Fletch and the Man Who f-6 Page 5

  Along the side of the bus, three women sat at pull-out tables, typing.

  That morning’s newspapers littered the bus’s floor.

  Dr. Thom was not in the forward section of the bus.

  As Fletch moved down through the noise and confusion of the bus, Walsh shouted, “You all know Fletch!”

  None of them did. In response to the shout, they all looked at Fletch and returned to what they were doing. Now they knew him.

  “Hey, Walsh!” Barry Hines yelled from the telephone. “Vic Robbins! Upton’s advance man?”

  “What about him?” Walsh asked.

  “His car just went off a bridge in Pennsylvania. Into the Susquehanna River.”

  “Dead?”

  “Unless he was wearing a scuba tank.”

  “Confirm that, please,” Fletch said to Barry. “Pennsylvania State Police.”

  Barry Hines pushed a button on the telephone in his lap and dialed O.

  Walsh pointed to the last typist in the row. Instantly she pulled the paper she was working on out of her typewriter and inserted a fresh piece.

  Walsh dictated: “Upon hearing of the tragic death of Victor Rob-bins, Governor Caxton Wheeler said, ‘There was no one who had better technical understanding of American politics than Victor Rob-bins. The heartfelt sympathy of Mrs. Wheeler and myself go out to Vic’s family, and to his friends, who were legion. I and my staff will do anything to help Senator Upton and his staff in response to their great loss.’”

  “Yeah,” Barry Hines said, pushing another phone button. “He’s dead.”

  Walsh took the typed statement from the woman and handed it to Fletch. “Why am I doing your work for you?” He smiled. “Immediate release to the press, please.”

  Paul Dobson asked, “Should Caxton mention Robbins’s death in the Winslow speech, Walsh?”

  “Naw.” Hand rubbing the back of his neck, Walsh turned in a small circle in the middle of the bus. “Just wish Upton weren’t going to get all that free press in Pennsylvania, of all places. Why the hell couldn’t Robbins have driven himself off a bridge in a smaller state? South Dakota?”

  Phil Nolting said, “Some advance men will do anything to make a headline.”

  “Yeah,” said Dobson. “Let’s send a suggestion to Willy in California. California’s a big state, too. Must have some bridges.”

  “More active press, too,” Nolting said. “The weather’s nicer.”

  Fletch was standing at the copying machine, running off the Victor Robbins press release.

  The factory whistle blew. Through the steamy window, Fletch saw the governor turn and go through the factory gates by himself.

  “Where’s he going?”

  The press herd had turned their noses from the wind and were looking toward the campaign bus.

  “In to have coffee with the union leader,” Walsh answered, not even looking. “What’s his name—Wohlman. He’ll also have coffee with management.”

  “Coffee, coffee,” said a huge-chested man in a black suit who had stepped through the stateroom door at the back of the bus. “Coffee is bad for him.”

  “You know Flash Grasselli?” Walsh asked. “This is Fletcher, Flash.” Fletch got his hand crushed in the big man’s fist. “Flash is Dad’s driver, etc.”

  “And friend,” Flash said.

  “Couldn’t do without Flash,” Walsh said, and the big-chested man nodded as if to say, Damn right.

  “Glad to meet you,” Fletch said.

  At the front of the bus, while Fletch was trying to get by, Lee Allen Parke was saying quietly to the two volunteers, “Now, you make sure the congressman is made right comfortable, you hear? No matter what time of the morning he comes aboard, you have an eye-opener mixed and ready for him. If he doesn’t want it, he won’t drink it….”

  The press was gathered around the foot of the steps of the campaign bus.

  “Where’s the statement?” Fenella Baker demanded. Her lips were blue with cold.

  “What statement?” Fletch asked.

  “The governor’s statement regarding Vic Robbins’s death.” Fenella was staring at the papers in Fletch’s hands. “Idiot.”

  “How do you know about Robbins’s death?” Fletch asked. “We got the news only three minutes ago.”

  “Give us the damned statement!” Bill Dieckmann shouted. “I’ve got the first phone!”

  “You know the governor couldn’t possibly have made a statement,” Fletch said. “He’s in the factory!”

