“You know better than we do, uh? The newspaper assign you to this story?”
“The museum angle.”
“Oh. The museum angle. That make sense to you, Gomez?”
“No sense whatever, Biff.”
“I think this kid ought to get lost.”
Gomez said, “We can lose him.”
“Some sort of bureaucratic tangle,” Biff said. “You know, kid, once you get entangled with the cops, any damned fool thing’s liable to happen.”
“Sure,” said Gomez. “We’ll put him in the van for the funny farm this morning. It will be a good ten days before anyone straightens out that bureaucratic tangle.”
“What will that get you?” Fletch asked. “A few days. You think I’d shut up about it?”
“Can’t blame us for a bureaucratic tangle,” Biff said.
“I’m not even in this building this morning. You’re not here either, are you, Gomez?”
“Naw. I’m never in this early.”
“This is a real wise guy. Our offer of a few days’ vacation at the funny farm doesn’t frighten him. We should stick a real charge on him, Gomez. Get him off my back forever. Is that what you do with wise guys? I forget.”
“Generally, Biff, if you’re going to hit somebody, you should hit him so hard he can’t get up swinging.”
“Yeah.” Although speaking softly, the veins in Biff’s neck and temples were pulsing visibly. His eyes glinted like black pebbles at the bottom of a sunlit stream. “I’ve heard that somewhere before. Let’s hit him with a real charge, so he can’t get up again swinging. Let’s see. He was picked up as Alexander Liddicoat. While he was being booked, it was discovered he had a seller’s quantity of angel dust in his pocket. You got any spare PCP, Gomez?”
“Sure,” said Gomez. “For just such an occasion.”
Fletch was hot. “All because I’m bird-dogging your story, Biff?”
“Because you’re a wise guy,” Biff said. “There’s no room for wise guys in journalism. Is there, Gomez?”
“You were always an altar boy,” Gomez said to Biff.
“We play by the rules, kid. You get convicted for possession of a seller’s quantity of PCP, Fletcher, and somehow I doubt John Winters and Frank Jaffe are going to want to see you around the News-Tribune emptying wastebaskets anymore. Or any other newspaper.”
“What am I supposed to say?” Fletch asked. “That I’ll back off and be a good boy?”
“Too late for that,” Biff said. “I’ve decided you’re a real wise guy. We want you gone.”
“I’m supposed to say I’ll go away?”
“You’ll go away,” Gomez said. “At taxpayers’ expense. We’ll see to it.”
Fletch laughed. “Don’t you think I’ll ever come back, Biff?”
Biff glanced at Gomez. “Maybe. Maybe not. Who cares?”
“You’ll care.”
“I doubt it. You spend a few years inside now, and, what with one thing and another, you won’t even be able to walk straight when you get out. Not much of a threat.” Biff said to Gomez: “Find out about this gun he’s talking about. Where’s the PCP?”
“Got some in the locker.”
“Get it. We’ll go to your office and rewrite this kid’s booking sheet.”
“Got some real coffee in the office. We’ll have some real coffee.”
“I could use some.”
Fletch said, “Jesus, Biff! You’re serious!”
“Have I ever made a joke?”
“Ann McGarrahan said you’re a shit.”
“She should know. Biggest mistake of her life was marryin’ me. Everybody says so.”
Gomez laughed. “You the reason she never had any kids, Biff?”
“Had something to do with it. The lady didn’t like to be screwed by anybody with whiskey on his breath.”
Fletch said, “Jesus!”
“Guess I won’t be seeing you around anymore, kid,” Biff said. “Can’t say I’ll miss ya.”
“Biff—”
“Someone will come get you in a while,” Gomez said. “Enjoy waiting. It will be a lot of years before you ever get to spend any time alone again.”
“We’re going to go cook your papers, kid.” Biff held the door open for Gomez. “And, believe me, Gomez and I are the greatest chefs in the world.”
Fletch stood alone in the fluorescent-lit room. The door had thwunked closed. Wilson’s and Gomez’s footsteps faded down the corridor. Muffled shouts came from the cellblock.
