Fletch's Fortune Read online

“Well, I do.”

  Fletch unclasped his seat belt.

  He said again, “I do.”

  Four

  Mrs. Jake Williams—Helena, she insisted people call her—the hostess at the American Journalism Alliance Convention—had a way of greeting people as if they were delighted to see her.

  “Fletcher, darling! Aren’t you beautiful!”

  She extended both hands beyond her bosom.

  “Hi, Helena, how are you doing?”

  He leaned over her and kissed her.

  They were standing near the reception desk in the hotel lobby.

  An airport limousine had been waiting for them when their airplane had touched down.

  Ignoring his luggage, Fletch had gone directly to the limousine and sat in it.

  In a few moments, a quiet Fredericka Arbuthnot opened the car door and slid in next to him.

  After the luggage had been stowed on top of the car and most of the other passengers from the airplane had taken seats, they left the airport, went through a small village blighted by a shopping center and straight out a rolling road to the plantation.

  Almost immediately outside the village were the plantation’s white rail fences, on both sides of the road.

  Fletch lowered his head to look through the windshield as the car turned into the plantation driveway.

  On both sides of the driveway was a golf course. A brightly dressed foursome was on a green down to the left. The car came to a full stop to let a pale blue golf cart cross the gravel driveway.

  The plantation house was a mammoth red-brick structure behind a white, wooden colonnade, with matching red-brick additions at both sides and, Fletch supposed, to the rear. They were motel-type units, but well-designed, perfectly in keeping with the main house, the rolling green, the distant white fences.

  On the last curve before the house, Fletch glimpsed through the side window a corner of a sparkling blue swimming pool.

  No one had said a word during the ride.

  The driver’s polite question, aimed at the passengers in general, “Did you all have a nice flight?” when he first got into the car received no answer whatsoever.

  It was if they were going to a funeral, rather than a convention.

  Well, they were going to a funeral.

  Walter March was dead.

  He had been murdered that morning at Hendricks Plantation.

  Walter March had been in his seventies. Forever, it seemed, he had been publisher of a large string of powerful newspapers.

  Probably everyone in the car, at one point or another in their careers, had had dealings with Walter March.

  Probably almost everyone at the convention had.

  These were journalists—some of the best in the business.

  Smiling to himself, Fletch realized that if any one of them—including himself—had been alone in the car with the driver, the driver would have been pumped for every bit of information, speculation, and rumor regarding the murder at his imagination’s command.

  Together, they asked no questions.

  Unless in an open press conference, where there was no choice, no journalist wants to ask a question whose answer might benefit any other journalist.

  Fletch waited until his luggage was handed to him from the top of the car, and then went directly into the lobby.

  While Helena Williams was greeting Fletch, Fredericka Arbuthnot, with her luggage, came and stood beside him.

  She was continuing to look at him quizzically.

  “Hello, Mrs. Fletcher,” Helena said, shaking Freddie’s hand.

  “This isn’t Mrs. Fletcher,” Fletch said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Helena said. “We’re all so used to greeting anyone with Fletch as Mrs. Fletcher.”

  “This is Freddie Arbuthnot.”

  “Freddie? So many of your girls have had boys’ names,” Helena said. “That girl we met with you in Italy, Andy something or other.…”

  “Barbara and Linda,” Fletch said. “Joan.…”

  “There must be something odd about you I’ve never detected,” she said.

  “There is,” said Freddie Arbuthnot.

  “Furthermore, Helena,” Fletch said. “Ms. Arbuthnot and I just met on the plane.”

  “That’s never been a major consideration before,” Helena sniffed. “I remember that time we were all having dinner together in New York, and I noticed you were looking at a girl at the next table, and she was looking at you, and next thing we knew, you were both gone! You hadn’t even excused yourself. Not a word! I remember you missed the tarte aux cerises, flambée.”

  “I did not.”

  “Well, anyway,” Helena said to Freddie, “just like everything else Fletch does, he is the most spectacular dues-payer. He’s coughed up every dime he’s owed the American Journalism Alliance lo these many years.…”

  “She knows,” Fletch said.

