Fletch's Fortune (15 page)

“I never got out of the car, Captain Neale.”

“What?”

“I did not have breakfast, and did not buy newspapers. At least, not until I got back to the hotel.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“I changed my mind. I drove through that shopping center and said, to hell with it. It was a beautiful morning and the shopping center looked so sterile. Also, of course, I’m forever making simple little plans like going to a drugstore for breakfast—I like people, you know? I like being with people—and I get right up to it, and I realize everybody will recognize me, and giggle, and shake hands, and ask for autographs. I’m not keen on that part of my life.”

“Are you saying that no one saw you Monday morning?”

“I guess I prevented anyone from seeing me. I wore sunglasses. I drove around. Over the hills. Maybe I was trying to talk myself out of murdering Walter March.”

“What time did you leave the hotel?”

“About seven-fifteen.”

“What time did you get back?”

“About nine. I had breakfast in the coffee shop here. I didn’t hear about Walter March’s murder until later. Ten-thirty. Eleven.”

“Okay, Mister Wisham. You say Walter March was smearing you, trying to destroy you.…”

“Not ‘trying to,’ Captain Neale. He was going to. There is no doubt in my mind he would have succeeded.”

“… because you were becoming a potential threat to him.”

“Don’t you agree? I could never be as powerful as Walter March. We lost the only newspaper we had. But I have been becoming an increasingly powerful and respected journalist. I’m only twenty-eight, Captain
Neale. I have a lot to say, and a forum for saying it. Even having me at this convention, telling people what I know about Walter March, was a threat to him. You’ve got to admit, I was more a threat to him as a halfway decent and important journalist than if I had become a skiing instructor in Aspen.”

“I guess so. Tell me, Mister Wisham, do you happen to know what suite the March family were in?”

“Suite 3.”

“How did you know that?”

“I checked. I wanted to avoid any area in which Walter March might be.”

“You checked at the desk?”

“Yup. Which gave me an opportunity to steal the scissors. Right?”

“You’re being very open with me, Mister Wisham.”

“I’m a very open guy. Anyhow, you strike me as a pretty good cop. There’s a lot of pressure on this case. Sooner or later, you’d discover Walter March drove my Dad to suicide. Everyone in Denver knows it, and probably half the people here at the convention do. Concealing evidence against myself would just waste your time, and leave me hung up.”

“It’s almost as if you were daring me, Mister Wisham.”

“I am daring you, Captain Neale. I’ve worked a lot with cops. I’m daring you to be on my side, and to believe I didn’t kill Walter March.”

At three-thirty Wednesday afternoon all the tennis courts were in use, the swimming pool area was full, and on the hills around Hendricks Plantation House people were walking and horseback riding.

The bar (Bobby-Joe Hendricks Lounge) was dark and empty except for some people from the Boston press keeping up their luncheon glow with gin and tonics.

And Walter March, Junior, sitting at the bar.

Fletch sat beside him and ordered a gin and bitter lemon from the bored, slow-moving barman.

At the sound of his voice, Junior’s head turned slowly to look at him.

Junior’s eyes were red-rimmed and glazed, his cheeks puffy, his mouth slack. A small vein in his temple was throbbing. He looked away, slowly, thought a moment, burped, and looked back at Fletch.

He said, “William Morris Fletcher. I remember you.”

“Irwin Maurice Fletcher.”

“Tha’s right. You used to work for us.”

“Practically everybody used to work for you.”

“Flesh. There used to be a joke about you. ‘And the Word was made Fletch.’ ”

“Yeah.”

“There were lots of jokes about you. You were a joke.”

Fletch paid the barman.

Walter March, Junior, said, “You heard my father’s dead?”

“I heard something to that effect.”

“Someone stabbed him.” Junior made a stabbing motion with his right hand, his eyes looking insane as he did it. “With a scissors.”

Fletch said, “Tough to take.”

“Tough!” Junior snorted. “Tough for him. Tough for March Newspapers. Tough for the whole mother-fuckin’ world.”

“Tough for you.”

“Yeah.” Junior blinked slowly. “Tough for me. Tough darts. Isn’t that what we used to say in school?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t in school with you.”

There was a long, slow, blinking pause.

Junior said, “My father hated you.”

Fletch said, “Your father hated everybody.”

Another three blinks.

“I hated you.”

“Anyone who hates me is probably right.”

“My Jesus father thought you were night and day.”

Fletch sipped his drink. “What does that mean?”

Junior tried to look at Fletch in the proper executive fashion. “You know, he wanted to make a thing with you. He loved your balls.” Junior’s eyelids drooped. “He wanted to bring you along, you know? Make something of you.”

“Gee, and I’m not even in journalism anymore. Just a hanger-on.”

“Do you remember his trying to frighten you once?”

“No.”

“He tried to scare you.”

“I don’t remember it.”

“Tha’s because you weren’t frightened, shit. You remember the story about the Governor’s secretary?”

“Yeah.”

“He sent memos to you. Directly. Telling you to blow the story.”

“Sure.”

“He came to town. Sent for you in his office.”

“Yeah.”

“Scared the shit out of you.”

“Did he?”

“Told you you’d be fired if you wrote the story.”

“Five minutes in an office.…”

Junior’s head swooped up toward Fletch. “You wrote the fuckin’ story! And then quit!”

“Yeah.”

There was a long pause, and two small burps.

“It wasn’t the Governor Dad cared about. Not the Governor’s secretary. Not the story.” This time Junior put the back of his hand to his burp. “It was you.”

“There was a long pause,” Irwin Maurice Fletcher said, “while Irwin Maurice Fletcher reacted.”

“You don’t get the point,” Junior said.

“I get the point,” Fletch said. “People are always shittin’ around, and I’m me. I always get the point.”

