Toros & Torsos (The Hector Lassiter Series)

by Craig McDonald

  Hector said, “A call came for me at your house today, Hem. It was a male voice. I almost thought I knew the voice, but I couldn’t quite place it. The caller threatened us both. Said he would kill us both, and soon.”

  Hem said, “So some cocksucker really does have a hard-on for me. For both of us, I guess.” Hem frowned. “But how’d this son of a bitch know you are here?”

  “I gave Leonard Lyons a heads-up,” Hector said carefully. “I asked him to put a note in his column, advertising my visit to you. I told you — in Los Angeles, in 1947, I crossed this thing again. Something tied back to Key West. To Spain and the murders there linked to surrealism.”

  “So you’re trying to draw fire?” Hem accepted another daiquiri. “Don’t tell Mary any of this about the Keys or Spain or L.A. or now, Lasso, or she’ll think you’re buggy like me.”

  “I heard about the murders here,” Hector said. “And being here, seeing your cat, and taking that call and hearing about your other letters, well, there’s no question in my mind anymore. Someone means us both dead. And that someone is tied to the murders we both saw in ’35 and ’37...to what I saw in 1947.”

  Hem pulled off his wire-rimmed glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Hell of it is that your coming here makes it easier for this killer, Lasso. Us together means an easier target for him.”

  “From a different perspective,” Hector said smiling, all bluff, “now the son of a bitch has the pair of us to deal with. He’s the one should be sweating just about now.”

  Hem thought about that, then said, “At least that makes the two of us sound like forces to maybe still be reckoned with. Still, I’d like to be home, where I have guns. We should drink up and go there, pronto. Hunker down for a fight.”

  “Agreed,” Hector said. “But between here and there, I have your back, Hem.” Hector pulled back his white sports coat to reveal the butt of his old Colt. “Smuggled it in past security,” Hector said.

  “How’d you do that?”

  “Tricks of the trade.”

  Hem smiled and slapped Hector’s arm. “That fucking bitch Martha. It’s another thing to hate her for...making you and me piss away twenty-two years. Jesus, the good times we’ve missed together.”

  “Surrealism: An archaic term. Formerly an art movement. No longer distinguishable from everyday life.”— Brad Holland

  THE WIDOW-IN-WAITING

  44

  Hector had promised himself one thing: There would be none of his own writing undertaken at the Hemingway house. The notion of two typewriters firing away down the morning-quiet halls of the ancient Finca struck Hector as a kind of risk in itself — it could descend into competition. It would be a one-way competition, but no less dangerous for that.

  Hem would maybe want to start comparing daily page or word counts...wanting to remark on things in progress. Hector only shared full first drafts, and he wouldn’t do that with Hem, not ever. And Hector knew too well Ernest’s attitudes toward “genre” fiction.

  So Hector sat out by the pool in the early morning cool with Mary, watching all the cats prowl.

  The island’s heat hadn’t come on yet and Hector was wearing khaki slacks, decks shoes, a long-sleeved white shirt and a nylon windbreaker — the last something that would allow him to hide his big Peacemaker.

  It was just past eight and Hector was drinking orange juice. Mary was savoring a screwdriver. Hector figured the morning chill must be keeping Mary from thoughts of a swim since she was wearing clothes — a baggy sundress and sweater.

  She said, “You’ve read his three books in progress. What did you really think, Hector?” Mary smiled and winked. “This is just between us — what did you really think?”

  It sounded to Hector like his stated opinions to Hem had already been made known to Mary. So he reiterated, “The memoir is brilliant, if mean, and it will further restore his reputation...build on what The Old Man and the Sea has started.”

  She nodded eagerly. “And the other two, the novels?”

  “Both show great promise. When Hem starts to pare back, to cut back toward the bone and bring them down to the length of his first two novels, they’ll strengthen, maybe become brilliant. Hem always writes a good deal more than he uses. I read The Sun and Farewell in their original drafts. I know how he works.”

  Mary shook loose a cigarette and Hector leaned over with his Zippo to light it. She took his hand to hold the lighter where she wanted it. Puffing away, she said from the side of her mouth, “The memoir is drawing on notebooks from the old days that Hem found a short time back. Some are fragments cut from The Sun — evidently from some version you never saw. Because he won’t show me the old notebooks, only Ernest knows how much of the Paris book is writing or rewriting. The new novels are a mess.”

