Fletch’s Fortune

Seven

“Another one,” the masseuse said.

Fletch was lying on his back on the massage table.

She was working on the muscles in his right leg.

He had been told he would have to wait more than an hour for the masseur to be free.

The masseuse was a big blond in her fifties. She looked Scandinavian, but her name was Mrs. Leary.

He had waited until she was finished with his right arm before mentioning Walter March.

His question was: “Did Walter March come in for a massage last night?”

The masseuse said, “I’m beginning to understand just how you reporters operate. How you get what you write. What do you call ’em? Sources. Sources for what you write. You’re always quoting some big expert or other. ‘Sources.’ Huh! Now I see you all just rush to some little old lady rubbin’ bones in the basement and ask her about everything. I’m no expert, Mister, on anything. And I’m no source.”

Fletch looked down the length of himself at the muscles in her arms.

“Experts,” he said, “are the sources of opinions. People are the sources of facts.”

“Uh.” She dug her fingers into his thigh. “Well, I’m no source of either facts or opinions. I’ll tell you one thing. I’ve never been so busy. You’re the ninth reporter I’ve massaged today, every one of ’em wanting me to talk about Mister March. I suppose I should make somethin’ up. Satisfy everybody. It’s good for business. But I’m near wore out.”

Having worked for him, Fletch knew Walter March had massages frequently. Apparently at least eight other reporters knew that too.

“If you want a massage, I’ll give you a massage.” She took her hands off him, and looked up and down his body. “If you want me to talk, I’ll talk. I’ll just charge you for the massage. Either way.”

Fletch looked into a corner of the ceiling.

He said, “I tip.”

“Okay.”

Her fingers went into his leg again.

“Your body don’t look like the other reporters’.”

Fletch said, “Walter March.”

“He had a good body. Very good body for an old gentleman. Slim. Good skin tone, you know what I mean?”

“You mean you massaged him?”

“Sure.”

“Not the masseur?”

“What’s surprising about that? I’m rubbing you.”

“Walter March was sort of puritanical.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

She was working her way up his left leg.

Fletch said, “Oh, boy.”

“That feel good?”

Fletch said, “Life is hard.”

“Walter March was a pretty important man?”

“Yes.”

“He ran a newspaper or something?”

“He owned a lot of them.”

“He was very courteous,” she said. “Courtly. Tipped good.”

“I’ve got it about the tip,” Fletch said.

She finished his left arm.

Suspending her breasts over his face, she rubbed his stomach and chest muscles vigorously.

“Oh, God,” he said.

“What?”

“These are not ideal working conditions.”

“I’m the one who’s doing the work. Turn over.”

Face down, nose in the massage table’s nose hole, Fletch said, “Walter March.” He couldn’t get himself up to asking specific questions in a sequence. He blew the bunched-up sheet away from his mouth. “Tell me what you told the eight other reporters.”

“I didn’t tell them much. Not much to tell.”

She lifted his lower left leg and, with a tight grip, was running her hand up his calf muscle.

“Oh,” he said.

“Are you Jewish?”

“Everyone who’s being tortured is Jewish.”

“Mister March said nice day, he said he loved being in Virginia, he said they’d had nice weather the last few days in Washington, too, he said he wanted a firm rub, like you, with oil.…”

“Not so firm,” Fletch said. She was doing the same thing to his right calf muscles. “Not so firm.”

“He asked if I was Swedish, I said I came from Pittsburgh, he asked how come I had become a masseuse, I said my mother taught me, she came from Newfoundland, he asked me what my husband does for a living, I said he works for the town water department, how many kids I have, how many people I massage a day on the average, weekdays and weekends, he asked me the population of the town of Hendricks and if I knew anything about the original Hendricks family. You know. We just talked.”

Fletch was always surprised when publishers performed automatically and instinctively as reporters.

Old Walter March had gotten a hell of a lot of basic information—background material—out of the “little old lady rubbing bones in the basement.”

And, Fletch knew, March had done it for no particular reason, other than to orient himself.

Fletch would be doing the same thing, if he could keep his brain muscles taut while someone was loosening his leg muscles.

She put her fists into his ass cheeks, and rotated them vigorously. Then she kneaded them with her thumbs.

“Oof, oof,” Fletch said.

“You’ve even got muscle there,” she said.

“So I’m discovering.”

She began to work on his back.

“You should be rubbed more often,” she said. “Keep you loose. Relaxed.”

“I’ve got better ways of keeping loose.”

He found himself breathing more deeply, evenly.

Her thumbs were working up his spinal column.

He gave in to the back rub. He had little choice.

Finally, when she was done, he sat on the edge of the table. His head swayed.

She was washing the oil off her hands.

“Was Walter March nervous?” he asked. “Did he seem upset, in any way, afraid of anything? Anxious?”

“No.” She was drying her hands on a towel. “But he should have been.”

“Obviously.”

“That’s not what I mean. I had a reporter in here earlier today. I think he could have killed Walter March.”

“What do you mean?”

“He kept swearing at him. Calling him dirty names. Instead of asking about Mister March, the way the rest of you did, he kept calling him that so-and-so. Only he didn’t say so-and-so.”

“What was his name?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I could look up the charge slip. He was a big man, fortyish, heavy, sideburns and mustache. A Northerner. A real angry person. You know, one of those people who are always angry. Big sense of injustice.”

“Oh.”

“And then there was the man in the parking lot yesterday.”

She put her towel neatly on the rack over the wash basin.

“When I drove in yesterday morning, he was walking across the parking lot. He came over to me. He asked if I worked here. I thought he was someone looking for a job, you know? He was dressed that way, blue jeans jacket. Tight, curly gray hair although he wasn’t old, skinny body—like the guys who work down at the stables, you know? A horse person. He asked if Walter March had arrived yet. First I’d ever heard of Walter March. His eyes were bloodshot. His jaw muscles were the tightest muscles I’d ever seen.”

“What did you do?”

“I got away from him.”

Fletch looked at the big, muscular blond woman.

“You mean he frightened you?”

She said, “Yes.”

“Did you tell the other reporters about him?”

“No.” She said, “I guess it takes nine times being asked the same questions, for me to have remembered him.”