Toros & Torsos (The Hector Lassiter Series)

by Craig McDonald

  He took her arm and said to Josie, “Sorry pal.” Hector smiled and shrugged. “But at least no damages this time, yeah?”

  “Sure,” the bartender said with a frown. “Those’ll likely come when that son of a bitch comes to.”

  Looking contrite, Hector bit his lip and steered Rachel out into the muggy sun. They walked a few yards, then Hector said, “I feel bad about that — for Josie I mean. And I forgot to arrange delivery of our provisions.”

  Rachel frowned. “You mean that we’re going back?”

  “Just me,” Hector said. “Just to arrange delivery of the liquor to my place, and to give Josie some money to have his boy, Carlos, maybe drag old Tito to the other side of the island. Likely best to let Tito wake up far from the scene of my crime and Josie’s joint. You wait here, Rachel. You’ll be safe, I swear. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  Hector ducked back into the shade of the saloon, his eyes slow to adjust from the harsh sunlight. He blinked a few times and looked back over his shoulder to make certain that Rachel hadn’t followed.

  Josie was patting the swarthy man on the back and handing him a drink and a wet towel for his swollen lip as Hector sidled up beside him. The one-eyed man grinned with bloodied gums and a swollen lip. He said:

  “It worked, Mr. Lassiter?”

  “It worked so fine, Tito. You okay?”

  “Yeah...hell yeah, Mr. Lassiter. Thanks for putting the damage on the left side. I’m trying to save what teeths left on the right so I have something to chaw with.”

  “I promised you I would make it the left side, Tito.” It was the least Hector could do: their little scam to score tail for Hector was tried and true, and it had cost Tito several of those teeth now missing along the left side of his mouth.

  Hector dug down into his pocket and pulled out his roll. He tugged off two tens and handed them to Tito. “There you go, as promised, old pal.” Hector smiled at Tito, thinking, Poor toothless goddamn rummy. But Hector said aloud, “We’re going to hunker down at my place until this storm passes, then she’ll likely be getting back on the boat for Miami. Think you could stay to the other end of the island until after the Big Blow, Tito? Wouldn’t want to send her off to the mainland thinking you’re still stalking her, Teet.”

  “Can do, Mr. Lassiter.” That terrible smile.

  Hector smiled back and clapped the one-eyed man on the back and handed some more cash to Josie. “A fresh bottle for Tito here, Josie. Then, say in an hour, can you send Carlos to my place with some ice and makings for mojitos?”

  Josie nodded, holding out his hand for more cash. “Sure. Gonna nail this skirt, you figure? She’s sure enough a looker, Hector, that’s for certain.”

  “Time will tell,” Hector said with a shrug and a smile.

  “Hell of a soothing way to ride out a storm,” Josie said.

  “The only way to do it,” Hector said. Then he frowned and stripped off two more bills. “And send Carlos around to the jewelers. Have him pick me up a locket, or brooch. Maybe a bracelet. Something old looking would be best...something I could say belonged to my mother.”

  Josie shook his head. “Jesus but you’re going to go to hell, Hec.”

  The crime novelist smiled, then squared his shoulders, set his mouth in a frown and stepped back out into the harsh sunlight.

  Rachel was standing on the corner, her bare and proud shoulders squared, silhouetted against the sun...the outline of her thighs visible under the backlit cotton of her dress and sheer silk of her slip. Rachel held her purse in front of her and she nodded at Hector as she saw him step out of Sloppy Joe’s. There was a worried look on her pretty face and she said:

  “That man, Tito, he’s still out cold?”

  “Still is.” Hector said. “Now let’s get over to that hotel and collect your stuff and get you settled in.”

  “I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done, Hector,” Rachel said. “Not that you ever want to confuse authors with their books or with their characters, but I have to confess, I didn’t expect you to be so gallant, Hector. I never expected you to be such a gentleman.”

  “That’s me all over,” Hector said, wrapping an arm around Rachel’s waist as they crossed the street. “I’m a regular Boy Scout.”

