Fletch's Fortune (18 page)

“I was sure the network would be yelling at the State Department, and the State Department doing whatever one does under such circumstances and, yes, all that was happening. It was a big news item in the United States and Europe. The network made plenty of hay out of it. They pulled their hair and gnashed their teeth on camera; they made life miserable for several people at the State Department. However, they didn’t do whatever was necessary under the circumstances to get us out of jail.

“The afternoon of the fourth day, two men showed up in the corridor between Sarah’s and my cells. One of them was an Albanian national. The other was the chief of the Rome bureau of March Newspapers. You know what he said? He said, ‘How’re ya doin’?’

“Someone unlocked our cells. The two men walked us out of the building, without a word to anyone, and put us, shivering, filthy, stinking into the backseat of a car.

“At the airport the two men shook hands.

“The March Newspapers bureau chief sat in the seat behind us, on the way to Rome, never saying a word.

“At the airport in Rome, all the other passengers were steered into Customs. An Italian policeman took the three of us through a different door, into a reception area, and there, seated in one chair, working from an open briefcase in another chair, was Walter March.

“I had never met him before.

“He glanced up when we came in, got up slowly, closed his briefcase, took it in one hand, and said, ‘All right?’

“He drove us into a hotel in Rome, made sure we were checked in, saw us to a suite, and then left us.

“An hour later, we were overcome by our own network people.

“He must have called them, and told them where we were.

“I didn’t see Walter March again for years. I sent him many full messages of gratitude, I can tell you, but I was never sure if any got through to him. I never had a response.

“When I finally did meet him, at a reception in Berlin, you know what he said? He said, ‘What? Someone was impersonating me in Rome? That happens.’”

Freddie said, “Nice story.”

Crystal said, “It brings a tear to my eye.”

“Saintly old Walter March,” Fletch said. “I’ve got to go, if you’ll all excuse me.”

During dinner he had received a note, delivered by a bellman, written on hotel stationery, with
Mr. I. Fletcher
on the envelope, which read: “Dear Fletch—Didn’t realize you were here until I saw your name in McConnell’s piece in today’s Washington paper. Please come see me as soon after dinner as you can—Suite 12. Lydia March.”

He had shown the note to no one. (Crystal had expressed curiosity by saying, “For someone unemployed, you sure get interrupted at meals a lot. No wonder you’re slim. When you’re working, you must never get to eat.”)

Eleanor Earles said, “I take it you’ve worked for Walter March?”

“I have,” said Crystal.

“I have,” said Fletch.

Freddie smiled, and said, “No.”

“And he was tough on you?” Eleanor asked.

“No,” said Crystal. “He was rotten to me.”

Fletch said nothing.

Eleanor said, to both of them, “I suspect you deserved it.”

The door to Suite 12 was opened to Fletch by Jake Williams, notebook and pen in hand, looking drawn and harassed.

“Fletcher!”

They shook hands warmly.

Lydia, in a pearl-gray house gown, was standing across the living room, several long pieces of yellow Teletype paper in one hand, reading glasses in the other.

Her pale blue eyes summed up Fletch very quickly and not unkindly.

“Nice to see you again, Fletch,” she said.

Fletch was entirely sure they had never met before.

“We’ll be through in one minute,” she said. “Just some things Jake has to get off tonight.” Leaving Fletch standing there, she put her glasses on her nose and began working through the Teletype sheets, talking to Jake. “I don’t see any reason why we have to run this San Francisco story from A.P. Can’t our own people in San Francisco work up a story for ourselves?”

“It’s a matter of time,” Jake said, making a note.

“Poo,” said Lydia. “The story isn’t going to die in six hours.”

“Six hours?”

“If our people can’t come up with our own story on this within six hours, then we need some new staff in San Francisco, Jake.”

“Mrs. March?” Fletch said.

She looked at him over the frame of her glasses.

“May I use your John?”

“Of course.” She pointed with her glasses. “You have to go through the bedroom.”

“Thank you.”

When he came back to the living room she was sitting on the divan, demitasse service on the coffee table in front of her, not a piece of paper, not even her glasses, in sight.

She said, “Sit down, Fletch.”

He sat in a chair across the coffee table from her.

“Has Jake left?”

“Yes. He has a lot to do. Would you care for some coffee?”

“I don’t use it.”

He was wondering if his marvelous machine was picking up their conversation. He supposed it was.

He wondered what Mrs. March would say if he began singing Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the
Edmund Fitzgerald”
as he had promised the machine he would.

“Fletch, I understand you’re not working.”

She was pouring herself coffee.

“On a book.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “The journalist’s pride. Whenever a journalist hasn’t got a job, he says he’s working on a book. How many times have I heard it? Sometimes, of course, he is. What’s keeping the wolf from the door?”

“My ugly disposition.”

She smiled, slightly. “I’ve heard so much about you,
from one source or another. You were one of my husband’s favorite people. He loved to tell stories about you.”

“I understand people like to tell outrageous stories about me. I’ve heard one only lately. Highly imaginative.”

“I think you and my husband were very much alike.”

“Mrs. March, I met with your husband for five minutes one day, in his office. It was not a successful meeting, for either of us.”

“Of course not. You were too much alike. He had a lot of brashness, you know. Whenever he was presented with alternatives, he always thought up some third course of action no one else had considered. That’s about what you do, isn’t it?”

Instead of saying “Yes” or “No,” Fletch said, “Maybe.”

