Fletch Won (22 page)

“I had no idea he was going into a monastery. It must have come over him sudden like. I had a girl friend like that. Suddenly it overcame her to be a WAC.”

“I guess we’d better get you in touch with some federal officer here in town.”

“I thought of talking to the mailman about it. Well, I mean… really.”

“Someone will call you.”

“Plus, I’m locked out of the house.” She turned around and looked at the quiet brick house floating on rhododendrons. “My fur is in there.”

He started toward the house with her. “Is there a burglar alarm? I didn’t notice.”

“No. Isn’t that stupid? Think of a big criminal lawyer like that, and his house don’t even have a burglar alarm. He should have known some of the guys I knew!”

“I think he did, Jasmine. I think he knew all of them.”

“I see someone’s arse sticking up from the bushes!” Definitely, that was Frank Jaffe’s voice. No other voice was that gravelly. “And on that arse is written ‘Ben Franklyn Friend Service’!”

In the dark, in the bushes in front of the
News-Tribune
, momentarily Fletch wondered if he went all the way in his imitation of an ostrich and stuck his head into the ground he would disappear entirely from view.

Instead, he stood up and turned around. He had not realized he had moved so far into the building’s security lights.

“’Evening, Frank. Time you’d gone home.”

“Oh, it’s you!” Frank Jaffe exclaimed in mock surprise. “Don’t you think we’ve given that particular
institution of physical excess enough free advertising this week?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Then why are you in front of the
News-Tribune
building waving a flag at passing traffic advertising their services?”

The manila envelope and the pencil Fletch had taken from his car were on the ground behind the bushes.

“That’s not really what I’m doing, Frank.”

“What else are you doing?”

“I’m looking for a gun, Frank.”

“You’re looking for your gum?”

“Okay.”

“How could you drop your gum way over there in the bushes?”

Fletch held up his index finger. “Don’t you feel that wind?”

“You were trying to throw up in the bushes,” Frank accused.

“No, I wasn’t.”

“You were trying to catch a buggerer?”

“Frank…”

“Besides advertising their services across your arse, have you penetrated any deeper into the whorehouse story?”

“I wanted to talk to you about that, Frank.”

“Clearly you’ve exposed yourself. Are we going to expose them?”

“Frank, I think the story is going to take a little longer than we originally thought.”

“Ah,” said Frank. “Really getting involved, are you, boy?”

“Something unpredictable has happened … a setback….”

“Discovered you really dig this assignment, that it?

Getting your bones ground at office expense, who wouldn’t? Ah, Fletch, I wish all the employees at the
News-Tribune
threw themselves into their work as enthusiastically as you do! I knew you’d like this assignment, once you got into it!”

“I threw myself into it, all right, Frank—”

“That’s my boy!”

“Trouble is, you see, this girl, Cindy—”

“Now, I’ll bet, even
you’re
asking yourself why you’re getting married Saturday!”

“Well, you see, Barbara—”

“Carry on, Fletcher, whatever you’re doing. But, please! The publisher and I would both appreciate it if, in keeping your chin up, you keep your arse down!”

“All right, Frank.”

“Good night, Fletch.”

“Good night, Frank.”

“Is Lieutenant Gomez in?”

The counter in the lobby of the police station was so high it made even a helpful citizen feel like a humble miscreant.

“Why do you want to know?” the desk sergeant asked.

“I want to talk to him,” Fletch said. “I want to give him something.”

“Leave it with me. I’ll see that he gets it.”

The sign on the desk said S
ERGEANT
W
ILHELM
R
OHM
.

“I’d like to talk to him. Is he in?”

“What’s in the big envelope?” Sergeant Rohm read the advertisement on Fletch’s clothes.

“What I want to give him.”

“Delivery service from a whorehouse; that’s pretty
good. What’s in the envelope, handsome? A case of clap for the lieutenant? It won’t be his first.”

“A gun.”

“Used?”

“I think so.”

“I’ll give it to him.”

“He’s not in?” The sergeant took the envelope and felt the contents. “Don’t mess up the prints,” Fletch said.

“Ah, a junior G-man,” the sergeant said. “I can see you’re used to working under covers.”

“At least let me write the lieutenant a note.”

“Sure.” The sergeant slid a turned-over booking sheet and a ballpoint pen across the desk. “Write anything you want, stud. We just love full confessions. Sometimes even the lawyers find them an obstacle to getting their clients acquitted.”

“Why was Stuart Childers released?”

“What’s that got to do with you?”

“Curious.”

“Stuart Childers is always released. He comes in here once a day. Sometimes twice. He confesses to any murder he hears about on the radio. Also robbery, arson, and aggravated littering. He must have really gotten a kick out of his day in court. Wants to play defendant again.”

