But an old Conch, eavesdropping from the next table, growled, “Poor bitch. I’ve heard about it, too. Least she won’t likely be crossing over alone. Not with the storm headed our way.” The man dragged a scarred, tanned hand through his tangled white hair. “This morning I was down at the point. The crabs were crossing from the Atlantic over to the Gulf of Mexico side. Critters only do that for the biggest blows. And Toby Duke, he said the tarpon are all running westward through the Keys — like bats out of hell.”
Hector gave the old man a sour look and chewed his turtle steak. He smiled at his dining companion and said, “Ignore that crazy old coot, Rache’. We’ll be better than fine.”
“Everything in this world has two handles. Murder, for instance, may be laid hold of by its moral handle... and that, I confess, is its weak side; or it may also be treated aesthetically, as the Germans call it — that is, in relation to good taste.”— Thomas DeQuincey
IN YONDER ROOM
3
Hector walked with his hands in his pockets, feeling the wind against his back, drying his damp shirt. The wind still wasn’t particularly strong...just strangely steady. The gulls and herons and pelicans were all heading out west into the Gulf — racing to outrun the storm. Rachel slipped her arm through his and Hector smiled. She brushed her windblown hair back from her face and said:
“This murdered women they were talking about at the restaurant...”
“I think I know where you’re headed with this,” Hector said. “It’s a crazy thought, but I had it, too. If you’re really concerned about it as a possibility, I can check with the police. But I’ll need a description of Bev.”
Rachel sighed and shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m even allowing myself to entertain this notion. It’s quite mad, you know — terrible and sick. And probably pointless. I pray it is.”
“All the same,” Hector said. “It’s your instinct to check. When we ignore our instincts, we suffer.”
Rachel seemed to think about that. She wrapped her other arm around his, squeezing his bicep. Hector resisted the urge to tighten it. She said, “Beverly is about my height: five-seven. Maybe twenty pounds heavier than me. She has black hair and dark eyes. She has...well, her nose...well, her name is Beverly Rubenstein. She has a mole on her left cheek. Oh, and a few years ago, she met a man at Coney Island and got a little tight. So now she has a small red heart tattooed on the inside of her left thigh, just above the knee.”
“How...scandalous,” Hector said, winking.
“It was certainly scandalous enough in South Bend. That’s where we’re both from.”
“Any distinguishing marks along those lines of your own that you want to tell me about?”
Rachel frowned. “No. And no, there aren’t any like those. I hate tattoos.”
“I’m clean, too,” Hector said. “Well, there are scars aplenty, but no body art.”
“Scars? A man’s not a man without a few of those.”
Hector thought, Hm. Then Hector said, “I can drop you at my place and check with the police, but we’re only a block away from headquarters. You could wait in the lobby and I could talk to the sheriff now — find out one way or another, fast like.”
“You know him — the sheriff?”
“He knows me,” Hector said. “And once-in-a-while, he gets a call from me to check something — some detail or procedural thing — you know, research stuff, for a story or a novel.”
“I’ll wait in the lobby, then,” Rachel said. “I want to know and know now if there’s been some trouble.”
***
“It’s a terrible bloody fucking thing,” Jack Dixon said. Jack was Monroe County Sheriff...another veteran, but one of the increasingly rare ones who’d landed on his feet.
Hector offered Sheriff Dixon a Pall Mall and the cop nodded and leaned in to Hector’s flickering Zippo. Hector lit his own cigarette and blew smoke out both nostrils. He said, “Karen, over at the Electric Kitchen, she said this woman was cut up.”
“That makes it sound like butchery,” Jack said, waving a big hand. His middle finger was missing at the second joint. He stared at his cigarette. “That makes it sound like some crazy son of a bitch went off his head and just hacked the poor bitch to pieces. But it wasn’t like that at all, Hec. In some ways, she was dressed out like a deer — utterly gutted.”
“Hollowed out, eh?”
“Yeah, but for the cogs and the flywheels.”
Hector narrowed his eyes, his lip curled. He must not have heard right. He said, “What?”
“No shit, Hec’, this bastard scooped her hollow and filled her up with metal: gears...a bicycle chain...even a propeller from a small outboard motor.”
