Fletch Won

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “If Habeck got him out of prison in eleven years on that kind of charge, I can’t see why he’d go gunning for Habeck.”

  “He’s crazy, Fletch. I mean, a guy who works all that out with trained dogs has to be crazy. Talk about premeditation.”

  “I guess so.”

  “In this case, he’s had eleven years to premeditate.”

  “Alston, I have another thought. Supposing someone killed or maimed one of your loved ones. And Habeck got him off scot-free, or something meaningless, a suspended sentence, or something. Wouldn’t that incline you to go after Habeck?”

  “Come again?”

  “I heard of a case today in which Habeck was involved. Drunken teenager stole a car and killed someone with it. Habeck got him off with just a sentence of probation. What about the victim’s family? Wouldn’t they have reason to be pretty mad at Habeck?”

  “I can see them wanting to harm the drunken kid.”

  “But not Habeck?”

  “That would take too much thinking. First, in anger, I think people want to see people get the punishment they deserve. When the courts don’t give perpetrators the punishment they clearly deserve, yeah, I think even the most decent people feel the temptation to go out and beat the perpetrator over the head themselves.”

  “But, if they think twice…”

  “If they think twice, they’re angry at something vague, you know, like the legal system, or justice, or the courts.”

  “You don’t think anyone ever focuses on the defense attorney who twists the legal system to get genuine bad guys off free?”

  “It’s possible. Someone bright, maybe.”

  “Someone bright who sees a pattern in what Habeck is doing.”

  “And, maybe, has a personal grudge.”

  “And knows there is no way of ever bringing Habeck to justice.”

  “Yeah. Such a person might be able to justify shooting Habeck in the head. But, Fletch, think of the numbers. Over Habeck’s thirty-five-year career, the numbers of victims’ loved ones and families who have watched Habeck send the perpetrator to the beach instead of to jail must number in the hundreds, the thousands.”

  “I suppose so.” Fletch took The Knife, The Blood from the table beside the telephone. “Anyway, I already know who killed Habeck.”

  “Bright boy.” Alston sighed. “Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place? Instead of spending all this long time talking to you, I could have gone jogging.”

  “You can still go jogging,” Fletch said, turning the pages.

  “I don’t want to get mugged by a milkman.”

  “Listen to this.” Fletch read:

  Slim, belted hips

  Sprayed across by automatic fire,

  each bullet

  ripping through,

  lifting,

  throwing back,

  kicking

  the body at its

  center.

  Thus

  The Warrior In Perfection

  bows to his death,

  twists,

  pivots and falls.

  Waisted, he is wasted

  but not wasted.

  This death is his life

  And he is perfect

  In it

  “Jeez!” Alston breathed. “What’s that?”

  “A poem called The Warrior in Perfection.”

  “You and I know a little better than that, don’t we, buddy.”

  “Do we?”

  “That dancing beauty just isn’t there.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “That’s the sickest thing I’ve ever heard. It makes me angry.”

  “If I’m right, and I’m not sure that I am, it was written by Donald Edwin Habeck’s son-in-law.”

  “Oh. Anybody who’d write that would do anything for kicks.”

  “I read one to Barbara called Knife, Blood and suddenly she decided she had to come off the beach to get dinner.”

  “I think you-’re right. You needn’t look any further for the murderer of Habeck than the snake who wrote that poem.”

  “I think he’s worth talking to.”

  “So, the newspaper wants you on this story?”

  “No, Alston, they don’t.”

  “Trying to prove yourself, boy?”

  “If I come up with something good, do you think the newspaper will turn it down?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I’m getting married. I’ve got to get going in life. So far, I’m playing dumb jokes on the newspaper. And the newspaper is playing dumb jokes on me.”

  “You’re taking a risk.”

  “What risk? If I don’t come up with anything, no one will ever know it.”

  Barbara stood wrapped in a towel over Fletch in the Morris chair.

  “You want to know why we’re getting married?”

  “The world keeps asking,” Fletch answered.

  She dropped the towel on the floor.

  She stood before him in the dimly lit beach house like a sculpture just finished.

  “This body and your body moving in concert through life, in copulation and out of copulation, coupled, always relating to each other, each movement to each, however near or separated we may be, will measure our minuet in this existence, tonight, tomorrow, and all tomorrows.”

  Fletch cleared his throat. “I’ve heard worse poetry. Recently.”

  “Are you coming to bed?”

  “I guess I’d better.” Fletch stood up, thinking of the immediate tomorrow. “It’s now, or maybe never again.”

  Barbara entered the bedroom, head down, reading the front page of the newspaper.

  “Dammit,” Fletch said from the bed. “Next time you house-sit, please check to make sure there are curtains on the bedroom windows first, will you?”

  “Biff Wilson made the front page.”

  “Of course.”

  “Or Habeck did.”

  “The sun isn’t even up yet.”

  “You want to hear this?” Folding one leg under her, Barbara sat on the bed.

  “Yeah.”

