“What did I forget now?” Frank looked at his fly.
“My expense account.”
“We expect there to be expenses.”
“Yeah, but I’m going to write my expense account with accuracy painful to you.”
“That will be a novelty.”
“In detail. I’m going to write down exactly what money I’m spending on the Ben Franklyn Friend Service, and for what services.”
“Expense accounts are never questioned, if the story’s worth the expense.”
“Frank, I’m gonna file a pornographic expense account.”
Frank opened the door to the corridor. “Maybe we’ll print that, too.”
“What will the publisher say about that?”
Leaving the men’s room, Frank said, “Give it your best shot, kid.”
“As I live and breathe,” said the Beauty in the Broad-brimmed Hat. “You must be Fletcher.”
Standing in the door of her small office, Fletch frowned. “What makes you say that?”
“Your suit, darling. Your suit.” Sitting corsetless at her console, Amelia Shurcliffe, society columnist for the
Fletch looked down at Donald Habeck’s suit. “Exciting?”
“You don’t mean to tell me you don’t know what you’re doing! At fashion, you’re just an unconscious genius!”
“I’m unconscious, all right.”
“Look how you’re dressed, Fletcher darling.” Although Amelia was staring at Fletch, head to toe and back again, she nevertheless kept glancing at her telephone. “That gray businessman’s suit is miles too small for you. Surely you know that?”
“One or two have mentioned it.”
“Your trousers are up to your shins, your sleeves nearly up to your elbows, and you have yards of extra material around your waist.”
“Pretty cool, uh?”
“I’ll say. The point of fashion, my dear, if you’ll listen to old Amelia, not that you need to, clearly, is to wear clothes which make other people want to get them off you.”
“Have I succeeded at that?”
“Brilliantly. You look lost and uncomfortable in that suit.”
“I am.”
“Anyone, seeing you, would want to tear those clothes off you.”
“Would they turn down the air-conditioning first?”
“And you encourage that impulse, you see. The jacket and shirt are much too narrow across your chest and shoulders. Your shirt buttons are straining. Why, you’re just ready to burst out of those clothes.”
“I’m a fashion plate, am I?”
“So original. What do you call that style?”
Fletch shrugged. “Borrowed.”
“‘Borrowed,’ ” Amelia said with great satisfaction. She typed a few words on her console. “I’ll use that.”
“Have you heard about jodhpurs?”
“What about jodhpurs?”
“They’re going to be all the rage in a month. Cecilia’s Boutique is fully stocked with them.”
“Jodhpurs, darling, were all the rage months ago.”
“Oops.”
Amelia glanced at her telephone. “Now, darling, other than your presenting me with a vision of brilliant, new, young fashions, to what do I owe the honor of this visit?”
“Habeck, Donald Edwin. Haven’t done my homework on him yet, but I was hoping you’d point me in the right direction.”
Amelia’s eyelids lowered. “You mean that sleazy criminal lawyer who was shot in our parking lot this morning?”
“The same.”
“Not Society, darling. A creature like Donald Edwin Habeck could be shot just anywhere. And was.”
“But supposedly he was giving five million dollars to the art museum.”
Slowly, Amelia Shurcliffe said, “I should think Biff Wilson would have the exclusive on that story for this newspaper.”
“Oh, right,” said Fletch. “I’m just tracing down the social aspects of it.”
“The social aspects of murder? Are there any other?”
“You know, the five million dollars.”
“Did he actually give the five million dollars to the museum?”
“I believe he was just about to announce it.”
“Well,” Amelia sighed. “People do give money to charities.”
“You say Habeck was not socially prominent?”
“People like Habeck exist in a very peculiar way,” Amelia said. “One knows them, of course, but, at best at the other end of a telephone. You know, if one shoots one’s husband in the middle of the night, having once mistaken him as one’s lover and now wanting to have mistaken him as a burglar, one must have someone to call, mustn’t one?”
“I guess.”
“One must know people of that sort well enough to be able to call them, but have them to dinner as a regular thing? No. Their presence might give one’s husbands ideas.”
“I guess you’re serious about all this.”
“The Habecks of this world are not to be trusted. After all, when we hire someone like Habeck we’re hiring someone to lie for us. Isn’t that what we’re doing? That’s what people like Habeck do for a living. They’re professional liars. We don’t mind hiring them to lie for us. But do we want them to lie to us, at our own dinner tables? Of far more importance, do we want them lying to other people about what happened and what was said at our dinner tables?”
“Generally, aren’t lawyers trained to follow rules of evidence?”
Amelia Shurcliffe stared at Fletch a long moment. “Lawyers, my dear, are trained to follow rules of gullibility.”
“Okay. How rich was Habeck? Was he rich enough to give away five million dollars?”
“I have no idea. Probably. He’s always in the news over some sensational case, or other. Although how criminal lawyers get criminals to pay their law bills has always been a puzzle to me. There must be some trick to it.”
“I think there is.”
“His partner, Harrison, does all the divorces worth doing. These chaps aren’t in the law business to serve justice or just make a living, you know.”
“What about Mrs. Habeck? I’m a bit puzzled—”
“Have no idea. Don’t even know if there is a Mrs.
Habeck. I’ll have to read Biff Wilson in the morning. As I said, the Habecks of this world do not shine socially.”
“Amelia, I was in Habeck’s house this morning, very briefly, I admit, but I didn’t notice any paintings or other
