Fletch's Fortune

by Gregory Mcdonald

  Weekly Newspapers Group Discussion

  Bobby-Joe Hendricks Cocktail Lounge

  “Mister Fletcher?”

  Fletch squinted up from the poolside long chair at the young man in tennis whites, HENDRICKS PLANTATION written on his shirt.

  “Yeah?”

  “You phoned for a court at eleven o’clock?”

  “I did?”

  “I. M. Fletcher?”

  “One of us is.”

  “We have you down for a tennis court at eleven o’clock.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Will you be needing equipment, sir?”

  “I guess so. Also a partner. Playing tennis alone takes too much running back and forth.”

  “You mean, you want the pro?”

  “I guess not. Someone means to provide me with exercise.”

  “Stop at the pro shop a little before eleven. We’ll fix you up with a racket and balls—whatever you need. Have whites?”

  “Send them to my room, will you? Room Seventy-nine.”

  “Sure. Thirty waist?”

  “Guess so. Just ask the bellman to leave them inside the room. I have sneakers.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thanks,” Fletch said.

  A chair scraped next to him.

  Fletch turned his head and squinted again.

  “You’re Fisher, aren’t you?”

  Stuart Poynton was sitting beside him, in expensive leisure clothes, green shirt, maroon slacks, yellow loafers—as pleasant to look at as lettuce, tomato soup, and a lemon.

  “Fletcher,” Fletch said.

  “That’s right. Fletcher. Someone told me about you.”

  “Someone tells you about everyone.”

  To be polite, one could refer to Stuart Poynton as a syndicated political columnist.

  No one was ever polite about Stuart Poynton.

  His columns demonstrated very little interest in politics—just politicians, and other power people.

  His typical column had four to six hot, tawdry, indicative items (years ago, Senator So-and-so and his family had vacationed at a hunting lodge owned by a corporation his subcommittee is now regulating; Judge So-and-so was seen leaving a party in Georgetown at three in the morning; Congressman So-and-so fudged his fact-finding junket to Iran so he could visit his son in Zurich)—some of which were accurate enough to attract suits.

  Always going for the jugular, in his desire to reform others, over the years he had accomplished little—except to harden everyone’s jugular.

  “You know who I am?” he asked. “Poynton. Stuart Poynton.”

  “Oh,” Fletch responded to this forced humility. “Nice to meetcha.”

  “Well, I was thinking this.” Stuart Poynton was staring at his hands clasped between his knees, in thinking this. “Little hard for me to operate around here. Too much meeting and greeting going on. Well, point is, everyone here knows who I am, and everyone is sort of, you know, watching me.” He looked sideways at Fletch. “Got me?”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Makes it hard for me to operate, you know, carry on my own investigation. Find out anything. And this Walch March thing is a hell of a story.”

  “You mean Walter March?”

  “I said Walter March. Point is, I can ask questions and so forth, but these idiotic conventioneers—well, you know, they seem to get a great kick out of giving Stuart Poynton a bum steer. Some of them have tried all ready. Jeez, you can’t believe some of the crazy things they’ve told me around here—and with a straight face!”

  Fletch said, “Gotcha.”

  “I can’t blame ’em, of course. It’s a convention after all. Fun and games are part of it.”

  Fletch had raised his chairback a few notches.

  “Point is, I am Stuart Poynton.” Again the sideways look. “Got me?”

  “You got it right.”

  “And I am here.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “And the whole world knows that I’m here.”

  “Right.”

  “And here—here, at Kendricks Plantation—there’s an important story.”

  “Hendricks Plantation.”

  “What?”

  “Hendricks. H, as in waffle.”

  “I feel I ought to come up with something on the Walch March murder.”

  “Walter.”

  “You know, as a decent, self-respecting journalist. Some insight. Something indicative. You know, some little item or items that will mean something, prove to be right through the apprehension, trial, and conviction of the murderer.”

