Now they were sitting in a café across from the Floridita, drinking strong Cuban coffee and watching the bar.
A black and white, 1959 Chevrolet convertible rolled to a stop a block from the Floridita, across the street from where Hector and Hem watched from the café.
A man struggled out of the new-model Chevy. The man had a humped back and his right leg was twisted out at a severe angle. The man didn’t use a cane and he actually seemed to move with some speed once he was out of the car. Hector guessed that shouldn’t surprise him too much: the shooter had escaped Hector down that steep hill at the Finca, after all. The shooter had clambered over the wall bounding Hem’s property. The man had graying-blond hair and would probably have been tall if his backbone wasn’t so twisted.
“We get him now,” Hem said, “right?”
“Not yet. We settle up, get your car and move it around where we can see his car...follow him after he’s done mopping up and probably asking Norberto about you.”
***
An hour later, they were sitting outside an apartment building in northern Havana.
“Upscale,” Hem said. “Wind could afford it.”
“Hi-tone,” Hector agreed.
“We confront him inside?”
Hector shook his head. “No, I’d like to get a look at his digs, first. There’s a bar right there. You should go in and phone the Floridita, Hem. If you can trust your friend the bartender, Norberto, you should see if this character made inquiries after you, or after us.”
While he waited, Hector smoked two Pall Malls, tapping the ashes out the open window into the street. A couple of Cuban kids begged Hector for money — for American coins. Hector paid them to move them along.
Hem leaned in through the open passenger’s side window. “Norberto said our friend left a phone number where he can be reached. He asked he be called next time I show up at the Floridita. Something about getting a copy of The Old Man signed for a sick nephew.”
“Touching,” Hector said. “Have Norberto make that call,” Hector said. “Won’t give us much time, but it’ll have to do. When our boy gets to the Floridita, Norberto should shrug and say we pushed on. You give Norberto the name of some specific other bar, at some distance from the Floridita and here, ideally. Buy us some more time. While you do that, I’m going to move your Chevy out of sight. I’ll meet you in the bar. Don’t leave there until I come for you, Hem.”
***
Hector and Hem crossed the street to their stalker’s apartment building. Hector was struck again by how much smaller Hem seemed now. Hem said, “How do we know which apartment to search?”
Hector winked. “While you made your phone calls, I watched lights go on and off inside this flophouse. I’m banking on the third floor, southwestern corner. Lights came on in that pad shortly after our buddy entered the building, and went off shortly before he left.”
“How do we get in to that apartment, Lasso?”
Hector smiled and held up the thin leather case with lockpicks. “Always be prepared,” he said. “You know, like a good Boy Scout.”
“I never got past Weblo level,” Hem said.
“Hell,” said Hector, “I didn’t even get that far.”
“Surrealism can only deliver a reactionary judgment; can make out of history only an accumulation of oddities, a joke, a death trip.”— Susan Sontag
ÚLTIMO
47
Hector stopped fiddling with the lock long enough to pull on his glasses. He shrugged and said, “I told you, Hem, it’s come to this...blind as a bat without ’em.” He began juggling the pick again and the lock finally popped.
“Just like your books,” Hem said. Hector wished Ernest would give that one a rest.
The apartment was neutral; anonymous. There was an old sofa and a couple of matching chairs. A tube-radio the size of a small icebox. Stuff that probably came with the place.
Hector checked the bathroom. He found no pill bottles with useful names on the prescription labels. A couple of tortoise-shell brushes lay on the sink. They were monogrammed: QW. Their theory was holding, but it didn’t make it any less disquieting for Hector.
Hem had drifted into the bedroom. It had been quiet for a while. He called out suddenly, “Jesus Christ! Goddamit, I knew I should have shot the cocksucker back in Spain.”
Hector followed Hem’s rants to the bedroom. It was another anonymous room: a bureau, a couple of sidetables on either side of a Marlowe bed with a chenille coverlet. An undistinguished painting of Havana’s skyline hung above the bed.