  “... in the nineteen-thirties ... the most casual reader of murder mysteries could infallibly detect the villain, as soon as there entered a character who had recently washed his neck and did not commit mayhem on the English language.”— Ellen Glasgow

  CROSSED WIRES

  2

  The palm fronds were thrashing and the white clouds were being pushed out into the Gulf by the quietly mounting, east-to-west wind.

  The wind kept Rachel and Hector something close to cool on their walk from Green Street to the Colonial Hotel.

  Browned, wrinkled old-timers were out nailing boards over the windows of their cottages and shotgun shacks or securing storm shutters...carrying in chairs and potted plants that might become projectiles when the high winds reached the Keys. A few called to or waved at Hector, who smiled and waved back.

  Hector pointed and they ducked into the tall white hotel, the overhead fans drying the sparse beads of sweat on their foreheads.

  Someone was trying to inject a little dubious culture: a copy of Max Ernst’s Anatomie als Braut was hanging behind the front desk. Hector found the image deeply disturbing. While they waited for the desk clerk to finish with an older couple, Hector picked up a discarded art magazine and began to leaf through it. He paused at an ad for a Picasso exhibition to be held in December in New York.

  The ad featured a new illustration Picasso had titled Le Minotaure. A bullheaded, naked beast with a hairy chest, bulging biceps and a creditable cock was attacking a screaming horse in a bullfighting arena. Hector caught Rachel looking at the illustration and saw her blush. He closed the magazine and gestured at the copy of Ernst’s circa-’21 collage hanging behind the front desk. He squeezed her arm and said, “Modern art. So damned much and diseased crap.”

  Rachel nodded, still looking embarrassed. If she was truly this prudish, Hector was beginning to think getting Rachel in his bed might require a substantial investment of time. If he succeeded, getting her out of his bed and sending her on her way might be harder still.

  Hector was close to rethinking his hurricane plans.

  The clerk finished up and Rachel told the man she would be checking out shortly and asked for a porter to be sent up for her bags and steamer trunk.

  “Everyone’s leaving,” the clerk said, frowning and haughty. “Even though this is probably the strongest structure on the island. All this safety for $6 a day — whatever are they thinking?”

  Rachel shot Hector a look. The novelist shrugged and said to her, “And this is the ‘structure’ with the most windows on Bone Key.” Hector said to the effeminate desk clerk, “We both know that if a hundred-mile-an-hour wind hits the side of your hotel that my friend here is staying in, all that glass is going to be imbedded in the interior walls of this ‘fortress.’ And in anything else that gets in its way.”

  “The glass is a real concern,” the clerk said reluctantly. “Particularly since we can’t really get out there to board or shutter the higher windows.”

  He frowned again and said, “I’ll close out your account ma’am. Oh, and you have a cable. It arrived a bit ago.”

  Rachel frowned at the telegram. Hector read over her shoulder:

  Aug. 31, 1935

  Miss Rachael Harper

  Colonial Hotel

  Key West, Florida

  Things going swimmingly stop Am in love stop Be safe and see you after the storm

  Beverly

  “That’s certainly good news for Beverly,” Rachel said, her voice raw and her cheeks red. “Suppose we should finish your shopping.” She moved to crush the wire and Hector closed his hand over hers.

  “Wait,” he said. “Let me see that again.”

  Rachel frowned and released her hold on the slip of pa
per.

  Hector read the wire again and said, “That’s strange. You said this man took Beverly to Cuba.”

  “That’s right,” Rachel said, looking up at him. “They were going to go bar hopping in Havana. They were going to get rooms at the Hotel Ambos Mundos. That’s where she said I could reach her.”

  Hector smiled. Rooms. Right. But there was more falsehood than that one afoot. Hector said, “Did you meet this man your friend ran off with?”

  “No.”

  “Got a name for this fella?”

  “No. Why do you ask, Hector?”

  “Because this wire was sent from Upper Matecumbe.”

  Rachel scowled. “Is that somewhere in Cuba? Bimini?”

  “No, it’s here in Florida, Rachel. Several islands north of here. Not much there to see, either. Just a place you pass by to get to other better places like this one.”

  Rachel looked at Hector a moment, biting her lower lip. “Maybe their plans changed, that’s all.”

