Fletch and the Widow Bradley

33

F I N A L L Y A T A X I rolled up to the curb in front of the Dallas Registry. The driver rolled down his window.

“Three forty nine Grantchester Street,” Fletch said.

“Why would you want to go there?” The expression on the taxi driver’s face was the one taxi drivers all over the world use while talking to damned furriners who don’t know what they’re talkin’ about.

“Why wouldn’t I want to go there?”

“You lookin’ for somebody?”

“You might say so,” Fletch drawled.

“Well, you won’t find him.”

“I’m beginning to get that idea.”

“I’m pretty sure all that way’s a big owell.”

“A big what?”

“ ‘Course not sure of that number in particular. What’s you say the number is?”

“Three forty nine.”

“Might’s well get in. You look more like you can stand to lose the fare’n I can.”

Inside his clothes Fletch’s body was running with sweat from the dry heat. After he closed the door of the back seat he heard the air conditioner whirring high. The interior of the car was degrees colder. The driver started the car and, not interfering with anyone in Dallas who wanted to get ahead of him, followed the traffic sedately. As he drove he rolled up his window, making the interior of the car even colder.

“All that way’s up there a big owell.”

At nine o’clock Monday morning Fletch had been at the Registry of Births and Deaths in downtown Dallas, Texas. A slim, gray-haired woman had taken his simple enquiry not only as a great interest and cause of her own but also as an opportunity to be hospitable to someone clearly not native Texan. She poured Fletch coffee from the office pot, offered him a doughnut, which she insisted had been ordered by mistake, disappeared into the stacks and returned with a volume really too big for her to carry and dusty enough to make her white blouse look like it had been run over by a bus. Besides the date of birth, she established that Thomas Bradley indeed had been born in Dallas, Texas, at the Dallas Hospital, of Lucy Jane (McNamara) and John Joseph Bradley, of three forty nine Grantchester Street.

“I’m just tellin’ you it’s a big owell, sonny, so when we get that way you won’t turn on me mad for bringin’ you that way.”

“I won’t turn mad,” Fletch promised.

“ ‘Less you’re in ‘struction.”

“In what?”

“You looked like you’re in ‘struction I never would say nothin’. But you don’t.”

“Oh, yes,” Fletch said.

The sunlight reflected from a million mirrors as they drove along, from the windows of buildings, the windshields and chromium of cars. The driver was wearing sunglasses.

The sweat on Fletch’s body froze. He held his arms close to his body.

The lady at the Registry of Births and Deaths had been very kind and very helpful, dragging out volume after volume for him. He doubted her blouse would ever be pure white again.

The taxi driver took a right turn, then another. The sign saying Grantchester was tipped.

Ahead of them, both sides of the street, was an enormous construction site. Chain-link fence ran along both sidewalks. An idle bulldozer dozed among the rubble. There were no workers in sight. Whatever buildings, houses, trees which had been there had been knocked down. On neither side of the road had new building commenced.

“Urban removal,” the driver said. He slowed the car and brought it nearer the dusty curb. “A big owell.”

“Oh,” Fletch said. He had never gone so far to see a hole. “A neighborhood gone.”

“No one here,” the driver said simply. “Whoever you’re lookin’ for.”

“Guess not.”

“No one even to ask after him.”

“No.”

“Lotsa ‘struction goin’ on in Dallas,” the driver said.

“Makes you proud, don’t it?” Fletch said.

He gave the driver the name of the hotel where he had spent Sunday night and would not spend Monday night.

“Francine?”

Fletch had not been sure she would pick up the phone to him. He had identified himself properly to her secretary.

Returning to the hotel he had showered, changed to trunks, played around the hotel’s roof-top pool awhile, until he felt his Puerto de Orlando sunburn beginning to sting again. Now he was sitting on the edge of his bed, wondering which way to dress before checking out.

“Yes, Mister Fletcher. I mean, Fletch.” Francine’s voice was low, sounded cautious and tired.

“Any new thoughts?” Fletch asked. He had direct-dialled station-to-station. There was no way either the secretary or Francine could know he was calling New York from Dallas.

“About what?”

“About what we talked about Friday night.”

“Well, I see that you’ve been damaged, Fletch. I understand that. Some mix-up at Wagnall-Phipps caused you to lose your job. Your profession. I’d like to talk to Enid about making it up to you.”

“How do you mean?”

“Financially. Whether it was Charles Blaine’s mistake, or some office mischief—or because of Enid’s and my decision to delay news of Tom’s death six months—the fact remains you got caught in the middle and suffered damage. It’s partly our fault—I see that—or the fault of Wagnall-Phipps. You’ve suffered damage at our hands. So much so that you’re imagining things. Wild things.”

Her throaty voice was so soft Fletch realized he was pressing the phone receiver hard against his ear.

“I’d like to recommend to Enid we make it up to you somehow—like give you half a year’s pay. Enough to let you go to Europe, or whatever, take a vacation, think out what you’re going to do next with your life.”

“That’s kind of you,” he said.

“Well, I really believe we owe it to you. I figure all this confusion happened just to protect Enid’s authority in the company, get her through a bad time. There’s no reason you should be wiped out by it.”

“Francine, where were you born?”

There was a silence before she said, “My father, you know, was an engineer. I was born on station.”

“Where was that?”

“Juneau, Alaska.”

“I see.”

“Fletch, why don’t you let me talk to Enid about all this?”

“You don’t seem to have thought much of the evidence I presented you, Francine.”

“Oh, I’ve thought about it. And I find simple explanations, for everything, incredibly obvious. The one thing I will never tell Enid about, though, is that that Swiss undertaker gave her the ashes of a burned rug, or whatever you said. That’s horrid. I trust you’ll never let Enid know, either.”

Looking at his toes, Fletch smiled.

“May I see you again?” Fletch asked.

“I wish you would. Toward the end of the week?”

“Thursday night?” Fletch asked.

“Yes. Come to the apartment Thursday evening. By then I’ll have talked with Enid at length about all this. I will know what she thinks. I’m sure she’ll agree with me. A trip abroad might be nice for you, at this point in your life. Help you sort things out.”

Fletch said, “I’ll see you Thursday night.”

After putting the telephone receiver back in its cradle, Fletch walked across his Dallas hotel room to his suitcase and pulled out his sweater.