Fletch’s Fortune

Eighteen

“One moment, sir. Major Lettvin calling.”

Fletch had been led to a wall phone down the corridor from the entrance to the dining room.

Leaving the dining room, he had seen (and ignored) Don Gibbs.

Through the plate glass window at the end of the corridor, a couple of meters away, he could see the midday sunlight shimmering on the car tops in the parking lot.

“How do,” the Major said. “Do I have the honor of addressing Irwin Maurice Fletcher?”

The drawl was thicker than Mississippi mud.

“Right,” said Fletch.

“Veteran of the United States Marine Corps?”

“Yes.”

“Serial Number 1893983?”

“It was. I retired it. Anyone can use it now.”

“Well, sir, some sharp-eyed old boy here in one of our clerical departments, reading about that murder in the newspaper, you know, what’s his name? where you at?”

The drawl was so steeped in courtesy everything sounded like a question.

After a moment, Fletch said, “Walter March.”

“Walter March. Say, you’re right in the middle of things again, aren’t ya?”

Fletch said, “Middle of lunch, actually.”

“Anyway, this here sharp-eyed old boy—he’s from Tennessee—I suspect he was pretty well-known around home for shooting off hens’ teeth at a hundred meters—well, anyway, reading this story in the newspaper about Walter March’s murder, he spotted your name?”

Again, it sounded like a question.

Fletch said, “Yes.”

“Say, you aren’t a suspect or anything in this murder, are ya?”

“No.”

“What I mean to say is, you’re not implicated in this here murder in any way, are ya?”

“I wasn’t even here when it was committed. I was flying over the Atlantic. I was coming from Italy.”

“Well, the way this story is written, it makes you wonder. Why do journalists do things like this? Ask me, take all the journalists in the world, put ’em in a pot, and all you’ve got is fishbait.” Major Lettvin paused. “Oops. Sorry. You’re a journalist, aren’t ya? I forgot that for a moment. Sportswriters I don’t mind so much.”

“I’m not a sportswriter.”

“Well, he recognized your name—how many Irwin Maurice Fletchers can there be?” (Fletch restrained himself from saying, “I don’t know.”) “And checked against our files here at the P-gon, and, sure enough, there you were. Serial Number 1893983. That you?”

“Major, do you have a point? This is long distance. You never can tell. A taxpayer might be listening in.”

“That’s right.” The Major chuckled. “That’s right.”

There was a long silence.

“Major?”

“Point is, we’ve been lookin’ for ya, high and low, these many years.”

“Why?”

“Says here we owe you a Bronze Star. Did you know that?”

“I heard a rumor.”

“Well, if you knew it, how come you’ve never arranged to get decorated?”

“I.…”

“Seems to me, if a fella wins a Bronze Star he ought to get it pinned to his chest. These things are important.”

“Major, it’s nice of you to call.…”

“No problem, no problem. Just doin’ my duty. We got so many people here at the P-gon, everybody doin’ each other’s lazying, it’s a sheer pleasure to have something to do—you know what I mean?—to separate breakfast from supper.”

There was a man ambling across the parking lot, hands in the back pockets of his jeans.

“You going to be there a few days, Mister Fletcher?”

“Where?”

“Wherever you are. Hendricks Plantation, Hendricks, Virginia.”

“Yes.”

The man in the parking lot wore a blue jeans jacket.

“Well, I figure what I’ll do is dig up a general somewhere—believe me, that’s not difficult around the P-gon—we’ve got more generals in one coffee shop than Napoleon had in his whole army—we could decorate the Statue of Liberty with ’em, and you’d never see the paint peel—and move his ass down to Hendricks, Virginia.…”

“General? I mean, Major?”

The man in the parking lot also had tight, curly gray hair.

“I figure a presentation ceremony, in front of all those journalists—decorating one of their own, so to speak, with a Bronze Star.…”

The man who had accosted Mrs. Leary in the parking lot.

“Major? I’ve got to go.”

“The Marine Corps could use some good press, these days, you know.…”

“Major. I’ve got to go. An emergency. My pants are on fire. Call me back.”

Fletch hung up, turned around, and headed down the corridor at high speed.

He found a fire door with EXIT written over it, pushed through it, and ran down the stairs.

He entered the parking area slowly, trying not to make it too obvious he was looking for someone.

No one else was in the parking lot.

The man had been walking toward the back of the area.

Fletch went to the white rail fence and walked along it, looking down the slope to his right.

He caught a glimpse of the man crossing behind two stands of rhododendrons.

He sprung over the fence and ran down the slope.

When he ran through the opening in the rhododendrons, and stopped, abruptly, to look around, he saw the man standing under some apple trees, hands in back pockets, looking at him.

Slowly, Fletch began to walk toward him.

The man took his hands out of his pockets, turned, and ran, further down the slope, toward a large stand of pine. Behind the pine trees were the stables.

Fletch noticed he was wearing sneakers.

Fletch ran after him, and when he came to the pine trees, his shoes began to slip on the slope. To brake himself from falling, he grabbed at a scrub pine, got sap on his hands, and fell.

Looking around from the ground, Fletch could neither see nor hear the man.

Fletch picked himself up and walked through the pines to the stable area, trying to scrape the sap off his hands with his thumbnails.

In the midday sun, the stables had the quiet of a long lunch hour typical of a place where people work early and late. No one was there.

For a few minutes Fletch petted the horse he had ridden that morning, asking her if she had seen a man run by (and answering for her, “He went thet-away”), and then walked back to the hotel.