Fletch and the Man Who (20 page)

“He’s been with the campaign three weeks. He left yesterday, came back, there was another murder. I saw him in the elevator last night. He was frustrated, angry—”

“Esty wouldn’t want to be caught as a murderer.” Freddie smiled. “The Supreme Court might prohibit prisoners from praying.”

“Bill Dieckmann,” Fletch said.

“Bill’s pretty sick, I guess.”

“Last night I found him in the corridor of the fifth floor of this hotel. He was having one of his seizures. When I came across him, he was leaning against the wall. He didn’t recognize me. He didn’t know
where he was or what he was doing. He collapsed. I carried him to his own room on the ninth floor. When he came to, he didn’t know how he got there.”

“What was he doing on the fifth floor?”

“Who knows? But this morning I realized he was standing between the main elevators and the service elevators. The chambermaid was found in a service elevator, right?”

Freddie’s face was sad. “Poor old Bill. He’s got five kids.” Then she laughed. “Did you see Filby’s face yesterday when he realized he had missed the whole ‘New Reality’ speech? You’d think the doctor had just told him he’d have to have his whole stomach amputated.”

“That would be hard to swallow.”

“Joe Hall has an uncontrollable temper,” Freddie said. “I saw him lose it once. At a trial in Nashville. A courtroom marshal wouldn’t let him in. Said his press credentials were no good. Joe went berserk. He began swinging at people.”

“And you can’t tell me,” Fletch said, “that Solov is your normal Russian boy-next-door. If what you all say is true, he sits there watching pornography all night. He must build up a hell of a head of steam. Goin’ out and beatin’ women to death might be his way of fighting off a night of such entertainment.”

“Poor Russians,” Freddie sighed. “They have so little experience handling smut.”

“Are you listening to me?”

“He bears watching.”

“I think he’s a very good candidate. Might even oblige Wheeler’s theory of someone wanting to sabotage the campaign.”

“So where does Wheeler go when he disappears?” Freddie asked.

“You keep bringing the conversation back to Wheeler.”

“You keep steering me away from Wheeler. And his staff. You keep pushing it on the press. Have you forgotten yourself so easily? Really, how quickly one becomes a member of the establishment.”

“I’m trying to be honest with you. I trust you.”

“Now that you know I really am Freddie Arbuthnot.”

“Yes. Now that we both agree you’re Fredericka Arbuthnot.”

“There are plenty of kooks on staff. Dr. Thom, who clearly got his medical degree from Bother U.”

“He has his hatreds.”

“That Lee Allen Parke is a manipulator of women, if I ever saw one. And I’ve seen plenty. The governor’s driver—”

“Flash Grasselli.”

“—has the body of a brute, and the brain of a newt. Barry Hines is twitching so fast you can’t even see him.”

“I guess we’ve got kooks on this campaign.”

“Fletcher, dear, you’re almost beginning to seem normal to me.”

“You mean, next to Solov?”

“Next to Solov, Maxim Gorky would seem a fun date.”

Fletch glanced at his watch. It was twenty to twelve. “We’ve got a press bus to catch.” He went to the bed and closed his suitcase. “The rally at the shopping mall is at one o’clock. Tonight in Melville is the last big rally of this campaign.”

She hadn’t moved from her chair. “So where does the governor go when he disappears?”

“Oh, Flash gave me some cock-and-bull story about his going to some unnamed mountain cabin on some unnamed lake and going on a sleep orgy.”

“A sleep orgy?”

“He reads and sleeps for a few days.”

“I’ll bet.”

“I’m not sure I believe it.”

Freddie stood up. “Fletch, let’s keep talking about this to each other, okay?”

“Absolutely.”

She crossed the room to the door. “There must be things we’re not noticing, not hearing, not seeing. You know—like that Ms Sullivan, the way she just treated that woman reporter from a local newspaper. She’s a tough, vicious broad.”

Fletch had put his suitcase on the floor. He had not opened the door. “Promise me something else, Freddie?”

“No.”

“Keep your eyes and ears open for your own sake. Someone traveling with us likes to maul women. You’re a woman.”

“I’ve never proven that to you.”

“I watched you fold my jacket.”

“Oh.”

“Going to kiss me on the nose again?”

“You’re exploiting me,” she said.

She kissed him warmly on the mouth.

Fletch let Freddie out and went back to answer his phone.

