Fletch, Too

We have to tell someone.”

“Barbara, just wait a minute.”

“Can you identify the murderer? The first man in the men’s room?”

“Yes.”

“What did he look like?”

“Middle-aged. Slim. Thinning, sandy hair. Pencil moustache. Khaki clothes. Safari jacket.”

“What were they arguing about?”

“I couldn’t tell. Foreign language. Portuguese, I think.”

“Fletch, we have to tell someone.”

“Barbara, you’re not thinking.”

“What’s to think about? You saw a murder.”

“We’ve just arrived in Kenya. We don’t know how things are here. Because of the skis, the ski clothes, we made clowns of ourselves coming through customs.”

“Come on. That was funny.”

“Yeah. And the press will report we were not acting normally going through customs. We seemed confused.”

“I am confused.”

“I know. I’ve written reports like that. Barbara, we attracted the attention of the two gun-carrying soldiers.”

“True.”

“What are we doing in Kenya?”

“What are we doing in Kenya with skis?”

“We’re here to meet my father. Prove it. There’s this washed-out letter inviting us. It’s illegible! We’re not on very solid ground here.”

“You’re just reporting a murder.”

“I don’t want to have anything to do with a murder. This isn’t California. We’ve just arrived in a foreign country. We don’t know what it’s like here. I go into a men’s room. There’s someone in there alive. I come out and report there is someone else in the men’s room who is dead? And you expect people to believe I had nothing to do with it? Come on, Barbara. What would you think? I didn’t come halfway around the world to be taken off immediately in handcuffs and leg irons to the local police warehouse.”

“Did anyone notice you go into the men’s room?”

“How do I know?”

“Or come out?”

“Barbara …”

“You’re right. Until a better suspect comes along, you’re the best the police would have.”

“Just an airport incident.”

“You have no evidence that there was another guy, a third guy, in the men’s room?”

“Nothing but my word. And that’s the word of a guy who has just arrived on the equator carrying skis and ski clothes, waving an illegible invitation from a man whom the courts in California declared dead years ago.”

“Shaky ground.”

“Without a leg to stand on.”

“Fletch, we have been moving pretty fast here.”

“Yeah. Lots of fun. Until something goes wrong.”

Annoyed, Barbara looked through the window at the terminal again. “Why didn’t your father meet us at the airport? He’s a pilot. He has to know where the airport is!”

Fletch didn’t say anything. He exhaled slowly.

“Your breath smells like an old cat’s,” Barbara said. “Do you still feel sick?”

“Good thing British Air didn’t give us much breakfast.”

The driver passed by Fletch’s window.

“Barbara, don’t say anything about this the driver can hear.”

Barbara sighed. “Your decision.”

Before starting the engine, the driver turned around in the front seat and looked at Fletch. “Jambo.”

“Habari,” Fletch breathed.

The driver’s forehead wrinkled. “Mzuri sana.”

“My husband’s sick,” Barbara said. “Must be something he ate.”

For the first time, Fletch heard the two-note song, B flat, F: “Sorry.”

In a land where people, even a broad-shouldered taxi driver, sang so sweetly, so gently, their simple courtesies, “Oh, I see. Sorry,” how could Fletch possibly have seen what he just saw? A clean, public lavatory turned into a blood-splattered, blood-streaked, blood-puddled room of horror in less time than it took for him to relieve himself. Like seeing a snake come out of a hen’s egg. Again, Fletch rubbed his eyes with his fists. The man sat in a pool of blood, spraddle-legged on the floor in the corner of the room, his neck twisted, his eyes staring unblinking at the door, blood everywhere below his rib cage.

“Damn!” Barbara expostulated. “Your father didn’t come to meet us at the airport.”

Softly, Fletch said, “I guess he didn’t.”

As the taxi pulled away from the curb it passed a group of people packing into a van. From behind the van walked quickly the first man Fletch had seen in the men’s room, thinning combed hair, pencil moustache: the murderer. He carried his safari jacket rolled up in his hand. Small sections of his khaki trousers were dark brown, wet.

Fletch said, “Hey, wait a minute.”

The taxi slowed. The driver looked at Fletch through the rearview mirror.

Barbara asked, “Are you going to be sick?”

The man, the murderer, had his hand on the door handle of a parked car. He was looking around.

Fletch did feel sick again.

“Go ahead,” Barbara said to the driver. “He’ll be all right.”

The taxi proceeded through the gate. The moment had passed.

Barbara took Fletch’s hand onto her lap. “You going to be all right?”

“I’ll be all right. Just a shock. The last thing I expected to see.”

“It was the last thing someone did see.” She squeezed his hand. “Welcome to Africa.”

“What in hell are we doing here?”

“When you arrive at a ski lodge in Colorado you’re handed a cup of hot chocolate.”

“Somehow,” Fletch said, “I don’t think this welcoming was arranged by the Kenyan Tourist Bureau.”

“No,” Barbara said. “But I would have expected your father to be here. He arranged the tickets. He knew when we were arriving. Altogether, it would have been a help having him here.”

Again, Fletch exhaled, heavily.

Slowly, on the drive into Nairobi from the airport Fletch became more alert to his surroundings.

The taxi went at a sedate pace. Worriedly, the driver kept glancing in the rearview mirror. As they went along, the trunk lid bounced higher and higher.

The snow skis sticking out of the trunk of a taxi driving into Nairobi, Kenya, attracted a lot of attention. Other drivers smiled at them, blew their horns, waved at what appeared to be a joke or, at least, something funny. People on the sidewalks pointed. A few people seemed to know, or were able to figure out, what they were. Others just found two blue fangs sticking out the back of a flapping Mercedes funny enough.

As they began to go around a rotary, Fletch saw, on his left, a children’s playground. Everywhere in the playground were oversize traffic signs, STOP, RAILROAD CROSSING, WAIT, WALK, CAUTION.

Fletch said, “People here like their kids.”

Barbara frowned at him. “People everywhere like their kids.”

“I’ve never seen an urban park dedicated to teaching kids traffic signs before.”