Hem was sorting books: some bullfighting manuals, a copy of The Old Man and the Sea and a Badekers of Cuba. He handed those volumes to Hector. Hem held up a leatherbound journal, again bearing the initials QW.
Hector said, “So it is Quentin Windly.”
Hector tossed the other books on the bed.
“So we wait for him, is that it, Lasso?”
“Huh-uh. Get on that phone there by the bed, Hem. There should still be time to call that bar we sent him to from the Floridita. Doubt Windly’s reached it yet. Have the bartender at that second bar tell Windly we left there, as well. Have him say that we were drunk as hell and talking of going back to the Finca for a swim to sober up.”
“Make us sound like sitting ducks, eh?” Hem smiled. “This time we shoot that cocksucker. We see the body. I shoot that son of a bitch.”
Hector wasn’t about to let that happen. But he said, “Hurry: you make that call. And toss me that journal.”
“We’re taking it?”
“We are. I think we are decided on what happens next. If all goes according to plan, Quentin won’t be coming back here, ever. He won’t be needing this.” Hector held up the journal.
“Oh, we’re agreed,” Hem said.
“Then make that phone call.”
***
Hector drove fast back to the Finca, following Hem’s directions. Hector took it as another ominous sign of Hem’s deterioration that he’d been permitted to drive. Hem’s night vision had evidently declined to the point that Ernest couldn’t bluster through it...Hem seemingly feared his own weakness behind the wheel.
As they approached the Finca, Hector saw Quentin’s Chevy sitting across the street from Hem’s front gate.
“Pretty brazen of him...pretty reckless,” Hem said.
“Quentin doesn’t know we know who he is, or what he drives,” Hector reminded him. “I just can’t believe he got here first.”
“I know,” Hem said, voice thin. “God, poor Mary. I may have gotten her killed doing this.”
Hector didn’t tell Hem that he had seen the driver of the Chevy duck down as they approached. Let Hem be afraid and protective of Mary, Hector thought. It would keep Hem out of the way and safely from the mouth of Windly...give Hector time to put him down first.
Shifting into park, Hector said, “I’ll get out and open the gate. You take the wheel and drive through. I’ll close the gate behind you, then I’ll open and close the passenger door again — make him think I back got into the car. Then you drive on up to the house and I’ll make my way up the hill on foot.”
Hem licked his lips, nodding. “Squeeze him, you mean?”
“That’s the plan I have.”
Hem smiled. “Good. I’d feel better having a gun when I get up there, though. What about you, Lasso, you carrying your Colt?”
Hector smiled and said, “Yeah. And I put a back up under your seat. Military issue .45 with extra clips.”
Hem beamed.
Hector opened the gate and Hem drove through. Hector locked the gate and trotted around the front of the red Chrysler. He opened the passenger side door then slammed it loudly. “See you up top,” he said softly through the opened window, then slid off into the overgrown brush.
As Hem drove up to the Finca, Hector watched Windly’s black and white Chevy through the bars of the gate.
Quentin struggled out of the car, bent over...running like some wounded crab over to the wa
ll. Hector crept along the interior side of the wall, crouched down and gun out, waiting for Quentin to drop over the wall.
Hector was determined to keep it short — no chitchat...no chance for Quentin to tip Hem to any of the facts surrounding those old murders and Rachel/Alva.
Two feet, one of them twisted out at an angle, were dangling over the wall — Quentin was sitting on the wall, preparing to drop down.
The crime writer shoved his Peacemaker into the waistband of his pants and grabbed both of the critic’s legs, just above the ankles. He jerked hard, then stepped out of the way, again.
Quentin landed on his face. Hector pulled the critic’s coat down over his hump and around his arms, constricting his movement, then picked up the rifle the critic had been carrying — a Heckler & Koch with a now-damaged scope. Hector slammed the butt of the H&K against the wall, breaking its stock, then tossed the ruined rifle off into the undergrowth. He drew his own Colt.
Hector stomped hard on Quentin’s right kidney, and said, “That’s for denouncing me in Spain for a murderer, you son of a bitch. You nearly got me killed before I tried to kill you.” Hector got down and pressed one knee to the small of Quentin’s back. He pressed his Colt’s barrel to the back of Quentin’s head.
