Head Games (The Hector Lassiter Series)

by Craig McDonald

  Thing is, the rest of him is spread-eagle, face down. I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure necks aren’t supposed to do that.

  Hector’s head starts whistling the old sea shanty, “What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor?”:

  Put him in the guard room till he’s sober

  Put him in bed with the captain’s daughter...

  4

  Turns out those coastal lights are those of a humble Mexican “resort complex.”

  “Resort complex.”

  Feh. Mostly, it’s just your typical roadside hotel with a beachfront view.

  I pay cash. Then I buy some khaki pants, a couple of Hawaiian shirts and pair of black Wayfarers in the resort’s gift shop — such as it is.

  Dressed in my new togs, I look like Jack Lord on his day off from Five-O.

  Back in our room, I check to make sure the alarm clock is off, take the phone off the hook, shove a chair under the door knob and Hector’s head under the bed and I eat some room service eggs, toast and orange juice.

  Then Hector and me sleep the sleep of the dead.

  * * *

  Exhausted, I hit the shower.

  Seeing myself naked for the first time in seven days isn’t a happy experience. I’m one long and scrawny bruise. I’ve always run to bone, but the prominence of my ribs is scaring even me. You could slice open envelopes with my cheekbones. My knife wound is starting to worry me again and my shoulder doesn’t feel quite right ... not dislocated exactly, but surely separated.

  I check my belly: those old wounds where the maguey spikes bored into me ... they’ll never go away.

  The bullet wound in my right calf.

  All my broken and poorly set fingers and toes.

  And my goddamned lost eye.

  Jesus Christ. I’m a fucking poet! How did I end up with the body of a middle-aged mercenary?

  I dress and walk to the lobby. There I pick up newspaper and read the literary section over breakfast.

  The number one book in the land?

  Love Story.

  Dear God.

  But Hemingway, nine years dead, has managed to come in at number three — Islands In the Stream. It’s a book I remember Hector telling me he read in typescript in Cuba in 1959. His reviews of the manuscript were mixed. Hec said it suffered from Hemingway’s “lack of aesthetic distance from himself.” Back then, I didn’t quite understand what Hector meant.

  Graham Greene has made the list, too, and that isn’t bad.

  But Irwin fucking Shaw?

  And two Rod McKuen poetry books: In Someone’s Shadow and Caught in the Quiet.

  Try to soldier on through that sad success.

  The hotelier is one of those Mexicans who crossed the border to fight the Nazis in a U.S. unit. He is totally blind, but managing to kick my ass at chess. We share a bottle of Scotch and play three games.

  No. Put it this way: I lose three games. We are starting the fourth when the call comes through.

  “It’s for you, Mr. Fiske,” the hotelier’s wife says. She is a delightful, charming little woman who can’t be an inch over four-eleven.

  A “call” for me. That can’t bode well.

  Wary, I say, “Hello?”

  “Hey, pardner!”

  I know that voice, but I can’t quite place it. Sounds a little drunk, but plenty affable.

  “Clearly, I know where you are, pard’. So you can figure I know that because Pop and Grandpop know where you are ... you follow?”

  “George?” I say, “George W.?”

  “Get out of there, hombre. Go now and you can have maybe thirty minutes’ headstart. But you gotta go now. Vamoose.”

  “Why warn me?”

  “They need to be humbled. And stealing an American’s head? That ain’t right. Geronimo is one thing, but Lassiter? That’s unacceptable. And you’re pissing away your lead, jawing like this. I’m buckin’ big horses, Fiske. Don’t make it all for nothing — for either of us. Fuck Dad.”

  I hang up; settle up. My heart pounding, I gather my stuff and Hector and run across the street, looking over my shoulder for spies.

  A few blocks north of the hotel, I hear a train whistle. I run to its sound.

  There is a big old diesel hauling a long chain of freight cars. It seems to be bound west. I find an unsecured door on one of the boxcars, sling my stuff and Hector’s head up and in, and then I vault in after them.

  We have the boxcar to ourselves.

