“That was the extent of your conversation?”
“No.” Betsy was dredging her memory. “Her father had been killed in an accident when she was nine years old. He worked for the Chicago Waterworks or something. When he was in a ditch, a pipe landed on his head. So she could never think of going to college, you see.”
“Oh. Anything else?”
“Her mother never recovered from her father’s death, got stranger and stranger, and finally five years ago committed herself to a state home.”
“Nothing else?”
“Well, she lived alone in a studio apartment. Married sister, living in Toronto, four children. Her husband owns a gun shop. Sally—that is, Alice Elizabeth Shields; she called herself Sally—had been engaged a couple of times, once to a Chicago policeman who got another girl pregnant and decided he’d better go marry her. Sally never married.”
“Is that all you’ve got?”
“She had something like thirty-seven hundred dollars in a savings account. So she quit her job, sublet her apartment, packed up her Volkswagen, and came a-wandering.”
“You didn’t get much out of her.”
“Just civilities over toast.”
“What was her Social Security number?”
“You think I’m nosy?”
“You are a reporter, after all.”
“I wasn’t interviewing her.”
“Why was she following the campaign?”
“Didn’t know she was, at that point.”
“While you were having breakfast with her, did she mention anyone who is traveling with the campaign by name?”
Betsy thought. “No. But she did seem to know I’m a reporter.”
“I wonder if it was something you said.”
The bus, at high speed, was climbing a left-curved hill. Fletch had to push off the seat backs not to land on Betsy.
“I mean, she didn’t ask me anything about myself.”
“You think she had a chance?”
“We were just talking.”
“While you were at breakfast with her, did anyone from the campaign say hello to her, nod to her as he went by, wave from across the breakfast room?”
“Not that I remember. She seemed a lonely person.”
“Eager to talk.”
“As long as she didn’t have to be assertive about it.”
“You were in the motel bar last night.”
“Yes. Drinking rum toffs.”
“What’s a rum toff?”
“Yummy.”
“At any time did you see this girl—Sally, you called her—in the bar with anybody, or leave the bar with anybody, anything?”
“I’m not aware of ever having seen her again since I had breakfast with her in Springfield.”
“But you saw her Volkswagen trailing the caravan.”
“No. I don’t know a Volkswagen from an aircraft carrier.”
“They’re different.”
“I expect so.”
“Sea gulls seldom follow a Volkswagen.”
“Oh. Well, at least I know the connection between the Shields woman and the campaign.”
“What?”
“There isn’t one. At least, as far as you can find out. So I won’t worry about it. As a story. Yet. Will you tell me if you discover there is a connection?”
“Probably not.”
“After all I just told you?”
“Not much. You said so yourself.”
“Now I have a question for you.”
“You just asked one.”
“Walsh has never married, has he?”
“Yes, he likes girls.”
“Oh, I can see that. Why don’t you introduce me to him? You’re his friend.”
“You don’t know him?”
“Not really. I mean, I’ve never been introduced as a woman to a man. As a reporter I know him.”
“I see.”
“He looks like he might go for the homebody type.”
“You’re a homebody?”
“I could be. If the home had a nice address on Pennsylvania Avenue.”
“Sixteen-hundred block.”
“Right.”
“Lots of rooms to clean.”
“You’ve never seen me with a mop.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Pink lightning. Flushed with excitement. Ecstasy. You ought to introduce us.”
“I will.”
“Somebody in a presidential family ought to marry a Ginsberg. We do nice table settings.”
“Agreed.”
“Tell him you and I worked together in Atlanta.”
The bus slowed. The bus driver was looking through the rearview mirror at Fletch.
“I never worked in Atlanta.”
“I did.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Irwin!” the bus driver shouted.
“Irwin!” Roy Filby echoed. “I’d rather see one than be one!”
“Telephone!” the bus driver shouted. In fact, a black wire led from the dashboard onto his lap.
Fletch said, “We have a telephone?”
“Not for the use of reporters,” Betsy said. “Staff only. Want to hear what James said about the duplicating machine?”
“I’ve heard.”
Fletch went forward. The bus driver handed him the phone from his lap.
“Hello?” Fletch said. “Nice of you to call.”
Barry Hines said, “You’d better come forward, Fletcher.”
“I’ve always been forward.”
“I mean into this bus. Watch the noon news with us.”
“Sure. Why?”
“Just heard from a friendly at U.B.C. New York that something unsavory is coming across the airwaves at us.”
“What?”
The phone went dead.
Brake lights went on at the rear of the campaign bus. It headed for the soft shoulder of the highway.