Fletch wrote:

Lieutenant Gomez:

Your search for the Habeck murder weapon couldn’t have been extensive. Guard checking cars at
News-Tribune
parking lot gate indicates murderer walked into and out of parking lot. I followed logical walking path from back of parking lot, where Habeck was murdered, to street, and found this gun in the bushes in front of
News-Tribune
building tonight. I lifted it with pencil through trigger ring, so prints should be complete. Also look
forward to ballistics report Tell your pal. Biff Wilson, I’m always glad to be of assistance. Clearly he needs help writing obituaries
.

I. M. Fletcher

“You writing your life’s story?” the desk sergeant was trying to ignore a weeping black lady at the other end of the counter. “I’d love to know what it is you male whores do that’s worth paying for. Nobody’s ever offered to pay me.”

Fletch handed him the folded note. “Put this in the envelope with the gun, will you?”

“Sure, stud. I’ll take care of it.” He put the note on top of the envelope.

“Please,” Fletch said. “It’s important.”

“Sure, stud, sure. Now why don’t you get out of here before I throw you in a cell where you’ll get to do whatever you do for free?”

“What are you two doing, playing
Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut?”

“Yeah.” Cindy quoted: “ ‘I was a nice girl, wasn’t I?’ ”

Barbara and Cindy were in lounge chairs on the deck of the beach house. The small, round table between them held their glasses, a half-empty bottle of Scotch, and an ice bucket.

“A banana split for lunch and Scotch at night,” Fletch said. “Better be careful you don’t go to hell, Cindy.”

She stretched her arms. “That’s okay. I’m retiring real soon.”

“Yeah,” Fletch said. “You’re going to the dogs.”

There was a quarter moon over the ocean. Far out to sea a good-sized freighter was moving south.

“Have a drink,” Barbara said. “Join us.”

“Yeah,” Cindy said, “you’ve had a long day, I think, getting a job this morning, when you already had one, then a business lunch…”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“A discouraging day, too, I think,” Barbara said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Cindy said. “Discouraging, presenting yourself so well at the job interview, then being discovered a liar, an impostor, so quickly at lunch.”

The women laughed.

In the kitchen Fletch half-filled a glass with tap water.

“Poor Fletch,” Barbara said. On the deck he added Scotch and ice to the water in his glass. “He was so discouraged he drove himself all the way to Tomasito, just for a drink.”

“A warm beer,” he muttered. “What’s to eat?”

“Nothing,” Barbara said. “Remember, you canceled dinner with my mother.”

“We haven’t eaten,” said Cindy.

“It’s ten o’clock,” Fletch said.

“We’ve been talking,” said Cindy. “Story of my life.”

“Maybe you’ll go for pizza,” said Barbara.

Fletch sat in the chair near the railing. “So, Cindy… Did you ruin my prospects for employment? Did you tell Marta I’m an impostor? That I’m not really a male whore but rather an honest journalist out to screw the Ben Franklyn Friend Service?”

“I thought about it,” Cindy said. “I thought a lot about what to do. This afternoon my clients didn’t get my undivided attention. Seeing I wasn’t controlling the situation as well as I should have been, one guy came on real strong. I had to make an accident to cool him off. One of the lift bars swung against his nose accidentally-on-purpose.” She was dressed as she had been at lunch, in a short kilt and loafers. “It’s okay. No blood got on the rug.”

“You were ready with a towel,” Fletch guessed.

“I’m always ready with a towel. Men are always spilling one fluid or another.”

Barbara took a gulp of her drink.

“Did you tell Marta, or not?” Fletch asked.

“I decided either I had to tell Marta who you are and screw you,” Cindy said, “or tell Barbara who I am, and screw Marta.”

“A tough decision.” Fletch watched Barbara. “So you’ve told Barbara, your old friend, who you are, what you do for a living … et cetera?”

“Yeah.”

Fletch asked Barbara, “How do you feel about that?”

Barbara didn’t answer immediately. “I guess I understand. I’m more surprised at myself, than anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“That I could have a friend and really know so little about her. It makes me doubt myself, my own sensitivity, my own perceptions.” For a moment Barbara looked into the glass she held in her lap. “This is difficult to explain. I mean, now I’m wondering who the hell you are, Fletch, the guy I’m going to marry in three days. What don’t I know about you? How good are my perceptions?”

“Jitters,” Cindy said.

“Today,” Fletch said, “I discovered things about a few people I would never have guessed. I added some real interesting people to my collection.”

“I mean, here we go along in life assuming everybody is more or less as he or she appears to be, as he or she say they are. Forgive my bad grammar. Enough of that he-or-she shit. And, wham-o, in one minute over a drink or something you discover they’ve been living this whole life, having thoughts, doing things, being someone you never knew about, never even dreamed possible.”

Cindy said, “I think with orthodontics and psychiatry, health care, clothing fashions, too, with the great American
idealization of normalcy, which doesn’t exist, people think they want to love people similar to themselves.”

“All that’s the mother of prejudice,” said Barbara. “Economics is the father.”

“It’s the differences between people that we ought to love,” said Cindy.

“If we were just exactly what people think we are,” Fletch said, “we wouldn’t have much of ourselves to ourselves, would we?”