Fletch

5

Clara Snow had ordered an uncut bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwich on toast. When she bit into it the two edges of toast nearer Fletch gaped as if about to bite him.

“Tell me what I’ve always wanted to know, Clara, and somehow never expected to find out: how is our editor-in-chief, Frank Jaffe, in bed?”

“Fletch, why don’t you like me?”

“Because you don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know anything about this business.”

“I’ve been employed in this business a lot longer than you have.”

“As a cooking writer. You know nothing about hard news. You know nothing about features. You know nothing about the mechanics of this business.”

Speaking like a school marm trying to coax a boy full of puberty toward the periodic tables, she said, “Are you sure you don’t resent me just because I’m a woman?”

“I don’t resent women. I rather like women.”

“You haven’t had much luck with them.”

“My only mistake is that I keep marrying them.”

“And they keep divorcing you.”

“I don’t even mind your going to bed with the editor-in-chief. What I do mind is your being made an editor—my editor—solely because you are going to bed with the editor-in-chief, when you are totally unqualified and, I might add, totally incompetent. Go to bed with Frank if you like. Anything to keep the bastard reasonably sober and relaxed. But your accepting an editorship in bed when you are unqualified is thoroughly dishonest of you.”

Even in the cafeteria light, the skin over Clara’s cheekbones as she stared at him was purple.

She bit into the sandwich, and the toast yawned at Fletch. He chewed his calves’ liver open-mouthed. “Such principle,” she said, sucking Coke from a straw. “You can’t tell me you haven’t made every strung-out little girl on the beach.”

“That’s different. That’s for a story. I will do anything for a story. That’s why I put penicillin on my expense account.”

“You do?”

“Under ‘Telephones.’ ‘

“What Frank and I do together, and what our personal relationship is, is none of your damned business, Fletcher.”

“Fine. I’ll buy that. Just leave me alone, and leave my goddamned copy alone. You chopped hell out of my divorce equity story and made me look like a raving idiot.”

“I had to make changes in it, and you were away on a story. I couldn’t get in touch with you.”

“It came out totally imbalanced, thanks to you, bitch editor. If I were a divorce lawyer in our circulation area, I would have sued the hell out of me by now. You opened me and the newspaper wide for suit, besides making me look like an incompetent.”

“I tried to get in touch with you.”

“Leave my copy alone. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Want coffee?”

“I never take stimulants.”

“For now, Fletch, we have to work together.”

“Until you build enough of a case against me to get me fired, right?”

“Maybe. Now please tell rne how you are doing on the drugs-on-the-beach story.”

“There are drugs on the beach.”

“Lots?”

“On that particular stretch of beach, lots.”

“Hard drugs?”

“Very.”

“Who are the people there?”

“The so-called kids on the beach are divided into two groups. The first group are drifters, kids on the road, alienated, homeless wanderers, usually incapable of permanent relationships. Some of them are just sun-worshippers, but if they are, they case this particular stretch of beach and move on. The kids who stay are there for the drugs. Because there is a source there, somewhere, of good, clean junk. Some of these so-called kids are forty years old. Although others aren’t, like Bobbi.”

“Tell me about Bobbi.”

“Jesus, she’s been listening. Bobbi is as cute as a button, only sexier. She is fifteen, blond, with a beautiful, compact little body.”

“Have you been making it with her?”

“She needed someplace to crash.”

“A fifteen-year-old. And you talk about me.”

“She came out with a guy older than I am. Originally from Illinois. Daddy’s a dentist. She fell in love with this guy passing through the local coffee shop, packed a knapsack and came with him. Once she was on the beach and thoroughly hooked, he wandered off. She was hooking when I met her.”

“How are you paying for her?”

“Expense account. Under ‘Breakfast’ and ‘Lunch.’‘

“Aren’t you afraid of the law, Fletcher? A fifteen-year-old?”

“If there is no one to complain for a kid, the law don’t give a shit.”

“Fletcher’s Rule.”

“The second group of kids on the beach are the local teenagers. They show up after school in their stripped Volkswagens, with surfboards, and make deals with daddy’s hard-earned bread. The fuzz care a lot more about the local kids, as might be expected. In fact, one kid in particular, a kid named Montgomery, they pick up every week, yank him down for questioning. His dad is important in the town or something. Regular as clockwork. But he shows up again, almost immediately, beat up and smiling.”

“Why do the kids go to that beach?”

“Because there is a source there.”

“Who is the source?”

“An older drifter called Vatsyayana. I’d say he’s in his mid-thirties. Balding and bearded. Oddly enough, he’s got kindly eyes. Desperately skinny. The local kids call him Fat Sam.”

“So why haven’t you a story, if you know this much?”

“Because I don’t know what Fat Sam’s source is. I can’t figure it out. He never seems to leave the beach. I spent ten days tailing him. All he seems to do is sell, sell, sell. I know where his stash is. It’s in a chink of the sea wall. When word passed that Fat Sam was getting low, I kept my eyes on the stash for thirty-six hours. One: Fat Sam didn’t leave the beach. Two: no one else went near his stash. After thirty-six hours, the supply was up again. Rationing was over. I can’t figure it out.”

