Head Games (The Hector Lassiter Series) (2 page)
I grinned, waiting to see what would happen next.
Orson exploded in laughter. He slapped his fat thigh and rumbled, "Ah, by Christ, I do so love that bastard. I can't imagine him dead. I'd like to see Hem again. To drink with him. I'd so love to drink with both of you --- the three of us together a last time --- me and you bastards dear."
Me too, maybe. But it wasn't apt to happen in this lifetime.
Bud started pressing Welles for more details.
The crew was setting up Orson's next shot outside, so color Welles expansive --- no pun intended. Welles had time on his hands and an attentive audience taking down every damned word ... it all added up to some kind of bliss for Orson, I figured.
I left Welles to his accidental interview and staggered out into the balmy Venice night, clutching the decanter of brandy.
I followed the scent of seawater to the ocean and found the beach.
There was something shimmering and white out there. I walked out onto Orson's truncated, faux bridge --- little more than a jetty with rails, really --- angling to get a better look.
The effort was worth it. It was one of the extras, a pretty Mexican girl, swimming in her white bra and panties in the moonlight.
I watched her for a while.
Absent-mindedly, I shook out a Pall Mall and lit it up.
The swimmer must have seen the flare from my Zippo. She immediately sank low, feet first, arms crossing over her breasts. She glared at me with the dark-eyed echo of my dead wife's and dead daughter's black Spanish eyes, long raven hair, now plastered to dusky skin. I muttered, "
Pérdon,"
and turned my back to her, ass to the rail.
A few minutes later, she was standing beside me, her blue gingham dress clinging to wet curves. "That was not very nice," she said.
"I'm perhaps not a very nice man." I smiled. "But tonight I wish that I was." I offered her the decanter of brandy and she sniffed at it and then sipped from it.
She eyed my cigarette. I shook one loose, put it in my mouth and did my one-handed Zippo trick, holding my own cigarette in my left hand. I pocketed the Zippo and took the cigarette from my mouth, gently placing it between her ruby pillow lips. She arched an eyebrow. "You are Héctor Lassiter, yes?"
It wasn't really a question. I nodded.
"I recognize you from the photographs on the backs of your books." My new friend shrugged. "And I've heard much about you from Miss Dietrich. She has been waiting for you. You'll follow me, yes?"
Forever, yes
.
I followed the pretty, dark-haired girl back across the beach, back across the movie set, down an alley to a trailer. I would have followed her to Galveston if she had led the way. I said, "What are you to the Kraut? Are you an assistant, maybe? Understudy, perhaps? Or something else?" I let that last hang there. Marlene, famously, wasn't one to limit her options in bed.
The girl smiled and knocked on the trailer door and stepped aside. "It was so nice to meet you, Mr. Lassiter." I gently squeezed the Mexican girl's arm. I said, "You got a name, hon'?"
She smiled and shrugged: "It is not important."
"Not true. It is very important to me."
She smiled and slipped from my grip. "So nice of you to say so."
I watched her sway away ... this unnamed beauty. Her head was tipped back to feel the breeze across her long neck. She was smoking the cigarette I'd given her. I took a last swig of brandy and tossed the empty decanter under the trailer.
The trailer door opened a crack --- opened with a squeak. This dark face with chiseled cheekbones was peering at me; disarmingly dark hair and burning eyes. Marlene turned her head a bit; considered me through the cracked door.
I was taken aback by her hesitation. It had been a few years, granted. We hadn't crossed paths since Paris, during the liberation, staying in touch by phone. It had been a few miles and a few too many drinks, maybe. But, Jesus Christ, had I truly slid that much? I said, "Christ, Kraut, don't you know me? I'm Hector Lassiter."
Marlene Dietrich smiled. She feinted a playful swing at my chin. She held her thumbs just like Papa had taught her to so she wouldn't break them on impact. Gutturally, she said, "Ah, Hec, you look like hell, sweetheart."
We sat on the steps of her trailer, passing back and forth a bottle of Spanish red wine --- it was too sweltering to go inside.
I took a swig, then handed the bottle back to her. "I may look like 'hell,' but you look stunning, Mar."
Marlene smiled and sipped the wine.
In vino veritas
:
She said, "You're a mess, honey. But you've had a wicked year. I'm so sorry ... so very very sorry ... for your ... for your loss. I know what Dolores meant to you." Dolores ... my daughter. The Kraut was right. So many months since I've heard my daughter's name spoken aloud, but my little girl had become my world in the too-short time that she was alive. Marlene sent my baby girl stuffed animals and music boxes. I could feel my composure slipping.
I took the bottle from Marlene's dyed hand and drank deeply of the wine. I smelled something from her trailer. I checked my Timex. "Christ, Kraut, you been cooking something this late?"
"Perhaps." She smiled and stroked my cheek. "How are you doing Hec? Really?"
"Surviving. Writing. Drinking. Certainly there's been too much drinking. And not enough writing. Just trying to keep myself interested. You know me --- you embrace whatever keeps you in the game."
"You sound like Papa. 'First one must endure.'" Her mentioning Hem like that...I knew it was a set-up for the resumption of a twenty-year refrain:
Patch it up with Hem, please
.
I remembered a line Hemingway wrote Marlene in a letter. She told me she'd adopted Hemingway's casual aside as a personal philosophy. I repeated it to her: "The trick is not to 'confuse movement for action.' That said, Hem's going to have to call me, darling. He owes me the apology, you know."
Marlene reached into her pocket. She pulled out this little dark thin cigar. I fired her up with my Zippo. "My God," she said, "you two are like warring brothers. And about equally star-crossed. And maybe equally doomed. You should call Papa, Hector. Fix it, please, before it's too late for both of you."
"My God, darling, when did you become a fatalist?" Welles' script rewrite made it clear: Dietrich's madam was also a fortune-teller. I Bogied my cigarette and extended my right palm. "Wanna read my fortune, Kraut?"
Marlene searched my failing blue eyes. Her eyes glistened. She blew two perfect smoke rings and smiled sadly. "I'm not sure how much future you have left, Hector. I think maybe you've already spent your future, my love."
I heard something on the other side of the trailer. I put my finger to my lips and then ducked down. I searched the darkness on the other side of her trailer. Two legs and some kind of a stick were silhouetted over there. I crouched down and rolled all the way under Marlene's trailer.
I tucked my arms around the back of the spy's knees and heard this rumbling, "Shit!"
Then this mountain fell on me.
The mountain was followed by a pen and a notepad that smacked me in the face.
It was fucking Welles, spying on us --- actually taking notes. I couldn't get my big hands around his bigger neck, but I was sure trying too. Orson's nails scratched the backs of my hands, drawing blood. Marlene had her arms around me, pulling at me. "Stop it, Hector. Stop it you two!"
Welles had his hands up in surrender, smiling crookedly and laughing at me.
My fucking ribs
hurt
. It felt like the enormous bastard might have cracked a couple falling on me. I struggled up with Marlene's help, one arm wrapped around my ribs. "You cocksucker!" I kicked Orson once ... and couldn't tell if I hit fat or special-effect's padding. So I kicked him again. But to no discernible effect.
"You and me," I said to Welles, "we're through." I walked as Marlene stooped to help Orson to his feet. The Kraut and a forklift might get the job done.
I heard Orson's resonant grumble at my back: "That bastard. Who does Lassiter think he is? That fucking degenerate drunk and wife killer! You hear me Lassiter? Who do you think you are? I'm Orson Welles!"
He screamed this last at my back.
I heard Marlene say to Welles, "Stop it you fool. What does it matter what you say about him? He's a man ... that's all."
I was limping down the thirsty canals of Venice when this arm slipped through mine. The Mexican girl who favored near-naked moonlight swims smiled, then sighed as she saw the bloodied backs of my hands. "Come with me," she said. "I'll clean and bandage those for you."
I obediently let myself be led along. I muttered, "Guess you saw all that."
"I saw the fat pig spying. And what happened after, yes."
I smiled and shook my head. "Because you were spying, too. Yes?"
She smiled back ... and I was a goner. She said, "Just so."
She led me to her modest room located a couple of blocks from the movie set. I asked, "You live here?"
"Just for now ... while we film. I'm an extra. And assistant to Miss Dietrich." The Mexican girl smiled and arched a black eyebrow. "And that title --- 'assistant,' I mean --- is all that I am to her," she said.
Well, well
. "I'm so glad," I said. I lowered myself gingerly onto her couch, my ribs burning.
The girl returned with a bottle of Merthiolate. She used the little glass wand bound to the rubber-stopper lid to slather the red, stinging medication on the fingernail scratches furrowed across the backs of both of my mangled mitts.
"I still don't know your name, sweetheart."
She pressed the adhesive bandages in place and then helped me off with my jacket
. "Me llamo
Alicia Vicente."
I let that roll around my mouth: "Alicia. Lovely name." She unbuttoned my shirt and put out her hands to help me up. She squeezed my ribs, feeling and probing through my undershirt.
I winced a couple of times as she found the spots that hurt most. "You a nurse?"
"I've had some training," Alicia said, brushing her black hair back behind her ears. "But my grandmother thought with my looks..."
"
Abuela
was right."
Alicia smiled knowingly. "I don't think they're broken Héctor ... probably only bruised. But if so, they'll hurt almost like they are broken."
"Don't suppose you know anything about diabetes?"
She narrowed her eyes. "Why?"
"My friend thinks I might have it. I thought you could maybe confirm his diagnosis. And I should probably find him. He's bony. If Welles were to fall on poor Bud, well, it would be a slaughter."
Alicia helped me back on with my shirt and jacket. "Other than some of the old
pachucos
Mr. Welles has hired to play thugs, we don't have much fighting on the set. Not 'til you arrived, anyway."
"Unfortunately, it's all too often the way when Héctor is in the room." I smiled as I caught myself pronouncing my name with my new friend's Spanish inflection.
She smiled back. "I will help you look for your friend. And try to keep you out of harm's way."
"Don't get me wrong, but why would you do that?"
"You strike me as a man who needs looking after. Your luck is running dark tonight."
"I met you."
Her shoulders rose and fell. "On balance, your luck is running dark. You need looking after."
"You and my skinny friend are gonna get along great."
Couldn't really go back to the movie set --- didn't want to confront Orson or Marlene again.
Bud was a Midwest boy, so I wagered he was maybe walking the beach, taking in the Pacific by moonlight. Or perhaps he'd found himself one of the Mexican working girls who were camp-following the film crew ... with any luck, he wouldn't get rolled after his roll with her.
Alicia's arm was linked with mine, the creaming waves almost licking our feet. I wasn't
quite
old enough to be her grandfather. But I was within limping distance. I looked at my bandaged hand and muttered, "Christ, I feel like Robert Cantwell."
"I know the book you speak of. I just read it. Miss Dietrich has been forcing copies of Papa's books on me. She thinks maybe I could play Maria in a television production being worked on of
For Whom the Bell Tolls
."
Alicia's thick black hair swung almost to her ass ... her long hair tapering to a point just above her tailbone. "You'd have to cut off all of your hair for that part," I said. "That would be a mortal sin."
My new friend smiled and shook her head. "She's a stupid girl --- Maria in
The Bell
. In the book, you know?"
"I know. I agree."
"Papa cannot write good women," Alicia said. "Not in romance, anyway ... not in the novels. They are almost all daughters and whores. The women in some of his short stories, however, well, they are different."
I couldn't resist: "Ever read my books?" A wicked thing, a writer's vanity.
"A couple. Miss Dietrich has been giving me those, in the past few days, too. You don't write stupid girls like Maria or that countess mooning over old Col. Cantwell. But you do write about a lot of
putas
and scheming women."
"It's pulp fiction sweetheart. I don't do romance." I gave her a good once over and a smile. "Though you ... for you I could give it a try. I'll rechristen you 'Paloma' and we'll call the book
Across the Rio Grande and Into the Cacti
."
She smiled and wrinkled her nose. "That is terrible." She slipped her other arm through my arm, lowering her head and watching our feet. Her black hair cascaded in a veil that covered her face from my view. "Last night, I finished
The Land of Dread and Fear
, Héctor."
My most recent book ... written in a fever dream of guilt and liquor and whoring along
La Frontera
in the weeks following my family's death. I got too cute with it: tried to "subtly" use a love affair between my border agent and an unwed Mexican mother to mask a meditation on U.S. and Mexican relations. Not sure I pulled it off. And the guard ends up alone and old and dying.
Alicia said, "The girl, the young mother in your book? Marita Sánchez? She seemed quite real to me."
