Fletch Reflected

24

As Fletch walked back from the laboratory passing the main house, his pocket phone buzzed. “Hello?” On the driveway in front of the house he stopped to listen.

“Fletch …”

“Hi, Crystal. How are you doing this morning? Did you survive the night?”

“I slept.”

“That’s good.”

“There must have been something in the milk.”

“That was the milk. By itself. It’s the best sedative.”

“I’ve had a breakfast of only grapefruit juice with protein powder in it, one coffee, vitamins and an amino acid tablet called L-Carnitine. Well, I had the tablet before breakfast.”

“That’s nice.”

“I feel very energetic. I’ve done a total of five sit-ups already this morning, and used the ankle and wrist weights a total of twenty minutes.”

“You’ll sleep tonight.”

A small jet airplane taking off from Vindemia’s airstrip roared over Fletch’s head.

Fletch looked up at it.

The plane was marked RADLIEGH MIRROR.

He assumed it was Chet Radliegh leaving Vindemia, his family, his fiancée, leaving well before the funeral of his father.

“How did you get workmen to come to this Godforsaken place on a Sunday morning?” Crystal asked.

“I didn’t. What workmen?”

“They’re replacing the mirrors here in the gym with perfect mirrors. They said the order came from I. M. Fletcher. I do believe you are I.M.?”

“I am,” Fletch said. “It did. But I didn’t ask that the mirrors be delivered Sunday morning.”

“Well, they’re here. The workmen showed up about eight o’clock. They’ve been working all morning.”

“That’s nice,” Fletch said. “Guess I’ll be paying time-and-a-half or double-time, or something.”

“Maybe not,” Crystal said. “Maybe they know about you. Maybe they heard about what you did to that terrible place, Blythe Spirit.”

“Beg pardon?”

Under the sound of the jet engine, Fletch had to strain to hear Crystal.

“Blythe Spirit was a terrible place, Fletch.” Crystal’s voice was low. “I’m glad you got me out of there. All their expensive, expert help had succeeded only in making me hopeless. I’m glad you nailed those bastards.”

“Is Mister Mortimer pleased?” Fletch asked. “I mean, with the new mirrors?”

“He’ll never tell you. No, in fact he’s been expostulating all morning. First, at the boys’ training schedule being interrupted. The next explosion from his mouth was, ‘Why doesn’t that Fletcher mind his own damned business?’ Then, when he watched Ricky seeing himself for the first time in the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall perfect mirrors, he fumed. ‘Now that damned boy won’t want to fight anybody but himself, ever! For a boy fightin’ himself in a mirror I couldn’t sell a ticket to a nun,’ was what he said. I noticed he didn’t send the mirrors back, though.”

“I can always tell when he’s pleased.”

“Ricky is why I’m calling.”

“Ricky? The younger boy? Why would you be calling me about him?”

“I’ve discovered him.”

“Was he under a rock?”

“You know Leaves of Grass?” “Whitman. Of course.”

“No, ‘Leaves of grass, grains of sand/ Seasoned, soldier, hardened man/ Is what I’m told I am …’?”

“Guess I missed that one.”

“I found it in an anthology here. I just read it to him. To Ricky. Because they couldn’t work out in the gym this morning, with your workmen here. Listen to this. I’m putting him on.”

“Crystal—” At that moment, Fletch did not expect to be listening to a sixteen-year-old boxer in Montana recite poetry to him by long-distance telephone.

Then Fletch heard Ricky speaking. To him. To his core.

“‘Leaves of grass, grains of sand//Seasoned soldier, hardened man / Is what I’m told I am.’”

Through Fletch’s little telephone came Ricky’s magnificently timbred, modulated voice enhanced by his distinct diction, thrilling cadence: “‘Drinking mud, eating grass: / Think of me as Saddam’s ass. // We’re of different centuries / You and I. / I’m taught to think of lips for lips, / Eye for eye, / While you, my conqueror, are trained / To think of blips; / Coordinate hand, eye and brain …’”

Fletch stuck his index finger in his opposite ear and hunched over a little to hear better.

