Fletch and the Man Who

“Yeah.”

“How old?”

“Twenties. They say.”

“Damned shame.”

“Apparently she jumped from the roof right over your windows.”

The governor looked at Fletch. “So that’s why you showed up at my door tonight? Checked the balcony. The door.” He looked at Walsh. “Turned off the phone. You guys are working together already.”

“People had been on your balcony,” Fletch said quietly. “Your front door was unlocked.”

“You don’t know anything about it,” Walsh said.

“In fact, I do,” the governor said. “I heard the sirens. Saw the ambulance lights flashing. How can I pretend it didn’t happen?”

“I guess she actually jumped just as you were coming into the hotel.”

“No one said she jumped,” Fletch said. “Someone told me the girl was naked and had been beaten before she hit the sidewalk.”

“Anyone we know?” the governor asked.

Walsh shrugged. “A political groupie, best I can find out.”

“No.”

“A political groupie?” asked Fletch.

“Yeah,” Walsh said. “There are people who think political campaigns are fun. They follow the campaign— literally. They travel from town to town with the candidate’s party, try to get into the same hotels—generally just hang around. Women mostly, girls; but men too. Sometimes they turn into useful volunteers.”

“Was this girl a volunteer?” the governor asked.

“No. Dr. Thom saw the body. Said he thinks she’s been with us less than a week. Never saw her doing anything for the campaign.”

“Name?”

“Don’t want you to know her name, Dad. When reporters ask you about her, I don’t want the expression on your face that you’d ever heard her name before.”

“Okay. Can we do something nice? Send flowers—?”

“Nothing, please. She was just someone who happened to be in the motel. Fletch has the job, as of right now, of denying this girl had anything to do with the campaign. And without making an issue of it.”

Fletch said, “You said the woman had been trailing this campaign for almost a week.”

Walsh said: “That’s the problem.”

A thin man in an oversized sport coat, carrying a little black bag, entered the suite. He too did not knock.

The governor said to him, “Want to go to sleep, Dr. Thom.”

“Go to sleep you will,” said the doctor. “You’re not getting eight hours every night.”

“I will tomorrow night,” the governor said. “If all goes well.”

“Come on,” Walsh said to Fletch. “We’ve got one or more things to do.”

As Walsh and Fletch were leaving the suite, Dr. Thom was saying, “You’ve got to get eight hours every night, Governor. Every night. If Walsh can’t work it out for you, we’ll have to get someone else to run your campaign.”

“Listen, Bob. I got real tired around four o’clock today. Couldn’t think. Started repeating myself.”

“Okay,” Dr. Thom said. “Okay. I’ll give you something after lunch tomorrow….”

5

“Got to leave Mother’s schedule in her suite for her,” Walsh said as they walked down the corridor. His jaw was particularly tight.

“Does this Dr. Thom travel with the campaign?” Fletch asked.

“Shut up.”

The door to Suite 758 was unlocked. Walsh seemed to know it would be.

They entered a suite identical to the one they had just left. The chips on the gold paint seemed identical. The painting of the ship was oil on canvas. Even the bottles on the bar seemed identical, with identical quantities missing.

The lights in the room were low.

Walsh dropped a schedule on the coffee table. “Close the door,” he said to Fletch. “Let’s sit down a minute.”

Fletch closed the door.

Walsh did not brighten the lights. He sat in an armchair identical to the one he had just left in his father’s suite, at the side of the room next to a reading lamp turned low. “Mother isn’t due in on the plane from Cleveland until after one. We can talk a little.”

“Didn’t know your parents were separated,” joked Fletch. He sat in the same chair he had just been in. At least it looked and felt the same.

Carrying on at his regular pace, Walsh said: “Yes. Dr. Thom travels with the campaign. He is available to the candidate and his wife, the staff, members of the press, volunteers, bus drivers, pilots, whoever else. Have ringing in the ears? See Dr. Thom. Intestinal problems? Line forms at the rear.”

“That’s not what the question meant, Walsh.”

“No. That wasn’t what your question meant.” Walsh took a deep breath. “My parents are not separated. On the campaign trail mostly they stay in separate suites because their schedules are different. Their sleep is important. They have different staffs, for the most part.”

“Have you lost your sense of humor?” Fletch asked.

“I don’t like stupid questions in the corridor of a public hotel.”

“There was no one in the corridor, Walsh. It’s past midnight.”

“Don’t care. Someone could have heard you.”

Fletch noticed that across the dark living room, the door to the bedroom was closed.

“You either understand what I’m saying, Fletch, or you can go back to Ocala, Florida, and play the horses, or whatever you were doing.”

“So what are you saying, Lieutenant? Give it to me in small words, simple sentences.”

“Loyalty, Fletch. Absolute loyalty. We’re on a campaign to get my father, Governor Caxton Wheeler, elected President of the United States. I want you to be the campaign’s main press representative. As such, you will see things and know things you will question. When this happens, you are to ask me, but you are to ask me in private. You just saw Dr. Thom carry his little black bag into Dad’s room after midnight. And you were going to ask me about it in the corridor of a public hotel.”

“That’s a no-no,” Fletch said.

“That’s a no-no. Maybe you’re going to see and hear things that surprise you, things you don’t like. You don’t have to be very old in this world to lose your idealism. Nothing and no one is perfect. When that happens, you shut up about it.”

“You mean like when your mother cancels a visit to a children’s burn center to play indoor tennis with some old cronies—”

“You sure don’t point it out to the press. And if the press happens to pick it up, you put the best face on it possible.”

“Walsh, I hate to break your cadence, but I think I know all this. I even accept most of it.”

“And you watch the jokes you make. America wants to go to bed at night thinking of the candidate and his wife doing the same things they’re doing: vying with each other for the bathroom sink to brush their teeth, sharing a reading lamp in bed, saying little good-night words to each other. Their actually staying in separate suites is logistically necessary, but the public doesn’t want to know that. It disturbs the image. It gives certain sick minds the thought that having separate suites gives Dad the opportunity to have other ladies in his room, and therefore