  “We were all staggered, Fletch darling.”

  “I was a little surprised myself,” Fletch said. “Don’t let word get around, okay, Helena? Might ruin my reputation.”

  “Fletch darling,” Helena said, with mock sincerity, hand on his forearm, “nothing could do that.”

  Fletch said, “I’m sorry about Walter March, Helena.”

  Helena Williams pushed the mental button for A Distraught Expression.

  “The crime of the century,” she said. She had been married to Jake Williams, managing editor of a New York daily, for more years than anyone who knew Jake could believe. “The crime of the century, Fletch.”

  “Hell of a story,” Freddie muttered.

  “We had a vote this morning, those of us who were here, to decide if we would continue the convention. We decided to open it on time. Well, with all these people coming, what could we do? Everything’s arranged. Anyway, the police asked everybody who was here to stay. Having the convention running will help take everybody’s mind off this terrible tragedy. Walter March!” She threw her hands in the air. “Who’d believe it?”

  “Is Lydia here, Helena?” Fletch asked.

  “She found the body! She was in the bath, and she heard gurgling! She thought Walter had left the suite. At first, she said, she thought it was the tub drain. But the gurgling kept up, from the bedroom. She got out of the tub and threw a towel around herself. There was Walter, half-kneeling, fallen on one of the beds, arms thrown out, a scissors sticking up from his back! While she watched, he rolled sideways off the bed, and landed on his back! The scissors must have been driven further in. She said he arched up, and then relaxed. All life had gone out of him.”

  Helena’s expression of shock and grief was no longer the result of mental button-pushing. She was a lady genuinely struggling to comprehend what had happened, and why, and to control herself until she could.

  “Poor Lydia!” she said. “She had no idea what to do. She came running down the corridor in her towel and banged on my door. I was just up. This was just before eight o’clock this morning, mind you. There was Lydia at my door, in a towel, at the age of seventy, her mouth open, and her eyes closing! I sat her down on my unmade bed, and she fell over! She fainted! I went running to their suite to get Walter. I was in my dressing gown. There was Walter on the floor, spread-eagled, eyes staring straight up. Naturally, I’d thought he’d had a heart attack or something. I didn’t see any blood. Well, I thought I was going to faint. I heard someone shrieking. They tell me it was I who was shrieking.” Helena looked away. Her fingers touched her throat. “I’m not so sure.”

  Fletch said, “Is there anything I can get you, Helena? Anything I can do for you?”

  “No,” she said. “I had brandy before breakfast. Quite a sizable dose. And then no breakfast. And then the house doctor here, what’s-his-name, gave me one of those funny pills. My head feels like there’s a yellow balloon in it. I’ve had tea and toast.”

  She smiled at them.

  “Enough of this,” she said. “It won’t bring Walter back. Now you must tell me all about yourself,
Fletch. Whom are you working for now?”

  “The C.I.A.”

  He looked openly at Freddie Arbuthnot.

  “I’m here to bug everybody.”

  “You’ve always had such a delightful sense of humor,” Helena said.

  “He’s bugging me,” Freddie muttered.

  “I’ve heard that joke,” Fletch snapped.

  “Would you children like to share a room?” Helena asked. “We are sort of crowded—”

  “Definitely not,” Fletch said “I suspect she snores.”

  “I do not.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve been told.”

  “Well, you’re just so beautiful together,” Helena said. “What is one supposed to think? Oh, there’s Hy Litwack. I didn’t see him come in. I must go say hello. Remind him he’s giving the after-dinner speech tonight.”

  Helena episcopally put her hands on Fletch’s and Freddie’s hands, as if she were confirming them, or ordaining them, or marrying them.

  “We must have life,” she said, “in the presence of death.”

  Helena Williams walked away to greet Hy Litwack.

  “And death,” Fletch said, softly, “in the presence of life.”

