Roll the Credits: A Hector Lassiter novel Read online

  ROLL THE

  CREDITS

  A Hector Lassiter novel

  Craig McDonald

  First published in the English language worldwide in 2014 by Betimes Books

  www.betimesbooks.com

  Copyright © 2014, 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 978-0-9929674-1-3

  Roll the Credits 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

  Praise

  “A writer of truly unique voice, approach, and ambition, Craig McDonald delivers again with ROLL THE CREDITS. Hector Lassiter is a compelling character but also a fascinating forum for McDonald’s historical, social, and artistic observations. For all the wonderful action, slick dialogue, and plot twists McDonald throws at the reader, he’s equally interested in saying something substantial about time and place. Not to be missed.” —Michael Koryta

  “With each of his Hector Lassiter novels, Craig McDonald has stretched his canvas wider and unfurled tales of increasingly greater resonance.” —Megan Abbott

  “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

  “I don’t think there’s anything quite like them. These are incredible novels… Not only is the series a one-of-a-kind, but Craig has done one better by trying to make each novel a different novel.” —James Sallis

  ALSO BY CRAIG MCDONALD

  The Hector Lassiter Series

  One True Sentence

  Forever’s Just Pretend

  Toros & Torsos

  The Great Pretender

  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

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  FRANCE: 1940

  BOOK ONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  PARIS, JANUARY, 1925

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  BERLIN, SEPTEMBER 1929

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  BOOK TWO

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  BOOK THREE

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  BOOK FOUR

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  August 1971

  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 relea
se 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 for Yeats and Madeleine, who willed it

  “Perhaps our eyes are merely a

  blank film which is taken from us

  after our deaths to be developed

  elsewhere and screened as our

  life story in some infernal

  cinema.”

  — Jean Baudrillard

  FRANCE:

  1940

  In the old days, if a horse stumbled three times you shot it in the head.

  As far as I was concerned, our driver had just made his second stumble.

  Well, arguably it was his third if you counted a certain slip of the tongue earlier in the late-morning. I’d wondered at Billy’s fluent German before, but now?

  Following the twisting, mounting road toward the Alps, we were still thirty miles from our unstated destination. I was chewing my lip and weighing when best to kill our traitorous driver.

  From the seat behind us, Gertrude Stein yelled over the Renault’s engine’s roar, “Hector, perhaps we will at last have the windows up. It looks like rain, does it not?” She was tugging the window crank on her side with no success.

  More bellyaching. I twisted further around in my seat and said, “Sorry, darlin’, but this heap’s side and rear windows are all broken out. As a humble war correspondent moving in enemy territory, this Juvaquatre van was all I could wrangle under the gun.”

  That was true enough. I’d doffed my correspondent’s duds for native street clothes, and then stolen our current ride. According to my hastily forged papers, I was Günther Hess of Lyon, one of the guys in charge of retooling Renault for German war production.

  I had a smattering of rusty, Great War-era German and figured to get by just fine if chitchat didn’t go far beyond basic weather, bathroom and sporting house directions or drink orders. I said, “Still, you’re maybe right about the weather turning. I’ve got some rain slickers stowed behind you there. We’ll stop and break those out, just in case.”

  Might as well get the bloody deed over with now, I told myself. I glanced at Billy, finding little stomach for the wicked task to come. I promised myself that for both our sakes, I’d try to make it quick. That was a sop to my sometimes not-elusive-enough conscience.

  To distract myself, I smiled at Alice B. Toklas. Alice had never cared for me, not a lick, but the same was true of all the men that Gertrude doted over—all the male fiction writers and poets Gertrude had mentored or fed through the poorer times in older, better days in long-gone Paris.

  Alice and I had exchanged perhaps a half-dozen frosty words since we’d hit the road seven hours ago. Now I said to the little bird-like woman with the dark, hairy upper lip, “Think we might even have an extra-petit raincoat that will fit you, Miss Toklas.”

  Turning back around, I tapped my driver on the arm and above the wind’s sheer hollered, “You find a shoulder that looks firm enough, you pull over, okay, Billy? We’re going to need to stretch our legs and get some provisions out of the back.”

  Blond, blue-eyed Billy, looking very Aryan to my own pale blue eyes now, shot me this suspicious look and said, “We’re making good time, Hec. How much further do we have to go? Where are we going, exactly?”

  Not subtle. But then subtle and Billy didn’t seem to be acquainted. I shrugged and smiled. “Told you, kid, I’m only allowed to go where we’re going so long as I keep my secrets until we get there. And it’s far enough away yet to warrant a break from this kidney-busting heap of ours, son.” The Renault’s shocks were well past shot.

  Yessir, I had decided now. Billy was going to be going further away than the rest of us, quite soon and for keeps.

  I shook out a cigarette, offered one to Billy — his last, after all. I fired him up with my windproof Zippo. Alice coughed as our smoke blew back past her face. The little dame would just have to tough it out. Gertrude was diverting-enough company when she wasn’t complaining, but Alice? I could feel her hateful stare at the back of my head, even now.