The voice was compelling. “‘Moslem, Christian and Jew / You do not know me as a man, / A true believer in Saddam, / See my bravery, see me bleed. / Even my final, dying scream: / Silent on your computer screen …’” In the voice of this sixteen-year-old boxer in Montana was a touch of the best, some of the surety, authority, timbre, rhythmic sense of Olivier, Burton …

To himself, Fletch mouthed: “Wow!”

Hunched over, finger in his ear, listening to Ricky over a cheap telephone speaking more than a thousand miles away, Fletch felt something electrical go up his spine and burst in the back of his head between his ears.

“‘The bazaar battled the arcade, / And, naturally, the arcade won. / You’ve had the benefits of our oil, / While my mother and I have had none. // The problem is, and think of this, / It is your every wish / To drag me into a new time, / The century of bliss. / While the world economy thins / Resources shall be averaged. / It matters not who wins. // Seasoned soldier, hardened man / Is what I’m told I am. / You, the pinball wizard mind, / The tommy deaf, dumb, and blind.’”

There was a pause. Then the boy’s voice, not speaking into the telephone, asked, “All right, Mrs. Faoni?”

Crystal took the phone. “Fletch? Did you hear?”

“Yes.”

“Are you hearing what I’m hearing?”

“That’s some fine instrument that boy has.”

“Fletch, Ricky isn’t a boxer. He’s an actor.”

“Oh, Crystal! Mister Mortimer will kill you for sure.” Looking up at the house, Fletch wasn’t sure what he was seeing.

“I read this poem to Ricky once, just once, this morning, and after a moment he began reciting it back to me, the whole thing, sounding as you just heard. Consider not only his sound. He’d memorized the whole thing only hearing it once! He still hasn’t read it! Isn’t he marvelous?”

“Outstanding.”

Someone was tying a sheet, a white bedsheet, to a railing of one of the upper balconies.

He could not see who that someone was.

Sheets. Something about sheets.

Bedsheets wouldn’t be aired from a balcony of the main house.

There was a laundry yard somewhere for that.

“Crystal, you can’t take one of Mister Mortimer’s two remaining boxers.”

“Such talent can’t be ignored. This boy should have his head beat in? No way! I won’t have it. I think it’s a very good thing you brought me here, Fletch. Who’d think of discovering a talented actor in boxing gloves and britches in Where-the-hell-am-I, Wyoming?”

“Why does that surprise you?” For a moment, nothing was happening on the balcony. The rest of the sheet did not appear. “What are you going to do about it, anyway, Crystal? I mean, do about him?”

“Work with him a little myself. I don’t know much, but I know more about this than Mister Mortimer does. I’ll read to him, make him read the texts, ask him what things mean, how he interprets them. I’ll get some tapes, play them for him. This boy has never seen or heard anything other than Terminator movies. I’ll get in touch with some people I know in regional theater—”

A black bulk appeared laid out along the top of the balcony railing. The bulk was as long as a person.

The black bulk rolled, was rolled off the railing.

As it fell, as the sheet unfurled, the body’s arms extended above its head.

The lower end of the sheet was knotted around the neck of the bulk, of the body, of the person.

Fletch yelled: “Crystal! I’m seeing someone being hung!”

“What?”

Hanging from the balcony railing by a bedsheet tied around her neck, the body was swinging. The legs and arms struggled, but not much.

The black hat fell off the head and floated to the ground.

No head appeared over the railing.

“Mrs. Radliegh!” Fletch yelled into the phone. “Amalie! She’s being hung! Good bye!”

Fletch was already running toward the house. As he ran, he folded his phone and tried without success to jam it into his pocket.

He jumped up steps and across a terrace into an enormous sunroom.

“I’ve been stabbed!”

Wearing only the bottom of a bikini, Alixis stood with Amy in the sunroom.

Alixis kept whirring around in a small circle, first this way, then that, whimpering, like a puppy chasing its tail. As she twisted, first she would reach her back with the fingers of one hand, then the other.