  Five

  In his room, Fletch, still wet from his shower, sat on the edge of his bed and opened the suitcase he had taken from Locker 719 at Washington’s National Airport.

  Through the wall he heard Fredericka Arbuthnot’s hair drier in the next room.

  A porter had led them through a door at the side of the lobby, down a few stairs, around a corner, and along the corridor of one of the plantation house’s wings. Fletch carried his own bags.

  The porter stopped at Room 77, put down Freddie’s luggage, and put the key in the lock.

  “Where’s my room?” Fletch asked.

  “Right next door, sir. Room 79.”

  “Oh, no.”

  Over the porter’s shoulder, Freddie grinned at him.

  “Give me my key,” Fletch said.

  The porter handed it to him.

  “You know,” Fletch said to Freddie, “for someone who’s a figment of my imagination, you cling real good.”

  She said, “Your luggage doesn’t match.”

  There were four doors to his room—one from the corridor, locked doors to the rooms each side of his, and one leading outdoors.

  Before he took his shower, he had opened the sliding glass doors. Before him was the swimming pool, sparsely populated by women and children. To the left was a bank of six tennis courts, only two of which were being used.

  Every square centimeter of the suitcase’s interior was being used.

  In the center was the tape recorder, with the usual buttons, cigarette-pack-size speakers each side. It was already loaded with fresh tape. In the pocket of the suitcase lid were thirty-five more reels of tape—altogether enough for a total of seventy-two hours of taping.

  Across the top of the suitcase, over the tape recorder, were two bands of stations, each having its own numbered button, each row having twelve stations. To the right was a fine tuner; to the left an ON-OFF-VOLUME dial.

  In a pocket to the left of the tape recorder was a clear plastic bag of nasty-looking little bugs. Fletch shook them onto his bedspread. There were twenty-four of them, each numbered on its base.

  Fletch tested one against his bedside lamp and proved to himself the bug’s base was magnetic.

  Below the tape recorder was a deep slot, about a centimeter wide, running almost the length of the suitcase. Toward each end were finger holes. Fletch inserted his index fingers, crooked them as much as space allowed, and pulled up—perfectly ordinary rabbit ears, telescopic antennae.

  And in a pocket to the right of the tape recorder were a wire and a plug and an extension cord.

  Nowhere—not on the tape recorder, nor the tape reels, not even on the suitcase—was a manufacturer’s name.

  Fletch extended the antennae, plugged the machine into a wall socket, turned it on, chose bug Number 8, put it against the bedside lamp, pressed the button for station Number 8, pushed the RECORD button, and said the following:

  “Attention Eggers, Gordon and Fabens, Richard!” The red volume-level needle was jumping at the sound of his voice. The machine was working. Fletch turned the volume dial a little counterclockwise. “This is your friend, Irwin Maurice Fletcher, talking to you from the beautiful Hendricks Plantation, in Hendricks, Virginia, U.S. of A. It’s not my practice, of course, to accept press junkets; but, seeing your insistence I take this particular trip was totally irresistible, I want to tell you how grateful I am to you for not sending me anyplace slummy.”

  Fletch released the RECORD button, pushed the REWIND and PLAY buttons.

  His own voice was so loud it made him jump to turn the VOLUME dial for counterclockwise, A very sensitive instrument.

  He listened through what he had said so far.

  Chuckling to himself, Fletch turned the machine off and padded in his towel to the bathroom for a glass of water before sitting on the edge of his bed and pushing the RECORD button again.

  “Obviously,” he said to the room at large, “I could fill up seventy-two hours of tape with jokes, stories, songs, and tap dancing but, if I understand correctly, that is not why I am here.

  “In the event of my death, or whatever, I want anyone who discovers this formidable machine in my room to understand what it is doing here, and what I am doing here.

  “I am being blackmailed by the Central Intelligence Agency—under threat of spending twenty years or more in prison, for failing to file federal income tax returns, illegally exporting money from the United States, plus, not being able to account for the source of the money in the first place—to bug and record the private conversations of my colleagues at the American Journalism Alliance Convention at Hendricks Plantation.