“More of the same tomorrow,” a whiskey voice grated in Fletch’s ear.

“Am I supposed to know who this is?”

“This is
Newsbill’s
star writer, you jackass.”

“Gee, Hanrahan. I thought you’d dashed to New York to catch your Pulitzer Prize.”

“More tomorrow,” Hanrahan said, “of specifically who refuses to talk to me about the murdered broads. I’m going to publish a list of questions I’m not getting answered. Like where was Caxton Wheeler when Alice Elizabeth Shields got exited through his bedroom window? In whose bedroom had she spent the previous four nights? Why was Barry Hines thrown out of the University of Idaho? While Walsh Wheeler was in the Marines, did he machine-gun a bunch of kids?”

“No.”

“Questions don’t matter, sonny. Just the answers or lack thereof.”

“Barry Hines flunked out of the University of Idaho. Chemistry. Many do.”

“Who cares? You got my point?”

“You’re doin’ fine, Hanrahan. If I actually let you talk to someone, will you really write down what he says and print it, like a reporter? Or just use the opportunity to write fiction?”

“Guess you got to take that chance, jackass. If I can’t print something that looks like answers, I’m going to print something that looks like questions.”

“Oh, I see,” Fletch said brilliantly. “That’s why people refer to what you write as questionable. ’Bye, Mike.”

Using his hotel room phone, Fletch then communicated with Barry Hines and told him to find Walsh and tell Walsh he must plan to see Michael J. Hanrahan and Fredericka Arbuthnot.

Fletch opened the back door of the rented black sedan. “Walsh said I should drive with you to the shopping plaza.” Doris Wheeler gave him a friendly nod. “Fine.” He had found Walsh, without topcoat or tie, standing on the sidewalk outside the hotel. Coldly, Walsh said he had agreed to meet with Fredericka Arbuthnot and Michael J. Hanrahan, if Fletch thought it so necessary.

“Shall I sit in front?” The two women, Doris Wheeler and Ms Sullivan, pretty well filled up the backseat. Fletch did not recognize the car’s rented driver.

“No, no,” Doris Wheeler said. “Plenty of room back here. Go around and get in the other side.”

Fletch went around the back of the car and got in the other side. Which pushed the tall, short-haired, big-nosed Ms Sullivan onto the middle of the seat, her feet onto the high gasline bump. Which made her look like a large dog in a small box. “We haven’t met,” Fletch said to her. “I. M. Fletcher.” Ms Sullivan raised her upper lip in greeting. “Sully.” The campaign bus was pulling away from the curb in front of the
hotel, followed by the press bus. Around the area, other cars—those of volunteers and station wagons filled with television equipment— were rolling forward to form a caravan.

“Get behind the second bus,” Doris Wheeler ordered the driver.

In the road was slow confusion. The hotel’s doorman was trying to stop traffic so the caravan could assemble itself, but Farmingdale drivers were not impressed by his green-and-gold suit, or his brown derby hat. They honked their horns at him and insisted upon going directly about their own business.

A volunteer’s green van and a blue pickup truck ended up between the press bus and Doris Wheeler’s sedan. The bumper sticker on the pickup truck read: HONK FOR UPTON.

The rented driver honked his horn.

“Stop that,” Doris Wheeler said.

“I hear you had some difficulty with a local reporter this morning,” Fletch ventured.

“Cow,” said Sully.

“Was she rude or something?”

“Stupid.”

Doris said to the driver, “I told you to get directly behind the second bus.”

All the vehicles were jammed together at a red light. The driver looked at Doris through the rearview mirror and did nothing. There was nothing he could do.

“How did she offend you?” Fletch asked.

“I make appointments for Mrs. Wheeler,” Sully said.

“She didn’t need a real appointment. All she wanted to do was hang around and watch, listen.”

“We didn’t have time for any such person this morning,” Sully said. “Furthermore, you are not to force people upon us, Fletcher. All this is none of your affair.”

“My ‘affair,’ as you call it,” Fletch said, “is the whole campaign. We’re supposed to be working together.”

“Now, now.” Doris Wheeler patted Sully’s knee. “Mr. Fletcher is working for this campaign. We’re looking forward to his help. You’re going to start being a great help to us, aren’t you, Mr. Fletcher?”

Doris Wheeler’s voice was abrasive even in dulcet tones in the back of the car.