“Just do it, Lassiter,” Quentin snarled.
“Sure. We have nothing left to say to one another.”
“No,” Quentin said. “You and Hem picked the wrong killer, that’s all. You missed the fact that Rachel, then ‘Alva,’ was the real killer. That crazy, bloodthirsty bitch. Or she was.”
Hector got in close. “Why the past tense?”
“I got to know those people over the past few years,” Quentin said. “Those surrealists — I got inside their circle in Europe after the war. After they all left the states to duck the HUAC subpoenas and warrants you helped bring against them.”
“Birds of a feather...” Hector said.
“I pierced the inner circle. There are two women it all revolves around, now. Name of Marshall. They’re coming for you, too. Some others. They have long memories, Lassiter. I tipped them to Rachel...let them know that she was really this ‘Alva’ whose paintings they all covet. I figured all that out back in Spain, while you two had me down there on my back, getting ready to blow me up. To do this to me.” Hector guessed he meant his injuries...his burns. Hector could really only see the left side of Quentin’s face, and he’d be hard pressed to recognize anything of Quentin other than his eyes. “You ever feel bad about that, even for a moment, Lasso? Blowing up an innocent man?”
“I’ve learned to cope,” Hector said.
“Stop talking like one of your goddamn hard-case heroes,” Quentin said. “Jesus, look at it like a normal human being just once. You two dragged me out for something I didn’t do, and you tried to murder me. Jesus.”
“You denounced me as a murderer to the Spanish secret police,” Hector said. “Given the possible consequences to me, that alone justified killing you.”
“Well I’m taking some back,” Quentin said. “They’re all hunting this Rachel, or Alva, or Rhonda or whatever she calls herself, now. They’ll find her...probably already have. And they’re going to kill you, too. They’re patient, and committed.”
“Me too,” Hector said. “You’re the one who killed these three women in Cuba — made it look like those other killings back in the Keys and Spain?”
“I had to get your attention, make you think Rachel was back at work. Did it as a lure, because I wanted you to die with Ernest — wanted you two to die together, like you tried to kill me together.”
“You enjoy it? Killing those women...cutting them up. Was it a sexy kick?”
“It was terrible.”
“But you did it anyway, ‘innocent man.’ You became what Hem and me thought we beheld in you in ’35 and ’37. It’s a terrible thing, to be tangled up in the creativity of another, isn’t it?”
Hector heard rustling behind them. It was Hem, making his way down the hill. Hector couldn’t risk Quentin maybe calling out, so he kicked Windly again, hard and in both kidneys. He kicked him in the stomach. The critic curled up in a ball. Hector kicked him once more in the crotch, robbing Quentin of all wind. “That’s for killing those women,” Hector said, loudly, so Hem could hear, “and for killing Hem’s cat!”
Hem finally reached them.
Hector almost shot Windly then — before the critic could maybe say something...something about Rachel or Alva that would tip Hem to the mistake that he and Hector had made so many years ago when they had wrongly judged and tried to execute Quentin the first time.
“Fucking Windly,” Hem said, panting. “Fucking lousy kraut grenades. I knew I should have shot this son of a bitch all those years ago in Spain. Should have shot him when I had the chance.” Hem was holding his arm, massaging his forearm. “Tripped and lost my goddamn gun,” he said. Hector winced: back in the day, Hem would never have fallen, and even if he had, he would never have lost his gun.
Quentin was up on his knees, still panting and clutching his stomach and between his legs. Hector was standing behind the critic, his antique Colt pointed at the back of the disfigured critic’s head, just below his mutilated ear.
Hem said suddenly, “Pass me that goddamned gun of yours, Hector.”
“No way,” Hector said. “I’ll do this. His finger twitched at the trigger of the old Peacemaker.
“Give me the damn Colt,” Hem said. “Dame aca, con que a los mios los mato yo.”
