Fletch and the Widow Bradley Read online

  “Do you have any reason to doubt its authenticity?” the manager asked.

  “Sure. I’ve never seen one before.”

  “You don’t see too many pictures of Grover Cleveland.”

  “Is that who it is? I thought it might be Karl Marx.”

  The manager looked at him in shock. “Karl Marx?”

  Fletch shrugged. “Don’t see too many pictures of him, either.”

  The manager chuckled. “It looks okay to me.”

  “Will you cash it for me?”

  “Sure.”

  Fletch took another thousand dollar bill out of the pocket of his jeans. “This one, too?”

  The manager examined the second thousand dollar bill even more closely. “Where did you get these?”

  “My employer is a little eccentric. Hates to write checks.”

  “You must be well paid.” The manager looked closely at Fletch. “I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

  “Have you?”

  “Your picture. I’ve seen your picture—very recently.”

  “Oh, that,” said Fletch. “I’m on the five-thousand dollar bill.”

  “Maybe on a Wanted Poster?” The skinny man laughed. “How do you want these bills broken up?”

  “Hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens, fives.”

  The manager stood up. “You just want it spendable, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  The fistfulls of money the manager brought back to Fletch were bigger than Fletch expected. The manager counted it out again, on the desk in front of Fletch.

  “Thank you.” Fletch was having difficulty stuffing the bills into the pockets of his jeans.

  “I’m just slightly uneasy.” The manager looked closely again at Fletch’s face. “I’ve seen a picture of you somewhere—I think, this morning.”

  “Did you read the funnies?”

  “Yes,” the manager answered. “I read the funnies on the bus.” Fletch said, “That must be it, then.”

  “When will the suit be ready?”

  “Ten days.”

  “Not soon enough.”

  “When do you need it?”

  “Wednesday.”

  “This is Monday.”

  “Thursday morning then.”

  “We’ll see what we can do.”

  Besides the well-cut, serious blue business suit, Fletch had bought, in the very expensive men’s shop, shirts, shoes, neck-ties, tennis sneakers, shorts, sport shirts, and, a suitcase.

  “Going on a vacation?” the salesman asked.

  “Yes,” answered Fletch. “I’d like to take everything with me, except the suit.”

  “Certainly, Mister Fletcher. How do you choose to pay? We’ll accept your check.”

  “Cash.” Fletch took a mess of bills from the pocket of his jeans.

  “Very good, sir. I’ll have everything wrapped for you.”

  “No need. I’ll just put everything in the suitcase.”

  “If that’s what you wish.”

  While the salesman added up the bill and made change, Fletch packed the suitcase.

  “Mister Fletcher,” the salesman said slowly. “I wonder if you’d accept a gift from the store.”

  “A gift?”

  “That was quite a wonderful thing you did last night—talking that woman off the bridge.”

  “You know about that?”

  “Everyone knows about that.” The salesman’s eyes studied the deep carpeting. “Our cashier, last year, found herself in similar straits. You see, no one knew, understood …”

  “So people do read newspapers.”

  “We’re proud to have you a customer of our store.”

  Other salespersons, Fletch now noticed, were standing around watching him.

  The salesman handed Fletch a boxed silver-backed brush and comb.

  “Wow,” said Fletch.

  “They’re made in England,” the salesman said.

  “Real nice.” Fletch shook the salesman’s hand. “Real nice of you.”

  “People make efforts so seldom for other people …” The salesman seemed embarrassed.

  “Thank you,” said Fletch.

  With suitcase in one hand and the boxed brush and comb in the other, Fletch proceeded to leave the store.

  All the salespersons smiled at him as he went by, and applauded him.

  “You don’t want to go to San Orlando,” the heavily made-up woman in the tight-fitting jacket said. On the wall of the travel agency posters recommended Acapulco, Athens, Nice, Naples, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, and Rio de Janiero. Fletch wanted to go to all of them.

  “I must,” Fletch said.

