Hector nodded and took the boy in his arms and climbed in back — Hem steadying him with a firm hand. The woman climbed in up front with Hem and they tore off.
A block from the first blast site, Hem frowned and yelled over the freezing wind shear, “Duck low, not that it’ll help.”
Another shell whined overhead then blew the front off a café. More screams.
***
Hem frowned and said, “I don’t like this sobriety stuff on you. Makes you more suspicious, somehow.”
Hector laughed. “Alright, I’ll fucking have one, my poor kidney be damned.”
Hem beamed and called out, “Another whiskey soda!”
The writers were both wrung out now, and their pants and shirts were soaked through with the boy’s drying blood.
True to his word, Hem had gotten the boy to the hospital within four minutes of the kid’s leg being blasted off. The doctor’s seemed quite hopeful.
The boy’s mother had kissed their bloodied hands. Most of her attention had been lavished on Hem, whom she seemed to recognize — unbidden, she had called him “Papa” over and over. That punted Hem into something like a state of ecstasy, Hector had thought. But Hector had to smile. In such situations, Hem was the best man to have at your side...and impossible not to love.
Hem said, “Back to this other thing. These murders — I have a theory.”
“I can guess. Quentin Windly.”
“Exactly,” Hem said. “That cocksucker! I know it ain’t you or me. Bishop’s on last legs. But Quentin was there in Miami...Matecumbe, and Key West.”
“Also in Mexico,” Hector said. “While back, Orson told me some stories about strange murders down there. Sounded like these things all over again.”
“Orson? Welles? Funny, he’s supposed to do the narration of my script for The Spanish Earth. God willing he won’t fuck it up.”
“I told the secret police what I thought about Windly,” Hector said. “They won’t touch him.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Hem said. “He’s too connected, too prominent ...and his fucking family is richer than God. They buy ambulances for one side and rifles for the other in this goddamn cluster-fuck.”
Hector searched Hem’s brown eyes. He decided to confide it to Hem: “I’ve been given permission to handle it myself.”
“Good,” Hem said, meeting his inquiring gaze. “That’s good. We clean up after our own, Lasso. I want a piece. I liked Rachel...I liked her fine.”
“I don’t want to put you at risk.”
“Fuck off, Lasso. What do you need? I know there’s no way you got your Peacemaker here — you couldn’t have gotten that old Colt across the borders.”
“That’s exactly what I need: Ordinance.”
“Done. And you’ve got yourself a wheelman.” Hem checked the clock behind the bar. “Just time to get you back to your lady. By the way, does she know what’s on with Wind?”
“No,” Hector lied. “No.”
“Good. Two can keep a secret....”
“If one is dead,” Hector finished for him.
“But we two are the exceptions that prove that sorry rule. When do you want to do this, Lasso?”
“Tomorrow night. Then I leave the following morning. I’m promised safe passage back to France. Then I’ll likely be sentenced to death, in abstentia.”
“At least it’s publicity,” Hem said. “Hell, it may goose some book sales for you.”
“There is perhaps no finer defense of surrealism’s central theme of transgression via eroticism than Man Ray’s wanton nudes, who point more to death than to sexuality.”— Werner Spies
PARLEZ-MOI D’AMOUR
23
Bishop Blair said, “Quite an exceptional, developing talent — quite a talent in one still so young. A painter isn’t really whole until they’re in their thirties. They do not reach artistic maturity until they’re in their forties or fifties. Mastery can be a decade beyond that. I can’t fathom what you’ll be then, Alva.”
She kissed the old man on both cheeks. “Thank you, Maestro,” she said.
Maestro? Hector wasn’t liking this at all — it seemed to him to further dim his prospects of getting Alva to move to Puget Sound.
Frowning, Hector helped Alva on with his given-away leather coat. He said to her, “Where’s your portfolio? I’ll carry it for you.”