  “Maybe.” Hector reached into the pocket of his shirt for his cigarettes and shook one loose and was about to put it in his mouth. Rachel took the cigarette from his fingers with a shaking hand and put it between her lips. Hector fished his Zippo from his pant’s pocket and lit her cigarette, then lit a second for himself. Hector watched Rachel smoke — she looked practiced. She was maybe more worldly than Hector had begun to fear. Hector’s hopes for a carnal Labor Day weekend buoyed, slightly.

  “Guess maybe Bev and me got our wires crossed,” Rachel said. “I must have misunderstood.”

  Hector held the telegram back up where Rachel could see it. He said, “Maybe. But do you really spell your first name with an extra ‘a’?”

  “No,” she said. “R-A-C-H-E-L. You know — like everyone else does.”

  “Except for the person who wrote the text for this wire.”

  Rachel looked at her misspelled name and nodded. “Yes, I see. You think something’s wrong?”

  “Suspicious, anyhow. Let’s go upstairs. Get you packed. I’ll try to think of something.”

  “Could I get there,” Rachel said, stepping into the elevator with Hector, “could I still get to Upper Matecumbe, I mean?”

  “With this storm coming, I wouldn’t recommend trying it,” Hector said. He nodded at the elevator operator and flashed him five fingers to indicate Rachel’s floor. “Road doesn’t go all the way there...so you have to ride the train. Nobody competent or in love with life is going to take you north by boat with the storm this close. And like I said, there’s not much there. Not much to see or to do, and nothing like real shelter. And that train, in this weather? You’d have to have a death wish to make that trip.”

  The eavesdropping elevator operator said, “You’re right about that, brother.” He held the gate for them as they exited and walked to Rachel’s room.

  “All right. If it was your aim to alarm me, now I’m getting worried, Hector.”

  “It may be nothing,” he said. “But all the same, let’s do something.”

  “What?”

  Hector took her arm and steered her toward her room’s writing desk. “As I said, you go ahead and pack, Rachel. I’ll spend a little time with this hotel stationary and my pen. I’ll draft a reply to that telegram.”

  While Rachel packed her suitcases, Hector sat by the window, staring off at the horizon. The sky was still clear, but there was something wrong about the clouds drifting over the Atlantic. He thought a time, then wrote:

  Bev, am staying with Hector Lassiter stop All is well stop Thought you were headed to Cuba so surprised to see you’re in the upper Keys especially that one where Hector says there is nothing stop Will be weathering storm with Hector and Hemingway stop Hec says to come to Hem’s place at Whitehead Street if you can get down from Matec. before Sunday afternoon stop Hector and Hem anxious to meet you and your beau and learn what he knows about that Key that they don’t

  — Rachel

  Rachel read over Hector’s shoulder. She said, “Should we misspell my first name?”

  “I pointedly think we shouldn’t,” Hector said, capping his pen. “It’s not much, but I’m hoping my reputation, such as it is — combined with Hem’s — might at least throw some caution in this man who’s with your friend. Just in case he’s up to anything...well, untoward.”

  “You’re worried, too, aren’t you?”

  Hector shrugged. She put her hands on his shoulders and massaged them. Hector rolled his neck, enjoying the sensation. His back and shoulder muscles were still tight from fighting marlin the day before. “You’ve sure got strong hands, kid,” he said. “But to answer your question, I’m more worried because of where they are now. Those middle Keys are basically labor camps...populated by destitute vets building the next leg of that crazy highway. Rough customers, to a man. You’ll see some of them in town tonight if we go out. They come into Key West for the weekend to drink their wages or to hit the sporting houses...to lose money on the cockfights. It’s not a real weekend for these rowdies until one of them stabs or shoots another. They’re riff-raff, mostly. And the Keys where they live and work are squalid. There are also the usual camp followers...gamblers and prostitutes. A few wives and kids. If this man had taken Beverly to Key Largo, or to Miami — or to Havana, like he said he was going to — I’d say he’s just a wolf looking to show your friend a good and tawdry time. But to take her to Matecumbe? I honestly don’t know to what end.” Hector reached over his shoulder and took her right hand. He held and stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. He said, “You hungry? I’m hungry.”

