Fletch’s Fortune

Twenty-seven

“Ye Olde Listening Poste,” Fletch said.

He had sat up, on the edge of his bed, and thrown the switch on the marvelous machine before answering the phone.

“Hell, I’ve been trying to get you all night.”

“You succeeded. Are you calling from Boston?”

How many hours, days, weeks, months of his life in total had Fletch had to listen to this man’s voice on the phone?

“I’ve never known a switchboard to be so damned screwed up,” Jack Saunders said. “It’s easier to get through to the White House during a national emergency.”

“There’s a convention going on here. And the poor women on the switchboard have to work from only one room information sheet. Are you at the Star?”

Jack had been Fletch’s city editor for more than a year at a newspaper in Chicago.

More recently, they had met in Boston, where Jack was working as night city editor for the Star.

Fletch had even done Jack the minor favor of working a desk for him one night in Boston during an arsonist’s binge.

“Of course I’m at the Star. Would I be home with my god-awful wife if I could help it?”

“Ah,” Fletch said. “The Continuing Romance of Jack and Daphne Saunders. How is the old dear?”

“Fatter, meaner, and uglier than ever.”

“Don’t knock fat.”

“How can you?”

“Got her eyelashes stuck in a freezer’s door lately?”

“No, but she plumped into a door the other night Got the door knob stuck in her belly button. Had to have it surgically removed.” Fletch thought Jack remained married to Daphne simply to make up rotten stories about her. “I saw in the Washington newspaper you’re at the convention. Working for anyone?”

“Just the C.I.A.”

“Yeah. I bet. If you’re at a convention, you must be looking for a job. What’s the matter? Blow all that money you ripped off?”

“No, but I’m about to.”

“I figure you can give me some background on the Walter March murder.”

“You mean the Star doesn’t have people here at the convention?”

“Two of ’em. But if they weren’t perfectly useless, we wouldn’t have sent ’em.”

“Ah, members of the great sixteen-point-seven percent.”

“What?”

“Something a friend said.”

“So how about it?”

“How about what?”

“Briefing me.”

“Why?”

“How about ‘old times’ sake’ as a reason?”

“So I can win another award and you not even tell me but go accept it yourself and make a nice, humble little speech lauding teamwork?”

Such had actually happened.

Saunders said, “I guess technically that would come under the heading of ‘old times’ sake’—in this instance.”

“If I scoop the story, will you offer me a job?”

“I’ll offer you a job anyway.”

“That’s not what I asked. If you get a scoop on this, will you make with a job?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. You want background or gossip at this point?”

“Both.”

“Walter March was murdered,”

“No foolin’.”

“Scissors in the back.”

“Next you’re going to say he fell down dead.”

“You’re always rushing ahead, Jack.”

“Sorry.”

“Take one point at a time.”

“‘Walter March was murdered.’ I’ve written it down.”

“He was murdered here at the convention, where everybody knows him, and a great many people hate him.”

“He’s the elected president.”

“You know that Walter March kept a stable of private detectives on his permanent payroll?”

“Of course I do.”

“His use of them has irritated many people—apparently given many people reason to murder him. In fact, if you believe what you hear around here, dear old saintly Walter March was blackmailing everybody this side of Tibet.”

“Do you know whom he was blackmailing and why?”

“A few. He’s been having Oscar Perlman followed and hounded for years and years now.”

“Oscar Perlman? The humorist?”

“Used to work for March. His column got picked up by a syndicate, and has been running in March’s competing newspapers ever since.”

“That was a thousand years ago.”

“Nevertheless, he’s been hounding Perlman ever since.”

“So why should Perlman stab March at this point, when he hasn’t before?”

“I don’t know. Maybe March’s goons finally came up with something.”

“Oscar Perlman,” Jack Saunders mused. “That would be an amusing trial. It would make great copy.”

“Lydia March says she saw Perlman in the corridor outside their suite immediately after the murder. Walking away.”

“Good. Let’s stick Perlman. Anything for a laugh.”

“None of this is printable, Jack.”

“I know that. I’m the editor, remember? Daphne and all those ugly kids of mine to feed.”

“Rolly Wisham hated Walter March with a passion. He has reason, I guess, but I think his hatred borders on the uncontrollable.”

“‘Rolly Wisham, with love’?”

“The same. He says he was so upset at seeing March in the elevator Sunday night, he didn’t sleep all night.”

“What’s his beef?”

“Wisham says that March, again using his p.i.’s, took the family newspaper away from Rolly’s dad, and drove him to suicide.”

“True?”

“How do I know? If it is true, it happened at a dangerous age for Rolly—fifteen or sixteen—I forget which. Loves and hatreds run deep in people that age.”

