Fletch Reflected (20 page)

“Who’d buy it?” Duncan asked. “Who’d want it?”

Beauville answered, “I expect new corporate officers will want to move headquarters out of here. Who wants to live in this hellhole?”

“I do,” Amy said. “My children do. I expect this place to continue.”

“You’ll be mighty lonely here,” Chet said.

“There’s Mother,” Amy said. “She’ll stay. Where could she go?”

“That’s what I mean,” Chet said. “You’ll be mighty lonely.”

“Paying the servants comes first,” Nicolson said. “Three have already resigned,” Nancy Dunbar said.

“They have?” Downes asked.

“They’re waiting for their checks in the kitchen,” she said. “I forgot to tell you.”

“Nobody’s writing any checks on that money!” Duncan said. “I have an emergency. I wrote Dad a memo.”

“I saw it,” said Downes. “For a college graduate you don’t spell worth shit.”

“You have nothing to say about it, Downes!”

“Sloppiest thing I ever saw. I can’t believe Vanderbilt sells degrees. How did you get a college degree, Duncan?”

Chet said, “I’m gone.”

“You are the most horrible people!” Shana’s eyes were closed. “None of you deserves anything! You never gave Chester a moment of peace! You never appreciated him as much as did his dog!”

“I appreciate him now,” Amy said. “He’s dead.”

“Freedom with moola.” Alixis stretched. “No one to tell me what to do.”

“He always made me feel like shit,” Duncan said. “No one could be as good as he was.”

“You made yourself feel like shit!” Shana said. “You are shit! Worthless shit! None of you is worth one hair of Chester’s head.”

“Where is Arky?” Amalie asked. “I haven’t seen him around all morning.”

“I shot him,” Duncan said. “I’ve been looking forward to doing that.”

“You have no idea,” Shana continued as if talking to herself, “how hard he worked, how much he did for you, tried to do for you, how much he wanted for you, how much he loved you.”

“Sure, sure,” Alixis said, “as long as we met all his demands.”

“If there were justice …” Eyes still closed, Shana rocked a little on her feet. “There’d be a bus outside the front door to cart you all off to prison. You’re all murderers, as sure as God made little green apples.”

Fists tight at her side, head down, Shana turned to leave the room into the foyer.

“You’re the one that’s leaving, Shana old girl. Don’t hesitate.” Clumsily, Duncan lifted himself off the floor into a standing position. “Chet seems to be leaving without you. Did you notice?”

“Justice …” Shana said.

Amalie said, “We haven’t decided yet where to plant Chester. Who votes for near the laundry yard? I hate gravestones where you can’t help seeing them.”

Getting up, Alixis said, “I’m packin’ my bikinis. Down payment on a Malibu house will take more than a hundred grand.”

His finger in her face, Duncan shouted at her, “I told you that’s my money!”

“Oh, stick it up your nose, Duncan.”

“He would.” Rearranging her brassiere, Amy said, “That money goes to paying the servants and keeping this place running. There’s Grandmother to think of.”

“Sure,” Duncan said. “You’re thinking of senile old Grandmother. It would be a little cheaper to put her in a nursery, don’t you think, cow? You we can put in the dairy.” To Nicolson, Duncan said, “My father planned for me to run this show. I’m taking that money.”

“As a matter of fact,” Beauville said, “your father planned for you to start rehab tomorrow.”

Duncan’s face drained of the little pallor it had. “Like hell.”

“Sure,” Alixis said. “I’m sure he had plans for all of us. Plans and plans and plans.” Leaving the room, she said, “Well, he’s dead. So are his plans. Thank God.”

Angrily, Duncan grabbed an end table and tossed it on its side. The lamp on it smashed. “Get me out of here!” Leaving, he stumbled over the table’s legs.

Saying nothing, Amy carried her baby out of the room.

Ashen, Nicolson and Downes remained standing as they were. Beauville was florid.

“Has anything been decided?” Amalie asked from behind her veil.

“Not a damned thing,” Nicolson said. “Except that you sure have four disrespectful, self-centered brats.”

“That’s good,” Amalie said. “I’m feeling tired now.” Uncertainly, she stood up and headed out of the room. “I’m doing well not to weep.”

Downes asked Dunbar, “What kid got run over?”

“You see,” Beauville said to Nicolson, “the children here aren’t used to there being cars on the roads. Shows you how stupid this place is.”

Still sitting on the couch, Nancy Dunbar spoke to Beauville. “I guess I’ve had it with this place, myself. I wasn’t sure until I just heard these people. I can’t stand it anymore. I guess I’ll leave today, too.”