  Rachel thought about that. She said, “I could eat a little.”

  “I’ll go fetch my car so we can load your bags and trunk. Then we’ll get an early dinner — before those damned vets get out of control. Honestly, between those fellas and the mosquitoes, it’s been a rotten summer.”

  “Mosquitoes?”

  “The little bloodsuckers are out of control this summer. That’s another sign, or so say the old conchs, that we’re due for a big storm.”

  Rachel nodded. “Where shall we eat?”

  “I know a place.”

  ***

  Their blond, busty waitress said to Hector, “Papa was in this morning, sugar. He asked after you. He said this storm could be the one that swamps Bone Key. He’s pretty down about it.”

  Hector half-smiled. He said, “The son-of-a-bitching swain wishes, Karen. And that’s our Hem — always the expert. Always the know-it-all.” Hector perused the menu written on the chalkboard hanging on the wall and said, “Turtle steak and potatoes for me, I think. Rachel?”

  She licked her full lower lip then bit it. For the first time, Hector noticed her slight overbite — he thought it becoming. She said, “I think I’ll try the yellow tail and potatoes.” The waitress, Karen, said, “Sure, sweetie.” Once she was out of earshot, Rachel said, “Looking over the menu, it’s kind of all seafood something and potatoes, you know?”

  Hector nodded. “It’s always ‘seafood something and potatoes.’ That’s the price of island living. And it’s almost always ‘something’ involving conch. Conch fritters...conch chowder. You’re just lucky to hit this joint on a non-conch day.”

  Rachel smiled and looked around. “‘The Electric Kitchen’...it’s...curious.”

  “You’d be hard-pressed to find anything on this island that isn’t ‘curious.’ We’re hardly even in America. Hell, we’re closer to Cuba than the mainland. It’s like a border town surrounded by water, Rachel. A weigh-station and a retreat for mavericks and misfits. Or at least it used to be.”

  “Is that how you see yourself, Hector — as a maverick?”

  He grinned. “Sure...makes me feel like a Romantic with a capital R. You know — in the Byronic sense.”

  Rachel smiled back. “Just how long have you been here, Hector?”

  “I came here in the early twenties and bought my house. Then I skittered back and fourth between here and Europe for a few years. Long abou
t ’27, I really dug in my heels here. Paris was getting too touristy. Key West was remote and cheap — important selling points for a pulp writer. But it’s changing now, not for the better, and more every day. It’s going the sorry way of the Left Bank. In other words, the Key is on all the tourist maps now. Partly because of John Dos Passos and me, Hemingway came here. That bastard never left. Hem bought the best and stoutest house on the island — with his wife’s family’s money — and became some kind of mangy feudal lord. And he soon enough drew more tourists, like flies. And then along came goddamned FDR and his communist crew. Roosevelt and his New Deal cronies and their notions of turning Bone Key into a tourist attraction have just about ground out the last best qualities of this place. This crazy railroad they’ve helped to build...the damned overseas highway they’re working on now. It’s all slipping away. I think I’m truly starting to hate this place.”

  Rachel sipped from a glass of iced tea. “Are you thinking of leaving?”

  Hector blew two smoke rings. “More and more, I do think of leaving. I’ll maybe always keep the house as a retreat of sorts. A last hideout. But it is feeling like time to move on, yeah.”

  Rachel reached across the table and took Hector’s hand. He smiled and squeezed back. She said, “Where would you go?”

  “Hard to say. Maybe just across the Gulf. Maybe to Galveston. I was born in Texas, you know. Or maybe to Seattle, or to Vancouver. Puget Sound. Have me a notion they may be the next good places. Need to get there before they get overrun like Paris and Key West.”

  The pretty blond waitress put down their plates. Karen said, sotto voce, “Did you hear about the murder, Hec? Some woman was killed. They found her near the lighthouse. They say she was cut into pieces. They say —”

  Scowling, Hector held up a hand. “Jesus, Karen, enough! You’re going to put me right off eating.”