Fletch's Fortune

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “… Well, I’ve got a surprise for you, too, dear old department headie. ‘What’s that?’ you ask with one voice. Well! I’ve got a surprise for you! ’Member those two sweet little things in Billy-Bobby’s boo-boo-bar lounge? ‘Sweet little things,’ you say together. Well, sir, I had the piss-pa-cacity to invite them up! To our glorious journalists’ suite. This very night! This very hour! This very minute! In fact, for twenty minutes ago.”

  (Englehardt’s voice): “You did?”

  (Gibbs’ voice): “I did. Where the hell are they? Got to live like journalists, right? Wild, wild, wicked women. Live it up!”

  (Englehardt’s voice): “I invited someone, too.”

  (Gibbs’ voice): “You did? We gonna have four

  broads’ Four naked, writhing girls? All in the same room?”

  (Englehardt’s voice): “The lifeguard.”

  Englehardt turned off the marvelous machine.

  “The tape continues,” Fletch said. “All through what I’m sure your superiors will provincially refer to as your drunken sex orgy. Lots more references to cocaine. Et cetera. ‘Switch!’” he quoted Gibbs, but with a drawl. “‘Switch!’”

  Englehardt’s shoulders had lowered, like those of a bull about to charge.

  His fists were clenched.

  The skin around his eyes was a dark red.

  “‘Live like journalists,?’ ” Fletch quoted. “‘Disgusting.’ ”

  Gibbs was assimilating more slowly. Or he was in a complete state of shock.

  His face had gone perfectly white, his jaw slack. Standing, he was staring at the floor about two meters in front of him.

  “Of course, this isn’t the original tape,” Fletch said. “But the original isn’t much better. Same cast of characters, same dialogue.…”

  Gibbs said, “You bugged our room! Goddamn it, Fletcher, you bugged our room!”

  “Of course. You think I’m stupid?”

  Englehardt’s shoulders had slumped somewhat, his fists loosened.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “Blackmail you,” Fletch answered. “Of course.”

  He picked up his two suitcases.

  “Six weeks from today, I want to receive official, formal notification that all charges against me have been dropped,” Fletch said. “Into the Potomac. If not, the careers of Robert Englehardt and Donald Gibbs will be over.”

  “We can’t do that,” said Englehardt

  “That’s Abuse of Agency!” said Gibbs.

  Fletch said, “You’ll find a way.”

  The airport limousine had gone, so Fletch had had to send for a taxi.

  He was waiting in front of the hotel with his suitcases.

  Don Gibbs came through the glass door of the hotel, toward him, still looking extremely white.

  “Fletcher.” His voice was low.

  “Yeah?”

  The taxi was arriving.

  “If you had any suspicion at all Eggers and Fabens weren’t from the C.I.A., why did you go through with this job?”

  “Three reasons.”

  Fletch handed his suitcases to the driver.

  “First, I’m nosy.”

  Fletch opened the door to the backseat.

  “Second, I thought there might be a story in it.”

  He got into the car.

  “Third,” Fletch said, just before closing the door, “I didn’t want to go to jail.”

  Thirty-eight

  “FREDDIE!”

  Her carry-on bag in hand, she was almost at the steps of the twelve-seater airplane.

  “FREDDIE!”

  His own suitcases banging against his knees, he ran across the airplane parking area.

  “FREDDIE!”

  Finally, she heard him, and turned to wait for him.

  “Listen,” he said. Standing before her, he was huffing and puffing.

  “Listen,” he said. “You’re Freddie Arbuthnot.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m Ms. Blake.”

  “I can explain,” he said.

  In the late afternoon light, her eyes examined him through narrow slits.

  “Uh…,” he said.

  She waited.

  He said, “…uh.”

  And she waited.

  “I mean, I can explain,” he said. “There is an explanation.”

  The pilot, in a white short-sleeved shirt and sunglasses, was waiting by the steps for them to board.

  “Uh…,” Fletch said. “This will take some time.”

  “We don’t have any more time,” she said. “Together.”

  “We do!” he said. “All you have to do is come to Italy with me. Tonight.”

  “Irwin Fletcher, I have a job to do. I’m employed, you know?”

  “A vacation? You could have a nice vacation. Cagna’s beautiful this time of year.”

  “If I had the time, I’d stay here and polish up the Walter March story.”

  “Polish it up?”

  “So far I’ve only been able to phone in the leaders.”

  “Leaders? What leaders do you have?”

  “Oh, you know. Lydia March’s suicide. Her confession note. Junior’s murder. Joseph Molinaro.…”

  “Oh,” he said. “Ow.”

  As if thinking aloud, she said, “I’ll have to do the polishing in New York, before Saturday morning.”

  “Then you could come to Italy,” he said. “Saturday.”

  She said, “You know the Jack Burroughs trial starts Monday.”

  “Jack Burroughs?”

  “Fletcher, you know I won the Mulholland Award for my coverage of the Burroughs case last year.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “No, actually, I didn’t.”

  “Fletcher, are you a journalist at all?”

  “Off and on,” he said. “Off and on.”

  “I’d think you’re a busboy,” she said quietly, “except busboys have to get along well with everybody.”

  Five heads aboard the plane were looking at them through the windows.

  “I have to be in Italy,” he said. “For about six weeks. Or, I should say, I have to be out of this country for six weeks, more or less.”

  “Have a nice time.?

  “Freddie.…”

  “Irwin.…”

  “There has to be some way I can explain,” he said.

