Fletch's Fortune Part 6

Six.

Fletch picked up the ringing telephone and said, "Thank you for calling."

"Is this Ronald Albemarle Blodgett Islington Dim-witty Fletcher?" a woman's voice asked.

"Why, no," Fletch answered. "It isn't."

Who would be calling him rabid? rabid?

He remembered vaguely an old joke someone had once told about Fletch biting a dog on a slow news night.

Who else?

"Crystal!" he said. "My pal, my a.s.s! How the h.e.l.l are you?"

Giggling. Per usual. In her throat. Per usual. Sardonically silly old Crystal.

"Are you here?" he asked. "Has the Crystal Palace s.h.i.+vered and s.h.i.+mmied into my very own purview?"

She began to sing the words, "All of me...." He joined in halfway through the first bar.

"Still heavily concerned with your tonnage, eh, old girl? Still down in the chins?"

Crystal Faoni was not pellucid. She, too, had been cursed by her parents when it had come time to delete "Baby Girl Faoni" from the birth register and subst.i.tute something more specific.

Crystal was dark, with black hair which could have been straight, or could have been curly, but wasn't either; blessedly, basically heavy, with monumental bones, each demanding its kilogram of flesh; the appet.i.te of a bear just after the first snowfall.

She also had huge, wide-set brown eyes, the world's most gorgeous skin, and a mind so sprightly and entertaining apparently it had never felt the need to cause her body to do anything but the sedentary.

She and Fletch had worked together on a newspaper in Chicago.

"Are you well?" he asked.

"I thought we could meet in the bar before the Welcoming c.o.c.ktail Party, and have too much to drink."

"I plan to go sit in the sauna and have a rub." Skimming the hotel's brochure on the bedside table, Fletch had noticed there were an exercise room, a sauna, and a ma.s.sage room open from ten to seven.

"Oh, Fletch," she said. "Why do you always have to be doing such healthy things?"

"I've been on airplanes and in airports the last twenty-four hours. I'm stiff."

"You've already had too much to drink? You don't sound it."

"Not that way. Are you still working in Chicago?"

"Why," she asked rhetorically, "do people go to conventions?"

"To wear funny hats and blow raspberry noise-makers?"

"No."

"I don't know, Crystal. I've never been to a convention before."

"Why are you here, I. M. Fletcher?"

Lord love a duck, he said to himself. Everyone who knew him would know that convention-going was not his thing.

Neither was dues-paying.

He said, "Ah...."

"Let me guess. You're unemployed, right?"

"Between jobs."

"Right. Let's return to our original question: Why do people go to conventions?"

"To get jobs?"

"About half. Either to get jobs, if they are unemployed, or to get better jobs, if they are employed."

"Yes."

"About a third of the people at conventions are looking for people to hire. A convention, dear Mister Fletcher, as you well know, is one great meat market. And, as I don't need to remind you, I am one great piece of meat."

"If memory serves, you do help fill up a room."

"It is not possible to overlook me."

"What about the other sixteen-point-seven percent?"

"What?"

"You said half the people are here to get jobs and a third are here to give jobs. That leaves sixteen-point-seven percent. Almost. What are they doing here?"

"Oh. Those are the people who will drop anything they are doing, including nothing, at any time, and go anywhere, for any reason, at someone else's expense, preferably, their company's."

"Gotcha."

"Except for poor little Crystal Faoni, who is here-as I expect you are-by the grace of a rapidly dwindling savings account."

"Crystal, how did you know I'm unemployed?"

"Because if you were employed you would be working on a story somewhere, and no one could divert you to attend a convention even under threat of execution. About right?"

"Now, Crystal, you know I always do what I'm told."

"Remember that time they found you asleep under the serving counter in the paper's cafeteria?"

"I had worked late."

"But, Fletch, you weren't alone. One of the all-night telephone operators was with you."

"So what?"

"At least you had your jeans on, all zipped up nicely. That was all you were wearing."

"We had fallen asleep."

"I guess. Jack Saunders was absolutely purple. The cafeteria staff refused to work that day...."

"People get upset over the most trivial things."

"My missing lunch, Fletcher, is not a trivial thing. If you had been working for old man March at that point, you would have been fired before you reached for your s.h.i.+rt."

"You worked on a March newspaper, didn't you?"

"In Denver. And I was fired from it. On moral grounds."

"Moral grounds? You?"

"Me."

"What did you do, overdose on banana splits?"

"You know all about it."

"I do not."

"Everyone knows all about it"

"I don't."

"No, I suppose you don't. I don't suppose anyone would bother to pa.s.s on such a juicy piece of moral scandal to you. You're the source of so many such scandals yourself. You'd just say 'Ho hum' and gun your motorcycle."

"Ho hum," Fletch said.

"You know, instead of being on the telephone all this time, we could be curled in a dark corner of the bar, tossing down mint juleps or whatever the poison of the house is."

"Are you going to tell me?"

"I was pregnant."

"How could anyone tell?"

"Pardon me while I chuckle."

"Were you married?"

"Of course not."

"So why was that Walter March's business?"

"I didn't act contrite enough. I had told people I intended to have the baby, and keep it. That was back it those days. Remember? We all thought things had changed?"

"Yeah."

"I had gotten pregnant on purpose, of course. An absolutely great guy. Phil Shapiro. Remember him?"

"No."

"An absolutely great guy. Good-looking. Brainy. Happily married."

"So what happened to the kid? The baby?"

"I thought I could handle having a baby without being married. But I sure couldn't handle having a baby without being either married or employed."

"Abortion?"

"Yeah."

"s.h.i.+t."

"That's what happened to my savings account the last time it got over two thousand dollars."

"Great old Walter March."

"He fired a great many people on moral grounds."

"Oddly enough, he never fired me."

"He never caught you. Or probably he heard so much about you, he never believed any of it. Even I can't believe everything I've heard about you."

"None of it is true."

"I was there that morning they found you under the cafeteria counter. And I hadn't had breakfast."

"Sorry."

"So whoever stuck the scissors into n.o.ble old Walter March was inspired."

"Did you?"

"I'd be pleased to be accused."