Fletch Won (17 page)

“I, uh, we…” said Fletch.

“Is there something funny?” Barbara asked.

“Not really,” said Fletch.

“Ho, ho, ho,” said Cindy.

“After we’re married,” Barbara said, “I have the small hope Fletch comes home at night dressed something like the way he goes out in the morning.”

“Ho, ho, ho.” Cindy was choking with laughter.

“Barbara,” Fletch said slowly and seriously, “Cindy and I met in the course of business.”

“Ho! Ho! Ho!” laughed Cindy.

The secretary and the older man at the nearby table were frowning at this disturbance.

“The course of business?” Barbara asked.

“The course of business!” Cindy laughed.

“In the course of business,” Fletch affirmed. “Now, Barbara darling, if you’d just—”

“Barbara darling!” yelled Cindy.

Not understanding Cindy’s raucous good humor, Barbara said to Fletch, “Oh, by the way. I just heard on the car radio that someone has confessed to murdering Donald Habeck.”

Fletch snapped forward in his chair. “What?”

“A man named Childers, I think. Went to the police this morning and confessed to killing Donald Habeck. A client of Habeck’s—”

“I remember,” said Fletch. “The trial ended two or three months ago. He was accused of murdering his brother.”

“Well, this morning he admitted murdering Habeck.”

“But he was acquitted. I mean, of murdering his brother.”

“So you needn’t trouble your little head about the murder of Donald Habeck anymore. You can go back to doing the job you’re assigned to do.”

“Yeah,” Fletch said grimly. “Thanks.”

“We can get married Saturday, we can have a honeymoon, and maybe you’ll even have a job when we get back.”

“That’s right.” Cindy had stopped laughing. She was looking at Fletch with new eyes. “You’re a reporter!”

Fletch sighed. “Right.”

“For the
Chronicle-Gazette,”
said Cindy.

“For the
News-Tribune.”
Fletch looked a dagger at Barbara.

“What’s going on?” Barbara asked.

“Cool,” said Cindy. “That explains everything!”

Fletch said, “I’m afraid it does.”

“Have you written anything for the newspaper I might have read?” Cindy asked.

“Sunday,” Fletch said. “Did you read ‘Sports Freaks at End of Line’?”

“Yeah,” Cindy said. “Sure I did. The lead piece in the sports section. Real good. Did you write that?”

Fletch said, “Just the headline.”

“Oh.”

“What were you doing?” Barbara grinned gamely, as if asking to be let in on a joke she might have already ruined. “Being undercover?”

“Thanks for asking,” Fletch said.

Cindy began laughing again. She clapped her hands. “Super!”

“ ‘Super,’ ” Fletch quoted grimly.

The waiter gave the bill to Fletch. “Serving you, sir,” said the waiter, “is an affliction I’d hate to have become an addiction.”

Fletch stared at him.

Cindy took the bill. “No. This is on the company, remember?” She laughed out loud again. “You might say, it’s on the house!”

“Anyway, Cindy,” Barbara said. “We’re going to be married on a bluff, overlooking the ocean. Did I tell you that? The weather’s supposed to be nice Saturday.”

Cindy was paying the bill in cash.
“Remember, we’re having dinner with my mother tonight,” Barbara said uncertainly to Fletch.

“Tonight for dinner,” Fletch said somberly, “I’m having my head on a plate.”

“Cindy,” Barbara said. “Around the corner there’s a sports shop. There’s this great-looking skiing suit in the window. You know, for our honeymoon. Want to walk over with me and see how I look in it?”

“Sure,” Cindy said. She left the waiter a generous tip.

The two women stood up from the table.

Fletch remained, elbow on the table, chin on his hand.

“See you, Fletch,” Barbara said.

Fletch didn’t answer.

Cindy said happily, “See you, Fletch! At the wedding! Saturday!”

After Cindy had gone a few paces, she turned around, again doubled over in laughter. “Fletch!” she called. “You’re being married on a bluff!”

“Hello? Hello?” Fletch knocked loudly on the frame of the screen door. Inside the bungalow a television was playing loudly but nevertheless was drowned out by a child crying, other children yelling, and the noise of some mechanical toy. “Hello!” he shouted.

