Fletch's Fortune Part 19

There was a long silence.

"Major?"

"Point is, we've been lookin' for ya, high and low, these many years."

"Why?"

"Says here we owe you a Bronze Star. Did you know that?"

"I heard a rumor."

"Well, if you knew it, how come you've never arranged to get decorated?"

"I...."

"Seems to me, if a fella wins a Bronze Star he ought to get it pinned to his chest. These things are important."

"Major, it's nice of you to call...."

"No problem, no problem. Just doin' my duty. We got so many people here at the P-gon, everybody doin' each other's lazying, it's a sheer pleasure to have something to do-you know what I mean?-to separate breakfast from supper."

There was a man ambling across the parking lot, hands in the back pockets of his jeans.

"You going to be there a few days, Mister Fletcher?"

"Where?"

"Wherever you are. Hendricks Plantation, Hendricks, Virginia."

"Yes."

The man in the parking lot wore a blue jeans jacket.

"Well, I figure what I'll do is dig up a general somewhere-believe me, that's not difficult around the P-gon-we've got more generals in one coffee shop than Napoleon had in his whole army-we could decorate the Statue of Liberty with 'em, and you'd never see the paint peel-and move his a.s.s down to Hendricks, Virginia...."

"General? I mean, Major?"

The man in the parking lot also had tight, curly gray hair.

"I figure a presentation ceremony, in front of all those journalists-decorating one of their own, so to speak, with a Bronze Star...."

The man who had accosted Mrs. Leary in the parking lot.

"Major? I've got to go."

"The Marine Corps could use some good press, these days, you know...."

"Major. I've got to go. An emergency. My pants are on fire. Call me back."

Fletch hung up, turned around, and headed down the corridor at high speed.

He found a fire door with EXIT written over it, pushed through it, and ran down the stairs.

He entered the parking area slowly, trying not to make it too obvious he was looking for someone.

No one else was in the parking lot.

The man had been walking toward the back of the area.

Fletch went to the white rail fence and walked along it, looking down the slope to his right.

He caught a glimpse of the man crossing behind two stands of rhododendrons.

He sprung over the fence and ran down the slope.

When he ran through the opening in the rhododendrons, and stopped, abruptly, to look around, he saw the man standing under some apple trees, hands in back pockets, looking at him.

Slowly, Fletch began to walk toward him.

The man took his hands out of his pockets, turned, and ran, further down the slope, toward a large stand of pine. Behind the pine trees were the stables.

Fletch noticed he was wearing sneakers.

Fletch ran after him, and when he came to the pine trees, his shoes began to slip on the slope. To brake himself from falling, he grabbed at a scrub pine, got sap on his hands, and fell.

Looking around from the ground, Fletch could neither see nor hear the man.

Fletch picked himself up and walked through the pines to the stable area, trying to sc.r.a.pe the sap off his hands with his thumbnails.

In the midday sun, the stables had the quiet of a long lunch hour typical of a place where people work early and late. No one was there.

For a few minutes Fletch petted the horse he had ridden that morning, asking her if she had seen a man run by (and answering for her, "He went thet-away"), and then walked back to the hotel.

Nineteen.

2:00 P.M P.M.VARIOUS U USES OF C COMPUTERS IN J JOURNALISMAddress by Dr. HiramParlor

From TAPE Station 1 Suite 12 (Mrs. Walter March and Walter March, Jr.) (Mrs. Walter March and Walter March, Jr.) "Bandy called from Los Angeles, Junior. Some question he can't deal with. And Masur called asking if he should put that basketball scandal on the wires from New York...."

There was no answer.

"Are you having lunch?" Lydia asked her son.

No answer.

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake, Junior. Buck up! Your father's dead, and someone has to make the decisions for the newspapers. They can't run themselves. They never have."

Another silence.

"I'm ordering you lunch," she said. "You can't b.l.o.o.d.y Mary yourself to death...."

From TAPE Station 9 Room 36 (Rolly Wisham) (Rolly Wisham) "If you'll permit me a question first, Captain Neale...."

"I don't know. Once you journalists start asking questions, you never stop. I've had enough opportunity to discover that."

"Very simply: Why are you questioning me?"

"We understand you might have had a motive to murder Walter March."

"Oh?"

Rolly Wisham's voice did not have great timbre, for a man nearly thirty, but there was a boy's aggressiveness in it, mixed with an odd kindliness.

Listening to the tape, sitting on his bed, picking at the sap on his hands, Fletch kept expecting Wisham to say, "This is Rolly Wisham, with love"-as if such meant anything to anybody, especially in journalism.

"What motive do you think I would have for murdering the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d?"

"I know about the editorial that ran in the March newspapers calling your television feature reporting-have I the term right?-let's see, it called it 'sloppy, sentimental, and stupendously unprofessional.' That's precise. I had the editorial looked up and read to me over the phone this noon."

"That's what it said."

"I also know that this editorial was just the beginning of a coast-to-coast campaign to put you in disgrace and get you fired from the network. Every March newspaper was to follow up with articles punching holes in your every statement, every report, day by day."

"I didn't know that, but I guessed it."

"Walter March had begun a smear campaign against you. Frankly, Mister Wisham, I didn't know such things happen nowadays."

"Call me Rolly."

"I think of that kind of smear campaign as being from back in the old days. Dirty journalism. Yellow journalism. What do you call it?"

"It still happens."

"On this a.s.signment," Captain Neale said, "I'm learning a lot of things I didn't particularly want to know."

"Is the campaign against me going to continue? Are the March newspapers going to continue to smear me now that Walter March is dead?"

"I understand it's been called off. Mister Williams-Jake Williams-has called it off."

"Good."

"Not for your sake. He thinks it might hurt the image of the recently departed. Leave a bad taste in the mouths of people regarding Walter March."

"If that's their reasoning, I wish they'd continue with it. Walter March tasted like p.i.s.s and vinegar."

"Interesting to see how decisions are made in the media. You people are feeding a thousand facts and ideas into human minds a day and, I see, sometimes for some pretty wrong reasons."

"Very seldom. It's just that in every woodpile there's a Walter March."

"Anyway, Mister Wisham, Walter March had begun a campaign to destroy you; he was murdered; the campaign was called off."

"Captain Neale, who tipped you?"

"I don't get you."

"Who told you about the editorial, and the campaign?"

"I'm not a journalist, Mister Wisham. I don't have to give my sources-except in a court of law."

"I'll have to wait, uh?"

"I intend to bring this case into court, Mister Wisham. And get a conviction."

"Why did you say that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Seems a funny thing for you to say. I mean, of course you intend to bring it into court. There was a murder. You're a cop."

"Well...."

"Could it be that you've heard some not-very-nice things about Walter March?"

"I've been on the case only twenty-four hours."

"Twenty-four hours investigating Walter March would be enough to make anyone puke."

"Mrs. March a.s.sures me he hadn't an enemy in the world. And there is the fact that Walter March was the elected President of the American Journalism Alliance."

"Yeah. And Attila led the Huns."

"Mister Wisham, any man with that much power...."

"... has to have a few enemies. Right. Everyone loved Walter March except anyone who ever had anything to do with him."

"Mister Wisham...."

"I have one more question."