One True Sentence: A Hector Lassiter novel (Hector Lassiter series Book 1) Read online

  ONE TRUE

  SENTENCE

  A Hector Lassiter novel

  Craig McDonald

  One True Sentence was first published in the United States of America by St. Martin’s Publishing Group 2011

  This edition published by agreement with Craig McDonald by Betimes Books 2014

  www.betimesbooks.com

  Copyright © 2011, Craig McDonald

  Craig McDonald has asserted his right under the Universal Copyright Convention to be identified as the author of this work

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, sold, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, print, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and the copyright owner.

  ISBN 978-0-9926552-8-0

  One True Sentence is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by JT Lindroos

  ALSO BY CRAIG MCDONALD

  The Hector Lassiter Series

  One True Sentence

  Forever’s Just Pretend

  Toros & Torsos

  The Great Pretender

  Roll the Credits

  The Running Kind

  Head Games

  Print the Legend

  Three Chords & The Truth

  Write from Wrong (The Hector Lassiter Short Stories)

  Standalones

  El Gavilan

  The Chris Lyon Series

  Parts Unknown

  Carnival Noir

  Cabal

  Angels of Darkness

  The Daughters of Others

  Watch Her Disappear

  Nonfiction

  Art in the Blood

  Rogue Males

  PRAISE FOR ONE TRUE SENTENCE

  "Vivid, remarkable characters--the historical people as well-drawn as the fictional ones!--in a rich, evocative setting, and a gruesome serial killer with one of the most unusual motives ever. Absolutely gripping!" —Diana Gabaldon, New York Times bestselling author of the Outlander series

  “Craig McDonald proves he is a master of literary suspense in this riveting historical thriller set in the 1920s Paris of Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. Complex protagonists, shocking murders, and a gripping tale will leave you wanting more.” —Stefanie Pintoff, Edgar-award winning author of A Curtain Falls

  "Nobody does mad pulp history like Craig McDonald. Reading a Hector Lassiter novel is like having a great uncle pull you aside, pour you a tumbler of rye, and tell you a story about how the 20th century really went down." —Duane Swierczynski, author of Expiration Date

  "A finely-crafted pulp historical mystery…While McDonald plucks your heartstrings, his wily hero Hector Lassiter will pound out a drum roll on your short ribs, and yes, you actually will be thankful for the experience." —Tom Piccirilli, author of Shadow Season

  “The real stuff… Sharp, smart, and fascinating. McDonald brings alive a unique time and place with not only his talent for history but style that would make his subjects proud.” —Ace Atkins, author of Devil’s Garden and Infamous

  “An amazing montage of mystery, murder, meta-fiction, and literary-history, quite unlike anything I’ve read before.” —Craig Holden, author of The Jazz Bird

  INTRODUCTION

  If any label best describes the Hector Lassiter series, it’s probably “Historical Thrillers.” These books combine myth and history. The Lassiter novels spin around secret histories and unexplored or underexplored aspects of real events. They’re set in real places, and use not just history to drive their plots, but also incorporate real people.

  As a career journalist, I’m often frustrated by the impossibility to nail down people or events definitively. Read five biographies of the same man, say, of Ernest Hemingway, and you’ll close each book feeling like you’ve read about five different people. So, I’ve concluded, defining fact as it relates to history is as elusive a goal as stroking smoke or tapping a bullet in flight.

  History, it’s been said, is a lie agreed to. But maybe in fiction we can find if not fact, something bordering on truth. With that possibility in mind, I explore what I can make of accepted history through the eyes of one man. The “hero” of this series, your guide through these books, is Hector Mason Lassiter, a shades-of-grey guy who is a charmer, a rogue, a bit of a rake, and, himself, a crime novelist.

  Some others in the novels say he bears a passing resemblance to the actor William Holden. Hector smokes and drinks and eats red meat. He favors sports jackets, open collar shirts, and Chevrolets. He lives his life on a large canvas. He’s wily, but often impulsive; he’s honorable, but mercurial.

  He often doesn’t understand his own drives. That is to say, he’s a man. He’s a man’s man and a lady’s man. He’s a romantic, but mostly very unlucky in love. Yet his life’s largely shaped by the women passing through it.

  Hec was born in Galveston, Texas on January 1, 1900. In other words, he came in with the 20th Century, and it’s my objective his arc of novels span that century — essentially, through each successive novel, giving us a kind of under-history or secret-history of the 20th Century.

  Tall and wise beyond his years, as a boy Hector lied about his age, enlisted in the military, and accompanied Black Jack Pershing in his hunt down into Mexico to chase the Mexican Revolutionary Pancho Villa who attacked and murdered many American civilians in the town of Columbus, New Mexico. Villa’s was the first and only successful assault on the United States homeland prior to the events of September 11, 2001.