  “Are you playing with us?” Ira Lapin yelled.

  “No,” Fletch said. “Here are the statements.” He tried to hand them out, but they were grabbed from him.

  Bill Dieckmann said to Betsy Ginsberg, “You I can outrun.”

  “With a strong tail wind,” Betsy said.

  “You must have wires screwed into your heads,” Fletch muttered.

  Andrew Esty scanned the statement, then looked up at Fletch. There was rage in his face. “There’s no religious consolation in it! In the statement!” Esty wore a Daily Gospel button even in the lapel of his overcoat.

  “God,” Fletch said.

  At varying speeds, the members of the press slid through the snow and wind to the telephones inside the factory’s main gates.

  Except Freddie Arbuthnot. She stood in the snow, grinning up at Fletch.

  “Not interested?” Fletch asked.

  “Already phoned it in,” Freddie said. “Such a statement has three parts. Compliment the deceased’s professional expertise. Consolation for family and friends. Offer of help to opposing campaign. Did I miss anything?”

  Fletch watched as a dirty, old taxi pulled up at the factory’s main gate. The factory was an expensive taxi ride from anywhere.

  “Amazing bunch of savages. Screaming for the governor’s statement on a matter they knew the governor couldn’t even know about yet.”

  “Ah, Fletch,” Freddie said. “You’re turning establishment already.”

  A man had lifted a battered suitcase out of the taxi. Money in hand, he was arguing with the driver.

  “Who’s that?” Fletch asked.

  Freddie turned around. “That,” she said definitely, “is bad news. Mr. Bad News, himself.” Turning back to Fletch, she said, “Mr. Michael J. Hanrahan, scourge of respectable journalists everywhere, lead dirt-writer for that chain of daily lies and mischief, the scandal sheet going under the generic name Newsbill.”

  Carrying his suitcase in one hand, a portable typewriter in the other, overcoat hems flapping in the wind, the man was lumbering toward the campaign bus. The taxi driver was shouting something at him, which could not be heard in the wind.

  “That’s Hanrahan? I hoped never to meet him.”

  Hanrahan turned his head and spat toward the taxi driver.

  “I thought Mary Rice was covering us for Newsbill.”

  “Mary’s a mouse,” Freddie said. “Hanrahan’s a rat.”

  “ ’lo, Arbuthnot.” With either a smile or a grimace, Michael J. Hanrahan tipped his profile toward her, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. “Made it with any goats lately?”

  “Always a pleasure to witness your physical and mental degeneracy, Hanrahan,” Freddie answered. “How many more hours to live do the doctors give you?”

  Hanrahan didn’t put down either his suitcase or his typewriter case. He shivered in his overcoat.

  The skin of his face was puffy, flushed, and scabrous. Between the gaps in his mouth were black and yellow teeth. His clothes looked as stale as last month’s bread.

  “Never, never use a toilet seat,” Freddie advised Fletch, “after Hanrahan has used it.”

  Hanrahan laughed. “Where’s this jackass Fletcher?” he asked her.

  “I’m the jackass,” Fletch said.

  Hanrahan closed his mouth, tried unsuccessfully to breathe through his nose, then opened his mouth again. “Oh, joy,” he muttered. “This kid doesn’t even go to the bathroom, I bet. Probably been taught not to. It isn’t n
ice.” He put his chin up at Fletch, who was still on the stairs of the campaign bus, and tried to give Fletch a penetrating look with bloodshot eyes, each in its own pool of poison. “Boy, are you in trouble.”

  “Why’s that?” Fletch asked.

  “ ’Cause you’ve never dealt with Hanrahan before.”

  “Dreadful stuff you write,” Fletch said.

  “All you’ve had to deal with so far are these milksop pussycats mewing for your handouts.”

  “Meow,” said Freddie.

  “You’re gonna work for me,” Hanrahan said. “You’re gonna work your shavvy-tailed ass off.”

  “What do you want, Hanrahan?”

  “I want to sit down with your candidate. And I mean now.”

  “Not now.”

  “Today. Within a few hours. I need to ask him some questions.”

  “About what?”