  Hector said nothing.

  “When the self-destructive son of a bitch finally takes himself down, it’ll fall to me to whip those in shape,” Mary said. “Probably the Paris book, too. Hem won’t finish ’em, mark my words. He’ll leave that for me. And the other books he’s left? Well, it’s a big job ahead of me.”

  Hector sensed he was frowning. He covered his mouth by hoisting his glass of orange juice. The notion of someone like Mary presuming to edit Hem horrified Hector. The expected thing when it came to editing a major author’s posthuma was to trust the task to the author’s best scholar, or critic. The man for the job, in Hector’s estimation, was Edmund Wilson. Edmund was Hem’s best and most astute critic. And he was one of the few critics that Hem — the über hater of all critics — held in any regard.

  Then a voice suddenly bellowed from inside the house, “You goddamn well did bump my head! I don’t like my head touched! Fucking do it again and I’ll blow your fucking head off. Now get your ass out of here and dust later. I’m fucking trying to write.”

  “That’s what life with Papa has become,” Mary said. “That’s the Ernest most of us get now, dawn to dusk. Paranoid and mean. That poor little bitch Consuelo must have touched his hair...what’s left of it. I should go talk to her. Calm her down.” But Mary made no move to do that. Borrowing Hem’s nickname for Hector, she said, “You know, Lasso—”

  Mary stopped, staring at her suddenly broken juice glass, its jagged-edged bottom still tumbling to the ground. Orange juice and vodka was pouring out of the broken glass and onto her lap.

  Hector was stung by something that just nicked his cheek. Hector saw splinters of wood falling from the wooden pillar about a foot from his face. He screamed, “Hem, we’ve got a shooter!”

  He threw down his own drink and cigarette and grabbed Mary’s rocking chair, pulling it over onto its side, rolling Mary to the ground and sprawling half atop her. The juice pitcher exploded on the table above them, peppering Hector’s face and hair with glass and orange juice.

  Brushing glass from her bleach blond hair, Mary said, “What fucking maniac...?!” Trying to stand up, she said, “Castro! I bet it’s those chickenshit Castroties.”

  Hector had never heard the Cuban revolutionaries called that.

  He said, “Stay the hell down, sweetheart.” Then, his knees cracking, he struggled up onto his feet and said again, “Just stay down there, Mary.” Hector pushed aside a big fern and vaulted off the patio and began running down the hill, thick with overgrowth, drawing his Colt, running in the direction he guessed the shot must have been fired from.

  Whoever the shooter was, Hector seemed to be gaining. Then Hector tripped, tumbling down the sudden-steepening hill, slamming into the wall that bounded Hem’s property. From the other side of the wall, Hector heard a car door slam and an engine fire...tires squeal.

  Then Hector heard someone else coming down the hill from which he had just fallen. Hem emerged through the shrubs and ferns, barechested and clutching a Mauser rifle. Hem said, “Did you see him? Did you see the car, Lasso?”

  Hector struggled up and holstered his Colt. “No, dammit.”

  “So we’ve got nothing.”

  Hector
was squinting at the ground, still wet from the overnight dew. There were footprints in the mud — heading up the hill toward the Hemingways’ swimming pool.

  Looking at the footprints, Hem, the hunter, said, “Still not much.”

  “Check out the right foot,” Hector said. “Sucker is twisted out at nearly a right angle to the left foot. Not club-footed ... worse than that. A badly set leg from a break, maybe.”

  Hem grunted. “Yeah. So he’s a limber gimp. What’s that get us?”

  “An identification,” Hector said. “This is all we need. I need to borrow your car.”

  “Where are we going, Lasso?”

  “The Floridita, to ask about a custodian — a man I saw there and who I think I saw in the crowd that morning your cat was killed.”

  “Surrealism is merely the reflection of the death process. It is one of the manifestations of a life becoming extinct, a virus which quickens the inevitable end.”— Henry Miller

  “PURSUIT AS HAPPINESS”

  45

  “He’s been with us, oh, two weeks at most, Papa.” The bartender handed Hem one of his daiquiris à la Papa.

