“What’s your name?”
“Fletch.”
“What’s your full name?”
“Fletcher.”
“What’s your first name?”
“Irwin.”
“What?”
“Irwin. Irwin Fletcher. People call me Fletch.”
“Irwin Fletcher, I have a proposition to make to you. I will give you a thousand dollars for just listening to it. If you decide to reject the proposition, you take the thousand dollars, go away, and never tell anyone we talked. Fair enough?”
“Is it criminal? I mean, what you want me to do?”
“Of course.”
“Fair enough. For a thousand bucks I can listen. What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to murder me.”
The black shoes tainted with sand came across the oriental rug. The man took an envelope from an inside pocket of his suit jacket and dropped it into Fletch’s lap. Inside were ten one-hundred-dollar bills.
***
The man had returned the second day to the sea wall to watch Fletch. Only thirty yards away, he used binoculars. The third day, he met Fletch at the beer stand.
“I want you to come with me.”
“Why?”
“I want to make you an offer.”
“I’m not that way.”
“Neither am I. There’s a job I might like to have you do for me.”
“Why can’t we talk here?”
“This is a very special job.”
“Where are we going?”
“To my house. I’ll want you to know where it is. Do you have any clothes on the beach?”
“Just a shirt.”
“Get it. My car is a gray Jaguar XKE, parked at the curb. I will be waiting in it for you.”
“I want to drink my beer first.”
“Bring it with you. You can drink it in the car.”
Walking away through the beach crowd, the man looked as out of place in his dark business suit as an insurance adjuster at a jalopy jamboree. No one appeared to notice him.
Keeping his shirt over it, Fletch picked up the plastic bag off the sand.
He sat a few feet away from his group, his shirt over the plastic bag beside him. Looking at the ocean, he drank some of the beer he held in his left hand. With his right hand he dug a hole in the sand under his shirt.
“What’s happening?” Bobbi asked.
She was belly-down on a towel.
“Thinkin‘.”
He put the plastic bag into the hole and covered it over with sand.
“I guess I’m splittin‘,” he said. “For a while.”
“Will you be back tonight?”
“I dunno.”
Slinging his shirt over his shoulder, he started away.
“Gimme a swallow before you go.”
Bobbi jacked herself on her elbow and took some of the beer.
“That’s good,” she said.
“Hey, man,” Creasey said.
Fletch said, “Splittin‘. Too much sun.”
The license plate of the car was 440-001.
In the car, Fletch sat with the can of cold beer between his knees. The man drove smoothly and silently. Below sunglasses, the man’s face was expressionless. On his left hand was a college ring. He used a gold cigarette lighter from his jacket pocket rather than the dashboard lighter.
In the shorefront traffic, the air-conditioner was making the car cold. Fletch opened the window. The man turned the air-conditioner off.
He took the main road going north from town and accelerated. The car cornered beautifully on the curves going up into The Hills. He slowed, turned left on Hawthorne, then right on Berman Street.
The house was what made Berman Street a dead end. If it weren’t for signs on the iron-grilled gate saying PRIVATE PROPERTY — NO TRESPASSING — STANWYK, the road would appear to continue straight onto the driveway. There were two acres of lawn on each side of the driveway in front of the house.
Fletch threw his beer can through the window onto the lawn. The man did not appear to notice.
The house was built like a Southern mansion, with white pillars before a deep verandah.
The man closed the door to the library behind them.
***
“Why do you want to die?”
The envelope weighed little in the palm of Fletch’s right hand.
“I am facing a long, ugly, painful and certain death.”
“How so?”
“A while ago I was told I have cancer. I’ve had it checked and had it rechecked. It’s terminal. Nonoperable, nontreatable cancer.”
“You don’t look it.”
“I don’t feel it. A kind of general rottenness. It’s in its early stages. The docs say it will be a while before it’s noticeable to others. Then it will move very swiftly.”
“How long will it take?”
“They say three months, maybe four. Not six months, anyway. From what they say, I would guess in a month from now I won’t be able to conceal that I have it.”
“So? A month’s a month.”
“When you make a decision like this… that you’re going… to be dead… you uh… decide to do it as quickly, as