“No need, Hector,” Bishop said. “I’ve just shipped the paintings Alva brought on to a gallery in Paris. I had just the dealer in mind. I can guarantee the first of many sales. I’m sure of that.”
“Sounds like you and me better really seal that deal on those works of yours I want,” Hector said to Alva. “I’m getting this sense that in a few months, I won’t be able to afford you anymore.”
Alva rolled her eyes and Bishop smiled. She looked again at Hector — at his black corduroy pants and black flannel shirt. She narrowed her eyes and said, “Have you been rolling in the mud?” She sniffed a few times and then leaned in closer. “Good Lord, Hector, is that blood?”
He explained then what had happened to Hem and him since dropping Alva off at Bishop’s studio.
The old man nodded gravely, then squeezed Hector’s arm. It was meant as a comradely gesture, Hector figured, but there was no grip there at all. Bishop said, “But the boy will live?”
“The doctors said so.”
“Good work...good work, and just what I’d expect from Hem and particularly from you,” Bishop said.
“I just feel sorry for that poor kid,” Hector said. “Probably has been walking less than a year or two. Now he’s a cripple for life. Sorry little bastard.”
“These creatures on the other side,” Bishop said — real venom in the old man — “their ceaseless shelling is monstrous. Sometimes I think they deserve the cruelest things we can conceive for them in the darkest corners of our imaginations. And we have darker corners than most.”
“On that note,” Hector said, “I heard the most incredible thing today.” He first told the old painter about the killings that had been occurring in and around Madrid — the ones’ echoing those in Key West. Blair said, without hesitation, “We should look to this critic, Windly.”
“We are,” Hector said. Alva seemed to be made uncomfortable by the drift of the conversation. She said:
“We should get home, Hector. Get you out of those clothes and get you into a bath.”
“Soon,” Hector said. “There’s something else, Bishop...have you heard word of some, well, we’ll call them ‘experiments’ involving psychological torture using surrealist imagery as a weapon?”
Alva said, “You sure you weren’t hit on the head when that truck nearly blew up under you, Hector?” She took his arm. “Let’s get you home where I can watch you for a while, mister. I’m even more worried about you. I’m worried you have a concussion.”
Annoyed, he pushed her hand away. “Just a minute, Alva. Does this sound like anything you’ve heard whispers of, Bishop?”
“I’m not even sure I understand what you’re suggesting,” the old painter said.
Hector pressed ahead, again shrugging off Alva’s hand. “I’m told there are hidden prison camps strewn around Barcelona. They are full of little rooms with curved and crooked walls...tilting beds and benches. Vertigo-inducing forced perspectives and blocks — like something torn from Escher — strewn glued to the floors. The rooms are said to drive men mad.”
Bishop’s eyes widened. He wet his lips, looking furtively at Alva. He said, “I’ll make some inquiries, my friend.” He handed Hector one of his cards. “Assuming the fascists don’t hit the telephone exchange, call me later this evening. Or I will call you. Perhaps we can meet, just the two of us, for a drink. I may know more in a short while.” He nodded again at Alva. He said softly, “Your work, my dear, is more startling, more revelatory, the more I think on it.”
He shook Hector’s hand — another damp handshake. “We’ll talk in a few hours, Hector. Please watch after yourself until then.”
>
“Always,” Hector said, taking Alva’s arm. She looked a last time over her shoulder at Bishop, so Hector did that, too. The old man was standing there, his hands clasped in front of him, looking like Hector thought he might have looked when Harriet died — lost...terribly alone.
***
As they stepped out of the studio, a horn honked. A man waved at them from a cab. Hector frowned: Quentin Windly. When the critic saw who was with Alva, he quickly dropped his hand.
Alva said, “I hate him, now.”
“Put on a brave face for a few more hours, darling,” Hector said. “Take solace from this fact — the bastard’s living on my clock.”
