Fletch Reflected

by Gregory Mcdonald

  •

  “You’re late.”

  Jack had walked halfway along the back of the building. The windows were tinted so he could not see the rooms inside.

  All he could see in the windows was himself.

  A sliding glass door had opened.

  “Sorry,” Jack said. “Want an excuse?”

  “Not really.” Nancy Dunbar, although trim enough in figure, had an unattractive face. Her forehead was low, her chin receded, her eyes were small and close together, her nose wide. Her face looked pinched at birth. “Do you have one?”

  “I couldn’t find anyone to give me directions. Do you have a map?”

  “Yes.” She reached inside the building. “You didn’t start in time. Don’t come in. The air conditioning will chill you. You’re sweating. Don’t bother putting on your shirt.” Outside the building, she slid the glass door shut. She had a loose piece of paper in her hand. A purse dangled from her arm. “We’ll go over there.”

  She handed Jack the map. He folded it and put it in his back pocket.

  He went with her along a walk toward what he thought was another building. They went through an arch in the wall.

  He found himself in a walled Japanese garden. Ordinary rocks surrounded by raked sand were spaced throughout it. Stone benches were placed along the meandering natural stone walk that went around and through it. Graceful trees with few leaves stood against the walls of the garden.

  “Hey,” Jack said. “This is nice.”

  “Are you artistic?” Nancy sat on the stone bench closest to the wall nearest the office building. “Raking this daily will be your chore.” Quickly, she took a cigarette out of her purse and lit it. She inhaled deeply. “Try to vary the designs the rake makes in the sand, will you? If you rake it the same way every day, Doctor Radliegh will notice and mention to me that you are a bore with a rake.”

  “I guess that’s better than being a rake with a bore.”

  She glanced at him. She said: “Humor.”

  “I’m not fired?”

  “For being late?” She exhaled a large amount of smoke. “Not this time.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Jack said. “You’re smoking.”

  “Right,” she said. “Not permitted. Care for a cigarette?”

  “No, thanks.”

  She was putting the ash from her cigarette into a Ziploc bag she had taken from her purse.

  “Now, then, I assume Downes gave you all the do’s and don’ts regarding working here.”

  “Mostly don’ts,” Jack said.

  “This garden is your chore, the outdoor pool, the indoor pool, gymnasium, saunas, whirlpool, tennis courts. You’re expected to help out the gardeners when they ask, also the indoor help, in the event of too many guests, or a party. There will be a party here Saturday night. You don’t mind putting on a white jacket and handing around canapes, do you?”

  “I’ll have to sample them first,” Jack said, “so I’ll feel good about sharing them with the guests.”

  “Who has talked to you here so far?”

  “Mrs. Houston.”

  Nancy smiled. “She’s about the only reasonable one here. She’s my good friend. What did she say to you?”

  “She may have been talking to the azaleas.”

  “Ah!” Nancy smiled again. “She really opened up on you.”

  “Or the azaleas.”

  “You can forget whatever she says.”

  “Okay.”

  “Her loyalty is unquestioned. Who else has spoken to you?”

  “A young woman who swam in the pool this morning. And a young man joined her. He didn’t speak to me. Is she called Shana?”

  “And Chet. Chester Junior. What did Shana say to you?”

  “She asked if I worked here, when did I arrive, that sort of thing.”

  “They are affianced.”

  “Going to marry up with each other,” he said.

  “Yes. Exactly that. Anyone else?”

  “No. I found my quarters last night. Ate my sandwiches. Walked around. I saw no one at all, except the guard at the gate who let me in.”

  “You won’t be that lonely,” she said. “Didn’t you find the staff recreation hall?”

  “No.”

  “Ping-Pong. Stereo. Billiards. Wide-screen t.v. Quite nice, really.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “The thing is that you are not wanted around when members of the family or guests are present, unless there is a need for you. On the other hand …” She put out her cigarette against the sole of her shoe. No ashes fell to the ground. She must have practiced this maneuver. She put the filter into her little plastic baggy. Immediately, she lit another cigarette. “… if you notice anybody acting oddly, saying anything odd, you are to come and tell me.”

