doing the job you’re assigned to do.”
“Yeah,” Fletch said grimly. “Thanks.”
“We can get married Saturday, we can have a honeymoon, and maybe you’ll even have a job when we get back.”
“That’s right.” Cindy had stopped laughing. She was looking at Fletch with new eyes. “You’re a reporter!”
Fletch sighed. “Right.”
“For the
“For the
“What’s going on?” Barbara asked.
“Cool,” said Cindy. “That explains everything!”
Fletch said, “I’m afraid it does.”
“Have you written anything for the newspaper I might have read?” Cindy asked.
“Sunday,” Fletch said. “Did you read ‘Sports Freaks at End of Line’?”
“Yeah,” Cindy said. “Sure I did. The lead piece in the sports section. Real good. Did you write that?”
Fletch said, “Just the headline.”
“Oh.”
“What were you doing?” Barbara grinned gamely, as if asking to be let in on a joke she might have already ruined. “Being undercover?”
“Thanks for asking,” Fletch said.
Cindy began laughing again. She clapped her hands. “Super!”
“ ‘Super,’ ” Fletch quoted grimly.
The waiter gave the bill to Fletch. “Serving you, sir,” said the waiter, “is an affliction I’d hate to have become an addiction.”
Fletch stared at him.
Cindy took the bill. “No. This is on the company, remember?” She laughed out loud again. “You might say, it’s on the house!”
“Anyway, Cindy,” Barbara said. “We’re going to be married on a bluff, overlooking the ocean. Did I tell you that? The weather’s supposed to be nice Saturday.”
Cindy was paying the bill in cash. “Remember, we’re having dinner with my mother tonight,” Barbara said uncertainly to Fletch.
“Tonight for dinner,” Fletch said somberly, “I’m having my head on a plate.”
“Cindy,” Barbara said. “Around the corner there’s a sports shop. There’s this great-looking skiing suit in the window. You know, for our honeymoon. Want to walk over with me and see how I look in it?”
“Sure,” Cindy said. She left the waiter a generous tip.
The two women stood up from the table.
Fletch remained, elbow on the table, chin on his hand.
“See you, Fletch,” Barbara said.
Fletch didn’t answer.
Cindy said happily, “See you, Fletch! At the wedding! Saturday!”
After Cindy had gone a few paces, she turned around, again doubled over in laughter. “Fletch!” she called. “You’re being married on a bluff!”
“Hello? Hello?” Fletch knocked loudly on the frame of the screen door. Inside the bungalow a television was playing loudly but nevertheless was drowned out by a child crying, other children yelling, and the noise of some mechanical toy. “Hello!” he shouted.
The front porch was a junkyard of broken toys, a scooter with its neck twisted, a crunched tricycle, a flattened plastic doll, a play stove that looked like it had been assaulted with an ax.
On the television, a woman’s voice said, “If you tell Ed what you know about me, Mary, I’ll see you rot in hell.”
Inside the house, a woman’s voice shouted, “Keep up that bawlin’, Ronnie, and I’ll slap you silly!”
A man’s voice said, “Now, now. Let’s get this eating process completed. The kiddies must eat, Nancy. Keep up their strength!”
Associate Professor Thomas Farliegh’s bungalow was eight blocks from the edge of the university campus. Other humble houses surrounding it had vestiges of paint on them and at least undisturbed stands of weeds in their front gardens. Farliegh’s house was yellow and gray with rot, a front window was smashed in its center, and the front yard was packed dirt, holding, among other things, a wheelless, collapsed, rusted yellow Volkswagen.
Driving to Farliegh’s house, Fletch had heard a repeat of the radio news report Barbara had mentioned. Stuart Childers had confessed to murdering Donald Habeck. He had confessed—and been released.
Fletch stood as close to the screen door as he could and shouted as loudly as he could, “Hey! Hello!”
Noise within the house dimmed fractionally.
A shadow the other side of the screen door grew into a woman who said, “Who are you?”
“Fletcher.”
“Who? I don’t know you. Better come in.”
Inside it was discovered it was not the screen door which had made him less audible.
“Are you a student?” the woman asked.
“I’m from the
“Tom’s back here,” she said. “I don’t know if he’s corrected your paper yet.” She led him into the kitchen at the back of the house. “You said your name is Terhune?”
The house smelled of diapers, burned food, spilled milk, and ordinary household dirt.
“I’m from the newspaper,” Fletch said.
In the kitchen, beside the blaring television set, a battery-operated toy tank treading noisily along the floor, up and down piles of laundry, garbage, and books, were five children, all of whom seemed to be under the age of seven. Two were in diapers, three in underpants. Each seemed to have been freshly bathed that morning in used dishwater.
A short, bald, chubby man was at the chipped kitchen table spooning mushed prunes into an infant in a high chair. The man’s eyes, visible as he glanced up at Fletch for a brief instant, were a startlingly pale blue. Four of the children also had light blue eyes, but none as light as his.
The woman said something.
“What?” Fletch asked.
The television said, “… transporting a cargo of dumdum bullets…”
The woman turned it down, which left just the noises of the tank overcoming all obstacles on the floor, two children shouting and kicking each other, and one small child sitting on a torn cushion against the wall bawling lustily.
“Ronnie,” the woman said to the bawling child, “stop crying, or I’ll kick you in the mouth.” Her threat went unheeded. Her feet were bare.
“Do you have a car?” the woman asked Fletch.
“Yes. Are you Nancy Farliegh?”
“He wants to see you,” the man at the table said.
“I’m sure he wants to see you, Tom. Something about a paper.”
“I want to see you, Nancy. I’m from a newspaper.”
“Oh,” she said. “About my father’s death.” She was wearing a loose, bleach-stained skirt and a green, food- stained blouse. Her arms and legs were thin and white, her stomach distended. Her hair hung in greasy strands. “I don’t care to say anything about that, but I do need a ride.”
“I’ll give you a ride.”
“Our car is broken,” the man at the table said. “Smashed.