  Then I wonder if railroads still pay to employ railroad bulls.

  Panting, sweating, I sit back in that sweltering car, thinking of Woody Guthrie and Hector’s and Hemingway’s tales of hopping freights. Feels like I should have a harmonica or something.

  Hector must feel the same way ... he is humming some song and mumbling its lyrics. Some tune called something “Mixteca.”

  5

  Matamoros: against all odds, I made it here alive.

  I hole up in a hotel room for three days, room service food and hotel papers and pens, collaborating on this new novel with Hector.

  There is a knock at the door. A woman’s voice that I know says, “Bud, it’s me. It’s Alicia.”

  Oh my God, look at her. She was always beautiful ... and now she’s handsome, too.

  Her black hair is cut a bit shorter and she’s lost some weight.

  She hugs me hard, then half-turns.

  Three children move into my room with her. One is older — her first daughter, I guess.

  The other two, a bit younger, are twins — a girl and a boy.

  I have no doubt about whom their father is.

  It is so strange, so moving, to see Hector’s blue eyes staring up at me from these dusky little Spanish faces.

  There is a younger man behind Alicia, too. He resembles her. She introduces him as her brother, Augustin.

  “Take the children downstairs,” she tells him. “I need to speak with Bud.”

  They leave and she comes and sits on the bed beside me. She takes my hands and rests them on her hap. “You look like hell, Bud. There have been many close calls?”

  “Many,” I say. “I’m clean for now, I think.”

  “You won’t be for long. We somehow picked up a tail yesterday. Some bad people from back in New Mexico. Three brothers — triplets. Very, very bad. We’ve lost them for the moment, but they know we are in town. So we only have a few minutes, I’m afraid. I wish...”

  Have to confess that I’m not sure where she is going with that.

  I suddenly have the urge to kiss her, hard.

  But Hector’s memory hangs between us like a ghost.

  And in actual fact, he is hiding under the bed.

  “These men who will chase you, soon, the Castillo Brothers, they are very bad, and very focused.”

  “I understand.”

  “We came in two cars,” she says. “Me and my brother and my children will leave in one. They have not identified that car with us yet.” She reaches in her purse and hands me a set of keys. “These are to Héctor’s old Chevy,” she says. “You remember the car?”

  “Sure.” I loved that Bel Air: sucker spanked.

  “They followed Augustin, who was driving that car,” she says. “I suppose they knew following us would eventually get them to you, and therefore to Héctor.” She shakes her head. “There’s not even treasure to justify them wanting Héctor’s head. It’s all hubris — stupid pride. Machismo, I suppose.”

  “Sure,” I say again.

  “Héctor’s car has a full tank of gas,” she says, searching my remaining eye. “There are guns, loaded and ready, in the trunk and glove compartment. There is another head in the trunk — a decoy.”

  I’m tempted to ask whose head. Instead I say, “Don’t be specific — it’s better I don’t know details — but once I get out there, and they come after me, vaguely, what will you do?”

  “I need a day. That’s all.” She shakes her head. “‘That’s all.’ That’s like an eternity with those bastards who will
be following you. But one day, if you can give us that day, will let us get to the plane we have chartered. We moved Héctor not long after the bastards took his head. We also exhumed his daughter, Dolores. We will bury them somewhere safe in the San Joaquin valley. In a good and secret place.”

  “The San Joaquin was Hector’s favorite place,” I remember. “He once told me it was the only place on earth he ever wanted to see twice.”

  She squeezes my hand, hard. “We have to do this soon. If they find Héctor’s Chevy before you go...”

  “Just tell me where to find it. You’ll have your day.”

  “It’s parked in the alley out back. Augustin has thrown a tarp over it.”

  I stand up and begin gathering my things. Hesitating, I say, “Your youngest children — they’re his, aren’t they?”

  Alicia nods.

  “Did he know?”

  “Not at first. When he did ... it was too late for any of us.”

  “They’re beautiful.”

  She smiles and strokes my cheek.