  “About dead broads,” Hanrahan snapped. “That broad in Chicago. That broad last night. The brutally slain debutante your candidate leaves behind him everywhere he goes.”

  “Newsbill’s electronics must be good as Newsworld’s,” Fletch said to Freddie.

  “Newsworld’s doesn’t use such colorful words,” Freddie said. “Archaic though they may be.”

  “Hell, Hanrahan,” Fletch said, “that matter’s already wrapped up.”

  Hanrahan squinted. “It is?”

  “Yeah. They took Mary Rice into custody an hour ago. Your own reporter. From Newsbill.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “He’s right, Hanrahan. We all know how far you Newsbill writers will go to make a story. Mary just got caught this time.”

  “The police knew the murderer was Mary because she left someone else’s notes at the scene of crime,” Fletch added.

  Even Hanrahan’s neck was turning red. “You know how many readers I got?” he shouted.

  “Yeah,” Freddie said. “Everyone in the country who can’t read, reads Newsbill. Big deal.”

  “They all vote,” Hanrahan insisted to her.

  “More’s the pity,” Freddie said to the ground.

  “I want to get together with your candidate now,” Hanrahan said. “And no more juvenile crap from you!”

  “Doubt the candidate will have all that much time for you, Hanrahan.”

  “What’s the matter?” Hanrahan took a step forward. “Doesn’t little boyums like the smell of big bad man’s breath?”

  “Highly indicative, I’m sure,” Fletch said.

  “You put me together with your candidate, let me work him over with my bare knuckles, or tomorrow Newsbill’s readers are going to be told Governor Caxton Wheeler refuses to answer questions about two recent murders on his campaign trail.”

  “You just do that, Hanrahan.” Fletch turned to climb the bus steps. “It will be the first time you’ve ever written the truth.”

  9

  “Listen to this.” Dr. Thom was stretched out on the bed in the candidate’s stateroom at the back of the bus. He was reading a book entitled The Darwinian Theory as Fossil. “‘For thousands of years, we have been told perfection is not attainable, but a worthy aspiration. In this post-Freudian era, we are told normalcy is not possible, but a worthy aspiration. In one scheme, we might achieve excellence; in the other, mediocrity. In one scheme, we fear despair; in the other, depression.’” The doctor put down the open book on his chest. “What can I do for you?”

  “Need to ask you a couple of questions.” Fletch had knocked, entered the stateroom at Dr. Thom’s drawled “Enter if you must,” and sat in one of the two comfortable swivel chairs at the stateroom’s desk.

  Dr. Thom spoke with extraordinary slowness. “Anyone trying to handle the press can have anything he wants from me: poisoned gas, flamethrowers, machine guns, hand grenades. If I don’t have such medical and surgical tools on hand, I shall secure them for you at greatly reduced rates.”

  “At the moment, I’m inclined to place an order,” Fletch said. “I just met Michael J. Hanrahan, of Newsbill.”

  “The press ought to be an extinct species,” Dr. Thom drawled. “They never evolved to a very high level. You can tell by the way they go along the ground, sniffing it. I might suggest to the candidate that the press be handed over to the Department of the Interior. That way their extinction will be guaranteed.”

  “Got to have the free press,” said Fletch.

  “Do you really think so? Neither the substance of America’s favorite sport, politics, nor the substance of America’s favorite food, the hot dog, can bear too much analysis. If the innards of either American politics or the American hot dog were too fully revealed, the American would have to disavow and disgorge himself.”

  “You against motherhood too?”

  Dr. Thom clicked the nail of his index finger against the cover of the book on his chest. “On the evolutionary scale, Woman and The Bird, of course, are superior.” He cleared his throat. “Which is why, of course, Man invented the telephone wire.”

  “I understand you were one of the first people to get to the body of Alice Elizabeth Shields last night.”

  “I was.”

  “Will you tell me about it?”

  “Have you a morbid curiosity?”

  “Fredericka Arbuthnot and Michael J. Hanrahan are not on the press bus to count the votes in congressional districts. They’re crime writers.”

  “You mean the death of Ms. Shields might affect the campaign in some way?”