  “You mean, if I see someone breaking the rules?”

  “Yes. That, of course. But I’m speaking of members of the family and guests as well as staff.”

  “Like Mrs. Houston?”

  “Not Mrs. Houston. She is the exception. But that sort of thing, yes. We want to know of any plans you hear anybody make. If you see people together you think don’t belong together, we want to know. We want to know of comments you hear people make about each other, Mr. Beauville, me, Doctor Radliegh. That sort of thing.”

  “Why?”

  “Doctor Radliegh does not like surprises.”

  “That’s the simple answer?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about people’s privacy?”

  “Oh, all this information is private. If I think it necessary, I will pass it on to Doctor Radliegh, but it goes no farther than him.”

  Jack did not say anything. Granted, odd things were going on, possibly four attempts on Radliegh’s life. He did not want Nancy Dunbar to know he had been told of them. Perhaps some such precautions were necessary.

  The idea of his spying was hateful to him.

  Yet that was why he was there, wasn’t it?

  “Is all this clear?” Nancy asked.

  “Yes.”

  There was the sound of a siren.

  Nancy’s eyes widened. “Oh, my God.”

  Quickly, she ground the cigarette out against her shoe, dumped the bent filtered cigarette in her baggy, dropped that in her purse, snapped her purse shut, stood up and began running toward her office.

  Jack walked rapidly after her.

  After the sunlight in the garden, her office was cold and dark. It took him a moment to see in the room.

  She stood at her desk, talking on the telephone. “Yes … Yes … And Doctor Radliegh was not there? … I see … Thank you,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  After she hung up, Jack said, “What?”

  “Doctor Jim Wilson was overcome by some sort of gas in the laboratory. The ambulance has come for him.”

  The phone rang.

  “Yes?” she said into the receiver. “Yes … ? I see. I’ll take care of it.”

  Slowly, she hung up.

  To Jack, or to herself, she said, “Jim Wilson is dead.”

  Jack said nothing.

  “Odd,” Nancy Dunbar said.

  “Yes,” Jack said. “What do you say is odd?”

  “Doctor Radliegh always arrives first in the laboratory. He wants the time alone before Jim comes in at two o’clock.” She looked at her watch. “It’s only one-thirty. Normally, Doctor Radliegh would be there alone.”

  Jack said, “That’s five.”

  •

  Standing on the road on one leg, his other leg draped over his bike’s boy bar, Jack watched people assemble in front of the hacienda-style laboratory across the road from Radliegh’s main offices.

  Back doors open, the ambulance was parked in front of the building.

  Jack assumed the ambulance attendants had entered the building to recover the body of Doctor Jim Wilson. Some of the building’s windows had been smashed, presumably to let the lethal gas escape.

  Down the road at high speed rode
a man on a bicycle. In his late fifties, he was tall, slim, broad-shouldered. His hair was salt and pepper gray and black. He wore horn-rimmed glasses.

  Jack saw a tongue of flame spurt from a broken window on the first floor of the building.

  “Hey!” Jack pointed at the window, at the flame.

  The older man dropped his bike on the lawn and ran toward the building’s front door.

  “Hey!” No one was paying attention to Jack.

  Smoke was now rushing through that window.

  The older man collided with the ambulance attendants rushing out of the building at the front door.

  The older man tried to push past them.

  One attendant tried to grab his arm.

  “No, Doctor Radliegh!” the attendant yelled. “Fire!”

  Radliegh pushed the attendant away. “Jim Wilson! Is he dead?”

  The other attendant fell to his knees on the lawn, coughing.

  “Smoke!” the attendant yelled. “The building’s on fire! Stay out of there!”

  Radliegh disappeared into the building.

  “Oh, my God, no,” a woman on the sidewalk said. She screamed: “Doctor Radliegh! No!”