  I want to say, “Are you happy? Happy out there without a man, living in Hector’s old house?” I want to keep talking with her...

  But I stroke her hair behind her ear and cup her chin. “It’s good to see you a last time. Even like this.”

  She hugs me tightly and then kisses me hard on the mouth.

  I reach under the bed and hand her the bag with Hector’s head. She squeezes my arm with fierce pressure. “You run hard and fast now, Bud. Don’t let them get you. Then one day, a day soon, I hope, you’ll come to New Mexico and stay with us. You can tell the children stories about their father.”

  “Sure. There’s nothing I’d love more than that.”

  We hug a last time and then she is gone.

  Dazed, I wander to the mirror — rub the remnants of her lipstick from the side of my mouth. I can taste her lips. I wash my face a last time, call downstairs and ask that a large travel cup of black coffee be made ready for me. Then I pull on my boots.

  The tarp comes off easily and I cast it onto the street. I pop the trunk and look at the bag with the phony head. There is a Magnum in the trunk, too. Big wicked looking thing. I take the gun out and close the trunk on the stranger’s head.

  The engine turns on the first try — the Bel Air has been well cared for in the intervening thirteen years. I push down the button to release the top — make it easier for those cocksucker triplets to spot me. Then I pull out on the streets and drive around town slow for a time, the radio turned up to blasting.

  Within a half-an-hour, I know that I have been spotted by those wicked triplets.

  They are driving a blue Charger: three skinny, dark-faced men with long, black hair.

  Only their individual scars — many, many of these — set their faces apart from one another.

  Spooked, I run three red lights just to avoid being stopped in traffic where they might lay hands on me.

  When we hit the outskirts of town, I put my foot to the firewall.

  Three hours in, Hector says to me, “You realize the math just isn’t on our side, Bud.”

  I look over at him. He’s sitting there, the wind pushing around his hair, his elbow on the window. This sad smile. I say, “Explain.”

  He shrugs. “Three of them, Bud. One of you. Well, only you, because I can’t drive anymore. First time you stop to fill the tank, they’ll probably move on you. But even if they don’t, they can sleep in shifts. You can’t. Any way you slice it, they’re foreordained to win this pursuit race.”

  Hector is right. Again.

  If I were one of those Tarahumara Indians Hector’s talked about, I might withstand the tyranny of the math. But I’m not.

  And I started this chase already beaten down by a week of running. So I say, “Any ideas?”

  “No good ones,” Hector replies, tossing a Pall Mall out the window. “If I could still do it, I’d slide over into the back seat and cut a hole through to the trunk. Grab me one of those Tommy guns and strafe those bastards as you hit the brakes to bring ’em closer.”

  Then I remember that long-ago day in downtown Los Angeles, when Hector played chicken with Rodolfo Fierro and his friends. I check the mirror. There’s a cloud of dust, perhaps a mile back. I slow and palm the wheel, belling out in a big curve and heading back the way we’ve just come, foot pushing the pedal to the floor.

  I reach for the Magnum.

  Steering with my right hand, I extend my left out the window, the butt of the gun braced on the rearview mirror.

  At this speed, and pointed at one another, it’s going to be dicey. But if I succeed in shooting the driver before he shoots me or actually rams our Chevy, well, the rest should take care of itself.

  I glance over a last time.

  Hector smiles and winks back at me.

  Above the roar of the wind sheer, Hector hollers, “If we survive this Bud — if you take those cocksuckers out — well, then I’ve got a hankering to head into the high country. What do you say we go find those Tarahumara Indians? See if we can’t figure out what makes those bastards run like they do.”

  THE END

  Les ruego que me perdonen

  Si al narrar meti la pata

  Pero asi cuentan murio

  Don Francisco Villa.

  — Anonymous

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I am indebted to Svetlana Pironko, Michael O’Brien and Ben LeRoy for their support and belief in this novel. I’m also grateful to Alison Janssen for her superb edit and suggestions.

  Special thanks also to Debbie, Madeleine and Yeats McDonald.