“Oh, that’s great!” Beauville said angrily. “Leave me completely in the lurch!”

“I don’t think I care.” On high heels, Nancy Dunbar began leaving the room. “Unlike everyone else around here, I guess I’ve got what I want.”

Corso said to Fletch, “I guess this wasn’t a good time to question these folks.”

“You’ll never get them together again. Never.”

“I don’t know what they had to say, anyway.”

“Seems to me we heard quite a lot,” Jack said.

“Laboratory accident,” Corso said. “That gas could have been there for years. That’s the easiest answer.”

“Are you looking for the easiest answer?” Fletch asked.

“Somebody had to arrange to release the gas,” Jack said.

“Yeah, well. Maybe.”

“Coming for lunch?” Jack asked Fletch.

“Lunch. Can you do lunch?”

“Sandwiches,” Jack said. “Cheese.”

“I’ll be at your place in a few minutes. I think I saw a date on the label of that gas canister. I’ll just go back to the lab and check it.”

“Yeah,” Corso said. “You do that. Let me know.”

A
s Fletch walked back from the laboratory passing the main house, his pocket phone buzzed. “Hello?” On the driveway in front of the house he stopped to listen.

“Fletch …”

“Hi, Crystal. How are you doing this morning? Did you survive the night?”

“I slept.”

“That’s good.”

“There must have been something in the milk.”

“That was the milk. By itself. It’s the best sedative.”

“I’ve had a breakfast of only grapefruit juice with protein powder in it, one coffee, vitamins and an amino acid tablet called L-Carnitine. Well, I had the tablet before breakfast.”

“That’s nice.”

“I feel very energetic. I’ve done a total of five sit-ups already this morning, and used the ankle and wrist weights a total of twenty minutes.”

“You’ll sleep tonight.”

A small jet airplane taking off from Vindemia’s airstrip roared over Fletch’s head.

Fletch looked up at it.

The plane was marked
RADLIEGH MIRROR.

He assumed it was Chet Radliegh leaving Vindemia, his family, his fiancée, leaving well before the funeral of his father.

“How did you get workmen to come to this Godforsaken place on a Sunday morning?” Crystal asked.

“I didn’t. What workmen?”

“They’re replacing the mirrors here in the gym with perfect mirrors. They said the order came from I. M. Fletcher. I do believe you are I.M.?”

“I am,” Fletch said. “It did. But I didn’t ask that the mirrors be delivered Sunday morning.”

“Well, they’re here. The workmen showed up about eight o’clock. They’ve been working all morning.”

“That’s nice,” Fletch said. “Guess I’ll be paying time-and-a-half or double-time, or something.”

“Maybe not,” Crystal said. “Maybe they know about you. Maybe they heard about what you did to that terrible place, Blythe Spirit.”

“Beg pardon?”

Under the sound of the jet engine, Fletch had to strain to hear Crystal.

“Blythe Spirit was a terrible place, Fletch.” Crystal’s voice was low. “I’m glad you got me out of there. All their expensive, expert help had succeeded only in making me hopeless. I’m glad you nailed those bastards.”

“Is Mister Mortimer pleased?” Fletch asked. “I mean, with the new mirrors?”

“He’ll never tell you. No, in fact he’s been expostulating all morning. First, at the boys’ training schedule being interrupted. The next explosion from his mouth was, ‘Why doesn’t that Fletcher mind his own damned business?’ Then, when he watched Ricky seeing himself for the first time in the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall perfect mirrors, he fumed. ‘Now that damned boy won’t want to fight anybody but himself, ever! For a boy fightin’ himself in a mirror I couldn’t sell a ticket to a nun,’ was what he said. I noticed he didn’t send the mirrors back, though.”

“I can always tell when he’s pleased.”

“Ricky is why I’m calling.”

“Ricky? The younger boy? Why would you be calling me about him?”

“I’ve discovered him.”

“Was he under a rock?”

“You know
Leaves of Grass?”
“Whitman. Of course.”

“No, ‘Leaves of grass, grains of sand/ Seasoned, soldier, hardened man/ Is what I’m told I am …’?”

“Guess I missed that one.”

“I found it in an anthology here. I just read it to him. To Ricky. Because they couldn’t work out in the gym this morning, with your workmen here. Listen to this. I’m putting him on.”

“Crystal—” At that moment, Fletch did not expect to be listening to a sixteen-year-old boxer in Montana recite poetry to him by long-distance telephone.

