to asking specific questions in a sequence. He blew the bunched-up sheet away from his mouth. “Tell me what you told the eight other reporters.”

“I didn’t tell them much. Not much to tell.”

She lifted his lower left leg and, with a tight grip, was running her hand up his calf muscle.

“Oh,” he said.

“Are you Jewish?”

“Everyone who’s being tortured is Jewish.”

“Mister March said nice day, he said he loved being in Virginia, he said they’d had nice weather the last few days in Washington, too, he said he wanted a firm rub, like you, with oil.…”

“Not so firm,” Fletch said. She was doing the same thing to his right calf muscles. “Not so firm.”

“He asked if I was Swedish, I said I came from Pittsburgh, he asked how come I had become a masseuse, I said my mother taught me, she came from Newfoundland, he asked me what my husband does for a living, I said he works for the town water department, how many kids I have, how many people I massage a day on the average, weekdays and weekends, he asked me the population of the town of Hendricks and if I knew anything about the original Hendricks family. You know. We just talked.”

Fletch was always surprised when publishers performed automatically and instinctively as reporters.

Old Walter March had gotten a hell of a lot of basic information—background material—out of the “little old lady rubbing bones in the basement.”

And, Fletch knew, March had done it for no particular reason, other than to orient himself.

Fletch would be doing the same thing, if he could keep his brain muscles taut while someone was loosening his leg muscles.

She put her fists into his ass cheeks, and rotated them vigorously. Then she kneaded them with her thumbs.

“Oof, oof,” Fletch said.

“You’ve even got muscle there,” she said.

“So I’m discovering.”

She began to work on his back.

“You should be rubbed more often,” she said. “Keep you loose. Relaxed.”

“I’ve got better ways of keeping loose.”

He found himself breathing more deeply, evenly.

Her thumbs were working up his spinal column.

He gave in to the back rub. He had little choice.

Finally, when she was done, he sat on the edge of the table. His head swayed.

She was washing the oil off her hands.

“Was Walter March nervous?” he asked. “Did he seem upset, in any way, afraid of anything? Anxious?”

“No.” She was drying her hands on a towel. “But he should have been.”

“Obviously.”

“That’s not what I mean. I had a reporter in here earlier today. I think he could have killed Walter March.”

“What do you mean?”

“He kept swearing at him. Calling him dirty names. Instead of asking about Mister March, the way the rest of you did, he kept calling him that so-and-so. Only he didn’t say so-and-so.”

“What was his name?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I could look up the charge slip. He was a big man, fortyish, heavy, sideburns and mustache. A Northerner. A real angry person. You know, one of those people who are always angry. Big sense of injustice.”

“Oh.”

“And then there was the man in the parking lot yesterday.”

She put her towel neatly on the rack over the wash basin.

“When I drove in yesterday morning, he was walking across the parking lot. He came over to me. He asked if I worked here. I thought he was someone looking for a job, you know? He was dressed that way, blue jeans jacket. Tight, curly gray hair although he wasn’t old, skinny body—like the guys who work down at the stables, you know? A horse person. He asked if Walter March had arrived yet. First I’d ever heard of Walter March. His eyes were bloodshot. His jaw muscles were the tightest muscles I’d ever seen.”

“What did you do?”

“I got away from him.”

Fletch looked at the big, muscular blond woman.

“You mean he frightened you?”

She said, “Yes.”

“Did you tell the other reporters about him?”

“No.” She said, “I guess it takes nine times being asked the same questions, for me to have remembered him.”

Eight

AMERICAN JOURNALISM ALLIANCE

Walter March, President

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Hendricks Plantation

Hendricks, Virginia

Monday

6:30 P.M. Welcoming Cocktail Party

Amanda Hendricks Room

“Hi,” Fletch said cheerfully. He had stuck his head around the corner of the hotel’s switchboard.

Behind him, across the lobby, people were gathering in the Amanda Hendricks Room.

The telephone operator nearer him said, “You’re not supposed to be in here, sir.”

Both operators looked as startled as rabbits caught in a flashlight beam.

“I’m just here to pick up the sheet,” he said.

“What sheet?”

He popped his eyes.

“The survey sheet. You’re supposed to have it for me.”

The further operator