  Head Games is a work of fiction rooted in historical fact. As such, it draws on contemporary newspaper accounts regarding the theft of Pancho Villa’s head and the arrests that followed that crime. The whereabouts of Villa’s head actually became a campaign issue during the U.S. presidential race between George Herbert Walker Bush and Michael Dukakis. Some within the Mexican government continue to press George W. Bush to use his status as a Skull and Bones member to return the missing skull. Two books were of particular use in the writing of this novel. The first is a biography of Emil Holmdahl entitled Soldier of Fortune, by Douglas V. Meed (Halcyon Press LTD, 2003). The second is Character Studies: Encounters with the Curiously Obsessed, by Mark Singer (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005) which contains a chapter on Pancho Villa’s missing skull and those in Texas still obsessed with its return. Dangerous Friends, by Peter Viertel (Doubleday, 1992), also provided useful information about Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles.

  SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS/PREVIEWS

  Following are Book Club discussion points for HEAD GAMES. Also included is the short story “The Last Interview” that introduced Hector Lassiter and casts fresh light on some events in the novel you’ve just read. Also, excerpts follow from other novels in the Hector Lassiter series, all available in eBook format.

  Reading Group Questions/Topics for Discussion

  1. Hector Lassiter, narrator of Head Games, is himself a fiction writer. How credible does that make much of what Hector is relating to the reader in the narrative? Is it possible, as a fiction writer handing down a supposed memoir, Hector might knowingly make himself “unreliable” in a literary or factual sense?

  2. Rodolfo Fierro, Emil Holmdahl, Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich are all historical figures. Do Hector Lassiter and Bud Fiske remind you of particular historical figures or real personalities? If so, whom?

  3. Hector seems to regard himself as a maverick and a kind of loner. Yet he’s been married several times, and apparently sees in Alicia and her toddler daughter a chance to recover the family life he’s recently lost. What is your sense of Hector and his notions of family and marriage?

  4. It’s been said those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. How does the attack on Columbus, New Mexico by Pancho Villa and the resulting “Punitive Expedition” to capture Villa in the deserts of Mexico compare/contrast to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the ens
uing hunt for Bin Laden?

  5. How does the character “George W’s” remarks about the Punitive Expedition and the resulting theft of the head of someone other than Pancho Villa’s compare/contrast with George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in the wake of 9-11?

  6. “George W.” appears to disdain the timeworn rituals and secrecy shrouding Skull and Bones, and he seems highly critical of his own father and grandfather. How would you characterize George W.? Heroic? Naive? Misguided? Or something else?

  7. Hector has been called “the man who lives what he writes and writes what he lives.” He tells Bud Fiske writers “have to try to live in every moment and then live to write about it.” How much of what you read in a novel do you presume to be drawn from its author’s own experience?”

  8. Bud asks Hector, “Do you deliberately make a mess of your life just to keep yourself interested?” How much of Hector’s grief do you think is self-inflicted? Do you sense Hector courts disaster in an effort to generate source material for his novels?

  9. Is Hector a heroic figure? A tragic character? Do you have some notion apart from those two extremes in terms of the kind of man Hector might be?

  10. Bud Fiske, Hector’s young sidekick, assumes narrative responsibilities in the last third of Head Games. What do you think is the state of Hector and his relationship to Bud as the book concludes? What form do you think the concluding dialogue between Bud and Hector assumes?

  11. The novel concludes in 1970. How would you characterize the effect Hector has had on Bud’s life since 1957? On Alicia’s life?

  12. Head Games has been released as “the first Hector Lassiter novel.” Having read the book, what do you anticipate in terms of future installments in the series?

  Following is the short story, “The Last Interview,” that first introduced the character of Hector Lassiter.

  THE LAST INTERVIEW

  (New Mexico, 1967)

  More than a thousand miles from Lake Michigan to the borderlands — this hellhole of red dust and terra-cotta tile roofs.

  The Las Cruces sun tumbles down legless drunk behind Picacho Mountain, making the reporter squint. Jug-eared LBJ is yammering on through the radio’s static: more lies about Vietnam.