  The attendant who had tried to stop Radliegh seemed pushed backward from the smoke rushing out of the open door.

  For a moment, except for the soft wind noise of the flames and the smoke coming through the door and some of the smashed windows, there was silence.

  Then there was an enormous bang. Just the sound made the people in the road jump back and duck their heads.

  Tiles from the building’s roof shot into the air.

  The first story walls of the laboratory’s main section blew out. The second story walls collapsed inward from their tops as if pulled by cables.

  “No!” screamed the woman.

  Pieces of the roof fell into the building, sending both smoke and dust into the sky.

  “Doctor Radliegh!” The weeping woman turned her back to the building. She embraced another woman. “The boss …”

  Jack looked at his watch.

  It was one fifty.

  Smoke at one side of the building swirled like fog.

  Through that smoke walked the older man.

  In his arms he carried the limp body of another man.

  The building’s collapse almost had put out the fire.

  Still, the air was thick with smoke and dust.

  Walking heavily, smoke-stained, Radliegh carried the body of Doctor Jim Wilson to the ambulance.

  Quietly, the people watched him.

  Gently, Radliegh placed the body as well as he could on the floor of the back of the ambulance. Bent at the knees, the corpse’s legs dangled over the road.

  Radliegh turned. In a low voice, simply, he said to the people, “He is dead.”

  Slowly, he picked up his bicycle. Without glancing at the destroyed laboratory, he walked the bike across the street and neatly put it in the rack.

  Then he entered the office building.

  To himself, Jack said, “Six?”

  8

  “You all right?” Jack asked.

  “Allergies,” the woman managed to say in a strangled voice. “You have to show me your I.D.”

  Jack took his laminated pink Vindemia identification out of his pocket and showed it to her.

  “I guess I’d better look around.” Jack put his shopping list in his pocket.

  She handed him back his identification tag. “Help yourself.”

  Through the window of the Vindemia General Store Jack saw a white hearse park against the curb. Two men dressed in black slacks and white shirts were getting out of its front doors.

  While riding the bike from the airport/office complex, silently a race car had drawn alongside Jack. It was going not much faster than Jack’s bicycle. It oozed by him. Jack stood astraddle his bike on the road and looked after it. Almost every bit of the car, from hubcaps to windows, appeared to be mirrors. The sun reflecting from it stabbed his eyes painfully a half dozen times before it turned a corner and disappeared into an impeccably planted tree forest. He never heard the engine.

  At the edge of the village, there was an intersection. The road to his left went one block, and, at a right angle, turned right. The road to his right went one block, and, at a right angle, turned left. The houses on both sides of the road, each in its own lot, were not identical, but very similar white cottages with blue roofs and trim, a bit of garden, a bit of lawn. Some of the cottages, like his own near the main house, appeared to be duplexes. None of the cottages had a driveway or garage. Crossing the road into the village, Jack figured these residences were built in a perfect square around the village’s center.

  The center of the village of Vindemia was only a block long. Landscaping made it look bigger. The buildings were placed precisely on their sites, in relation to each other, more as if a child had placed them for his toys rather than as if there had ever been any sort of human, evolutionary growth to the place, response to the location, the land itself.

  The road was a smooth black; the sidewalks glaring white.

  Besides the trimmed lawns, bushes, cultivated flowers, everything in the village, including the several fire hydrants, was glossy, eye-stabbing white in the sunlight, with blue roofs and trim.

  There were metal bicycle racks everywhere.

  “A pound of baloney, please.”

  “Oh, honey, we don’t have baloney.” The woman behind the counter of the Vindemia Village General Store coughed until her eyes ran. “Sliced ham. We have sliced ham.”

  “Isn’t that a lot more expensive?”

  She sneezed. “Of course.” Her brown hair was thin on her scalp. The bags under her eyes complemented the general puffiness of her face. Her skin was gray. “Just healthy food,” she coughed. “Health food.”