  “No one must go to San Orlando.” She had the phone to her ear, waiting for information from the airline. “You know where Puerto de San Orlando is? Way down the Mexican coast. Takes forever to get there. They haven’t finished building it yet. Barely started. One hotel. The place is insuperably hot, dusty—hello?” She noted information from the airline. “That’s terrible,” she said, hanging up. “Terrible connections all the way through. It’s a far more expensive trip than it’s worth, at this point. If you waited a few years, until after they’ve developed the place a little …”

  Leaning on the counter she told Fletch about the bad connections to San Orlando, and the expense.

  “Fine,” said Fletch. “Reservations for one, please.”

  “For one?” The woman looked truly shocked.

  “One,” Fletch said.

  “Boy,” the woman said. “Is being a hero that bad?” She sat down at the small desk behind the counter. “Return when?”

  “Wednesday.”

  “Wednesday? This is Monday.”

  “Got to pick up a new suit,” Fletch said. “Thursday morning.”

  She put the airline’s ticket form into the typewriter. “Some people’s idea of fun. It’s all right, I suppose, as long as they have the travel agent to blame.”

  24

  “H E Y, F L E T C H!” A L S T O N Chambers said, answering the phone to him. “You’re an unemployed hero again!”

  In his apartment, sitting on the divan, Fletch put his coffee mug precisely over his own mug on the front page of the News-Tribune. Moxie had left the newspaper on the coffee table.

  “I’m beginning to think that’s your natural condition,” Alston said. “Heroically unemployed.”

  “Aw, shucks. ‘Twarn’t nothin’.”

  “I wouldn’t have gone out on that bridge cable for a million dollars. A million plus loose change. Especially in the dark.”

  “Actually, I never did decide to do it, Alston. I just did it.”

  “It’s a good thing you’re thoughtless, Fletch.”

  “Am I calling too early?” Fletch’s watch read two thirty.

  “Nope. I called the U.S. Embassy in Geneva before I left home, and they answered here at the office before noon. Was the name you gave me Thomas Bradley spelled B-r-a-d-l-e-y?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No American citizen named Thomas Bradley has died in Switzerland.”

  “Ever?”

  “Ever.”

  “No Thomas Bradley has ever died in Switzerland?” Fletch admired his new suitcase standing on the floor just inside the apartment’s front door. “Do they know about deaths in private sanatorium?”

  “They say they do. They assure me their records regarding in-country deaths are one hundred percent accurate. I should think they would be.”

  “Even if the guy was cremated?”

  “I asked them to check deaths and burials, removals, what have you, under all circumstances. Swiss paperwork, you know, leaves the rest of the world blushing. Wherever your man died, it wasn’t

  Switzerland. Did you hear the announcement on the noon news the mayor is giving you The Good Citizen of The Month Citation?”

  “The month isn’t over yet. What about the ashes I gave you, Alston?”

  “Oh, yeah. I dropped them at the police lab o
n my way to work. Why did you give them to me, anyway?”

  “What was the result?”

  “The result was that the good gentlemen in white coats called when I got back from lunch and asked if the D. A. had really wanted those ashes analysed. I assured the gentleman solemnly that the D.A. did. I didn’t tell him that by ‘D.A.’ I meant a damned ass named Fletch.”

  “Alston—”

  “Carpet.”

  “What?”

  “Carpet. You know, rug? They were the ashes of a tightly woven, high quality carpet. Probably Persian.

  “A carpet?”

  “A quantity of petroleum, it says here, probably kerosene, a few wood ashes, probably pine, and a small measure of earth and sand.”

  “Are those guys always right?”

  “Listen, Fletch, these guys do the lab work for every suspected arson in the state. They know a burned rug when they see one. They were very curious as to which case of arson we’re working on. By the way, Fletch, which case of arson are we working on?”

  “None I know of.”

  “Is Moxie burning up the family heirlooms so she can get a job playing in Die Walkure?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Fletch, was Audrey right?”

  “Probably. About what?”

  “Are you on to a murder?”

  “I don’t know that at this point.”

  “What do you know at this point?”

