Confess, Fletch Read online

“Sorry to wake you all up last night,” Fletch said.

  Elizabeth had come in the other door with tea things.

  “Come over and have a cuppa,” Flynn said.

  While Flynn and Fletch sat over their tea, Elizabeth at the piano helped the children tune their instruments. Todd had picked up a viola. Jenny had a less than full-sized violin.

  Fletch spoke over the scrapings and plunks.

  “Did you catch him?”

  “Who?” Flynn poured a cup for Elizabeth as well.

  “The arsonist.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Flynn.

  “Was it the gas station attendant?”

  “It was a forty-three-year-old baker.”

  “Not the gas station attendant?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are you crushed?”

  “Why was he burning down Charles town?”

  Flynn shrugged. “Jesus told him to. Or so he said.”

  “But where did he get all the Astro gasoline containers?”

  “He’d been saving up.”

  Elizabeth was tuning his ’cello.

  “Now, let’s see what this is all about.”

  Leaving his cup drained behind him, Flynn sat behind his music stand.

  “Elsbeth usually joins us at the piano,” he explained to Fletch, “but Beethoven didn’t consider her today.”

  She came over to the divan and took her tea.

  The children were behind their music stands.

  The youngest, Winny, was the page-turner.

  “Remember to turn me first,” his father said. “I’ve got a memory like a bear’s mouth.”

  They all straightened their backs, like flowers rising on their stems in the morning sun.

  “Con brio!” their father shouted, in a voice of pleasant threat.

  They were off, bows indicating two dimensions in their coming and going, eyes intent upon the sheet music, Randy’s violin gracefully indicating, belatedly, a few notes Jenny skipped, her blue eyes getting more huge as they travelled down the page, a few times losing her place altogether (when she had nothing to play, she sighed; then her tongue would sneak out and touch the tip of her nose), Winny back and forth behind them like a waiter, following his father’s score, turning his page first, then Jenny’s on perfect time (frequently a help to her finding her place and a cause of renewed, more confident playing), then Todd’s, then Randy’s, every five or six minutes a jet screeching by just five hundred metres above the house, deafening the players (drowned out, they sawed away apparently soundlessly), making them adjust their paces to each other once they could hear each other again, ever and always Flynn’s ’cello playing along, leading from behind (“Molto! Molto!” he shouted over the shrieking of a jet during the third section; he was enormous, delicate over his instrument), keeping the pace, somewhat, the tone, as well as it could be kept, Elizabeth sitting in the divan beside Fletch, ankles crossed, hands in her lap, loving them all with her eyes.

  Upstairs, a baby mewed.

  They sat rigid in their slight curve, shoulders straight, chins tucked, the boys’ blue denim stretched over their slim thighs, sneakers angled on the floor like frogs’ feet, the sky through the windows behind them going down the scale of grey through dusk to dark, more lights coming on at the airport across the reflecting surface of the harbour. During the fourth section, Jenny was tired and not as practised. Sighs became more frequent. The tongue crept out to the tip of her nose even when she should have been playing. Even Randy’s and Todd’s faces shone with perspiration.

  Their hair matted on their foreheads identically. For a moment, Fletch looked at the chessmen set up on a board to his right. A game was in progress.

  Jenny was vigorous in the last bars, practised, allegro, and, finished a little before the others. She looked momentarily confused.

  It was a wonderful forty minutes.

  “Bravo!” Elizabeth said while she and Fletch applauded.

  “Pretty good, Jenny,” Randy said, standing up.

  Without comment Flynn closed his sheet music and stood to lean his ’cello in the curve of the piano again.

  “Da’?” Todd said. “That should never have been in anything other than F major.”

  “We all make mistakes,” said Flynn. “Even Beethoven. We all have our temporary madnesses.”

  Elizabeth was hugging Jenny and complimenting Winny on his page-turning.

  It was five-twenty.

  “I expect we could find a drink for you, before supper,” Flynn said. “Elsbeth drinks sherry, and I suppose there’s some other stuff in the house.”

  “I have to get to the airport,” Fletch said.

  “Oh?” said Flynn. “Skipping town, finally?”

  Conversation was suspended while a jet thundered overhead.

  The room reeked with accomplishment as the kids moved about with their instruments. They bounced on the balls of their sneakered feet as only happy, accomplished children do.

  “Andy’s arriving,” Fletch said finally. “Six-thirty.”

  “Is she now? That’s nice.”

  “You’ll stay for supper?” Elizabeth said, coming back to where Fletch was now standing.

  “He’s picking up his girlfriend,” rolled Flynn. “At the airport. That will alarm your police escort, I’m sure. I’d better warn them you don’t mean to take flight, or they will tackle you at the information counter. They’ll watch you, all the same.”

  “Bring her back with you,” Elizabeth said.

  Fletch shook hands respectfully with the children.

  “I like you,” Elizabeth said. “Frannie, this is no murderer.”

  “That’s what all the women say,” Flynn said. “I haven’t convinced him yet, either.”

  “His face was good while he listened.”

  “As long as he didn’t hum along,” Flynn said. “Tap his toes.”