I stopped, turned, brushed the glistening black hair back from her face and kissed her forehead. God, the sweet young scent and promise of her. "If I sell the movie option of that book," I said, "I'll make it a contract stipulation that you play Marita. Deal?"
She gave this the smile it deserved --- the book was far too dark. It could never be a movie. "I'll hold you to it," she said with mock gravity. She got my act ... and that made me want her more.
Then the gunfire started.
There was this flare of light from the pier --- sixty, maybe seventy yards away. That distance and the dark were all that saved us from being cut to ribbons by the first volley. I pivoted, getting myself between the shooter and Alicia. Then we ran.
The sand kicked up around our feet as the slugs dug in at the tideline. All that moonlight on silvered water made us silhouettes --- too-easy targets. Running inland though, well, that would take us closer to the shooter --- and off the hardpacked wet sand that was easier to run on.
I checked that distinctive flash flare from the muzzle. It was a Thompson submachine gun. I was sure of it.
I wrapped my right arm around Alicia's shoulders. With my left, I somehow drew my Colt and fired at the machine gun's muzzle flash. The flash jittered --- the shots started going wide of us. I must have actually hit the bastard. But how badly? I shot again at the flare, but it was a long way away and a guess. And my Colt's muzzle flash let the bastard get a better bead on us. A skiff lay abandoned at the tide line. I dragged Alicia with me behind it, then rolled half atop her. I switched gun hands and chanced a look over the boat's hull.
Strange
... the machine gunner was firing straight up and over his head. I almost pitied the bastard when all those slugs come raining back down.
Sudden silence --- no more gunfire.
A familiar voice called, "Hector, you okay out there?"
Bud Fiske
. Bless him! "Shooter's down Hector --- the coast is clear."
I smiled and stood, waving. I brushed off sand and extended my right hand. Alicia took it and I pulled her up to me. I helped her brush sand from her dress ... felt muscled thighs and hips through the thin fabric. Her eyes searched mine. Reluctantly, I said, "We best get up there ... make sure my friend really has it all in hand." I slipped my arm around her waist as we slogged through sand. She wrapped her arm around my waist.
We climbed the steps up to the pier. Bud was standing there, looking like the world's most rickety Texas Ranger in his white hat. He had one wingtip pressed to our attacker's throat and Wade's .45 leveled at the bastard's right eye. "I gotta get you some lizard-skin boots to go with that hat, Bud," I said.
The Tommy gun was laying several yards away. I picked it up to add to our arsenal of liberated weaponry. As I rose with it, my ribs cracked again. I walked back and squatted down next to the shooter, Mex-style --- hams on heels. The shooter had taken a slug in the shoulder. I guessed that that slug was one I had fired. There was blood pooling under him, much lower down. Probably hit in the back. That would have been Bud's shot. Backshooting --- now, that ain't cricket. Not
ever
. But then Bud was not a professional. And he was outgunned. And hell, he saved me and Alicia --- who at that point I was thinking might well be the next Mrs. Lassiter.
There was blood at the corners of the shooter's mouth --- some more running from his nose. Lung shot, probably. He wouldn't linger long like this. The gunner was maybe thirty. High-country Mexican ... some Indian in there. Maybe Tarahumara in the mix. "You got a handle, boy? You speak English?"
"I'm dying."
I nodded. "Probably. Why'd you try to kill me, son? Who are you working for?"
"I need a priest."
Christ
. One of those.
"Not much chance of finding a padre around here at this hour," I said. "But I'm Catholic, too, and I know the words well enough, I guess."
Well, I was a Catholic three-marriages-ago. I looked at Fiske and Alicia. "Anyone got a crucifix?"
Alicia was wearing one around her neck. I handed it to the Mexican who kissed it with his bloodied lips.
"Now," I said, "you tell me who sent you after me, and why, and we'll pray with you."
Not good --- he was fading faster than I expected. I thrust my thumb into his shoulder wound, bringing him back a ways. Between screams he gasped, "Fierro. We were hired by Fierro, to help get
el Jefe's
head."
I kept digging my thumb into his wound: "Fierro? Who is Fierro?" I pressed harder.
He groaned, blood bubbling from his mouth with the garbled words: "Rodolfo ... Rodolfo Fierro ...
el Carnicero
."
The Spanish for "the Butcher."
"You fucking liar!" I ground my thumb in hard then and accidentally passed the bastard out. "Fuck!" Rodolfo Fierro --- a dead legend.
Long dead
. He couldn't be alive...
Alicia, white-faced, was clearly upset by what I'd just done, what I'd just said. She put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed hard. "Did you hear what he said?"
"Pretty clearly I did. You know of Fierro?"
Alicia angrily shook her head. "No, not that, Héctor. He said, '
We
were hired...'"
Oh yeah "we
.
"
And just then, the second machine gun opened up on us.
Bud wrapped an arm around Alicia's trim waist and rolled back around the corner of the loading dock with her --- good thing for them the building was brick because the shooter tracked their path with a flurry of lead. Fragments of brick rained down on me. But my friends were safe. I crouched down behind some boxes filled with something I prayed was thick and hard. I aimed the first shooter's discarded Thompson and fired back at the other machine gun's muzzle flash. I held my thrumming machine gun with one hand. It was murder on my right wrist. With the other bandaged hand, I fished out the keys to my Chevy and lobbed them over my shoulder at Bud --- all that twisting and exertion was almost too much for my Orson Welles'-splintered ribs.
I hollered over the din of the roaring machine gun, "You two go get to my car, and pick me up at the end of the alley. While you do that, I'll keep this bastard busy." Then I remembered fabled Fierro, and said, "Bud, you see any old Mexicans, you shoot 'em. Don't hesitate. God'll sort ' em out on the other end. No shit --- shoot first." I heard four feet beat pavement down the alley. God willing, I'd follow them soon enough.
I squeezed off a couple of bursts then set the Tommy aside. I had no target, and no infinite supply of ammo. My situation wasn't looking anything near the neighborhood of good.
Groaning, I picked up the conked-out, wounded Mexican at my side. I propped him up and then lifted him up from cover and pitched him far and high as I could to the right. My ribs burned as I hurled him up and out.
Several slugs tore through the Mexican and shredded his head and neck. I picked up the machine gun and rolled off to the left of my cover, deep into shadows. I rolled up against a pile of old discarded burlap sacks. I pulled the sacks over me and waited.
The other shooter approached, crouched low, his gun swiveling side-to-side --- a very cautious fellow.
At six feet, I let loose on him, looking just to maim him --- I sorely wanted to debrief the bastard.
But it's a tricky thing, firing for flesh wounds with a machine gun at close range. I hit him, but not squarely enough. Howling, he turned, drawing a bead on me. I had to let him have it then. I went for his upper body, but my would-be assassin lost his footing, dipping a bit. All those slugs I hurled his way decapitated him. There it was --- another head, rolling there on the boardwalk, but much too fresh for our collection. I patted his torso down, trying hard to avoid all the spreading and spraying blood. No wallet and no papers to be found on this fella. Ditto on the first shooter. They were pro enough to leave all the incriminating or useful stuff elsewhere, just in case they were caught or arrested.
They were nasty as hell --- and hot, too, from all the firing --- but I couldn't bear to leave the twin Thompsons. I grabbed 'em up with a couple of drums left by the first shooter. Loaded down with firepower for Bud's and my arsenal, I trotted down the alley.
There were sirens in the distance now. I could hear 'em better as I put some buildings between me and the muted roar of the ocean.
Thank Christ and Bud Fiske. My beautiful blue and white Chevy was sitting there like Trigger, or Rocinante --- or maybe Siete Leguas, Pancho Villa's legendary doomed mare.
Alicia opened the passenger door and slid over to make room. I tossed the Thompsons on the floor of the backseat and swung in, the pretty Mexican girl sandwiched between Bud and me. I smelled her perfume and dark hair, her sweat and fear and vibrancy. She smelled like Mexico.
I told Bud, "Cops are on the way, so drive slow and easy and like we own the place."
He did.
I checked my hands --- they were shaking badly. Alicia took my left hand in hers and squeezed, careful to go easy on the Orson-inflicted cuts across the back of my hand. "You are unhurt?"
"From that particular fray? Yeah."
"And the other men?"
I shrugged and rooted around my sports jacket's pocket for my cigarettes. "
Día de los muertos
time back there, darling. I'm no Tracy Richardson, but I can hit some things with one of those choppers." I jerked my head in the direction of the machine guns in the back seat. "Papa and me used to use them on the
Pilar
to kill sharks."
Two California Highway patrol cruisers whipped past us then, headed to the place we'd left. The cops' cruisers were the same make and model as my own --- '57 Chevrolet Bel Airs --- but black with white doors and roofs, blue sirens screaming.
"We'll let things cool down, then see you get back to the set," I told Alicia.
The wind through the open windows fingered her raven hair. She shrugged. "It wasn't much of a job. You have all those connections with Hollywood; I say you owe me a real film role, Héctor."
"It's a deal, sweetie," I muttered, unlit cigarette dangling from my lips as I looked for my Zippo. "I've got a picture for you in mind," I said, hand still fishing around for my lighter. "Sam Ford's the director. And we're filming in Mexico. He owes me large."
Ah, my old Zippo
. I fired her up and lit my Pall Mall. Soon as it was going, Alicia appropriated the cigarette. I got a second coffin nail going. She took that one from my lips and stuck it in Bud Fiske's mouth. Three's the charm: I got to keep the third one. But the girl took my old Zippo from me. She turned it until the dash light fell just so. She read the engraving aloud:
To Hector Lassiter:
'One true sentence.'
--- E.H.
Key West,
1932
"What does it mean?"
I took my Zippo back. "Something from an ex-friend you've been lately reading. A kind of shared credo. I remember it. Not sure he does anymore." I felt the weight of twin gazes from Bud and Alicia.
Astute Bud went for a change-up. "This Rodolfo Fierro, or '
el Carnicero
' --- what's his story?"
I looked to Alicia. I was curious to see how much she knew of her country's revolutionary history. She exhaled a thin stream of smoke and tipped her head back on the seat. It was very tight up front. I stretched my left arm along the seat's back, fingertips brushing her bare shoulder. The tactile contact
could
be interpreted as an accident. "His story," the Mexican girl said, "is supposed to be over. He is supposed to have died, something, I believe, like forty years ago." She smiled apologetically and it felt like she scooted a bit closer to me. "I don't know the details."
But I did. Legends passed along the dusty, sweltering trails during the Pershing Expedition.
Rodolfo Fierro was Pancho Villa's chief assassin. Fierro is the Spanish for "iron," and Rodolfo was certainly that. He was also a full-fledged psychopath ... a stone cold killer of epic proportions. He was born in El Fuerte, Sinaloa in some unknown year. He was gaunt, cold-eyed and often leering. The diseased fucker favored Stetsons --- a fact that made him more the asshole in my eyes.
After a rout of the enemy at San Andrés, Villa once ended up with several hundred inconvenient prisoners. Supplies were running low and bullets were precious. It was "take no prisoners" time. But there was the vexing issue of those precious bullets. Fierro struck a bloody balance. He arrayed men in rows of three, according to height, best it could be arranged. He made some men squat and made some others stand on tiptoes. He ordered them to embrace one another ... to press bellies to backs. He killed three men with a single shot ... over and over...
Juárez brought another slaughter. It was a similar situation: Several hundred prisoners were being held in a corral. Fierro was feeling "sporting." He had a table set out. He had an array of guns loaded and spread out on that table. Several men stood by him to reload his empties. Fierro told the prisoners any man who cleared the fence at the back of the corral before Fierro could shoot him would go free. At day's end, Fierro's hands were cramped and bloody. He was seen soaking them in a horse trough. No Mexicans had cleared the fence that day. There were high piles of bodies with holes in their backs, left swelling and rotting in the Juárez sun.
At the battle of Tierra Blanca, 1913, Fierro, on horseback, allegedly overtook a Federalist train. He hopped on board and single-handedly killed the entire crew. A railroad man from way back, Fierro stopped the train --- and earned a heady field promotion from Pancho Villa.
But even
el Carnicero's
luck couldn't hold. His alleged end was almost too poetic to be accepted as true.
Autumn, 1915: one of Pancho Villa's lieutenants, Tomás Urbina, something like a bastard brother to Pancho, stole a cache Villa's gold and silver --- the treasure whose location was allegedly recorded on a map hidden in Pancho's severed head.