“Apologize.”

“Apologize?”

“Jesus, yes. Apologize.”

“For what? For everyone else always shittin’ around, or for me being me?”

“Before my Dad did that …”—apparently, Junior was considering the prudence of saying what he was about to say—“he had every kind of a fix run on you.”

Fletch sat quietly over his drink.

“He wanted you,” Junior said.

“I was an employee. I wrote that story. Quit. A common incident, in this business.”

“Dad didn’t want any of that. He wanted you. He ran every kind of a fix on you. Have I said that?”

“No.”

“Before he tried to throw the scare into you, he had you worked over with a fine-toothed … pig.”

“That I don’t understand.”

“He wanted you. You were tough. You didn’t scare.”

“He let me resign.”

“That, beaut…”—Junior leaned toward him—“was because he hadn’t figured you out. He gave up, you see.”

“He put detectives on me?”

“He liked your style. In the city room. You were a thousand-dollar job, at first. A mere hand job. He couldn’t believe what he found out. More. Ten thousand. Fifteen.”

“I would rather have taken it in pay.”

“He couldn’t believe.… Who were you married to then?”

“I don’t remember.”

“He said, ‘Either all of it’s true, or none of it’s true.’”

“None of it’s true,” Fletch said. “At the age of eleven, if you want the truth.…”

“Stories,” Junior said. “Used to get stories about you. At dinner.”

Fletch said, “This is very uncomfortable. What a lousy bar. The barman has dirty elbows. No music. What’s that noise? ‘Moon River.’ That’s what I mean. No music. Look at that painting. Disgusting. A horse, of all things. A horse over a bar. Ridiculous.…”

Junior was blinking over his drink.

“It was me Dad hated.”

“What?”

“All my life … I grew up.…”

“Most of us did.”

“… being Walter March, Junior. Walter March Newspapers, Junior. The inheritor of enormous power.”

“That can be a problem.”

“What if I wanted to be a violinist, or a painter, or a baseball player?”

“Did you?”

Junior closed his eyes tight over his drink.

“I don’t even know.”

Someone at the table in the corner said, “Walter marched.”

Someone else said, “And about time, to boot!”

Fletch looked over at them.

Junior hadn’t heard.

“You know, the first day I was supposed to report for work,” Junior said. “September. The year I graduated college. They’d let me have the summer off. I walked to the office. Stood across the street from it, staring at it. Twenty minutes. Maybe a half-hour. Then I walked back to my apartment. I was scared shitless. That night, Jake Williams came over to my apartment and talked to me. For hours. Next morning, he picked me up and we walked into the March Newspapers Building together.” Junior went through the motions of drinking from his empty glass. “Good old Jake Williams.”

Fletch said nothing.

“Fletcher, will you help me?”

“How?”

“Work with me. The way Dad wanted.”

“I don’t know anything about the publishing side of this business. The business end.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me.”

Junior tightened his right fist and let it down slowly on the bar, as if he were banging it in slow motion.

“Help me!”

“Junior, I suspect you missed lunch.”

“My father loved you so much.”

“Come on, I met the bastard—I mean, your father—I mean, your father the bastard, the big bastard five minutes in his office.…”

“I can’t esplain. I can’t esplain.”

Fletch, on his bar stool, was facing Walter March, Junior.

There were tears on Junior’s cheeks.

Fletch said, “Nappy time?”

Junior straightened up immediately. Suddenly, no tears. No whining voice. No quivering. Princeton right down the spine. Hand firmly around the empty glass. Not deigning to answer.

“Hey, Walt,” Fletch said. “I was thinking of a sauna and a rub. They’ve got this fantastic lady hidden away in the basement, a Mrs. Leary, she gives a great massage.…”

Junior looked at him. He was the President of March Newspapers.

“Good to see you again, Fletcher,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I guess I just said I’m sorry you didn’t stay aboard.” He dipped his head to Fletch. “Can I have a drink sent to your room?”

“No, that’s all right.” Fletch stood up from the bar stool.

He looked at Junior, closely, through the dark of the bar.

“As a matter of fact, Walt.” Fletch put his hands in his trouser pockets. “I would like you to send a drink to my room.” He drawled, “I’d appreciate it. Room
79.” He spoke slowly, softly, deliberately. “A couple of gin and tonics. Room 79. Okay? I’d appreciate it. Room 79.”

Fletch wasn’t sure how well Junior was hearing him, if at all.

“Thanks, Walt.”

From TAPE

Station 8

Suite 8
(Oscar Perlman)

“… Yeah.”

“May I say, Mister Perlman, how much my wife enjoys your columns.”

“Fuck your wife.”

“Sir?” Captain Neale said.

“Fuck your wife. It’s always, ‘My wife likes your columns.’” Clearly, Oscar Perlman was talking through a well-chewed cigar. “Everytime I do anything, a book, a play, it’s always, ‘My wife likes it.’ I go to a party and try to get the topic of conversation off me and my work, because I know what to expect all ready. I say, ‘What did you think of Nureyev last night at the National Theater?’ ‘My wife liked it.’ Always, ‘My wife liked it.’ You saw the latest Bergman? ‘My wife liked it.’ What about Neil Diamond’s latest record—isn’t it somethin’ else? ‘My wife liked it.’ You read the new Joe Gores novel? ‘My wife.…’ What about
King Lear
these days? ‘My wife says it’s chauvinistic. The father expects something.’ Always, ‘My wife liked it, didn’t like it.’ What are American men, a bunch of cultural shits? Always what the wife likes. The men don’t have eyes, ears, and a brain? What’sa matter with you? You can’t say you like my column? It’s feminine to like my
column? Will your chest suck up your hair and push it out your asshole if you say you like something other than hockey, boxing, and other nose-endangering sports?”