted. “One can never be truly sure after so many years,” he said. Try as I might, I couldn’t truly read that old bastard Fierro’s expression. I couldn’t be certain that he’d bought our deception. “So much rot. But, yes, I concur.” As he said this, he reached under my coat and took my Peacemaker. He smiled and held it up. “No,” Emil said to him. “You can’t keep it. That ain’t cricket. That’s his gun. You know how that is. Empty it and give it back to him.”

  Fierro sneered at the mercenary. “Fuck you, gringo. This gun looks worth much money.”

  Emil turned his gun on Fierro. “Some things aren’t done, asshole. Never a man’s horse, or his gun. Empty the bullets out and give him the Colt back.”

  Fierro opened my gun...spun the cylinder. He threw the bullets at Emil’s feet. He shoved the gun down my waistband, the site scraping my thigh. Cocksucker.

  “So you’re going to sell the skull to Bush after you take the map out,” I said to Holmdahl. “I should have seen it coming.” I looked back and forth between Fierro and Holmdahl. “But then, in the nearer-term, I’d hate to be either one of you sons of bitches. Hard to say which of you is the bigger snake. I don’t see this as a steady partnership. Don’t envy either of you the next hour or two.”

  Both old men winked at me. My skin crawled.

  One of the younger Mexicans reached into my Chevy and pulled my car keys from the ignition. He tossed them into traffic.

  “Vaya con Dios, you sorry asshole,” Emil said, backing toward his Rambler.

  Fierro smiled and tipped his Stetson. He was backing back toward the theatre.

  Emil waved at The Butcher and said, “See you at the rendezvous.”

  When they and their buddies were gone, holding up a hand to stop traffic, I walked out and retrieved my car keys. Then I swung behind the wheel of my Chevy.

  “Well, that all went to hell,” Bud said.

  “Did it?” I smiled. “We all knew Emil would try to screw us. But we have Prescott Bush’s money. We have Emil’s hundred grand. Emil and Rudy will try to dick one another of course. Frankly, I’d hate to make book on who comes out ahead there. But really, it’s academic. Because before those cocksuckers turn guns on one another, Agent Duane David is going to intercept Emil.

  “Duane is a bent FBI agent,” I continued. “A Yale grad. And a Skull and Bones member. He has his own designs on that treasure. And he sees himself currying favor with the Bush family, down the road. He’ll give them the skull so Prescott will be appeased. But there’s more. Agent David’s partner, Kenneth Brown, is going to move on David for betraying the FBI, for secretly working for the CIA on American soil. That’s one big no-no. And worse, he was betraying the agency and wicked J. Edgar. So Duane’s just bought himsel
f an Old Testament-style ass fucking. So, it all balances out in the end. Except maybe for Fierro. Him, I may have to track down later ... personally put him down.”

  Alicia squeezed some honey into the tea she had poured into the lid of her thermos. “Can it really all play like this? As you’ve plotted it?”

  “Sure. It could. It should. Why the hell wouldn’t it?”

  36

  We returned to our Tom Mix bungalow a last time.

  Bud borrowed my car and headed out to a tavern to write. I told him about my favorite new singer and L.A. tavern and he headed over there.

  Alicia and I pulled the shades and went to bed. We were both sober and it was sad and slow this time. I could tell she was torn. Had me this sense that maybe young Bud was right — I might actually have a shot at finessing this lady into my life. Afterwards, hearts pounding against one another, I found her hand and squeezed. I said, “In the book, I get the girl.”

  She brushed the damp hair back from my forehead and said softly, “The men in your books never get the girl.”

  “I’m thinking about turning over a new leaf, so to speak.”

  “If that is so, then you would have to write very different books.”

  I nodded. “I know. But it’s maybe getting to be that time of life.”

  She smiled and hugged me hard.

  We showered together, then sat out on the back porch. At my request, she began to sing an a cappella version of “Canción Mixteca.” She sang it like a torch song this time, in that smoky voice she had.

  I heard three gunshots — fired out front.

  “Get in the bedroom, my Colt is there,” I said, rising. “I’ve reloaded it. Lie down under the bed. Anyone looks under the bed, you shoot the fucker in the face.” Then, unarmed, I vaulted the back porch railing. That was slick — didn’t know I still had such gymnastics in me. Pumped, I hurdled the chainlink fence that surrounded the bungalow’s backyard. When I hit the ground, I wrenched my ankle — pain all the way up to my right knee.

  Half-limping, half-running, I edged around to the front of our place. Two Mexicans were beating on Bud Fiske. Several cars were approaching. The Mexicans threw Bud into my Chevy and tore off. Behind my Bel Air was a second Chevy. Rodolfo Fierro was behind the wheel and another Mexican was with him. A third car, a Buick, pulled out behind that. Didn’t get a look at those guys, but there seemed to be at least five in the car.