Head Games (The Hector Lassiter Series) (3 page)

Get a look at Emil Holmdahl: a crisply-pressed, starched checkered shirt buttoned all the way up and accented with a black and silver bolero tie, lizard-skin boots and khaki jodhpurs. He cinched those crazy pants with a hand-tooled, turquoise-studded belt and carried a Stetson in his callused hand. His shock of full white hair was brushed neatly back from a high forehead. After all the years and the picaresque living Emil had packed in since I'd known him, I expected him to look older.

We shook hands. The old man had a good grip on him.

Not for the first time, I wondered if Emil suffered from a mild strain of dwarfism. He'd always had a horse face and arms too long for his body. Age had exaggerated his asymmetry. Emil's shoulders were now narrow and sloped and his torso seemed even more strangely stunted. What height he had always seemed to reside between his waist and knees. His lower legs were too short and the brown cowhide boots he affected now didn't make 'em look much longer, though I suspected he thought they did --- no other way to justify wearing those things out in L.A. in 1957. He looked like a George Rozen pulp magazine cover in those damned boots whose heels probably gave him an extra inch and yet got him nowhere near proportional.

Holmdahl had a few years on me, but I sensed maybe that that morning, anyway, I looked older, more tired.

Alcohol withdrawal --- now of all times --- couldn't be helping much on that front.

And those of us who truly live in our heads seem to age harder. Probably the booze and the cigarettes and late nights and the whoring. Or, not enough of those things to kill us while we are young and beautiful.

The soldier of fortune gave Bud a bemused once-over and a perfunctory handshake.

The courtly old bastard bowed and kissed Alicia's hand.

He glanced over and said to me, "I remember you now." His saying it gave me chills.

We went inside the Aero Squadron with all its old military artifacts, and were led to a backroom I'd paid extra for where we could talk about things like lost treasure and stolen heads and grave-robbing.

Emil smiled at me. He said, "The head close by?"

The head
--- Emil was already rubbing me the wrong way. After all, he'd served under Villa for a time. It was bad enough he later turned on Pancho, but then to dig Villa up, saw off his head and stuff it with a map? Just what kind of sorry son of a bitch did it take to do all that? I shook my head, wondering how long I could hide the hatred seeing Emil again stoked in me.

"Course not," I said. "And I sincerely hope you haven't done something stupid and obvious like have a confederate toss our place while we're meeting here."

"That would be too obvious, wouldn't it?" The old man waved his hand. "That would be amateurish. And it wouldn't engender trust when I didn't find it. I figure you've hidden it well. So, no, I ain't that stupid."

"Sure." Truth was, Pancho's head was in the trunk of my car, just outside. Not that it was that an important an artifact now --- now that we knew that I had accidentally torched the treasure map it once contained.

I said, "So that something you've got stashed in Pancho's head ... I figure it for a document. Invisible ink --- something simple. What was it? Piss? Maybe lemon juice? Onion juice, or vinegar? Something like that, probably?"

Holmdahl snorted and shook his head. "Christ no. That's like something out of a pulp novel --- no offense intended."

"None taken."

"Anyway, that's Boy Scout crap," he said. "I'm glad you didn't try heating the baby up. We used magician's flash paper. Sucker would have gone up, just like that. Glad you had the brains not to screw with it."

Alicia sipped her water, looking at me over the glass.

I shifted in my seat. "Me too," I said.

"I'll tell you what we used, and do it just because it won't help you anyway," Holmdahl said. "That map --- hell, I've never seen its contents either. But I'll explain that part later. Thing is, you have to know exactly where to start in order to use the directions on the note."

"Tricky. And you know that place."

"I do. Just me, now. The other two guys who might have done something with it are dead."

Alicia set her glass down. She said, "Natural causes?"

Emil gave her a nasty smile. "As it happens, yes dear. We wrote the note in ammonia with an eagle's quill. You reveal it with a light sponge wash of red cabbage water."

"Neat," Bud said.

Emil smirked. "Those new boots hurting you, boy? Oh, and it's impolite to keep your hat on indoors. Do that in Texas, and you'll get your ass kicked by an old lady."

Bud's cheeks reddened. "Thanks," he said. I'd firmly admonished my young poet to stay stoic and silent. I sure as hell didn't need Bud stirring Emil up with his angry remarks like he had that equally hair-trigger Yale pointdexter back at my hacienda.

