The travel agent had been right. The airline’s connections had been terrible: three different flights, each with a wait longer than the flight. She had been right that Puerto de San Orlando was just beginning to be built: whole walls were missing from the hotel; the landscaping was typified by weeds growing through cement blocks; beaten paths led from decorated bar to diningroom to pool. The sounds of bull-dozers grinding, hammers bamming, saws buzzing filled the dusty air. She also had been right about Puerto de Orlando’s insuperable heat.
Late morning, Fletch took a table for two in the palm-roofed, open-sided bar on the beach and ordered a beer. Hot though he was, the beer was not cold. His eyes stung from the three jet airplane hops during the night, the brilliant sunlight reflected from the ocean and the beach, from swimming in the salt water. He drank his beer slowly and then ordered a Coca Cola. The Coke wasn’t cold, either.
Just before noon he saw Charles Blaine, in long plaid shorts and a yellow sports shirt, heavy horn-rimmed glasses and sandals, come through the hotel’s arched doorway and plod across the sand to the beach bar.
When Blaine came into the shade of the palm-leaf roof he stopped, looked around. His eyes passed over Fletch, sitting at the table in just swimming trunks, blinked, and looked back. Blaine frowned like an accountant spotting red ink on books he had felt were not perfectly sound. He turned to go, apparently thought better of it, looked again at Fletch, hesitated, and then walked over to Fletch’s table.
“You’d make a good accountant,” Charles Blaine said to Fletch. “You don’t give up.”
Fletch turned his head toward the sea. “I’d make a good reporter, too. Pity I can’t get a job as either.”
Blaine put his hand on the other chair. “Shall I sit down?”
“I didn’t come to Puerto de Orlando,” Fletch said slowly, “to drink the water.”
Blaine sat down.
“Drink?” Fletch asked. “Warm beer or warm Coke?”
“Gin and tonic.”
“Sounds good,” Fletch said. “Me, too.”
“Mexico has excellent limes,” Blaine advised.
“I should think so.”
They ordered from the young waitress whose hips were stacked on her like lava flow on a volcanic mountain.
“Nice vacation?” Fletch asked Blaine.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Sort of an out-of-the-way place you chose for a vacation.”
“It’s not too expensive—once you get here.” Charles Blaine then listed the exact price of everything purchasable in Puerto de Orlando, Mexico, in both pesos and dollars—every article of food, drink, clothing, every souvenir.
Fletch asked, “How’s your nervous breakdown doing?”
“Am I having one?”
“Enid Bradley says so.”
“Does she? One of us may be haying a nervous breakdown—either Enid or myself.”
“She says you are. She says you were so fond of her husband you can’t let him rest in peace. You can’t believe he’s dead. You keep referring to him in the present tense.”
“Me, fond of Thomas Bradley?”
“Weren’t you?”
“Thomas Bradley was my boss. I was as fond of him as I am of my desk, chair, filing cabinet, and desk calculator. He was a necessary piece of office equipment. As replaceable in my life as any other boss.”
“There’s some evidence,” Fletch said, “that you’re so eager to perpetuate the myth that Thomas Bradley is still alive that you even go so far as to forge memos from him.”
A small, quirky smile flashed on Blaine’s face.
“Why did you come here, Fletcher? What’s your question?”
Fletcher looked innocently at Charles Blaine. “Was Thomas Bradley really a carpet?”
Blaine’s eyebrows wrinkled. “I don’t get you.”
“I don’t wonder. I don’t get you, either.”
Blaine finished his drink and signaled the waitress for another. “Vacationing in Mexico,” Blaine said, “is enough to make a rummy of anyone. It’s hot and it’s dry and the injunction not to drink the water is well advertised. I calculate that because Mexico’s water is famous for causing diarrhoea, Mexico’s liquor sales are approximately three hundred percent higher than they otherwise would be.”
“No one’s more cynical than a good accountant,” Fletch said.
“That’s true,” Blaine said. “Or a good reporter, I guess.”
“If we’re both so good,” Fletch said, “how come we’re both sitting here on the edge of the world, about as popular with our employers as an earache and a toothache?”
Blaine sipped his new drink. “Do I understand, from what you said before, that you’ve lost your job?”
“I’ve lost my job. I’ve lost my career. I couldn’t get a job now even working for the
“Is there such a newspaper?”
“Your wife’s aunt said you’re relentlessly literal-minded.”
“Happy? You talked with Happy?”
“Of course. That’s how I found you.”
“My wife’s aunt is sort of …”
“… happy?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s a nice lady. Which, by Fletch definition, means she fed me.”
“I’m surprised you had the resources to come find me,” Blaine said. “I mean, the financial resources. The money.”
“I don’t,” Fletch said. “Is Wagnall-Phipps paying for your so-called vacation?”
“Yes,” Blaine admitted.
“I’m glad Enid Bradley didn’t order you to go have your nervous breakdown on McDonald Island.”
“Where’s that?”
“Why don’t you stop being so literal about the trivial, Mister Blaine, and become literal regarding the material.”
Charles Blaine nodded his head, as if agreeing to difficult terms after a long negotiation. “All right.” He sat back in his chair. “I guess I owe you an apology.”
“Finally we’re getting somewhere.”
“I admit I was using you. Intentionally. Not you, personally. For that, I’m sorry. I was using the press. I guess I was thinking it’s okay to use the press. I didn’t realize, I forgot, that the media is made up of people, flesh and blood, who can be hurt, damaged.”
“Damn,” said Fletch. “I forgot to bring my violin.”
“That was an apology,” Blaine said.
“Consider it accepted, until you hear otherwise. Now please move to the facts.”
“That’s what I don’t know,” Blaine said. “That’s what I want to find out. You can hardly blame me.”
“That, too, will be decided later.”
“Okay, I worked—work—for Wagnall-Phipps, Inc. Not one of the world’s top forty companies, but a nice, solid little concern turning over a healthy profit. Thomas Bradley, founder, creator, Chairman of the Board. A sensible man, a quiet man, a good business man. A quiet man except for the long, dirty stories he liked to tell.”
“You didn’t like his dirty jokes?”
“Didn’t understand most of them. My wife and I lead a fairly—what should I say—conventional life. Always have.” Blaine sneezed.
“I bet.”
“An able business man. He’d been married to Enid for twenty years or more. Two kids.”
“I’ve got all that.”
“Rode horseback for exercise, or pleasure, or for … whatever reason one rides horseback.”
“Good for the digestion.”