  She agreed. “There has to be.”

  “It’s sort of difficult…”

  Her eyes were still squinted against the sun.

  “In fact, I think it’s sort of impossible to explain.…”

  Freddie Arbuthnot’s chin-up smile was nice.

  She said, “Buzz off, Fletcher.”

  There were only two empty seats remaining aboard the plane, one in front (next to Sheldon Levi) which Freddie took, and one in back (next to Leona Hatch) which Fletch got.

  Leona Hatch watched him closely while he took off his coat, sat down, and buckled his seat belt.

  “I’ll swear I’ve met you before,” Leona Hatch said “Somewhere.…”

  Five rows in front of him, Freddie’s golden head was already buried in a copy of Newsworld magazine.

  Leona Hatch continued to stare at him.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Fletch.”

  “What’s your full name?”

  “Fletcher.”

  “What’s your first name?”

  “Irwin.”

  “What?”

  “Irwin. Irwin Fletcher. People call me Fletch.”

  ALSO BY GREGORY MCDONALD

  FLETCH

  He’s an investigative reporter whose methods are a little unorthodox. Currently he’s living on the beach with the strung-out, trying to find to the source of the drugs they live for. He’s taking more than a little flack from his editor, who doesn’t appreciate his style. Or the expense account items he’s racking up. Or his definition of the word “deadline.” Or the divorce lawyers who keep showing up at the office. So when multimillionaire Alan Stanwyk offe
rs Fletch the job of a lifetime, which could be worth a fortune, he’s intrigued and decides to do a little investigation. What he discovers is that the proposition is anything but what it seems.

  Crime Fiction/0-375-71354-9

  CONFESS, FLETCH

  The flight from Rome had been pleasant enough, even if the business he was on wasn’t exactly. Fletch’s Italian fiancée’s father had been kidnapped and presumably murdered, and Fletch is on the trail of a stolen art collection that is her only patrimony. But when he arrives in his apartment to find a dead body, things start to get complicated. Inspector Flynn found him a little glib for someone who seemed to be the only likely suspect in a homicide case. With the police on his tail, Fletch makes himself at home in Boston, breaking into a private art gallery, “entertaining” his future mother-in-law, and visiting with the good Inspector Flynn.

  Crime Fiction/0-375-71348-4

  FLETCH WON

  As a fledgling reporter, Fletch is doing more flailing than anything else. That and floating around from department to department trying to figure out where he fits in. His editor’s got him pegged for the society pages, but the kind of society Fletch gets involved with is anything but polite. His first big interview, a millionaire lawyer with a crooked streak and an itch to give away some of his ill-gotten gains, ends up dead in the News-Tribune’s parking lot before Fletch can ask question number one. So Fletch ends up going after the murderer instead. At the same time, he’s supposed to be covering (or maybe uncovering) a health spa that caters to all its clients’ needs, and gets hired as a very personal trainer.

  Crime Fiction/0-375-71352-2

  FLETCH AND THE WIDOW BRADLEY

  When Fletch calls in to the News-Tribune, he discovers that he might just be out of a job. If Tom Bradley, the chairman of Wagnall-Phipps and one of Fletch’s principal sources—and not incidentally, the source of his paper’s embarrassment—is dead, who’s been signing his name to company documents, and why doesn’t the company treasurer seem to know? If he’s alive, how come his widow, Enid, has Tom’s ashes on the mantel? Fletch may have more questions than answers on his hands, but he knows he’s a pretty good reporter, and if he’s going to get his reputation back, not to mention his job, he’s going to have to get to the bottom of more than one mystery.

  Crime Fiction/0-375-71351-4

  FLETCH, TOO

  Fletch is finally getting hitched. It’s a small affair, just a few friends, the bride’s parents, the groom’s mother, and—just maybe—his father. Except Fletch has never met his father. But somebody delivered a letter from Fletch senior that contained an invitation to visit him in Nairobi for the honeymoon, along with a pair of plane tickets. No sooner does the couple land in Africa than the search for Fletch’s father begins. There’s a murder at the airport, reports of the old man’s incarceration, and the hospitality (and evasiveness) offered by Pop’s best friend, who flies them across the continent, just a step or two behind—or maybe ahead of—the old rascal.

  Crime Fiction/0-375-71353-0

  CARIOCA FLETCH

  Fletch’s trip to Brazil wasn’t exactly planned. But he has plenty of money, thanks to a little arrangement made stateside. And it took him no time to hook up with the luscious Laura Soares. Fletch is beginning to relax, just a little. But between the American widow who seems to be following Fletch and the Brazilian widow who’s convinced that Fletch is her long-dead husband, Fletch suddenly doesn’t have much time to enjoy the present. A thirty-year-old unsolved murder, a more recent suicide, and an inconvenient heart attack—somehow Fletch is connected to all of them, and one of those connections might just shorten his own life.

  Crime Fiction/0-375-71347-6

  VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD

  Available at your local bookstore, or call toll-free to order:

  1-800-793-2665 (credit cards only).

  FIRST VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD EDITION, MARCH 2002

  Copyright © 1978 by Gregory Mcdonald

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in the United States by Avon Books, New York, in 1978.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mcdonald, Gregory.

  Fletch’s fortune / by Gregory Mcdonald.

  New York: Vintage Books, 2002.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-52391-4

  1. Fletch (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—Fiction.

  3. Journalists—Fiction.

  PS3563.A278F5144 2002

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.0