“Yep,” Frank said. “That’s what I mean.”
“You know what you’re full of, Frank?”
“Lemme see. Do you spell it with four letters?”
“Damnit, Frank!”
“Report Monday,” Frank Jaffe said. “And don’t ever write anything again you can’t defend immediately.”
“Blast you, Frank Jaffe.”
“Cheers, Fletch.”
Amid a widening pool of silence, Fletch sat down at his desk in the City Room. Someone had placed a sign on his desk which read R.I.P.
Fletch took the sign off the desk, and dropped it in the waste basket. Then he smiled at all the other reporters sitting at desks around him.
Al said, loudly enough for everyone around him to hear him, “Finally come to clean out your desk, Fletch?”
“No. I’m not doing that.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Just stopped by to make sure it’s still here. I’ll need it Monday.”
The silence became brittle enough to crack with a hammer. Even the police radios became quiet.
Randall, the religion news reporter said, “You mean, Frank has taken you back? Given you your job back?”
“That’s what I mean,” Fletch said. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
Everyone around him exchanged looks—significant looks, angry looks.
“See you Monday,” Fletch said, getting up from his desk. “Nice weekend, everybody.”
He crossed the City Room. At the door to the foyer, he looked back. What was clearly a delegation of editors and reporters was barging into Frank’s office. Clara Snow was in the middle of the pack.
Fletch knew the delegation thought they were going in to protest his rehiring to the managing editor. What they were really doing, being journalists, was going in to get a story—whatever story Fletch had told Frank.
And Fletch knew they would not get the story from Frank.
Laughing, Fletch left the building.
A meter maid was putting a parking ticket on his car.
He took it from her, thanked her, then made her blush by kissing her lightly on the cheek.
40
I N T H E S H O W E R, Fletch thought he heard the doorbell ringing, but didn’t care much. Then definitely he heard a banging on the front door sufficient to wake the asleep in a burning building.
Having grabbed a towel around him, he opened the front door.
Two men stood in the corridor. One was small and well-dressed and had mean, glinty eyes. The second was large, not well-dressed, and had mean, glinty eyes.
“You have the wrong apartment,” Fletch said. “I hope.”
“Irwin Maurice Fletcher?”
“Well, as long as you asked.” Dimly, Fletch remembered the large man had been in the lobby of the apartment house when Fletch had entered, watched him pick up his mail, and came up in the elevator with him. Vaguely, Fletch had thought he looked like a carnival wrestler with much experience, and wondered if he might not make an interesting interview.
Now he thought avoiding an interview with this man might be the more prudent course.
The small man said, “I’m James St. Eustice Crandall.”
“Eustice?”
“You have something that belongs to me.”
“I have?” Like tanks the men entered the apartment. Like a wet, near-naked laborer, Fletch backed up before the tanks. “Oh, yes. So I have. Sort of.”
“What do you mean, ‘sort of?” the small man asked.
The large man closed the front door.
Fletch hitched his towel firmly around his waist.
“May I see proof you’re James St. Eustice Crandall?”
“Sure,” the small man said. “Sure. That’s reasonable.”
He took a driver’s licence from his wallet and handed it to Fletch.
Who held it in his hand and stared at it as long as he could.
“What’s the matter?” the small man asked.
“I’m sure it’s just a bureaucratic error, but your licence says James Reilly.”
The small man snatched it from him, stuffed it back into his wallet without glancing at it, took out another licence and shoved it into Fletch’s hand.
“Ah!” said Fletch, examining it. “You’re James St. E. Crandall, too! I can tell. The pictures match.” He handed the licence back. “It must be nice being a schizocarp. You can scratch your own back.”
“Come on,” the small man said. “I want my wallet.”
“Sure,” Fletch said. He stepped back into the livingroom. The large man stepped with him. The large man was keeping Fletch within striking range. “I was wondering how much of a reward you’re considering?”
“For what?”
“For finding your wallet and returning it to you.”
“You didn’t return it to me. I had to come get it.”
“I advertised,” Fletch said. “Two newspapers.”
“Bullshit you did. I didn’t see no advertisement.”
“Then how did you find me?”
“The San Francisco police. Some hotel manager turned you in. They said you were scarperin’ with my dough. They even showed me a picture of you in the newspapers, caught pushin’ an old lady off a bridge or somethin’. They said, ‘That’s the guy’. You, ya punk.”
“Oh, boy.”
Red appeared around the small man’s eyes. “I been waitin’ for you all week! Make with the wallet!”
“No reward?”
“Get outta here with that shit!”
“I’d like to.” The front door wasn’t even visible behind the large man. “I was just thinking a reward of about three thousand, nine hundred and eighty-two dollars might be nice.”
“Nice, mice!” The small man put his index finger against Fletch’s chest. “Tearin’ your skin off in strips would be nice.”
“That’s the amount I don’t have.”
The small man’s eyes popped. “You don’t have?”
“I spent it.”
“How could you spend my money? Son-of-a-bitch!”
“Something came up, you see. Had to take a jaunt.”
The small man shook his head and made every apparent effort to sound reasonable. “Listen, kid, this is my gambling money, got that? Know what that means?”
“Oh, no. Not that syndrome.”
“That’s my poke. My stake. That’s exactly where my winnin’s are, in a particular enterprise. I need the whole stake. Intact. Or it’s no good for me.”
Fletch sighed. “Oh, boy.”
“I lost my poke!” the man complained. “In the street somewhere. I can’t use no other money in this particular enterprise. Last two weeks, you’ve cost me a fortune!”
“Oh, yeah,” Fletch said.
