Fletch’s Moxie

4

The lobby of the police station looked like the departure point for a summer camp. The film and television crews sat around in various combinations of shorts, jeans, T-shirts, halters, sandals, boots, sneakers, sunglasses, western hats, warm-up jackets. Plastic and leather sacks bulging with their equipment hung from their shoulders and lay at their feet. Fletch had put moccasins on before entering the station.

The local press, two wearing neckties, stood in a clump in the middle of the lobby. There were lightweight sound cameras among them.

Fletch leaned against the frame of the front door.

All these various people engaged in getting various kinds of reality onto various kinds of film eyed each other with friendly distance, like members of different denominations at a religious convention. They were all brothers in the faith but they worshipped at different altars.

A few looked at Fletch curiously, but no group claimed him. He was not proselytized.

Around the room were a few familiar faces he had never seen before in person. Edith Howell, who played older women, mothers, these days; John Hoyt, who played fathers, businessmen, lawyers, sheriffs; John Meade, who played the local yokel in any locale. The young male lead, Gerry Littleford, sat on a bench along the wall in white duck trousers and a skintight black T-shirt. Like a well-designed sports car, even at rest he looked like he was going three hundred kilometers an hour. His lean body seemed molded by the wind. His black skin shone with energy. His dark eyes reflected light as they flashed around the room, seeing everything, watching everybody at once, missing nothing. The girl in the halter who had been kind to Marge Peterman was next to him, leaning against a wall, chewing a thumbnail. Marge Peterman was not there. There was a short, thin, weather-beaten man Fletch had not seen before, even on film, wearing some sort of a campaign hat and longer shorts than others wore. Fletch noticed him now because he was the only other person in the room who did not seem a part of any group.

The booking desk was to the left. Across the lobby from it, between two brown doors, was a secretary’s desk. One door was labeled CHIEF OF POLICE, the other, INVESTIGATIONS.

The instant the door marked INVESTIGATIONS opened the two mini-cameras were hefted onto shoulders, unnaturally white lights went on, and the two men in neckties, holding up pen-sized microphones like priests about to give blessings, stepped forward. The other reporters followed them.

Her head neither particularly up nor down, her eyes looking directly at no one, Moxie Mooney came through the door and started slowly across the lobby. She was a saddened, concerned person momentarily oblivious to others, despite the light, despite the noise.

Using a Brazilian dance step which hadn’t been invented yet and elbows which had had much practice, Fletch shoved forward with the rest of the press. The reporters were murmuring polite questions, How do you feel? Will shooting continue on Midsummer Night’s Madness?

Fletch’s voice was the loudest and sharpest of all: “Ms. Mooney—did you kill Steven Peterman?”

All the reporters jerked their heads to look at him and some of them even gasped.

Moxie Mooney’s deep brown eyes settled on him and narrowed.

Fletch repeated: “Did you kill Steve Peterman?”

With a hard stare, she said, “What’s your name, buster?”

“Fletcher,” he said. Magnanimously, he added, “You can call me Fletch, though. When you call me.”

Other reporters t’ched and shook their heads and otherwise expressed embarrassment at their crass colleague.

After staring at him a moment, Moxie said, slowly, clearly into the cameras, “I did not kill Steve Peterman.”

The other reporters resumed clucking sympathetic questions. How long have you known Steve Peterman? Were you close?

Loudly, Fletch asked: “Ms Mooney—were you and Steve Peterman lovers?”

When she looked at Fletch this time, there was revulsion in her face.

“No,” she said. “Mister Peterman and I were not lovers.”

“What were your relations with Peterman?” Fletch asked.

Moxie hesitated, just slightly. “Strictly business. Steve was my manager,” she said. “He took care of my business affairs. He helped produce this film.” Her eyes closed fully and she took a deep breath. “And he was my friend.”

Fletch thought he was doing a sufficiently surreptitious job of fading back through the crowd when he felt a hand on his arm.

He turned.

The short man was squinting at Fletch. He removed his hand.

“Haven’t seen you before,” he said. “Who are you?

“I.M. Fletcher. Global Cable News.”

“City guy, huh? National news type.”

“You got it in one.”

Behind the short man, the question rang out: Do you think the murder of Peterman had anything to do with the earlier hit-and-run incident?

Fletch couldn’t hear Moxie’s answer.

“Listen to me, Mister,” the short reporter said. “We don’t treat people like that around here.”

“Like what?”

“That little lady—” The reporter jerked his tape recorder toward the sweat-stained shirt of another reporter. “—just lost her friend to death. Do you understand that? Asking her questions like you just did is just plain uncivil.”

“Where you from?” Fletch asked. “The Girl Scout Monthly?”

“St. Petersburg.”

“Listen, man—”

“Don’t you ‘listen, man’ me.” The short man pressed his index finger against Fletch’s chest. “You get away from Ms Mooney and you get away from this story, or you’ll find yourself stomped.”

Fletch heard a reporter ask: Ms Mooney, do you believe there are people trying to stop this film from being made?

Again, Fletch did not hear her answer.

To the short reporter he said, “That would be uncivil of you.”

“Don’t you scoff at us, Mister. You work South and you mind your manners—you hear?”

“In this business,” Fletch said to the short reporter, “there is no such thing as a wrong question. There are only wrong answers.”

As he was leaving the lobby, Fletch heard a reporter ask: Ms Mooney, have you yourself received any death threats?

“Hey,” Moxie said.

She got into the front seat of the white Lincoln Continental and closed the door.

“Hey.” Fletch was waiting in the back seat. She had taken exactly as long with the press as he thought she would. Without air-conditioning running, the car was hot, even on a gray day.

“Why are you sitting in the front seat?” Fletch asked.

“I’m a democratic star.”

A few people were milling around the car, looking in.

“You believe in Equity?”

“And Equity believes in me. I pay my dues.”

She sat sideways on the front seat and put her tanned arm along the top of the backrest.

“I may call you Fletch?”

“When you call me.”

“That’s a funny name. Think of all the things with which it rhymes.”

“Yes,” he mused. “Canelloni, for one. Prognathous, lasket, checkerberry, scantling, Pyeshkov, modulas, Gog and Magog.”