“Biff—”
“Someone will come get you in a while,” Gomez said. “Enjoy waiting. It will be a lot of years before you ever get to spend any time alone again.”
“We’re going to go cook your papers, kid.” Biff held the door open for Gomez. “And, believe me, Gomez and I are the greatest chefs in the world.”
Fletch stood alone in the fluorescent-lit room. The door had thwunked closed. Wilson’s and Gomez’s footsteps faded down the corridor. Muffled shouts came from the cellblock.
Louise Habeck crossed his mind.
Fletch looked up at the dirty, barred window. Even with the bars on the outside, an electric wire ran from the closed window into the wall.
There was no air-conditioning/heat vent.
The walls were painted cement.
Green sneakers, blued hair, and a flowered dress…
It was crazy. Fletch went to the door and turned the knob. He pushed.
The door opened.
He looked out. The corridor was empty.
His heart going faster than his feet, he ambled along the corridor and up the stairs.
There was no one at the counter of the booking office.
In the lobby the same black woman who had been weeping there the night before was now sitting quietly on a bench. The sergeant at the reception desk was reading the sports pages of the
It took Fletch a moment to get the sergeant’s attention. Finally, he looked up.
“Lieutenant Gomez and Biff Wilson are having coffee in the lieutenant’s office,” Fletch said. “They’d like you to send out for some doughnuts. Jelly doughnuts.”
“Okay.” The sergeant picked up the phone and dialed three numbers. “The lieutenant wants some doughnuts,” he said into the phone. “No. He has his coffee. You know Gomez. If it ain’t mud, it ain’t coffee.”
“Jelly doughnuts,” Fletch said.
The sergeant said, “Jelly doughnuts.”
“Hiya, Pilar. How’re you doin’?”
“Good morning. This is Mary.”
“Oh. Good morning, Mary.”
“Code and name, please.”
Still ravenously hungry, Fletch was glad at least to be back in his own car, headed for his own apartment. “Seventeen ninety dash nine. Fletcher.”
Jogging to the bus stop, his eyes scanning the storefronts for a place open for breakfast, Fletch then realized he had no money. The police had stolen his wallet and keys. The thought amused him that if he robbed a convenience store, Alexander Liddicoat would be blamed.
His car was in the parking lot of a pizza store way out at the beach. He hitchhiked. The first driver who picked him up was a middle-aged man who sold musical instruments. He tried to interest Fletch in the roxophone. He was then picked up by a van filled with kids headed for the beach. At that hour of the morning they were passing around a joint of marijuana and already had finished one quart of white wine. A group of youngsters headed for the beach on a fine morning, each was near tears. It was past nine o’clock by the time Fletch arrived at his car, removed the parking-violation notice from it, hot-wired it, and started the drive back to his apartment.
“Messages for you,” said the resource desk’s Mary over the car phone. “Someone named Barbara called. Sounds like a personal message.”
“Yes?”
“We’re not supposed to take too many personal messages, you know.”
“Ah, come on, Mary. Be a sport.” Fletch’s hunger, the morning’s heat, the bright sunlight, made his eyes and head ache.
“Message is, ‘Did you eat all the pizza yourself? All is forgiven. Please phone.’ ”
The reference to pizza made his tum-tum beat a tom-tom.
“Well?” Mary asked.
“Well what?”
“Did you eat all the pizza yourself?”
“Mary, that’s a personal question. No personal questions, please.”
“You did. I think you ate the pizza yourself. There’s nothing worse than expecting someone to bring you a pizza and that someone eats it all himself.”
“Mary, have you had breakfast this morning?”
“Yes.”
“I haven’t.”
“You don’t need breakfast, with all the pizza you ate.”
“Is there another message?”
“I wouldn’t forgive you. Yes. Ann McGarrahan wants to hear from you. Message is, ‘Fletch, know you have your hands full with present assignment but please phone in. Beware B.W. and other social diseases.’ ”
“Okay.”
“What’s B.W.?”
“Mary, that’s another personal question.”
“I never heard of B.W.”
“You’re lucky.”
“I thought I knew all the social diseases. I mean, I thought I knew of them.”
“Fine. Now I need the address of Felix Gabais.” He spelled the name for her. “In the St. Ignatius district.”
“Aren’t you going to warn me about B.W.?”
“Mary? Stay away from B.W.”
“I mean, how do you catch it?”
“Sticking your nose in places it doesn’t belong.”
“Oh, we never do things like that. There’s only one Gabais in the St. Ignatius district. First name, Therese.”
“That’s it. He lives with his sister.”
“That’s 45447 Twig Street. Mapping shows the address to be a half-block west of a car dealership on the corner.”
“Thank you. One more: I need the address of Stuart Childers.” Again he spelled the name.
“That’s disgusting,” she said. “Anyone who does that deserves B.W.”
“Mary…”
“That’s 120 Keating Road. Mapping shows that to be Harndon Apartments. Swank.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“I shouldn’t tell you this, I suppose, but Mr. Wilson called in a while ago. He wanted that address, too.”
“Which address?”
“The one in St. Ignatius. Therese Gabais.”
“Mary, you’ve already got B.W.”
“Oh, don’t say that.”
“Be careful, Mary. B.W. can lay you up a long time.”
“This is an answering machine,” Fletch said into his apartment phone on the third ring. “I am not able to