  “ ‘Nationally famous criminal attorney, partner in the law firm of Habeck, Harrison and Haller, Donald Edwin Habeck, sixty-one, was found shot to death in his latemodel blue Cadillac Seville this morning in the parking lot of the News-Tribune.’ ”

  “This bedroom faces west, but still this room is as full of light before dawn as a church at high noon Sundays.”

  “ ‘Police describe the murder as, quote, in the style of a gangland slaying, unquote.’ ”

  “ ‘Gangland’!”

  “That’s what it says. ‘Mr. Habeck’s law partners, Charles Harrison and Claude Haller, issued a joint statement before noon this morning.’ ”

  “I’ll bet they did. Dropped all other work and put themselves right down to it.”

  “ ‘The legal profession has lost one of its most brilliant minds and deft practitioners with the passing of Donald Habeck. His incisive understanding and innovative use of the law as a defense attorney, especially in criminal cases, made Donald Habeck an example to attorneys nationally, and somewhat of a popular hero. We mourn the passing of our partner and dearest friend, especially under such despicable and inexplicable circumstances. Our heartfelt sympathy goes out to Donald’s widow, Jasmine, his son Robert, daughter Nancy in parenthesis Farliegh, and his grandchildren.” ’ ”

  “ ‘Innovative,’ ” Fletch said. “First time I’ve heard that word to mean crooked.”

  “Was he crooked?” Barbara asked.

  “There was a moment yesterday when I referred to Habeck as a criminal lawyer I was afraid someone would think I was making a joke.”

  “Some wordsmiths, these guys. ‘Despicable and inexplicable circumstances.’ ”

  “Lawyers are the only people in the world who get to say, ‘Words don’t mean what they mean. They mean what we say they mean.’ A deft practitioner of the law. Ha! A perverter of the legal system.”

  “You seem to have formed a persona
l opinion, Fletch.”

  “I hear what I hear.”

  “Don’t let personal opinion get in your way. There are other perfectly good ways you can destroy us over this story.”

  “You’re right.”

  “ ‘Habeck’s wife, Jasmine, was placed in seclusion by her doctors and therefore was not available for comment.’ ”

  “There must have been a first Mrs. Habeck. Any reference to her?”

  “Not that I see. ‘Neither Harrison nor Haller would comment on the nature of Habeck’s death pending police investigation.’ ”

  “It was no gangland slaying.”

  “ ‘According to John Winters, publisher of the News-Tribune, Donald Habeck had requested a meeting with Mr. Winters for ten o’clock this morning to seek advice regarding the announcement of a charitable contribution Mr. Habeck intended to make in the city. “I did not personally know Donald Habeck,” John Winters said. “Naturally, all of us here in the News-Tribune family express our regrets to his family and friends.” ’ ”

  “Wise old John Winters. Hold the sleazy lawyer at arm’s length even in his death. Amelia Shurcliffe said no one would dare declare Donald Habeck either a friend or an enemy. I guess she was right.”

  “ ‘Mr. Habeck’s body was discovered by News-Tribune employee Pilar O’Brien while she was reporting to work. Police Lieutenant Francisco Gomez stated Mr. Habeck had been shot once in the head at apparently close range by a handgun of as yet undetermined caliber. The gun was not discovered at the scene of the crime.’ ”

  “It was not a gangland slaying.”

  “ ‘A graduate of the state system of education, and for years a visiting lecturer at the law school, Habeck…’ Blah, blah, blah. The report goes on to recount his most famous cases.” Barbara turned to an inside page. “At great length. Want me to read all that?”

  “I went through all that yesterday. Even I know how to write obituaries.”

  “I think son-in-law Tom Farliegh should be arrested, charged, convicted, and imprisoned immediately.” Barbara refolded the newspaper.

  “You think Tom Farliegh murdered Habeck?”

  “Tom Farliegh wrote that poem you read me last night. Isn’t that enough reason to imprison him? A man who writes a so-called poem like that shouldn’t be left loose to walk around in the streets.”

  “It was not a gangland slaying.”

  “Am I’m supposed to ask you why you keep saying that?”

  “Are you asking?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “In order to drive into the parking lot of the News-Tribune you have to stop and identify yourself and state your purpose to the guard at the gate. But anyone can walk in and out. Habeck’s car was parked more toward the back of the lot than the front. I just can’t see professional gangsters stopping and saying anything to the guard at the gate, driving in, doing their dirty deed, then driving out again. I also can’t see a professional gangster parking his car outside the gate, walking in, popping Habeck in the head, and then walking out. Can you? A professional gangster would have hit Habeck somewhere else.”

  “Strange no one heard the shot.”

  “A small-caliber handgun makes a pop so slight, especially in a big, open-air parking lot, you could mistake the sound for a belch after eating Greek salad.”

  Barbara stretched out beside him on the bed.

  “Guess I should start the long drive back to the city,” Fletch said.

  “You don’t have to go yet.”

  “How do you know? There are many, many things I want to do today. And some I don’t.”

  “Don’t forget you’re having dinner with Mother and me tonight. To discuss the wedding.”

  Fletch glanced at his watch. “We really did wake up awfully early. I guess we have time.”

  “I know.” Barbara cupped her hands behind his neck. “That’s because I took down all the window curtains in here last night, before you arrived.”

