place to put us.”
“Really living it up, uh?”
“The rule book says we can take a suite if nothing else is available.”
“I’m glad I’m not a taxpayer,” Fletch said. “Bye.”
Fletch switched his marvelous machine to Station 5—Suite 3.
“… Turkey in school,” Don Gibbs was saying. “Always out doing his own thing.”
“More?” Robert Englehardt said.
“No one could ever figure out what it was. Gone night after night. Never came to the parties. Used to make jokes about Fletch. They always began with, ‘Where’s Fletch?’ and then someone would make up something ridiculous, like, ‘Sniffing the bicycle seats outside the girls’ dorms.…’ ”
“Come on. Finish your drink. Let’s go to lunch.”
“Hey, Bob. We’re supposed to be journalists, aren’t we? Journalists live it up. I saw a movie once.…”
Seventeen
1:00 P.M. Lunch
Arriving late at lunch, Fletch put his hand out to Robert McConnell, who was already looking warily at him from his place at the round table, and said, “Bob, I apologize. Let me buy you a drink.”
Robert McConnell’s jaw dropped, his eyes bugged out, and he turned white.
Robert McConnell bolted from the table, and, from the room.
Crystal Faoni was staring at Fletch.
Fletch said to her, “What’s the matter with him? Just trying to apologize for accusing him of murder.…”
Freddie Arbuthnot looked clean and fresh after their tennis. Clearly she had sung her “Hoo, boy” song again.
Lewis Graham had taken one of the empty seats at the table, and Fletch shook hands with him, saying, “Slumming, eh?”
The man shook hands as would an eel—if eels were familiar with human social graces.
Lewis Graham was a television network’s answer to the newspaper editorial.
A gray man with a long face and narrow chin, who apparently confused looking distinguished and intellectual with looking sad and tired, every night for ninety polysyllabic seconds he machine-gunned his audience with informed, intellectual opinion on some event or situation of the day or the week, permitting the people of America to understand there were facts they didn’t have yet and probably wouldn’t be able to comprehend if they did have them, without his experience, and understandings they could never have, without his incisive intelligence.
Trouble was, his colleagues read the
Other journalists referred to Lewis Graham as “the
It was questioned whether behind his grayness he had any personality he had not lifted from newsprint.
Lewis Graham said, “I didn’t know where to sit. I expect lunch is the same at all the tables.”
Crystal Faoni was still staring at Fletch after he sat down.
Freddie said, “A fairly even match, if I may say so. Six-four you; six-four me; seven-five us.”
“Me,” said Fletch.
“It was just your chauvinist pride.”
“Me,” said Fletch. “Me.”
“Not a clear victory. Your arms and legs are longer than mine.”
“The thing about tennis,” Lewis Graham said, “is that someone has to win, and someone has to lose.”
Crystal turned her stare at Lewis Graham.
They all stared at Lewis Graham.
“Tennis always provides a clear victory,” Lewis Graham said.
Fletch asked, “Did you read that somewhere?”
Crystal said to Fletch, “I ordered you both the chicken Divan and the chef’s salad.”
“Thank you for thinking of me,” Fletch said. “I don’t want both.”
“You want one of them?”
“Yes. I want one of them.”
“Then I’ll have the other one. Well, why should I embarrass myself by ordering two meals for myself—when I can embarrass you instead? You need a little embarrassing.”
“Why should you be embarrassed?”
“Oh, come off it, Fletch,” Crystal Faoni said. “Have you ever made love to a really fat girl?”
Graham shifted his elbows uncomfortably on the table.
“I’ll weigh the question,” Fletch said.
“As fat as I am?”
Fletch said, “It’s a heavy question.”
Lewis Graham cleared his throat and said, “You appear to be giving light answers.”
During the lunch (Fletch ate the salad; Crystal ate two Divans, which caused Lewis Graham to quip that all she needed more to entertain was a fireplace and a coffee table), the topic of Walter March’s murder arose, and, after listening awhile to Graham’s reporting what he had read in the morning newspapers, complete with two Old Testament references to the transitory nature of life, Crystal raised her large, beautiful head from the trough and said, “You know, I heard Walter March announce his retirement.”
“I didn’t know he had,” said Graham.
“He did.”
“So what?” Freddie asked. “He was over seventy.”
“It was more than five years ago.”
“Men look forward to their retirements with mixed feelings,” said Graham. “On the one hand, they desire retirement in their weariness. On the other, they shirk from the loss of power, the vacuum, the … uh… retirement which is attendant upon uh…,” he said, “… retirement.”
Crystal, Freddie, and Fletch stared at Lewis Graham again.
“Was it a public announcement?” Fletch asked.
“Oh, yes,” Crystal answered. “A deliberate, official, public announcement. It was at the opening of the new newspaper plant in San Francisco. I was covering. There was a reception, you see, big names and gowns and things, so of course the darling editors sent a woman to write it all up. There were scads of those little hors d’oeuvres, you know, chicken livers wrapped in bacon, duck and goose pates, landing fields of herring in sour cream.…”
“Crystal,” Fletch said.
“What?”
“Are you hungry?”
“No, thanks. I’m having lunch.”
“Get on with the story, please.”
“Anyway, Walter March was to make one of those wowee, whizbang, look at our new plant, look at us, what
