Fletch's Fortune (17 page)

“And,” asked Freddie, “do you always sing at play?”

“Was I singing?”

“Something of doubtful appropriateness. I believe it was ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee.’ ”

“No, no. For Crystal, I was singing, ‘Nearer,
my God!
to thee.’”

“Such a happy child.”

Leona Hatch swayed over to Fletch and said, “Don’t I know you?”

She would make it to dinner tonight, but just barely.

“My name’s Fletcher.” He put out his hand. “I. M. Fletcher.”

Leona took his hand uncertainly. “I don’t recognize
the name,” she said. “But I’m sure I know you from somewhere.”

“I’ve never worked in Washington.”

“Maybe on one of the presidential campaigns?”

“I’ve never covered one.”

“Funny,” she said. “I have the feeling I know you very well.”

“You probably do,” muttered Freddie. “You probably do.”

Don Gibbs and another man appeared behind Leona Hatch.

Gibbs’ face was highly flushed.

“Fletcher, old man!”

Almost knocking Leona Hatch over—in fact, knocking her hat askew—Don Gibbs, drink in hand, made a clumsy effort to embrace Fletch’s shoulders.

“Ha, ha!” Fletch said. “Ha, ha!”

They remained standing in a circle while Fletch looked into his glass and remained quiet.

Don Gibbs, his face highly decorated with smiles, finally said, “Well, Fletch, aren’t you going to introduce us?”

Still looking into his glass, Fletch shrugged. “Oh, I’m sure you all know each other.”

He looked up in time to see an odd flicker in Fredericka Arbuthnot’s left eye.

Leona was resettling her hat on her head at a completely wrong angle.

“Well, I don’t know who they are. Who the hell are they?”

“Oh, Ms. Hatch, I’m sorry,” Fletch said. “This is Donald Gibbs. And this is Robert Englehardt. They work for the Central Intelligence Agency. Ms. Leona Hatch.”

Gibbs’ smile sank down his face, his neck, and disappeared somewhere beneath his shirt collar.

Englehardt, a large man in a loose brown suit, turned white all over his bald head.

Freddie said, “You have the C.I.A. on the brain.”

Fletch shrugged again. “And frankly, Ms. Hatch, I have no idea who this young lady is.”

Englehardt stepped forward and grabbed Leona’s free hand in his paw.

“Delighted to meet you, Ms. Hatch. Mister Gibbs and I are observers at your convention. We’re from the Canadian press. We’re planning a convention of our own, next year, in Ontario.…”

“You don’t sound Canadian,” she said.

“Pip,” said Gibbs. “Pip, pip, pip.”

“Pop,” said Fletch. “Pup.”

“See what I mean?” asked Leona. “Since when have Canadians said ‘pip’?”

Englehardt, the top of his bald head dampish, gave Fletch a killing look.

“And you pronounced the word ‘observers’ wrong, too.” Leona Hatch shook her arm. “Mister, you’re hurting my hand.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

Englehardt not only released her hand, but, in doing so, took a step backward, thus tipping Leona Hatch a little forward.

This time, she caught herself.

She said, “A Canadian would have said, ‘I
am
sorry,’ with the stress on the
‘am.’
A Canadian never would have contracted
‘I’
and
‘am’
in that sentence under those circumstances.”

Don Gibbs had taken several steps backward. He continued to look as if tons of lava were flowing toward him.

Freddie said, “Ms. Hatch, I’m Fredericka Arbuthnot. I work for
Newsworld
magazine.”

“Nonsense,” sniffed Leona. “No one works for
Newsworld
magazine.”

“Ah, here’s the beautiful young couple!” Arms extended to embrace the whole world, Helena Williams entered the group. “Hello, Leona. Everything all right?”

Helena looked at Gibbs and Englehardt curiously.

They took several more steps backward.

“Fletch and uh.…” She was looking at Freddie. “I forget your name.”

“So does she,” said Fletch.

“Fredericka Arbuthnot,” she said. “For short, you may call me Ms. Blake.”