At the appearance of a green light the caravan had sprung forward.

“Pass those two vehicles,” Doris Wheeler said.

“We won’t lose the buses, ma’am,” the driver said.

“Pass them, I said!”

Again the driver glanced through the rearview mirror. On the main street of Farmingdale he swung the car out into oncoming traffic. An approaching yellow Cadillac screeched on its brakes. A Honda smashed into its rear end. The rented driver got back into the right lane ahead of the pickup truck, but still behind the volunteer’s car.

“Imbecile,” Doris Wheeler said. She pronounced it
imbeseal
“Get ahead of this car.”

“When I have room,” the driver muttered.

“Don’t you speak to me that way,” Doris Wheeler said. “Do as you’re told!”

They were far enough away from the center of Farmingdale so that the traffic had lightened. The driver swung out, waved the volunteer’s car back, and pulled up snug behind the press bus.

“Ought to be nice to the local press,” Fletch said. “Judy Nadich may be a feature writer for the
Farmingdale Views
this year. But three years from now she may be a columnist for the
Washington Post
.”

“Three years from now,” Sally said, “she’ll be up to her nose in diapers and burning meatloaf for a beery husband.”

“I don’t know what you two are talking about,” Doris Wheeler said.

“That stupid cow who appeared at the door this morning.”

“Which one?”

“The smiling one. She thought she had permission from this Fletcher here. She showed me some scribble on a piece of notepaper.” Sully sniffed. “She thought it meant something.”

“Did you send her up, Fletcher?”

“You could have made a friend for life. She’s a young woman reporter and this story would have set her up.”

“Have you been on a political campaign before, Fletcher?” Doris Wheeler asked.

“No, ma’am.”

“I have no idea why Caxton took you on.”

“To make mistakes, ma’am,” Fletch answered evenly. “To create an aura of youth and amateurism about the campaign.” There was a
surprised hard gleam in Doris’s eyes as she stared sideways at him. “To be blamed for everything and get fired, probably just before the Pennsylvania and California primaries. To warm the seat for Graham Kidwell.” Even Sully was looking at him as if he were a kitten messing with her dinner bowl. “To get sent home on a bus.”

They were entering the highway. There was another snow squall.

Doris said, “I don’t know why Walsh happened to think of you.”

“I know how to run a copying machine.”

“What you did for my son while you were in the service together was nice.” Doris Wheeler settled her coat more comfortably around her shoulder. “But really, I don’t think he needs that kind of help now.”

The driver was keeping the car so close behind the press bus that the car was being sprayed by slush and sand from the highway. He had the windshield wipers going full speed. The whole car, even the rear windows, was being covered with mud.

“Imbecile!” Doris shouted at him. “Slow down! Let the bus get ahead of us!”

“Don’t want anybody to pass us, ma’am,” the driver drawled.

“Imbecile! Where did Barry find this man?” Doris asked Fletch loudly. “The local games arcade?”

“In my spare time—when I’m not driving idiots—I’m a fireman.”

Doris’s eyes bulged. “Well, my man. You just lost both jobs.”

Sully took pad and pen from her purse and made a note.

Through the rearview mirror the driver looked at Fletch.

“Now,” said Doris Wheeler, again settling her coat over her big shoulders, “let’s talk about what you can do to be helpful.”

Fletch put on his listening expression. He had learned to do that in junior high school.

“My husband, Fletcher, is a dependent man. Very bright, very energetic—all that is true. But he’s always going around asking people what they think. You see, he’s not really confident in what he himself thinks.”

“He listens to advisors?” Fletch speculated.

“He listens to everybody. Caxton,” Doris Wheeler confided, “is very impressed by the last idea he hears.”

“Whatever it is,” Sully added.

“He’s impressionable?” Fletch conjectured.

“I’ve known the man thirty-odd years.”

“Ever since Barbara died?”

She stared at him as if he had burped resoundingly in public. “Who’s Barbara?”

“Oh,” he said.

“I dare say,” she continued, “he flattered you by asking you what you thought.”

“He did.”

“And you came up with that whole ‘New Reality’ nonsense.”

“Not really.”

“Young people always think it’s clever to disparage our institutions.”

“It’s not?”

“Politically, it’s suicide. As I said last night. You can knock the institutions on their goddamned asses,” her voice grated, “as long as you always give them lip service. That’s the
only
reality.”