Fletch’s Fortune

Five

In his room, Fletch, still wet from his shower, sat on the edge of his bed and opened the suitcase he had taken from Locker 719 at Washington’s National Airport.

Through the wall he heard Fredericka Arbuthnot’s hair drier in the next room.

A porter had led them through a door at the side of the lobby, down a few stairs, around a corner, and along the corridor of one of the plantation house’s wings. Fletch carried his own bags.

The porter stopped at Room 77, put down Freddie’s luggage, and put the key in the lock.

“Where’s my room?” Fletch asked.

“Right next door, sir. Room 79.”

“Oh, no.”

Over the porter’s shoulder, Freddie grinned at him.

“Give me my key,” Fletch said.

The porter handed it to him.

“You know,” Fletch said to Freddie, “for someone who’s a figment of my imagination, you cling real good.”

She said, “Your luggage doesn’t match.”

There were four doors to his room—one from the corridor, locked doors to the rooms each side of his, and one leading outdoors.

Before he took his shower, he had opened the sliding glass doors. Before him was the swimming pool, sparsely populated by women and children. To the left was a bank of six tennis courts, only two of which were being used.

Every square centimeter of the suitcase’s interior was being used.

In the center was the tape recorder, with the usual buttons, cigarette-pack-size speakers each side. It was already loaded with fresh tape. In the pocket of the suitcase lid were thirty-five more reels of tape—altogether enough for a total of seventy-two hours of taping.

Across the top of the suitcase, over the tape recorder, were two bands of stations, each having its own numbered button, each row having twelve stations. To the right was a fine tuner; to the left an ON-OFF-VOLUME dial.

In a pocket to the left of the tape recorder was a clear plastic bag of nasty-looking little bugs. Fletch shook them onto his bedspread. There were twenty-four of them, each numbered on its base.

Fletch tested one against his bedside lamp and proved to himself the bug’s base was magnetic.

Below the tape recorder was a deep slot, about a centimeter wide, running almost the length of the suitcase. Toward each end were finger holes. Fletch inserted his index fingers, crooked them as much as space allowed, and pulled up—perfectly ordinary rabbit ears, telescopic antennae.

And in a pocket to the right of the tape recorder were a wire and a plug and an extension cord.

Nowhere—not on the tape recorder, nor the tape reels, not even on the suitcase—was a manufacturer’s name.

Fletch extended the antennae, plugged the machine into a wall socket, turned it on, chose bug Number 8, put it against the bedside lamp, pressed the button for station Number 8, pushed the RECORD button, and said the following:

“Attention Eggers, Gordon and Fabens, Richard!” The red volume-level needle was jumping at the sound of his voice. The machine was working. Fletch turned the volume dial a little counterclockwise. “This is your friend, Irwin Maurice Fletcher, talking to you from the beautiful Hendricks Plantation, in Hendricks, Virginia, U.S. of A. It’s not my practice, of course, to accept press junkets; but, seeing your insistence I take this particular trip was totally irresistible, I want to tell you how grateful I am to you for not sending me anyplace slummy.”

Fletch released the RECORD button, pushed the REWIND and PLAY buttons.

His own voice was so loud it made him jump to turn the VOLUME dial for counterclockwise, A very sensitive instrument.

He listened through what he had said so far.

Chuckling to himself, Fletch turned the machine off and padded in his towel to the bathroom for a glass of water before sitting on the edge of his bed and pushing the RECORD button again.

“Obviously,” he said to the room at large, “I could fill up seventy-two hours of tape with jokes, stories, songs, and tap dancing but, if I understand correctly, that is not why I am here.

“In the event of my death, or whatever, I want anyone who discovers this formidable machine in my room to understand what it is doing here, and what I am doing here.

“I am being blackmailed by the Central Intelligence Agency—under threat of spending twenty years or more in prison, for failing to file federal income tax returns, illegally exporting money from the United States, plus, not being able to account for the source of the money in the first place—to bug and record the private conversations of my colleagues at the American Journalism Alliance Convention at Hendricks Plantation.

“Who’d ever think having a fortune could be so much trouble?

“My three reasons for going along with this quote assignment unquote are obvious to any journalist.

“To Eggers, Gordon, Fabens, Richard, Gibbs, Don, Englehardt, Robert, and all you other backwards people whose asses are where your mouths are supposed to be, so far I have the following to tell you.

“First, I suspect you all suck goats’ cocks and lay hens.

“Second, the person you are most interested in having me bug, old Walter March, is dead. So there.

“Which, of course, causes me to wonder if the reason for your interest in him and the reason for his murder have anything in common.

“Third, Fredericka Arbuthnot has done a terrific job of clinging to me so far. She is magnificently seductive. However, you guys have to be some kind of special stupid. What you’ve done is like sending a man into battle with an arrow through his head.

“More jokes and stories later. I’ll try to learn all the verses of ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ to sing to you at bedtime.”

Fletch turned the machine off and sat another moment, hands in lap, looking at it.

Then he put the suitcase on the floor, leaving it open, and slid it under the bed with his toe. Kneeling, he forced the antennae under the box spring.

He lay on his stomach on the floor, unplugged the machine, and shoved all the wire under the bed, so none of it would be visible from anywhere in the room, and replugged it, running the wire between the bed’s headboard and the wall.

Wriggling out from under the bed, his left biceps landed on paper—an envelope.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he picked up the envelope. He was sure it had not been there before. It must have fallen out of the suitcase. It had not been sealed.

Dear Mister Fletcher:

Our representatives in Italy, in explaining your assignment to you, mentioned only the name of Mister Walter March.

As you have now seen, the equipment we provided you has twenty-four listening devices and stations. We would like to have our public relations effort directed specifically at those on the following list. You may disperse the remainder of the listening devices in the quarters of those younger journalists you feel are most apt to rise to positions of power and influence, in time. We will not consider this assignment completed unless all the devices have been used profitably.…

Next to each name on the list was the journalist’s network, wire service, newspaper, or magazine affiliation.

They were all so well known there was absolutely no need to list their affiliations.

On the list were Mr. and Mrs. Walter March, Walter March, Junior, Leona Hatch, Robert McConnell, Rolly Wisham, Lewis Graham, Hy Litwack, Sheldon Levi, Mr. and Mrs. Jake Williams, Nettie Horn, Frank Gillis, Tom Lockhart, Richard Baldrige, Stuart Poynton, Eleanor Earles, and Oscar Perlman.

“Sonsabitches,” Fletch said. “Sonsabitches.”

There was no signature, of course—just the words, in tiny print at the very bottom of the letter, “WE USE RECYCLED PAPER.”