“Because you asked me.”
“Why do you characterize Steven Peterman as ‘a son of a bitch’?”
“He was a nuisance. Look,” Fletch said, “the house there is on the beach. Above the beach. It’s a beach house.”
“You’re loosing your conciseness.”
“People hang around in swim suits. Pasta and fish for supper on the patio. A little wine. Music.”
“You’re saying Peterman didn’t fit in.”
“Always in a three-piece suit. He wore a cravat. Wouldn’t go on the beach because he didn’t want sand against his Gucci loafers.”
“Intolerable behavior.”
“Always on the telephone. Calling Rome, Geneva, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires. I know. I got the phone bill. It would have been cheaper to have had the entire French government for the weekend.”
“All right. He was an inconsiderate houseguest.”
“Every night he insisted everybody get dressed up and plod through the most expensive cafes, restaurants, night clubs, casinos on the Riviera.”
“And you paid?”
“Everytime a bill came, he was on the telephone somewhere.”
“Okay.”
“Worse. Everytime he saw Moxie, he bothered her with some clause of some contract, or some detail of her schedule, ran over the names of people she was to meet in Berlin two weeks from then, Brussels, who, what, where, when, why. He never left her alone. She was there to relax.”
“And play games with you. You two avoided him?”
“As much as we could. It’s hard to ignore a government-in-residence.”
“You played hide-and-seek with him.”
“Yeah.”
“Marjory Peterman was not with you that weekend. Right?”
“Right.”
“Where was she?”
Fletch shrugged. “Home milking her minks, for all I know.”
“I repeat the question: you have never seen or spoken with Marjory Peterman before today?”
“Right. No. Never.”
“You knew the victim, Steven Peterman, and admit not liking him.”
“I would never murder anyone over a phone bill. Instead, I just wouldn’t pay it. I’d move to Spain.”
“And you have this complicated love-slash-hate relationship with Moxie Mooney.”
Fletch looked at her from under lowered eyelids. “Don’t make too much of that.”
She looked evenly back at him. “Frankly, Mister Fletcher, I think you and Ms Mooney are capable of anything… together.” She glanced at the tape recorder, at Fletch, and at the typewritten list on her desk. “Okay, Mister Fletcher. I guess I don’t need to tell you not to leave the Fort Myers area.”
“You don’t need to tell me.”
Roz Nachman turned off the tape recorder.
6
Soaking wet from running through the heavy rain, Fletch slowed at the top of the outside, sheltered stairs when he recognized Frederick Mooney’s famous profile.
His back to the white, churning Gulf of Mexico, Mooney was sitting alone at a long table on the second floor verandah of a drinks-and-eat place on Bonita Beach. On the table in front of him was a half empty litre bottle. In his hand was a half empty glass.
Fletch ambled to the bar. “Beer,” he said.
“Don’t care which kind?” The bartender had the tight, permanently harrassed look of the retired military.
“Yeah,” Fletch said. “Cold.”
The bartender put a can of cold beer on the bar. “Some rain,” he said.
“Enough.” Fletch popped the lid on the beer can. “Mister Mooney been here long?”
No one else was on the verandah.
“You come to collect him?”
“Yeah.”
“Couple of hours.”
“Has he had much to drink?”
“I don’t know.”
Fletch swallowed some beer. “You don’t know?”
“Drinks out of his own bottle. Carries it with him. Five Star Fundador Cognac. I don’t keep such stuff.”
At Frederick Mooney’s feet was an airlines travel bag.
“You allow that?”
“No. But he tips well. As long as he pays a big rent for the glass, I don’t care. After all, he is Frederick Mooney.”
There was a roll of thunder from the northwest. Rain was blowing into the verandah.
“Does he come here every day?”
“No. I think he hits all the places on the beach.”
“In what kind of shape was he when you rented him the glass?”
“He’d been drinkin’ somewhere else before. Took him ten minutes to get up the stairs. Heard him comin’. Had to help him sit down and then bring his bag over to him.”
The rain spray was passing over Mooney.
“Think of a famous, talented man like that…”
The bartender popped a can of beer for himself.
“You an actor, too?”
“Yeah,” said Fletch. “At this moment.”
“I mean, you’ve come from the film crew, and all, to pick him up. What films you ever been in?”
“That the one with Elizabeth Taylor?”
“No,” said Fletch. “Maud Adams.”
“Oh, yeah. I remember.”
“He ever talk to anybody?” Fletch asked, nodding to Mooney.
“Oh, yeah, he’s friendly. He talks to everybody. Usually the old ladies are six deep around him. Young people, too. Mostly he recites lines. Sometimes he gets loud.”
“Good for business though, huh?”
“Sure.”
“A traveling tourist attraction.”
“You’d think he’d be livin’ on the Riviera, or something. Superstar like that. He’s a lonely man.”
“All the wrong people live on the Riviera.”
Fletch walked over and stood at the edge of Mooney’s table.
Mooney did not look up.
Lightning flashed in the north sky.
“Your daughter sent me for you, Mister Mooney.”
Mooney still did not look up. He was breathing rapidly, shallowly. Spray was lightly in his hair and on his shirt.
Suddenly, the great voice came out of this hunched over man, not loud, but with the compel ling vibrato of an awfully good cello played by an awfully good musician.
