Comparing the map with the list of garages for rent he had torn from the newspaper while going back to town in the taxi, he told the driver to go to the Boston underground garage. It was not far from his apartment. Once at the garage, he rejected it immediately—there would be no privacy there, typical of most government-run facilities the world round. He wanted Walls.
He walked to a garage advertised on River Street, even closer to his apartment. First he woke up the housekeeper left in charge of the negotiation by its owner. She had to find the key. In broken down, red house shoes, describing her osteitis in jealous detail, she showed him the garage. The monthly rent was exorbitant. But the place had brick walls and a new, thick wooden door. He paid two months’ rent in cash and took the key, as well as a signed receipt (made out to Johann Recklinghausen) shortly after the interminable time it took the woman to find the receipt book.
He advised her to see a doctor.
After standing in line for forty-seven minutes at the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles at 100 Nassau Street before being able to present his driver’s license, purchase agreement marked “Cash —Paid,” and application for insurance, he was given his vehicle registration (for a light blue Chevrolet caravan) and two license plates.
They attached his license plates for him at the used car lot in North Cambridge.
Driving back into Boston, he stopped at a corner variety store and bought twenty-five issues of that evening’s
He also stopped at a hardware store and bought a quart of black paint, a cheap, brush, and a bottle of turpentine.
It was dark when he returned to River Street. Leaving the garage door open and the van outside with its lights on, he spread the
Then he, drove the van into the garage, onto the paper, and closed the door.
Being careful of his clothes, doing a purposefully messy job by the headlights reflected from the front wall, he climbed on top of the van and wrote, “YOU MUST BE HIGH” on the roof. Climbing down, again over the windshield, he wrote, in huge, dripping letters, on the left panel, “FEED THE PEOPLE.” On the right panel, “ADJUST!”
As the truck was wet from the mist before he began, the mess he created was perfect.
After cleaning his hands with the newspapers and turpentine, he locked the garage.
Then he taxied to the Sheraton Boston Hotel and rented a two-door, dark blue Ford Ghia, which he drove to his apartment and parked on the street.
Nine
Lights were on in the apartment.
Taking off his coat, Fletch went directly into the den. He flung the coat over an arm of a chair.
On the desk was a note for him.
It read, “Call Countess de Grassi at Ritz-Carlton—Mrs. Sawyer.”
Aloud, Fletch said, “Shit!”
“Would,, it be more bad news for you, Mister Fletcher?”
Inspector Flynn was looking is at him from the hall.
“I fear we must add to it.”
Grover joined Flynn from the living room.
“Your Mrs. Sawyer allowed us to remain after she left,” Flynn said, “after we had fully proven ourselves not only Boston Police officers but fully virtuous men as well.”
Fletch left the note upside down on the desk.
“If you want to talk to me, let’s not sit in here,” he said. “I got sort of tired of this room last night.”
“Precisely why we were waiting for you in the living room.” Flynn stood back to let Fletch pass. “It’s airier.”
“Do you gentlemen want a drink?”
“Don’t let us spoil your pleasure.”
Fletch abstained.
He sat in one, of the divans at the fireplace—the one nearer where the corpse had lain, and therefore not is view of the site.
“You’ve led us a merry chase,” Flynn said, letting himself down in the opposite divan. “After you disappeared this morning, you would have found it impossible to leave the City of Boston—at least by public transportation.”
“Disappeared?”
“Now you can’t tell us you went in one door of the Ritz-Carlton and out the side door in a flash, thereby dropping our tail on you, out of the purest of all innocence!”
“Actually, I did,” Fletch said. “I just stopped in to buy a newspaper.”
“Such an innocent man, Grover. Have we ever met such a blissfully innocent man? Here, stalwart men of the Boston Police have been staking out all the terminals all the day, the airport, the train stations, the bus stations, armed with the description of our murder suspect here, and our Mister Fletcher pops up at the cocktail hour like a proper clubman with the entirely reasonable explanation that he went in one door of a hotel and out another simply to buy a newspaper!”
“I bought a map of Boston, too.”
“We were just about to leave,” Flynn said, “having heard you rented a car a half hour ago. A blue Ford Ghia, whatever that is—I suppose it’s got wheels—license number what-is-it; Grover?”
“R99420,” Grover read from his notebook.
“By the by, Grover. Go call off that all-points bulletin on that car. Let the troopers on the Massachusetts Turnpike relax tonight. Mister Fletcher is at home.”
Grover returned to the den to use the telephone.
Flynn said, “Is that turpentine I smell?”
“It’s a new men’s cologne,” Fletch answered. “Eau Dubuffet. Very big in France at the moment.”
“I’d swear it’s turpentine.”
“I can get you a bottle of it,” Fletch said.
“Ach, no, I wouldn’t put you to the trouble.”
“No trouble,” Fletch said. “Honestly.”
“Is it expensive stuff?”
“Depends,” Fletch said, “on whether you buy it by the ounce or the quart.”
“No offense intended,” Flynn said, “but I’m not sure I’d want to smell that way. I mean, like a housepainter coming home. Supposed to be manly, is it?”
“Don’t you think it is?”
“Well, noses play funny tricks on people. Especially the French.”
Grover came back into the living room.
“Inspector, I smell turpentine,” he said. “Do you?”
Flynn said, “I do not.”
Grover stood in the middle of the, room, white at the wrists, wondering how he should settle.
“Do you want me to take the conversation down, Inspector?”
“In truth, I don’t want you to take anything down, ever. I have a very peculiar talent, Mister Fletcher. Being a writer-on-art you must have a heightened visual sense. I gather you have a more refined olfactory sense as well, as you pay a fancy price for a French cologne which smells remarkably like turpentine to me. My talent is I never forget a thing I’ve heard. It’s these wonderful Irish ears.” The green eyes gleamed impishly as the big man pulled up on his own ears. “Ears of the poets.”
Grover was in a side chair, his notebook and pen in his lap at the ready.
In his soft voice, Flynn said, “Grover gave me quite a scolding last night, Mister Fletcher, on the drive home.
