Fletch's Fortune (3 page)

“Man!” Alone in the phone booth, Fletch grinned. “You guys can’t do anything straight.”

“I guess you’re calling Don to ask if this assignment is something you have to take on.”

“You’ve got it.”

“What do you think the answer is?”

“It sounds to me like the answer is yes.”

“You have the right impression.”

There was another click on the line.

Fletch asked, “Don, are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“I know you guys are so wrapped up in your own mysteriousness you can’t answer a simple question yes or no, but why the extra degree of mysteriousness about this?”

“What mysteriousness?”

“Come on, Don.”

“We’ve just been trying to make absolutely sure that the A.J.A. convention is still on.”

“Still on? Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You journalists are always the last with the news, aren’t you?”

“What news?”

“Walter March was murdered this morning. At the convention. So long, Fletcher.”

“Hello, hello,” Fletch said, as he buckled himself into the seat next to the girl with the honey-colored hair and the brown eyes, “I get along well with everybody.”

“You don’t even get along with plane schedules,” she answered. “They’ve been holding the plane for you for ten minutes.”

It was a twelve-seater.

“I was on the phone,” Fletch said. “Talking to an old uncle. He doesn’t talk as fast as he used to.”

The pilot slammed the passenger door and pulled the handle up.

“I forgive you,” the girl said. “Why are you so tan?”

“I just arrived from Italy. This morning.”

“That would have been excuse enough.”

The pilot had started the engines and turned the plane away from the terminal.

“Ask me if I had a nice flight.”

They had to shout. The plane had three propellers, one of them right over their heads.

“Did you have a nice flight?”

“No.” Taxiing to the runway, the small plane was very bouncy. “Ask me why I didn’t have a nice flight.”

“Why didn’t you have a nice flight?”

“I sat next to a Methodist minister.”

She said, “So what?”

“The closer to heaven we got, the smugger he got.”

She shook her head. “Jet lag affects different people in different ways.”

Fletch said, “My uncle didn’t think it was funny either.”

“Not only that,” the girl said, “but telling it to your uncle probably took up the whole ten minutes we waited.”

“I’m a loyal nephew.”

The plane stopped. Each of the three engines was gunned. With the left engine still running high, the brakes were released and the plane swung onto the runway. Gathering speed, it bounced and vibrated down the runway until the bounces got big enough, at which point the plane popped into the air.

The plane rose and banked over Washington and the sound of the engines diminished somewhat.

The girl was looking out her window.

She said, “I love to look at Washington from the air. Such a pretty place.”

“Want to buy it?”

She gave him the sardonic grin he deserved. “You say you get along well with everybody?”

“Everybody,” Fletch said. “Absolutely everybody. Methodist ministers, uncles, terrific looking girls sitting next to me on airplanes …”

“Am I terrific looking?” she shouted.

“Smashing.”

“You mean smash-mirrors kind of smashing?”

“I dunno. Maybe. How’s your husband?”

“Don’t have one.”

“Why not?”

“Never found anybody good enough to marry me. How’s your wife?”

“Which one?”

“You have lots?”

“Have had. Lots and lots. Gross lots. Practically anybody’s good enough to marry me.”

“Guess that lets me out,” she said.

“I ask people to marry me too quickly,” Fletch said. “At least that’s what the Methodist minister said.”

“And they all say yes?”

“Most have. It’s a thing with me. I love the old institutions. Like marriage.”

“It’s a problem?”

“Definitely. Will you help me with it?”

“Of course.”

“When I ask you to marry me, please say no.”

“Okay.”

Fletch looked at his wristwatch and counted off ten seconds under his breath.

“Will you marry me?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“What?”

“I said, ‘Sure.’”

“Well, you’re not much of a help.”

“Why should I help you? You get along well with everybody.”

“Don’t you?”

“No.”

“I can see why not. Underneath that terrific exterior, you’re weird.”

“It’s a defense mechanism. I’ve been working on it.”

“Have you ever been in Hendricks, Virginia, before?” Fletch asked.

“No.”

“Are you going to the A.J.A. Convention?”

“Yes.”

Fletch thought most, if not all, the people on the plane were.

Two seats in front of him was Hy Litwack, anchorman for United Broadcasting Company.

Even the back of Hy Litwack’s head was recognizable as Hy Litwack.

“Are you a journalist?” Fletch asked.

“You think I’m a busboy?”

“No.” Fletch considered his thumbs in his lap. “I hadn’t thought that. You’re a newsperson.”

“With
Newsworld
magazine.”

“Women’s stuff? Fashion? Food?”

“Crime,” she said, looking straight ahead.

“Women’s stuff.”

Fletch was smiling behind his hand.

“Newspersons’ stuff. I’ve just come back from covering the Pecuchet trial, in Arizona.”

Fletch did not know of the case.

“What was the verdict?” he asked.

She said, “Good story.”

“Yee.” He slapped himself on the cheek. “Yee.”

She looked into his eyes. “I wouldn’t expect any other verdict.”

“Do you know Walter March was murdered this morning?”

“I heard about it from the taxi radio on the way to the airport. Do you have any of the details?”

