Fletch’s Fortune

Fletch released the RECORD button, pushed the REWIND and PLAY buttons.

His own voice was so loud it made him jump to turn the VOLUME dial for counterclockwise, A very sensitive instrument.

He listened through what he had said so far.

Chuckling to himself, Fletch turned the machine off and padded in his towel to the bathroom for a glass of water before sitting on the edge of his bed and pushing the RECORD button again.

“Obviously,” he said to the room at large, “I could fill up seventy-two hours of tape with jokes, stories, songs, and tap dancing but, if I understand correctly, that is not why I am here.

“In the event of my death, or whatever, I want anyone who discovers this formidable machine in my room to understand what it is doing here, and what I am doing here.

“I am being blackmailed by the Central Intelligence Agency—under threat of spending twenty years or more in prison, for failing to file federal income tax returns, illegally exporting money from the United States, plus, not being able to account for the source of the money in the first place—to bug and record the private conversations of my colleagues at the American Journalism Alliance Convention at Hendricks Plantation.

“Who’d ever think having a fortune could be so much trouble?

“My three reasons for going along with this quote assignment unquote are obvious to any journalist.

“To Eggers, Gordon, Fabens, Richard, Gibbs, Don, Englehardt, Robert, and all you other backwards people whose asses are where your mouths are supposed to be, so far I have the following to tell you.

“First, I suspect you all suck goats’ cocks and lay hens.

“Second, the person you are most interested in having me bug, old Walter March, is dead. So there.

“Which, of course, causes me to wonder if the reason for your interest in him and the reason for his murder have anything in common.

“Third, Fredericka Arbuthnot has done a terrific job of clinging to me so far. She is magnificently seductive. However, you guys have to be some kind of special stupid. What you’ve done is like sending a man into battle with an arrow through his head.

“More jokes and stories later. I’ll try to learn all the verses of ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ to sing to you at bedtime.”

Fletch turned the machine off and sat another moment, hands in lap, looking at it.

Then he put the suitcase on the floor, leaving it open, and slid it under the bed with his toe. Kneeling, he forced the antennae under the box spring.

He lay on his stomach on the floor, unplugged the machine, and shoved all the wire under the bed, so none of it would be visible from anywhere in the room, and replugged it, running the wire between the bed’s headboard and the wall.

Wriggling out from under the bed, his left biceps landed on paper—an envelope.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he picked up the envelope. He was sure it had not been there before. It must have fallen out of the suitcase. It had not been sealed.

Dear Mister Fletcher:

Our representatives in Italy, in explaining your assignment to you, mentioned only the name of Mister Walter March.

As you have now seen, the equipment we provided you has twenty-four listening devices and stations. We would like to have our public relations effort directed specifically at those on the following list. You may disperse the remainder of the listening devices in the quarters of those younger journalists you feel are most apt to rise to positions of power and influence, in time. We will not consider this assignment completed unless all the devices have been used profitably.…

Next to each name on the list was the journalist’s network, wire service, newspaper, or magazine affiliation.

They were all so well known there was absolutely no need to list their affiliations.

On the list were Mr. and Mrs. Walter March, Walter March, Junior, Leona Hatch, Robert McConnell, Rolly Wisham, Lewis Graham, Hy Litwack, Sheldon Levi, Mr. and Mrs. Jake Williams, Nettie Horn, Frank Gillis, Tom Lockhart, Richard Baldrige, Stuart Poynton, Eleanor Earles, and Oscar Perlman.

“Sonsabitches,” Fletch said. “Sonsabitches.”

There was no signature, of course—just the words, in tiny print at the very bottom of the letter, “WE USE RECYCLED PAPER.”

Six

Fletch picked up the ringing telephone and said, “Thank you for calling.”

“Is this Ronald Albemarle Blodgett Islington Dim-witty Fletcher?” a woman’s voice asked.

“Why, no,” Fletch answered. “It isn’t.”

Who would be calling him rabid?

He remembered vaguely an old joke someone had once told about Fletch biting a dog on a slow news night.

Who else?

“Crystal!” he said. “My pal, my ass! How the hell are you?”

Giggling. Per usual. In her throat. Per usual. Sardonically silly old Crystal.

“Are you here?” he asked. “Has the Crystal Palace shivered and shimmied into my very own purview?”

She began to sing the words, “All of me.…” He joined in halfway through the first bar.

“Still heavily concerned with your tonnage, eh, old girl? Still down in the chins?”

Crystal Faoni was not pellucid. She, too, had been cursed by her parents when it had come time to delete “Baby Girl Faoni” from the birth register and substitute something more specific.

Crystal was dark, with black hair which could have been straight, or could have been curly, but wasn’t either; blessedly, basically heavy, with monumental bones, each demanding its kilogram of flesh; the appetite of a bear just after the first snowfall.

She also had huge, wide-set brown eyes, the world’s most gorgeous skin, and a mind so sprightly and entertaining apparently it had never felt the need to cause her body to do anything but the sedentary.

She and Fletch had worked together on a newspaper in Chicago.

“Are you well?” he asked.

“I thought we could meet in the bar before the Welcoming Cocktail Party, and have too much to drink.”

“I plan to go sit in the sauna and have a rub.” Skimming the hotel’s brochure on the bedside table, Fletch had noticed there were an exercise room, a sauna, and a massage room open from ten to seven.

“Oh, Fletch,” she said. “Why do you always have to be doing such healthy things?”

“I’ve been on airplanes and in airports the last twenty-four hours. I’m stiff.”

“You’ve already had too much to drink? You don’t sound it.”

“Not that way. Are you still working in Chicago?”

“Why,” she asked rhetorically, “do people go to conventions?”

“To wear funny hats and blow raspberry noise-makers?”

“No.”

“I don’t know, Crystal. I’ve never been to a convention before.”

“Why are you here, I. M. Fletcher?”

Lord love a duck, he said to himself. Everyone who knew him would know that convention-going was not his thing.

Neither was dues-paying.

He said, “Ah.…”

“Let me guess. You’re unemployed, right?”