Fletch and the Man Who (19 page)

“I’d better get Nolting to whip up some statements, figures on the high incidence of crime. I can say things like, ‘Everywhere I go, it seems like someone is getting murdered.’”

“Governor …” Fletch hesitated.

“Yes?”

“I understand. You have to protect yourself. You have to protect the campaign. But making statements won’t make the matter go away.”

“What else can we do? The primary is in a couple of days.”

“The best way to make the matter go away is to find out who is murdering these women.”

“How are we supposed to do that? We’re at full gear here, traveling at high speed. How many people are traveling with us—fifty or sixty? Is someone trying to sabotage my campaign? Just when I’m beginning to say something that is at least of interest to me? Who? Upton? Unthinkable. Graves? This goes a bit beyond dirty tricks. Some foreign agent? That guy from
Pravda
—”

“Solov.”

“That’s his name? Looks like a complete basket case to me. You know he’s never approached me with a single question? What’s he here for? The press. You said Andrew Esty left yesterday, and there was a murder last night. So that lets him off.”

“He came back. He was ordered back. Saw him in the elevator last night. Why do you mention him in particular?”

“That guy’s a nut. Did you ever see him smile? He’s as tight as a tournament tennis racquet. One of those guys who thinks he’s absolutely right. Anyone who thinks he’s absolutely right is capable of anything, including murder. Some kook among the volunteers. Lee Allen can’t do very thorough checks on their backgrounds. We’re traveling too fast, don’t have the resources. I trust everyone on the staff implicitly. Believe me, they’ve all been vetted. You’re the only one I don’t know well personally, and you weren’t with us at the time of the murder in the Hotel Harris. What the hell am I supposed to do? Go before the electorate, and say, ‘Hey, guys and gals, I’m not a murderer.’ Has an unfortunate ring to it. ‘I’m not a froggy-woggy; I’m a toaddy-woaddy.’”

“Yes, it’s time to say something,” Fletch said. “It’s also time to do something. I love what you’re saying about the ‘New Reality,’ but the true reality is that the people are going to be concerned about unsolved murders touching your campaign.”

The governor waved his hand at the pages from
Newsbill
still in Fletch’s hand. “Did you show that filth to Walsh?”

“He had already left his room when I called this morning.”

The governor looked at his watch. “I’m due at a television studio for a taping in twenty minutes. I will refer to these women’s deaths, and say I am appalled. We have got to do something about violent crime in this country. It’s affecting all of us. There’s the big rally in Melville tonight. I have to fly to New York to be on that network program, ‘Q. & A.,’ live tomorrow morning. Everybody tells me I’ve
got to attend a church service somehow in the morning, seeing I’m accused of slurring Christianity in Winslow.”

For a moment the two men were silent. Recitation of schedule did not make the problem go away, either. “Damn,” the governor said. “It’s snowing again.”

Fletch said, “Now will you get some federal investigators to travel with us?”

“No.” The governor thought a moment, and then said: “Your job, Fletcher, is to make sure this doesn’t touch me. Doesn’t touch the campaign. That’s your only job.” The Man Who had fallen into the cadence of a public speech. “No matter who is doing this string of murders, for whatever reason, it is to have no bearing on my candidacy. The primary in this state is in a couple of days. No one can solve a string of far-flung murders in a couple of days. I cannot go into that primary election day with people thinking of murder, associating this campaign with the murder of women. Do what you have to do, but keep this away from me. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’d better go.”

Fletch opened the swing door of the hospital room for the governor. “Do you know the President has announced a press conference for two o’clock this afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“Saturday afternoon press conference. Most unusual.”

Going through the door the governor said, “I expect he’s going to speak well of Christianity and democracy and drop a bomb on me.”

“Here I am.” Freddie Arbuthnot announced her presence at Fletch’s elbow.

Actually, using one of the hotel’s house telephones, Fletch had been trying to find Walsh Wheeler. His room didn’t answer. Barry Hines wasn’t sure where Walsh was. He thought Walsh was meeting with Farmingdale’s Young Professionals Association. Lee Allen Parke thought Walsh was visiting an agronomy exhibit about fifty miles from Farmingdale. (Fletch was to discover Walsh breakfasted with the Young Professionals Association, then visited the agronomy exhibit.)