  “I don’t see how you can do that without solving the crime.”

  “Well, that would help.”

  “Solving the Walter March murder would make a good item for your column,” Fletch said mildly. “Might be worth a ’graf or two.”

  “Point is,” Poynton said, “everyone knows I’m here. Everyone knows there’s a big story here. But I’m so well-known here, if you get me, my hands are tied.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Jack Williams tells me you’re a hell of an investigative reporter.”

  “You mean Jake Williams?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Good old Howard.”

  “Yeah. Well, I asked him last night who he thought could help me out. You know, shag a few facts for me. You’re unemployed?”

  “Presently unencumbered by earned income.”

  “You have no outlet?”

  “Only the kind you can flush.”

  “I mean, if you had a story, it would probably be difficult for you to get it published?”

  “There’s no front page being held for me.”

  “I thought not. Maybe we can work something out. What I’m thinking is this.” Poynton again went into his staring-at-hands-clasped-between-his-knees propositional pose. “You be my eyes and ears. You know—do legwork. Circulate. Talk to them. Listen to them. If you do any keyhole stuff, I don’t want to know about it. Just the facts—all I want. See what you can dig up. Report to me.”

  Fletch let the next question hang silent in the air.

  Poynton sat back in his chair. “’Pending on what you come up with, of course—when I get back to New York—well, maybe I could use another legman.”

  “‘Maybe’?”

  “The three I have are pretty well-known. Which is why I can’t bring them in here. Everyone in the business knows who they are. In fact, they’ve about served their purpose.”

  “Hell of an offer,” Fletch said.

  Poynton glanced at him nervously.

  “Legman for Walter Poynton. Wow!”

  “Stuart,” said Stuart Poynton.

  Fletch looked at him, puzzled.

  “‘Course, I’d pick up your expenses here at the convention, too,” Poynton said, “ ’cause you’d be working for me.” Poynton turned full-face to Fletch. “What do you say. Will you do it?”

  “You bet.”

  “You will?”

  “Sure.”

  “Shake on it.” Poynton held out his hand, and they shook. “Now,” he said, reclasping his hands, “what have you got so far?”

  “Not much,” Fletch said. “I haven’t really been working.”

  “Come on,” Poynton said. “Reporter’s instincts.…”

  “Just arrived yesterday.…”

  “Must have heard a few things.…”

  “Well… of course.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, I heard something funny about the desk clerk.”

  “The desk clerk here at the hotel?”

  “Yeah. Seems Walter March got very angry when he arrived. Desk clerk made some fresh crack at Mrs. March. March took his name and said he was going to report him to the manager in the morning.… Someone said the clerk’s pretty heavily in debt. You know—the horses.”

  “That would tie in with the scissors,” Poynton said.

  “What scissors?”

  “The scissors,” Poynton said. “The scisso
rs found in Walch March’s back. They came from the reception desk in the lobby.”

  “Wow!” said Fletch.

  “Also the timing of the murder.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The clerk would have to nail March before he left his room in the morning. Before the hotel manager arrived at work. Before March had a chance to report the clerk to the manager.”

  “Hey,” Fletch said. “That’s right!”

  “Another thing,” Poynton said. “There’s been the question of how anyone got into the suite to murder March in the first place.”

  Fletch said, “I don’t get you.”

  “The desk clerk!” Poynton said. “He’d have the key.”

  “Wow,” Fletch said. “Right!”

  Again the nervous glance from Poynton.

  “Sounds worth investigating,” he said. “See what you can dig up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Three youngsters were throwing something into the pool and then diving after it.

  “I heard something else,” Poynton said.

  “Oh? What?”

  “Ronny Wisham.”

  Fletch said, “You mean Rolly Wisham?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Must be the noise from the pool.”

  “Seems Walch March had started an editorial campaign to get this Wisham character fired from the network, and ordered March newspapers coast-to-coast to follow up.”

  “Really? Why would he do that?”