Louise Habeck crossed his mind.
Fletch looked up at the dirty, barred window. Even with the bars on the outside, an electric wire ran from the closed window into the wall.
There was no air-conditioning/heat vent.
The walls were painted cement.
Green sneakers, blued hair, and a flowered dress…
It was crazy. Fletch went to the door and turned the knob. He pushed.
The door opened.
He looked out. The corridor was empty.
His heart going faster than his feet, he ambled along the corridor and up the stairs.
There was no one at the counter of the booking office.
In the lobby the same black woman who had been weeping there the night before was now sitting quietly on a bench. The sergeant at the reception desk was reading the sports pages of the News-Tribune.
It took Fletch a moment to get the sergeant’s attention. Finally, he looked up.
“Lieutenant Gomez and Biff Wilson are having coffee in the lieutenant’s office,” Fletch said. “They’d like you to send out for some doughnuts. Jelly doughnuts.”
“Okay.” The sergeant picked up the phone and dialed three numbers. “The lieutenant wants some doughnuts,” he said into the phone. “No. He has his coffee. You know Gomez. If it ain’t mud, it ain’t coffee.”
“Jelly doughnuts,” Fletch said.
The sergeant said, “Jelly doughnuts.”
“News-Tribune resource desk. Code and name, please.”
“Hiya, Pilar. How’re you doin’?”
“Good morning. This is Mary.”
“Oh. Good morning, Mary.”
“Code and name, please.”
Still ravenously hungry, Fletch was glad at least to be back in his own car, headed for his own apartment. “Seventeen ninety dash nine. Fletcher.”
Jogging to the bus stop, his eyes scanning the storefronts for a place open for breakfast, Fletch then realized he had no money. The police had stolen his wallet and keys. The thought amused him that if he robbed a convenience store, Alexander Liddicoat would be blamed.
His car was in the parking lot of a pizza store way out at the beach. He hitchhiked. The first driver who picked him up was a middle-aged man who sold musical instruments. He tried to interest Fletch in the roxophone. He was then picked up by a van filled with kids headed for the beach. At that hour of the morning they were passing around a joint of marijuana and already had finished one quart of white wine. A group of youngsters headed for the beach on a fine morning, each was near tears. It was past nine o’clock by the time Fletch arrived at his car, removed the parking-violation notice from it, hot-wired it, and started the drive back to his apartment.
“Messages for you,” said the resource desk’s Mary over the car phone. “Someone named Barbara called. Sounds like a personal message.”
“Yes?”
“We’re not supposed to take too many personal messages, you know.”
“Ah, come on, Mary. Be a sport.” Fletch’s hunger, the morning’s heat, the bright sunlight, made his eyes and head ache.
“Message is, ‘Did you eat all the pizza yourself? All is forgiven. Please phone.’ ”
The reference to pizza made his tum-tum beat a tom-tom.
“Well?” Mary asked.
“Well what?”
“Did you eat all the pizza yourself?”
“Mary, that’s a personal question. No personal questions, please.”
“You did. I thi
nk you ate the pizza yourself. There’s nothing worse than expecting someone to bring you a pizza and that someone eats it all himself.”
“Mary, have you had breakfast this morning?”
“Yes.”
“I haven’t.”
“You don’t need breakfast, with all the pizza you ate.”
“Is there another message?”
“I wouldn’t forgive you. Yes. Ann McGarrahan wants to hear from you. Message is, ‘Fletch, know you have your hands full with present assignment but please phone in. Beware B.W. and other social diseases.’ ”
“Okay.”
“What’s B.W.?”
“Mary, that’s another personal question.”
“I never heard of B.W.”
“You’re lucky.”
“I thought I knew all the social diseases. I mean, I thought I knew of them.”
“Fine. Now I need the address of Felix Gabais.” He spelled the name for her. “In the St. Ignatius district.”
“Aren’t you going to warn me about B.W.?”
