Bob McConnell whispered, “Here it comes.”
“Blaming television,” Hy Litwack continued, “for causing acts of terrorism simply by reporting them is as bad as shooting the messenger simply because the news he brings is bad.…”
Eleven
In the privacy of their bedroom, Carol Litwack was saying to her husband, “… Live to be a hundred, I’ll never get over it.”
“Over what?”
“You. I don’t know.”
At a distance there was the sound of gargling.
Before leaving for dinner, Fletch had tuned the receiver to Leona Hatch’s room, Room 42, so he could check on her later, make sure she was as comfortable as possible. All he had expected to hear on the tape was snoring and “Errrrrrrr’s.”
But that wasn’t the way the marvelous machine worked.
Like all things governmental, it had its own system of priorities.
It took him a while to figure it out.
First he heard Leona Hatch snoring in Room 42, on Station 22, then Station 21 lit and he heard Sheldon Levi’s toilet flushing in Room 48, then Station 4 lit and he heard Eleanor Earles saying in Suite 9, “… Dressed to hear Hy Litwack’s stupid speech. Ugh! But if I don’t, I suppose there’ll be three pages in
Any noise in any room in which he had placed a lower-numbered bug had precedence over any noise in any room in which he had placed a higher-numbered bug.
Fletch studied his telephone information sheet, and the notes he had made
To keep himself straight at what he was doing, and, in fear of eventually being caught as he let himself into other people’s rooms, he had planted the lower-numbered bugs in the rooms of the more important people: Station 1 was Suite 12, Lydia March and Walter March, Junior; Station 2, the Litwacks, in Suite 5; Station 3, Helena and Jake Williams, in Suite 7; Station 4, Eleanor Earles, in Suite 9. In Suite 3, now empty—it being where Walter March had been murdered—he had placed bug Number 5. And, in Room 77, Fredericka Arbuthnot’s, he had placed bug Number 23.
“My, my,” Fletch said of his marvelous machine, “it walks, it talks, cries ‘Mama!’ and piddles genuine orange juice!”
Hy Litwack spent a long time gargling his famous throat—every bubble and blurp of which Fletch faithfully recorded.
Carol Litwack was saying, “Here you are, the most successful, respected journalist in the country, in the whole world, a multimillionaire on top of that, and you still feel you can’t say what you want to say, what you think is the truth.”
“Like what?” Hy Litwack’s voice sounded tired and bored.
“Well, what you just said about terrorism and television downstairs is not what you’ve said to me about terrorism and television.”
Clearly, Hy Litwack was having a bedtime conversation with his wife which did not interest him much. “I mentioned the possibility that the more publicity we give terrorists and murderers the more other kooks are apt to commit acts of terror and murder for the publicity alone. Too many people want to be on television, even with a gun in hand, or in handcuffs, or lying face down in the street with their backs riddled with police bullets… how much more of my speech would you like me to repeat to you? I admitted all that. I said I worry about it. But I don’t know what to do about it. No one does. News is news, and it’s seldom good.”
There was a feminine sigh. “That’s not what you’ve said to me at all.”
“What have I said different?”
“Hy, you know you have. Time after time you’ve said to me the networks give maximum exposure to acts of terrorism in progress because it gets the ratings up.”
Hy Litwack said, “They make for good drama.”
“People tune in, especially, to see if the hostages or whoever have gotten machine-gunned yet. Or had their heads chopped off. You know you’ve said this.”
“Yes,” Hy Litwack said. “I’ve said this. To you.”
“You didn’t say it tonight. In your speech. An ongoing act of terrorism and the whole network news department comes alive. You rush to the studio, day or night. People switch on their TV sets. Audience ratings go up.”
“I said they make for good drama.”
“The advertisers’ commercials get more exposure,” Carol said. “Here some little nut out in Chicago, or Cleveland, is holding twenty people hostage to protest the establishment in some way, and in boardrooms all across the country the establishment is cheering because the poor little nut is helping to sell the establishment’s products to all the other nuts and thus make the establishment richer!”
“Everything makes the establishment richer.”
“You’ve said that. To me. Why didn’t you say it in your speech tonight? Are you so establishment yourself you can’t say what you really think, as a journalist?”
“No,” said Hy Litwack. “But I’m a good enough journalist to keep my cynicism to myself.”
There was what seemed to Fletch a long silence. He was waiting to hear where the marvelous machine would switch next.
He was about to experiment, to see if he could run the machine manually, when he again heard Carol Litwack’s voice. “Oh, Hy. You don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“I guess not,” said the famous voice, now sleepy.
“This afternoon you rushed down here to Virginia early, and immediately taped that phony eulogy on Walter March for the network evening news. ‘The great journalist, Walter March of March Newspapers, is dead,’ you intoned, ‘shockingly murdered at the convention of the American Journalism Alliance, of which March was the elected president.’”
“I never said ‘shockingly murdered.’”
“You even put on your tight-throat bit.”
“You can check the tape.”
“Whatever you said.”
“Whatever I said.”
“You didn’t even know Walter March. Really.”
“No man is an island.”
“The few times you met him you told me the same thing about him. He was a cold fish.”
“Carol? Would you mind if we went to sleep now?”
“You’re not listening.”
“No. I’m not.”
“Just because all you famous newspeople are here, because it’s a cheap story, cheap drama, because you’re competing with each other between martinis, you’re giving Walter March’s murder more publicity than World War Two!”
“Carol!”
The famous voice was no longer sleepy. It sounded as if someone had just declared World War Three.