As Hector started to say, “What was that?” Hem suddenly tried to twist the old Colt from Hector’s hand. “I said give it to me, damn it, I kill my own,” Hem said. Hector was almost depressed at how easily he staved off Hem’s attempt to take the gun. Hector shifted the Colt to his left hand and fired twice.
The critic tumbled to the ground.
Hem crossed himself and gestured at the old Colt.
Hem said, “Blessed are the Peacemakers.”
“I believe in the future resolution of...dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality.”— André Breton
RECESSIONAL
48
“You should come to Spain with us,” Hem said, “or meet us there along the way. It’ll be just like old days, Lasso.”
Hector smiled and shook his head.
It might be a lot of things, but it would never be like old days.
It was obvious to Hector that Hem was dedicated to chasing memories straight into his unquiet grave. Hem had done it with Italy in the run up to the writing of and aftermath of Across the River and Into the Trees. Hem was doing it presently with his Paris memoir.
And Spain? Hem was chasing the ghosts of the time of The Sun Also Rises and Death in the Afternoon.
And Hector and Hem couldn’t maintain the pace of their 26-year-old selves, though it was clear to Hector that Hem aimed to try and do just that.
“Too much to do,” Hector said, trying hard to sound regretful. “There’s the other thing, too: Franco is still north of the dirt. He might decide to exercise that still-standing death warrant against me. Maybe I’ll catch up with you in Idaho. Always liked that part of the country. We’ll murder some bottles of Rioja Alta in the Ram.”
They hugged and Hem said, “It was good we did this. Good that we leave it like this.”
“Yeah.” Hector started up the gangplank, then he turned and yelled back, “Hemingstein! One true sentence: ‘A best friend—’”
Hem chewed his lip and said, “‘—one day stands alone.’”
Hector boarded the plane, found his seat, then stared out at the old, white-haired man with the big beard waving at him. It was the last time he saw Ernest.
***
Hector was sitting in the lounge of the Miami airport. Someone slapped Hector on the back. Agent Edmond Tilly took up a chair across from Hector. The crime writer smiled and said, “Jesus, when did you get to be so old, G-Man?”
“Going to retire at
the end of this year,” Tilly said. “How about you, Hector?”
“Writers never retire.”
“You don’t have much time, so let’s get down to cases.” Tilly plunked a wire recorder down on the table between them. “What are your thoughts on Cuba and the state of things down there? And please, keep it clean — this tape goes straight to the director and to Ike.”
Hector shook his head. “In that order?”
***
The wire-recorder had been turned off. Agent Tilly drained his drink and Hector said, “Your boys still watching Hemingway?”
“Sure,” Tilly said. “He’s one of the director’s obsessions. Hemingway’s made a lot of cracks about the agency over the years, and about her agents. Papa seems to delight in tweaking Mr. Hoover.”
“People around him increasingly think Hem’s crazy because he says your folks are watching him all the time. Can’t you do something to pull them off Hem? He’s harmless. Hem’s in steep decline. He should be given quarter.”
“Mr. Hoover will never let it go,” Tilly said. Hector rose with the agent and they began walking back through the terminal.
Hector said, “How’s Agent Kenneth Brown, doing, by the way? He recover from his injuries in’57?”
“He’s doing pretty well,” Tilly said. “And he strongly warned me away from any field action with you.” Tilly paused as they reached the restrooms. “Gotta hit the head first. Damned enlarged prostate. Wait for me, yeah? I’ll walk you to your plane.”
Hector found a payphone and called his answering service while he waited for Agent Tilly. He had a few messages from various directors offering screenwriting opportunities...Sam Ford...Hitchcock again. Hitch had some project in mind about a noted crime writer suspected of killing his own wife. Fuck that.
There was an urgent call from his Key West property manager. Hector scribbled down the number and called. Probably the old house had finally gotten termites...maybe burned down.
“So sorry, Mr. Lassiter,” the property manager said, “but the party currently leasing your Key West home was adamant that you’d be furious if I didn’t get word to you about her being there.”’
Toros & Torsos (The Hector Lassiter Series) Page 31