Villa and company rode out to confront Urbina and company. Villa got sentimental and weepy --- for a time. Suddenly, always-mercurial Villa turned on a dime. Pancho said, "Shoot him." Fierro was always eager to comply with a directive like that. Fierro dragged the execution out though --- maiming Urbina with surgically administered shots. Then Fierro and his crew loaded their horses with bars of recovered gold and silver and rode off in pursuit of Villa.
Accounts differ regarding what happened next. One story has it that Fierro, horse heavy with bullion, drowned attempting to cross a rain-swollen stream outside Nuevo Casa Grandes. Others said he went down in a quicksand bog, screaming for help as his own men watched him sink down to hell, leaving only a hat floating on a bog.
Either way, in mid-October of 1915, Rodolfo Fierro disappeared from history.
Bud shook his head. "Jesus Christ. If the old bastard is alive, he'd be, what, around 80?"
"Probably thereabouts," I agreed.
The young poet nodded. "And Fierro's chasing Pancho's stolen head?"
"Why not? Everybody else seems to be."
"So what's next?"
I shook loose another Pall Mall. My luck truly seemed to be improving --- I get to hold on to this one, too. "We head up to L.A. --- Van Nuys," I said. "I think it's time to have a colloquy with Mr. Emil Holmdahl, the mercenary and head thief." I squeezed Alicia close. "What about it, darling? Up for a road trip? I leaned around to get a better look at Fiske. I said, "How's about you, Bud ... you balk at a three-way split?"
Fiske smiled. It was all hypothetical to him it seemed. "What the hell, Hector? Sure. But it's tough to divide an even number by an odd one."
"We'll even it out from my end," I promised.
Alicia shook her head. "These crazy men after you seem prepared to do anything. I think the only way I might be safe for now is staying with you two." She narrowed her eyes and said, "But what is this of heads ... of
stolen
heads?"
I smiled. "We'll get back to that. Right now, we've got another, more pressing concern." I spotted a truck stop. There were perhaps four dozen tractor-trailers, idling in the night with their running lights on. "Pull in there," I told Bud.
I rolled out, wincing as my ribs crack again. Bud sidled up beside me. "What's wrong?"
"That slaughter back in Venice," I said, " it got me to thinking. How did those sons of bitches find us?"
Bud nodded, going white. "Yeah ... how
did
they do that?"
Moaning, I slipped off my sports jacket and handed it to Bud. I popped the hood ... checked the trunk ...
nada
and
nada
.
I was feeling around the left rear wheel well when I felt this strange bump. I tugged hard at it and loosened this ...
device
. I pulled hard against the magnet wedding it to the chassis. Bud whistled low as I held it up to the parking lot light --- a black box with a chrome antenna sticking out. Bud said, "What in God's name is that thing?"
"Some tracking gizmo I'm thinkin'," I said.
"Yeah. Who put it there?"
I smiled at Bud and said, "Some asshole from El Paso, maybe. Probably working for Prescott Bush --- the alleged spymaster."
Yeah
. Prescott ... who clearly didn't know he was maybe employing stooges who also worked for Fierro. Or maybe Bush had actually unwittingly employed the Butcher. Which shows you what that fella, as a spymaster, apparently knew.
I looked around but saw no obvious spies. I slapped the tracking gizmo on the bottom of a tractor-trailer with Idaho plates. Let the cocksuckers chase that bad boy. Bud grinned, said, "I hope they like Boise."
I slapped his back, smiled. "They do," I said, "and they'll be the first."
We made Los Angeles at dawn. My blood sugar was off again, and my vision was fading fast. Alicia had fallen asleep long ago, her head curled into the hollow of my neck. "Let's get some breakfast," I said to Bud. "We need to be sharper for this old bastard Emil. We really need to be on our game."
I treated them to the Aero Squadron --- a kitschy restaurant tricked up to look like a bombed out European palace, packed with military memorabilia. It had been a few years, but it was frozen in time. It was a pricey breakfast, but God, was it ever worth it.
As Alicia and Bud finished up, I scooted to a pay phone. I dialed up Jack Webb. Laconic cocksucker owed me at least one favor. And the LAPD owed Webb many more favors.
Someone had left their
L.A. Times
in the booth. As I waited to leave a message, I flipped the paper over and scanned it. There was a banner headline about the Brooklyn Dodgers maybe moving to L.A. According to "staff writer" Cooter Wrye, in New York, there was talk of lynching Walter O'Malley. Plans were afoot to place the stadium in Chávez Ravine.
Holy Jesus
. So much for American's favorite pastime. When the ball clubs are for sale to the highest bidder and can be moved around like house trailers, what's left of the game to love? Bastards had even found a way to fuck up baseball for me.
I left my message for Webb and headed back to the table.
One hour and several Bloody Marys later, I was summoned back to the phone. Jack spilled. Well, he
laconically
spilled ... telegraphically giving up the goods.
Seemed that Emil's wife, Elizabeth, had died a few months ago. Holmdahl was currently living with his stepdaughter. Mr. Dragnet shot me the address. "Now
you
owe
me
one, cocksucker," he said.
"You ever get down south, you can collect." There was an implied "asshole" on my part there at the end.
"We got a line on Emil," I said, rejoining Fiske and Alicia. She'd freshened up, brushed the wind tangles from her black hair. That lipstick she sported ... Scarlet Seduction, maybe? Should be called that. I swung in the booth close to her; felt her hip pressed tight against mine.
Bud watched me scoping Alicia. Lad probably felt like a third wheel. I made a note to myself:
I gotta buy this kid a woman
.
Bud said, "Holmdahl must be as old as dirt, too."
Too
?
I let that one pass. Maybe Bud was thinking of Rodolfo, the Butcher. "Yeah," I said, scowling in spite of myself. "He'd be seventy-five or upwards. But he remains in the game. He's tied up with some real estate deal in Punta Banda now, down San Diego way."
"We'll call ahead?" Bud said.
I waved a dismissive hand. "Why warn? Let's ambush the old campaigner," I said.
I checked Bud's dusty, beat wingtips. "But I want to hit a Western outfitter first. Get you a proper pair of boots to go with that hat. Holmdahl's a horseman. Let's play to his sentiment for days gone. I'll do the talking, you'll just be like Tonto --- if Tonto was a cowpuncher."
Alicia had spent a couple of hours the night before, captive to a bunch of Holmdahl stories. She said, "'Sentiment?' It doesn't sound like this Mr. Holmdahl has much of a heart, Héctor."
"Naw, he really doesn't," I agreed. "But now he's getting up there and he may have old regrets that make him weak in some important places. And he lost his wife recently. Maybe that weakened him a bit, too."
She searched my eyes. Her hand brushed my cheek and she shook her head. "So we go now?" She smiled --- a bittersweet, Scarlet-Seduction smile. I suddenly had the feeling she and Fiske had been talking about me in my absence ... maybe talking about presumed regrets and recent losses of my own.
"Huh-uh," I said. "Not now. Now we go to bed. We're all beat-to-the-wide and look road-ragged. We'll stop and get you a couple of new outfits when we get Bud his boots. Then we'll find a good hotel. Grab some sleep and showers --- bath for you honey, if you prefer. We'll see Emil
mañana
, maybe. We need to be at our sharpest for that negotiation. This old bastard Emil doesn't draw a breath without thinking three moves out."
The unspoken, additional motive --- I wanted to watch our tail for a time ... make sure we were not being shadowed by frat boys; Texas Republicans; by machine-gun toting
banditos
or old Mexican ghosts nicknamed "the Butcher."
The desk clerk was missing an arm. I asked, "Korea?"
The maimed clerk shook his head. "Naw. Parachuting into Corregidor, February of '45."
"You're older than you look," I said.
"That's 'cause I can't drink with both fists anymore. They shot it off before I hit the ground," he said.
I thanked him for his war service. There was some awkwardness after that.
Two rooms?
Three?
We ended up with two. Me and Fiske ostensibly in one room, Alicia in the other ... a connecting door between them.
But Fiske, bless him, said he wanted to get some notes organized, then he essentially commandeered one of the rooms, leaving Alicia and me together in the other. I had to smile at Bud's excuse that he needed time with his notes for his article --- as if he could truly print anything about what had been happening to us these past forty-eight or so hours.
It was real publish-and-perish stuff --- write it down and you'd likely face indictment and the chair. Hell, we'd maybe face a firing squad if they extradited us to Mexico for killing those
federales.
But good ole Ike would never let
that
happen. The U.S. doesn't deport it's own gringos to mere Mexico, regardless of what bad things they might have done down there.
As Alicia drew her bath, Bud and I talked, sharing a couple more cigarettes and some decaffeinated coffee. The sound of her bathwater being drawn was like a siren's song ... so hard to resist. But I hung in there.
Bud slipped off his jacket. He rolled up his sleeves a couple of turns. Unfastening his watch, he accidentally dropped it on the carpet. As he reached to retrieve it, his sleeve rode up. It was like a shot to the kidney:
Christ, Are those fucking needle scars there just below the crook of his elbow?
My stomach knotted tighter.
Easy: could be a trick of diabetes-afflicted vision
, I told myself. But I filed it away. I'd be watching. Particularly since this kid had my back. I sure as hell didn't need some junkie Tonto. And I really didn't need some inverted Sherlock Holmes and Watson relationship with the great detective's sidekick doing all the shooting up.
"Hard to know when we'll get another chance to get some sleep, kiddo," I said, trying to sound friendly --- just like always. "So you try and get some rest, Bud."
Fiske shook his head. "You should talk."
I backed out, smiling and closing the connecting door between us.
The bathroom door opened. Steam rolled out through the widening crack. Alicia was wearing one of my shirts, the sleeves rolled up several turns at each arm. And those rolled up sleeves instantly reminded me of my worries regarding Fiske.
Fuck
!
She pulled a comb through her damp black hair, making tracks, and sat on the foot of the bed, tucking one dusky leg up under the other. I saw a flash of white cotton panties, and, just like that, Bud Fiske was forgotten.
Alicia smiled uncertainly. "Everything is all right, Héctor?"
"Getting there." I rubbed my chin; two days without shaving. I could feel --- hell, I could
smell
--- the dust and sweat on my skin and hair. And, of course, I was saturated in the stench of all of that cordite and nicotine. "Gonna grab me a shower." I smiled, shrugging and unbuttoning my shirt. "You don't have to wait up."
Alicia flashed a knowing smile. "No, I don't."
I finished shaving and sourly appraised myself in the mirror.
Regardéz
: Hector Lassiter at fifty-seven.
The liquor was maybe a week away from putting some worrisome and irreversible weight on me. The capillaries in my nose and cheeks looked like they were ready to go. My once dark brown hair had faded to brindle and was now well on its way to gray.
I wasn't the man I remembered being ... or at least not the guy I remembered thinking I was. No longer the man who could clear a bar or win the heart of any woman for at least the long week it would take her to tumble to the kind of man I really am.
No longer the man who could endlessly write words that burned.
I hitched a towel around my waist and padded out, massaging my aching ribs.
I sat down on the bed. Alicia had the sheet up over her breasts. I stroked her bare shoulder. "You sure about this?" I asked. "I'm old enough ---"
Alicia pressed her hand to my mouth and said, "You're old enough to know what to do."
She turned the radio on, presumably to set the mood and maybe spare Bud the sounds through the walls.
Johnny Cash for the nervous talk, "Give My Love To Rose."
Foreplay: Mathis crooning "Chances Are"; Sam Cooke and "You Send Me." Tender, slow kisses and caressing hands. Holding close, moving slow and hard together, her arms tight around me; her legs wrapped around me too, making me forget, at least for that long, how much my ribs hurt.
Afterward, hearts pounding at one another: Patsy Cline, "Walkin' After Midnight" ... Peggy Lee and "Don't Smoke in Bed."
All my scars --- my new, Mexican darling raised her black eyebrows, her fingertips tracing the welts, the knife-blade furrows, the bullet holes and the ancient cigarette burns. She lingered longest on the crisscrossed whip scars covering my back and wondered aloud, "How in God's name?"
"You really don't wanna know."
Based on past experience, I'd made some of observations of my own. She'd had at least one child. I risked sharing my theory on that.
"Her name is Azucena," Alicia confirmed with a sad smile. "Well, that's her real and private name, anyway. She's got my coloring, but blue eyes and sandy hair. I'm hoping she'll pass ... so her name to the world is Jessica. She's living with my mother while I try to make us some more money."
"How long since you saw her last?"
"Almost a month."
God
. "How old is she?"
"Three."
My stomach kicked. "Three is an important age. They start to get really interesting then. Start becoming the person they will be. You should try to work things out so you can be with her now ... shape her."
Alicia smiled sadly. "The money..."
