Fletch’s Moxie

37

Fletch knocked on Frederick Mooney’s bedroom door and entered without waiting to be invited.

Mooney was sitting in a Morris chair, his hands in his lap. Silently, he watched Fletch.

“How long you been sober?” Fletch asked.

“Over three years.”

The airlines flight bag was on the floor beside the bed. Fletch hunkered down next to it. He lifted one of the bottles from it. He uncapped the bottle and sniffed the contents.

“You can’t get apple juice in most bars,” Mooney said.

Fletch left the bottle on the bureau. “You’re one hell of an actor.”

“I thought you knew that.” Mooney shifted in his chair. “Of course I had the advantage. Once people think of you as a drunk, they see you as a drunk.”

“Moxie said you were drunk when she arrived at her apartment in New York.”

“I had set the stage, knowing she’d show up sometime. Empty bottles around, dirty smelly glasses…”

“But why?”

“I wanted to see her, as it were, without being seen. She would have shut off the reformed Frederick Mooney. I had shut her off too many years. Her behavior would have been cool and proper in front of the great man, her father. I decided the best way to see her, to really see her, get to know her, was as a dependent. In front of a helpless old man, blind drunk, Marilyn was herself. I’ve really gotten to know her, the last few weeks. She’s really quite marvelous.”

“But she hasn’t gotten to know you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Frederick Mooney. “It’s all on film.”

“So at the apartment in New York you heard everything. Everything about Peterman—”

“Of course. I even read Midsummer Night’s Mad-ness one afternoon while she was out. I knew the fiddle was on. You see, Fletch…” Fletch, in continued shock, glanced at the man. He could not get his mind around the dimensions of this man’s acting genius. All that Peterman-Peterkin-Peterson-Patterson routine had been consciously created. “…in my twenties, I was virtually ruined by one of these charlatan friend-managers, the word friend italicised. I was dragged through courts for five years. Someone I had trusted. It virtually ruined my work, my sleep, my health. One is made to feel so vulnerable, so weak. And doing creative work while being made to feel weak and vulnerable is immensely hard. Mind breaking. Creative people should receive some protection by law. There really aren’t that many of us, and our time is short, our energies limited. Our energies should not be drained by lawyers playing at their paper games. Something similiar happened to me again in my late thirties. If I had known then what I know now—that energies do not last forever—I would have killed anyone who so assaulted me.”

“Instead you killed Steve Peterman.”

“I haven’t been able to do much for Moxie, as a father. I didn’t want her to be dragged through the courts for years, humiliated, made a fool, her life and work laid out in little boxes, her every privacy invaded. Preventing all that was something I could do for her.”

“How did you do it?”

“I’m an actor. A well-trained actor.”

“You know how to ride a horse like a guards-man and an Indian, how to handle a gun as if it were a natural extention of your hand…”

“You heard that little sermon I gave at Durty Harry’s.” Mooney’s eyes wandered over the palm trees outside the windows. “Always used to go over well at colleges.”

“Downstairs just now,” Fletch said, “when they were carting Moxie away, I remembered her telling me, years ago, that as a kid in the carnivals, whatever, small-town travelling shows, you were even a part of a knife throwing act. That was just after I realized I had seen three empty apple juice bottles in the rubbish.”

“You’d be surprised how your youthful physical skills come back to you after you’ve become absolutely tea-total.” Mooney smiled. “I was never the drinker I was made out to be, anyway. I cultivated the image. I could heighten the audience’s suspense by making them wonder if I was too drunk to go on, too drunk to finish the play. I believe Kean used the same trick. There’s old Mooney, drunk again. It can’t be him who’s acting so beautifully, but some god acting through him. You see, everyone had seen Hamlet before, knew the story. They had to be made unsure as to whether Mooney could play Hamlet. Again. And again and again. Believe me, friend and lover of my daughter, no one could do what I’ve done as drunk as I’m supposed to have been. Of course I didn’t make twenty or thirty pictures without knowing what I was doing. People will believe anything…”

“Mister Mooney, how did you actually commit the murder? There were cameras everywhere.”

“I made myself into a rubbish man. A few rags, more hair, more beard, a discouraged way of standing, walking, wandering around location picking up the odd candy wrapper, cigarette pack.” He chuckled. “Edith Howell asked me to move a trash barrel away from her trailer. Didn’t ask. Demanded. Called me a lazy old lout, when I moved slowly on my supposedly sore feet. Not a very nice lady, Edith Howell.”

“She has her eyes on your millions.”

“She was always looking the wrong direction onstage, too. She’d look a meter more upstage than she was supposed to be looking, a meter more downstage. That woman drove me nuts all during Time, Gentlemen, Time.”

“And have you millions of dollars?”

“Sure.”

“Many millions?”

“Why not? I’ve practiced a rewarding profession. Worked hard all my life, and been well paid for it. Never had expensive tastes. One hotel room is very much like another.”

“Oh. Moxie thinks you’re broke.”

“It’s been good for her soul to think so.”

Fletch sighed.