Hector felt his own disbelieving smile. He said, “You’re pullin’ my leg.”
“Christ, I wish.”
“My friend’s friend...she’s a Jewess,” Hector said. “Dark hair, dark eyes. We in the ballpark in terms of what you’ve got on ice out to back?”
“Not at all,” Jack said. “This one’s got dirty blond hair...blue eyes.”
“No tattoos? Say, on the inner thighs?”
“Your friend’s friend sounds like a wild one. But no, no tattoos.”
Hector nodded. “That’s a load off.” Then he said, “No shit? This woman was gutted and her organs replaced with machine parts?”
“No shit, Hec. Could I make that kind of stuff up? Hell, in your darkest study, and four-sheets-to-the-wind, I doubt even you could make that kind of thing up. Have you ever heard the like?”
“Heard? No,” Hector said. “But seen? Maybe. On canvas. In Paris, in the ’20s.”
“What?”
“Let me back there to the ice house,” Hector said. “I want a look at her.”
“We’ve already established she’s not your lady friend’s friend.”
“Right, but I may be of help to you. Based on what you’ve said, I’m getting notions. Let me see that body.”
“It’ll mess with your head, Hec’. Trust me on this.”
Hector waved a hand. “My head’s so messed with, it couldn’t do me any real harm. Let’s have a look at her. Based on things you’ve said, I’ve got me a wild hair of a notion.”
***
Hector was sitting in the Silver Slipper with Rachel, slamming back the mojitos. It seemed that Rachel had also been to Paris...toured the museums and studied painting herself before moving back to the states as the ’20s wound down. Her father, she said, had stayed on in the City of Lights a few years longer before settling in Los Angeles in late ’34 — convinced Hollywood was “the next great frontier for artists.”
When Hector described the state of the corpse he’d seen — the area between the woman’s sex and her breasts that had been laid open and packed full of carefully arranged cogs and wheels — Rachel had confirmed Hector’s own surmise: “It sounds like Magritte’s L’age des Merveilles,” she said. “A woman with clockworks in lieu of organs.” She shivered despite the heat. “But it wasn’t Beverly?”
“No, the murdered woman was fair. A real blond.” Hector winced. “Sorry. You’d never know I write for a living. I could have put that much better.”
Rachel half smiled and squeezed his hand. “It’s alright, Hector. You’re shaken up by what you’ve seen.”
She picked up his pack of Pall Malls and shook one loose. She looked at his Zippo, running her fingers across the inscription:
To Hector Lassiter:
‘One true sentence.’
— E.H.
Key West,
1932
She said, “A gift from whom I’m thinking?”
Hector nodded and flicked his Zippo open with one hand and lit Rachel’s cigarette. He noticed his hand was shaking. “It is.”
She said, “What’s it mean? The engraving, I mean?”
“Little game Hem and I still play from time to time. Once of us writes — or really, speaks — a few words. Perhaps the start of a sentence. The other one tries to
give it the best finish — make it a clear, true sentence. A kind of writing exercise.”
Rachel nodded. She said, “Your color is coming back, thank God. I can’t imagine what you just went through for me. I’m in your debt.”
Hector waved his hand — it was steadier now. Rum — the great stabilizer...until it becomes its own problem. “Nah, hell no. You don’t owe me a thing. I’ve seen worse. Just not...odder.” Trying to make light of it, he said, “What’s your thought on this? You think maybe René Magritte or Salvador Dali went off their heads, came down to Key West and decided to take the concepts of surrealism and trompe l’oeil to new and heady heights?”
“Is that what you think, Hector?”
“Frankly, having seen that sorry woman? Yeah...I nearly really do.”
Rachel squeezed his hand. “Based on what you’ve described, I think I do, too.”
Hector drained his drink, then began fishing his rear pocket for his wallet. Getting the signal, Rachel finished her Cuba Libre. Hector nodded at her glass and said, “That made like you like ’em?” He’d told the bartender to go light on the cola.
“Yes, it was yummy.”
Hector smiled and threw a few bills on the table. He dipped his head at the bearded, bronzed man behind the bar. “Later Tone — after the Big Blow.”