"What about her father? What happened there?"
"Not sure. I was attacked outside the restaurant in L.A. where I was working, on Hope Street. There were three of them. They dragged me into an alley and..."
Now I was on fire. "They were never caught?"
"No. Me being Mexican, I not sure how hard the police looked, you know?"
I knew. My big fingers combed through her glistening black hair. I asked her some questions about her child, about where she lived in Los Angeles ... eventually drew out her mother's name and general location. I committed them to memory. It was just enough for me to track her down proper later, when this bandit's head stuff was wrapped up. I'd know soon enough where to start sending the money.
And, Christ, but my house back in New Mexico felt so empty. Maybe I could just move 'em all in ... Alicia and her baby girl ... and
abulea
. Fill that old hacidena with life again. Get a dog. Yeah ... so comforting to dream. Hemingway ambushed me suddenly: "Isn't it pretty to think so."
"Pretty to think what?" Her brow wrinkled.
Holy Christ, I was monologing out loud --- must really be getting senile. I shook my head, tracing the line of her jaw with my scarred and bruised hand. "Pretty to think how it would be if I was twenty years younger ... the life we might have had together."
Her fingers traced the lines around my mouth. "Those dimples of yours. When you smile, you look twenty years younger, Héctor. You should just smile more often."
"I need a reason."
"Haven't I given you one?" She nestled in, her breasts pressed to my chest, her arm enveloping my aching ribs, her thigh drawn up over my thighs. We fell into a deep sleep to the sound of rain.
We awakened to an explosion.
There was a sharp report outside ... could have been a gunshot, or maybe just a car backfiring. It was unexpected, so I couldn't be sure, either way.
I slipped from the bed and stepped into my pants. I scooped up my Colt and edged to the window. There was the glare of morning sunlight through the L.A. smog, but nothing particularly sinister in sight out there. I edged over to the connecting door, tapped once and then opened it.
Bud Fiske was sitting on the foot of the bed, naked to the waist. His hair was wet and slicked back from the shower. He was just replacing the hypodermic in its case. His left arm and his belly were riddled with scars. I tossed aside my gun and dove for him, trying to get my hands around his scrawny neck. Two words snarled from my twisting mouth: "Fucking junkie!"
Fiske screamed, "No!" and got his hands up and blocked my hands from getting to his throat. He kneed me in the crotch and we both tumbled off the side of the bed. I hit the floor first, right on my rickety ribs. The impact robbed me of my wind. Fiske slid his leg over me and got his hands around my wrists, trying to pin me down. It worked for about a minute. But I had two inches and a hundred pounds, easy, on Bud Fiske. I upended him, scrambled atop him and finally got a grip on his throat. The skinny bastard squeaked out, "I'm di ---"
I squeezed harder and cut off his air, snarling, "That's right you fucking traitor junkie, you are gonna die."
I felt this sharp crack behind my ear and saw lights.
I reached to the back of my throbbing head, tumbling off Bud Fiske. As I rolled onto my back I saw Alicia, wrapped in a sheet. The copper ice bucket she'd taken from the bathroom sink and hit me with fell to the carpet.
She said, "Are you all right?"
She asked that as she ran to Bud Fiske.
Fiske struggled up onto on elbow, rubbing his neck with this other hand. I struggled up too.
The young poet, my trellis-thin Boswell, took one look at me, cocked and let fly. His right caught me just under the left eye. I saw stars again. Fiske grabbed a handful of my graying hair. He was all lion now. He snarled into my face, "I'm a fucking diabetic, Hector! I tried to tell you, you cocksucker. I'm a fucking diabetic!" He let go of my hair and my head bounced on the tile floor. I saw more stars.
Alicia helped Fiske to his feet.
He picked up his hypodermic vial. "Insulin, Hector," he said. "It's insulin, not fucking heroin. Jesus Christ, Hector."
I struggled up onto my elbows. "Alicia, sweetheart, leave us alone a minute," I said, rubbing my eye. "Please? Just give me a minute with Bud?" Her eyes were still blazing at me --- like she really hated me.
She glanced at Fiske and asked, "Do you want to be alone with him, Bud?"
"
Sí. Gracias
, Alicia."
She smiled uncertainly. "
De nada
." She bent over, holding the sheet over her swaying breasts with her left arm. With her right hand, she picked up the copper bucket she'd brained me with and tossed it to Fiske. "Just in case, yes?"
He smiled and pitched the pail onto the bed. "I can handle myself."
Alicia backed out and closed the connecting door behind her. Fiske shrugged into his shirt and buttoned up past the needle scars on his belly. He extended a hand and I took it. He wrapped his other arm around me and helped me to my feet. My ribs hurt ... my eye hurt ... my cheek hurt ... my head hurt. And I felt sick inside. "Kid," I groaned, "I'm so fucking sorry."
"Yeah," Fiske said. "Sure. Now you know why I'm so attuned to your own sugar problems --- first-hand experience."
"I get it now."
"What if it had been the other way? What would it be to you?" Bud shook his head. "Christ, Hector, I've seen you put away a bottle of whiskey a day --- sometimes along with a couple of beers or a bottle of wine. You smoke two packs a day, easy. You've got more than your share of monkeys clinging to that scarred back of yours. So what's it to you if I was shooting smack?"
I limped to the side table and liberated a couple of Bud's cigarettes. I picked up the hotel's complimentary book of safety matches and struck one and fired us both up. I set an ashtray between us on the chenille bedspread and shook the match out and dropped it in.
"We off the record, Bud?"
"Sure."
"I mean it, friend." I don't expect he felt much like a friend about then, but I plunged on as though he was. From my direction he was. Maybe even more than a friend, now. "Nobody gets this story but you," I said. "And you never share it, right? Swear?"
"On my life, Hector. But the talk about what happened between you and your wife has been out there for a while ... you know that."
"But not the reasons...and I've never confirmed the other --- my wife's addiction --- not to anyone, Bud. My wife, Maria,
was
a heroin addict. For
years
. She hid it well from me. She shot up between her toes. Through the soles of her feet. Under her arms so the scars could be confused for razor stubble. Shot up through her pubic hair when she could will herself to do it."
No words needed there. Bud just nodded, sucked down some smoke.
"That was bad enough. But my daughter, Dolores, she was born with a hole in her heart ... and other birth defects. From day one, it was just one thing after another for my little girl. Eventually, the latest in a long line of doctors told me he thought my daughter's problems might be a result of her mother's addiction. Meant to warn me off having other kids with Maria, I guess. Almost on first meeting with my wife, that particular sawbones correctly deduced what I had never suspected ... even though I lived with the woman, and slept with her. The doc
knew
when he looked at Maria. I didn't know until he told me. He broke the news just a few hours before my little girl died of the birth defects caused by my wife's addiction. I confronted Maria later, after we lost Dolores, and she confessed it all. Then Maria tried to turn me into a junkie."
Bud sat there, perched on the end of the bed, waiting to see if I'd go the distance ... maybe confess complicity in my wife's infamous overdose.
But I'd gone as far as I was prepared to. "So," I said, blowing smoke through both nostrils, "that's why I attacked you when I saw the needle and all those scars. When I got a glimpse of the scars on your arm last night when you reached for your watch. It ate at me. Then walking in here this morning and seeing all your scars ... seeing that damned needle and hypo ... well, you know.... took me back to bad places. I made a shitty deduction and acted on it."
"I understand how it could happen." I hadn't gone far enough for him.
"I'm so fucking sorry, kid." I went ahead and said what I thought he must be thinking. "I might have killed you if Alicia hadn't brained me with that damned bucket..."
"You might have," Bud said. He reached into his pocket and pulled something out. I heard a click and a swish. He held the switchblade up to catch the morning light through the window. "Or I might have killed you, Hector. I was in the process of deciding when she hit you."
I took a deep breath and rubbed my eye.
All right then
.
I said, "Good. That's good, Bud. There won't be a next time, but if there ever was ... don't hesitate."
Bud smiled. "I ain't saying 'likewise.'"
I laughed and stood up, cracking all over. I extended my hand. "We're okay then?"
Bud took my hand and shook it. "We drive on." He nodded at the wall between our rooms. "What do you tell her, though?"
"I don't know yet."
Bud slipped on his socks, tugged on his new boots and snagged his room key. He put on his hat and clipped some shades over his glasses. "Use my shower. Clean up. I'll take her to breakfast ... patch things up for you."
I searched his eyes behind the sunglasses. "You sure about that?"
"Leave it to me, Hector."
Would Bud tell Alicia what I'd just confided to him? Probably ... if he thought it was necessary to mend things. But maybe he'd be so smooth it wouldn't be needed. Hell, he
was
a fucking poet, after all. And I was past caring, either way. "I'll owe you three times, then," I said.
Bud Fiske said, "How do you figure?"
"You've saved me three times. Once in Mexico, putting that pic in the
federale's
eye; a few minutes ago, when you had every right to shiv me and chose not to; and making things okay with Alicia again."
"Haven't done the last yet." He smiled and shook his head, his hand on the doorknob. "Hector, do you deliberately make a mess of your life just to keep yourself interested?"
I chuckled and shook my head. "Kid," I said, "you're the first person in this screwed up excuse for a world to really get my act. Well, the first who isn't a woman to get it."
Bud Fiske smiled sadly. "My God," he said, "what a terrible way to live." He hesitated, then said, "You know, there's a big difference between living for the moment and really trying to live in the moment, all the fucking time, Hector. The first is just wrong-headed and shallow. The latter is not only impossible, it's downright dangerous."
I remembered something Hemingway said to me in Captain Tony's so many years ago. I said it aloud: "We all have a right to hurt ourselves."
"No," Bud said. "It's plenty dangerous to you living like that, but it's also dangerous to the poor bastards closest to you. It's not right for you to choose for them."
I shrugged. "Maybe not. But you know, Bud, poets have to try to live in every moment ... and then live to write about it. It's the path you've chosen for yourself. You may not know it yet, but that's the truth. Got to feed the beast; feed the hungry muse so she'll spread her legs for you."
He nodded, but looked skeptical.
After Bud left I sat there, staring at my hands. They were blurring out on me again.
All right
. I was officially starting to worry myself, now.
If Alicia was still talking to me when Fiske was done working her over for me, I'd ask her to find me a good doctor to help with my diabetes. And I needed an eye doctor, too.
In the meantime, I needed some grub to stabilize my blood sugar, but I couldn't hardly hit the same restaurant as Alicia and Bud. I finished dressing and checked my face where Bud cuffed me. Skinny sucker threw a creditable punch --- the bruise was already asserting itself.
I locked up and walked a block to a diner that promised "breakfast all day." The eternal and omnipresent beehive-capped waitress popped her stale chewing gum and called me 'hon' by way of greeting.
Two other customers were perched on stools at the counter. They were an improbable pair. The first was an ugly fella with bad skin and an enormous red nose. He was drinking coffee with a midget decked out in cowboy boots and toddler-size Levis. The mismatched duo looked like they were trying to burn off the previous night's beer buzz with the acidic black coffee.
I ordered eggs-over-easy with sides of toast, sausage and bacon and my own flask of black coffee. The coffee came first, of course. I poured myself a cup and took it along to the phone booth in the back. Inside the mahogany phone cabinet was a stool and a little writing shelf. I set down my coffee and pulled out my notepad and Mont Blanc and flipped to a blank page. Then I dialed my answering service.
Marlene Dietrich had called.
Orson Welles had called.
Sam Ford had called.
Someone described to me as "an older, very rude, Mexican-sounding gentleman who couldn't or wouldn't speak English" had called. I got a phonetically transcribed version of what he purportedly said. I wrote it down, played with it, and eventually figured out it must have been:
"Muerte a los gringos."
Very nice, that: "Death to the Americans." My mind, of course, immediately went to Fierro.
El Carnicero.
Sam Ford could wait.
Orson Welles could go fuck himself if he could ever position his hands around his own girth in order to do so.
Fierro (?) --- the Butcher (?) --- left no number where I could reach him.
"There's one more," the honey-toned voice on the other end of the line said. "A Senator Prescott Bush called." With suddenly clammy hands, I scrawled down his number.
I hung up and stared at Bush's number for a minute or two. The spooky bastard and his reputed intelligence connections had me cowed. Christ, he could probably arrange to trace a call like nobody's business. Probably could have J. Edgar's goons growing from both of my arms before I could rack the receiver.
Well,
fuck that
. For now, least ways.
I called Marlene back --- called her collect, just as she had instructed.
Straight out of the gate, she asked: "Alicia is with you, Hector?"
