Fletch's Moxie Read online

  There was no breeze on the porch of the mini-mart. It was a gray, sultry day.

  “Yes, sir, Fletch,” Ted’s voice finally boomed into the phone. “You coming by?”

  “Just wanted to see if you’re using your house in Key West.”

  “For what?” Ted Sills said. “I’m here at the farm.”

  “Then may I use your house in Key West?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Want to get away for a few days.”

  “From what? You’re always away. Where are you now?”

  “Southwest Florida.”

  “You want to go to Key West?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There are some nice hotels there.”

  “Don’t want a hotel. Hate to be awakened in the morning by work-eager maids.”

  “So you don’t have to make the bed. Hotels make your breakfast for you, too.”

  “Need a little p. and q.”

  “That mean peace and quiet?”

  “It do.”

  “I need the nine thousand dollars you owe me in feed bills.”

  “That much?”

  “The horses you have training here at Five Aces do eat, you know. A race horse cannot train on an empty stomach, you know. A race horse, like the rest of us, is encouraged by gettin’ its vittles regular. You know?”

  “You’ll have it in the morning. Now, may I borrow your house?”

  “The house rents for twelve thousand a month.”

  “Twelve thousand what?”

  “Twelve thousand dollars.”

  “Twelve as in after-eleven-followed-by-thirteen?”

  “The very same twelve. You’re very good at figures, Fletch, except when it comes to writing them on checks for feed bills.”

  “You let me stay in The Blue House for free when you were trying to sell me some slow race horses.”

  “What do you mean, ‘slow race horses’? You had a winner last week.”

  “Really?”

  “Speedo Demon won the fourth at Hialeah. You should have been there.”

  “How much was the purse?”

  “Let me see. Uh … Your share was two hundred and seventy dollars.”

  “Some race.”

  “Well, it was a plug race. And the favorite was scratched.”

  “Good old Speedo.”

  “She was faster than five other horses.”

  “Did the fans stay for the whole race?”

  “Fletch, someone’s gotta own the losers.”

  “Why me?”

  “I expect they sense that you resent their feed bills. Horses aren’t dumb that way. Race horses are like a certain kind of woman, you know. You gotta spoil ’em with a smile on your face.”

  “Okay. Feed the horses. But, damn it, Ted, make sure their overshoes are buckled before you put ’em in a race, willya?”

  “We always buckle their overshoes.”

  “Now. About The Blue House.”

  “No.”

  “I only want it for a few days.”

  “Twelve thousand dollars. I wouldn’t rent it for just a few days. Wouldn’t be worth changing the bedsheets.”

  “You rent it very often at that price?”

  “Nope. Never before.”

  “Uh, Ted…”

  “I’ve never rented it before. I don’t want to rent it. I put a price on it just because you asked. As a friend.”

  “Okay. As a friend, I’ll take it.”

  “You will?”

  “I will.”

  “Boy, no other sucker was born the minute you were.”

  “Make sure the bedsheets are changed.”

  “That’s twenty one thousand dollars you owe me.”

  “So—some weeks are more expensive than others.”

  “Will I get the money?”

  “In the morning. In nickles and dimes.”

  “You don’t really care about money, do you? I mean, you have no sense of money, Fletch. I’ve noticed that about you.”

  “Money’s useful when you have to blow your nose.”

  “Maybe I’ll drop by, while you’re there. There are a couple of other race horses I’d like to talk to you about.”

  “Don’t expect to stay in your own house, Ted. You’ll find the room rent very expensive.”

  “Naw, I’d stay at a hotel. I’ll phone down to the Lopezes. They’ll open the house for you. You going down tonight?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll tell the Lopezes you tip well.”

  “Do. And tell good ol’ Speedo Demon happy munchin’ for me.”

  Fletch didn’t need his credit card for the third phone call he made. It was to the airport in Fort Myers.

  The man Fletch spoke to there repeated three times that Fletch was chartering a one-way flight from Fort Myers to Key West, with no stops. Which made it four times he said it altogether. There was something hard, almost threatening in the man’s voice when he said with no stops.

  “There will be no dope aboard the plane,” Fletch finally assured him. “Except me.”

  Fletch pushed open the door to the mini-mart.

  The woman behind the counter was Cuban. She looked at his smile and said with an impeccable accent, “How do you do? You need shoes to come in the store.”

  “Can you direct me to the police station?” Fletch asked.

  Immediately, her face expressed genuine concern. “Is there some problem?” She glanced through the window. “Trouble?”

  Fletch grinned more broadly.

  “Of course.”

  4

  The lobby of the police station looked like the departure point for a summer camp. The film and television crews sat around in various combinations of shorts, jeans, T-shirts, halters, sandals, boots, sneakers, sunglasses, western hats, warm-up jackets. Plastic and leather sacks bulging with their equipment hung from their shoulders and lay at their feet. Fletch had put moccasins on before entering the station.

  The local press, two wearing neckties, stood in a clump in the middle of the lobby. There were lightweight sound cameras among them.

  Fletch leaned against the frame of the front door.

