Fletch Won

“Fletcher?”

On the cell bunk that reeked of disinfectant, Fletch sighed with relief. The guard opening the cell door had called him Fletcher. Confusion regarding who he was was over. Now he could go to his apartment and get some sleep.

He stood up. He figured it must be about four in the morning.

For about three hours he had lain on his bunk listening to two men, not synchronized, vomiting, one old man whimpering, another singing, for more than an hour, over and over again, the refrain I’ll be Mowed, Lucy, if you will…. In the cell next to him, two male streetwalkers argued endlessly and passionately about barbers. One had asked Fletch how to get a job with the Ben Franklyn Friend Service. Fletch answered he didn’t know, he was just a bouncer there. Fletch’s cellmate was a portly, middle-aged man in white trousers and sandals who said he was a schoolteacher. The afternoon before, he said, he had stabbed one of his students. There was blood on his trousers. After telling Fletch this, he curled on his bunk and fell asleep.

“Come on,” the guard said. “Move it.”

“Am I free to go?”

He followed the guard between the cells to the steel door.

While he was being booked as Alexander Liddicoat, for more than twenty incidents of armed robbery, Fletch’s wallet and watch had been taken from him. Photographs of Alexander Liddicoat were with the warrants. Looking at them upside down, Fletch saw a remote resemblance. While handing it over, Fletch showed the booking officer identification in his wallet, his driver’s license and press card, proving who he was. Without really looking at the identification photographs, the booking officer charged him with stealing the wallet of Irwin Maurice Fletcher, as well.

The other side of the steel door, Fletch turned right, toward the stairs to the booking desk and the lobby.

The guard grabbed him by the elbow. “This way, please.”

They went to the left, past offices. Most of the doors were open. Lights were on, people working in the offices.

At the end of the corridor, they came to a closed door. The guard opened it with a key. He snapped on the inside light.

Six chairs were around a long conference table. Nothing else was in the room. High up on the far wall was a barred window.

“Wait here,” the guard said.

“Why are you holding me?”

The guard closed the door behind him.

Fletch snapped off the light, crawled onto the table in the dark, and fell asleep.

The light snapped on. The door was open.

Lieutenant Gomez was standing over Fletch.

“You make yourself at home wherever you are, don’t you?”

Fletch sat up. “What time is it?”

He was cold.

“Five-thirty A.M. The jailhouse swimming pool doesn’t open for another half-hour. The mayor and his top aides are down there cleaning it for you now. They know you like to go skinny-dipping every morning.”

“Glad to see you.” Fletch remained sitting on the table. “You get to work early.”

“Working on an important case,” Gomez said. “The murder of Donald Edwin Habeck. You know anything about it?”

“Yeah. Read something about it in the newspapers.” Fletch yawned and rubbed his eyes. “Did you get the gun?”

“What gun?”

“The gun I left for you last night. I left it upstairs at the desk for you, with a note.”

Gomez repeated: “What gun?”

“I think it’s the gun used to kill Habeck. I found—”

Gomez looked at the door.

Biff Wilson stood in the door, shaved and suited as well as ever, wrinkled and rumpled.

“Oh, hi, Biff,” Fletch said. “Did you bring the coffee?”

Biff snorted. “I guess I was a wise guy once. Was I ever this much of a wise guy, Gomez?”

“You were never a wise guy,” Gomez said. “Always the altar boy.”

“I thought so.” Biff closed the door. “I’m not even sure I remember precisely what it is one does to a wise guy.”

“On the police, we break his balls,” Gomez offered. “Do all the guys in journalism have balls?”

Biff stood closer to Fletch. “Hi, kid. I heard you were incarcerated.”

“Case of mistaken identity,” Fletch said. “Robber named Liddicoat. Apparently his picture had been circulated to all the liquor stores, pizza parlors—”

Biff said to Gomez, “Can we make the charge stick awhile?”

“Awhile,” said Gomez.

“You can’t,” Fletch said. “Booking desk has already checked the identity in my wallet. That’s how you know I’m here, right?”

“Wallet?” Biff asked Gomez.

“He didn’t have a wallet,” Gomez said. “Just a stolen wristwatch.”

Biff nodded at Fletch.

“We were talking about a gun,” Fletch said.

Biff looked at Gomez. “What gun?”

“A gun I found,” Fletch said. “Outside the News-Tribune. I turned it in to Sergeant Wilhelm Rohm last night, with instructions to give it to Gomez.”

“I don’t know about a gun,” Gomez said.

“You’re a good boy.” Biff stroked Fletch’s leg with the palm of his hand. “A real good boy.”

Fletch moved his leg.

“Muscle.” Biff dug his fingers into Fletch’s thigh. “Look at that muscle, Gomez.”

Fletch got off the table and moved away.

“And what do those shorts say?” Biff squinted. “I can’t quite read it, can you, Gomez? Some high-school track team?”

“Ben Franklyn Friend Service,” said Gomez.

“Football,” said Biff. “I think that means a football team.”

“That’s another story,” Fletch said.

“I sure would like to know what you’ve found out,” Biff said.

“Lots,” Fletch said. “You write lousy obituaries, Biff.”

“Why do you say that, Liddicoat?”

“For one thing, Jasmine and Donald Habeck never married. He never divorced Louise.”

“Yeah? What else?”

Fletch looked from Gomez to Wilson and shook his head.

“What else?” Biff asked.

“Have you talked with Gabais yet?”

“Who?”

“Felix Gabais. Child molester. An ex-client of Habeck. Served eleven hard years. Released from prison last week.”

“Have you talked with him yet?”