"Yes. And she's fine."
"All these shot-up bodies..."
"Trouble found us. Well, found me and a friend. Alicia got swept up in it. No fault of her own, though that hardly matters. Circumstances being what they were, I couldn't really leave her behind."
"You swear to me that she is truly fine?"
"Truly. She is 'truly fine.' I swear."
"You see that she stays that way, Hector. Whatever it takes." Marlene hesitated. "She ... has a little girl, you see. Her daughter is about the age of---"
"I know."
"It's just that---"
"Sure. I know, Marlene." I rarely ever used the Kraut's first name --- doing so now brought her up short.
"All right then," she said. "Of course." She tried then to put on a cordial face. I could hear her forced smile in her voice. "Orson is desperate to talk to you. He feels terrible."
"If you knew the back story, Kraut..."
"I do know it, love. He told me, after you fought. Orson needs this film, Hector. I'm willing to let him draw on what we two shared if it will help him make a perfect film. If I'm willing to do so, what earthly objection can you have?" That sounded more like an accusation than a question. "Do you know that you cracked one of Orson's ribs?"
I shrugged. "Big so what? He got at least six of mine," I said.
"Hector..."
"Aw, Kraut ... I abhor this. But you know, if I were similarly inclined --- agreeable, as you say that you are --- I have this other bloody business to contend with, and I know Orson is pressed for time. Not sure our schedules can be made to blend."
"What exactly
is
going on? What is this other 'bloody business?'"
"I'm not completely sure I really have a handle on it yet," I said. "It's just something that has happened and---"
"Bullshit! That's beneath you, Hector. Alicia is in danger because of this, isn't she?"
"Yes. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just like I said. Nobody could see it coming. With me, or away from me, she's a potential pawn until this is played out. At least if she's with me, I can try to protect her. I'll lay down my life to shield her," I said.
That last sounded too melodramatic to my own ears.
Marlene snorted softly. "A pledge like that might mean something if you actually valued your own life." She sighed. "She loves your writing, you know? More even than Papa's writing. When his old dog has to be shot by your revolutionist, Perdido, in
Wandering Eye
--- you know the scene of which I speak? Well, Alicia sobbed over those wonderful words of yours. We talked about your writing for hours these past few days. She has an old and steady soul, Hector. A soul sounder than yours, if I might dare say so."
"You just did, Kraut."
"That was harsh of me. I'm sorry for that."
"Doesn't mean you weren't right."
"Alicia wants a life close by her little girl," Marlene said. "But money is tight. And you know, a Mexican girl like her, pretty as she is, well, she will never make that kind of money in Hollywood. Not now, nor for many many years. If you'd grow the hell up, Hector --- stop courting disaster at every fucking turn just to get your blood pumping --- well, you might, in a very real way, reclaim the life you had for those four years."
"No," I said, grinding my teeth. "Let's amend that. The life I
thought
I had for those four years. Turns out that life was a fucking lie."
"Not all of it. Dolores was real enough."
"All too real, darling," I agreed. "But not any longer. And now you're pushing too far --- even for you."
"It's too early for you to die, Hector. You have words to write. Scores to settle. Fences to mend. Friends to reclaim. And maybe another dark-haired, dark-eyed little girl to raise to womanhood."
"Kraut ...
darling
..."
"Write this down," she ordered. "Do it for me."
She recited a series of digits and I dutifully recorded them. "What is this, Kraut?"
"A phone number. Just keep it with you. I won't ask you to use it now. Just promise me that you will carry it with you for a while. For a good while. Do it for me. Won't you do that, Hector?"
"What kind of number is this? Where in hell does this number ring?"
"Cuba," she said.
Of course. "Finca Vigia, yeah?"
"Just carry it with you a time. Maybe one night, you'll feel like using it."
I cradled the receiver between cheek and shoulder and tore the sheet of paper with Ernest Hemingway's number from my notepad. I was about to crumple and discard it when Marlene lashed out at me:
"I heard that --- the paper tearing! Promise me you will keep it, Hector. Fold it up and stick it in your wallet and forget it is there if you will, but promise you'll carry it. It ... it means luck to me. You know what 'luck' means to me, Hector. I know that you know that."
Goddamned superstitious German chanteuse.
Marlene famously met Hemingway on a transatlantic passage. She had been invited to dine with a large party and realized she would be the thirteenth at the table. Hemingway overheard. Papa's the superstitious sort himself ... always carrying little coins and pebbles and rabbits' feet for good luck. Hemingway offered to join Marlene to make it fourteen. And they were off to the races.
I folded up the sheet of paper and shoved into a slot in my tri-fold wallet. "I just stashed it. For you, Kraut."
"
Gracias
, Hector. You two must settle this. For me, yes, but for yourselves."
I shook my head. "I don't lightly give up an old friend like that, you know. Hem' and me go all the way back to Italy, and our teens. We were both shot up working for the Red Cross. Shared Paris in our twenties. That first festival at Pamplona. He and me came up together, Marlene ... two of us share so many memories and losses. There's scads of stuff that I can only truly talk about and reminisce about with him. Losing Papa as a friend is like cutting off a part of myself --- denying myself vast chunks of my own history and experience. So I don't do this lightly, you see --- I'm not pissed on some whim."
"I hear you. Someday, perhaps, you will tell me, or he will, what happened between you two."
"Perhaps."
"Well, for now, you work this other business out, Hector, and do it fast," Marlene said. "Keep Alicia safe. Then get back down here. Orson feels terrible for what happened."
Fucking Welles --- he called me a wife-killer, and his being right didn't make it go down any easier to me. But I just said to Marlene, "I'm working on it."
"Stay well, Hector."
"You too, Kraut."
I needed to shake that conversation, so I went ahead and called up Sam Ford, my dissolute, one-eyed, director buddy. He was in some place called Glasscock, Texas and drunk out of his mind. Sam wanted me to "roll east to where I am." Where he "was" was some cabin along Mustang Draw, not so far from Odessa --- holed up with an Underwood and a crate of whiskey and three Mexican whores. I told him I was tied up in L.A., but would try to get back to him soon.
I looked at Prescott Bush's phone number again. I picked up the receiver and dialed the operator --- then hung up before anyone answered. I needed to think it out more before I made that contact.
My breakfast had arrived. I headed back toward my table. The big drunk and his midget friend had cleared out for parts unknown. Just a trio of college-age boys sat at the counter now, drinking orange juice and stirring around scrambled eggs.
I poured some more coffee and smoked another cigarette and thought about Pancho Villa's head. I hadn't given it a good look since all this began. I hadn't checked that rotting scalp for traces of some tattooed treasure map. I hadn't probed the nose holes and eye sockets for scrolled up scraps of paper or other clues ... hadn't searched for some scrimshaw map carved into bone, maybe.
I hadn't shaken that sucker to see if anything rattled inside Pancho's rotten head.
It was high time that I did all that.
I settled up and stretched and cracked my back and wandered out onto the street. It was already getting muggy and the smog lay thick across downtown L.A. The storefronts of the shops across the street shimmered and wiggled through the curtain of exhaust fumes.
The first punch was to my right kidney --- furious pain and I fell to my knees. A hand tangled in my hair and I took a kick to the gut. "Get him up," I heard.
It was the three kids from the diner.
Of course.
I coughed and tried to get my breath. Being lifted and forced to stand was agony on my kidney. I suspected I'd be pissing blood for the next couple of days. I choked out, "Skull and Bones?"
"That's right."
"How'd you assholes find me? Getting help from the senator and the CIA?"
"Something like that. But probably we could have just followed all the bodies you left along the way. Now where's the head?"
"Back at my motel."
"We'll walk you there, old man."
I nodded, biting my lip until it bled ... fucking kidney shot had really done me some damage. I heard tires squealing and saw the car slowing as it approached us --- a ragtop Caddy with four Mexican's inside. Three were young Mexican guys; one was an old white haired Mexican with a big moustache and leathered face. Instinctively, I went prone --- hugged the pavement.
The blast from the Tommy gun shredded through the college boys and exploded the windshields of parked cars in front of us. The storefront display windows behind us splintered and fell. As the slugs dug in past my feet, I struggled up and began half-running, half-limping in the direction the car had come --- trying to put some distance between me and the Mexicans before they could swing their big Caddy around for another pass. I figured they didn't mean to kill
me
... not until they had Pancho's head, anyways. But the thought of being in the hands of a sadistic madman like Fierro? Frankly, that bloody prospect terrified me.
But that kidney shot was slowing me down. I fished around under my jacket for my Colt. Another car swerved around the corner. It was my Chevy. Alicia was driving and Bud was riding all-too-literal shotgun. They skidded to the curb and I ran around to the driver's side. "Over the seat, Sweet," I barked at Alicia. She slid over into the back and I slipped behind the wheel.
I got my Bel Air in gear and yelled to Alicia to lay down on the floorboards behind the front seat.
The Cadillac was just turning the corner.
I accelerated and steered straight for it. At the last moment, I veered to the right, palming the wheel with my right hand. I extended my left arm out straight, Colt in hand, and shot the Mexican driver in the face. The Caddy veered and slammed into the side of a newspaper delivery truck. One of the Mexicans in the backseat --- the one who had fired a Thompson at me --- flew over the front seat and landed on the pavement, face first and twenty feet from the Caddy.
Two down.
I was preparing to swing back around and take out the others --- finish Fierro for good --- when I saw the cop cruiser in the distance. Some L.A. flatfoot's routine patrol was about to go very crazy on him.
Cowed, I righted my Chevy and headed back toward our motel. "You guys come looking for me for a reason?"
Bud nodded and slipped his shotgun down out of view. "We got back to the hotel and the proprietor was out front, watering his garden. He said several people had been by asking after us --- some college kids and some Mexicans. We packed up quick, and left a message with the clerk to have you take a cab to the Aero Squadron to meet up with us again. It was just an accident that we spotted you when we did."
"Happy accident."
"We deserve some luck," Bud said.
Alicia sat up behind us and brushed the hair from her face. She pulled out a scarf and tied it over her head and slipped on a pair of black Wayfarers. "You looked like you were hurt, Héctor --- unable to run," she said.
"College boys from Yale got a good shot into my kidney just before they got turned into confetti. Hurts like a son of a bitch."
"Pull over," Bud said. "I'll drive now."
I pulled over. Alicia slipped back in front between us and I squeezed in. She rested her hand on my knee. Fiske --- that silver-tongued devil --- I did owe him thrice.
Bud said, "Which fraternity is going to be seeking new pledges?"
"Those dead boys were authentic Skull and Bones."
"No shit?"
"That was Fierro back there, wasn't it?" Alicia asked.
"Yeah --- for sure it was him. The Butcher. Could see the Fierro I remember from newspaper photos and the wanted posters in that old face."
Bud smiled and shook his head. "Too strange. So what now?"
"Now we get some new digs. Hotels and motels are out of the question, now. Fuckers will scour every one of those in greater L.A. for us."
Alicia arched a dark eyebrow. "What then?"
"Pull over a second," I ordered Fiske. He did and I struggled out and limped over to the newsstand. I picked up a copy of the
L.A. Times
. I pulled out the classified section and binned the rest. I searched the ads, arms held out a distance to see the tiny type better. "Here we go. There's a little Hollywood court apartment with a garage. So let's go claim our new bungalow. Ad claims Tom Mix once slept there."
Bud Fiske said, "I loved Tony."
Alicia looked at the poet.
Bud said, "Tony. You know --- Tom Mix's horse."
Alicia mouthed, "Oh..."
"It's a guy kind of thing," I said.
Our new place came furnished --- two bedrooms, small kitchen. Came with a radio, too --- a big old floor model Motorola with tubes and lights. Bud fiddled around with the dial on that monstrosity and coaxed loose a newscast.
The morning's shooting was being passed off as flaring Mexican gang violence; the Skull and Bones crew was presumed by police to have been confused for some rival gang. The ghosts of the Zoot Suit Wars loomed.
It strained credulity, but, hell, at least we were kept out of it. No arrests were reported, so I could only deduce that Fierro and his surviving crony had walked off from the wreck before the cops spotted them. Fierro seemed to have been granted more lives than a litter of bastard cats.
Bud and me went to the garage and retrieved Pancho's skull. I brought along the fake head, too --- the best of the phony skulls with the underbite --- for good measure.
Alicia said, "What are you doing with those heads?"
"Full disclosure time," I said. "You two should know some other legends about Pancho's head and some of his lost loot. Stuff about treasure maps and the like. Stories that might make us all richer." As I toyed with Pancho's skull, I filled my friends' heads with Tex-Mex treasure folklore.
