Fletch and the Man Who (13 page)

As he turned from the mirror, he was buttoning the cuffs of his shirt. The muscles in his jaw were working hard.

“You’ve just quit, Caxton. You’ve just retired from politics! You retired me!” she shouted. “You self-destructed in one day!”

“It’s all our fault,” Walsh said. He bit his lower lip. “We were overimpressed by Victor Robbins’s death this morning. With the
primary in a couple of days, we were trying to make the nightly news.”

“I don’t need excuses made for me, son,” the governor said with annoyance. “I said what I felt like saying, and saying it felt right.”

“Well, it certainly cost enough for you to feel good.” Her eyes were as hard as a rooster’s.

“What real harm has it done?” the governor asked. He called on Fletch: “What’s the reaction on the press bus?”

“I don’t think they’ve digested it yet. Not really. I think most of them are just glad to hear something new.”

“Sure,” scoffed Doris Wheeler. “They’d be delighted to publish Caxton’s suicide note.”

“Actually—” Fletch hesitated. “Andrew Esty did head for the airport. Said he was leaving the campaign. Called you a godless person.”

“Caxton!” exclaimed Doris. “Do you know the circulation of the
Daily Gospel?
Do you realize what that readership means to us? To this campaign?”

“Oh, Esty!” the governor snorted. “Jesus Christ wouldn’t have pleased him. Jesus washed the feet of a whore.”

Doris Wheeler’s face was rising up the crimson scale. “How come you do these stupid things without even consulting me? How come you stood up on your hind legs in Winslow, and again in Spiersville, and spouted a pseudo-profound, pseudo-philosophical, pseudo-statesmanlike speech on the state of the whole world, without consulting me?”

“People are waiting,” the governor said.

“Believe me,” Doris Wheeler said, brushing Barry Hines aside and opening the door to the living room, “nothing more that is stupid and self-destructive is going to happen today. Not with me at his side. If you all can’t stop him from making a fool of himself, I can.”

Leaving the room, she left the door open.

The governor swung the door almost closed again. “Gentlemen,” he said to Barry, Walsh, Fletch, “while greeting people in the living room, please drop casually into your conversations that we were just playing the television rather loudly in here. What’s on television at this hour, Barry?”

Barry thought. “Most places, reruns of ‘M*A*S*H,’ Archie Bunker, and ‘The Muppets.’”

“Right,” said the governor. “We were watching a rerun of Archie Bunker while I dressed, with the volume on loud.”

In the living room, meeting and greeting went on. Fletch found himself talking to the publisher and chief editorial writer of
The Farmingdale Views
, They wanted to be sure the governor believed absolutely in freedom of the press and had some ripe things to say about a certain federal judge; Fletch assured them the governor believed in freedom of the press without reservation and did not intend to appoint federal judges without thorough research into their local backgrounds.

The look of mild alarm and polite curiosity on everyone’s face when the governor entered the living room dissipated slowly as more drinks were poured and Archie Bunker was mentioned.

Doris Wheeler was never still. She kept moving around the room, her eyes apparently in everyone’s face simultaneously, appearing to hear, to agree with everything.

The governor stood with his hands in his pockets, chatting with a slowly changing group of people around him, making pleasantries, laughing easily.

Walsh was in earnest conversation near the bar table with five or six people in their twenties.

After a few moments, the governor came over to Fletch, gripped him by the elbow and, nodding at them kindly, faced him away from the publisher and the editorial writer. “Fletch. Find Dr. Thom for me. Have him come up here. No black bag. He’ll know what I need.”

The hand holding Fletch’s elbow shook ever so slightly.

Fletch said, “Yes, sir.”

“Hello, Ms. Arbuthnot?” Fletch said into his bedroom telephone.

“Yes?”

“Glad I caught you in.”

“In what?”

“The shower?”

“Just got out of it.”

“And did you sing your ‘Hoo boy, now I wash my left knee. Hoo boy, now I wash my right knee’ song?”

“Oh, you know about that.”

“Used to hear you through the wall in Virginia. Key of C in the morning, F at night.”

“I take a cold shower in the morning.”

“I was just about to order up a sandwich and a bottle of milk to my room. I could order up two sandwiches.”

“Yes, you could, Fletch. If you want two sandwiches.”

“I only want one sandwich.”

“Then order only one.”