“I remember. Did Wisham have the opportunity? You said he was there Sunday night.”

“Yeah, and he has no working alibi for Monday morning. He says he was driving around Virginia, in sunglasses, in a rented car. Didn’t even stop at a gas station.”

“Funny. ‘This is Rolly Wisham, with love, and a scissors in Walter March’s back.’ ”

“You know March was planning a coast-to-coast campaign to get Wisham thrown off the air?”

“Oh, yeah. I read that editorial. It was right. Wisham’s a fuckin’ idiot. The world’s greatest practitioner of the sufferin’-Jesus school of journalism.”

“Keep your conservative sentiments to yourself, Saunders. You’ve been off the street too long.”

“Two good suspects. We’ll start doing background on them both right away. Anyone else?”

“Remember Crystal Faoni?”

“Crystal? Petite Crystal? The sweetheart of every ice cream store? She used to work with us in Chicago.”

“She tells me that once when she was pregnant without benefit of ceremony, March fired her on moral grounds. Crystal had no choice but to abort.”

“That bastard. That prude. Walter March was the most self-righteous.…”

“Yes and no,” Fletch said.

“Well, I’ll tell you, Fletch. Crystal has the intelligence and imagination to do murder, and get away with it.”

“I know.”

“I’d hate to have her as an enemy.”

“Me too.”

“I shiver at the thought. I’d rather have a boa constrictor in bed with me. This Captain Andrew Neale, who’s running this investigation, what do you think of him?”

“He’s no Inspector Francis Xavier Flynn.”

“Sometimes I think Inspector Francis Xavier Flynn isn’t, either.”

Flynn was the only person working for the Boston Police Department with the rank of Inspector.

“I think Neale’s all right,” Fletch said. “He’s working under enormous pressure here—the press all over the place—trying to interview professional interviewers. He’s under time pressure. He can keep us here only another twenty-four hours or so.”

“Is there anyone else, Fletch, with motive and opportunity?”

“Probably dozens. Robert McConnell is here.”

“McConnell. Oh, yeah. He was what’s-his-face’s press aide. Wanted to go with him to the White House.”

“Yeah. And Daddy March endorsed the other candidate, coast-to-coast, which may have made the difference, gave Bob his job back, and sat him in a corner, where he remains to this day.”

“Bob could do it.”

“Murder?”

“Very sullen kind of guy anyway. Big sense of injustice. Always too quick to shove back, even when nobody’s shoved him.”

“I noticed.”

“We’ll do some b.g. on him, too. Who’s this guy Stuart Poynton mentions in tomorrow’s column?”

“Poynton mentions someone? The desk clerk?”

“I’ve got the wire copy here. He mentions someone named Joseph Molinaro.”

“Never heard of him. I wonder what his name really is.”

“I’ll read it to you. ‘In the investigation of the Walter March murder, local police will issue a national advisory Thursday that they wish to question Joseph Molinaro, twenty-eight, a Caucasian. It is not known that Molinaro was at the scene of the crime at the time the crime was committed. Andrew Neale, in charge of the investigation, would give no reason for the advisory.’ Mean anything to you, Fletch?”

“Yeah. It means Poynton conned some poor slob into doing some legwork for him.”

“Fletch, sitting back here in the ivory tower of the Boston Star.…”

“If that’s an ivory tower, I’m a lollipop.”

“I can lick you anytime.”

“Ho, ho.”

“My vast brain keeps turning to Junior.”

“As the murderer?”

“Walter March, Junior.”

“I doubt it.”

“Living under Daddy’s thumb all his life.…”

“I’ve talked with him.”

“That was a very heavy thumb.”

“I don’t think Junior’s that eager to step into the batter’s box, if you get me. Mostly he seems scared.”

“Scared he might get caught?”

“He’s drinking heavily.”

“He’s been a self-indulgent drinker for years, now.”

“I doubt he could organize himself enough.”

“How much organization does it take to put a scissors in your daddy’s back?”

Fletch remembered the stabbing motion Junior made, sitting next to him in the bar, and the insane look in his eyes as he did it.

Fletch said, “Maybe. Now, would you like to know who the murderer is?”

Jack Saunders chuckled. “No, thanks.”

“No?”

“That night, during the Charlestown fires, you had it figured out the arsonist was a young gas station attendant who worked in a garage at the corner of Breed and Acorn streets and got off work at six o’clock.”

“It was a good guess. Well worked-out.”

“Only the arsonist was a forty-three-year-old baker deputized by Christ.”

“We all goof up once in a while.”

“I think I can stand the suspense on this one a little longer.”

“Anyway, Christ hadn’t told me.”

“If you get a story, you’ll call me?”

“Sure, Jack, sure. Anything for ‘old times’ sake.’ “