“You are looking for me, aren’t you?” Freddie asked.

“Always.” Fletch gave up on the phone. “Have you packed yet?”

“I never really unpack.”

“Neither do I. But I ought to go up and throw things together. Come with me?”

“Sir! To your hotel room?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure.”

Judy Nadich burst off the elevator.

“Hey!” Fletch said to her.

She turned around, her tote bag swinging against her leg. She was crying.

“What’s the matter?” Fletch asked.

“That bitch!” Judy said.

“Who?”

“Your Ms Sullivan.” She stepped closer to Fletch. “And your Doris Wheeler!”

“What did they do?”

“Nothing. Threw me out. Called me a squirrel.”

Fletch couldn’t help smiling.

“Told me to go cover the flower show!” Fresh tears poured from her eyes. “That’s not for a month yet!”

“So screw ’em,” Fletch said.

Judy tried to collect herself in front of Freddie. “How?”

“Screw ’em in what you write.” Fletch realized James had been right: Mrs. Presidential Candidate Doris Wheeler badly needed a lesson in manners. The realization made him hot.

“I don’t have anything to write!” Judy almost wailed. “I didn’t even see what the inside of her suite looked like!”

“Oh,” he said lamely.

“This story was important to me.” Judy Nadich walked away, head down, her tote bag banging against her knees, back to do stories about flower shows and cracked teacups and the funds needed to clean the statues in the park.

“Poor local press,” Freddie sighed. “I was one once.”

Fletch pressed the elevator button. “Where?”

“New York City.”

“New York City is not local. Even in New York City, New York City is not local.”

“On a national campaign like this,” Freddie said, stepping into the elevator, “local press is seduced with a weak drink, and granted a kiss on the cheek.”

“So this is how you live.” Freddie looked around his hotel room. “Your suitcase is dark brown. Mine is light blue.”

“Yeah,” Fletch said. “That’s the difference between boys and girls.” He went into the bathroom to collect his shaving gear. “You know
anything in particular about the woman who was murdered this morning?”

“Mary Cantor, age thirty-four, widowed, mother of three. Her husband was a Navy navigator killed in an accident over Lake Erie three years ago.”

Fletch tried to visualize the three children, then decided not to. “Has the woman in Chicago been identified yet? The one found in a closet off the press room?”

“Wife of an obstetrician. Member of the League of Women Voters. Highly respectable. Just not carrying identification that night. Maybe she left her purse somewhere and someone walked off with it.”

Fletch came back into the bedroom. Freddie was stretched out on the unmade bed. “I don’t see what the women have in common,” he said. “A society woman in Chicago—”

“A socially useful woman, you mean.”

“Alice Elizabeth Shields, a bookish woman with her own mind, two nights ago. And last night, a mother, Air Force widow, a night chambermaid.”

“They all have something in common.”

“What?”

“They’re all women.”

“Was the woman found last night raped?”

“Haven’t talked with the coroner himself yet. A lab assistant says she believes the woman was not raped. There’s something very rape-like about these murders, though.”

Fletch was rolling up his dirty shirts. He hadn’t been in any hotel long enough to get his laundry done. “What do you mean?”

“Rape isn’t a sexual thing,” Freddie said. “Not really. The main element in rape is to dominate a woman, subject her, mortify her. Degrade her. Sexually victimizing her is secondary to victimizing her.”

“I understand that. But without the element of actual rape, Freddie, there is no absolute proof that the murderer is a male. The murderer could be a strong woman.”

“Yeah,” Freddie said from the bed. “Fenella Baker. She tears off her blouse and turns into a muscle-bulging Amazon.”

“How was the woman last night murdered?”

“Strangled with some kind of a soft cord, the police say. Like a drapery tie, or a bathrobe sash. They haven’t found whatever it was.”

“The lack of sexual rape bothers me.” Fletch took a jacket from the closet, folded it quickly, and put it in the suitcase. “A strong woman …”

“Terrible.” Freddie got up, took the jacket out of the suitcase, and folded it properly. “Got to make clothes last on a trip like this.”

“I never wear that jacket.”

“Then why do you carry it?”

“That’s the jacket I carry.” He pointed to one on the unmade bed. “That’s the jacket I wear.”