  All these various people engaged in getting various kinds of reality onto various kinds of film eyed each other with friendly distance, like members of different denominations at a religious convention. They were all brothers in the faith but they worshipped at different altars.

  A few looked at Fletch curiously, but no group claimed him. He was not proselytized.

  Around the room were a few familiar faces he had never seen before in person. Edith Howell, who played older women, mothers, these days; John Hoyt, who played fathers, businessmen, lawyers, sheriffs; John Meade, who played the local yokel in any locale. The young male lead, Gerry Littleford, sat on a bench along the wall in white duck trousers and a skintight black T-shirt. Like a well-designed sports car, even at rest he looked like he was going three hundred kilometers an hour. His lean body seemed molded by the wind. His black skin shone with energy. His dark eyes reflected light as they flashed around the room, seeing everything, watching everybody at once, missing nothing. The girl in the halter who had been kind to Marge Peterman was next to him, leaning against a wall, chewing a thumbnail. Marge Peterman was not there. There was a short, thin, weather-beaten man Fletch had not seen before, even on film, wearing some sort of a campaign hat and longer shorts than others wore. Fletch noticed him now because he was the only other person in the room who did not seem a part of any group.

  The booking desk was to the left. Across the lobby from it, between two brown doors, was a secretary’s desk. One door was labeled CHIEF OF POLICE, the other, INVESTIGATIONS.

  The instant the door marked INVESTIGATIONS opened the two mini-cameras were hefted onto shoulders, unnaturally white lights went on, and the two men in neckties, holding up pen-sized microphones like priests about to give blessings, stepped forward. The other rep
orters followed them.

  Her head neither particularly up nor down, her eyes looking directly at no one, Moxie Mooney came through the door and started slowly across the lobby. She was a saddened, concerned person momentarily oblivious to others, despite the light, despite the noise.

  Using a Brazilian dance step which hadn’t been invented yet and elbows which had had much practice, Fletch shoved forward with the rest of the press. The reporters were murmuring polite questions, How do you feel? Will shooting continue on Midsummer Night’s Madness?

  Fletch’s voice was the loudest and sharpest of all: “Ms. Mooney—did you kill Steven Peterman?”

  All the reporters jerked their heads to look at him and some of them even gasped.

  Moxie Mooney’s deep brown eyes settled on him and narrowed.

  Fletch repeated: “Did you kill Steve Peterman?”

  With a hard stare, she said, “What’s your name, buster?”

  “Fletcher,” he said. Magnanimously, he added, “You can call me Fletch, though. When you call me.”

  Other reporters t’ched and shook their heads and otherwise expressed embarrassment at their crass colleague.

  After staring at him a moment, Moxie said, slowly, clearly into the cameras, “I did not kill Steve Peterman.”

  The other reporters resumed clucking sympathetic questions. How long have you known Steve Peterman? Were you close?

  Loudly, Fletch asked: “Ms Mooney—were you and Steve Peterman lovers?”

  When she looked at Fletch this time, there was revulsion in her face.

  “No,” she said. “Mister Peterman and I were not lovers.”

  “What were your relations with Peterman?” Fletch asked.

  Moxie hesitated, just slightly. “Strictly business. Steve was my manager,” she said. “He took care of my business affairs. He helped produce this film.” Her eyes closed fully and she took a deep breath. “And he was my friend.”

  Fletch thought he was doing a sufficiently surreptitious job of fading back through the crowd when he felt a hand on his arm.

  He turned.

  The short man was squinting at Fletch. He removed his hand.

  “Haven’t seen you before,” he said. “Who are you?

  “I.M. Fletcher. Global Cable News.”

  “City guy, huh? National news type.”

  “You got it in one.”

  Behind the short man, the question rang out: Do you think the murder of Peterman had anything to do with the earlier hit-and-run incident?

  Fletch couldn’t hear Moxie’s answer.

  “Listen to me, Mister,” the short reporter said. “We don’t treat people like that around here.”

  “Like what?”

  “That little lady—” The reporter jerked his tape recorder toward the sweat-stained shirt of another reporter. “—just lost her friend to death. Do you understand that? Asking her questions like you just did is just plain uncivil.”

  “Where you from?” Fletch asked. “The Girl Scout Monthly?”

  “St. Petersburg.”

  “Listen, man—”

  “Don’t you ‘listen, man’ me.” The short man pressed his index finger against Fletch’s chest. “You get away from Ms Mooney and you get away from this story, or you’ll find yourself stomped.”

  Fletch heard a reporter ask: Ms Mooney, do you believe there are people trying to stop this film from being made?

  Again, Fletch did not hear her answer.

  To the short reporter he said, “That would be uncivil of you.”

  “Don’t you scoff at us, Mister. You work South and you mind your manners—you hear?”

  “In this business,” Fletch said to the short reporter, “there is no such thing as a wrong question. There are only wrong answers.”

  As he was leaving the lobby, Fletch heard a reporter ask: Ms Mooney, have you yourself received any death threats?

  “Hey,” Moxie said.

  She got into the front seat of the white Lincoln Continental and closed the door.

  “Hey.” Fletch was waiting in the back seat. She had taken exactly as long with the press as he thought she would. Without air-conditioning running, the car was hot, even on a gray day.