Rachel slipped her arm through Hector’s. She tipped her head back into the breeze. Between the various forms of rum and the rise and fall of tension regarding the potential fate of her friend, Rachel seemed obviously and pleasantly numbed. Hector said, “What now, sweetheart? Any shopping to be done for items you might need for my place? Provisions you want? Some Coca-Cola to go with our rum supply, since I know now that you’re a Cuba Libre fiend?”
“No, Hector. Maybe just a walk back to your place. I could use a shower, if that’s okay...freshen up for dinner tonight. Maybe call over to the hotel after — while the phones are still working — to see if Beverly responded to my, or rather, your cable.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Hector said. “I could use a shower myself.” He couldn’t get the scent of formaldehyde and the combined odors of dead flesh and oil from the machine parts jammed into the woman’s body cavity out of his mind.
A voice behind them — a masculine tenor with a slight speech impediment that made his individual i’s and r’s sound a little like w’s: “Jesus, Lasso, where you been hiding this one?”
Hector smiled and shook his head. He turned around, saying before he even saw him, “Rachel, meet Ernie, from Oak Park. Hem, this is Rachel Harper, of South Bend, and now, the prettiest girl in Key West.”
“Usually you talk a lot of crap, Lasso, but this time...” Limping up to them, he stuck out a hand. Ernest was just under six feet — a couple of inches shorter than Hector but broad-shouldered and deep-chested. Ernest carried himself like a taller man, and somehow to Hector, they always seemed about the same height. Hemingway’s dark hair was already receding into a widow’s peak and his skin was dark brown. His teeth were white and straight in contrast to his bluntly cut mustache and he had four days’ growth of beard. Ernest’s legs were covered in old scars and now bore a few fresh bandages. He had a rubber brace secured around one bronzed knee — just visible under the fraying cuff of his khaki shorts. His black Polo shirt was stained with dried fish blood. He smelled of sweat and whiskey and fish. Yet Ernest’s smile was infectious. In Hector’s experience, his famous friend’s smile was always winning in the first minute or two, even when you knew Ernest well and knew what that smile could hide.
And if it was your first time meeting the famous writer?
Hector smiled and shook his head at Rachel’s expression — star-struck.
Ernest said to her, “Jesus, you’re sure beautiful for a blind woman. I mean, you must have eye problems to be with my buddy Lasso, here.”
“I like Hector fine,” Rachel said, shaking Ernest’s hand and smiling. “And he’s clean, Mr. Hemingway...well-groomed and smells nice.” Hector suppressed a smile.
Ernest’s own smile didn’t ebb. “Christ, I know I stink to high heaven. Been on the boat all afternoon; hauled a big one alongside to lash it fast to try and outrun the sharks. Haven’t been home yet to shower — kind of a last blast before the storm. Just secured my boat in the Naval Station’s submarine basin...tied her up fast.”
Rachel pointed at the bandages on Hem’s legs. She said, “Mr. Hemingway, what happened?”
Ernest shook his head. “Christ. A while back, we had a shark alongside the Pilar and I tried to shoot it. The fish lashed out and hit the gaff hook in my mate’s hand and the gun in my other hand discharged. The bullets hit the brass rail of my boat, fragmented, and then hit me in both legs. Just wrote about it for Esquire.”
Ernest’s admission about his self-inflicted wounds — and his willingness to write about them — pleasantly surprised Hector. Ernest rarely publicly placed himself in less than the most flattering of lights. Ernest never made himself the brunt of his own jokes.
Hector hadn’t witnessed the shooting accident, but John Dos Passos had and had told Hector about it. Dos had said his wife, Katy, a childhood friend who knew Ernest longer than any of them, had been so offended by Ernest’s “stupid” and “reckless” actions she hadn’t talked to Papa on the trip back into the harbor. She’d remained tight-lipped even as Ernest lay bleeding and groaning on the deck of his own boat. She thought he was lucky not to have shot and killed someone else.
Clearly, it had been a stupid accident resulting from a cruel and senselessly destructive act. There could be no good way to spin it for the Esquire essay.