“So,” Mooney continued, “as an old, tolerated member of the custodial staff, I even watched them build the set for The Dan Buckley Show. You think I don’t know how to work out camera angles? I approached the slit curtain at the back of the set from all the way down the beach, from the water’s edge. I had to walk in a very carefully worked-out Z. I never showed up on film. And thankfully there wasn’t much breeze. The curtain stayed more or less still.”

“Why did you throw the knife into Peterman’s back just after Moxie walked behind him?”

“Did I? I didn’t know that. I wasn’t watching, you see, I couldn’t without being seen. I threw the knife at exactly that moment the breeze split the curtain.”

“And then walked in a Z back to the water’s edge.”

“Yes. And by the time you found me in that bar I had been doing my drunk act for a good two hours or more. And I had convinced the bartender that I was drunk when I arrived.”

“And no one thought you capable of such a thing.”

“Not even you.”

“And how did you get on and off location so easily?”

“After all,” said Frederick Mooney, “I am Frederick Mooney.”

“Yeah. I’ve heard.”

“Making me stop and identify myself, sign in, sign out—really. Not all the rules have to apply to me, you know.”

Fletch shook his head and chuckled. “There is a big black dog named Emperor who goes in and out of Durty Harry’s. I went back the next night. I had thought it was something you had seen instead of a pink elephant.”

“Fletch… it is all right if I call you Fletch, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I was getting sort of used to Peterkin.”

“Would you mind having a drink with me?”

“Are you serious?”

“In that flight bag there’s another bottle. The real stuff. There are two glasses in the bathroom.”

“Sure.”

When he was done pouring the drinks Fletch left that bottle on the bureau, too. He handed one glass to Mooney.

“Here’s to you, Mister Mooney. It’s real interesting knowing you.”

“Here’s to you, Mister Fletcher. You tried your best, I think.”

After the cognac cleared in Fletch’s throat, he asked, “Did you mean to get away with it?”

“No.” Mooney seemed quite certain on that point. “Of course I expected to be found out.”

“Then why did you commit such a clever crime?”

“I like doing things well. Furthermore, puzzling everyone has given me a little more time with Marilyn. Not much.”

“What did you expect to do once you were found out?”

“Fade into the background, Fletch, fade into the background. Disguise myself as a pink-kneed, short-pants tourist, or an aged beach bum, or a bewhiskered priest, and slither into the common human pool. I rather fancied retirement for myself in some out of the way place within walking distance of a good, warm, friendly pub, where people care not for theater or films.”

“You can’t do that now. They’ve arrested Moxie.”

“I couldn’t do that anyway, now, you bastard.” Mooney grinned ruefully. “You ruined that. You put me on an airplane and landed me on a spit of sand at the end of the world. There’s no way off Key West for Frederick Mooney. Frederick Mooney couldn’t charter a boat or a plane out of Key West disguised as a bedbug. Such people look too closely at you. The first night I was here I went out to investigate. And found there was no way off this damn place for me. I walked so much, I got so tired, I went into a bar and did my drunk act. Had the cops drive me home. One road out of here, and Edith Howell has told me about all those bridges between here and the mainland.” Affection was in Mooney’s look and his chuckle. “You bastard.”

“Sorry. Do you know Peterman killed McKensie’s wife? Ran her down with a car.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. He was wrecking a lot of people, and would wreck many more. What was this all about? A drug scam?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” said Mooney, “when the corner candy and newspaper store isn’t selling candy and newspapers, you know it must be in some other business.”

Fletch put his empty glass on the bureau. “Guess you and I have to fly back to Fort Myers together.”

Mooney said, “We don’t want to keep Marilyn under duress too long.”

“By the way,” Fletch asked. “Why didn’t you come clean downstairs—before they took her away?”

“Would you believe I was stunned? I had heard so many murder theories floating around, I thought we had plenty more time to be together. I didn’t know that Moxie had crossed behind Peterman. Truly stunned. I couldn’t think how to handle it downstairs. Here I had successfully passed myself off as a sick old man. What was I supposed to say—I’m sober and I did it? Moxie would have said, Oh, hell!”

“O.L.”

“It will take them a moment to believe this one.The curtains will have to close and the lights will have to come up. Young man, I know my audience.”

Fletch said, “I’ll go phone around to charter a plane.”

Mooney’s empty glass was on the arm rest of his chair. His fingers were folded in his lap.

At the door, Fletch said, “One more question, Mister Mooney. When you and I first met, in that bar on the beach, you told me that Moxie—Marilyn—might have murdered someone, a teacher, a drama coach, when she was fourteen.”

Mooney nodded.

“Why did you tell me that—if you knew she hadn’t killed Peterman?”

“To keep suspicion—particularly your suspicion—away from me. I knew Marilyn had sent for you. I knew who you are—an old friend and lover of Marilyn’s. I knew it would be most difficult for you to believe Marilyn guilty of murder. I made it easier for you. I planted a doubt in your mind.”

“You blinded me,” Fletch said. “I haven’t thought straight since.” Fletch’s hand was on the door knob. “What was true about the story—anything?”

“Did you ask Marilyn about it?”

“Yes.”

“And did she assure you she did not kill Mister Hodes?”

“No. She didn’t.”

“Ah, that Marilyn.” Smiling, Mooney shook his head. “She sure knows how to keep an audience.”