  “Apparently this Wisham is one of these bleeding-heart reporters. An advocate journalist.”

  “Yeah.”

  Rolly Wisham did features for one of the networks, and they were usually on Society’s downside—prisoners, mental patients, migrant workers, welfare mothers. He always ended his reports saying, “This is Rolly Wisham, with love.”

  “Son of a bitch,” said Fletch.

  “March thought he was unprofessional. As President of the A.J.A. he wanted Ronny Wisham drummed out of journalism.”

  “That would be a motive for murder, all right,” Fletch said. “Walter March could have succeeded in a campaign like that—to get rid of someone.”

  “Jack Williams confirmed last night that these articles were going to run. Then there’d be an incessant campaign against this Ronny Wisham character.”

  “And these articles are not going to run now?”

  “No. Jack Williams feels beatin’ up on somebody like Ronny Wisham would result in a sort of bad image for Walch March.”

  “I see,” said Fletch. “Very clear.”

  Freddie Arbuthnot appeared around the hedge.

  She was wearing tennis whites and carrying a racket.

  “Williams said he was sure the other managing editors in the chain would feel the same way.”

  “Sure,” said Fletch.

  Poynton saw Freddie approaching them, and stood up.

  “See what you can dig up,” he said.

  “Thanks, Mister Poynton.”

  Fletch got out of the long chair and introduced Fredericka Arbuthnot and Stuart Poynton by saying, “Ms. Blake, I’d like you to meet Mister Gesner.”

  As they shook hands, Poynton gave Fletch a glance of gratitude and Freddie gave him her usual You’re weird look.

  After Poynton ambled away, Freddie said, “You get along well with everybody.”

  “Sure,” Fletch said. “I’m very amiable.”

  “That was Stuart Poynton,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Why did you introduce him as whatever?”

  “Are you Ms. Blake?”

  “I am not Ms. Blake.”

  “Are you Freddie Arbuthnot?”

  “I am Freddie Arbuthnot.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve looked it up.”

  “You have nice knees. Very clean. Hoo, boy!”

  She blushed, slightly, beneath her tan.

  “You’ve been listening through my bathroom wall.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “That was a little song I was taught. As a child.” She was blushing more. “The ‘Wash Me Up’ song.”

  “Oh!” Fletch said. “There is a difference between boys and girls! I was taught the wash-me-down song!”

  She put her fist between his ribs and pushed.

  “There’s a difference between people and horses,” she said. “People and weirdos.”

  “Playing tennis?” he asked.

  “Thought I might.”

  “You have a partner, of course.”

  “Actually, I don’t.”

  “Odd,” said Fletch. “There seems to be a court reserved in my name. Eleven o’clock.”

  “And no partner?”

  “None I know of.”

  “That is odd,” she said. “One ought to have a partner, to play tennis.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Makes the game nicer.”

  “I suspect so.”

  “Would you please go get dressed?”

  “Why are people always saying that to me?”

  “I suspect people aren’t always saying that to you.”

  “Oh, well,” said Fletch.

  “Ms. Blake is waiting for you,” Freddie Arbuthnot said softly. “Patiently.”

  Fifteen

  12:00 Cocktails

  Bobby-Joe Hendricks Lounge

  From TAPE

  Station 17

  Room 102 (Crystal Faoni)

  “Hi, Bob? Is this Robert McConnell?

  “This is Crystal Faoni… Crystal Faoni. We sat at the same table last night. I was the big one in the flower-print tent.…Yeah, isn’t she gorgeous? That’s Fredericka Arbuthnot. I’m the other one. The one twice the size people spend half the time looking at.…

  “Say, I really dig you, Bob. I think you’re great. I read your stuff all the time.…

  “Yeah, I read your piece this morning. On the murder of Walter March. You mentioned Fletcher, uh? Fletcher. We used to work together. On a newspaper in Chicago. You really put it to him, didn’t you… what was it you wrote? Something about Fletch’s already having figured prominently in two murder cases but never indicted … and he used to work for Walter March … ?

