Confess, Fletch

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “I do.”

  “What makes you think Mister Cooney might have such a painting, Mister Fletcher?”

  “We all have our little secrets.”

  “You mean, you want me to to ask him straight out if he has this ‘Red Space’ by Boccioni?”

  “Not necessarily ‘straight out’. After all, I’m offering him over half a million dollars for the Picasso….”

  “It’s worth much more.”

  “I think it’s a good enough offer to justify a little conversation. You might say that someone has mentioned the existence of such a painting, and you’d give anything to be able to locate it.”

  “You want me to exercise craft, is that it?”

  “Even deviousness,” suggested Fletch. “I’ll be interested in what he says.”

  “It’s nearly eight o’clock now,” Horan said. “Of course, that’s not Dallas time. I guess I can try to call him tonight.”

  “Will you call me in the morning?”

  “If I reach him.”

  “Thank you, Good-night.”

  XXXII

  T H E dining room table had been set with crystal and silver. The light was subdued.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” said Sylvia, removing her apron. “I’ll serve.”

  Fletch sat at the far end of the table. Before leaving the room, Sylvia indicated Andy should sit to his right.

  Sylvia would sit at the other end of the table.

  Fletch said to Andy, “Trust you don’t feel seven years old.”

  “What’s going on here?”

  “Oh!” said Fletch. “Soup!”

  “The first course,” said Sylvia. “A nice soup!”

  In the flat bowls was about a cupful of consommé.

  The bouillon cube, worn away only at its edges, sat in an island of its own grease, surrounded by cool water.

  “I can tell,” said Fletch. “You gave us big spoons.”

  Applying the tip of the spoon to the bouillon cube accomplished nothing. A minute Michelangelo with hammer and chisel might make something of it.

  Stirring the water around the cube only caused it to sway like a tango dancer. The grease reached out in disgusting, finger-like patterns.

  Sylvia said, “I thought we all needed a good, hot dinner! Filling and tasty! American cooking, yes?”

  Fletch said, “Yes.”

  “After such a long airplane ride for poor, dear Angela!”

  “Yes.”

  “This beastly, cold New England weather!”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, hot American cooked soup!”

  “Most substantial,” said Fletch. “Full body, vigorous aroma, the ambience of a bus….”

  “You no like your soup?” Sylvia had come to collect his bowl. “You no finish your soup.”

  “It’s taking too long to cool down.”

  He waved it away.

  While Sylvia was in the kitchen, Andy said, “She can’t cook. Everyone knows that.”

  “I’m finding it out.”

  “Now the fish!” Sylvia announced from the door. “Good American fish!”

  A piece of cold, canned tuna fish and a quarter of a lemon lay on his plate.

  What happened to the fourth slice of lemon?

  “Oh, yeah,” said Fletch. “Fish. I recognize it. Glad you removed the head, Sylvia. Never could stand a fish head on a plate. Aren’t you glad she removed the head, Andy?”

  “I’m glad she removed the lid.”

  “That, too,” said Fletch. “Funny no one’s ever made a solid silver can opener to go with a place setting. I’d think there’d be a market for it.”

  At her end of the table, Sylvia was beaming.

  Her neckline disappeared into her lap. Her bilateral, upper structural support systems were more sophisticated than anything used on the Swiss railway system.

  It was not the same gagging décolletage she had worn to stun the Ritz.

  “Yeah.” Fletch chewed the fish. “This is nice.”

  “Just like a family,” said Sylvia.

  “Precisely,” said Fletch.

  “Just like a family, we are together.”

  “Precisely like a family. Precisely.”

  “If only Menti were here.”

  “Now there was a man who knew a piece of fish when he saw one.”

  “Poor Menti.”

  “Nice touch, the slice of lemon,” Fletch said. “Did you cut it yourself?”

  “They’ve located his body,” Andy said.

  “Whose?”

  Sylvia said, “What?”

  “In a pasture. Outside Turin. The police called, just before I left.”

  Sylvia said, “They found Menti?”

  “Really?”

  “Sorry,” Andy said. “I didn’t mean to bring it up at dinner.”

  “You can’t ruin dinner,” Fletch said.

  Sylvia began in galloping Italian exclamations (at one point, she blessed herself with her fork), ultimately giving way to long questions, which Andy answered tersely As Sylvia’s questions became shorter, she switched to French—the language of reason. Andy, who had attended school in Switzerland, answered even more tersely in the language of reason.

  Muttering in Portuguese, Sylvia took the fish plates into the kitchen.

  “Now it’s my turn,” said Fletch.

  “The police called just before I left. They found the body in a shallow grave in a pasture outside Turin.”

  “Do they know it’s your father?”

  “His age, his height, his weight. They’re pretty sure. Dead about three weeks.”

  “I see.”

  Sylvia entered with salad plates. The salad consisted of a clump of cold, canned peas huddled together against the rim. On none of the plates had any of the peas broken free of the clump.

  “Oh,” said Fletch, “a pea.”

