Fletch and the Man Who

Freddie stood up. “Fletch, let’s keep talking about this to each other, okay?”

“Absolutely.”

She crossed the room to the door. “There must be things we’re not noticing, not hearing, not seeing. You know—like that Ms Sullivan, the way she just treated that woman reporter from a local newspaper. She’s a tough, vicious broad.”

Fletch had put his suitcase on the floor. He had not opened the door. “Promise me something else, Freddie?”

“No.”

“Keep your eyes and ears open for your own sake. Someone traveling with us likes to maul women. You’re a woman.”

“I’ve never proven that to you.”

“I watched you fold my jacket.”

“Oh.”

“Going to kiss me on the nose again?”

“You’re exploiting me,” she said.

She kissed him warmly on the mouth.

Fletch let Freddie out and went back to answer his phone.

“More of the same tomorrow,” a whiskey voice grated in Fletch’s ear.

“Am I supposed to know who this is?”

“This is Newsbill’s star writer, you jackass.”

“Gee, Hanrahan. I thought you’d dashed to New York to catch your Pulitzer Prize.”

“More tomorrow,” Hanrahan said, “of specifically who refuses to talk to me about the murdered broads. I’m going to publish a list of questions I’m not getting answered. Like where was Caxton Wheeler when Alice Elizabeth Shields got exited through his bedroom window? In whose bedroom had she spent the previous four nights? Why was Barry Hines thrown out of the University of Idaho? While Walsh Wheeler was in the Marines, did he machine- gun a bunch of kids?”

“No.”

“Questions don’t matter, sonny. Just the answers or lack thereof.”

“Barry Hines flunked out of the University of Idaho. Chemistry. Many do.”

“Who cares? You got my point?”

“You’re doin’ fine, Hanrahan. If I actually let you talk to someone, will you really write down what he says and print it, like a reporter? Or just use the opportunity to write fiction?”

“Guess you got to take that chance, jackass. If I can’t print something that looks like answers, I’m going to print something that looks like questions.”

“Oh, I see,” Fletch said brilliantly. “That’s why people refer to what you write as questionable. ’Bye, Mike.”

Using his hotel room phone, Fletch then communicated with Barry Hines and told him to find Walsh and tell Walsh he must plan to see Michael J. Hanrahan and Fredericka Arbuthnot.

28

Fletch opened the back door of the rented black sedan. “Walsh said I should drive with you to the shopping plaza.” Doris Wheeler gave him a friendly nod. “Fine.” He had found Walsh, without topcoat or tie, standing on the sidewalk outside the hotel. Coldly, Walsh said he had agreed to meet with Fredericka Arbuthnot and Michael J. Hanrahan, if Fletch thought it so necessary.

“Shall I sit in front?” The two women, Doris Wheeler and Ms Sullivan, pretty well filled up the backseat. Fletch did not recognize the car’s rented driver.

“No, no,” Doris Wheeler said. “Plenty of room back here. Go around and get in the other side.”

Fletch went around the back of the car and got in the other side. Which pushed the tall, short-haired, big- nosed Ms Sullivan onto the middle of the seat, her feet onto the high gasline bump. Which made her look like a large dog in a small box. “We haven’t met,” Fletch said to her. “I. M. Fletcher.” Ms Sullivan raised her upper lip in greeting. “Sully.” The campaign bus was pulling away from the curb in front of the hotel, followed by the press bus. Around the area, other cars—those of volunteers and station wagons filled with television equipment— were rolling forward to form a caravan.

“Get behind the second bus,” Doris Wheeler ordered the driver.

In the road was slow confusion. The hotel’s doorman was trying to stop traffic so the caravan could assemble itself, but Farmingdale drivers were not impressed by his green-and-gold suit, or his brown derby hat. They honked their horns at him and insisted upon going directly about their own business.

A volunteer’s green van and a blue pickup truck ended up between the press bus and Doris Wheeler’s sedan. The bumper sticker on the pickup truck read: HONK FOR UPTON.

The rented driver honked his horn.

“Stop that,” Doris Wheeler said.

“I hear you had some difficulty with a local reporter this morning,” Fletch ventured.

“Cow,” said Sully.

“Was she rude or something?”

“Stupid.”

Doris said to the driver, “I told you to get directly behind the second bus.”

All the vehicles were jammed together at a red light. The driver looked at Doris through the rearview mirror and did nothing. There was nothing he could do.

“How did she offend you?” Fletch asked.

“I make appointments for Mrs. Wheeler,” Sully said.

“She didn’t need a real appointment. All she wanted to do was hang around and watch, listen.”

“We didn’t have time for any such person this morning,” Sully said. “Furthermore, you are not to force people upon us, Fletcher. All this is none of your affair.”

“My ‘affair,’ as you call it,” Fletch said, “is the whole campaign. We’re supposed to be working together.”

“Now, now.” Doris Wheeler patted Sully’s knee. “Mr. Fletcher is working for this campaign. We’re looking forward to his help. You’re going to start being a great help to us, aren’t you, Mr. Fletcher?”

Doris Wheeler’s voice was abrasive even in dulcet tones in the back of the car.

At the appearance of a green light the caravan had sprung forward.

“Pass those two vehicles,” Doris Wheeler said.

“We won’t lose the buses, ma’am,” the driver said.

“Pass them, I said!”

Again the driver glanced through the rearview mirror. On the main street of Farmingdale he swung the car out into oncoming traffic. An approaching yellow Cadillac screeched on its brakes. A Honda smashed into its rear end. The rented driver got back into the right lane ahead of the pickup truck, but still behind the volunteer’s car.

“Imbecile,” Doris Wheeler said. She pronounced it imbeseal “Get ahead of this car.”

“When I have room,” the driver muttered.

“Don’t you speak to me that way,” Doris Wheeler said. “Do as you’re told!”

They were far enough away from the center of Farmingdale so that the traffic had lightened. The driver swung out, waved the volunteer’s car back, and pulled up snug behind the press bus.

“Ought to be nice to the local press,” Fletch said. “Judy Nadich may be a feature writer for the Farmingdale Views this year. But three years from now she may be a columnist for the Washington Post.”

“Three years from now,” Sally said, “she’ll be up to her nose in diapers and burning meatloaf for a beery husband.”

“I don’t know what you two are talking about,” Doris Wheeler said.