“You know, Leona, I offered these young people the Bridal Suite. But they insist They’re not married! What’s the world coming to?”

“Great improvement,” said Leona Hatch. “Great improvement.”

Fletch said, “Helena, I haven’t seen Jake around much.”

“Well, you know. He’s trying to spend as much time with Junior as he can. And with Walter gone.… Well, someone has to make the decisions. Junior isn’t quite up to it yet.” She gave the back of her hair a push. “I’m afraid Jake isn’t enjoying this convention, much. None of us is, I suppose.”

“In case I don’t see Jake, be sure and say hello to him for me,” Fletch said.

Helena put her arms out again, to flap to another group. “I surely will, Fletch.”

There was a hoarse whisper in Fletch’s right ear. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Fletch turned, to face Don Gibbs and Robert Englehardt.

He said, “Have you ever tried to lie to someone like Leona Hatch?”

“She’s crocked,” Gibbs said.

“Have you ever tried to lie to someone like Leona Hatch—even when she’s crocked?”

Englehardt was looking exceedingly grim.

“She’d pin your wings to a board in one minute flat,” Fletch said. “In fact, if you noticed, that’s exactly what she did do.”

Crystal Faoni came through a crowd to them, casting quite a bow wave.

“Ms. Crystal Faoni,” Fletch intoned, “allow me to introduce you to Mister Robert Englehardt and Mister Donald Gibbs, both of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Englehardt’s eyes closed and opened slowly.

Gibbs’ sweaty upper lip was quivering.

Crystal said, “Hi.” She turned to Fletch. “I stayed in my room to watch Lewis Graham on the evening news show. You know what he did?”

“You tell me.”

“He did a ninety-second editorial on the theme that people should retire when they say They’re going to, regardless of how much they have to give up, using Walter March as an example.”

“We wrote that for him at lunch,” Fletch said.

“I think we can say we contributed to it.”

“Did he use the same biblical quotes?”

“Identical.”

“Well,” said Fletch, “at least one always knows Lewis Graham’s sources. May I escort you to the dining room, Ms. Faoni?”

“Oh, goody! Will we be the first ones there? I so like having a perfect record, at the things I do.”

“Ms. Faoni,” Fletch said, crossing through the cocktail party, her arm in his. “I’ve just figured something out.”

“Who murdered Walter March?”

“Something much more important than that.”

“What could be more important than that?”

“The reverse. Death in the presence of life; life in the presence of death.”

Crystal said, “Funny the way riddles have always made me hungry.”

“Crystal, darling, this afternoon you were trying to get pregnant.”

Immediately, she said, “Think we succeeded?”

“Oh, Lord.”

“If you remember, I always was very good at math.”

They were in the dining room.

“Crystal, sit down.”

“Oh, nice. He’s taking care of me already.” She sat in the chair he held out for her. “Not to worry, Fletcher.”

“I promise.”

“There’s just no way I can be unemployed nine months from now. Good heavens! I’d starve!”

He was sitting next to her, at the empty, round table. “Crystal, you lost a job before, this way. It’s an unfair world. You said yourself nothing has changed.”

“Oh, yes, it has,” she said. “Walter March is dead.”

“Frankly, I think you’re all being dreadfully unfair.” Eleanor Earles put her napkin next to her coffee cup. “I’ve never heard so many spiteful, vicious remarks about one man in all my life as I’ve heard about Walter March since coming here to Hendricks Plantation.”

Fletch was at the round table for six with three women—Eleanor Earles, Crystal Faoni, and, of course, Freddie Arbuthnot. No Robert McConnell. No Lewis Graham.

“You all act and talk like a bunch of nasty children in a reformatory, gloating because the biggest boy among you got knifed, rather than like responsible, concerned journalists and human beings.”

Crystal burped.

“What have we said?” asked Freddie.