***
Hector was in his third bath. He finally felt clean. And he must finally have come clean enough to meet Alva’s standards. She put on some music — Parlez-Moi D’Amour — and then smiling, slowly stripped off her clothes and climbed into the claw-foot tub with Hector. She lowered herself slowly, saying, “You really do like it hot, don’t you?”
He watched as she eased into the tub. He noticed for the first time that her pubic hair was several shades paler than the short hair framing her face. Usually it ran the other way — darker down there than on top. Hector realized he must have misunderstood what Alva had told Bishop about keeping herself brunette: it must be Alva who dyed her hair, not Rachel.
Smiling and scooting around until she found a comfortable position, facing him, he said, “Cold baths are only for Key West in the summer and early fall.”
“I’ll never know,” she said. “How’s your kidney?”
He had excused himself to the water closet down the hall before getting in the bath. While he was there, Alva had gone downstairs to arrange to have someone knock on her door if a call came from Bishop Blair. With a shrug she explained before going downstairs, “I haven’t had a phone of my own since my husband...”
When she returned from her landlord’s office, she had found that Hector was still in the water closet. When he finally returned to her loft, she had commented upon how pale he looked — how wrenching his expression was. “Kidney pain is a remarkable thing for a man,” he had said.
Now, stroking his chest with her bare foot, she said, “Is the kidney getting better at all?”
“It’ll take a few days,” he said, fishing around for the big sponge at the bottom of the tub and then soaping her long legs. “The bleeding is weakening. The pain comes and goes. Heat helps.”
“Then we’ll keep you warm. I’m not letting you out of this apartment again until....” It hung there unsaid: Until you go to kill Quentin Windly. “When will that be?”
“Tomorrow night,” he said. “I’ll have to leave the next morning. Cross into France. I’ll be safe there.”
“But unable to come back here?”
“That’s right. Maybe not in this lifetime. Certainly not if Franco wins and can hold power. And Franco has won. It’s just an undeclared victory.”
“So you keep saying,” Alva said. “I’ve been thinking about Paris. You used to live there — Rachel noted that in her letter. Maybe in Paris, we could....”
Hector was beginning to think that Rachel must have written her kid sister a novella. He said, “I like Paris fine, but not to ever live there again. And with this coming war, well, my sense is, if Hitler wants Paris, Hitler will have Paris.”
“So it’s really the thing to come — your island out west?”
“I’ve bought the house. Papers are all signed. Just have to move in.” He smiled. “It has a third floor — a finished attic, with big dormers on all four sides. There’ll always be light there. It could be a fine studio.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying again — come to my new island.”
“But I have so much to move,” she said, going along as if she thought he was joking about moving in with him. “I can’t part with the furniture...shabby as it must look to you.”
“I’ll see it’s all moved. Attic’s square footage is about the same as your place here. We can recreate this room there, if you want. Hell, I’d insist upon it. I love this place.”
Her smile went away as she saw that he was serious. “It really is very tempting to come. As you say, this city is becoming like a tomb. I think of that little boy you saved this morning...out for a walk with his mother, then mutilated, just like that.” She tried to snap her fingers but they were too wet to make much sound.
Hector picked up the straight razor resting on the stool by the tub. “You sure you trust me to do this?”
She winked. “Trust me to shave your face?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Your throat?”
“It’s connected to my face. Sure.”
“So you can shave my legs,” Alva said.
It seemed a pointless gesture — her legs were covered with a fine blond down he could hardly see. He said, “So, you’re really a blond?”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
“I’m trying to imagine you with blond hair.”
“That shouldn’t be hard,” she said...acid there. “And I’m trying to imagine you didn’t just say that — that you didn’t wonder aloud how I’d look looking like my sister. You almost had me swayed to run west with you.”
“I didn’t mean it like that, Alva. Hell, I love dark hair...prefer it, really. This is about you and me, not your sister.”
“You swear?”
He held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
“Don’t be flip, Hector.”
“I’m didn’t mean to be...I swear. It’s you and it’s me.”