I thought maybe she would closet herself while I fooled around with Pancho's head, but Alicia stayed close by the action. She brewed us up some coffee while Bud and I looked over the head. If there was ever a tattoo on the scalp, well, it was lost now. No carvings there in bone that any of us could detect, either.
Took me about six minutes, but I finally found this hairline bump trailing down out of the wispy, remaining hair, down the forehead toward the nose and then veering off and into the orbit of Pancho's right eye. The bump was just raised a bit from the surface of the skull and of slightly different hue.
Granted Pancho wasn't embalmed well, but looking at the skull now, I thought about the steps that would have to have been taken to hide something all those years ago in that much fresher head. I figured Emil and his cronies must have had pretty strong stomachs to skin down to bone whatever was left of Villa's mummified soft tissue; to maybe have to clear material out of the eye sockets and whatever was left in the head in order to accommodate whatever they might have hidden inside the skull.
I took out my Swiss Army knife and used the dull edge of my bottle-opener to scrape away at the bump. The surface of the welt flaked off like old plaster or something similar to it. There was a thin string hidden under there --- something like fishing line, maybe.
I slipped the flat edge of my blade under the string and raised it and the rest of the welt crumbled away as the pressure I was exerting on the string popped it loose. I grabbed the end of the string where it disappeared into the eye socket and coaxed loose the other end. It emerged secured to a small glassine tube, about the width of a cigarillo and maybe an inch-and-a-half long. I detached the tube from the end of the string. I said, "There's some kind of paper rolled up inside there."
Alicia loaned me her tweezers and I teased the paper loose and carefully unrolled it. It was square. Unfolded and unfurled, the scrap of paper measured maybe three inches by three inches. The paper was yellowed with age and appeared to be blank on both sides. There was a notepad of blank paper by the phone. I asked Fiske to fetch the pad. I carefully traced the outline of the hidden scrap of paper and cut out a match from the notepad. "An eventual replacement," I said to Alicia when she arched an inquiring eyebrow.
Bud leaned in and looked at the old scrap of paper. "The map?"
"Must be. Or must have been: nothing to be seen on it now."
"Invisible ink maybe?"
"Only thing it could be."
"Great," Fiske said. "So we'll need to get the information from Holmdahl about making the writing appear to have any shot at how to get at Villa's gold. It's looking like a four-way split."
"Fuck that," I said. "This thing was probably prepared on the fly, down there south of the border. They would've used whatever was at hand and that couldn't have been too fancy. So I'm betting the ink they used would've been milk, lemon juice ... maybe vinegar, or most probably, their own urine."
Alicia wrinkled her nose and muttered "Yuck."
"In any of those cases," I continued, "heat will bring the writing up. We got any candles around this joint?"
Bud found a pair in the cabinet over the range. The last inhabitant of our bungalow must have been some Klansmen or
Amos and Andy
fan who liked romancing fellow racists --- the candles were attached to some wicked candleholders. The wax sticks of the candles were gripped in the exaggerated lips of these little ceramic-minstrel faces.
I lit one candle with my Zippo, sat the repugnant Step-and-Fetch holder on the table, and picked up the scrap of paper with the tweezers. I nodded at the notepad and said to Bud, "Get a pencil and be ready to get this down. It's old and the writing may be very faint ... it may also evaporate very fast. Could be one-shot-only stuff."
I held the scrap of paper over the candle, about three inches off the tip of the flame. The paper flared and exploded with a soft
whoosh!
"Son of a whore," I bellowed. I slammed my other hand down on the table and upset the candle. The barest corner of paper was gripped in the tweezers now --- the rest gone to hell.
Bud was shaking his head. Alicia said, "Guess that's that, yes?" She almost looked pleased; or maybe "relieved" was the better word to describe her expression.
"Guess so," I said. "So far as the treasure goes. On the other hand, the son of a bitch might have had something we can't even imagine written down on there."
Bud sat back, disconsolate. "We're fucked. I had been thinking about a hacienda somewhere on the coast of Baja."
"We're not necessarily through yet," I said, hiding my own disappointment. "This map stuff was apart from Prescott and the Skull and Bones. Remember --- we've still got a good shot at securing our eighty-grand for turning Pancho's noggin here over to those assholes at Yale."
"True," Bud said.
Alicia sat down next to me and smiled uncertainly. "So we can skip this meeting with Holmdahl, yes?"
"Oh, God no," I said. "I don't think we should 'skip' that --- not at all. There are some things to maybe learn there. And I haven't completely written off a treasure hunt. And I think that bastard Emil would like to know --- should know --- that Fierro is alive and in town. Part of me, maybe mostly the writer in me, would like to kick back and watch that knowledge put to some bloody end by Holmdahl. And hell, the ex-Cavalry part of me feels an obligation to maybe even throw in with Emil to take down Fierro. Maybe fulfill one of our old missions from the Expedition."
"You're
loco,"
Alicia said. "Let those two old men kill one another if you will, but you stand back from it now. We mail this head off to your senator friend, get our money, and go back to our lives. That's my vote. Meet Holmdahl if you will, yes --- just to point him at Fierro. But then end this before it truly harms one of us, Héctor. I mean, harms us beyond aching ribs, bleeding kidneys, black eyes and broken knuckles. Look at the two of you. What will
Señor
Holmdahl think when he gets a look at both of you with your limps and slow and careful ways of sitting down ... with your swollen, barked knuckles and bruised faces and throats and your split lips?"
I looked at Bud and raised my eyebrows. It was long-pants time, now. The poet searched my eyes a minute and then nodded decisively. "The lady is right. Let's see Holmdahl, then make the contact with the senator and wrap this mess up."
Truth be told, I was inclined their way --- but I feigned disappointment that I didn't feel. For some reason, I felt an obligation to play to character. "As we're still in a democracy," I said with a false edge, "you two win."
I leaned over and picked up the notepad. I took my fountain pen from my pocket and made a shopping list. I folded a couple of twenties up in the piece of paper and handed it to Bud. "We passed that grocery on the corner. How's about you two get some provisions?"
Alicia took the list from Bud and scanned it. She said, "Flour? Food coloring? We baking?"
"Yeah. Just desserts," I said. "We need to mock up a replacement skull for Emil. We'll use the food coloring and flour to put a good fake welt on phony Pancho, here." I cocked my thumb at the fake skull with the biggest underbite.
I placed the piece of paper I'd cut from the notepad onto a cookie sheet and slid it into the range and turned up the gas on it for a minute. I pulled it out and inspected it. It looked a hundred years old now. It was a good facsimile of the slip of the treasure map I'd just inadvertently incinerated. I handed it to Bud along with a toothpick. "Keep these safe and at hand," I told him. "The time to employ those poetic gifts of yours is swiftly coming."
Fiske looked wary. "How so?"
"Once we talk to Emil, I hope that we're going to have a better handle on what we need to write on that scrap of paper in order to fool the old bastard." I pointed at the bathroom. "You'll have to do those honors, Bud. I would, but I'm pissing blood."
Bud smiled, said, "It's not my usual medium, you know."
While Alicia and Bud shopped, I stashed Pancho's skull and the other head --- the one we would pass off on Emil as the real thing when we had it ready --- in the hall closet. I drank several glasses of water and fiddled with the dial on the radio until I found a border station. A mariachi band playing "The Texas River Song," an old tune believed written by a long-dead teacher:
"There's many a river
That waters the land
Now the fair Angelina
Runs glossy and gliding
the crooked Colorado
Runs weaving and winding
The slow San Antonio
Courses and plains
But I never will walk
By the Brazos again
All that water I had drunk down had its intended effect and I headed to the head. There was a good deal less blood in the bowl than I had anticipated. I'd steer clear of the liquor a few more days to be sure.
I ordered a couple of pizzas and a carton of Coca-Cola for delivery and hit the shower.
I dried off and dressed and found Bud and Alicia already eating my pizza. I grabbed a couple of slices and wrapped them in a napkin and then holstered my Colt and slipped on my sports jacket. I picked up my parcel of pizza and told my partners I'd be back soon.
Bud chewed and swallowed and said, "What are you doin'?"
"Phone calls. Appointments."
"Can't call from here?" Alicia asked.
"Can't risk a phone trace. I'm keeping these calls short and sweet --- and a good ways away from our dear Fortress of Solitude, here."
I wolfed down my pizza as I walked four blocks to a phone booth. I thumbed through the phonebook and found a listing for what I deduced to be Holmdahl's stepdaughter's place. A woman, the stepdaughter, likely, answered. She went to fetch the old man. I waited, then a voice said, "Emil speakin'." It was good to hear another Texas accent.
"We go back,
amigo,"
I said. "My name is Hector Lassiter."
"I've read your books, a few of 'em anyhows. You lookin' to write about me? Seems there's always some reporter or biographer comin' around these days. Can't say as I'm much interested."
"Uh,
no
. Me neither, truth to tell. I was there, riding with Pershing and you way back then. I've got my own memories for memoirs if I were inclined that way. And I so ain't."
"You were in the Expeditionary force?" Emil was palpably skeptical.
"That's right," I said. "We talked a few times. Shared a few drinks together. Shared our thoughts. And we shared at least one Mexican whore, I think."
"Guess that last makes us something."
"I'd like to think so."
"So, you lookin' to relive old times together, or something? Talk about stale tail? If so, I ain't frankly interested in that, neither. I keep movin' ahead. Never look back or dwell in the past --- just kills you quicker."
"Drive on, huh?"
"That's it exactly," the old campaigner said. "Life is short, but
wide
, and I mean to pack mine full to burstin'."
I had to smile. I said, "In that spirit, I'm gonna cut to the chase. I have Pancho Villa's rotting head. And I know all the tales about you and treasure, tied, so to speak, to his fucking skull. I'm willing to deal for a cut of the gold and silver you recover. I'm no prospector myself, you see, but as I have his head..."
Emil snorted softly. "If I had a nickel for every time some yahoo has come to me with an old skull and a proposition. Have to confess, though, you're the first guy who hasn't asked me to pay for the head up front."
"Well, the head's not for sale," I said. "See, I have other ambitions along those lines. I'm not going to give you the head, per se. I'm just gonna let you retrieve something you hid inside of that rotting bastard."
I could hear the excitement and terror in his voice now. "Have you looked that something over? Don't lie to me --- I'll know."
"Hell no. Just looked enough to determine there's something you rigged that seems to run into the right eye. Can hear it shake around in there a bit. But I haven't gone further. Figure it couldn't possibly be that easy, Emil."
"You'd be right, Hector."
Hmm.
Swapping first names --- we were getting downright chummy.
"Here's my vision," I said. "I bring the head over, you take your little trinket from out of it, we strike a deal on your recovery, and I take the head away with me," I said.
"Gonna sell it to Yale, aint'cha?"
"Maybe something like that."
"Won't even ask what you stand to get for it," Emil Holmdahl said. "On the one hand, it would probably depress me. On the other hand, it's academic, 'cause that cocksucker Pres Bush will dick you, just like he dicked me, I expect. In his current position, he could screw you big time. Worse than he ever did me."
"I'm doing my best to see he doesn't."
"Good luck with that, buddy. A fiction writer versus the U.S. intelligence services? I don't like your odds,
mi amigo
. So, you bringing that head my way now, then?"
"No can do. Looking to get some information, first."
Emil laughed. "You can't get enough from me to read the map, if that's your idea."
Map
... damn.
"That's not my idea," I lied. "Thing is, since I got my hands on the head, a lot of bad things have been happening. So far, most of it has happened to other people, but I've had my brushes and enjoyed my share of dumb luck and I've survived long enough to know that luck can't run my way forever. Lot of dead people around me suddenly. And there's someone else wants Pancho's skull."
"Besides, Bush, you mean?"
"Brace yourself: Rodolfo Fierro is still alive," I said. "This morning he nearly shot me to death outside a diner here in Los Angeles. You'll see it in the newspapers this afternoon. It's already on the radio, although they are reporting it as gang violence."
"So, Fierro found you." It was a simple statement on the old man's part. "And you didn't fucking kill him?"
No statement there --- more like mocking accusation. Shaking my head, I said, "I have to say, I'm surprised you don't sound surprised to hear that Rodolfo is still north of the dirt. You must be the only guy from back-then who doesn't believe
el Carnicero
drowned decades ago down there in the quicksand bog."
"I've heard stories to that effect for years," Emil said. "So, no, I'm not too surprised." The old mercenary paused, then said, "I'd love to see him a
last
time." He paused. "But you didn't fucking try to kill the Butcher yourself?" That was a direct accusation. One I let pass.