The front porch was a junkyard of broken toys, a scooter with its neck twisted, a crunched tricycle, a flattened plastic doll, a play stove that looked like it had been assaulted with an ax.

On the television, a woman’s voice said, “If you tell Ed what you know about me, Mary, I’ll see you rot in hell.”

Inside the house, a woman’s voice shouted, “Keep up that bawlin’, Ronnie, and I’ll slap you silly!”

A man’s voice said, “Now, now. Let’s get this eating
process completed. The kiddies must eat, Nancy. Keep up their strength!”

Associate Professor Thomas Farliegh’s bungalow was eight blocks from the edge of the university campus. Other humble houses surrounding it had vestiges of paint on them and at least undisturbed stands of weeds in their front gardens. Farliegh’s house was yellow and gray with rot, a front window was smashed in its center, and the front yard was packed dirt, holding, among other things, a wheelless, collapsed, rusted yellow Volkswagen.

Driving to Farliegh’s house, Fletch had heard a repeat of the radio news report Barbara had mentioned. Stuart Childers had confessed to murdering Donald Habeck. He had confessed—and been released.

Fletch stood as close to the screen door as he could and shouted as loudly as he could, “Hey! Hello!”

Noise within the house dimmed fractionally.

A shadow the other side of the screen door grew into a woman who said, “Who are you?”

“Fletcher.”

“Who? I don’t know you. Better come in.”

Inside it was discovered it was not the screen door which had made him less audible.

“Are you a student?” the woman asked.

“I’m from the
News-Tribune!
The paper!”

“Tom’s back here,” she said. “I don’t know if he’s corrected your paper yet.” She led him into the kitchen at the back of the house. “You said your name is Terhune?”

The house smelled of diapers, burned food, spilled milk, and ordinary household dirt.

“I’m from the newspaper,” Fletch said.

In the kitchen, beside the blaring television set, a battery-operated toy tank treading noisily along the floor, up and down piles of laundry, garbage, and books, were five children, all of whom seemed to be under the age of
seven. Two were in diapers, three in underpants. Each seemed to have been freshly bathed that morning in used dishwater.

A short, bald, chubby man was at the chipped kitchen table spooning mushed prunes into an infant in a high chair. The man’s eyes, visible as he glanced up at Fletch for a brief instant, were a startlingly pale blue. Four of the children also had light blue eyes, but none as light as his.

The woman said something.

“What?” Fletch asked.

The television said, “… transporting a cargo of dumdum bullets…”

The woman turned it down, which left just the noises of the tank overcoming all obstacles on the floor, two children shouting and kicking each other, and one small child sitting on a torn cushion against the wall bawling lustily.

“Ronnie,” the woman said to the bawling child, “stop crying, or I’ll kick you in the mouth.” Her threat went unheeded. Her feet were bare.

“Do you have a car?” the woman asked Fletch.

“Yes. Are you Nancy Farliegh?”

“He wants to see you,” the man at the table said.

“I’m sure he wants to see you, Tom. Something about a paper.”

“I want to see you, Nancy. I’m from a newspaper.”

“Oh,” she said. “About my father’s death.” She was wearing a loose, bleach-stained skirt and a green, food-stained blouse. Her arms and legs were thin and white, her stomach distended. Her hair hung in greasy strands. “I don’t care to say anything about that, but I do need a ride.”

“I’ll give you a ride.”

“Our car is broken,” the man at the table said. “Smashed.
Kaput
. Ruined.”

“I should have gone yesterday,” Nancy said.

“Yes, yes,” the man said. “Bobby likum prunes.”

“Sit down.” Nancy picked up a pile of newspapers and a telephone book from another chair at the table, and dropped them on the floor. “I’ll just change.” She looked down at her clothes. “Tom, should I change?”

The child on the cushion stopped bawling. Determination entered his face.

“Never change, darlin’.”

The determined-looking child got up from his cushion. He crossed the floor. He caught the tank and picked it up. He hurled it through the window.