  They all laughed at Flynn as a jet whined in a holding pattern over their heads.

  “Bring your girl back with you,” shouted Elizabeth. “We’ll wait supper for you!”

  “Thanks anyway,” said Fletch. “Really, this has been a wonderful time for me.”

  Flynn said, “We’d be glad to have you, Fletch.”

  Fletch said, “I’d be glad to stay. May I come back sometime?”

  “What’s your instrument?” Winny asked.

  “The typewriter.”

  “Percussion,” said Flynn.

  “Well,” said Elizabeth, “Leroy Anderson wrote for the typewriter.”

  “You come back any time,” said Flynn. “Any time you’re free, that is.”

  In the cold vestibule, Flynn said, “I guess you didn’t have the conversation with me this afternoon you wanted to.”

  “No,” said Fletch. “This was much better.”

  “I thought you’d think so.”

  “May I see you in your office tomorrow?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s a good time?”

  “Five o’clock. Any policeman with good sense is in his office at that time. The traffic is terrible.”

  “Okay. Where are you?”

  “Ninety-nine Craigie Lane. If you get lost, ask the plainclothesmen following you.”

  They said good-night.

  Outside, the air was damp and cold.

  Fletch stood on the top step off the porch for a moment, adjusting his eyes to the dark, feeling the house’s warmth at his back, hearing a bit of early Beethoven scraping in his memory’s ears, thinking of the two blue doll’s eyes under a doll’s mop of tossed, curly blonde hair.

  Across the street, under a street-light, he clearly saw the faces of the two plainclothesmen waiting for him. It seemed to him their eyes were filled with hatred.

  One of them picked up the car phone as Fletch started down the steps. Flynn would be telling them Fletcher was going to the airport, and they shouldn’t panic … but to make sure he didn’t get on a plane.

  “Jesus Christ,” Fletch said
.

  The scrape of his chin on his shirt collar made him realize he should have shaved.

  XXX

  “F L E T C H !”

  He had never seen Andy in an overcoat before.

  After they had embraced and he had taken her hand luggage, her first question was quick and to the point.

  “Is Sylvia here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bitch. What is she doing?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen much of her. I mean, I haven’t seen her often.”

  “Where is she staying?”

  “At my apartment.”

  “Where am I staying?”

  “At my apartment.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “How are you?”

  Andy’s big suitcase was in the way of people coming through the customs’ gate. The few porters were being grabbed by artful older people.

  “Any luck with the paintings?” she asked.

  “Can we wait until we get in the car? How are you?”

  He handed her back her purse and vanity case.

  “Why did you want to know about Bart Connors?”

  “How are you?”

  He carried the huge suitcase through the airport, across a street, up a flight of stairs, across a bridge and halfway through the garage, to where his car was parked.

  The plainsclothesmen, hands in their pockets, followed at twenty paces.

  She began her questions again as he drove down the dark ramp of the airport garage.

  “Where are the paintings? Do you know?”

  “Not really. It’s possible they’re in Texas.”

  “Texas?”

  “You and I may fly down later this week.”

  “How can they be in Texas?”

  “Horan seems to have gotten all three de Grassi paintings from a man in Dallas named James Cooney. He’s a rancher, with eight kids.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “How do I know? I’ve handled Horan very carefully. His reputation is impeccable. Pompous bastard, but everything he’s said so far has been straight. I’m putting a lot of pressure on him to try to crack Cooney’s source.”

  “You mean, find out where Cooney got the paintings?”

  “Yes. If putting pressure on Horan doesn’t work, then we go to Texas and put pressure on Cooney ourselves.”

  “What did you do? You asked Horan to locate one of the paintings?”

  “Yes. The bigger Picasso.”

  “Where is that painting now?”

  “In Boston. Horan has it. I asked him for it Wednesday. He located it Thursday night or Friday morning and had it flown up Friday night. I saw it Saturday. He doubted the whole thing when I first spoke to him about it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, he doubted whether the painting existed; whether it could be located; if it was authentic; if it was for sale.”

  “Is the painting authentic?”

  “Yes. I’m certain as I can be. So’s Horan. And, apparently, Cooney is willing to sell it.”

  After paying a toll, they went down a ramp into a tunnel.

  Fletch spoke loudly at Andy’s puzzled expression.

  “So far, Horan has acted in a thoroughly professional, efficient, routine manner. I don’t like him, but that’s immaterial.”

  Driving up out of the tunnel, they faced strata of crossroads, and a vast confusion of signs and arrows.

  “Oops,” he said. “I don’t know which way to go.”

  “To the right,” Andy said. “Go on Storrow Drive.”

  “How do you know?”

  He turned right from the left lane.

  “We’re going to Beacon Street, aren’t we? Near the Gardens?”

  “Yeah, but how do you know?”

  They went up a ramp on to a highway.

  “I lived here nearly a year,” she said. “The year I was at Radcliffe.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Cambridge. Go down there, to the right, to Storrow Drive. You knew that.”

  Her directions were perfect.

  “Why did you want to know about Bart Connors?” she asked.

  “Because the night I arrived, a girl was found murdered in his apartment.”

