“No.”
“She was naked and beaten. Brutally beaten. Don’t need a coroner to tell me that. I saw that much with my own eyes. I would guess also raped. And further, I would guess she was either thrown off a balcony of this motel, or, virtually the same, driven to jump.”
Fletch’s eyes were round. “That only happened a half hour ago, Freddie. You couldn’t have gotten here that fast from New York or Los Angeles or—or from wherever you hang your suspicions.”
“Oh, you do know something about it.”
“I know a girl fell to her death from the roof of this motel about a half hour ago.”
“Dear Fletch. Always the last with the story.”
“Not always. Just when there’s Freddie Arbuthnot around.”
“I’d invite you into my room,” Freddie said, “but times I’ve tried that in the past I’ve been wickedly rebuffed.”
“What else do you know about this girl?”
“Not as much as I will know.”
“For sure.”
“Good night, Fletcher darling.”
Fletch stood foursquare to the door which was about to close in his face.
“Freddie! What is a crime reporter doing covering a presidential primary campaign?”
Door in hand, she stood on one tiptoed foot and kissed him on the nose.
“What’s a newspaper delivery boy doing passing himself off as a presidential candidate’s press secretary?”
3
“Who is it?” The voice through the door to Suite 748 was politely curious. Fletch was used to hearing that voice making somber pronouncements about supersonic bombers and the national budget.
“I. M. Fletcher. Walsh told me to come knock on your door.”
The door opened.
Keeping his hand on the doorknob, his arm extended either to embrace or restrain, Governor Caxton Wheeler grinned at Fletch while his eyes worked Fletch over like a football coach measuring a player for the line. Fletch fingered his collar and regretted having put back on the shirt he had been wearing all day.
Governor Caxton Wheeler’s face was huge, a map of all America, his forehead as wide as the plain states, his jaw as massive as all the South, his eyes as large and set apart as New York and Los Angeles, his nose as assertive as the skyscrapers of Chicago and Houston.
“Hello,” Fletch said. “I’m your new genius press representative.”
Smile growing stiff on his face, the presidential candidate stared at Fletch.
Fletch said: “Wanna buy a broom?”
“Well,” the governor said, “I want a clean sweep.”
“And I’ll bet you want to sweep clean,” Fletch said.
“Were you ever one of them?” the governor asked.
Fletch looked around him in the motel corridor. “One of who?”
“The Press.”
“The Press is The People, sir.”
“Funny,” said The Man Who. “I thought the government is. Come in.”
The governor took his hand off the doorknob and wandered in stockinged feet into the living room of the suite.
Fletch closed the door behind him.
The living room was decorated in Super Motel. There was a bad painting on the wall, oil on canvas, of a schooner under full sail. (In Fletch’s room there was a cardboard print of the same ship under full sail.) The four corners of the coffee table surface and the hands of the chair arms had chipped gold paint on them.
There were several liquor bottles on a side table.
The governor nodded to them. “Want a drink?”
“No, thanks.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“May I get you one?”
“No.” The governor sat on the divan. “My wife doesn’t approve. She says I have to get all my energy and all my relaxation from The People. I doubt if the sweet thing knows it, but what she is describing is a megalomaniac.”
The Man Who wore an open, washed-out, worn, sagging brown bathrobe. Over the breast pocket, in green, was CW. The robe draped his big, bare, white belly.
Fletch’s eyes moved back and forth from the deep tan of the governor’s face and the lily whiteness of the governor’s belly.
“You look like you just got home from summer camp,” the governor said. “Will the press accept you?” Fletch said nothing. The governor had not asked him to sit down. “A campaign is tough, and it’s exciting, and it’s boring. Not to worry.” On the coffee table in front of the governor, papers had spilled out of a briefcase. “By the end of this campaign—if we win this primary, that is—you’ll look as dissipated as a schoolchild in March.”
The other side of the room, beyond the governor, was a sliding glass door onto the balcony. The drapes were open.
Slowly, as if wandering aimlessly, Fletch crossed the room to the balcony doors. Trying to make the question sound conversational, he asked, “If you lose this primary, is the campaign over?”
“You win votes in a primary; you win contributions. You lose, and the contributions dry up. Motels and gas stations expect even presidential candidates to pay their bills. It’s the American way.”
Fletch snapped on the balcony light outside the glass doors. “Does the press know you’re short of funds?”
The governor did not turn around in the sofa to look at Fletch. “We don’t issue a financial report every day. But we have to get the message out through the press that we need money. If they ever thought our campaign was broke, they’d desert us faster than kittens leave a gully in the January thaw.”
On the balcony, the snow and ice, the slush, had been stirred up, walked on. A section of the railing had been scraped clean of snow.
“Have you been out on the balcony tonight?” Fletch asked.
Finally the governor turned around in his seat. “No. Why? At least, I don’t think so.”
“Somebody has been.”
“Some of the press were in earlier. For drinks. Some of the staff. Lots of cigarette smoke. I might have stepped out for some fresh air. I do things like that. Or a quiet word with someone. Must be slushy out there.”
Fletch turned off the balcony light and pulled the drapes closed. “Would there be people in your suite if you weren’t here? I mean, other than hotel staff?”
“Sure.” The governor turned around to face the coffee table again. “For traffic, my suite is second only to O’Hare International Airport. In fact, where is everyone now? Why isn’t the phone ringing?”
“Walsh had it turned off at the switchboard.” Fletch went through the living room and down the little corridor to the front door of the suite.
“Why did he do that?”
Fletch opened the door and tried the outside knob. “Your door is unlocked.”
“Sure. People come in and out all the time. What are you, a press agent or a security man?”
Fletch closed the door and came back into the living room. “Looks like you need a good security agent.”
“Flash is all I need for now. He doesn’t bother anybody. So,” the governor said, “you and Walsh knew each other in the service. I remember hearing about you.”
“Yes, sir. He was my lieutenant.”
“Was he any good that way?”
“You mean your son? As a lieutenant?”
