Good night, Bill.”
22
“ ’Mornin’. Thank you,” Fletch said into the bedside phone. It had rung and he assumed it was the hotel operator calling to tell him it was six-thirty.
“You’re welcome,” said the strong voice of The Man Who.
Fletch looked at his watch. It was only six-twenty.
“ ’Morning,” Fletch said in a voice that wasn’t too strong. He sat up in the bed. His shoulders and chest and stomach were wet with sweat. Steam was clanging in the radiators. The room had been cold when he went to bed. He had put on an extra blanket from the closet. Now he threw the blankets off
“You’re up early,” said Governor Caxton Wheeler.
“Am I?”
“Apparently.”
“Oh, yes,” Fletch said intelligently. “I must be.”
“Are you awake now?”
“Sure. Ask me a riddle. Never mind, you know the answer.”
“Look, Fletch, I’ve just called Lansing Sayer. Asked him to join me in the car on the ride out to the hospital.”
“Hospital?”
“I’m visiting the Farmingdale Hospital this morning.”
“Oh, yeah. I mean, oh, yes. Sir.”
“He can interview me in the car on the way out. I want you to come along. To keep me honest.”
“Okay. I mean, yes, sir.”
“We’ll leave about eight-thirty. Flash will drive us out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“See you out front at eight-thirty. Are you awake?”
“Like a snowman on …”
“What were you doing when I called?” There was laughter in the governor’s voice.
Fletch ran his thumb down his chest and stomach. “Sweating.”
“Great,” said The Man Who. “Nothing like exercise first thing in the morning. Do a push-up for me. I’ll feel the better for it.”
Fletch padded to the door, opened it, and saw the stack of newspapers a volunteer had left for him in the hotel corridor.
DEATH STALKS WHEELER CAMPAIGN
Fletch knelt on one knee and scanned the story, with many photographs, which began on page three:
Farmingdale—Presidential Candidate Caxton Wheeler and his staff have refused to answer questions about the murders of two young women which have happened on their campaign trail within the last week.
The second young woman, Alice Elizabeth Shields, 28, was found naked and beaten on the sidewalk just below Wheeler’s seventh floor hotel suite.
Campaign officials even refuse to state they have no knowledge of the women or of their murders….
The by-line read Michael J. Hanrahan.
“Well, well,” Fletch muttered into the empty hotel corridor. “The dam has broken. Somebody better get a mop.”
23
“No, no eggs for me,” Ira Lapin said. He and Fletch were in a booth in the hotel’s coffee shop. “My doctor gave me a big warning against cholesterol. No bacon, either. I forget what’s wrong with bacon. I’m sure something is. No coffee, of course.” He ordered oatmeal, unbuttered toast, and tea. “What is cholesterol, anyway? Little boomies that gang up trying to get through the doorways to your heart?”
“I think it gives you hardening of the head or something.”
“I’d never notice,” Ira said. “If my head were any harder I could never sneeze.”
Fletch ordered steak and eggs, orange juice, and coffee.
“What is it with you young people?” Ira asked. “Can’t afford to go to a doctor and never enjoy breakfast again?”
“My worry is the population explosion,” Fletch said.
“And that’s your answer to the population explosion? Commit suicide at breakfast?”
“Not suicide,” Fletch answered. “I just don’t hope to take up space beyond my allotted time.”
Ira nodded sagely. “An original point of view.”
“Everybody has to worry about something.”
“These doctors kill you,” Ira said. “Everything’s bad for you. Booze is bad for you. Tobacco. Coffee. Red meat. The egg is bad for you. What can be more innocent than the egg? It isn’t even born yet.”
“Milk, cheese, chocolate. Water. Air.”
“They want us to go straight from our incubators to our coffins. No outside influences, please; I’m living.”
“Tough life.” The waitress brought them their tea and coffee. “Doubt we’ll ever adapt to it.”
“I take from the unhealthiest doctor I could find. He’s a wreck. Fat as the federal budget. He smokes like a public utility; drinks as if he has as many different mouths as a White House source. When he breathes, you’d think someone is running a caucus in his chest. Thought he’d be easy on me. Tolerant. Relaxed. Not a bit of it. Still he gives me that old saw, ‘Don’t do as I do; do as I say.’ I guess I should. Already he’s invested in a burial plot, he tells me. And he’s only thirty-two.”
Breakfast came.
“How do you like the campaign so far?” Ira Lapin asked the candidate’s press representative.
“Getting some surprises,” Fletch said.
“Like …?”
“Caxton Wheeler’s brighter than I thought. More honest. More sane.”
“You didn’t know him before?”
“No.”
“You knew his son.”
“Yes.”
“What do you think of the press, now that you’re seeing us from a different angle?”
“Cute.”
“What do you mean, cute? Or are you referring only to La Arbuthnot?”
“That incident yesterday with the governor and the kids and the coins. The magic show he put on. I would never see that as a national issue.”
Ira nodded. “I reported it. I didn’t report it as an issue. I just reported it. Let people make of it what they will.”
“You mean, the editors, news directors …”
“It’s the little things that count,” Ira Lapin said. He had spooned cream and sugar onto his oatmeal, cream and sugar into his tea. He had put a quarter of a pot of jam on his toast. Blissfully, he was eating everything. “You know you’ve been thrown in here as a sacrificial lamb. Yes. You have. You’ve been thrown to the wolves. To me. To us. You’re surprised? Eat your steak. Steak for breakfast. You’d drive my doctor to drink. Never mind. For him it’s not a long ride. We’re at the point in the campaign where they need someone young in your job. A throwaway. Nothing wrong with James except he was tired. His tricks were tired. He was boring us. You’re young, and people say you have a crazy mind. You do. Ignore the doctor because you worry about the population explosion. You’ll keep us entertained, all right. There’s a story you gave Solov a bottle of eyedrops. You do that?”