  “Let me tell you something about Fletch.…

  “Useful information? Why, sure, honey.…

  “Just a funny story, really.…

  “See, there was this guy in Chicago Fletch didn’t like much, a real badass named Upsie… a pimp running a whole string of girls in Chicago, real young kids, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen-year-olds, pickin’ ’em up at the bus station the minute they hit town, pilling them up, then shooting them up, putting them straight on the street sometimes the same damn’ night they hit town.

  “As soon as the kids got to the point where they couldn’t stand up anymore, couldn’t even attract fleas—which was usually a few months, at most—like as not they’d be found overdosed in some alley or run over by a car. You know?

  “A big, nasty business Upsie was running. This fast turnover in girls meant there was very little live evidence against him, ever. What’s more, he could pay off heavy, in all directions, up and down the fuzz ladder.…

  “This was a very slippery badass.

  “Fletch wanted the story. He wanted the details. He wanted the hard evidence.

  “’Course he got no cooperation from the police.

  “And the newspaper wasn’t cooperating, either. The editors, they said, you know, what’s one pimp? It isn’t worth the space to run the story. Typical.

  “And Fletch wasn’t doing this precisely right, either.

  “Every time he talked a girl into his confidence and began getting stuff he could use as evidence, he’d realize what he was doing, what he was asking them to do, in turning state’s evidence—allow themselves to be dragged through the newspapers and television and courts for months, if not years.

  “Upsie had already badly damaged their lives in one way.

  “Fletch s
aw himself badly damaging their lives in another way.

  “These kids were so young, Bob.…

  “Anyway, as soon as Fletch got the story from each girl, instead of using it, he found himself getting her to a social service agency, a hospital, or getting up the scratch to bus her home—whatever he thought would work.

  “He did this six, eight times maybe.

  “Well, Upsie got upset. He was pretty sure, I guess, Fletch wasn’t going to be able to print anything on him, ever, what with no police support, no newspaper support, and while Fletch kept sending his best sources of evidence home on a bus … but nevertheless, Fletch was hurting Upsie’s business by continually taking these girls away from Upsie before they were ready to be wiped.

  “Get the point?

  “So Upsie sends a couple of goons out, and they find Fletch, drag him out of his car—a real honey, a dark green Fiat convertible, I loved it—and while they hold him at a distance, arms behind his back, they put a fuse in the gas tank and light it and the car blows all over the block.

  “The goons say, ‘Upsie’s upset. Next time the fuse goes up your ass, and it won’t be just gas at the other end.’

  “So next night—it was a Saturday night—Fletch finds Upsie getting out of his pimpmobile and goes up to him as smooth as cream cheese, hand out to shake, and says, ‘Upsie, I apologize. Let me buy you a drink.’ Just like that. Upsie’s wary at first, but figures, hell, Fletch is aced, he’s aced other people easily enough, maybe it might be nice to have someone on the newspaper he has in his pocket, whatever.…

  “Fletch takes him into the nearest dive, buys Upsie a drink, tries to explain he was just doing his job, but, what the hell, what did the newspaper care, he could end up dead on the sidewalk for all the newspaper cared.

  “He had brought a little pill with him—something one of Upsie’s own girls had given him—and when Upsie was nice and relaxed and beginning to tell Fletch about his having been a nine-year-old newspaper boy on the South Side, Fletch slips the pill into Upsie’s gin.

  “In a very few minutes, Upsie’s swaying, doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, begins to pass out, and Fletch, still as smooth as canned apple sauce, walks him out and puts Upsie in the passenger’s seat of the pimpmobile at the curb. See?

  “He drives Upsie to this heavy, ornate Episcopal church Fletch knows about—knows how to get into that hour of Saturday night—and helps him into the church and sits him on the floor, where Upsie passes out.