  Much of that part of Hector’s life figures into Head Games, the first published Hector Lassiter novel and a finalist for the Edgar and Anthony awards, along with a few similar honors. That novel is set mostly in 1957. Its sequel, Toros & Torsos, opens in 1935. Subsequent books about Hector similarly hopscotched back-and-forth through the decades upon original publication.

  The Betimes Books release of the Hector Lassiter series will try for something different, presenting the books in roughly chronological order—at least in terms of where each story starts as the novel opens. The series now opens with One True Sentence, the fourth novel in original publication sequence, but the first novel chronologically.

  Set in 1924 Paris, that novel is now followed by its intended sequel, Forever’s Just Pretend, enjoying its first-ever publication and completing a larger story revealing how Hector became the guy we come to know across the rest of the series: “The man who lives what he writes and writes what he lives”; friend to Hemingway, Orson Welles and other 20th-Century luminaries.

  The rest of the repackaged series unfolds in similar fashion, a mix of the old and new titles.

  The Lassiter novels were written back-to-back, and the series mostly shaped and in place before the second novel was officially published. It’s very unusual in that sense—a series of discrete novels that are tightly linked and which taken together stand as a single, larger story.

  Welcome to the world of Hector Lassiter.

  Craig McDonald

  This novel is dedicated to Madeleine and Yeats McDonald:

  “Be careful in choosing your path; nor walk in a dangerous way.

  For all of tomorrow hinges on how you’ve handled today.”

  CONTENTS

  PARIS: FEBRUARY 1924

  COVEN

  PART I

 
CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  PART II

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  PART III

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  PART IV

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  PART V

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  PART VI

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  PART VII

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Reader Discussion Questions

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PARIS:

  FEBRUARY 1924

  “It is the fate of every myth to creep by degrees into the narrow limits of some historical reality, and to be treated by some later generations as a unique fact with historical claims.”

  — Nietzsche

  Snow falling on the Seine.

  It was half-past-two and it was quiet as it gets with the heavy falling snow and Hector was just starting to cross the Pont Neuf, heading home after a long night of writing. He was alone and cold and slightly drunk.

  Icy fog crawled across the river. The lights of the bridge glowed strangely in the fog, not illuminating anything, but instead casting hazy, solitary cones of weak light that receded off into the cold mist.

  From the other end of the bridge, much farther than Hector could see, he heard a scream, then the sound of the rubbery, thin ice breaking below…water splashing.

  Hector called, “Hey there!” and began running, his leather soles slipping and sliding on the slick bricks. Hector thought he heard other feet hitting the pavers.

  He crossed the bridge, knowing he’d passed the halfway point when the grade changed. Hector ran to the spot where he thought he’d heard the splash and leaned out over the stone rail, peering into the fog. Squinting, Hector could see a black patch below — standing out against the thin veil of snow covering the iced-over surface of the river. Wisps of steam from the warmer water trapped beneath the ice drifted from the black spot, curling into the mists of the fog. Hector watched a few moments, waiting to see if there was any sign of motion from the hole, but he saw nothing like that.

  A suicide, probably…there was never any shortage of those.

  He looked at the steps leading down to the river’s edge. The bridge’s lights glowed meanly across the slick steps. And if he got down there without falling, Hector knew he’d still be faced with just that hole in the ice. The current would likely have already swept whatever — whoever — had gone through dozens of yards from the steaming hole.

  Reluctantly, Hector backed away from the railing. He decided going to the authorities would do little good. And doing that might just make Hector a fleeting suspect if they fished a body from the river later, after the thaw.

  There were fresh footprints in the thin crust of snow…spaced far apart, like the person who left them was running. The weight of the impact on the hard snow made the size and the shape of the footprints indistinct…impossible to tell if they were those of a man or a woman.

  He looked around again; saw nothing; heard nothing. He thought about trying to follow the footprints in the snow, then decided against it.

  Hector shook loose a cigarette and struck a match with his thumbnail. He pulled his collar up higher and tighter around his face and jammed his hands deeper into the pockets of his overcoat, continuing his solitary way home.

  By morning he’d nearly forgotten about all of it.

  COVEN

  They were gathered in a private room off the back of a café called the Grand Néant.

  The speaker wearing the black mask surveyed them sitting there, sipping their wine or anise: gaunt, intent-eyed men whom the self-dubbed “Nobodaddy” — a moniker borrowed from the poet William Blake — had personally selected as likely converts.

  Dark men with darker sensibilities. Cynical vets, jaded rich boys, and bitter men who viewed life after the trenches and horrors of the World War as a gauntlet — a thing to tear pleasure from at any cost and with no eye toward consequences.