  “Good morning,” Fletch said cheerily to the middle-aged woman in an apron who opened the door to him at 12339 Palmiera Drive, The Heights. Her eyes narrowed as she recognized him as the man who had run through her kitchen the day before wearing nothing but a denim shirt hanging from his waist. He gave her a big smile. “I’m really not all the trouble I’m worth.”

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “I just want to deliver this package.” He handed the grocery bag filled with Donald Habeck’s clothes through the doorway to her. “I’d also like to see Mrs. Habeck, if possible.”

  The woman kept the door braced with her feet when she took the package with both hands. The string had loosened. “In seclusion,” she said. “Under sedation.”

  One of Donald Habeck’s black shoes dropped out of the bag.

  “Oh, my,” Fletch said. He picked up the shoe and put it on top of the bundle in her arms.

  The woman drew her head back from the shoe.

  “One other question,” Fletch went on. “There was an older woman here yesterday, sitting by the pool. Bluish hair, red purse, green sneakers. Do you know who she was?”

  The woman looked at Fletch through narrow slits over Donald Habeck’s shoe.

  “She said she was Mrs. Habeck. She acted strangely.”

  “I do not speak English,” the woman said. “Not a single goddamned word.”

  “I see.”

  She closed the door.

  “I’ll be back to see Mrs. Habeck when she’s feeling better!” Fletch shouted through the door.

  Getting into his car in the driveway, Fletch looked up at the house.

  A window curtain in the second story fell back into place.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” Fletch said slowly, “so promptly.”

  He was surprised the curator of contemporary art at the museum was seeing him at all, let alone at nine-thirty in the morning without an appointment. He expected museum curators to keep relaxed hours. He also expected any museum curator to be standoffish with someone presenting himself in blue jeans and T-shirt, however fresh and clean, sneakers however new and glistening white, who said he was from a newspaper.

  He also did not expect any museum curator, however contemporary, to be sitting behind a desk in a Detroit Tigers baseball cap. On the desk, beside one huge book with MARGILETH written in script on the glossy cover and a few folders, was an outfielder’s mitt and a baseball.

  “You’re from the News-Tribune” curator William Kennedy confirmed.

  “Yes. I was assigned to report on the five-million-dollar gift to the museum that was to be announced by Donald and Jasmine Habeck.” Fletch smiled slightly at his accurate use of the past tense. “A lady in your Trustees’ Office said she thought the gift was to be made to this department.”

  “I’m glad to talk to someone, anyone, about it,” Kennedy said.

  Fletch asked, “Are you from Detroit?”

  “No.” Kennedy took off his baseball cap and looked at its logo. “I just admire excellence, in any form.”

  “I see.”

  “I also collect video-cassettes of Nureyev, Muhammad Ali, and Michael Jackson. Recordings of Caruso, Mc-Cormack, Erroll Garner, and Eric Clapton. Do you think I’m odd?”

  “Eclectic.”

  “I’m a perfectly happy man.” Kennedy reached for his baseball mitt. “I don’t know why everyone isn’t like me.”

  “Neither do I,” Fletch said.

  “Do you collect things?”

  “Yes,” Fletch said. “People.”

  “What an interesting thought.”

  “I don’t use people, just collect them. It gives me some interesting memories on the long drive.”

  “Is that why you’re a journalist?”

  “I suppose so. That, and a few other reasons.”

  “You have less of a storage problem than I have.”

  “First, I need to confirm with you that Mr. and Mrs. Donald Habeck were giving this department of the museum five million dollars.”

  “I’m not sure.” Kenned
y tossed the ball up into the air and caught it in his mitt. “And if they were going to actually make such an offer, in writing, I’m not sure we would accept it.”

  Fletch raised his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t a museum accept money from any source?”

  “The source doesn’t bother us. In my fifteen-year museum career to date, I’ve never seen money turned down because of its source, even if it were tainted money. Remember that old wheeze about Mark Twain? A minister came to him saying that a gangster had offered him money to fix the church’s roof. Twain asked ‘Why are you hesitating?’ The minister said, ‘Because it’s tainted money.’ That’s right,’ Twain said. ‘T’ain’t yours, and t’ain’t mine.’ ”

  “You collect good stories, too?”

  “As they come along.”

  “I think I’m hearing you saying that you considered Habeck’s money tainted.”

  Kennedy shrugged. “We knew he was a tricky lawyer.”

  “By ‘tricky’ do you mean crooked? I think I’m collecting polite ways of saying crooked.”

  “How often do you hear of lawyers going to jail?”

  “Not often.”

  “Doctors get sick, but lawyers seldom go to jail.”

  “Why would a museum turn down money?”

  “Because of the stipulations that come with the money. Let me explain.” Kennedy put his mitted hand on top of the baseball cap on his head. His other hand spun the baseball on the desk. “Late last week, Donald Habeck made an appointment to see me. I was dismayed when my secretary told me she had made the appointment. We had never pursued Donald Habeck. I had never heard that he cared anything about art, or the museum. Therefore, I suspected he wanted to talk me into being an expert witness for a case of his—something of that sort.”