In fact, their conversation had been fairly neutral, mostly concerning the arrival of the Vice-President of the United States the next afternoon, discussing who would play golf with him (Tom Lockhart, Richard Baldridge, and Sheldon Levi; Oscar Perlman had invited him to a strip poker party to prove he had nothing to hide) and whether his most attractive wife would accompany him.

Freddie had just mentioned the memorial service for Walter March to be held in Hendricks the next morning.

“Oh, it’s not you.” Eleanor looked resentfully around the dining room. “It’s all these other twerps.”

Eleanor Earles was a highly paid network newsperson, attractive enough, but resented by many because she had done commercials while working for another network—which most journalists refused to do—and, despite that, now had one of the best jobs in the industry.

Many felt she would not have been able to overcome her background and be so elevated if she had not been seized upon by the networks as their token woman.

Nevertheless, she was extremely able.

“Walter March,” she said, “was an extraordinary journalist, an extraordinary publisher, and an extraordinary human being.”

“He was extraordinary all right,” Crystal said into her parfait.

“He had a great sense of news, of the human story, of trends, how to handle a story. His editorial sense was almost flawless. And when March Newspapers came out for or against something, it was seldom wrong. I doubt Walter March was ever wrong.”

“Oh, come now,” Fletch said.

“What about the way he handled people?” Crystal asked. “What about the way he treated his own employees?”

“Let me tell you,” Eleanor said “I would have considered it a privilege to work for Walter March. Any time, any place, under any circumstances.”

“You never worked for him,” Crystal said.

Eleanor said, “You know about the time I was stuck in Albania—when I was working for the other network?”

Fletch remembered, vaguely, an incident several
years before—one of those three-day wonder stories—concerning Eleanor Earles in a foreign land. He was a teenager when it happened. It was the first he had ever heard of Eleanor Earles.

“It was just one of those terribly frightening things.” Eleanor sat forward, her hands folded slightly below her chin. “I and a producer, Sarah Pulling, had spent five days in Albania, shooting one of those in-country, documentary-type features for the network. Needless to say, we’d had to use an Albanian film crew, and, needless to say, we could film only what they wanted us to, when they wanted us to, and how they wanted us to. However, getting any film, any story out of Albania was considered a coup; it had taken months of diplomatic back-and-forth. Of course they had to accept me as an on-camera person, and I figured if I kept my eyes and ears open I’d be able to add plenty of material and additional comments to the sound track once we got back to New York.

“Despite their ordering us this way and that and putting us up in their best hotel, which had the ambience of a chicken coop, I think they tried to be kind to us. They offered us so much food and drink so continuously, Sarah said she was sure it was their way of preventing us from doing any work at all.

“So things went along fairly well, under the circumstances. We hadn’t much control over what we had on film, but we knew we had something.

“The night we were leaving, we packed up and were driven to the airport by some of the people who had been assigned to be our hosts and work with us. It was all very jolly. There were even hugs and kisses at the airport before they left us to wait for the plane.

“Then we were arrested.

“After we had gone through all the formalities of leaving Albania, most of which we didn’t even understand,
and were actually at the gate, ready to board, two men approached us, took us out of the line, said nothing until everyone else had passed us boarding the plane, until all the airlines personnel had gone about other business—all those eyes carefully averted from the two American women standing silent and somewhat scared with two Albanian bulldogs.

“After everyone had left, they took us by our elbows, marched us through the airport, and into a waiting car.

“We were brought back into the city, stripped, searched, dressed in sort of short, loose cotton house-dress kinds of things that allowed us to freeze, and put in individual, rank, filthy jail cells. Fed those things that look like whole wheat biscuits in pans of cold water, three a day, for three days. No one official ever saw us. No one spoke to us. We were never questioned. Our protests and efforts to get help, get something official happening, got us nowhere. The people who brought us our biscuits and removed our pails just shrugged and smiled sweetly.

“Three days of this. Have you ever been in such circumstances? It’s an unreasonable thing. And you find yourself reasoning if they can do it for a day, they can do it for a month. Two days, why not a year? Three days, why not keep you in jail the rest of your life?