She was quiet for a time. “I couldn’t come with you on that train,” she finally said. “It would take time for me to pack — to prepare paintings for shipping. Except for whatever else I turn over to Mr. Blair.”
“Or sell to me.”
She smiled. “Or sell to you.”
“How long would it take you to prepare — how long will I have to wait?”
“Some weeks, probably. Then I could follow you. You sure you want this...this with me?”
He set the razor aside. “Come here, Alva — I’ll show you.”
***
They were again on the carpet next to the fireplace. Hector said, “Have you ever painted anything you don’t display?”
She shrugged. “You ever write anything you don’t publish?”
“I used to, when I was younger. Before I found my voice.”
“Why do you ask that question, Hector?”
“I was thinking of Hem. He wrote a story once and showed it to Gertrude Stein. Because it described a woman’s first sexual experience, old Gert’ said it could never be published. She likened it to something that an artist paints, but can’t hang. Said it was ‘inaccrochable.’”
Alva said, “A few months ago — when I was beside myself — I painted a few things that were kind of a response to Man Ray’s photos of naked women. The women all looked dead to me in his photos. So I painted naked men with their eyes closed. The men all looked dead to me. Too disturbing. Transgressive.”
Her inaccrochable paintings sounded macabre enough. “You still have them?”
“No,” she said. “Money was tight. So I painted over them.” She looked at him, this strange smile on her face. “If I move in with you, I’m going to expect modeling time out of you. You know that, don’t you?”
“Do I have to play dead?”
Her hand drifted down there. “Only from the neck up.”
“When man commits a crime, God will find a witness.”— Origin unknown
MUERTE
24
About five o’clock, Hector began to wonder why he hadn’t heard from Bishop Blair. He’d dressed and gone downstairs twice to try and phone the surrealists’ shared studio, but nobody answered there.
Hector was sitting at Alva’s desk, trying to do some afternoon writing — a rarity for Hector. He was a morning writer and for whatever reason, more prolific then. And he kept
finding himself distracted. Alva was painting, using herself as a model again. She sat at her easel, nude, referencing herself in a floor length mirror that she had leaned against the wall.
He shook his head and turned back to his Underwood. He’d never be able to write like this — not with her close by, naked like that. He thought he was lucky his new house had three floors.
There was knock at her door. Alva put down her brushes and reached for a robe. Hector said through the door, “Yes?”
“There’s a phone call for you Señor Lassiter,” the landlord’s wife said in Spanish.
Hector excused himself from Alva. He trotted down the steps and scooped up the candlestick phone. He said, “Bishop?”
A gruff, vaguely familiar voice: “How interesting you answer that way. It’s Captain Barrera. We met the other night.”
“Oh, I haven’t forgotten, Jefe. Neither has my kidney.”
“I call with bad news. You were expecting a call from Señor Blair?”
“That’s right.”
“You can stop waiting, hombre. Señor Blair was killed about an hour ago. I thought since you knew him, and since he was around the fringes of this other — I mean his having been in Key West during the time of the other killings — you would want to know.”
Hector was reeling. He leaned on the counter of the landlord’s front desk. “Dead? Killed? Like the others? You mean he was murdered?”
“Nothing so...exotic, Mr. Lassiter. His throat was cut. Mr. Blair’s wallet was taken. His watch, too. It looks like robbery...maybe he resisted so the man cut his throat.”
“Witnesses?”
“Just a couple of fellow artists who saw just the end — the slice and Mr. Blair falling, clutching his neck.”
“What did they see of the attacker? I don’t suppose the ‘thief’ in any way resembled our friend Mr. Windly?”
“Quite the opposite. A dark-haired man with a thin dark moustache and rather prominent ears. But since you invoke the name — it happens soon for QW, yes?”
“It happens tomorrow night.”
“Any notions of how you’ll...?”
“I’m contemplating something that might be construed as a tragedy of war.”
Toros & Torsos (The Hector Lassiter Series) Page 16