“Mary? Stay away from B.W.”
“I mean, how do you catch it?”
“Sticking your nose in places it doesn’t belong.”
“Oh, we never do things like that. There’s only one Gabais in the St. Ignatius district. First name, Therese.”
“That’s it. He lives with his sister.”
“That’s 45447 Twig Street. Mapping shows the address to be a half-block west of a car dealership on the corner.”
“Thank you. One more: I need the address of Stuart Childers.” Again he spelled the name.
“That’s disgusting,” she said. “Anyone who does that deserves B.W.”
“Mary…”
“That’s 120 Keating Road. Mapping shows that to be Harndon Apartments. Swank.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“I shouldn’t tell you this, I suppose, but Mr. Wilson called in a while ago. He wanted that address, too.”
“Which address?”
“The one in St. Ignatius. Therese Gabais.”
“Mary, you’ve already got B.W.”
“Oh, don’t say that.”
“Be careful, Mary. B.W. can lay you up a long time.”
“This is an answering machine,” Fletch said into his apartment phone on the third ring. “I am not able to come to the phone just now—”
“Fletch!” Barbara shouted through the phone. “You don’t have an answering machine!”
“Oh,” Fletch said. “I forgot.”
Fletch didn’t have much. Across from the rickety, secondhand couch where he sat, posters were on the wall of the harbor of Cagna, on the Italian Riviera, of Cozumel, in eastern Mexico, of Belize, of Nairobi, Kenya, of Copacabana, in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. He hoped someday to have some really decent photographs on his wall, a proper collection. Someday, maybe, he’d have walls big enough to hold some decent copies of the paintings of Edgar Arthur Tharpe, Jr., the western artist.
“Are you all right?”
“Of course.” On the chipped plate on the chipped coffee table in front of him there was very little left of his breakfast of scrambled eggs, waffles, and bacon. “Why do you ask?”
“You went out for pizza last night at eleven o’clock! And you never came back!”
“Oh, God! I didn’t! Are you sure?”
“You never even phoned!”
“I did not eat all the pizza myself. I didn’t get any of it.”
“Were you in an accident, or something?”
“Or something. How come you’re free to phone me? Cecilia finally get a customer for her jodhpurs?”
“I’m doing an errand for her, at the drugstore. We damned near starved to death.”
“Did you lost those eight pounds you don’t like?”
“I think I did.”
“What did you and Cindy do?”
“Went to bed, finally. What else could we do? We waited for you until past one o’clock.”
“Did Cindy stay the night?”
“Of course. What else? We’d had drinks, remember? She knew she shouldn’t drive.”
“Yeah.”
“Damned inconsiderate of you. You could have at least phoned.”
“I could’ve?”
Hung from the ceiling across the room was his surfboard, a thing of beauty, a joy forever.
“We were worried. I phoned the pizza store. The man said no one named Fletcher had been there.”
“You ordered in the name of Ralton.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot. Where did you spend the night?”
“Long story. Mind if I tell you later?”
“Does it have to do with Habeck?”
“I guess so.” Fletch looked at his plate. His headache was gone.
“Did you read Biff Wilson’s piece this morning?”
“Yeah.” The News-Tribune was on the couch beside Fletch. It was not reported that a gun, the possible murder weapon, had been turned in to police the night before.
“His piece strongly indicates, Fletch, that Habeck was bumped off by the mob because he knew too much.”
Fletch sighed. “Maybe he’s right.”
“I mean, really, Fletch, how long has he been covering crime for the News-Tribune?”
“A long time.”
“He must have contacts everywhere.”
“He must have.”
“I mean, sure, people must talk to him: the police, mobsters, informants. He probably has it all figured out.”
“Probably.”
“There’s little point in your being up all night, losing sleep over it. There’s no point at all in your losing your job over it.”
“Listen, Barbara, I’ve got to shave and shower and get to work.”
“Ate all the pizza, and slept late. And I’m marrying you?”
With a flick of his fingers, Fletch knocked the News-Tribune onto the floor.