Freddie tossed the clothes in his suitcase like someone tossing a salad with her fingers. “Fletcher, this suitcase is full of nothing but laundry.”

“I know.”

“You’ve got to do something about that.”

“Where? When?”

“Or we’ll put you off the press bus. There are enough stinkers on the press bus as it is. You notice no one will sit next to Hanrahan?”

“I notice he’s always stretched out over two seats.”

“He smells bad.” She resettled his shaving kit so the suitcase could close.

“Will you leave my damned laundry alone?”

She dropped the suitcase lid and stared at it. “Relationships between men and women can be nice. I guess.”

He watched her from the chair where he was sitting. “Can’t say you never had one, Freddie.”

“I live out of a suitcase, Fletcher. All the time. Anything that doesn’t fit in the suitcase can’t come with me.”

“Why? Why do you live this way?”

She was running the tips of her fingers along the top edge of Fletch’s suitcase. “Why am I Fredericka Arbuthnot? Because I have the chance to be. I’d be a fool to pass it up. Enough women get the chance to be girl friends, wives, and mothers.” She sat in the hotel room’s other chair. “Where would the world be without my sterling reporting?”

“Want me to order up coffee?”

“We’d never get it.”

Not giving any neighborhood snail a good race, Flash driving, Fletch had gone to the television studio and sat through the governor’s taped interview. Deftly, The Man Who had turned the interview to the high incidence of crime in this country. He even referred to having heard about the chambermaid murdered in his hotel that morning. The interview with the candidate was to be shown on the noon news.

“You saw Hanrahan’s shit this morning?” Fletch asked.

“Sure.”

“So now you’ll have to write something.”

“Already have,” Freddie answered. “I was fair. Reported that the murders have happened on the fringe of the campaign, no connection with the campaign has been made, the police so far don’t even think the murders are connected.”

“You indicated it could all be coincidence.”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe that?”

Freddie shrugged. “If I did, I wouldn’t be here. Also I had to say, as did Hanrahan, that the candidate has not made himself available for questioning on this matter.”

“Truly, he hasn’t anything to say.”

“Truly …” Freddie was stretched out in her chair, her head against the chair back. “Fletch, what does Wheeler really say about these murders?”

“He treats them like flies on his porridge. He keeps trying to brush them away. To him, this story is the story of the campaign itself. He doesn’t want it turned into a murder story.”

“It would ruin the campaign.”

“He’s talking about organizing the new technology to gather and disperse information, goods, and service for the betterment of people worldwide, and someone keeps dropping corpses on him.”

“Who?”

“Tell me.”

“Would he have any other reason for avoiding our questions? Inquiry? Investigation?”

“Isn’t the ruination of his campaign enough of a reason?”

“I suppose so.”

“You mean, like his own guilt?”

“Sally Shields was found on the sidewalk beneath his windows. As Hanrahan reported, and I didn’t, Doris and Caxton Wheeler have separate suites. Doris is a rich bitch. People tell me she can be real nasty. Who says he has to love her?”

“You think the candidate is using disposable women?”

“Who knows?”

“I don’t think he’d throw one out his own window.”

“Things get out of hand,” she mused. “Things can get out of hand.”

“There is an idea …” Fletch hesitated.

“Lay it on me. I can take it, whatever it is.”

“… that whoever, or whatever is doing this, is doing so to torpedo the campaign of Caxton Wheeler. To destroy him as a presidential candidate.”

“Whose idea is that?”

Again Fletch hesitated. “Caxton Wheeler’s.”

“I thought so. Even to you he tries to steer inquiry away from himself. Was he in his suite at the time Alice Elizabeth Shields landed on the sidewalk, or wasn’t he?”

Fletch shifted in his chair. “The timing doesn’t work out. He says he got out of a car, didn’t see anything like a crowd on the sidewalk, didn’t see the people leaving the bar, and yet when he got to his hotel room he says he saw the lights from the police cars and ambulance.”

“All that can’t be so,” Freddie said.

Fletch didn’t say anything.

“Is Wheeler pointing his finger at anyone else?”

“He’s mentioned Andrew Esty.”

“Esty?” Freddie laughed. “I don’t think his religion condones murder.”