“You missed the contact.”

“Thanks.”

“You’ve been on the story three weeks.”

“That’s not so much.”

“Why don’t we just run with what we’ve got? Put Fat Sam out of business?”

“Who cares about Fat Sam? The thing would start up again within a month. If you were any kind of a journalist, Clara, you would know we do not have a story until we have Fat Sam’s source.”

“You’ve got to stop somewhere. I mean, his source must have a source. Do you plan to follow the sources back to Thailand or some such place?”

“Maybe.”

“You’ve got pictures of Fat Sam dealing, right?”

“Right.”

“Let’s run with it.”

“Negative. You’ll get the story when there is one. Putting one little pusher behind bars for twelve hours is not my idea of journalism.”

“Frank is anxious.”

“You’re in charge of relieving Frank’s anxieties.”

“I wish I could have dessert,” she said.

Fletch was eating a strawberry shortcake with whipped cream.

Clara said quickly, “There’s a matter of insubordination. Disobedience.”

Fletch put a perfect balance of strawberry shortcake and whipped cream on his fork.

“I told you not to leave The Beach today. One: we want you to stay there until that story is done. Two: we don’t want you to blow your cover. Whoever Fat Sam’s source is could be wise to you by this time, or suspicious. He could be watching you. All you needed to do was jump into your Alfa Romeo or whatever it is you drive, and speed up to the News-Tribune, which you have done, and you are dead.”

“Good shortcake. It’s an MG.”

“What?”

“MG.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“My car. It’s an MG.”

“Oh. You may be dead.”

“I’ll get the story in first.”

“Do you think you should go back to The Beach?”

“Sure.”

“Will you be safe?”

“Come with me and find out.”

“No, thanks. But I do wonder, Fletch, if we hadn’t ought to tell the local police that you’re down there. Who you are and what you’re doing.”

Fletch put down his fork and sat back in his chair. His look was meant to terrify.

“If you do that, Clara, you’ll be dead before me. I will kill you. Make no mistake.”

“We’re responsible for you, Fletcher.”

“Then be responsible, goddamn it, and shut the fuck up! You never blow a story! To anyone, at any time, ever! Christ, I wish I didn’t have to talk to you, you’re such an idiot.”

“All right, Fletcher, calm down. People are watching.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

“I won’t talk to the police—yet.”

“Don’t talk to the police or anyone else—ever. If I need help, I’ll ask for it.”

“All right, Fletcher. All right, all right, all right.”

“Stupid bitch.”

“Which brings up the last matter—your Bronze Star.”

“What about it?”

“While you’ve been gone, not only have thousands of sleazy lawyers hired by your dozens of ex-wives been prowling the corridors ready to leap at you, but the marine commandant’s office has been calling as well.”

“So what.”

“You won a Bronze Star.”

“Years ago.”

“You never picked it up.”

“Right.”

“May I ask why not?”

“Such a thing doesn’t belong in a pawnshop.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s where they all end up, isn’t it?”

“I don’t see why.”

“You don’t have so many ex-wives.”

“You are going to pick up the Bronze Star.”

“I am not.”

“It’s all arranged. There is to be a ceremony next Friday, a week from today, in the commandant’s office at the marine base, and you are going to be there in a suit and tie and shoes.”

“What the hell is this to you? This is private business.”

“It is not private business. You are I.M. Fletcher, star writer of the News-Tribune, and we are going to have a photographer there and a cub reporter and we are going to run you smiling modestly in all editions Saturday.”

“You are like hell.”

“We are. What’s more, the marine commandant is going to have his full public relations staff, including photographers, there.”

“No.”

“And we’re going to try to make a wire story out of it and tell the whole world both about your exploits and the modesty that has kept you from picking up such a high honor all these years. We won’t tell them you really haven’t picked it up just because basically you are a slob.”

“I won’t be done with The Beach story by then.”

“You will turn in your beach story, whatever it looks like, with pictures, by four o’clock Thursday afternoon. We will run it in the Sunday paper, with a little sidebar saying, News-Tribune reporter I.M. Fletcher received the Bronze Star Friday, etc.”

“You will do nothing of the sort.”

“Frank has decided. The publisher has agreed.”

“I don’t care. I haven’t.”

“There is the matter of insubordination. You left an assignment when you were told clearly not to.”

“I won’t do it.”

“I’ll put it more simply, Fletcher: you have The Beach story in, complete, Thursday afternoon at four and be in the marine commandant’s office next Friday morning at ten, or you’re fired. And I, for one, will cheer.”

“I bet you will.”

“You’re an obnoxious prick.”

“I sell newspapers.”

“You heard me, Fletcher. Thanks for wearing your shoes to lunch.”

“I didn’t.”