Confess, Fletch

Eight

Apparently doing nothing but consulting his map, Fletch stopped across the street and looked at the Horan building.

On each side of the roof, along the lines where the building joined with roofs of buildings to its left and right, ran a high, spiked iron fence. Its forward ends curved over the edge of the roof, fanning halfway down the fifth story. The windows on the third, fourth, and fifth storeys were barred, too.

Ronald Horan liked his security.

Using his map, Fletch crossed to Boylston Street and walked into Copley Square.

There, at the State Street Bank and Trust Company—after long, albeit courteous, delays, interviews with everyone except the most junior teller, proving his identity over and over again, including showing his passport, listening five times to the apologetic explanation that “all this is for your own protection, sir”—he picked up the twenty-five thousand dollars in cash be had had sent ahead. He took the money in fifty and one hundred dollar denominations.

He observed how much easier it always is to put money into a bank than it is to take it out. Even one’s own money.

“That’s what banks are for, sir.”

“Of course.”

Then he lunched on a tuna fish sandwich and Coke.

He taxied to five used car lots, in Boston, Brookline, Arlington, Somerville, and Cambridge, before he, found precisely the van he wanted. It was last year’s Chevrolet, light blue, with an eight-cylinder engine, standard shift, heating, and air conditioning. He paid cash for it and had the garageman replace all four tires. The garageman also obliged him by providing the legally necessary insurance for the van, through his sister-in-law, who ran an office across the street. The insurance bill was outrageous in relation to the cost of the vehicle.

Comparing the map with the list of garages for rent he had torn from the newspaper while going back to town in the taxi, he told the driver to go to the Boston underground garage. It was not far from his apartment. Once at the garage, he rejected it immediately—there would be no privacy there, typical of most government-run facilities the world round. He wanted Walls.

He walked to a garage advertised on River Street, even closer to his apartment. First he woke up the housekeeper left in charge of the negotiation by its owner. She had to find the key. In broken down, red house shoes, describing her osteitis in jealous detail, she showed him the garage. The monthly rent was exorbitant. But the place had brick walls and a new, thick wooden door. He paid two months’ rent in cash and took the key, as well as a signed receipt (made out to Johann Recklinghausen) shortly after the interminable time it took the woman to find the receipt book.

He advised her to see a doctor.

After standing in line for forty-seven minutes at the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles at 100 Nassau Street before being able to present his driver’s license, purchase agreement marked “Cash—Paid,” and application for insurance, he was given his vehicle registration (for a light blue Chevrolet caravan) and two license plates.

They attached his license plates for him at the used car lot in North Cambridge.

Driving back into Boston, he stopped at a corner variety store and bought twenty-five issues of that evening’s Boston Globe. The curiosity of the storekeeper and his wife made Fletch wonder if indeed he was mentioned in that evening’s newspaper. In the van, he went through one newspaper quickly. He wasn’t.

He also stopped at a hardware store and bought a quart of black paint, a cheap, brush, and a bottle of turpentine.

It was dark when he returned to River Street. Leaving the garage door open and the van outside with its lights on, he spread the Globe all over the cement floor.

Then he, drove the van into the garage, onto the paper, and closed the door.

Being careful of his clothes, doing a purposefully messy job by the headlights reflected from the front wall, he climbed on top of the van and wrote, “YOU MUST BE HIGH” on the roof. Climbing down, again over the windshield, he wrote, in huge, dripping letters, on the left panel, “FEED THE PEOPLE.” On the right panel, “ADJUST!”

As the truck was wet from the mist before he began, the mess he created was perfect.

After cleaning his hands with the newspapers and turpentine, he locked the garage.

Then he taxied to the Sheraton Boston Hotel and rented a two-door, dark blue Ford Ghia, which he drove to his apartment and parked on the street.