Fletch’s Fortune f-3 Read online

  “The only thing I learned in college,” Fletch said into the phone, “is that all our less successful classmates went to work for the government.”

  “Who placed this call?” Gibbs’ throat muscles had tightened. “Tell me that, Fletcher. Did you call me, or did I call you? Are you asking me to help you, or am I asking you to help me?”

  “Gee whiz, Don. You forgot to take your Insensitive Pill this morning.”

  “I’m sick to death of you guys knocking us in the press whenever you feel like it, but whenever you have a problem that hurts even a little bit you’re crying over the phone at us.”

  “Bullshit, Don. I’ve never knocked you in the press. You’ve never been important enough to knock.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  They might as well have been seventeen-year-old freshmen arguing at eleven o’clock at night over who got to take a shower first. Fletch always hated to wait twenty minutes while Gibbs went through his shower routine; Gibbs hated the mirrors steamed by the time he got to take his shower.

  Fletch said, “Yeah, Furthermore, I’m not asking you a favor. I’m asking you a question.”

  “What’s the question, Irwin Maurice? Do you have the legal right to bug the entire American press establishment? No! Absolutely not.” His voice lowered. “But then again, Irwin Maurice Fletcher, I suspect you always have bugged the entire American press establishment.”

  “Funny, funny.” He had to grant that; he had to give him something. “Since when are you a lawyer? I’m not asking for legal advice. I know it’s not nice to bug my friends with the intention of blackmail—even if I’m not the guy who’s going to be putting the screws to ’em—you shits are. My question is: Do I have to do this?”

  There was a long silence from the other end of the phone.

  Fletch said, “Hello? Don?”

  The line clicked.

  “Fletch?”

  “Hello.”

  “I’m trying to answer your question. Would you mind going over all the facts again?”

  Don Gibbs’ voice had moderated. It had become more mature, reasonable, responsible. It also had lowered half an octave.

  “I gave you all the facts when I called you from London, Don.”

  “Just to make sure I’ve got everything straight.”

  “You’re just trying to take advantage of a local phone call from an old friend to make you look busy at your desk,” Fletch said. “Bastard.”

  Fletch knew it wasn’t a local phone call.

  The number he had dialed supposedly was a Pentagon number. But he knew he was talking to Don Gibbs in that curious underground headquarters of American intelligence in the mountains of North Carolina.

  “I have a plane to catch.”

  “Just run it by me again, Fletch.”

  “Okay. Two of your goons broke into my house in Cagna, Italy, yesterday morning, Sunday—”

  “Names?”

  “Gordon Eggers and Richard Fabens.”

  “Eggers, Gordon and Fabens, Richard. Right?”

  “You government jerks do everything backwards.”

  “Did you get their identification numbers off their credentials?”

  “No. But they had numbers. Lots of numbers.”

  “Doesn’t matter. When you say they broke into your house, what precisely do you mean?”

  “I think they entered through the French windows, doors, whatever you call them. The house was open.”

  “Did they actually break anything?”

  “Amazingly enough—no.”

  “So they entered your house.”

  “They entered it uninvited. Unexpected. Unwanted. They trespassed.”

  “What are you doing with a house in Italy?”

  “I live there.”

  “Yeah, but why? I mean, are you working for a wire service or something?”

  “No. I’m doing some writing on art. I had a piece in Bronson’s last month. I’m trying to do a biography of Edgar Arthur Tharp, Junior.…”

  “The cowboys-and-Indian artist?”

  “Gee. You know something.”

  “Wasn’t he a friend of Winslow Homer?”

  “No.”

  “Have you given up investigative reporting altogether?”

  Fletch dropped a pause into the conversation. “I’m on a sabbatical.”

  “Fired again, uh? I’m glad I’m not one of the more obvious successes in my class.”

  “There’s no job security,” Fletch said, “without complete obscurity.”

  “So what did these two gentlemen want?”

  “They weren’t gentlemen.”

  “Sorry to hear that. We usually send only our finest abroad. I haven’t made it yet.”

  “Not surprised.”

  “What did they want?”

  Across the terminal the band was playing “The eyes of Texas are upon you.…”

  “They told me to come to the A.J.A. convention, here in Hendricks, Virginia, and bug my ever-loving colleagues—get tape recordings of their bedroom conversations—and turn the tapes over to them, for blackmail purposes. They said there would be a suitcase full of bugging equipment here in a locker in Washington, and it is here.” Through the door of the phone booth Fletch noticed how badly the suitcase he had just taken from Locker 719 matched the rest of his luggage. “Are you telling me you don’t know all this already, Don?”

  Don Gibbs said, “It’s not often we get another perspective on one of our operations.”

  “When I called you from London last night, I asked you to look into all this.”

  “I have,” Don said. “I’ve checked pretty thoroughly.”

  “So why am I standing in a phone booth, late for a plane I don’t want to take anyway, going over it all with you again?”

  “Tell me again why you agreed to do it. I just want to see if it checks out with what I know.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Don! I’m being blackmailed.”