Emil said to me, "Where'd you find this boy?"

"He's my ward," I said. "I'm mentoring him in the finer points of writing ... and in living the kind of life that makes the muse open her legs."

"Interesting," Holmdahl said. He glanced at Alicia and back at me. "But coarse talk in front of a lady, Hector. Back in the forties, I read that book you wrote about the private eye and the Mexico City working girl ---
Border Town
. I think the lad here's got a distance to go to reach your level of worldliness ... and dissolution."

Now I found myself having to tamp down my own flaring anger. Or maybe Emil meant to say "disillusion." But probably not.

"I don't second-guess myself much these days, Emil," I said. "'Maybe in error, but never in doubt.' That's my motto."

Emil Holmdahl snorted and sipped his iced tea --- no liquor for him. "My motto is 'In God we trust; all other's pay cash.'"

"It suits you," I said. "I mean, you hunted your old buddy Pancho for what, just money?"

"What else is there?" The old man gestured at my left side. "What do you pack?" The door to our dining room was closed. The wait staff knew to knock before entering. I unholstered my Colt and pushed it across the table. The old man whistled and picked it up. "My God, a '73. She's a beauty." He turned her over, weighed her, ran his hands across her like he was stroking a woman's inner, upper thigh. He passed my gun back to me and pulled his own jacket back. "I'm a Mauser man, myself."

"Very nice," I said. "It's a C/96, yeah? A horseman's gun."

"Exactly. Ever done any time, Hector?"

"Not really. Slept off a few drunk and disorderlies in some of the better cities, but just overnight stuff."

"Didn't think so. You don't have the look."

"I know you've done your stints ... for grave-robbing, for instance," I said. "And for violating neutrality laws."

Alicia wrinkled her nose. "What does that mean, to 'violate neutrality laws'?"

Bud Fiske smiled. He'd taken off his hat and stowed it on the seat of the empty chair next to him. "I'm going to take a stab and say gun-running."

Emil Holmdahl winked and touched his nose. "Right-o. Not as callow as you look, boy. Sentenced to eighteen months in the federal pen. Then Pancho raided Columbus, New Mexico --- killed those civilians and bought himself a chase from Black Jack Pershing. They needed guides and I fit the bill. When you're in a spot like I was --- prison --- it always helps to have rare talents."

"But you never got us near enough to take a shot at Villa," I said. "No offense, but history is history. Or will you tell me you purposely fucked it up because of some lingering fondness for Pancho?"

"I still liked Villa well enough...but it was an impossible mission," Emil said. He spoke now to Alicia and Bud. "It was a crazy piece of business. Villa hurt us. Hit the U.S. in its own backyard. Killed civilians. So Wilson had to make Villa pay. But his response was ill-considered. Like everything else that cocksucker blue-blood Woodrow Wilson did. Mark my words, son --- never, ever serve in an army in a time of war under a president with no personal military service. And particularly under a Democrat --- they don't know how to win wars."

Bud, who I sensed had a touch of leftist in him, said, "What about FDR ... Truman?"

"Atom bomb," Holmdahl said. "Couldn't lose with that device in the mix. FDR died before he could steal defeat from the jaws of victory. And then Truman turned around and gave us Korea, where he couldn't drop the A-bomb. My analysis holds. But back to Villa --- terrible logic there. Sending 10,000 men into Mexico to hunt down and murder a native son --- a national hero to so many? That's bad judgment. It was only ever going to drive a wedge between us and Mexico. And we could have sent 100,000 men across the border and never found a single man who really wanted to hide in that desert country. They'd have been ahead to hire an assassin. In fact, I almost drew that duty."

This was news to me. I said, "Elaborate, wouldn't you?"

"Col. Herbert Slocum, he personally made me the offer to go in and kill Villa," Holmdahl said.

I shrugged, hating Emil again. "Money is money to you. And you'd killed many men by then. You agreed to hunt Villa. Why'd you say no to assassination?"

"Because it smacked of a suicide run, mostly," the old mercenary said. "I'm pretty attached to myself, having lived this long. And you know what? I actually did like Villa. I
personally
liked him. He was a good guy. A man's man. Even though I came to fight against him, I could never hate the magnificent bastard. He had some good qualities. And, hell, I'm a lot of things --- many of them very bad --- but I ain't no assassin. And, like I said, it was a suicide run --- like those Japs in their Zeros, diving down at our boats. Yellow cocksuckers." Holmdahl blushed and smiled awkwardly at Alicia. "Pardon my French, please,
señorita
."