“You’re not getting the point.”

“I’m trying not to be as presumptuous as some people I know.”

“You see, I could order up one sandwich for me. And one for a friend. Who might come along and eat with me.”

“Entirely reasonable. Do you have a friend?”

“I was thinking you might be that friend, seeing you’ve taken a shower and all.”

“Nope. I wouldn’t be.”

“What makes you so certain?”

“I’m certain.”

“We could eat and slurp milk and maybe even we could sit around and sing ‘Great Green Globs of Greasy Grimy Gopher’s Guts.’”

“Nope. We couldn’t.”

“Aw, Freddie—”

“Look, Fletch, would you mind if I hung up now? I’m expecting a phone call from Chicago. Then I have to call Washington.”

“Okay,” Fletch said. “I’ll call you back after you change your mind.”

He called room service and ordered up two club sandwiches and a quart of milk.

His shoes were already off. He took off his shirt and fell on his back on the bed.

His bedroom was virtually identical to the room he’d had the night before, to the same centimeter of space, to the autumnal, nondirtying color scheme, to the wall mirror tilted to reflect the bed, to the heating system that wouldn’t cool off, to the number of too-small towels in the bathroom, to the television he had discovered produced only pink pictures. The painting on the wall was of mountaintops instead of a sailboat. For a moment Fletch thought of American standardization and the interchangeability of motel rooms, motels, airports, whole cities, national news telecasts, and presidential candidates.

The bedside phone rang. Fletch said into the phone: “Knew you’d change your mind. Ordered you a club sandwich.”

A man’s voice said: “Nice of you. Can you have it sent to Iowa?”

“I suppose so,” agreed Fletch. “But who’s in Iowa?”

“I am,” the man’s voice said. “Rondoll James.”

Fletch sat up on the bed. “I. M. Fletcher, Mr. James.”

“Call me James, please. My parents spotted me with a first name no
one’s ever spelled right—Rondoll, you know? like nothing else you can think of—so early on I gave it back to the Registry of Births.”

“I know the problem.”

“No one ever spelled your first name right either?”

“Everyone did. You want your job back?”

“Not right away. I’m in Iowa for the funeral of Vic Robbins.”

“He died in Pennsylvania.”

“His home is in Iowa. His body’s being flown here tonight.”

“You good friends?”

“The best. Vic taught me much over the years. Who wrote Caxton’s remarks on Vic’s death? Walsh?”

“Yeah. The governor was in a factory when we got the news.”

“The statement would have been a hell of a lot warmer, if I had been there. Sometimes these guys forget who really runs American politics. So how do you like my job?”

“I’m not very good at it.”

“Hey, you got the lead on all the network news shows tonight. Not bad, first day.”

“Yeah, but didn’t the story do more harm than good?”

“Get the space, baby. Get the network time and the newspaper space. Builds familiarity. Recognition of the candidate, you know? What the candidate is actually saying or doing is of secondary importance, you know?”

“Did anything like what he was saying come across to the people, James, do you think?”

“I’m not sure. He said technology is tying us together, integrating us, maybe making us more sensitive to each other, maybe even increasing the sense of responsibility for each other. That about it?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Wonderful part of it was, I was sitting in an airport bar about a thousand miles away from where he was saying it, and I heard him and saw him say it. Sort of proves his point, don’t you think?”

“What did other people in the bar think of it?”

“Not much. One guy said, ‘There’s ol’ Caxton spouting off again. Why doesn’t he tell me where my wife can get a job?’ Gin drinker. The bartender? Typical. No good bartender ever takes sides. Costs him tips.”

“Guess it’ll be a day or two before anyone digests what the governor was trying to say.”

“Longer than that, I. M., longer than that. Something ol’ Vic taught me, and it’s always proved to be true: statesmanship has no place on a political campaign. A campaign is punch and duck, punch and duck. Fast footwork, you know? Always smiling. The voters want to see fast action. Their attention won’t hold for anything more. From day to day, give ’em happy film, and short, reassuring statements. If you really try to say anything, really ask them to stop and think, they’ll hate you for it. They can’t think, you know? Being asked makes us feel inferior. We don’t like to feel inferior to our candidates. Against the democratic ideal, you know? The candidate’s just got to keep giving the impression he’s a man of the people—no better than they are, just doin’ a different job. No one is ever elected in this country on the basis of what he really thinks. The candidate is elected on the basis of thousands of different, comfortable small impressions, not one of which really asks the voters to think.”