  Billy nodded at a wide spot in the road ahead, a scenic pull-off at an ascending curve, and said, “It’ll do?”

  It was a picturesque place to die with that mountain valley view.

  “If you think it’ll bear the weight, why not, kiddo,” I said thickly.

  He pulled over and set the brake against the incline. Last moves.

  I swung out and stalked around to the back of the van; dropped the tailgate. “Gonna need a hand with this, son.”

  Billy sighed and hauled himself out from behind the wheel. It was just starting to rain now, cold and stinging. Blinking back the rain and fumbling with the fasteners, I stepped aside as Billy said, “Here, Hec, let me.” He got her open and I loaded his arms with stuff. Billy was now burdened with tarps and rain ponchos. Perfect. My stomach churned.

  Gertrude had moved around in her seat to try and watch us. That was too bad for her. She was going to hate what she was about to see. Probably be haunted by it. She held her hand out the broken back window, palm up against the needle-spray rain and said, “Hector, hurry, the weather.” She said it like it was news. Well, that was Gertrude in a nutshell, always discovering the world for the rest of us. Or at least presuming that she did that.

  In the distance, I could hear truck engines. Those coming our way precluded me taking a gunshot at Billy. The sound of the approaching caravan also put the boot to my backside to take action, now.

  I dipped my hand in my coat pocket and wrapped it around the bone handle of the SS knife I’d taken off a dead Kraut a few days ago. Sudden-like, I got around behind Billy, or maybe he secretly was a “Wilhelm,” and wrapped my left hand around his forehead. I jerked his head back hard to expose his throat.

  Gertrude gasped; Alice turned.

  Billy, who evidently had some commando training, dropped his load and, snarling, elbowed me in the gut. He stamped on my foot with his heel, then he twisted in my arms. He forced his forearm against my neck, pushing at my windpipe. With his other hand, Billy went for my souvenir Nazi knife.

  He was half my age and all my height. Billy was also trained in hand-to-hand combat—that was all-too-evident now. More wisdom come my way too late.

  Billy snarled, said, “You Jew-lover! I’m going to kill you slow with that knife, Lassiter!” He smiled meanly and said, “Werner Höttl sends his regards.”

  Höttl: Would-be German film expressionist and auteur turned Hitler stooge.

  So, it was Höttl behind this chase after the women. Hell, I’d suspected as much.

  Billy’s hand of a sudden clutched at his own throat. The curved handle of a walking stick was digging into his windpipe now. Gertrude and Alice were pulling on the other end of the cane, bless ’em.

  I kicked Billy hard between the legs, three times though the second two kicks were admittedly meanly gratuitous. Clutching at his crotch, Billy fell gasping to his knees in what was quickly turning to mud. I got aroun
d behind Billy and slit his throat down to bone. I let his corpse fall face first into a blood-spritzed puddle.

  Gertrude said, “What is this, Hector? Why did you kill that young man?”

  “He’s a spy,” I said. “New Yorker from his accent, but Billy was German American Bund, or something, I’m guessing. One way or another, Billy-boy here somehow threw in with der Fatherland. Had my suspicions about him the past couple of days. I sorely owe someone in intelligence on our side for saddling me with this one. Close as we’re getting, well, to keep you two safe in this new, good place, this had to happen, bloody as it was. Sorry, ladies. And thanks a million for the assist. Billy was a tough little traitor, sure enough.”

  I looked at the boy’s body bleeding into the mud. Now he looked like just another luckless young one undone by our latest World War. Kid was going to stalk my dreams.

  Gertrude said, “We do not care for these times.”

  “Ain’t lately finding much to love myself,” I said, standing over the dead boy in the stinging rain.

  Those trucks were rumbling closer. Chewing my lip, I planted a boot against Billy’s hip, pushed hard and sent his body tumbling down the muddy mountainside.

  Shaking my head and wiping the kid’s blood from the back of my hand, I said, “Yep, moments like this, I ain’t remotely crazy about times myself, Ma’am. Now we best get moving, vite.”

  I helped the ladies out from the Juvaquatre and passed out the raincoats and some tarps to spread over their legs.

  Alice reluctantly accepted my steadying hand as she climbed back into the rear of the Renault. Helping in short, stout Gertrude took a bit more effort. She finally opted to sit up front alongside me, wrapped up like a damp mummy. I handed Gertrude the cane she stumped around on and she stowed it between our seats. Gertrude said, “You know how to get us there, my Hector? I mean, without his help?” She nodded in the direction of the hillside I’d sent Billy tumbling down.

  I released the brake, got us going again. “I was checking the maps,” I called above the engine’s roar. “Yeah, I can do it. Should be there before late afternoon. Hold on tight now, you two. We’ll see if we maybe can’t outrun this rain.”