  “At this point …” Fletch thought a moment. “… I know Thomas Bradley was a carpet.”

  Dear Moxie,

  Gone to Mexico to see a man about a carpet. Try to manage dinner by yourself. If you take anything from the refrigerator, please leave a $1,000 bill in the ice tray. Probably I’ll be back Wednesday night.

  -F.

  25

  I N L A T E M O R N I N G the sun on the Pacific Ocean and on the white sand of the beach at San Orlando was dazzling, dizzying to anyone who had spent most of the previous night jack-rabbiting in airplanes. Fletch had arrived at the hotel at two forty five A.M., discovered there was nothing for him to eat, slept for three hours, awoke too hungry to sleep more, swam in the hotel pool until the breakfast room opened at seven, ate steak, eggs, bacon, homefries and fried tomatoes, then went out to the beach and fell asleep again.

  The travel agent had been right. The airline’s connections had been terrible: three different flights, each with a wait longer than the flight. She had been right that Puerto de San Orlando was just beginning to be built: whole walls were missing from the hotel; the landscaping was typified by weeds growing through cement blocks; beaten paths led from decorated bar to diningroom to pool. The sounds of bull-dozers grinding, hammers bamming, saws buzzing filled the dusty air. She also had been right about Puerto de Orlando’s insuperable heat.

  Late morning, Fletch took a table for two in the palm-roofed, open-sided bar on the beach and ordered a beer. Hot though he was, the beer was not cold. His eyes stung from the three jet airplane hops during the night, the brilliant sunlight reflected from the ocean and the beach, from swimming in the salt water. He drank his beer slowly and then ordered a Coca Cola. The Coke wasn’t cold, either.

  Just before noon he saw Charles Blaine, in long plaid shorts and a yellow sports shirt, heavy horn-rimmed glasses and sandals, come through the hotel’s arched doorway and plod across the sand to the beach bar.

  When Blaine came into the shade of the palm-leaf roof he stopped, looked around. His eyes passed over Fletch, sitting at the table in just swimming trunks, blinked, and looked back. Blaine frowned like an accountant spotting red ink on books he had felt were not perfectly sound. He turned to go, apparently thought better of it, looked again at Fletch, hesitated, and then walked over to Fletch’s table.

  “You’d make a good accountant,” Charles Blaine said to Fletch. “You don’t give up.”

  Fletch turned his head toward the sea. “I’d make a good reporter, too. Pity I can’t get a job as either.”

  Blaine put his hand on the other chair. “Shall I sit down?”

  “I didn’t come to Puerto de Orlando,” Fletch said slowly, “to drink the water.”

  Blaine sat down.

  “Drink?” Fletch asked. “Warm beer or warm Coke?”

  “Gin and tonic.”

  “Sounds good,” Fletch said. “Me, too.”

  “Mexico has excellent limes,” Blaine advised.

  “I should think so.”

  They ordered from the young waitress whose hips were stacked on her like lava flow on a volcanic mountain.

  “Nice vacation?” Fletch asked Blaine.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Sort of an out-of-the-way place you chose for a vacation.”

  “It’s not too expensive—once you get here.” Charles Blaine then listed the exact price of everything purchasable in Puerto de Orlando, Mexico, in both pesos and dollars—every article of food, drink, clothing, every souvenir.

  Fletch asked, “How’s your nervous breakdown doing?”

  “Am I having one?”

  “Enid Bradley says so.”

  “Does she? One of us may be haying a nervous breakdown—either Enid or myself.”

  “She says you are. She says you were so fond of her husband you can’t let him rest in peace. You can’t believe he’s dead. You keep referring to him in the present tense.”

  “Me, fond of Thomas Bradley?”

  “Weren’t you?”

  “Thomas Bradley was my boss. I was as fond of him as I am of my desk, chair, filing cabinet, and desk calculator. He was a necessary piece of office equipment. As replaceable in my life as any other boss.”

  “There’s some evidence,” Fletch said, “that you’re so eager to perpetuate the myth that Thomas Bradley is still alive that you even go so far as to forge memos from him.”