  “I know that, but tell me again how.”

  “Well.…”

  “It won’t hurt to tell me, Fletcher. Don’t I already know?”

  “Nice guy.” The floor of the phone booth was filthy. “Taxes.”

  “You’ve never paid any?”

  “Just whatever was withheld from my salary.” He was pressing the phone against his ear. “Even for those years I never filed a return.”

  “Uh-uh. And what about the last year or two?”

  “I’ve never filed a return.”

  “It says here you have money you can’t account for. Is that right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why are you calling me?”

  “You’re my friend in the American Intelligence community.”

  “We’re not friends.”

  “Acquaintance. I’m trying to report to someone in the home office—someone responsible—that your guys down the line are blackmailing me to bug the private lives of some of the most important members of the American press—newspapers, radio, and television.”

  “Don’t you think our right hand knows what our left hand is doing?”

  “No, I don’t. And if you do, you should be ashamed of yourselves.”

  “I’m not ashamed of myself. Nobody’s blackmailing me.”

  “Come on, Don! Jesus Christ!”

  “How do you think we gather intelligence, Fletcher? By reading your lousy newspapers? From network news?”

  “Don, this isn’t legitimate, and you know it.”

  “I know lots of things.” Gibbs’ voice had risen again, slightly. “You said when you called from London that the guys who talked to you were particularly interested in getting information on old Mister March.”

  “Yes. That’s right. Walter March. I used to work for him.”

  “What does that mean to you?”

  “That they single out March?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s an incredibly powerful man. March Newspa
pers.” Fletch’s right ear was becoming hot and sore. “Listen, Don, I’ve only got a few minutes to make that plane, if I’m going to make it. Are you telling me…?”

  “No, Mister Fletcher. I’m telling you.”

  It was a much older, deeper voice.

  “Who is this?” Fletch asked.

  “Robert Englehardt,” the voice said. “Don’s department head. I’ve been listening in.”

  “Man!” Alone in the phone booth, Fletch grinned. “You guys can’t do anything straight.”

  “I guess you’re calling Don to ask if this assignment is something you have to take on.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “What do you think the answer is?”

  “It sounds to me like the answer is yes.”

  “You have the right impression.”

  There was another click on the line.

  Fletch asked, “Don, are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know you guys are so wrapped up in your own mysteriousness you can’t answer a simple question yes or no, but why the extra degree of mysteriousness about this?”

  “What mysteriousness?”

  “Come on, Don.”

  “We’ve just been trying to make absolutely sure that the A.J.A. convention is still on.”

  “Still on? Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “You journalists are always the last with the news, aren’t you?”

  “What news?”

  “Walter March was murdered this morning. At the convention. So long, Fletcher.”

  Three

  “Hello, hello,” Fletch said, as he buckled himself into the seat next to the girl with the honey-colored hair and the brown eyes, “I get along well with everybody.”

  “You don’t even get along with plane schedules,” she answered. “They’ve been holding the plane for you for ten minutes.”

  It was a twelve-seater.

  “I was on the phone,” Fletch said. “Talking to an old uncle. He doesn’t talk as fast as he used to.”

  The pilot slammed the passenger door and pulled the handle up.

  “I forgive you,” the girl said. “Why are you so tan?”

  “I just arrived from Italy. This morning.”

  “That would have been excuse enough.”

  The pilot had started the engines and turned the plane away from the terminal.

  “Ask me if I had a nice flight.”

  They had to shout. The plane had three propellers, one of them right over their heads.

  “Did you have a nice flight?”

  “No.” Taxiing to the runway, the small plane was very bouncy. “Ask me why I didn’t have a nice flight.”

  “Why didn’t you have a nice flight?”

  “I sat next to a Methodist minister.”

  She said, “So what?”

  “The closer to heaven we got, the smugger he got.”

  She shook her head. “Jet lag affects different people in different ways.”

  Fletch said, “My uncle didn’t think it was funny either.”

  “Not only that,” the girl said, “but telling it to your uncle probably took up the whole ten minutes we waited.”

  “I’m a loyal nephew.”

  The plane stopped. Each of the three engines was gunned. With the left engine still running high, the brakes were released and the plane swung onto the runway. Gathering speed, it bounced and vibrated down the runway until the bounces got big enough, at which point the plane popped into the air.

  The plane rose and banked over Washington and the sound of the engines diminished somewhat.

  The girl was looking out her window.

  She said, “I love to look at Washington from the air. Such a pretty place.”

  “Want to buy it?”

  She gave him the sardonic grin he deserved. “You say you get along well with everybody?”

  “Everybody,” Fletch said. “Absolutely everybody. Methodist ministers, uncles, terrific looking girls sitting next to me on airplanes …”

  “Am I terrific looking?” she shouted.

  “Smashing.”

  “You mean smash-mirrors kind of smashing?”

  “I dunno. Maybe. How’s your husband?”

  “Don’t have one.”

  “Why not?”

  “Never found anybody good enough to marry me. How’s your wife?”

