Fletch's Fortune (22 page)

“Who has the time to do that?”

“Is there any political thinking behind your not paying taxes?”

“Oh, no. My motives are purely esthetic, if you want to know the truth.”

“Esthetic?”

“Yes. I’ve seen your tax forms. Visually, They’re ugly. In fact, very offensive. And their use of the English language is highly objectionable. Perverted.”

“Our tax forms are perverted?”

“Ugly and perverted. Just seeing them makes my stomach churn. I know you wallahs have tried to improve them but, if you don’t mind my saying so, They’re still really dreadful.”

I.R.S. blinked. His Adam’s apple went up and down like a thermometer in New England.

“Esthetics,” he muttered.

“Right.”

“All right, Mister Fletcher. We haven’t heard from you at all in more than two years. No returns. No applications for extensions.”

“Didn’t want to bother you.”

“Yet our sources indicate you have had an income during this period.”

“I’m still alive, thank you. Clearly, I am eating.”

“Mister Fletcher, you have money in Brazil, the Bahamas, Switzerland, and Italy.”

“You know about Switzerland?”

“Quite a lot of money. Where did you get it?”

“I ripped it off.”

“‘Ripped it off’?”

“‘Stole it’ seems such a harsh expression.”

“You say you stole it?”

“Well, you weren’t there at the time.”

“I certainly wasn’t.”

“Maybe you should have been.”

“Did you steal the money in this country?”

“Yup.”

“How did you get the money out of the country?”

“Flew it out. In a chartered jet.”

“My God. That’s terribly criminal.”

“Why does my not paying taxes and illegally exporting money bother you more than the fact I stole the money in the first place?”

“Really!”

Fletch said, “Just an observation.”

Fletch picked up the phone and dialed Room 82.

“Bob? This is your friend Fletcher.”

There was a long pause before Robert McConnell said, “Oh, yeah. Hi.”

“Crystal tells me you have a cassette tape recorder with a tape splicer attachment.”

“Uh. Yes.”

“Wonder if I might borrow it for a few hours?”

Robert McConnell was envisioning his sensitive parts tied to a cathedral door if he said no. Dear Crystal.

“Uh. Sure.”

“That’s great, Bob. You going to be in your room?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be by in a few minutes.” Fletch started to hang up, but then he said into the receiver, “Bob, I appreciate. Let me buy you a drink.”

The only response was a click.

I.R.S. said, “Mister Fletcher, I hope you realize what you’ve admitted here.”

“What’s that?”

“That you stole money, illegally exported it from the country, failed to report it as income to the Internal Revenue Service, and have never filed a federal tax return in your life.”

“Oh, that. Sure.”

“Are you insane?”

“Just esthetic. Those tax forms….”

“Mister Fletcher, you seem to be signing yourself up for a long stretch in prison.”

“Yeah. Okay. Make it somewhere South. I really don’t like cold weather. Even if I have to be indoors.”

There was a knock on his door.

“Have I answered your questions satisfactorily?” Fletch asked.

“For a start.” I.R.S. was returning things to his attaché case. “I can’t believe my ears.”

Fletch opened the door to a bellman.

“Telegrams, sir. Two of them.” He handed them over. “You weren’t in your room earlier, sir.”

“And sliding them under the door, you would have lost your tip. Right?”

The bellman smiled weakly.

“You’ve lost your tip anyway.”

Fletch closed the door before opening the first telegram:

GENERAL KILENDER ARRIVING HENDRICKS FOR BRONZE STAR PRESENTATION MID-AFTERNOON—LETTVTN.

I.R.S. was standing in his droopy drawers, attaché case firmly in hand, staring at Fletch incredulously.

He came toward the door.

The second telegram said:

BOAC FLIGHT 81 WASHINGTON AIRPORT TO LONDON NINE O’CLOCK TONIGHT RESERVATION YOUR NAME. WILL BE AT BOAC COUNTER SEVEN-THIRTY ON TO RECEIVE TAPES—FABENS AND EGGERS.

At the door, I.R.S. said, “Mister Fletcher, I must order you not to leave Hendricks, not to leave Virginia, and certainly not to leave the United States.”