Then Fletch heard Ricky speaking. To him. To his core.

“‘Leaves of grass, grains of sand//Seasoned soldier, hardened man / Is what I’m told I am.’”

Through Fletch’s little telephone came Ricky’s magnificently timbred, modulated voice enhanced by his distinct diction, thrilling cadence: “‘Drinking mud, eating grass: / Think of me as Saddam’s ass. // We’re of different centuries / You and I. / I’m taught to think of lips for lips, / Eye for eye, / While you, my conqueror, are trained / To think of blips; / Coordinate hand, eye and brain …’”

Fletch stuck his index finger in his opposite ear and hunched over a little to hear better.

The voice was compelling. “‘Moslem, Christian and Jew / You do not know me as a man, / A true believer in Saddam, / See my bravery, see me bleed. / Even my final, dying scream: / Silent on your computer screen …’” In the voice of this sixteen-year-old boxer in Montana was a touch of the best, some of the surety, authority, timbre, rhythmic sense of Olivier, Burton …

To himself, Fletch mouthed: “Wow!”

Hunched over, finger in his ear, listening to Ricky over a
cheap telephone speaking more than a thousand miles away, Fletch felt something electrical go up his spine and burst in the back of his head between his ears.

“‘The bazaar battled the arcade, / And, naturally, the arcade won. / You’ve had the benefits of our oil, / While my mother and I have had none. // The problem is, and think of this, / It is your every wish / To drag me into a new time, / The century of bliss. / While the world economy thins / Resources shall be averaged. / It matters not who wins. // Seasoned soldier, hardened man / Is what I’m told I am. / You, the pinball wizard mind, / The tommy deaf, dumb, and blind.’”

There was a pause. Then the boy’s voice, not speaking into the telephone, asked, “All right, Mrs. Faoni?”

Crystal took the phone. “Fletch? Did you hear?”

“Yes.”

“Are you hearing what I’m hearing?”

“That’s some fine instrument that boy has.”

“Fletch, Ricky isn’t a boxer. He’s an actor.”

“Oh, Crystal! Mister Mortimer will kill you for sure.” Looking up at the house, Fletch wasn’t sure what he was seeing.

“I read this poem to Ricky once, just once, this morning, and after a moment he began reciting it back to me, the whole thing, sounding as you just heard. Consider not only his sound. He’d memorized the whole thing only hearing it once! He still hasn’t read it! Isn’t he marvelous?”

“Outstanding.”

Someone was tying a sheet, a white bedsheet, to a railing of one of the upper balconies.

He could not see who that someone was.

Sheets. Something about sheets.

Bedsheets wouldn’t be aired from a balcony of the main house.

There was a laundry yard somewhere for that.

“Crystal, you can’t take one of Mister Mortimer’s two remaining boxers.”

“Such talent can’t be ignored. This boy should have his head beat in? No way! I won’t have it. I think it’s a very good thing you brought me here, Fletch. Who’d think of discovering a talented actor in boxing gloves and britches in Where-the-hell-am-I, Wyoming?”

“Why does that surprise you?” For a moment, nothing was happening on the balcony. The rest of the sheet did not appear. “What are you going to do about it, anyway, Crystal? I mean, do about him?”

“Work with him a little myself. I don’t know much, but I know more about this than Mister Mortimer does. I’ll read to him, make him read the texts, ask him what things mean, how he interprets them. I’ll get some tapes, play them for him. This boy has never seen or heard anything other than Terminator movies. I’ll get in touch with some people I know in regional theater—”

A black bulk appeared laid out along the top of the balcony railing. The bulk was as long as a person.

The black bulk rolled, was rolled off the railing.

As it fell, as the sheet unfurled, the body’s arms extended above its head.

The lower end of the sheet was knotted around the neck of the bulk, of the body, of the person.

Fletch yelled: “Crystal! I’m seeing someone being hung!”

“What?”

Hanging from the balcony railing by a bedsheet tied around her neck, the body was swinging. The legs and arms struggled, but not much.

The black hat fell off the head and floated to the ground.

No head appeared over the railing.

“Mrs. Radliegh!” Fletch yelled into the phone. “Amalie! She’s being hung! Good bye!”

Fletch was already running toward the house. As he ran,
he folded his phone and tried without success to jam it into his pocket.

He jumped up steps and across a terrace into an enormous sunroom.

“I’ve been stabbed!”

Wearing only the bottom of a bikini, Alixis stood with Amy in the sunroom.