  “They tell me two young women have been murdered on the fringes of this campaign just this last week.”

  “Oh, dear. And the perpetrator might be one of us?”

  “There’s a good possibility of it.”

  “And you’d like to get the facts before they do, so you can put the right spin on them.”

  “And do so very quietly. Without appearing to do so.”

  Dr. Thom studied the roof a moment. “Don’t the police have anything to do with this? Or have they read their own statistical success-rates at solving murders and given up on them? Plan to limit their activities henceforth to placing parking tickets on stationary, nonargumentative cars, at which function they are very good?”

  “The murders are too spread out. Different jurisdictions. We are blessed in this country by not having a national police force.”

  “Ah, yes. Guaranteeing that only the smaller, narrower-visioned criminal gets caught.”

  “Tell me what happened last night.”

  “I was in the bar. A bellman came in—or the doorman, whatever he was. I’m not sure whether he was looking for a responsible person, a motel manager, a doctor, or for a drink. He said, sort of choking, so that his voice stood out in the tired, somber crowd anyway, ‘Someone jumped off the roof. She’s naked.’”

  “Exact words?”

  “I may not remember everything said in the bar last night, about Senator Upton, Senator Graves, the Middle East, and The Washington Post, but I do remember those words exactly. It took a moment for them to sink in.”

  “Who was with you in the bar at that point?”

  “I had been talking with Fenella Baker and Betsy Ginsberg. I had been talking with Bill Dieckmann earlier, but I think he’d left some time before. The usual faces in a motel bar. A few morose businessmen drinking themselves to sleep. A few long-haul, tongue-tied drivers desperate to talk with anybody about anything.”

  “That all?”

  “All I can remember. After the event, of course, after the ambulance had come and gone, the press were in the bar in force. Some had just thrown on coats over their pajamas.”

  “Tell me about going out to the girl. Examining her.”

  “Due to the high incidence of malpractice suits these days, you know doctors do not rush in where even fools fear to tread. Of course, if I ever come across a lawyer lying on the sidewalk, I’ll tread on his face.”

  “You don’t like lawyers either?”

  “Even lawyers’ mothers don’t like lawyers. If you do a survey, I think you’ll
find that lawyers’ mothers are the strongest advocates of legal abortions in the land.”

  Fletch fought the mesmerizing quality of the doctor’s manner of speech. “Going through the lobby, did you see Governor Wheeler coming in?”

  “No. No, I did not. I didn’t see the governor at all last night until I went to his suite.”

  “To put him to sleep.”

  “To put him to sleep. A middle-aged couple, nicely dressed, was standing over the girl. The man was just taking off his overcoat to cover the body. I asked him not to do that. I wanted to examine her.”

  “Was she still alive at that point?”

  “No. I would say death was nearly instantaneous the moment she hit the pavement.”

  “Not before?”

  “I don’t think so. My guess is that she landed on the back of her head, breaking her neck, then crashed on her back.”

  “What evidence did you see that the girl had been beaten before she fell or was pushed?”

  “Her face was badly bruised. Banged eye—her left, I think—blood from her nose, blood from lips, two broken front teeth, two or three badly fractured ribs on her left side. Compound fractures, I mean.”

  “The coroner announced this morning she had not been raped.”

  “So what motive? Robbery? Who’d want to steal her clothes? Certainly a beaten, naked female suggests rape.”

  “Would you say she was a good-looking woman?”

  Again Dr. Thom studied the ceiling. “Not beautified, in any way. Not much makeup, if any. A slim build, well-proportioned body, good muscle tone. A plain woman, I’d say.”

  “While you were examining the girl, a crowd collected?”

  “A small crowd. Mostly the press.”

  “Do you remember who was in the crowd?”

  “I did glance through the crowd, to make sure no small children were there. That Arbuthnot woman was there. Now, there’s a handsome woman. Fenella Baker had followed me out from the bar. I will not comment on her beauty, or lack thereof. One or two others, I’m not sure who. A truck driver from the bar was the only one who really tried to be helpful.”

  “I understand you had seen the Shields woman before.”

  “Yes. I had noticed her the last few days—in the hotel elevators, lobbies.”