Fletch and the Man Who (24 page)

“James, I don’t know what to do. Everyone’s over at the Public Auditorium.”

“Pin Grasselli. However you can. I don’t know. Do something.”

“James, I don’t see myself going ten rounds with Flash Grasselli. He’s old and he’s slow but he’s practiced.”

“Find him. Don’t take your eyes off him. Buy him a one-way ticket to Tashkent. Get him committed. Quietly. Do something. Jeez, I wish I were there. If I were there, all this would have been settled yesterday, if not sooner. That bitch, Doris Wheeler. If it weren’t for her—”

“Okay, James.”

“Yeah. Get movin’.”

It was while Fletch hurriedly was getting dressed that he noticed some of the articles in the stack Walsh had given him were separate from the loose pile. Five had been pinned together. They were at the foot of the bed.

He leaned over and looked closely at the one on top.

The first was from the
Chicago Sun-Times
.

The second was from the
Cleveland Plain-Dealer
.

“Oh, God,” Fletch said aloud.

The third was from the
Wichita Eagle
and
Beacon
.

“God, God.” Fletch looked at the remains of his sandwich on the bed and felt nauseous.

The fourth article reported the death of Alice Elizabeth Shields, “believed to have been pushed or thrown from the hotel’s roof, a few floors above the suite of presidential candidate Caxton Wheeler.”

The fifth article was from the
Farmingdale Views
.

Turning, Fletch steadied himself with his fingertips on the bureau. “God.” He saw himself start to sway in the mirror and closed his eyes. “And there are five….”

Numbly, Fletch answered the phone.

“Fletcher …?”

“Can’t talk now,” Fletch said. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have answered.”

“Fletcher…” The voice was horrible. Low. Slow. It almost didn’t sound human. “This is Bill Dieckmann.”

Fletch shook his head to clear it. “Yes, Bill?”

“Help me.”

“What’s the matter, Bill?”

“You said … you’d help me.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Fletch, my head. My head. It’s happening again. Worse. I’m scared. I don’t know what …”

“Bill, where are you?”

“Public …”

“Where in the auditorium, Bill?”

“Phones. At the back. By the phones.”

“Bill, look around you. Do you see anyone you know? Bill, is there a cop there?”

“Can’t see. It’s awful. What …?”

“Bill, stay there. I’ll be right there.”

“I’m about to … I don’t know …”

“I’ll be right there, Bill. Don’t do anything. Just stand there. I’ll be there as quick as I can.”

Fletch revolved through the hotel’s front door, saw the street in front of the hotel was empty, and revolved back into the lobby. He hurried across to the desk clerk.

“How do I get a taxi around here?”

“Just have to wait for one, I guess,” was the solution of the young man behind the desk. “They come by.”

“I’m in a big hurry,” Fletch said.

The young man shrugged. “There’s no one to call. This is a regular big city. Have to take your chances.”

“Where’s Public Auditorium?”

“Up eight blocks.” The young man waved north. “Over three blocks.” He waved east. “You need a taxi.”

“Thanks.”

Fletch hit the revolving door so hard it spun him into the street. The area was as devoid of taxis as a cemetery at midnight. He looked at his watch. With the side of his hand he chopped himself in the stomach. His muscles were tight. “I’ll race you,” he said to himself.

He began running north on the sidewalk.
Jacob, make the horse go faster and faster If it ever stops, we won’t be able to sell it
. Within three
blocks of this “regular big city,” accumulations of snow caused him to run in the street. The surface of the street was wet and there were icy patches. It was a raw night. He was sweating. He was glad he didn’t have an overcoat.
Five murders, not three
… There were no taxis anywhere in the streets. An old car clanking tire chains came down the street behind him. Waving as he ran backward, Fletch tried to get the car to stop, pick him up. The driver swung wide of Fletch.

At the end of the eighth block, Fletch turned east. Ahead of him he could see a block brightly lit. “
There is the possibility someone is doing this to sabotage the campaign
,” the governor had said. At the corner, Fletch jumped over a mound of snow. His left foot slipped landing on the ice. His ankle twinged with pain. “
Someone’s a nut
,” Lee Allen Parke had said.

The brightly lit Public Auditorium entrance was bedecked with bunting.

C
AXTON
W
HEELER FOR
P
RESIDENT
.

Many, many people were standing on the sidewalk and street outside the auditorium.

Those standing nearest the door wore fire department and police department uniforms.

Fletch squeezed through the crowds on the steps to the main door.

As Fletch was reaching for the door handle, a man in a fire department suit grabbed his elbow. “You can’t go in there.”

“Got to,” Fletch panted.

“Fire marshal’s orders. The hall is beyond capacity now.”

“Matter of life and death,” Fletch said.

“That’s right,” said the fireman.

Taking a deep breath, Fletch reached for his wallet. “Name’s Fletcher. I’m Governor Wheeler’s press secretary. I’ve got to get in.”

The fireman did not look at Fletch’s identification. “Right now we wouldn’t let Wheeler himself in there.”

“Someone’s sick in there,” Fletch said. “A reporter. Dangerously sick. Let me go get him out. That way you’d be ahead in numbers by one.”

“Let someone else bring him out.” The fireman began to restrain an old lady with yellow berries on her black hat. “That way we’ll be ahead in numbers by two.”

There wasn’t much light in the alley beside the auditorium. Mounds of dirty snow and ice ran along the base of both walls. Through the old brick walls and the auditorium leaked the sounds of a brass band. People were cheering and stomping.