  Hector said, “This fella who cleans for you, what handle did he give you?”

  The dapper Cuban blinked a few times, handing Hector an unasked for daiquiri à la Papa. He said, “Handle?”

  “Name,” Hector said. He warily sipped his drink. It was not to his taste at all. It struck Hector as a woman’s drink — though the kind of woman’s drink that might sneak up on you, particularly with that double dose of rum.

  “He said his name was Ernesto,” the bartender said. “The name he gave was Ernesto Lassiter.”

  Hem snorted. “Least our quarry has a sense of humor.”

  “Yeah, and he’s laughing at us,” Hector said. He said to the Cuban man, “He seems badly injured, this ‘Ernesto.’”

  “From the war,” the bartender said. “From Hürtgenwald he said, where he was blown up and badly burned. His face and hands are very scarred. He’s missing an ear that was burned off. His hair grows in patches on one side, around the scar tissue. He’s quite disfigured. Quite ugly.”

  Hem had been at Hürgenwald. Hector said, “An address — how do you reach him?”

  “He merely shows up.”

  “How’s he know when to come?”

  “He comes each morning. Late morning, perhaps after ten. He comes in again about seven in the evening.”

  Hector turned to Hem, “That cover your usual drinking hours here?”

  Hem shifted uncomfortably. “Roughly.”

  “This ‘Ernesto,’ he show up for his shift this morning?”

  “No, he did not,” the bartender said. “The first morning he has missed since he started two weeks ago.” Two weeks. That would have been shortly after Leonard Lyon’s column appeared advertising Hector’s trip to Cuba to visit Hem. “Perhaps tonight he will show up.”

  “We’ll be around to see,” Hem said. “Don’t tell him we were asking after him. Don’t tell anyone, okay, Norberto?”

  “Sí, Papa.”

  Hector watched Hem as he drank his namesake daiquiri then eyed Hector’s nearly untouched drink. “A shame to waste,” Hem said.

  “Kill if off, old pal,” Hector said, pushing the glass toward Hem. He watched Ernest watching two men at the back of the bar. They were obviously American. One was about fifty. Hector guessed the other might be about twenty-eight. Probably father and son.

  His eyes narrowing, Hem said loudly, “No, I’m driving — better call it quits.”

  Hector followed Hem out of the Floridita. Someone in an old Buick honked and yelled, “Hola, Papa!” Hem waved absently back at them. He said, “Did you see them there at the back of the Floridita, Hector?”

  Hector reached for his pack of cigarettes. “The older guy and the younger one? Sure, Hem, tourists.”

  “Fucking FBI,” Hem growled.

  The hairs stood up on the back of Hector’s neck. Hem’s eyes were hard and crazed looking. It had come over him all at once.

  “A father and son,” Hector said. “That’s all they were. At worst some chicken hawk and his ‘boy.’”

  “FBI,” Hem insisted. “I can spot ’em every time. Trying to get me on taxes, or for Spain. For trying to get crazy old Ezra out of the bughouse, and the like. They’d love to catch me on a drunk driving charge — make me look like a rummy. Like a Faulkner.”

  “Tourists,” Hector said, again, gently. “Some father who probably thought it would be a kick to bring his son down to sinful Cuba for a last blast. Probably hopped a dayboat from Miami or Key West and they came down here to old Havana hoping to see one of Castro’s guerillas. Maybe share some cute little Cuban whore...find themselves some gachis.”

  “FBI.”

  Hector didn’t want to waste breath or risk a fight. He said, unconvinced, “Maybe. Guess old J. Edgar might be wising up to the fact he shouldn’t dress his minions in matching blue suits and give them all the same haircut.”

  “FBI,” Hem said again. He suddenly smiled and then slapped Hector’s back. “So what’s the plan, MacDuff? We sit out here tonight and wait out this boy?”

  “Not in your pretty red Chrysler, no, Hem. And I don’t discount he’s watching us, maybe right now.”

  “‘He’? You think he’s operating alone?”

