Fletch and the Man Who f-6 Page 17

  “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.”

  “The governor gave an interview on all this to Lansing Sayer this morning,” Fletch said. “It was pretty good. It sounded to me like he’s actually coming up with a program.”

  The driver had slowed down so much that the buses were way ahead of them. Clearly the volunteers did not dare pass Doris Wheeler’s car.

  “The trouble with Caxton,” Doris Wheeler said, “is that he doesn’t always think. Even if he really were saying something here, he doesn’t always stop to think of the effect of his saying it. I spent a long time with Andrew Esty this morning.”

  “You did?”

  Sully vigorously nodded yes.

  “Told him all about my grandfather, who was a fundamentalist preacher in Nebraska….” Doris Wheeler then proceeded to tell Fletch all about her grandfather who was a fundamentalist preacher in Nebraska. It was his son, Doris’s father, who had discovered oil.

  Fletch put on his not-listening expression. He had learned that in junior high school, too.

  The NBC Television News station wagon pulled out of the caravan and began to pass Doris Wheeler’s car.

  “Speed up!” she shouted at the driver. “You’re losing them.”

  The driver began racing with the news wagon.

  “Ah, good,” said Fletch. “I always wanted to be in Ben Hur.”

  “Imbecile,” said Doris Wheeler.

  Close behind the NBC wagon was the CBS wagon. The ABC news wagon appeared on the right side of the car. Doris Wheeler’s car was getting pelted with slush from both sides.

  “You must be careful what you say around Caxton,” Doris Wheeler concluded. “It’s your job to protect him—from himself, when necessary. Not to walk him down the garden path.”

  Up ahead, the buses had disappeared altogether.

  “What do you ladies think of these murders?” Fletch asked.

  “You mean, the women?” Doris Wheeler asked.

  “You’re aware of them.”

  “Of course.”

  “Any theories?” asked Fletch.

  The turnoff to the shopping mall was at the top of a small rise. By then all the vehicles in the caravan were going so fast that slowing down properly and turning was problematical. There was some skidding. The volunteer’s green van missed the turn altogether and had to go miles west and then east and then west again to get back to the right turnoff.

  “No. No theories,” Doris Wheeler said. “Why should we have theories? It’s a police matter.”

  The campaign bus and the press bus were in the middle of the shopping plaza’s parking lot. A crowd of two or three thousand people was standing around in the cold slush, waiting for the candidate.

  “We don’t have any police traveling with us,” Fletch commented.

  “What this campaign doesn’t need,” Sully said, “is a police investigation.”

  “Don’t believe in law and order, huh?” Fletch asked.

  Sully’s look told him she thought him something not to be stepped in.

  The driver parked far away from the buses. He parked in the middle of the biggest puddle in the parking lot. Then he sat there. He did not get out to open doors.

  “This car is filthy,” Doris Wheeler told him as she opened her own door.

  “Don’t worry,” the driver muttered. “You’ll never see it again.”

  “I told you I�
��m going to report you,” Doris Wheeler said, lifting herself off the seat.

  “You may be Mrs. President of the United States!” the driver shouted at her through the open door. “But in Farmingdale, you’re just a big old bag!”

  Sully had followed Doris Wheeler out of the car. Fletch got out his own side.

  “I wouldn’t vote for your husband for dogcatcher!” the driver shouted. “He doesn’t know a bitch when he sees one!”

  The driver accelerated, splashing all of them.

  “My God.” Doris Wheeler looked at her splattered skirt. At the size of the puddle they were all standing in. At the back of the rapidly disappearing car. “That car was hired for all day. He can’t just leave me here.”

  Fletch watched the filthy rented car climb back onto the highway. “Actually, he can,” Fletch said. “He just did.”

  29

  “Good afternoon. I have just a brief announcement,” said the President of the United States.

  “I guess you do,” Phil Nolting said to the television set. “When did you ever give a Saturday afternoon press conference? Sports fans won’t love you.”

  Barry Hines said to Fletch, “You’re to call someone named Alston Chambers. He says you have his number. Also Rondoll James has called you twice. Here’s his number.”

  “You can forget James,” Walsh muttered.

  The campaign bus had pulled into a rest area and stopped. Even the bus driver was watching the President’s press conference.

  The press bus had stopped a mile down the road at a tavern to watch the press conference.

  “He wants to inspire a million Sunday sermons, I bet,” Paul Dobson said. “Up with God and country.”

  His head resting against a pillow, a cut on his cheek, The Man Who sat on the bench at the side of the bus, watching the television, saying nothing.

  The rally at the shopping plaza had not been a success.

  The governor climbed to the roof of a volunteer’s Ford, microphone in hand. Every time he said something the sound system screeched horribly. Again and again the governor tried to speak while Barry Hines and the bus driver scurried around trying to discover what was causing the screeching. Then he tried speaking without the microphone. The wind, the sound of traffic in the parking lot, the noise of jet airplanes passing overhead made the governor look like a frantic, laryngytic opera singer.

  Doris Wheeler completely ignored the crowd. She went directly to the campaign bus, spluttering about her wet shoes and splattered skirt. Sully followed her as if she were on a short leash.

  Fletch said to Walsh, “Don’t ask me to drive in the car with your mother again. Please.”

  “Yeah,” Walsh said. “That Sully.” Through his open shirt collar his Adam’s apple rose and fell. “Tough broad.”

  “The driver went off and left them here. In the middle of a puddle.”

  Walsh looked around the parking lot. “That’s okay. A volunteer will drive her to the senior citizens’ home. That always looks better anyway. No problem.”

  The governor climbed down from the wet car roof. He handed the microphone to Lee Allen Parke, who handed it to a volunteer, who handed it back to Barry Hines.