"Oh, I gave it a shot," I said. "Then the cops blundered on the scene. Absent the intrusion of the fucking LAPD, he'd be stinking just fine now."
"Well, partner, you best keep your head down and yourself alive --- least ways until I can have that session with Pancho Villa's head," Holmdahl said. "Come on by my place here and ---"
"Don't be daft, Holm. I'm thinking more about a good chat, first. A chat some place public, where I can't be ambushed. Not ambushed by you or yours, mind you," I rushed to say, though I certainly wouldn't put a double-cross past him; on the contrary, I was planning for it. "You know what I mean --- I don't want Bush's cronies, or frat boys or Fierro and his
banditos
cornering me anywhere semi-private. That said, my friends and I will meet you at Aero Squadron tomorrow at ten a.m. Breakfast is on me."
"Your 'friends'?" Emil snorted again. "Gonna gang up on me, huh?"
"I doubt that we could do that."
"Me too. Tomorrow at ten a.m. then," Emil said. "Oh, and Hector, don't you go and die on me 'tween now and then, got it,
hombre
?"
"Promise,
amigo
. Honest Injun."
One down.
I took out my little notepad and flipped to Senator Bush's number. No guts, no glory.
The senator kept it short and very spooky --- in a CIA kind of way --- all symbolic code-talk and mysterious mumbo-jumbo.
Bush said, "You have the parcel?"
I responded, "The all-important fucking 'parcel' is accounted for,
sí.
Empty eye sockets and remaining whiskers intact. All the attendant bullet holes are there. So, yes, Senator, your precious fucking skull is back in play."
"Don't use my title, please," Senator Bush said. "Or my name. I'm sure you're on an unsecured line."
"I'm sure you're sure that I am. Well, what the fuck should I call you,
amigo?"
"Poppy.'"
Oh Christ
. That nearly did it for me, right there.
I said, "No way,
hombre
. Fuck you and your Yale secret society. Fuck 'em all sideways. I've got my own handle for you. I'm gonna call you ... 'Headhunter.' As a nod to poor Geronimo, you skull-thieving asshole."
"Please,
stop
--- you're already making me hate you," the prissy senator said.
"Really? Well, it saves a step. You're gonna get there eventually anyway, so why not do it now?"
"This isn't the way we should proceed, Mr. Lassiter."
"Oh, Holy Jesus ---
screw
this. I'm not going to go the cloak-and-dagger, hand-job route with you, your Honor. Just tell me true, eighty grand still the going price for a dead Mexican legend's head?"
I could envision the thin lips saying the words: "Presuming you can provide provenance? Then, yes." The senator sniffed.
"'Provenance?" I almost snorted. "That ain't gonna happen. We both know that, Hoss. Sucker's been dead longer than your shot-down World War II-ace son has been alive. And Villa's head has been bouncing around in limbo a very very long time. Poor old Pancho, he's frankly the worse for wear. I don't have papers of authenticity. We both know that. We both accept that. My proof --- my fucking 'provenance' --- is just this big fucking underbite and a steadily growing pile of bodies."
There was a sharp intake of breath. Apparently, the career politician didn't like my use of the word "fucking." But what of the bodies? Well, cadavers, based on the evidence of Geronimo's headless torso, weren't much of an issue for this callous, blue-blooded character.
The senator said, "Bring the parcel on up to Connecticut, won't you? When you reach my town, call, and I'll send intermediaries to greet you. They'll take the parcel off your hands and you'll be paid your bounty."
"Please," I said. "You insult my intelligence. I'm not going down that path, no way, no how. We're going to use 'cut-outs,' to resort to your sad-ass spy parlance. And you're gonna make the first crucial leap of faith,
mi amigo
. You're going to pay eighty grand to a Swiss account of my choosing. I'll wire you the details,
mañana
. The guy who will be bringing you the head is an
hombre
I think you're well acquainted with --- Emil Holmdahl. When I see my account has been filled, then you'll get the rotting skull for your jerk-off Yale secret society."
"Very well," the senator said. He didn't sound too happy. And that gladdened my dark heart.
I said, "Here is my heart-felt advice, dumbass. You try and learn to
love
this plan, cocksucker. You
really
don't want to meet me face-to-face, you pinched-faced head thief. Just trust me on that."
The senator, just before hanging up and thus insuring himself the irrelevant last word, said, "Based on your violent and sorry excuse for novels, I suspect that's too terribly true, Mr. Lassiter."
I began the walk back to our new bungalow. There was a crack of a thunder, then a warm and steady rain began falling. With hunched shoulders, I trotted through an alley to a side street that afforded a near-constant procession of storefront canopies leading back to my current digs.
One canopy was emblazoned the name of an osteopath. For a fifty, the mercenary doc agreed to give me a cursory once-over.
I confided to the doc my fears regarding diabetes. He listened to my anecdotes and nodded gravely.
He checked my most recent wounds --- deftly jerking the bandages from the backs of my hands before I could react. He leaned in close and clicked his tongue.
"When exactly were you wounded?" The doctor's brow furrowed as he examined the scratches on the backs of my hands.
I told him. He shook his head and "tsked-tsked."
My new doctor shook his head and looked me in the foggy eye. "These wounds should be much better healed than they are. They're a sorry sign, all on their own, I'm afraid. Those and the foot pains you describe. Though those could be from dehydration, too. You should drink more water every day. And as regards circulation, you strike me as an active man. We wouldn't want to lose our toes or our feet, would we?"
"We wouldn't."
The sawbones spiked me and drew my blood. Then he passed me a cup and asked me to hit the restroom and to piss into it. I said, "I will, but I'll warn you in advance, there may be some blood in there."
"You suspect you have a cancer?"
"No," I said. "Some son of a bitch punched me in the kidney."
My doctor-for-hire didn't blink. He scoped my bruised and swollen knuckles. He said, "I'll confess that I've read many of your books, Mr. Lassiter. I didn't realize until now that they were nonfiction." I reckoned he fancied himself a comedian, but down deep, I had a grudging affection for my accidental doctor for that crack.
The sawbones ran me through an eye test and then, frowning, he referred me to an optometrist two doors down. I took that as another grave sign.
"It'll be a few days before I have anything definitive in terms of your tests, but I think I can safely say I'm soon going to be prescribing insulin," the doctor said. "Stay away from sugar in the meantime and refrain from alcohol. Can you do that?"
I shrugged. "What exactly makes you think I couldn't?"
"It's the alcohol that concerns me."
I bit my lip, then said, "What makes you think I drink?"
My new doctor blinked and smiled politely. Then he blinked a few more times.
"I'll do my best to stay dry," I promised.
"I know you'll try for me. But you need to do this for yourself. That's what concerns me."
I patted his arm. "Don't confuse me with my characters."
"That's good advice. You should listen to yourself, Mr. Lassiter."
My vision was fuzzy and my pupils light-sensitive from being dilated by the eye-doctor as I resumed my walk back to Alicia and Bud. The rain had slowed to a soothing drizzle.
Fucked up as my vision was, I nevertheless sensed I had a shadow.
This fella in a black suit and tie fell in step behind me. He stood out on the Los Angeles streets in that dark and severe rig of his. I guessed him for FBI.
Soon enough, he laced arms with me and said, "Don't react. I'm Special Agent Duane David."
I smiled and shook loose my arm. "My strong sense is that you're just a Fed by title. But whose creature are you
really
, Duane? J. Edgar's, or do you do the bidding of Bush?"
He sneered and reached under his jacket. I felt a barrel dig into my ribs. "That's some kind of record," the alleged FBI agent said, "pissing me off this quickly."
"Yeah, well fuck you, Duane. If that's so, you're so far out of your league I can't help but feel for you."
He steered me to a food stand that was sculpted to look like a giant hot dog. We took up a table in the shade of the giant wiener. As we hadn't ordered any food, we drew cross looks from the fella manning the stand. "Duane" --- a blond asshole in a too-tight black suit jacket --- flashed his FBI identification. The proprietor flashed Duane his middle finger. Duane started to rise. The proprietor raised his other hand. He curled his lip and said, "You and fucking HUAC wrecked my uncle."
"Well, fuck you," Duane shot back.
"Making friends everywhere you go, huh?" I shook my head. "Screw this.
My
time is valuable. You arrest me, or you tell me what you want, or I'm gonna take the side of hot-dog boy there. I'll start working my persuasive mouth and see you gutted by the resulting crowd."
Duane leaned in. "Don't fuck with me Lassiter. We have a file on you thicker than the hard-on I have for you, cocksucker."
Oh boy
. This was calamitous strategy on his part. Now
I
had a hard-on. I said, "I'm thinking your 'thicker than' equals my invisible,
pendejo
. Again, my question stands. Exactly whose stooge are you, dumbass?"
Duane bit his lip. His fists were clenched and his cheeks were red. Good. The boy had a temper. He snarled, "I'm not going to fuck with you. You were prematurely anti-fascist, and---"
"Hey, Duane-O, fuck you and your slut mother. Think about that term all you FBI cocksuckers seem so warm to: 'prematurely anti-fascist.' What's that make you Johnny-come-latelys?
Tardily
anti-fascist? Can only be the term for it. Wanna know what else? I went over to Spain to raise money just to chase Spanish tail. I ain't a political animal."
"I should clap iron on you now."
"And I should put a bullet in your right eye and call your mincing boss and tell him you're schlepping for sorry-ass Yale. I'm right, aren't I?"
"Fuck you."
"I'm gonna take that as a 'yes.'" I stood and flipped the bird at "Duane." I said, "You're outgunned. Here's the thing, Duane --- you come at me again, and I'll kill you. Fed or no."
"You're threatening a federal agent?" His face was red. His hand was trembling --- wanting to stray to his gun, I guessed.
I leaned in close. I smiled, my lips and eyes close to his: "No, Duane. I'm threatening a card-carrying member of the Skull and Bones Society. And I think, push comes to shove, Hoover would side with me. I know how much J. Edgar likes running his own show. Hell, garbage men in Illinois know that. I'd wager if I make one or two phone calls up the chain, I can have you unemployed in under two minutes."
I'd nearly made it "home" when the second FBI agent accosted me. "I'm special agent Kenneth Brown. Spare me a moment, Mr. Lassiter?"
I stopped and turned. "You work with Duane David?" I glared at the fella and said, "I really have to think so. So, you know, I think I'm gonna say, respectfully, 'Fuck you,' agent."
Special Agent Ken Brown smiled. He said, "Me and Agent David, we're only titular partners, Mr. Lassiter. That's all."
I looked him over. This guy was slender as hell. White hair; a good smile. He held out his hand and I shook it.
"That's all?" I asked.
"That's all."
"Seems maybe enough," I said, curious now where this was headed.
Brown tipped his head on side. "I'm frankly taking your measure, sir. I'm sure you're doing the same, sir. But I have an advantage. I've read
Wandering Eye
. I loved
Border Town
. Hell, I love
The Land of Dread and Fear
. I think it's your best book. I frankly think I understand you and what matters to you, Mr. Lassiter. I've spent some time with Mr. Hoover's files on you. And I think, at base, maybe you and me are kindreds. So I'm going to gamble here. I'm going to confess that I have a pretty firm handle on what you're involved in. I think I know what you possess. If you don't know already, I'm going to say it up front: Agent David was recruited by the Bureau during his senior year at Yale. We now suspect another agency got to him first. We think Agent David is playing a double game. We think this, because he was a member of the Skull and Bones Society. Please, Mr. Lassiter, don't insult my intelligence by pretending to act as if you don't know what I'm talking about. I'm certain you do. We've wired your car, put multiple tracers in it. To your credit, you quickly found one of those and sent several other agents --- two of whom, parenthetically, are Skull and Bones members --- to Idaho. But we correctly guessed once you found one tracer, you wouldn't look for redundant units."
"You bastards," I said.
"I can see how you could see it that way," Agent Brown said. "To be honest, we've traced every call you've made since you left New Mexico. We've even disposed of some bodies you or others left in your wake in order to shield you from various local law enforcement agencies and media outlets."
My head was spinning. I said, "For that, I guess I must say that I'm grateful."
"You should be," Agent Brown said. "I don't mean that in a gloatful sense, Mr. Lassiter. I just mean, well, you've collected some powerful enemies. The Skull and Bones are knitted tightly to the CIA and to the Secret Service, as I'm sure you know. That, frankly, concerns Mr. Hoover. I confide this to you at some personal peril. Particularly in so far as it concerns Special Agent Duane David. Mr. Hoover, understandably, can't abide CIA incursion into the Bureau, even if said-agent David is acting primarily under the aegis of Yale secret society fealty."