“Not yet.”

“You’ve been bird-doggin’ me all week, kid. Talked with everybody in the Habeck family, as far as I know, even the brother in the monastery. You’re stealin’ our thunder. What for, Liddicoat?”

Again, Fletch shook his head. “This was no gangland slaying, Biff. You’re on the wrong track.”

“You know better than we do, uh? The newspaper assign you to this story?”

“The museum angle.”

“Oh. The museum angle. That make sense to you, Gomez?”

“No sense whatever, Biff.”

“I think this kid ought to get lost.”

Gomez said, “We can lose him.”

“Some sort of bureaucratic tangle,” Biff said. “You know, kid, once you get entangled with the cops, any damned fool thing’s liable to happen.”

“Sure,” said Gomez. “We’ll put him in the van for the funny farm this morning. It will be a good ten days before anyone straightens out that bureaucratic tangle.”

“What will that get you?” Fletch asked. “A few days. You think I’d shut up about it?”

“Can’t blame us for a bureaucratic tangle,” Biff said.

“I’m not even in this building this morning. You’re not here either, are you, Gomez?”

“Naw. I’m never in this early.”

“This is a real wise guy. Our offer of a few days’ vacation at the funny farm doesn’t frighten him. We should stick a real charge on him, Gomez. Get him off my back forever. Is that what you do with wise guys? I forget.”

“Generally, Biff, if you’re going to hit somebody, you should hit him so hard he can’t get up swinging.”

“Yeah.” Although speaking softly, the veins in Biff’s neck and temples were pulsing visibly. His eyes glinted like black pebbles at the bottom of a sunlit stream. “I’ve heard that somewhere before. Let’s hit him with a real charge, so he can’t get up again swinging. Let’s see. He was picked up as Alexander Liddicoat. While he was being booked, it was discovered he had a seller’s quantity of angel dust in his pocket. You got any spare PCP, Gomez?”

“Sure,” said Gomez. “For just such an occasion.”

Fletch was hot. “All because I’m bird-dogging your story, Biff?”

“Because you’re a wise guy,” Biff said. “There’s no room for wise guys in journalism. Is there, Gomez?”

“You were always an altar boy,” Gomez said to Biff.

“We play by the rules, kid. You get convicted for possession of a seller’s quantity of PCP, Fletcher, and somehow I doubt John Winters and Frank Jaffe are going to want to see you around the News-Tribune emptying wastebaskets anymore. Or any other newspaper.”

“What am I supposed to say?” Fletch asked. “That I’ll back off and be a good boy?”

“Too late for that,” Biff said. “I’ve decided you’re a real wise guy. We want you gone.”

“I’m supposed to say I’ll go away?”

“You’ll go away,” Gomez said. “At taxpayers’ expense. We’ll see to it.”

Fletch laughed. “Don’t you think I’ll ever come back, Biff?”

Biff glanced at Gomez. “Maybe. Maybe not. Who cares?”

“You’ll care.”

“I doubt it. You spend a few years inside now, and, what with one thing and another, you won’t even be able to walk straight when you get out. Not much of a threat.” Biff said to Gomez: “Find out about this gun he’s talking about. Where’s the PCP?”

“Got some in the locker.”

“Get it. We’ll go to your office and rewrite this kid’s booking sheet.”

“Got some real coffee in the office. We’ll have some real coffee.”

“I could use some.”

Fletch said, “Jesus, Biff! You’re serious!”

“Have I ever made a joke?”

“Ann McGarrahan said you’re a shit.”

“She should know. Biggest mistake of her life was marryin’ me. Everybody says so.”

Gomez laughed. “You the reason she never had any kids, Biff?”

“Had something to do with it. The lady didn’t like to be screwed by anybody with whiskey on his breath.”

Fletch said, “Jesus!”

“Guess I won’t be seeing you around anymore, kid,” Biff said. “Can’t say I’ll miss ya.”

“Biff—”

“Someone will come get you in a while,” Gomez said. “Enjoy waiting. It will be a lot of years before you ever get to spend any time alone again.”

“We’re going to go cook your papers, kid.” Biff held the door open for Gomez. “And, believe me, Gomez and I are the greatest chefs in the world.”

Fletch stood alone in the fluorescent-lit room. The door had thwunked closed. Wilson’s and Gomez’s footsteps faded down the corridor. Muffled shouts came from the cellblock.

Louise Habeck crossed his mind.

Fletch looked up at the dirty, barred window. Even with the bars on the outside, an electric wire ran from the closed window into the wall.

There was no air-conditioning/heat vent.

The walls were painted cement.

Green sneakers, blued hair, and a flowered dress…

It was crazy. Fletch went to the door and turned the knob. He pushed.

The door opened.

He looked out. The corridor was empty.

His heart going faster than his feet, he ambled along the corridor and up the stairs.

There was no one at the counter of the booking office.

In the lobby the same black woman who had been weeping there the night before was now sitting quietly on a bench. The sergeant at the reception desk was reading the sports pages of the News-Tribune.

It took Fletch a moment to get the sergeant’s attention. Finally, he looked up.

“Lieutenant Gomez and Biff Wilson are having coffee in the lieutenant’s office,” Fletch said. “They’d like you to send out for some doughnuts. Jelly doughnuts.”

“Okay.” The sergeant picked up the phone and dialed three numbers. “The lieutenant wants some doughnuts,” he said into the phone. “No. He has his coffee. You know Gomez. If it ain’t mud, it ain’t coffee.”

“Jelly doughnuts,” Fletch said.

The sergeant said, “Jelly doughnuts.”