“How about handing coins out to kids. Was that ‘comfortable’?” How did that come across?”

“Just fine.”

“Yes?”

“You bet. Anytime you can get psychiatrists on television speaking against your candidate, immediately your boy is up three percentage points in the popularity polls. Psychiatrists shrink people, you know? People resent being shrunk.”

“You’re making me feel better.”

“Don’t intend to, particularly. And it’s not why I’m calling. But as long as we’re talking, take this advice: any time you see ol’ Caxton looking like he’s about to say something profound, stick a glove in his mouth.”

“Appreciate the advice. Why are you calling?”

“Why, sir, to tell you how much I love Caxton Wheeler. And explain to you what I’ve done for him lately.”

“What have you done for him lately?”

“Put myself out of a job, thank you. If not out of a whole career. Sacrificed myself on the altar of Athena. Wasn’t she the goddess of war?”

“Oh, yeah: the broad standing in her backyard with a frying pan.
Great statue. Seen it dozens of times, as a kid. The governor told me—”

“To hell with what Caxton told you. I’ll tell you.” Suddenly whatever James had imbibed in that airport bar became audible in his voice. “I’ve been with Caxton twenty-three years. I’ve been his eyes and his ears and his legs and his mouth for twenty-three years, night and day, weekends included.”

“I know.”

“I want you to know I love that man. I admire him and love him above all others. I know more about him than his wife, his son, anybody. He’s a good guy. I’d do anything for him, including sacrificing myself, which I just did.”

Fletch waited. Eulogies to a relationship never need encouragement from the listener.

James continued: “Caxton ought to be President of the United States. I believe that more than I believe I’m sitting here talking to you. But Doris Wheeler, in case you haven’t discovered it, is his weak spot. She’s horrible. There’s no other way to say it. Horrible. She has no more regard for people than a crocodile. If anything around her moves, she lashes at it and bites it, bites deep. She’s been lashin’ at Caxton, bitin’ him for thirty years now.”

“James, a husband and wife—not our business.”

“Not our business unless one of them is running for public office. Then it becomes our business. You ever hear her talk to a volunteer, or a chartered pilot?”

“Not yet.”

“Or a junior reporter, or to her son, or to Caxton himself?” Fletch didn’t answer.

“The word is bitch. Doris Wheeler is an absolute bitch. Sometimes I’ve been convinced the woman is insane. She becomes violent. She’s Caxton’s biggest liability, and he won’t admit it.”

“He knows something—”

“He won’t admit it. Always covering up for her. Over the years I’ve talked to him a thousand times, trying to get him to restrain the bitch. Even divorce her, get rid of her. He never listened to me. And she’s getting worse, with all this pressure of the campaign on her. I couldn’t keep covering up for her, I. M. I just couldn’t. You understand that?”

“Yeah.”

“I couldn’t cover up for her anymore. Stories were beginning to get out about the way she bullies the governor, the staff, everybody. The way everything either has to go her way, or else she’ll kick everybody in the crotch.
Her
campaign.
She’ll
run it. And everybody better fall in behind her, or life won’t be worth living for anybody.”

“The visit to the children’s burn center—”

“Was just one of a hundred things. She knew what she was doing. Walsh told her she had to go. Her own secretary, Sully, told her she had to go. Barry and Willy arranged another time for her to meet her friends for indoor tennis. She just walked off and played tennis.”

“Why?”

“Because she always knows best.”

“Yeah, but why? In this particular instance, so obviously stupid—”

“First, she’s convinced she can get away with anything. Whatever happens, it’s someone else’s fault. Second: vanity. Wouldn’t you love to appear among your old cronies, your peers, and play tennis with them as the wife of a presidential candidate?”

“The way I play tennis—”

“Listen—”

“Wait a minute. Wasn’t she also raising money for the campaign playing tennis? Badly needed money?”

“I said: we had already arranged for her to play tennis two days later. She didn’t even cancel the burn center. Just got in the car and went to play tennis. Look what happened. The nurses got all the kids into their wheelchairs, their roll-beds, into this special reception room. Photographers were there, reporters. The bitch never showed up. You realize the pain she caused? You don’t move kids with burns, and then go play
tennis!”