  “Which one?”

  “You have lots?”

  “Have had. Lots and lots. Gross lots. Practically anybody’s good enough to marry me.”

  “Guess that lets me out,” she said.

  “I ask people to marry me too quickly,” Fletch said. “At least that’s what the Methodist minister said.”

  “And they all say yes?”

  “Most have. It’s a thing with me. I love the old institutions. Like marriage.”

  “It’s a problem?”

  “Definitely. Will you help me with it?”

  “Of course.”

  “When I ask you to marry me, please say no.”

  “Okay.”

  Fletch looked at his wristwatch and counted off ten seconds under his breath.

  “Will you marry me?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘Sure.’”

  “Well, you’re not much of a help.”

  “Why should I help you? You get along well with everybody.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “I can see why not. Underneath that terrific exterior, you’re weird.”

  “It’s a defense mechanism. I’ve been working on it.”

  “Have you ever been in Hendricks, Virginia, before?” Fletch asked.

  “No.”

  “Are you going to the A.J.A. Convention?”

  “Yes.”

  Fletch thought most, if not all, the people on the plane were.

  Two seats in front of him was Hy Litwack, anchorman for United Broadcasting Company.

  Even the back of Hy Litwack’s head was recognizable as Hy Litwack.

  “Are you a journalist?” Fletch asked.

  “You think I’m a busboy?”

  “No.” Fletch considered his thumbs in his lap. “I hadn’t thought that. You’re a newsperson.”

  “With Newsworld magazine.”

  “Women’s stuff? Fashion? Food?”

  “Crime,” she said, looking straight ahead.

  “Women’s stuff.”

  Fletch was smiling behind his hand.

  “Newspersons’ stuff. I’ve just come back from covering the Pecuchet trial, in Arizona.”

  Fletch did not know of the case.

  “What was the verdict?” he asked.

  She said, “Good story.”

  “Yee.” He slapped himself on the cheek. “Yee.”

  She looked into his eyes. “I wouldn’t expect any other verdict.”

  “Do you know Walter March was murdered this morning?”

  “I heard about it from the taxi radio on the way to the airport. Do you have any of the details?”

  “Nary a one.”

  “Well.” She straightened her legs as much as they could be straightened in the cramped airplane. “I have two notebooks. And three pens.” Touching her fingers to her lips, she yawned. “And are you a journalist?” she asked. “Or a busboy?”

  “I’m not sure,” he answered. “I’m on a sabbatical.”

  “From what company?”

  “Practically all of them.”

  “You’re unemployed,” she said. “Therefore you’re working on a book.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “On the Vatican?”

  “Why the Vatican?”

  “You’re working on the book in Italy.”

  “I’m working on a book about Edgar Arthur Tharp, Junior.”

  “You’re working on a book about an American cowboy painter in Italy?”

  “It brings a certain perspective to the work. Detachment.”


  “And, I suspect, about thirty tons of obstacles.”

  “Do obstacles come by the ton?”

  “In your case, I think so. The rest of us measure them in kilograms.”

  She put her hand on his on the armrest, slipped one of her fingers under two of his, raised them and let them fall.

  “I think I detect,” she said, “what with all your ex-wives and ex-employers, that your life lacks a certain consistency—a certain glue.”

  “Rescue me,” Fletch said. “Save me from myself.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “I. M. Fletcher.”

  “Fletcher? Never heard of you. Why so pompous about it?”

  “Pompous?”

  “You announced your name, I am Fletcher. As if someone had said you weren’t. Why didn’t you just say, Fletcher?”

  She was still playing with his fingers.

  “My first initial is I. My second initial is M.”

  “Hummmm,” she said. “An affliction since birth. Does the I stand for Irving?”

  “Worse. Irwin.”

  “I like the name Irwin.”

  “No one likes the name Irwin.”

  “You’re just prejudiced,” she said.

  “I have every reason to be.”

  “You have nice hands.”

  “One on the end of each arm.”

  With her two hands she made a loose fist out of his left hand, brought it a few inches closer to her, and dropped it.

  She was still looking at his hand.

  “Would you run your hands over my naked body, time and again?”

  “Here? Now?”

  “Later,” she said. “Later.”

  “I thought you’d never ask. Shall I send them in to you by Room Service, or come myself?”

  “Just your hands,” she said. “I don’t know much about the rest of you—except that you get along well with everybody.”

  He took her hand in his, and she put her left hand on top of his.

  She had pulled her legs into her seat.

  “Ms., you have me at a disadvantage.”

  “I sincerely hope so.”

  “I don’t know your name.”

  “Arbuthnot,” she said.

  “Arbuthnot!” He extricated his hand. “Not Arbuthnot!”

  “Arbuthnot,” she said.

  “Arbuthnot?”

  “Arbuthnot. Fredericka Arbuthnot.”

  “Freddie Arbuthnot?”

  “You’ve heard of me? Behind that Italian tan, I detect a sudden whiteness of pallor.”

  “Heard of you? I made you up!”