"It's okay," she said. My Mexican beauty pointed at me. "I've been around him a while now. I've learned all kinds of new vulgarities since meeting Héctor."

"I'm sure that's true," the old man said. "You're a man's woman, if you know what I mean. No better kind. Well, if I had killed Villa in Mexico, I would never have gotten out of the country alive to collect that money."

Bud, incorrigible Bud, couldn't hold back. "But it was all right to cut off the 'magnificent bastard's' head? To cut into and root around inside the skull of a man you knew and liked?"

To my surprise and relief, Emil took that one in stride. He looked Bud in the eye and answered him --- giving me the sense he was warming to Bud in his own way. "That was different, son," Holmdahl said. "Villa was just rotting meat then. Everything that made Villa Villa was gone, fled to oblivion or Valhalla or wherever his kind finally flees to. Do you believe in an afterlife, Hector?"

I answered, too fast and too honestly. "Me, I don't harbor illusions of such things," I said. "I'm kind of counting on oblivion." I could feel Alicia's gaze on me. It didn't feel comforting. I wished I'd answered the old warrior more obliquely.

Alicia said, "What about you Mr. Holmdahl? Do you believe in heaven or hell, or both?"

"I gotta go with your beaten-up-on beau," the old man said. "If there is such a place as hell, I'm in a world of hurt, Beauty."

She said, "How is it Villa never came after you...I mean, after he was allowed to retire?"

Emil patted her hand. "I was on the move --- overseas --- a hard target to acquire. And hell, Mexico secured all kinds of assurances from Villa that he'd be a good boy if they let him live on his farm and fight cocks and bed women. He had to commit to doing nothing that would give the U.S. an excuse to come in again and get him. Killing an American, even one like me, was just not an option for Villa."

"Let's talk about the treasure," I said.

The old man smiled and leaned forward, crossing his too-long arms on the table. "Yes. Let's. That's what we all care about. And it's sure as hell more interesting than this jawing about afterlives."

"Let's talk treasure," I said again.

The old campaigner nodded. "I first heard about Villa's lost gold and Fierro's death when you'd likely heard it, I'd reckon along about 1915. I had some legal issues I was grappling with about then. Couldn't run right down to Durango to make my fortune. At the time, I was trying to avoid that quick stop from a short fall."

Alicia shot me a confused look. I said, "He means a noose."

"Ah," she said, stroking black hair behind her right ear.

"I heard the stories that I think many of us heard," the old mercenary said, looking at me. "Stories about Urbina, his betrayal of Villa and abandonment of the revolution. You know ... that stuff. How Urbina holed up in Las Nievas, Durango with all that gold and silver. You probably know what happened next. Villa confronted his old friend at Urbina's ranch, then Pancho ordered Fierro, the Butcher, to kill Urbina. Even Villa didn't have the stomach to see his old friend die on his orders --- particularly at the hands of a sadistic madman like Fierro. So Pancho left, and then the Butcher took Urbina apart, one piece at a time. After they finally killed him, they packed up the gold that they could carry and hid the rest. They split and Fierro sank in that quicksand bog."

I leaned in now. "Yeah. That's the myth. But we now both know he didn't sink in the quicksand."

Bud chimed in, "And you, Mr. Holmdahl, didn't seem too surprised to learn Fierro is alive."

Emil Holmdahl shrugged and sipped some water. "You always heard stories. The one I kept hearing was that Fierro faked his death. He could take the measure of men pretty good, Rudy Fierro could. Particularly when he was sounding for treachery and hate in his underlings. Fierro gambled his own men wouldn't try to save him if he was in jeopardy, and, brothers and sister, was he ever proven right on that count."

"Please explain," Alicia said.

Holmdahl smiled and spoke directly to the young Mexican woman. "Fierro purposely rode into fast-moving, dangerous waters. He beelined for the one place along that
arroyo
you would purposely avoid if you were any kind of a horseman, and Fierro was certainly that. Yet Rudy rode right in. His horse began to flail. Fierro pretended to go under with her. Then he swam a ways and beached himself downstream, thinking he'd wait his flunkies out. Or so he thought. His plan, the story goes, was to return for the treasure they'd left behind."