  A small, quirky smile flashed on Blaine’s face.

  “Why did you come here, Fletcher? What’s your question?”

  Fletcher looked innocently at Charles Blaine. “Was Thomas Bradley really a carpet?”

  Blaine’s eyebrows wrinkled. “I don’t get you.”

  “I don’t wonder. I don’t get you, either.”

  Blaine finished his drink and signaled the waitress for another. “Vacationing in Mexico,” Blaine said, “is enough to make a rummy of anyone. It’s hot and it’s dry and the injunction not to drink the water is well advertised. I calculate that because Mexico’s water is famous for causing diarrhoea, Mexico’s liquor sales are approximately three hundred percent higher than they otherwise would be.”

  “No one’s more cynical than a good accountant,” Fletch said.

  “That’s true,” Blaine said. “Or a good reporter, I guess.”

  “If we’re both so good,” Fletch said, “how come we’re both sitting here on the edge of the world, about as popular with our employers as an earache and a toothache?”

  Blaine sipped his new drink. “Do I understand, from what you said before, that you’ve lost your job?”

  “I’ve lost my job. I’ve lost my career. I couldn’t get a job now even working for the Leavenworth Levity.”

  “Is there such a newspaper?”

  “Your wife’s aunt said you’re relentlessly literal-minded.”

  “Happy? You talked with Happy?”

  “Of course. That’s how I found you.”

  “My wife’s aunt is sort of …”

  “… happy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s a nice lady. Which, by Fletch definition, means she fed me.”

  “I’m surprised you had the resources to come find me,” Blaine said. “I mean, the financial resources. The money.”

  “I don’t,” Fletch said. “Is Wagnall-Phipps paying for your so-called vacation?”

  “Yes,” Blaine admitted.

  “I’m glad Enid Bradley didn’t order you to go have your nervous breakdown on McDonald Island.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Why don’t you
stop being so literal about the trivial, Mister Blaine, and become literal regarding the material.”

  Charles Blaine nodded his head, as if agreeing to difficult terms after a long negotiation. “All right.” He sat back in his chair. “I guess I owe you an apology.”

  “Finally we’re getting somewhere.”

  “I admit I was using you. Intentionally. Not you, personally. For that, I’m sorry. I was using the press. I guess I was thinking it’s okay to use the press. I didn’t realize, I forgot, that the media is made up of people, flesh and blood, who can be hurt, damaged.”

  “Damn,” said Fletch. “I forgot to bring my violin.”

  “That was an apology,” Blaine said.

  “Consider it accepted, until you hear otherwise. Now please move to the facts.”

  “That’s what I don’t know,” Blaine said. “That’s what I want to find out. You can hardly blame me.”

  “That, too, will be decided later.”

  “Okay, I worked—work—for Wagnall-Phipps, Inc. Not one of the world’s top forty companies, but a nice, solid little concern turning over a healthy profit. Thomas Bradley, founder, creator, Chairman of the Board. A sensible man, a quiet man, a good business man. A quiet man except for the long, dirty stories he liked to tell.”

  “You didn’t like his dirty jokes?”

  “Didn’t understand most of them. My wife and I lead a fairly—what should I say—conventional life. Always have.” Blaine sneezed.

  “I bet.”

  “An able business man. He’d been married to Enid for twenty years or more. Two kids.”

  “I’ve got all that.”

  “Rode horseback for exercise, or pleasure, or for … whatever reason one rides horseback.”

  “Good for the digestion.”

  “Then I began hearing he was ill.”

  “From whom? When?”

  “Well, from Alex Corcoran, who, if you don’t know by now, is president of Wagnall-Phipps.”

  “I do know.”

  “Of course, next to Alex almost everyone looks ill. He’s a big, florid man, plays golf almost every day of the week. That’s all right. He makes more money for Wagnall-Phipps on the golf course than all the other sales personnel combined.”

  “When did Alex mention to you he thought Bradley was ill?”

  “About two years ago. I don’t know, really. I like to think I had noticed it myself, first.”