  Then The Man Who walked into the crowd, both hands out to the people, allowing himself to be grabbed, pulled, pushed, jostled nearly off his feet. A little girl sitting on her father’s shoulders vomited on his head. Somehow an older woman, trying to kiss the governor, gashed his cheek with her fingernail. The Man Who kept reaching over people’s heads to shake hands with people behind them so the crowd kept pressing closer and closer to him. Shortly a fistfight broke out near the back of the crowd. From where Fletch was standing, he could see that three men had gotten a man in a black leather jacket down on the ground and were beating him pretty well. Two short, older men were trying to get them to stop. Walsh went into the crowd, turned his father around, and literally pushed him back onto the campaign bus.

  Doris Wheeler and Sully got into the backseat of the volunteer’s Ford and were driven away.

  The campaign bus left ahead of schedule.

  As the bus was leaving, the man in the black leather jacket was staggering through the thinning crowd, yelling at them incomprehensibly through broken teeth and blood.

  Aboard the bus, Flash cleaned the scratch on the governor’s face. He put antiseptic on it. The governor grinned at his staff. “Winning the hearts and minds of the people … There must be an easier job than this.”

  “Sorry,” Barry Hines said.

  Walsh said, “It’s this damned weather.”

  So the caravan went on until nearly two o’clock and then parked at the tavern and in the rest area to watch the President’s news conference.

  Aboard the campaign bus everyone was silent while the President read his statement: “The technology we have available today, especially the technology of communications, is not being used for the betterment of the people of the world. Clearly, the people of all nations would benefit from a fuller, more responsible use of this technology, to bring basic education to all people, to exchange scientific data, programs of cultural merit, health information, and the facts that can provide for a more equitable and waste-free worldwide allocation of food. Proper use of this technology should be encouraged by responsible governments. Therefore, today I am naming a special White House panel of distinguished citizens, and charging them with reporting to me how the technology of communications can be better used, worldwide, to encourage the peace and increase the prosperity of all nations.” The President blinked through the television lights at the White House press corps. “Now I’ll take questions.”

  “The son of a bitch stole your issue,” Walsh said quietly.

  The Man Who sat with his head back against the pillow. He continued to watch the press conference silently.

  Most of the questions were about Central America, the economy, the Middle East, the Russian economic situation, and whether the President would agree to debate any or all of the other people running for the presidency and, if so, when. “It’s much too early to discuss that.”

  At the end of the press conference, Barry Hines clicked off the television set.

  Loudly, more firmly, directly at his father, Walsh said again, “The son of a bitch stole your issue.”

  “That’s all right.” The governor looked around at his staff and chuckled. “At least the son of a bitch got me out of trouble with my wife.”

  30

  “How do, Mr. Persecutor.” Fletch had taken the moment to lie down on his bed at the Melville First Hotel and return Alston Chambers’s call. “Only got a minute. Got to meet Walsh and a couple of members of the press in a bar about a matter of death and death. And death.”

  “How’s it going, Fletch?”

  “Feel like I’m dancin’ to the ‘Three Page Sonata,’” answered Fletch. “Have to do more listenin’ than dancin’.”

  It was five o’clock. The rally at Melville’s public auditorium was to begin at eight o’clock.

  From three to four that afternoon, Fletch had sat through a call-in radio talk show with The Man Who in the town of McKensie. Many of the people who called in had intelligent, pertinent questions regarding Social Security, farm subsidies, federal highway funds. A significant percentage called The Man Who with personal problems. “My wife is working now, we need the extra income, you know, to eat? This means my kids come home from school to an empty house, we ask a neighbor to watch over them, but she has arthritis, she can’t move none too fast, we never know what they’re doin’, you know? Why can’t things be like they were? When I was a kid, my mother was home…” The high incidence of crime came up more than once, naturally, and the governor made the most of the opportunity, referring to the chambermaid found murdered in his hotel that morning. For an hour The Man Who made a sincere effort to answer all questions, public and private.

  And then the slow crawl by car over dark roads from McKensie to Melville. Flash drove. In the backseat, the governor read.
In the front seat, Fletch watched the fifty-five-mile-per-hour signs approach at thirty miles per hour.

  At the Melville First Hotel, messages were waiting for Fletch. Asking him to contact journalists traveling with the campaign (Lansing Sayer, Fenella Baker, Stella Kirchner). Asking him to contact other journalists calling in from around the country (plus one from Mexico City and one from the Times of London). There were three messages asking him to return the calls of Rondoll James in Iowa.

  He had returned Alston Chambers’s call.

  Alston said, “Thought I’d tell you I followed up on that question I asked you last night.”

  “What question?”

  “About Walsh’s sudden departure from the field. After our three days hanging in the trees.”

  “Sure. He was tired. He’d had enough of it. His poppa had the political pull to bring him home. I would have gotten out of there at that point, too, if I could have. Any of us would have.”

  “Yes, but not quite. Walsh sassed a superior officer.”

  Fletch blinked. “Who didn’t?”

  “I talked to Captain Walters. He runs a book distribution center in Denver now, by the way.”

  “Nice man. Used to get reading books for all of us. Never lost his cool.”

  “Yeah, well he says that at one point, Walsh did.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Laced into Major Leslie Hunt.”

  “First time I ever heard her name pronounced with an H.”

  “That she was. You remember her.”

  “Awful bitch. Resented soldiers being men.”

  “Remember the thing she was always going on about?”

  “Yeah. Mess tent had to be in the middle. Regulations. Forget the snipers. Mess tent in the middle to impress the enemy. As they shot at us. Impress them with our stupidity.”

  “Two guys from K Company got shot on their way to breakfast. One in the leg, not bad; one in the back, pretty bad.”

  “I don’t remember that.”