Fletch’s Fortune

Twenty

3:30 P.M.

COMPUTERS AND LABOR UNIONS

Seminar

Aunt Sally Hendricks Sewing Room

At three-thirty Wednesday afternoon all the tennis courts were in use, the swimming pool area was full, and on the hills around Hendricks Plantation House people were walking and horseback riding.

The bar (Bobby-Joe Hendricks Lounge) was dark and empty except for some people from the Boston press keeping up their luncheon glow with gin and tonics.

And Walter March, Junior, sitting at the bar.

Fletch sat beside him and ordered a gin and bitter lemon from the bored, slow-moving barman.

At the sound of his voice, Junior’s head turned slowly to look at him.

Junior’s eyes were red-rimmed and glazed, his cheeks puffy, his mouth slack. A small vein in his temple was throbbing. He looked away, slowly, thought a moment, burped, and looked back at Fletch.

He said, “William Morris Fletcher. I remember you.”

“Irwin Maurice Fletcher.”

“Tha’s right. You used to work for us.”

“Practically everybody used to work for you.”

“Flesh. There used to be a joke about you. ‘And the Word was made Fletch.’ ”

“Yeah.”

“There were lots of jokes about you. You were a joke.”

Fletch paid the barman.

Walter March, Junior, said, “You heard my father’s dead?”

“I heard something to that effect.”

“Someone stabbed him.” Junior made a stabbing motion with his right hand, his eyes looking insane as he did it. “With a scissors.”

Fletch said, “Tough to take.”

“Tough!” Junior snorted. “Tough for him. Tough for March Newspapers. Tough for the whole mother-fuckin’ world.”

“Tough for you.”

“Yeah.” Junior blinked slowly. “Tough for me. Tough darts. Isn’t that what we used to say in school?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t in school with you.”

There was a long, slow, blinking pause.

Junior said, “My father hated you.”

Fletch said, “Your father hated everybody.”

Another three blinks.

“I hated you.”

“Anyone who hates me is probably right.”

“My Jesus father thought you were night and day.”

Fletch sipped his drink. “What does that mean?”

Junior tried to look at Fletch in the proper executive fashion. “You know, he wanted to make a thing with you. He loved your balls.” Junior’s eyelids drooped. “He wanted to bring you along, you know? Make something of you.”

“Gee, and I’m not even in journalism anymore. Just a hanger-on.”

“Do you remember his trying to frighten you once?”

“No.”

“He tried to scare you.”

“I don’t remember it.”

“Tha’s because you weren’t frightened, shit. You remember the story about the Governor’s secretary?”

“Yeah.”

“He sent memos to you. Directly. Telling you to blow the story.”

“Sure.”

“He came to town. Sent for you in his office.”

“Yeah.”

“Scared the shit out of you.”

“Did he?”

“Told you you’d be fired if you wrote the story.”

“Five minutes in an office.…”

Junior’s head swooped up toward Fletch. “You wrote the fuckin’ story! And then quit!”

“Yeah.”

There was a long pause, and two small burps.

“It wasn’t the Governor Dad cared about. Not the Governor’s secretary. Not the story.” This time Junior put the back of his hand to his burp. “It was you.”

“There was a long pause,” Irwin Maurice Fletcher said, “while Irwin Maurice Fletcher reacted.”

“You don’t get the point,” Junior said.

“I get the point,” Fletch said. “People are always shittin’ around, and I’m me. I always get the point.”

“Apologize.”

“Apologize?”

“Jesus, yes. Apologize.”

“For what? For everyone else always shittin’ around, or for me being me?”

“Before my Dad did that …”—apparently, Junior was considering the prudence of saying what he was about to say—“he had every kind of a fix run on you.”

Fletch sat quietly over his drink.

“He wanted you,” Junior said.

“I was an employee. I wrote that story. Quit. A common incident, in this business.”

“Dad didn’t want any of that. He wanted you. He ran every kind of a fix on you. Have I said that?”