“Nary a one.”

“Well.” She straightened her legs as much as they could be straightened in the cramped airplane. “I have two notebooks. And three pens.” Touching her fingers to her lips, she yawned. “And are you a journalist?” she asked. “Or a busboy?”

“I’m not sure,” he answered. “I’m on a sabbatical.”

“From what company?”

“Practically all of them.”

“You’re unemployed,” she said. “Therefore you’re working on a book.”

“You’ve got it.”

“On the Vatican?”

“Why the Vatican?”

“You’re working on the book in Italy.”

“I’m working on a book about Edgar Arthur Tharp, Junior.”

“You’re working on a book about an American cowboy painter in Italy?”

“It brings a certain perspective to the work. Detachment.”

“And, I suspect, about thirty tons of obstacles.”

“Do obstacles come by the ton?”

“In your case, I think so. The rest of us measure them in kilograms.”

She put her hand on his on the armrest, slipped one of her fingers under two of his, raised them and let them fall.

“I think I detect,” she said, “what with all your ex-wives and ex-employers, that your life lacks a certain consistency—a certain glue.”

“Rescue me,” Fletch said. “Save me from myself.”

“What’s your name?”

“I. M. Fletcher.”

“Fletcher? Never heard of you. Why so pompous about it?”

“Pompous?”

“You announced your name,
I am Fletcher.
As if someone had said you weren’t. Why didn’t you just say,
Fletcher?”

She was still playing with his fingers.

“My first initial is
I
. My second initial is
M
.”

“Hummmm,” she said. “An affliction since birth. Does the
I
stand for Irving?”

“Worse. Irwin.”

“I like the name Irwin.”

“No one likes the name Irwin.”

“You’re just prejudiced,” she said.

“I have every reason to be.”

“You have nice hands.”

“One on the end of each arm.”

With her two hands she made a loose fist out of his left hand, brought it a few inches closer to her, and dropped it.

She was still looking at his hand.

“Would you run your hands over my naked body, time and again?”

“Here? Now?”

“Later,” she said. “Later.”

“I thought you’d never ask. Shall I send them in to you by Room Service, or come myself?”

“Just your hands,” she said. “I don’t know much about the rest of you—except that you get along well with everybody.”

He took her hand in his, and she put her left hand on top of his.

She had pulled her legs into her seat.

“Ms., you have me at a disadvantage.”

“I sincerely hope so.”

“I don’t know your name.”

“Arbuthnot,” she said.

“Arbuthnot!” He extricated his hand. “Not Arbuthnot!”

“Arbuthnot,” she said.

“Arbuthnot?”

“Arbuthnot. Fredericka Arbuthnot.”

“Freddie Arbuthnot?”

“You’ve heard of me? Behind that Italian tan, I detect a sudden whiteness of pallor.”

“Heard of you? I made you up!”

The plane was on its landing run into Hendricks Airport

Mrs. Jake Williams—Helena, she insisted people call her—the hostess at the American Journalism Alliance Convention—had a way of greeting people as if they were delighted to see her.

“Fletcher, darling! Aren’t you beautiful!”

She extended both hands beyond her bosom.

“Hi, Helena, how are you doing?”

He leaned over her and kissed her.

They were standing near the reception desk in the hotel lobby.

An airport limousine had been waiting for them when their airplane had touched down.

Ignoring his luggage, Fletch had gone directly to the limousine and sat in it.

In a few moments, a quiet Fredericka Arbuthnot opened the car door and slid in next to him.

After the luggage had been stowed on top of the car and most of the other passengers from the airplane had taken seats, they left the airport, went through a small village blighted by a shopping center and straight out a rolling road to the plantation.

Almost immediately outside the village were the plantation’s white rail fences, on both sides of the road.

Fletch lowered his head to look through the windshield as the car turned into the plantation driveway.

On both sides of the driveway was a golf course. A
brightly dressed foursome was on a green down to the left. The car came to a full stop to let a pale blue golf cart cross the gravel driveway.

The plantation house was a mammoth red-brick structure behind a white, wooden colonnade, with matching red-brick additions at both sides and, Fletch supposed, to the rear. They were motel-type units, but well-designed, perfectly in keeping with the main house, the rolling green, the distant white fences.

On the last curve before the house, Fletch glimpsed through the side window a corner of a sparkling blue swimming pool.

No one had said a word during the ride.

The driver’s polite question, aimed at the passengers in general, “Did you all have a nice flight?” when he first got into the car received no answer whatsoever.

It was if they were going to a funeral, rather than a convention.

Well, they were going to a funeral.

Walter March was dead.

He had been murdered that morning at Hendricks Plantation.

Walter March had been in his seventies. Forever, it seemed, he had been publisher of a large string of powerful newspapers.

Probably everyone in the car, at one point or another in their careers, had had dealings with Walter March.

Probably almost everyone at the convention had.

These were journalists—some of the best in the business.

Smiling to himself, Fletch realized that if any one of them—including himself—had been alone in the car with the driver, the driver would have been pumped for every bit of information, speculation, and rumor regarding the murder at his imagination’s command.

Together, they asked no questions.