  Her profile was backed by lights reflected on the Charles River.

  “He didn’t do it,” she said.

  “You seem pretty certain.”

  “Yes. I am.”

  “That’s why I yelled at you that night on the phone to get out of the villa. When I asked you to go see him, I did not expect you to take up residence with him.”

  “You’ll want to go left here.” At the red light, she craned her head left. “We’ll have to go all the way around the Gardens, won’t we? Dear old Boston. Or is your apartment down to the right?”

  Fletch said, “The police think I did it.”

  “Murdered the girl? You didn’t do it, either. If you did, you wouldn’t be trying to blame Bart.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Bart’s a very gentle man. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “Boy, when I ask you to do a job for me…. Did you check his teeth, too?”

  “His teeth,” she said, “are perfectly adequate.”

  “My God.”

  “So who killed her?”

  “Damn it, Andy, there’s a very good chance Bart Connors did!”

  “No chance whatsoever.”

  “He was in Boston that night when he wasn’t supposed to be! He was seen two blocks away from the apartment in a pub with a girl tentatively identified as the murdered girl just before she was murdered! He had a key to his own apartment! He left on an airplane for Montreal just after the murder! And within the last six months he has received a sexual-psychological trauma, delivered by a woman, which he considered, wrongly, a blow to his masculinity!”

  “I know,” Andy said. “He told me all about that.”

  “Great.”

  “And he told me the night you called you were trying to lay the crime off” on him. He asked more questions about you than you’ve asked about him.”

  “Andy….”

  “Watch out for that taxi. Furthermore, Fletch,” she continued, “I can testify that the ‘sexual-psychological trauma delivered by a woman’, as you phrase it, has done him no harm whatsoever.”

  “I bet you can.”

  “You and I have our understandings,” she said. “Stop being stuffy.”

  “Stuffy? You’re wearing my engagement ring.”

  “I know. And it’s a very nice ring. Whom did you make it with this week?”

  “Whom? What?”

  “I didn’t hear your answer. You’re not acting like Fletch.”

  “We need a place to park.”

  “Over there. To the left.”

  “I need two places to park.”

  Headlights grew large in his rearview mirror.

  “Absolutely,” she said, “I will not help you blame Bart Connors for a crime neither of you committed.”

  He said, “Such loyalty.”

  Going up in the creaky elevator, she said, “Try Horan again.”

  XXXI

  O N T H E sixth-floor landing, Fletch put the huge suitcase down to take his keys out again, to unlock the door.

  Sylvia, arms wide, in an apron, opened the door.

  Andy and Sylvia clutched and jabbered simultaneously in Italian.

  He had to insinuate himself, with the luggage, through the crowded front door.

  They sounded like a girls’ school reunion.

  He understood Sylvia had prepared a magnificent supper for them. A dinner.

  He left the luggage in the hall and walked empty-handed down the corridor to the telephone in the master bedroom.

  Even through the closed door he could hear their delighted shrieks and exclamations while he dialled.

  “Mister Horan? This is Peter Fletcher.”

  “Ah, yes, Mister Fletcher.”

  “Sorry to phone on a Sunday night….”<
br />
  “Quite all right. I’m used to calls from anywhere, at any time. Have you decided to change your offer for the Picasso?”

  “Have you spoken with Mister Cooney?”

  “Yes, I did. He said he won’t respond to your offer at all.”

  “He wouldn’t consider it?”

  “No.”

  “Was he any more open regarding the painting’s provenance?”

  “No. I said you rightfully had questions. I outlined to him quite carefully what you had said regarding your responsibility to question the provenance. I went as far as I could, short of physically shaking him, which would be difficult over the phone, anyway.”

  “And you got nowhere?”

  “He didn’t even deign to offer the usual evasions. He said the authenticity of the painting can’t really be questioned….”

  “Of course it can be.”

  “Not really. I have thoroughly satisfied myself. No, he’s prepared to stand on the painting’s authenticity.”

  “I see.”

  “And, by the way, Mister Fletcher, our Texas cowboy friend rather surprised me by repeating something you said.”

  “Oh?”

  “He referred to ‘Vino, Viola, Mademoiselle’ as a ‘most significant Picasso’. He referred to it as the ‘key work of the cubist period’.”

  “Oh.”

  “So our cowboy with eight kiddies has no sheep wool over his eyes, if I may coin a phrase.”

  “If you insist. Mister Horan? Offer Mister Cooney five hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars for the painting.”

  “Ah! Mister Fletcher. Now you’re in the arena. I most certainly will.”

  “And you may remember originally I said I might ask you to help me on another problem or two?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder if you would ask Mister Cooney if he has another particular painting in his possession?”

  “You mean, another specific painting? I don’t understand.”

  “Yes, another specific painting. An Umberto Boccioni entitled ‘Red Space’.”

  “‘Red Space’? Again you’ve got me stumped. Mister Fletcher, you go from a key cubist work by Picasso to the work of an only relatively important Italian Futurist.”

  “I know.”

  “Fire and water.”

  “Or water and fire, depending upon your point of view.”

  “Well, again, professionally, I have to advise you that I don’t know if such a painting exists….”