Fletch opened the door for him.

“Wouldn’t think of it”

“You’ll be hearing from us shortly.”

“Always nice doing business with you.”

As I.R.S. walked down the corridor, Fletch waved good-bye at him—with the telegrams.

Fletch had a shower, swam a few laps in the pool, dressed, and went to the hotel’s writing room, next to the billiards room at the back of the lobby.

On a bookshelf near the fireplace was a copy of
Who’s Who in America
, which he pulled down and took to a writing table.

Fletch had learned the habit a long time before of researching the people with whom he was dealing, through whatever resources were within reach.

Sometimes the most simple checking of names and dates could be most revealing:

Fletch put
Who’s Who
back on the shelf and crossed the lobby to the post office, where he bought a large, insulated envelope.

Then he went to Room 82 to borrow the cassette tape recorder from the newly laconic Robert McConnell.

Much of the remainder of the morning he spent in his room, splicing tape.

Finished, he placed all the reels of used tape in the envelope (except the one spliced reel he left ready to play in his marvelous machine) and addressed the envelope to Alston Chambers, an attorney he knew in California. Boldly, he marked the envelope: “HOLD FOR I. M. FLETCHER.”

On the way to lunch, Fletch returned McConnell’s tape recorder and mailed the envelope.

Captain Andrew Neale was at the luncheon table for six, with Crystal Faoni and, of course, Fredericka Arbuthnot. No Robert McConnell. No Lewis Graham. No Eleanor Earles.

“Has anyone noticed,” Fletch asked, “that anyone who shares a meal with the three of us never returns?”

“It’s because you get along so well with everybody,” Freddie said.

“Whom shall we have for lunch today?” Crystal asked. “Poor Captain Neale. Our next victim.”

Sitting straight in his light, neat jacket, Captain Neale smiled distantly at what was clearly an in-joke.

“You’re not thinking of keeping us all here beyond tomorrow morning, are you?” Crystal asked.

“Tonight, you mean,” said Freddie. “I have to leave on the six-forty-five flight.”

“You’re not keeping us beyond the end of the convention.” Crystal was only passably interested in her fruit salad.

“I don’t see how I can,” Captain Neale said. “Almost everyone here has made a point of telling me how important he or she is. Such a lot of important people. The seas would rumble and nations would crumble if
I kept any of you out of circulation for many more minutes than I had to.”

Crystal said to Fletch, “I told you I’d like this guy.”

“Have people been beastly to you?” Freddie, grinning, asked Neale.

“I thought reporters were people who report the news,” Neale said. “The last couple of days, I’ve gotten the impression they are the news.”

“Right,” Crystal said solemnly to her fruit salad. “News does not happen unless a reporter is there to report it.”

“For example,” said Fletch, “if no one had known World War Two was happening.…”

“Actually,” Crystal said, “Hitler without the use of the radio wouldn’t have been Hitler at all.”

“And the Civil War,” said Freddie. “If it hadn’t been for the telegraph.…”

“The geographic center of the American Revolution,” Fletch said, “was identical to the center of the new American printing industry.”

“And then there was Caesar,” Crystal said. “Was he a military genius with pen in hand, or a literary genius with sword in hand? Did Rome conquer the world in reality, or just its communications systems?”

“Weighty matters we discuss at these conventions,” Freddie said.

“Listen,” Crystal said. “You know I take such comments personally. If I had two breakfasts, blame Fletch. Did you try those blueberry muffins this morning?”

“I tried only one of them,” Freddie said.

Crystal said, “The rest of them were good, too.”

Captain Neale was chuckling at their foolishness.

Fletch said to him, “People here have given you a pretty rough time, uh?”

Captain Neale stared at his plate a moment before answering.

“It’s been like trying to sing ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ while your head’s stuck in a beehive.”

“Literary fella,” Crystal told her salad.

“Musical, too,” said Freddie.

“Questioning them, they question me.”

“Reporters ain’t got no humility,” Crystal said.

“When they do answer a question,” Neale continued, “they know exactly how to answer it—for their own sakes. They know exactly how to present facts absolutely to their own benefit—what to reveal, and what to conceal.”