  “Could be a ‘she’ in the mix,” Hector said. “Could be more than one. But as ugly as this bastard sounds, I’d doubt it — doubt there’s a woman at work, too.”

  “I think I know who this bastard is.”

  “I have a thought on that, too, Hem.”

  “Want to elaborate, Lasso, or do I have to drag it out of you?”

  “I ain’t sharin’ yet. Don’t want to look like an idiot if I’m wrong.”

  Hem shook his head. “We both know who it is — it’s fucking Windly. We should have checked the body that night in Madrid...should have shoved the last grenade up his ass.”

  ***

  Hem called back to the Finca to make sure that Mary was okay. A couple of Hem’s stooges were standing sentry. Hector could hear Mary’s end of the exchange as Hem held the phone away from his ear, screaming into it...like he thought he had to push his voice across the distance.

  Mary said, “What is this nonsense, Ernest! This old friend of yours, this Lassiter, he seems crazy as you...seeing enemies everywhere. It was probably just some kid screwing around — some wingshooter who got reckless, Papa.”

  Hector frowned and Hem made a face and said, “Hey Pickle, fuck you and your slut Gellhorn mouth!” He slammed down the phone. Hem said to Hector, “About now, I’m thinking you’re thinking twice about having pushed Mary to the ground after that first shot. Now she thinks we’re both decompuesto.”

  “We’ll explain it to her later. I’ll make her see how it was,” Hector said.

  “She thinks I’m buggy, like Ezra,” Ernest said. “She’s trying to railroad me into the crazy house. Keeps pushing at me to go to the Menninger Clinic. She blames all my concussions. Says I can’t distinguish between reality and fantasy. She says I can’t write anymore.”

  Hector said, “She says that?” Hector figured Mary for a destructive, hardhearted bitch, but that last was beyond the pale. He said again, “Mary says that to you?”

  “Sure,” Hem said. “She says I only write myself now. And she’s always quoting Edmund Wilson back to me — about how I’m my own worst character.”

  Hector said, “Man once said, ‘Be careful what you dream: soon your dreams will be dreaming you.’”

  “You agree with Mary?” A real edge there in Hem’s voice.

  “No,” Hector said firmly. “I don’t. I’ve read your Paris sketches. And I read Across the River and into The Trees. When I read that one, I read the novel you wrote, not the novel the critics tried to make it. I saw what you did with Cantwell...your portrait in self-contempt. I admire what you did.”

  “I hear stories about you, Lasso. Even during the 1940s, I he
ard ’em...and about your wife and little girl a few years back. I’ve heard dark things. The distance between you and your own books ain’t all that great either, and never has been, but in the past three or four years, particularly, I hear that there’s no distance at all. Sounds to me like your dreams are dreaming you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Very surreal,” Hem said.

  Hector said, “You were around in the thirties. You saw what happened in Key West and in Spain. Like that hurricane in ’35, and Rachel Harper and those murders. Trouble finds me.”

  “Chicken and egg stuff,” Hem said. “Your dreams are dreaming you. Or both of us, now. Either way, guess we’re just fucked. Like Yeats said, we’re old men now, ‘fastened to a dying animal.’”

  “Maybe,” Hector said. “But I’m not prepared to check out just yet. At least not until we put this murderous bastard down first.”

  “You think it’s Windly, too?”

  “Sure,” Hector said.

  “Well one thing’s sure,” Hem said. “This cloak and dagger stuff that ‘finds’ you sure beats all hell out of writing.”

  “Surrealism in painting amounted to little more than the contents of a meagerly stocked dream world: a few witty fantasies, mostly wet dreams and agoraphobic nightmares.”— Susan Sontag

  THE HUNTERS

  46

  They passed the day into evening roaming Havana, visiting old haunts and taking drinks in bars they had shut down as young hell-raisers. As they moved from one watering hole to the next, Hector began to rue the fact that so many bars insisted upon hanging mirrors. He liked to think of himself as he saw himself in his own dreams — as a perpetual thirty-five. The man in the mirrors of the bars of old Havana had brindle hair and deep lines around his eyes and mouth. Not a welcoming sight. And Hem — Hector never once saw Hem look in a mirror. Hem tended to stare into his cups.