  “Who’d ever think having a fortune could be so much trouble?

  “My three reasons for going along with this quote assignment unquote are obvious to any journalist.

  “To Eggers, Gordon, Fabens, Richard, Gibbs, Don, Englehardt, Robert, and all you other backwards people whose asses are where your mouths are supposed to be, so far I have the following to tell you.

  “First, I suspect you all suck goats’ cocks and lay hens.

  “Second, the person you are most interested in having me bug, old Walter March, is dead. So there.

  “Which, of course, causes me to wonder if the reason for your interest in him and the reason for his murder have anything in common.

  “Third, Fredericka Arbuthnot has done a terrific job of clinging to me so far. She is magnificently seductive. However, you guys have to be some kind of special stupid. What you’ve done is like sending a man into battle with an arrow through his head.

  “More jokes and stories later. I’ll try to learn all the verses of ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ to sing to you at bedtime.”

  Fletch turned the machine off and sat another moment, hands in lap, looking at it.

  Then he put the suitcase on the floor, leaving it open, and slid it under the bed with his toe. Kneeling, he forced the antennae under the box spring.

  He lay on his stomach on the floor, unplugged the machine, and shoved all the wire under the bed, so none of it would be visible from anywhere in the room, and replugged it, running the wire between the bed’s headboard and the wall.

  Wriggling out from under the bed, his left biceps landed on paper—an envelope.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he picked up the envelope. He was sure it had not been there before. It must have fallen out of the suitcase. It had not been sealed.

  Dear Mister Fletcher:

  Our representatives in Italy, in explaining your assignment to you, mentioned only the name of Mister Walter March.

  As you have now seen, the equipment we provided you has twenty-four listening devices and stations. We would like to have our public relations effort directed specifically at those o
n the following list. You may disperse the remainder of the listening devices in the quarters of those younger journalists you feel are most apt to rise to positions of power and influence, in time. We will not consider this assignment completed unless all the devices have been used profitably.…

  Next to each name on the list was the journalist’s network, wire service, newspaper, or magazine affiliation.

  They were all so well known there was absolutely no need to list their affiliations.

  On the list were Mr. and Mrs. Walter March, Walter March, Junior, Leona Hatch, Robert McConnell, Rolly Wisham, Lewis Graham, Hy Litwack, Sheldon Levi, Mr. and Mrs. Jake Williams, Nettie Horn, Frank Gillis, Tom Lockhart, Richard Baldrige, Stuart Poynton, Eleanor Earles, and Oscar Perlman.

  “Sonsabitches,” Fletch said. “Sonsabitches.”

  There was no signature, of course—just the words, in tiny print at the very bottom of the letter, “WE USE RECYCLED PAPER.”

  Six

  Fletch picked up the ringing telephone and said, “Thank you for calling.”

  “Is this Ronald Albemarle Blodgett Islington Dim-witty Fletcher?” a woman’s voice asked.

  “Why, no,” Fletch answered. “It isn’t.”

  Who would be calling him rabid?

  He remembered vaguely an old joke someone had once told about Fletch biting a dog on a slow news night.

  Who else?

  “Crystal!” he said. “My pal, my ass! How the hell are you?”

  Giggling. Per usual. In her throat. Per usual. Sardonically silly old Crystal.

  “Are you here?” he asked. “Has the Crystal Palace shivered and shimmied into my very own purview?”

  She began to sing the words, “All of me.…” He joined in halfway through the first bar.

  “Still heavily concerned with your tonnage, eh, old girl? Still down in the chins?”

  Crystal Faoni was not pellucid. She, too, had been cursed by her parents when it had come time to delete “Baby Girl Faoni” from the birth register and substitute something more specific.

  Crystal was dark, with black hair which could have been straight, or could have been curly, but wasn’t either; blessedly, basically heavy, with monumental bones, each demanding its kilogram of flesh; the appetite of a bear just after the first snowfall.