  “Salad!” Sylvia screwed herself into her chair. “Good American salad!”

  She had added salt. Too much salt.

  “I would think,” Fletch spoke quietly, “if that were the case, one of you, if not both, should be in Italy to receive the remains.”

  “‘Remains?’” asked Sylvia. “What’s ‘remains’?”

  Fletch said, “Sort of like supper.”

  Andy answered her properly in Italian.

  Quickly, Sylvia said, “This is not to be spoken of at dinner.”

  “I thought not,” said Fletch.

  “Angela,” the Countess demanded archly, “why you no stay to accept your father’s remains?”

  “The police want them.”

  “Why the police want the remains of Menti?”

  Sylvia was getting a remarkable amount of chewing out of her pea.

  “They said they had much to do.”

  “What to do? What to do with the remains of Menti?”

  “They have to test his teeth.”

  “What’s wrong with Menti’s teeth? He’s dead! No good testing them now!”

  Fletch said, “That’s how they confirm the identification of a corpse, Sylvia. The body’s been in the ground three weeks.”

  “Oh. If the body is wearing Menti’s teeth, then they know it is Menti?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ha!” said Sylvia, for some reason victoriously, fork in air. “Menti had no teeth!”

  “What?”

  “All Menti’s teeth false! His gums were entirely—how you say?—bareass.”

  “That’s right,” said Andy. “I had forgotten that.”

  “They can identify a corpse by its false teeth,” Fletch said.

  “How come you know so much?” Sylvia asked.

  Andy said, “The police said they would give us a closed coffin when they are through doing what they can to identify father. We can have a burial. It doesn’t matter when. We’ve already had the funeral.”

  “This is terrible,” said Sylvia. “Poor Menti.”

  Something was sizzling in the kitchen, suggesting the threat of a fourth course. />
  “Did you have a chance to speak to the lawyers?” Fletch asked Andy.

  “Yes. I called Mister Rosselli. He said it was good news.”

  “That your father was murdered?”

  “We knew he was murdered. The police said so.”

  “Sorry.”

  “He said the will could be read after he gets the papers from the police.”

  “What papers?” exploded Sylvia. “Already we have had papers up the asses!”

  “They have to have positive identification, Sylvia,” Fletch said. “They can’t settle an estate without a corpse.”

  “Pash!” She shook her fork in the air. “All they want is Menti’s teeth! You look in that closed coffin. There will be no teeth! Some police inspector in Turin will wear them!”

  Fletch said, “Sylvia. Something is burning.”

  “Ooo,” she said, grabbing up her gown for the run to the kitchen.

  In their momentary privacy, Fletch said to Andy: “I guess I’m tired.”

  She said, “That’s why we’re having such a nice dinner.”

  “I should have planned something.”

  “Yes. You should have.”

  “I never guessed Sylvia would make such an effort.”

  Andy said, “I don’t guess she has.”

  The entrée was a burned frankfurter each, sliced lengthwise.

  At the edge of each plate was a tomato, obviously hand-squeezed. The indentations of four fingers and a thumb were clear. In fact, Sylvia’s thumb-print was clear.

  “Oh, my God,” Fletch said.

  “What’s the matter?” Sylvia was screwing herself into her chair again. “Good American meal! Hot dog! Ketchup!”

  Andy said, “Sylvia, really!”

  “You live in America, you get used to American food,” Sylvia said. “I been here nearly one week already. See?”

  “We see,” said Fletch.

  “Bastard Rosselli say what Menti’s will say about my paintings?”

  Fletch said, “What paintings? There are no paintings.”

  “There are paintings.” In her insistence, Sylvia leaned so far forward she almost dipped one in the ‘catsup’. “My paintings you two find. If you no look for, why you here? If you no find, why Angela come? Eh? Answer me that, Mister Flesh Ass-pants.”

  Fletch said, “We just came for dinner.”

  “Rosselli said nothing about the will, Sylvia.”

  Fletch said, “I’m in love with Jennifer Flynn.”

  He made no approach to his frankfurter and tomato. They sat there, burned and thumbprinted, like a victim and a perpetrator.

  Andy, using her knife and fork on the frankfurter, was looking at him.

  He said, “I would think you’d both want to be in Rome now.”

  “No!” said Sylvia. “I stay here. Where my paintings are.”

  Looking at Sylvia, Fletch counted the number of hours of sleep he had had. Then he counted the number of hours of sleep he hadn’t had.

  “Sylvia,” he said. “The paintings are in Texas.”

  “Texas?”

  “Andy and I are planning to fly to Dallas the end of this week.”

  “Good! Then I go, too.”

  “Good!” said Fletch. “We’ll all go. Just like a family.”

  Andy’s look could have burned through telephone books.

  To Andy he said, “I doubt you’ve ever had Texan chili. Good American cooking.”

  “Chili sauce,” said Sylvia. “You want chili sauce?”

  Fletch placed his unused napkin next to his untouched plate.

  “Sorry I can’t stay to help out with the dishes. I’m going to sleep now.”

