“Fletch, are you sure you and Carr aren’t related?”
Hanger in hand, Fletch was looking at his jeans. “You mean, is Carr my father?”
“At the pool last night, when you came back from Lake Turkana, I don’t know, watching you enter, the way you both walked, the way you sat, the way you both spoke …”
“We had both just been sandblasted, kept awake all night by a raging storm, deafened in the airplane … ‘course we moved and sounded alike.”
“He’s being awfully nice to us.”
“My jeans have been pressed. Look! My jeans have been pressed!”
“Oh, dear. That won’t do.” She took the jeans from him and started to rough them up in her hands.
“I’ve thought about this,” he said. “Want the hard evidence?”
“About what?”
“While we were out at Thika and Karen with Carr, someone came to the hotel, identified himself as Walter Fletcher, and inquired for us.”
“Couldn’t do that by phone?”
“The man at the reception desk said that someone came to the hotel. He said it was Walter Fletcher.” Barbara was kicking his jeans around the floor. “When we met Juma, he said he knows my father.”
“He sounded regretful about Walter Fletcher, too.”
“Juma identified Walter Fletcher as a pilot. Carr was with us. Juma knows Carr, and he knows a man here named Fletcher. When he came to the hotel this morning, before Carr, he knew Walter Fletcher is in jail.”
“My father-in-law the jailbird.”
“Please, Barbara.”
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”
“Is hitting below the belt a characteristic of yours?”
“A man who starts a fight in a bar! And gets arrested for it! Mother will love that one. I married the son of a jailbird!”
“God damn it, Barbara!” Fletch snatched his jeans off the floor. “Is this what marriage to you is? You’re nice to me in public and vicious in private. Downstairs, on the terrace, you were full of
“Well, I’ve had time to think.”
“I’m not in control of the facts, here, regarding my own life.” Fletch was falling over trying to get into his jeans. “Sorry. We just have to go along discovering what we can discover.”
“You said, ‘Maybe he got a flat tire.’ Really, Fletch. Yesterday, Carr said your father was delayed by some ‘legal difficulty.’ You call those
Fletch zipped his jeans. “I knew there’d been some unpleasantness in a cafe. I didn’t know he was in jail. Clearly, I didn’t know that.”
Barbara said, “I don’t want any of this to be true!”
“At least he turned himself in.”
“Why wouldn’t it have been natural for your father to meet us at the airport?”
“I don’t know.”
“He didn’t do it.”
“I guess he didn’t.”
Fletch was pulling on his T-shirt.
“You ‘guess’? What is this with you and the word
“I guess I did.” Sitting on the edge of the bed, Fletch was pulling on his socks and sneakers.
“What do you mean, you
“Do I?” Fletch headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“That’s the point, Barbara. I don’t.”
“Are you going somewhere?”
“Yes.” He opened the door to the corridor.
“Where?”
“Out.”
“Carr’s waiting for us.”
“He said he’ll pick us up at noon.”
“You’re disappearing again because you’re mad at me.”
“I’m going out…” Hand still on the door handle, Fletch hesitated. “… to answer your question; to find out something for myself: maybe to find out too much.”
“Fletch …”
“If I’m not back by the time Carr gets here, you’ll just have to wait for me.”
“Hello.” Fletch waited for the young policeman behind the high counter to look up, notice him, answer him.
“Hello,” the policeman answered after only a glance.
Fletch sneezed. “How are you?”
“Well, thank you. And yourself?”
“I’m fine.”
The policeman glanced at Fletch again. “What do you want at a police station?”
Fletch swallowed. “I want to see my father. My name is Fletcher. Is he here?”
“Oh, yes.” The policeman checked the second sheet of paper on a clipboard. “Awaiting trial.”
“May I see him?”
“That’s not the way it’s supposed to be,” the policeman said. “He is being punished, you see.”
“He is being punished before his trial?”
The policeman’s forehead creased. “What is the point of keeping him here if we let everyone see him?”
“I have come from America,” Fletch said. “Arrived two days ago. I don’t know how long I will be able to stay here. I have come to see him.”
“Oh, I see.” Moving around behind the counter, the policeman fiddled with papers. His brow remained creased.
Fletch said nothing more.
After a few moments, the policeman went through a door behind the counter.
Trying to clear his eyes and his nose and his throat of sand, Fletch had walked the half block from the Norfolk Hotel to the police station. The sidewalk was busy with people his age carrying books to and from Nairobi University. He passed an older, Caucasian couple in plaid shorts and straw hats looking exhausted and confused.
No one else was in the lobby of the police station. The place was absolutely quiet.
Fletch sneezed again.
The policeman returned alone.
He said nothing. Behind the counter, he started to sort some papers.
Fletch said, “Well? Any chance of my seeing him?”
“Mr. Fletcher is not in.”
“What?”
“He says to tell you he is not in.”
“Did you tell him I’m his son? His son is here to see him?”
“Oh, yes. He asked me to say he is not in.”
Going toward the door to the street, Fletch sneezed.
