Fletch's Fortune (9 page)

“No one ever got rich working for Walter March.”

“How much did all that cost you, Oscar?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“You can’t sue talent.”

“You didn’t buy him off?”

“Of course not.”

“Legal fees?”

“There were some.”

“Grief?”

“A lot. I’ll never forgive him. Frankly, I’ll never forgive him. Never.”

“Then immediately he started nudging, saying if your column was going to run, it had to run in his newspapers. Right?”

“The bastard threatened about every contract I’ve had with every newspaper in this country.”

“This has been going on for years and years. Right, Oscar?”

“What are you doing, playing cards or working on a story?”

“I don’t get it,” another voice said. “So Walter March has been biting your tail all these years. Why all the grief? Lawyers are for grief. You can’t afford lawyers, Oscar?”

“You don’t know how Walter March operated?”

“Look at that. Nine, ten, Queen.”

“Tell me.”

“If you don’t know how Walter March operated, you never worked for him.”

“Yeah, I only need one.”

“A little blackmail. Always a little blackmail.”

Someone else said, “That son of a bitch had more private eyes on his payroll than he had reporters. Paid ’em better, too.”

“And they didn’t have to write.”

“A cute man. Real cute.”

“Shit. Son of a bitch. I’m out.”

“You mean Walter March has been blackmailing you, Oscar?”

“No. Just trying to find a way to. Pair of eyes behind every bush. I’m flying first class—there’s always the same son of a bitch flying coach. No matter what city I’m in, there’s always someone waiting for me in the
hotel lobby to see if I go up in the elevator alone. Nuisance value, you know?”

“Dear old saintly Walter March operated like that?”

“Dear old saintly Walter March. The president of your American Journalism Alliance. You voted for him? Give me one card, so long as it’s the King of Clubs.”

“I’m very grateful to him,” said Oscar Perlman. “Kept me straight all these years. I’ve never had the opportunity to lie to my wife.”

“Oscar, you don’t think dear old saintly Walter March getting a scissors up the ass is funny?”

Oscar Perlman said, “Not worth a column.”

“I take it we’re not sleeping together?”

Fletch said into the phone, “Who is this?”

It was 1:20
A.M
. He had been asleep a half-hour.

“Damn you!” said Freddie Arbuthnot. “Damn your eyes, your nose, and, your cock!” The phone went dead.

It wasn’t that Fletch hadn’t thought of it.

He knew she’d washed her knees.

And in the morning, the phone was ringing as he entered his room.

He took off his sweaty T-shirt before answering.

“Have you seen the papers?” Crystal asked.

“No. I went for a ride.”

“Ride? You’re unemployed and you rented a car?”

“I’m unemployed and I rented a horse. They use less gas.”

“A horse! You mean one of those big things with four legs who eat hay?”

“That’s a cow,” Fletch said.

“Or a horse.”

It took Crystal a moment more of exclamations before accepting the idea that someone would get up before dawn, find the stables in the dark, rent a horse, and ride over the hills eastward watching the sun rise, “without a thought for breakfast.”

It had been a pleasant horse and a great sunrise.

And taking the horse from the stables and bringing it back, Fletch had not seen the man in the blue denim jacket, with tight, curly gray hair, who had approached the masseuse, Mrs. Leary, in the parking lot two mornings
before and asked her about the arrival of Walter March.

“I want to read you just one’graf from Bob McConnell’s story in March’s Washington newspaper regarding the old bastard’s murder.”

“Pretty extensive coverage?”

“Pages and pages. Two pages just of photographs, going back to and including a shot of the bastard at the baptismal font.”

“He deserves every line,” said Fletch. “Dear old saintly Walter March.”

“Anyway, Bob nailed you.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll just read the paragraph. First he names all the big names here at the convention. Then he writes, ‘Also attending the convention is Irwin Maurice Fletcher, who, although never indicted, previously has figured prominently in murder trials in the states of California and Massachusetts. Currently unemployed, Fletcher has worked for a March newspaper.’”

Fletch was pulling off his jeans.

He had listened to McConnell phoning in his story the night before.

“A pretty heavy tat for tit, Fletcher. Methinks you’ll not jokingly accuse Bob McConnell of first-degree murder again. At least, not in his presence.”

“Who was joking?”

“There are some pretty vicious people around here,” Crystal said.

“You didn’t know?”

“Breakfast?”

“Got to shower first.”

“Please do.”

Fletch had breakfast in his room, listening to Virginia State Police Captain Andrew Neale questioning Lydia March and Walter March, Junior, in Suite 12.

There were the preliminary courtesies—Captain Neale saying, “I know this must be terribly difficult for you, Mrs. March”; Lydia saying, “I know it’s necessary”; his saying, “Thank you. You have my sympathy. I would avoid disturbing you at this point if it were at all possible”—while Fletch was spooning his half a grapefruit.

Junior had to be fetched from his bedroom.

“Junior’s a little slow this morning,” Lydia said. “Neither of us is getting any sleep, of course.”