Now three children were in the middle of the floor shouting and flailing each other. Hair-pulling seemed their best strategic device. It caused the best shrieks.

“I’ll just change,” Nancy said.

Fletch looked through the kitchen window. In the yard, the toy tank was assaulting a collapsed baby carriage.

He sat down.

“Choo, choo, choo, choo!” said Tom Farliegh. “Now the choo-choo comes to the open tunnel. Open the tunnel!” The baby opened her mouth. Tom stuck the mushed prunes into it. “Now,” he said, scraping the bottle of the jar clean, “chew, chew, chew, chew.”

“Social Security,”
Fletch quoted.
“The sidewalks of the city/Offer up without pity/Little old ladies to be mugged.”

“Ah!” Tom wiped the baby’s mouth gently with a crusted rag. “You’re familiar with my work.”

“Do you call it the Poetry of Violence?”

“That’s what it’s called.” Tom lifted the baby from the high chair and placed her carefully on the floor.

He crossed the kitchen to where an even smaller baby was lying in a plastic basket-chair on the edge of the stove, looking like something to be roasted. The man was shaped like a rutabaga. He brought the baby in the basket-chair to the kitchen table.

“Your poetry is different,” Fletch said.

“Different, yes.” Tom was trying to unscrew the cap off a bottle of baby formula. “Why don’t you call it beautiful?”

He handed the bottle to Fletch, who unscrewed the cap and handed it back.

“Would
beautiful
be the right word?” Fletch asked.

“Why not?” Tom screwed a nipple onto the bottle. “Choo, choo, choo.” The baby opened his mouth. Tom inserted the bottle. “There must be a beauty in violence. People are so attracted to it.”

Holding the bottle tipped to the infant’s mouth, he looked down at where four children now fought and cried on the floor. One was bleeding from a scratch on an arm. Another had a new welt over an eye.

“That’s why I have so many children,” Tom Farliegh said. “Look at their fury. Isn’t it wonderful? Unbridled violence. I can hardly wait until this crop get to be teenagers.”

“May your dreams come true,” Fletch prayed. “How many do you think will make it?”

“You are attracted to violence,” Tom said.

“Not really.”

“Do you watch football?”

“Yes.”

“Do you watch boxing?”

“Yes.”

“They aren’t violent?” Tom’s hands were the softest, pudgiest Fletch had ever seen on a man. “The vast preponderance of human entertainment is violent.” He nodded at the television. “That instrument of popular human communication dispenses more violence in a day than most humans, without television, normally would see in a lifetime. What attracts us to such violence?”

“Fascination,” said Fletch. “It is the second greatest
puzzle, in life, that people are willing to do unto others violence which, apparently, they want done unto themselves.”

“Beauty,” Tom said. “The fascinating beauty of violence. The ultimate irony. Why has there never been a poet before to admit it?”
“Slim, belted hips/ Sprayed across by automatic fire/ each bullet/ ripping through,/ lifting,/ throwing back,/ kicking/ the body at its/ center.// Thus/ The Warrior In Perfection/ bows to his death,/ twists,/ pivots and falls/,”
quoted Fletch.

“Beautiful,” said Tom.

“I have seen such things,” said Fletch.

“And it is beautiful. Admit it.” Tom Farliegh tipped the baby bottle higher.
“Waisted, he is wasted/ but not wasted.// This death is his life/ And he is perfect/ In it”

“What courses do you teach at the university?”

“The works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Another course comparing the works of John Dryden and Edmund Spenser. Also, my share of freshman English courses.”

“You teach
The Faerie Queene?”

“Oh, yes.” Tom took the bottle out of the baby’s mouth. There was a small quantity of formula left in it. He put it to his own mouth, and drank it.

The baby cried.

Tom took the bottle to the sink and rinsed it.

Fletch asked, “Did you do violence to your father-in-law?”

“Yes,” Tom said. “I married his daughter. He never forgave either of us.”

“He never came to see his grandchildren?”

“No. I doubt he knew how many he had, or their names. Too bad. He would have appreciated them.”

Fletch watched one Farliegh child throw a carrot at the head of another. “I think so.”