“No.”

“Before he tried to throw the scare into you, he had you worked over with a fine-toothed … pig.”

“That I don’t understand.”

“He wanted you. You were tough. You didn’t scare.”

“He let me resign.”

“That, beaut…”—Junior leaned toward him—“was because he hadn’t figured you out. He gave up, you see.”

“He put detectives on me?”

“He liked your style. In the city room. You were a thousand-dollar job, at first. A mere hand job. He couldn’t believe what he found out. More. Ten thousand. Fifteen.”

“I would rather have taken it in pay.”

“He couldn’t believe.… Who were you married to then?”

“I don’t remember.”

“He said, ‘Either all of it’s true, or none of it’s true.’”

“None of it’s true,” Fletch said. “At the age of eleven, if you want the truth.…”

“Stories,” Junior said. “Used to get stories about you. At dinner.”

Fletch said, “This is very uncomfortable. What a lousy bar. The barman has dirty elbows. No music. What’s that noise? ‘Moon River.’ That’s what I mean. No music. Look at that painting. Disgusting. A horse, of all things. A horse over a bar. Ridiculous.…”

Junior was blinking over his drink.

“It was me Dad hated.”

“What?”

“All my life … I grew up.…”

“Most of us did.”

“… being Walter March, Junior. Walter March Newspapers, Junior. The inheritor of enormous power.”

“That can be a problem.”

“What if I wanted to be a violinist, or a painter, or a baseball player?”

“Did you?”

Junior closed his eyes tight over his drink.

“I don’t even know.”

Someone at the table in the corner said, “Walter marched.”

Someone else said, “And about time, to boot!”

Fletch looked over at them.

Junior hadn’t heard.

“You know, the first day I was supposed to report for work,” Junior said. “September. The year I graduated college. They’d let me have the summer off. I walked to the office. Stood across the street from it, staring at it. Twenty minutes. Maybe a half-hour. Then I walked back to my apartment. I was scared shitless. That night, Jake Williams came over to my apartment and talked to me. For hours. Next morning, he picked me up and we walked into the March Newspapers Building together.” Junior went through the motions of drinking from his empty glass. “Good old Jake Williams.”

Fletch said nothing.

“Fletcher, will you help me?”

“How?”

“Work with me. The way Dad wanted.”

“I don’t know anything about the publishing side of this business. The business end.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me.”

Junior tightened his right fist and let it down slowly on the bar, as if he were banging it in slow motion.

“Help me!”

“Junior, I suspect you missed lunch.”

“My father loved you so much.”

“Come on, I met the bastard—I mean, your father—I mean, your father the bastard, the big bastard five minutes in his office.…”

“I can’t esplain. I can’t esplain.”

Fletch, on his bar stool, was facing Walter March, Junior.

There were tears on Junior’s cheeks.

Fletch said, “Nappy time?”

Junior straightened up immediately. Suddenly, no tears. No whining voice. No quivering. Princeton right down the spine. Hand firmly around the empty glass. Not deigning to answer.

“Hey, Walt,” Fletch said. “I was thinking of a sauna and a rub. They’ve got this fantastic lady hidden away in the basement, a Mrs. Leary, she gives a great massage.…”

Junior looked at him. He was the President of March Newspapers.

“Good to see you again, Fletcher,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I guess I just said I’m sorry you didn’t stay aboard.” He dipped his head to Fletch. “Can I have a drink sent to your room?”

“No, that’s all right.” Fletch stood up from the bar stool.

He looked at Junior, closely, through the dark of the bar.

“As a matter of fact, Walt.” Fletch put his hands in his trouser pockets. “I would like you to send a drink to my room.” He drawled, “I’d appreciate it. Room 79.” He spoke slowly, softly, deliberately. “A couple of gin and tonics. Room 79. Okay? I’d appreciate it. Room 79.”

Fletch wasn’t sure how well Junior was hearing him, if at all.

“Thanks, Walt.”