  “Sleep?” Sylvia was prepared to be hurt. “You no want dessert?”

  “Don’t even tell me what it is,” Fletch said. “I’ll dream on it.”

  He went into a guest room, locked the door, stripped, and crawled between the sheets.

  The rhythms of exclamations in Italian, French, Portuguese and English through the thick walls lulled him to hungry sleep.

  XXXIII

  “H I , B A B E .”

  In the single bed, he had rolled on to his side.

  Light was pouring through the open drapes.

  Eyes open, staring at him, her head faced him on the pillow.

  The white sheet over her upper arm perfected her smooth, tanned shoulder, neck, throat.

  His right hand went along her left breast, under her arm, down her side. She pulled her right leg up, to touch his.

  “Nice to feel you again,” he said.

  She must have entered through the bathroom from the other guest room.

  He flicked her lips with his tongue.

  Then his left arm went under her and found the small of her back and brought her closer to him.

  “Where were you last night?” she asked.

  “When?”

  “Two o’clock. Three o’clock. You weren’t in bed.”

  “I went out for a walk,” he said. “After that heavy dinner.”

  In fact, between two and three in the morning, he had switched the licence plates of the rented car and the black truck.

  “‘After that heavy dinner’,” she said.

  She giggled.

  “Did you use my bed in Cagna?” he asked.

  “Of course. Our bed.”

  He said, “I’m hungry.”

  She put on a slightly perplexed face.

  She said, “This is your apartment.”

  “Yes.”

  “How come Sylvia’s in the master bedroom and you and I are in a single bed in a guest room?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I guess it’s like the Latin-American expression, ‘I lost the battle of the street’.”

  “Was there a revolution?”

  “There must have been. I guess I was an absentee government.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I wasn’t here a couple of nights.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I was working.”

  “Working?”

  “At a newspaper. An old boy I worked with in Chicago works for a paper here now. He was shorthanded and asked me to come in. Charlestown was burning down again.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Why not?”

  “Why should you?”

  “I liked it. Anyhow, Jack had let me spend some time at the newspaper looking up Horan.”

  “Jack?”

  “Jack Saunders.”

  “I doubt it would take two nights for Charlestown to burn down.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I would expect your friend to solve his staff problems by the second night.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “You said you were gone two nights.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “Where were you the other night?”

  “What other night?”

  “You were only gone one night?”

  “Ah….”

  “If you were only gone one night, how come Sylvia has the master bedroom?”

  “Um….”

  “How come she has it, anyway.”

  “Who? Sylvia?”

  “Were you sleeping with Sylvia?”

  “Who, me?”

  “You see, Fletch?”

  “See what?”

  “Don’t give me a hard time.”

  “Did I give you a hard time?”

  “About Bart.”

  “Oh, yeah, Bart the Woman Slayer.”

  “He needed help, Fletch.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “You know why his wife left him?”

  “I heard rumours.”

  “Then this girl he wanted to take to Gagna finally refused to go”

  “I know. I found her body. She should have gone.”

  “Bart never killed anybody.”

  “Andy, one of three people killed Ruth Fryer. I kn
ow I didn’t, and Bart tops the list of the other two candidates.”

  “Tell me about Sylvia.”

  “Sylvia who?”

  “Come on.”

  “You must have misunderstood something.”

  “I did not. You’re never lost a battle of the street in your life.”

  “I haven’t known many Sylvias.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was raped.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Not bad.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe me. I think you’ve figured out she wants the paintings as much as you do.”

  “She’s not going to get them, is she?”

  “I know what she has to offer. What do you have to offer?”

  “You know what I have to offer.”

  “You’re skinnier than she is.”

  “You like that. Skinny.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Was I telling the truth?”

  “One never knows.”

  “We’re doing an awful lot of talking. For two friends who haven’t seen each other in almost a week.”

  “I’m not used to making deals in bed.”

  “Oh. Then feel sorry for me.”

  “Why should I feel sorry for you?”

  “I was raped. I need to get my sexual confidence back.”

  “You have it back. I can feel it.”

  “See how much good you’ve done already?”

  XXXIV

  F L E T C H went into the den to answer the telephone after a second helping of scrambled eggs and sausage.

  It was past ten, and Sylvia apparently had gone out earlier to follow her own investigation, which, Fletch guessed, meant walking through Boston’s private galleries with the list of de Grassi paintings in her hand.

  It was, finally, a cloudless October day.

  At breakfast, Fletch and Andy had decided to spend the day walking the old streets. She said she would show him his American history.

  He worried about the moon.

  It was Horan.

  “Mister Fletcher, I was able to get Mister Cooney on the phone last night, too late to call you back.”

  “That was very considerate of you. I did go to bed early.”

  “There was little point in rushing to you with the news anyway.”

  “Oh?”

  “He says he won’t respond to your new offer for the Picasso, either. Contrary to my advice to you, he says you’re not even in the ballpark.”

  “Did you remind him he has eight kids to feed?”