Ernest said to Hector, “Hard to say what the next few days may bring. Pauline is edgy and bitchy and wants a party to lighten the mood. So ‘we’re’ having a few people over for drinks tonight. What about you two kids coming by? It’s mostly going to be Pauline’s friends. I could use you there, Lasso — someone to drink and talk with. I mean really talk — not have to play ‘author’ to impress Pfife’s goddamn artsy friends.”
Squinting against the sun, Hector glanced over at Rachel. “What do you say, Rache?”
“Sure, sounds wonderful. What time, Mr. Hemingway?”
“Papa,” Hem said. Hector resisted rolling his eyes. His nickname-mad friend had been making heroic efforts the past year or so to hang that patriarchal handle on himself. “Say eight.”
Rachel said, “It works for you, Hector?”
“Aces,” Hector said. “Eight it is.” He slapped Hem’s thick bicep. “Tonight then.”
“Tonight.” Hem was about to shove on, then held up a finger. “Lasso, you hear the news about this woman they found over by my place—?”
“I’ve seen that news, up close and personal,” Hector said quickly. “Tell you more about that tonight. What should I bring this evening, Hem?”
“Suit yourself. Just make sure you bring this beauty.” He winked and pointed at Rachel.
Hector chewed his lip. So it was going to be that kind of a night.
———————————
From official weather advisories:
(Saturday, August 31)
Advisory nine thirty p.m. (Key West wind direction = NW, velocity = 4 mph.) the tropical disturbance is central tonight near or over the northern end of Long Island Bahamas moving rather slowly westnorthwestward attended by strong shifting winds land squalls over a considerable area and probably gale force near center. Indications center will reach vicinity of Andros Island early Sunday. Hoist northeast storm warnings 10 p.m. Fort Pierce to Miami. 220631 Norton NAR 10:10 p.m.
———————————
“[I]f any human act evokes the aesthetic experience of the sublime, certainly it is the act of murder.”— Joel Black
ANATOMY AS A BRIDE
4
Rachel had taken the first shower, but she was still primping when Hector emerged from his bedroom, combing back his still-damp, dark brown hair. He’d dressed in white pants, white deck shoes and a whit
e shirt — open at the collar and its long sleeves rolled up above each elbow.
Rachel was wearing a sleeveless black dress and flat, black sensible sandals. She was tall enough, even standing next to Hector, that the flats flattered her. Her sunburn from her time spent in the afternoon sun was already fading to golden brown.
She said, “I’ve been thinking about that murdered woman some more.”
“Me too.” Hector couldn’t get the twisted image of the woman’s corpse out of his mind.
Rachel stroked his cheek with the back of her hand. “You have the bluest eyes, Hector,” she said. “They’re almost wasted on a man.”
Hector didn’t have a reply to that, so he wrapped an arm around her waist and hugged her close.
“That man earlier this afternoon. Tito, I think you said his name was.” Rachel laid down her brush and brushed a comma of hair back from Hector’s forehead with her slender fingers. “You said Tito was a ‘lady-killer.’ Do you think that maybe he was the one who—?”
“No,” Hector said quickly. “Tito’s a thug. But this thing with this woman — that’s way out of Tito’s line. It’s far too bizarre. Diabolical. Whoever did this, well, Christ, I don’t know how to begin to classify or to characterize this one. This goes well beyond murder.”
“What about the police, Hector? Do they have any idea or clue as to who might have done this?”
“Nada. So I guess we better all hope that it’s a one-off and that whoever did it has pushed on. The cops think the body had been there perhaps a day before it was discovered — plenty of time for the killer to have reached the mainland or to be deep into Cuba.”
Rachel had the radio on low — “Red Sails in the Sunset.” That song ended, and Marlene Dietrich’s recording of “Something I Dreamed Last Night” began. The German actress had just released the sixth of her films with Josef von Sternberg, The Devil is a Woman. John Dos Passos had done some tinkering on that film’s script. The guilt-stricken lefty was deeply ashamed to have taken Hollywood money, which amused Hector, who had since been ribbing “Dos” mercilessly for “selling-out.”
Toros & Torsos (The Hector Lassiter Series) Page 3