Each time she took her hand from her back she stared incredulously at the blood on her fingers.

There was blood on the floor where she was rotating on bare feet.

Amy was pacing around her sister, trying to examine her back. “Stay still! You haven’t been stabbed! You’ve been cut by a barbecue fork!”

There were two wobbling parallel lines across Alixis’ back dripping blood.

“Who did this to you?”

Amy said to Fletch, “I was asleep by the pool. Someone whacked me on the head—”

Fletch was dashing through the room. “Someone’s hanging from a balcony.”

“What?” Amy started to follow Fletch.

Alixis shrieked after them: “I’m bleeding!”

“Oh, shut up!” Amy yelled. “It’s time somebody barbecued you, you fuckin’ worthless piece of meat!”

Followed by Amy, Fletch ran up two wide staircases.

On the third floor, he opened the door of a room and looked through it. There was no bedsheet tied to the railing.

“Are you crazy?” Amy asked.

Pushing by her in the doorway, Fletch said, “I think it’s your mother.”

Amy followed him down the corridor. “I know she’s crazy.”

The next door to the left was open.

Fletch sprinted through the room onto the balcony.

A bedsheet was tied to the railing.

He looked over the balcony.

Less than four feet below the railing hung Amalie Radliegh. Her black hat and veil were on the ground way below her, but she still wore her long black dress and gloves.

Her face was purple.

Fletch supposed her neck was broken.

Her body hung limp.

Amy peered over the high railing like a child looking off a bridge. “Mother … ?”

“Sorry.” Fletch turned Amy away from the sight.

There was the sound of a loud engine roaring somewhere on the estate.

At first Fletch thought it was the sound of another airplane lifting off.

“Is she dead?” An old woman came onto the balcony from the bedroom.

“Oh, Gran.” Amy tried to put her arms around the old woman but was shrugged off.

“Are you Mrs. Houston?” Fletch asked. “Her mother?”

“Yes. Is she dead?”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Houston did not look over the railing. “Once death starts happening, you see…. She did not hang herself.”

“No,” Fletch answered. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, I know so. Amalie was miserable because she did not love and did not hate and did not hope and did not despair. She was murdered. Are you going to haul her up?”

The engine noise seemed at a distance but was still deafening.

Looking out over the estate, Amy said, “Duncan …”

“Yes,” Mrs. Houston said. “Duncan is using his racing car to chase the locals off Vindemia. At least, that’s what he thinks he’s doing. His eyes are glazed with some fantasy. The local boys seem to be making sport of him. Which is why I came in.”

Fletch asked, “Did you see your daughter hanging?”

Mrs. Houston began to choke, but stopped. “Yes. She was thrown off the railing, wasn’t she?” The little woman made a pushing gesture with her hands. “Rolled off.”

“I believe so.”

“Amalie never had much fight in her. She never fought for anything she had, or was given her, to keep it, treasure it; not even her life.”

“She’d probably taken some pills,” Amy said. “Sedatives.”

“I’m sure,” Mrs. Houston said, “you are right.”

“I’d better get Lieutenant Corso.” Fletch started for the door to the bedroom.

For the first time he noticed the barbecue fork on the floor of the balcony. There was blood on the tips of the tines.

“No.” Fletch stopped. He stared at the barbecue fork. “Amy, I think we had better go find your children. You both should come with me.”

Then came the great explosion.

The sound of the roaring engine stopped instantly.

Fletch whipped around.

Even in the brilliant midday sunlight the white flames rising from the exploded racing car were visible a mile away.

The accident was in the middle of the road near the gatehouse.

The racing car had smashed into the guardhouse.

Below the flames Fletch saw what looked like pieces of a smashed mirror piled up against the stone wall.

Then great black smoke rose from the mirror fragments, and began to settle over the mess.

Amy said, “Oh, Duncan …”

Mrs. Houston sighed. She said, “And things could have been so nice, for everybody.”