  “I like baloney.” Jack looked at his short shopping list. “You have canned tuna fish? I like tuna puffs.”

  “No canned anything.” She was choking.

  There were no cars in the village.

  At the end of the main street nearest the only gate to the estate (perhaps a mile away) was a fire station. Its doors were open. One large, one small fire truck had passed Jack on the road. They were headed for the laboratory, at thirty miles an hour. Next to the fire station was the General Store, with gasoline, diesel, and three air pumps, a phone booth, and three electric charging outlets neatly arranged outside. Beyond that was the church. It had a short steeple, a belfry, but otherwise was unadorned by any religious symbol, signboard, name. Next to it in its own bed of rhododendrons snuggled the library, low, with a low slanting roof and leaded windows. Then there was the school. Its windows were tinted glass. None was open. No sound emanated from the school. The side yard of the school nearest the library had picnic tables and instructional areas under pine trees. The further side of the school had seesaws, swings, and jungle gyms. Behind the school was a football field surrounded by a cinder running track, and a baseball diamond. The lawns appeared unscuffed.

  Across the road from these buildings was a recreation area. Handball courts along the sidewalk did not conceal an Olympic-sized swimming pool behind them. Behind the swimming pool, behind low hedges, were four tennis courts. There were drinking fountains enough, Jack noticed, but no soft drink machines. A large recreation hall was placed sideways to the road. Overlooking these activity areas was the recreation building’s wide, deep veranda, dotted with blue rocking chairs. The recreation building itself, Jack could see from the road, obviously had a large main room behind the veranda. On one end of the building, lower than the main hall, was a locker, shower, changing room for women; at the other end, one for men. Jack saw no evidence of a snack bar or other food service. The entrance to the recreation hall was on the other side of the building, canopied, facing a small parking lot. At two o’clock on Friday afternoon, the place was empty.

  Across the parking lot from the recreation hall was a small clinic. Next to it, the ambulance garage doors were
also open.

  At the end of the road (it was a dead end) was a tower, taller than anything else in the village. In the tower, facing the village, was a huge digital clock showing the hour, the minute, the second, and the millisecond. Even in the shaded bright sunlight the frantic whirring of the milliseconds dial provided the otherwise still village with an impression of activity.

  Riding back to the General Store, Jack decided this would be called a designed community. Designed on a board in a brightly lit, air conditioned office, with pencil and ruler, or maybe on a computer screen. Designed with all the engineering essentials in place, not all of the human essentials, places for people to neck, fight, laugh, scream, cry, hide. There were birds in the trees, and a few tanned children idling about, but there were no dogs, cats, squirrels visible in the village. Except for the whipping of the big blue and white flag atop the clock tower, the place was as quiet as ice on a December pond.

  As he pushed his shopping cart toward the produce section, he heard the two men from the hearse enter the store. “Hi, Marie.”

  “Frank.” A sneeze. “Junior.”

  “How’re the allergies doin’?”

  “They’re gettin’ healthier.” The woman behind the counter blew her nose. “They’re gettin’ healthier, and I’m gettin’ sicker.”

  “Came out to pick up Doctor Wilson. Got gassed to death.”

  “I heard.” Marie sniffled. “Didn’t know there was such a thing as lethal gas on this place.”

  “In the laboratory,” one of the undertakers said. “In the lab.”

  “What was it?” Marie asked. “The gas, I mean.”

  “Damned if I know. Enough to set fire to the place. Blow it up.”

  “Was that the big noise I heard?”

  “The lab. building blew up.”

  “I guess some thought ol’ Radliegh was in the building when it blew,” the other man from the hearse said. “He wasn’t.”

  “Too bad,” Marie said.

  The store’s fresh produce, Jack realized, clearly was untouched by any beautifying chemicals. Tangerines and oranges were spotted yellow and black; the tomatoes, even in that season, were more yellow and green than red; the bananas more green or black than yellow; the apples yellow and green, none shiny red. The carrots looked like carrots.