The humidity made Fletch’s breath cloud the air in front of his face.

Halfway down the alley was a fire escape. The bottom ladder of the fire escape was balanced with weights to keep its bottom step four meters off the ground. Stepped on from above, the bottom of the ladder would lower to the ground.

Fletch knew he couldn’t jump that high, but he knew he could try.

He ran on the uneven, slippery pavement as well as he could. He jumped not very high at all. He slipped. He lowered his hands toward the pavement. He skidded. His head smashed into an orange crate filled with garbage.

An empty tomato sauce can fell from the crate onto the alley. Fletch kicked the can away. It bounced off the opposite wall and landed noiselessly in the snow.

He picked up the crate and turned it over. Grapefruit skins, eggshells, bones poured over his shoes. He placed the crate upside down under the fire escape. He climbed onto the crate, jumped straight up from it, reaching his hand for the bottom rung. Coming down, his feet crashed through the orange crate. He found himself standing on the pavement again, his left ankle twinging again. He was wearing wood around the calves of his legs.

“Ummm,” Fletch said. “Man can’t fly.”

The alley at the side of the auditorium was broad enough for a truck to go through. It was clear that rubbish trucks sometimes, but not frequently, did go through.

“Matters not,” Fletch said. “Man has brain.”

Running back and forth, Fletch collected enough barrels, crates, boxes to stack into a stairway to the fire escape.

He climbed his stairway rapidly, as each stair gave way as he stepped on it.

He finally knelt on the bottom rung of the fire escape. Creaking, it lowered him back into the mess he had made in the alley.

It swayed as he ran up it.

Halfway up the fire escape was a metal fire door. There was no
handle on the outside, of course. Not even a keyhole. Metal strips along the edges of the door covered the jamb.

“Man has brain,” Fletch said.

The fire escape rose from this central landing. Fletch ran up it.

At the top was a smaller landing and one window. Thick, frosted glass, veined with the wires of an alarm system. Locked, of course.

He kicked in the window with his heel. Eggshell went onto the broken window; glass onto his shoe.

The alarm bell went off. It sounded like a school bell, more angry than loud. Inside the building the brass band was playing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The crowd was chanting “Wheel along with Wheeler! Wheel along with Wheeler! Wheel along with Wheeler!” Under the circumstances, Fletch expected the alarm bell to attract as much attention as the usual school bell.

He kicked a big hole in the little window and pushed the wires aside with the sleeve of his jacket. Pointing one shoulder toward the sky, he stepped through the window onto its inside ledge.

When he had both feet inside the building, he jumped into the dark. The floor on which he landed was higher than he had calculated. His left ankle hurt him right up to the small of his back. He punched the pain in his back with his thumb.

More the sense of light than actual light itself emanated from his left. The band and the chanting had quieted now. A man’s amplified voice strided.

Sliding his feet along the floor so he wouldn’t fall down any steps that might be there, Fletch went to his left. After several steps he felt himself against a wall. He turned right, following the sound of the man’s voice—“Protect this great republic”—toward greater light, against another wall, right again, around a corner. He found himself at the top of a dimly lit, old, wooden staircase.

He could no longer hear the alarm bell.

His ankle and back not complaining too much, he ran down the stairs.

He pushed through the wide door to the corridor of the balcony. On the corridor’s side, the door was concealed as a mirror.

To orient himself, Fletch went onto the balcony.

Every seat in the balcony was taken. People were standing.

Onstage, Doris Wheeler and Governor Caxton Wheeler were sitting
in the center of a half-moon of local dignitaries. Their plastic chairs were the sort designed to be uncomfortable in fast-food restaurants, to make people tip forward, eat fast, and get out. The speaker at the podium could have been Congressman Jack Snive.

In front of the stage, facing the audience, smirked a large band in high school marching uniforms. The uniforms might have been the right sizes for the band marching, but they were too big for them sitting down. All the drummers’ hands were in their sleeves.

The floor of the auditorium was filled. People clogging the aisles were urging other people to move. There was some movement, but it was more circular than directed.

Across the hall, nearer the stage than the balcony, was a separate box. In the box sat Freddie Arbuthnot, Roy Filby, Fenella Baker, Tony Rice, others. He could not see who was in the matching box, to his right.

Fletch left the balcony and ran down the stairs to the lobby of the auditorium.

To the left of the main door was a bank of three wall telephones. Bill Dieckmann was not there.

Fletch looked around what corners there were. No Bill Dieckmann.

There were no other phones along the back of the auditorium.

Even the foyer was crowded.

The fireman who had stopped Fletch outside the auditorium was now inside. He spotted Fletch. “Hey!” he shouted. He started toward Fletch.

Moving sideways very fast, Fletch kept the crowd between himself and the fireman.

Fletch ran back up the stairs to the balcony.

“Freddie?” Fletch sat down beside her. There was more room in the press box than there was anywhere else in the auditorium. “Have you seen Flash Grasselli?”

She shook her head no. “Something occurred to me,” she said.

“I need to find Flash.”

“Don’t you think it odd,” she asked, “that a few days after I join the campaign, Walsh hires you?”

Fletch said, “Help me find Bill Dieckmann.”

“I mean, you’re an investigative reporter. Like me.”

“Bill called me at the hotel. From here. Asked me to help him. Apparently his head was going again.”

Her brown eyes were fully on Fletch’s face.

Fletch said, “It sounded like he was afraid of what he might do, or something.”