  “Why are you sitting in the front seat?” Fletch asked.

  “I’m a democratic star.”

  A few people were milling around the car, looking in.

  “You believe in Equity?”

  “And Equity believes in me. I pay my dues.”

  She sat sideways on the front seat and put her tanned arm along the top of the backrest.

  “I may call you Fletch?”

  “When you call me.”

  “That’s a funny name. Think of all the things with which it rhymes.”

  “Yes,” he mused. “Canelloni, for one. Prognathous, lasket, checkerberry, scantling, Pyeshkov, modulas, Gog and Magog.”

  “You know any other big words?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Thanks for what you did for me in there.” Moxie smiled. “Pulling the teeth of the other reporters—and all those to come.”

  “Thought there was a need for one or two clear, simple statements on the incident from you.”

  “Didn’t I do well?”

  “You did. Of course.”

  “‘Steve Peterman was my friend’.” Moxie sort-of quoted, with a sort-of choke in her throat. “The bastard. I could have killed him.”

  “Someone agreed with you, apparently.” Outside the window nearest Fletch stood a heavy woman in a gaily printed dress. “Moxie, they have to have this murder solved in a matter of hours.”

  “Why?” Her face was as free of wrinkles as if she had never read a book. Moxie had read books. “Why do you say that?”

  “Steve wasn’t shot. Like from a distance. He was stabbed. In public.”

  “Steve was just dying to get on The Dan Buckley Show” she drawled.

  “There were cameras all over the place. There were cameras working the talk show. Local press were everywhere taking pictures of everything and everybody that had paint on it, whether it moved or not.”

  “Rather daring of whoever did it.”

  “And security was so tight on location they have the names and reason for being there of everyone within yodeling distance.”

  “Good,” Moxie said. “Let’s consider the damned thing solved.”

  “Are you sure this isn’t one of Peterman’s grand publicity schemes gone awry? Like the knife was just supposed to land on the stage, or something?”

  “You’re kidding. Steve wouldn’t risk getting a spot on his slacks if he saw an orphanage on fire.”

  “Hey,” Fletch said.

  “What?”

  “Stop acting tough.”

  She read his face. “What am I doing, protecting myself?”

  “I would say so,” he answered. “It’s not every day the guy sitting next to you gets stabbed. A person you know, someone important to you.”

  “I guess so.” She sighed. “I was having real problems with Steve, Fletch. Which is why I asked you to come down. I wanted to talk it out with somebody. I was finding it very difficult to be nice to him.”

  “Not being nice is not the same as being murderous.”

  “What?”

  “Forget it. You’re fighting shock, Moxie. Makin’ like a heartless vamp.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know it?”

  “I guess so. Sure.”

  “You and Steve were close at one time.”

  “Steve was just using me,” she said quietly. “Where’s Marge? Is she okay?”

  Fletch shrugged. “I expect she’s being taken care of.”

  “They questioned her first,” Moxie said. “In a car. At the beach.”

  “I see. Were Steve and Marge close?”

  “I wouldn’t say Steve was close to anybody but his banker.”

  “I was thinking of Marge,” Fletch said.

  “Good,” Moxie said. “Steve never thought
of her.”

  Her head was down and she was speaking softly. Beneath her tan, her skin had whitened. The enormity of what had happened was finally sinking into her. “Phew,” she said. “I guess I am confused. I’m so used to people dying on stage and on camera with me. You know? Of acting out my reaction.”

  “I know.”

  “Steve is really dead?” She had turned her face from him. “Steve is really dead.”

  He flicked his tongue against the side of her neck. “Hang in there, Moxie.” He opened the car door to get out. “I’ll pick you up for dinner. Eight o’clock okay?”

  “At La Playa,” she said.

  He had one foot on the pavement.

  She cork-screwed around on the front seat. “Fletch?”

  “Yeah?” He put his head back inside the car. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

  “Find Freddy for me, will you?”

  “Freddy? Is he here?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “He’s playing the attentive father these days to me, or retired on me, or something.”

  “Let me guess which.”

  “He shouldn’t be loose in public, with all this goin’ on. The murder.”

  “Is he boozin’?”

  “You need to ask?”

  There was sand on the rear rug of the Lincoln.

  Moxie said, “I suspect all those little squiggles in his brain have finally turned their toes up in the booze. Can’t blame ’em. They’ve been drownin’ in booze for years.”

  Over the car’s blue rug, perfect images flashed for Fletch: Frederick Mooney on stage as Willy Loman, Richard III, and Lear. On film as Falstaff, as Disraeli, as Captain Bligh, as a baggy-pants comic, as a decent Montana rancher turned decent politician, as Scanlon on Death Row, as…

  “He was the best,” Fletch said, “even when he was stinko.”

  “History,” Moxie said.

  “Where should I look?”

  “One of the joints on Bonita Beach. He drove up with us this morning. Freddy never wanders far, when there’s a handy bar.”

  Fletch chuckled. “The thought of Freddy makes poets of us all.”

  “See you at eight,” she said. “Thanks, Fletch.”