“I’d have second thoughts, if I were you,” Fletch said.
“Too late. I’m on my umpteenth thought. Remember you’re having dinner with my mother tonight.”
“Absolutely.”
“Six o’clock at the beach house. If you disappoint her again, all her doubts about you will turn into certainties, for sure.”
“For sure.”
“You’ll be there?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay. By the way, Cindy said to call her at twelve-thirty sharp at 555-2900. She’ll answer the phone herself.”
“Say again? That’s not the number of Ben Franklyn.”
“No. She said she’ll just be there at that time, waiting for you to call. That’s 555-2900. She’ll have things to tell you then.”
“Okay.”
“Fletch, this is Wednesday.”
“Already?”
“We’re getting married Saturday. You absolutely must be at dinner tonight.”
“Okay.”
“There are things to discuss.”
“Okay, okay.”
“I’ve got to get back to work,” Barbara said.
Fletch said, “Yeah. Me, too.”
“I’m from the News-Tribune” Fletch said. The woman who opened the door of the ground-floor apartment at 45447 Twig Street was in a wheelchair. “Are you Therese Gabais?”
Her eyes were black, her face gray, her hair unwashed, uncombed. “We can’t afford a daily newspaper. I don’t like them, anyway.”
“Has anyone else from the News-Tribune been here?”
She shook her head no.
The car dealership at the corner of Twig Street seemed to be offering special sale prices on rusty, six-passenger sedans. Fletch had parked near the dealership and walked the half-block, scuffing through the waste-paper and empty tins on the sidewalk. He almost stumbled over the legs of a woman asleep in a doorway.
He was watching for a police car, or Biffs car. While he breakfasted, talked with Barbara, shaved and showered, his doorbell had not rung. If it had rung, he planned to go through a back window a
nd down the fire escape. Being falsely arrested as Alexander Liddicoat for more than twenty robberies was slightly amusing. Having Wilson and Gomez contrive real charges against I.M. Fletcher for drug dealing was totally alarming. The police had not appeared at Fletch’s apartment. They were not now visible in the street.
But Wilson and Gomez had every reason to believe Fletch would show up at the Gabais apartment.
“Has anyone been here?” Fletch asked. “The police?”
Again the woman shook her head no. Her eyes were dull.
She wheeled her chair aside. Perhaps she next would close the door in his face.
Holding the door open, Fletch stepped into the foul odor of the apartment. “I’m looking for Felix Gabais.”
Expression briefly came into her eyes as she looked up at him. She was surprised he was still there. “He doesn’t want a newspaper, either.”
Fletch pushed the door closed. “Need to talk to him.”
There was a bed, a mattress and some blankets on a box, in the room.
Moving no further, the woman’s attention went to a television tuned to a quiz-prize show on a dark, heavy bureau.
Fletch stepped through the only door into another room, a kitchen, of sorts. There was a small refrigerator, a stove top, a sink. Everything was filthy. Empty food cans overflowed the sink. The smell of garbage and excrement was stinging. Against the wall on the floor was a double-sized mattress without pillows or blankets.
There was a massive, brown upholstered chair between the mattress and the refrigerator.
And in the massive chair was a massive man. His gaze remained on the corner of the walls behind the stove top. A half-finished quart bottle of beer was in one hand on the chair arm. Slobbered food and drink were on his shirt and prison-issue black suit.
Fletch sat on the edge of the mattress. “What have you done since You’ve been out of prison?”
“Bought this chair.” Felix Gabais’s free hand raised and lowered on the chair arm. “Bought that mattress.” Felix looked at the mattress. “Bought beer.” The counter in the corner beyond the refrigerator had more than twenty empty quart beer bottles. “Beer’s the only thing that fills me up now.” The fat creases on Felix’s neck rearranged themselves as Felix turned his head and looked down at Fletch. “I’m doin’ okay, first week out.”
“Looks like you got enough to eat in prison anyway.”
Fletch Won f-8 Page 18