  Fellow travelers.

  A lost generation. Prospects. Worthy candidates for Nobodaddy’s dark campaign.

  Nobodaddy said, “As a movement — as an organized entity — we can impose our artistic and philosophical vision on the world. Here, in the City of Lights, we stand at the center of the beating heart of the arts. Every writer, painter, and poet of consequence is right here. If we seize control here in Paris, our vision, our artistic aesthetic, can be carried forth to the world.”

  The German — the tall dark one with the hawk nose and the terrible scar down the side of his face — shook his head. Werner Höttl said, “Your aesthetic. Your artistic vision. For surely, it is not mine. You embrace nihilism…wallow in your concept of nothingness and the futility of life. Insofar as you dismiss religion, I applaud you. Particularly because the artistic community of this city is too in thrall to the Jew. But my medium is film, and film is a communal experience. It can elevate an audience. A master filmmaker can make an auditorium of strangers feel the same things…react the same way. All you offer is sterile, black loneliness. This does not appeal to me.”

  Höttl studied the speaker in the black mask again. He was still trying to decide it if was a man or a woman. The voice was odd…rather androgynous.

  The other dark-haired, hawk-faced one — Donovan Creedy — cleared his throat and nodded. “Herr Höttl is right about the Jews and the way they’re poisoning and warping the artistic scene in this city. They run all the little magazines. Their salons are hives of indoctrination to their vision of the arts. I’m all for grounding out their influence. But I don’t see how your campaign in any way enhances the prospects for our artistic success. Your vision of Nada renders life meaningless. If you have your way, everyone will be throwing themselves out windows or under trains. They’ll be drinking poison and shooting themselves in the head to escape the barren world you’ve handed them. I want no part of this.”

  Creedy rose, putting on his hat and scooping up his overcoat from the back of his chair. The German, Höttl, also stood, said, “I’ll follow you out, Herr Creedy.”

  Dejected, Nobodaddy looked to the young critic — handsome, tow-headed…a trust fund baby. “And you, Quentin?”

  The art critic blew twin streams of smoke out his nostrils and shrugged. “What can I say? Either you aren’t a good ambassador for your cause, or your aims are simply unfathomable to anyone who is remotely sane. All I’ve heard is an argument for the meaninglessness of all human effort…all artistic endeavor.”

  Quentin ground out the stub of his cigarette; lit another. He said, “I’ll confess, I have artistic ambitions myself. Until I get a better handle on how I mean to realize them, I’m furthering my own education under the cloak of art criticism. From where I sit, you and your group — if it extends beyond yourself — are at odds with my interests. Hell, if everyone starts believing as you do, nobody will be painting, writing novels or poetry…writing plays. Hell, as those two odd birds who just cleared out said, all the artists who fall for your pitch will be too busy killing themselves to create.”

  Quentin Windly stood up, stretched, and said, “Afraid
I’m going to take the air, too. Thanks for the drinks. I was you, I’d try drinking more myself. Maybe it’ll change your black state of mind. Oh, and lose the mask — it doesn’t engender trust. Hell, it makes you seem, you know, insane.”

  Nobodaddy had used the name “Elrond Huppert” — a fanciful alias he’d partly borrowed from a Leeds professor named Tolkien — when he’d solicited their participation; he hadn’t told them to expect a masked host. “When you’d joined us I meant to reveal my face,” Nobodaddy snarled, close to losing self-control.

  Quentin grinned. “For someone who believes in nothing, you ask for big leaps of faith.”

  Nobodaddy watched the art critic go. Nobodaddy stood alone in the room, staring at empty chairs.

  Well, soul winning wasn’t an easy task, particularly when you were trying to win converts to a faith as black and pitiless as this one.

  But there had been successes. The “church,” for lack of a better word, was growing — those who’d just left would probably use another word…maybe “festering.”

  But a dark course had been charted.

  It was just a matter of staying true to that plan and vision. If Nobodaddy couldn’t win them over — all the artists, all the opinion shapers in the artistic community of the City of Lights — well, then Nobodaddy and his minions would just continue pitching them into that black void, one at a time.

  Maybe one couldn’t kill them all, but one could surely try.

  After all, God was dead; actions no longer carried consequences.

  PART I

  vendredi, samedi & dimanche

  1

  Hector took the mail handed him by his femme de ménage and sorted it. He opened two envelopes from magazine publishers in the States and found two checks —each made out for several stories. It was enough to carry Hector well through the fall…not that he was as hard-pressed for money as so many other writers in the Quarter.

  Germaine LeBrun handed him a café au lait and he sipped it gratefully. She said, “It is good news?”