I laughed and shook my head. "Jesus, you sound like a lawyer from hell."
Special Agent Brown shrugged. "I happen to have a law degree. For liability reasons, my verbiage regarding that particular nuance was required to be a rote recitation of agency-hired attorneys. 'Tween us, it disgusts me, too --- wordy cocksuckers."
Someday, I thought, all the litigating assholes would accidentally destroy the world. And the CIA and FBI and their constant attempts to out-dick one another would result in bloodshed of epic proportions.
I steered Agent Brown back to the CIA mess.
"Fucking CIA, they're foreign, aren't they?" I shook my head and said, "They're not remotely domestic, right? At least by design, they can't operate on U.S. soil? So far as J. Edgar is concerned, they're over-reaching their charter by nosing around the domestic front, yeah?"
Special Agent Brown stared hard at me. He was really taking my measure, now. "That's essentially accurate, yes, sir. But they are also fucking with Mr. Hoover's agency. Mr. Hoover can't countenance rogues pissing in his pond. Sir."
"Now you're speaking my language Agent Brown."
He shook loose a cigarette from a soft pack and I accepted it. He shook loose a second for himself. I fired up both up with my Hemingway Zippo. "This rest has to be off the record," the FBI agent said. "The director would gut me for going where I'm about to go, sir. Do you understand? I need my job. I have two daughters to support. I need you to handle this information with real discretion."
"Sure," I said. "I get that. Thee and me, Agent Brown, we have made a separate peace. By the way, if I'm being watched by David and his cronies, aren't you worried you'll be spotted here with me?"
"You're on light surveillance currently, as we have your car wired and your phone tapped. You've established what appears to be a domicile with your two friends. You're easily found. For the moment, it's just me and Agent David tailing you. Agent David who needed a haircut. I threatened to report him to our superior. Director Hoover is very very fussy about our appearance, as I'm sure you know. So Agent David is now at a barbershop."
"'Fussy?'" I smiled. "One must be fastidious in his sartorial presentation, yes."
"I hate it too," Agent Brown said. "And now who sounds like a goddamned lawyer? But there's another reason your security is light."
"I'm all ears, Agent," I said.
"You'll be accumulating additional surveillance in a very short time," Brown said. "When you meet with Mr. Holmdahl, two investigative lines will be crossing. I hope you understand I'm breaking a confidence sharing this with you."
"Mum's the word." I said, "You're already watching Holmdahl?"
"For many many years now, yes," Agent Brown said. "We --- well, actually the Secret Service --- first questioned Holmdahl in 1952 regarding twenty million in gold he was reputed to have smuggled out of Mexico."
"Villa's gold?"
"Perhaps. But more likely, not. We think Holmdahl is also searching for Villa's gold. He's made several trips to the Las Nieves region --- Durango --- where Villa's gold is still rumored to be hidden. This other twenty million is something else ... maybe something foreign --- in a dark sense."
Jesus ... maybe Emil was more mercenary than even I knew.
Agent Brown slipped me a sheet of paper. "A special phone number. Call it if you need to. You'll be in touch with me within five minutes."
The night before a battle ... that's what it felt like, anyway.
The whole escapade was starting to remind me of one of my own novels from the late-1940s.
Overlapping and conflicting objectives. Third and fourth parties hiding private agendas.
The looming specter of double-or triple-crosses.
If I were plotting it, I would find a way to have Duane and Emil screw one another, to have Fierro wind up dead. Bud and me would end up with a king's ransom and "I" would get the girl. At least for the short term. All my books seem to end in death --- never any happy endings.
Just like life.
But, hell, maybe I could "plot" it after all, manipulate events toward some end of my own.
I found myself a table in a dark corner of the tavern. I ordered a club sandwich and a bottle of club soda, took out my notebook and tried to write while I waited for my food.
I didn't really have a story I could get going, so I started writing descriptions of Alicia, depicting her in different settings and situations. I tried to imagine what her mannerisms would be and what she would say in certain circumstances. Those descriptions and fragments of dialogue eventually began to spread out into a short story about a young, unwed Mexican mother sleeping with an older and doomed
Villista
the night before his final battle.
Roman à clef
? Push come to shove, I'd surely be hard-pressed to deny it.
The tavern had a small stage and a good sound system. Two guys with guitars were strumming and belting out cowboy tunes and border ballads. I didn't know most of the tunes and so figured they must be original compositions. But they were riveting and authentic. The singer/songwriter was this prematurely white-haired dude who introduced himself as "Buddy Loy Burke." He wore dark-tinted glasses and a white straw cowboy hat. Dude had a dry sense of humor and a riveting baritone. His accompanist was tall and skinny and a genius on the guitar. The singer was crooning a tune about lost romance and resulting regrets that he called "The Ones That Got Away" --- a pitilessly self-appraising border ballad that cut straight to my black and bloodied heart.
My club sandwich came and I ate and drank soda water and coffee and listened to the singer ... stealing occasional thirsty glances at the glasses of whiskey and bourbon gripped in the hands of the other patrons seated around me.
I finished eating, wrote for the duration of another four or five songs, and then felt these fingertips trail across the back of my neck. I looked up and Alicia smiled and leaned over and kissed my mouth. "Am I interrupting?" She nodded at my notebook. "I'd understand if you said yes."
"No. You're not. I'm finished. Have a seat and I'll buy you a drink and stare lustfully. At the drink and at you, I mean. And not necessarily in that order."
She smiled and nodded. She pointed at the singer. "He's quite wonderful. I requested a song for you. One Bud says you favor ... 'Tramps & Hawkers,' but with what Bud called, 'the Jim Ringer lyrics.'"
"Seems Bud knows me better than I do." I smiled and squeezed her hand. "It's probably my favorite tune. How in hell did you find me?"
She smiled. "It's the closest bar in walking distance."
I almost winced, but said, "I haven't gotten to apologize to you for that stuff with Bud the other day, Alicia."
"'Alicia,'" she repeated. "So ...
poised
. But you needn't be you know." Alicia brushed a black wing of hair back from above her left eyebrow and smiled. "Forget it. Bud explained for you."
"Explained how much?"
"Enough. Enough that I can link it to things I've heard from Miss Dietrich, and from Mr. Welles. And things I have deduced to make me think I know all of it. Or, at least as much as I want or need to know about how it was."
I started to speak, but couldn't figure out anywhere to go with it. I wanted to say, "And knowing what you think you know, you can sit here with me? Perhaps even stay with me?"
Alicia carefully stroked the bruise fading under my eye from where Bud had belted me. "Maria --- your woman --- she failed you," she said. "But worse, that woman failed your little girl ... in so many terrible ways."
My new favorite troubadour was singing "Prairie in the Sky" now --- a wickedly beautiful ballad seasoned with imagery of big skies and dying sunsets and desert birds taking wing.
I said, "Whatever she did, it could never excuse what I did." I hesitated. "Do you need more from me? I've never really talked about it. But I would tell you, if you wanted ... in spite of everything it could cost me."
"No," Alicia said, shaking her head. "No, Héctor. I know enough about what I think happened. If it is of any consolation, I would have maybe done it myself under similar circumstances. The men who raped me ... I think I could have killed them. Or at least maimed them. Understand --- I love my daughter. But I would kill the men who gave her to me. So I understand these bloody thoughts you have ... and maybe acted on."
"Can you live with them? Live with me, and my having had them?"
"I'm not sure yet. Perhaps not." She sighed and her fingers traced my mouth. "Is it always like this being with you? Running and ducking and fighting to survive?"
"Not exactly like this."
"But
usually
, you're saying. Close enough, in other words ... you writer. Because you like it like this. That could be a problem for us." She squeezed my hand and began moving our joined hands in time to the music. "When this is over --- this of the heads --- what do you do then, Héctor? Do you go on to the next bit of mayhem? Do you crawl into some bottle and start dying again? What do you propose to do?"
My Mexican darling certainly pulled no punches. Down deep, I adored her for her candor. The women who can really lay a glove on me are always the ones I'm most a fool for. Alicia was the quickest study I'd yet crossed.
I lied, "I don't think that far ahead, these days."
"You should. You should think about the future ... and what form it might take for you."
"Marlene told me back there in Venice that I don't have any more future."
Alicia smiled and looked up at me with bedroom eyes from under her black bangs. Her hand was warm in mine. "Well, you have no prospect of one with her, that much is certain," she said. "And she's merely a Hollywood actress: what can a narcissist such as she possibly know of anything that matters? You know what Hollywood women are like."
"But you're trying to be what she is."
"I just want to support my daughter," Alicia said. "I'm only interested in giving her a good life and in seeing that she goes to school so she can make her own way. That's all ... it's a means to an end." Alicia smiled a tired smile. "You want to go 'home' now?'"
I smiled and stroked her cheek. "Soon. But, for a time, can we just sit here and hold hands and listen to this guy sing?"
Alicia smiled sadly and squeezed my hand. She scooted her chair around close to mine and curled into my arm, her head resting on my shoulder and her hand tapping time on my thigh as the troubadour began to sing "my song" about rambling: blinding sun and snow; mountains and oceans; gypsies; ghosts and lost darlings; and the San Joaquin --- the most beautiful and wonderful goddamn place I've found on this increasingly sorry planet.
I said, "I don't really want to die you know."
Alicia twisted her head around. We locked gazes. Her dark eyes were glistening.
"No," she said after a time. "I don't think you care a bit about dying. What you really don't want is to grow old."
I rose early and wrote for three hours --- fleshing out my story I had started that was centered on Alicia. I could taste her on my mouth; the smell of her and us together clung to me. I started coffee and grabbed
The Los Angeles Times
from the front stoop. I flipped through it and found a review for my current novel,
The Land of Dread and Fear
.
The book reviewer, this little pilot fish called Lee G. Todd, agreed the title of my novel was "well-chosen." He said it was so because he "feared" my novel was terrible and filled him with "dread" of any more books from me.
I could envision the little hack eunuch at his typewriter, wringing his hands with glee over that one.
Lee savaged my novel. But his barbs and attacks were wrapped in too-carefully constructed prose and smarmy little sarcasms that screamed of more "creative" self-congratulation.
My book wasn't the anchor for the piece.
The so-called reviewer's reaction to my novel didn't come across as the pivot for the review, either.
This was all about the reviewer preening and prancing and playing to his presumed reader. And making a name for himself by tearing down a bigger man --- a real writer.
My book was a means to some twisted end whose true nature was known only to Lee and me. But it made my blood boil. "Lassiter can usually be counted upon to move matters along in pulpy and peppy fashion," --- (
peppy
?) --- "but here he stalls out as he partners his aging, bitter gringo with a Mexican pin-up who couldn't exist outside of a narcissistic old crime writer's fetid imagination."
Mr. Lee G. Todd said my descriptions of
La Frontera
"bogged down the action" and the perceived "romance" derailed my "otherwise competent if not particularly original mystery story." He wrote that chapter nine smacked of a sense of a "writer clearly trying to write above himself."
The diseased bastard said I should take lessons in mystery writing from Dame Quartermain.
Mystery writing
?
I've never written a "mystery" in my life. I'm a
crime
writer.
Lee said the "clipped and hyper-stylized" prose style that I'd employed kept "getting between" him "and the story." He said that my prose-style "kept reminding" him that he was "reading a book."
Huh
. Me, I'm
always
aware I'm reading a book when I'm, well,
reading a book
.
But then the bastard really crossed the line. He dismissed any notion of "persona" and went and confused me with my protagonist. He said I was my "own worst-invented character." And
then
he mentioned my dead wife and child. He implied the plot was calculated "to vent some sense of guilt the author might be experiencing ... to deflect some terrible culpability."
I tore the paper into pieces and beelined for the phonebook to look for his address. I would kill the bastard with my bare hands --- let my fists "get between him" and the rest of his sorry fucking excuse for a life.
Then I calmed down a bit, going cold inside like I always do before setting in motion terrible things that scare me later. I assessed angles.
I dug through my wallet and found the number for my friend "Packy" Thompson. Packy was an old boxer who'd found the bottle and reluctantly but effectively transitioned into contract work for Mickey Cohen and other Left Coast takers.
I dialed and found he was living in L.A. He gave me an address where I should leave the money --- a "dead drop."
I was just closing the deal when Bud came in.
"No," I said to the aging former boxer, "Just his hands. That'll be enough, Pack'."
Bud gestured at the phone as I hung up. "What was that about?"
"Just responding to a critic."