“Hello, Mister Neale,” Junior said.

His voice was not as clear as Lydia’s or Neale’s.

“Good morning, Mister March. I’ve told your mother that you have my sympathy, and I hate to put you both through this.…”

“Right,” Junior said. “Hate to go through it. Hate to go through the whole shabby thing.”

“If you would just go over the circumstances of your husband’s.… You don’t mind my using a tape recorder, do you?”

Junior said, “Tape recorder?”

“Of course not, Captain Neale. Do anything you like.”

“As an aid to my memory, and hopefully, so I won’t have to disturb you again. It’s most important that we fix the timing of this … incident precisely.”

“Incident!” said Junior.

“Sorry,” said Neale. “All words are inadequate.…”

“Apparently,” said Junior.

“We’re particularly interested in.…”

“I’ll do my best, Captain,” Lydia said. “Only it’s so.…”

“Mrs. March, if you can just describe everything, every detail, from the moment you woke up yesterday morning?”

“Yes. Well, we, that is, Walter and I, were scheduled to have breakfast at eight o’clock yesterday morning with Helena and Jake Williams—Helena is the Executive Secretary of the Alliance—to go over everything a final time before the mobs arrived, you know, discuss any problems there might have been.…”

“Were there any you knew of?”

“Any what?”

“Any problems.”

“No. Not really. There was a small problem about the President.”

“The president of what?”

“… the United States.”

“Oh. What was that?”

“What was what?”

“The problem with the President of the United States.”

“Oh. Well, you see, he doesn’t play golf.”

“I know.”

“Well, you see, he was scheduled to arrive at three in the afternoon. By helicopter. The problem was what to do with him until dinner. Presidents of the United States have always played golf. Almost always. At these conventions, the President goes out and walks around the golf course with a few members of the press, and it makes good picture opportunities for the working press, and it makes it seem to the public that we’re doing something for him, helping him to relax, giving him a break from work, and that the press and the President can be friendly, you know.…”

“I see.”

“But the President, this President, doesn’t play golf. The night before, Jake—that’s Mister Williams—over drinks—well, we were talking about this and Jake was making silly suggestions, of what to do with the President of the United States for four hours. He suggested we fill up the swimming pool with catfish and give the President a net and let him wade in and catch them all. I shouldn’t be saying this. Oh, Junior, help!”

“What did you decide?”

“I think they were deciding to put up softball teams, the President and Secret Service and all that against some reporters. Only Hendricks Plantation doesn’t have a softball field, of course. Who has? And Jake was saying, what would happen if the President of the United States got beaned by the Associated Press?”

“Really, Mister Neale,” Junior said.

“Right,” Neale said. “Mrs. March.…”

“At least the Vice-President plays golf,” she said.

“At what time did you wake up, Mrs. March?”

“I’m not sure. Seven-fifteen? Seven-twenty? I heard the door to the suite close.”

“That was me, Mister Neale,” Junior said. “I went down to the lobby to get the newspapers.”

“Walter had left his bed. It’s always been a thing with him to be up a little earlier than I. A masculine thing. I heard him moving around the bathroom. I lay in bed a little while, a few minutes, really, waiting for him to be done.”

“The bathroom door was closed?”

“Yes. In a moment I heard the television here in the living room go on, softly—one of those morning news and features network shows Walter always hated so much—so I got up and went into the bathroom.”

“Excuse me. How did your husband get from the bathroom to the living room without coming back through your bedroom?”

“He went through Junior’s bedroom, of course. He didn’t want to disturb me.”

“Mrs. March, are you saying that, in fact, you did not see your husband at all yesterday morning?”

“Oh, Captain Neale.”

“I’m sorry. I mean, alive?”

“No. I didn’t.”

“Then how do you know it was he in the bathroom yesterday morning?”

“Captain, we’ve been married fifty years. You get used to the different sounds of your family. You know them, even in a hotel suite.”

“Okay. You were in the bathroom. The television was playing softly in the living room.…”

“I heard the door to the suite close again, so I thought Walter had gone down for coffee.”

“Had the television gone off?”

“No.”

“So, actually, someone could have come into the suite at that point.”

“No. At first, I thought Junior might have come back, but he couldn’t have.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t hear them talking.”

“Would they have been talking? Necessarily?”

“Of course. About the headlines. The newspapers. The bulletins on the television. My husband and son are newspapermen, Captain Neale. Every day there are new developments.…”

“Yes. Of course.”

“After getting the newspapers,” Junior said, “I went into the coffee shop and had breakfast.”

“So, Mrs. March, you think you heard the suite door close again, but your husband hadn’t left the suite, and you think no one entered the suite because you didn’t hear talking?”

“I guess that’s right. I could be mistaken, of course. I’m trying to reconstruct.”

“Pardon, but where were you physically in the bathroom when you heard the door close the second time?”

“I was getting into the tub. I don’t shower in the morning. I discovered years ago that if I take a shower in the morning, I can never get my hair organized again, for the whole day.”