“My point is this, Fletch. Walter is dead.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t say you have my sympathy.”

“Thank you. March Newspapers will need a lot of help. Everything now falls on Junior’s shoulders. He’s every bit the man his father was, of course, even better, in many ways, but.…” She fitted her coffee cup to its saucer. “… This death, this murder.…”

“It must be a great shock to Junior.”

“He’s lived so much in his father’s.… They were great friends.”

“Mrs. March, I’m a working stiff. I’m a reporter. I know how to get a story and maybe how to write it. In a pinch I can work on a copydesk. I know a good layout when I see one. I know nothing about the publishing side of this business, how you attract advertising and what it costs per line, how you finance a newspaper, buy machinery.…”

“Junior does. He’s really very good at the back room mechanics of this business.” She poured herself more
coffee. “Fletch, this is very much a horse-and-wagon sort of business. The horse has to be in front of the wagon. What a newspaper looks like and how it reads is the horse, and the wagon it pulls is the advertising and whatnot. If a newspaper isn’t exciting and important, you can have all the clever people in the world in the back room and it won’t work out as a business.”

“There’s Jake Williams.…”

“Oh, Jake.” She let her hand flop, in disparagement. “Jake is sort of old, and worn-out.”

Jake Williams was a good twenty years younger than Lydia March.

“What I’m asking you, Fletch is: would you help Junior out? He has a terribly tough row to hoe just now.…”

“I doubt he’d want me to.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I bumped into him in the bar this afternoon, and we had a little chat.”

“The bar, the bar!” Her face was annoyed and pained. “Really, Junior’s got to pull up his socks, and very soon.”

“He seems to have some ambivalent feelings toward me.”

“Junior doesn’t know what he feels at the moment. He’s keeping himself as drunk as he can. To be frank, I suppose a little bit of that is understandable, under the circumstances. But, really, becoming totally inoperable.…”

“I think he’s afraid.”

Her eyes opened wide. “Afraid?”

“I never really had a sense of how much your husband was doing—and how he was doing it—until I came to this convention and started hearing the gossip. Your husband’s death was pretty ugly.”

Lydia fitted her back into the corner of the divan and stared at the floor.

The lady had much to think about.

“Mrs. March, more than five years ago, your husband announced his retirement. Publicly. All the newspapers carried it. Why didn’t he retire?”

“Oh, you heard Lewis Graham tonight. On television,”

“I heard about it.”

“What a pompous ass. You know, he ran against my husband last year for the presidency of the A.J.A. So he takes all the resentment and hatred he has for my husband, and turns it into ninety seconds of philosophical network pablum.”

“Why didn’t your husband retire when he said he was going to?”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

She was sitting up, looking uneasy. “It was because of that stupid union thing Junior did.”

Fletch said, “I still don’t know.”

“Well, a huge union negotiation was coming up, and Junior thought he’d be clever. Our board of directors had been putting pressure on him for some years, you know, saying they thought he had led too sheltered a life, was too naive. They thought all he wanted was to do his day’s work and go home at five o’clock to his wife. Of course, that was before she left him. They insisted he travel more, and, of course he did take that trip to the Far East.…”

Fletch remembered that Junior had filed a dispatch from Hong Kong which began, “There are a lot of Chinese…,” and every March newspaper printed it on the front page, faithfully, just to make the son of the publisher look ridiculous, which he did.

“… So I guess Junior wanted to show his father and
the board of directors that he had some ideas of his own, could operate in what he thought was a manly manner. Even Walter, my husband, thought the negotiations were going too smoothly. Even points brought up by our side as negotiating points were being accepted, almost without discussion. Of course, some of the union members smelled a rat and began nosing around. Don’t you know about this? Walter did his best to keep it quiet. I guess he succeeded. It was discovered that Junior had invested in a large bar-restaurant with the president of the labor union. Well, he had advanced the man the down payment and had accepted a first and second mortage on the place. Obviously, the union president hadn’t contributed a damn thing. Junior thought it was all right, because he had done it out of personal money, not company funds. There was hell to pay, of course. The National Labor Relations Board got involved. There was talk of sending both Junior and the union man to jail. We lost one newspaper because of it—the one in Baltimore. There was no question Walter could leave under such circumstances. And, of course, a thing like that takes years to settle down.”

Fletch’s inner ear heard Lydia say,
He’s every bit the man his father was, of course, even better, in many ways.
…

“We’re all entitled to one mistake,” Lydia said. “Junior’s was a beaut. You see, Fletch, it was really the fault of the board of directors, for doubting Junior so. He felt he had to prove something. You do understand that, don’t you, Fletch? You see, I think Junior needs a special kind of help.…”

Again, Lydia was sitting back on the divan, staring at the floor, clearly a very troubled person.

“Mrs. March, I think you and I should talk again, in a day or two.…”

“Yes, of course.” With dignity, she stood up and put
out her hand. “Of course, it is now when Junior most needs the help.…”

“Yes,” Fletch said.

“And in reference to what you said”—Lydia continued to hold his hand—“Junior and I did speak about you tonight, at dinner. He agrees with me. He would like to see you involved in March Newspapers. I wish you’d talk with him more about it. When you can.”

“Okay.”

At the door, she said, “Thanks for coming up, Fletch. I’m sure you didn’t mind missing Oscar Perlman’s after-dinner speech. Think of the people down there in the dining room, laughing at that dreadful man.…”