fantasies.

“I hate witnessing terrorism. I hate reading about it. I hate reporting it—as I’m sure we all do.

“But television did not create terrorism.

“Terrorism, like many another crime or insanity, is infectious. It perpetuates itself. It causes itself to happen. One incident of terrorism causes two more incidents, which cause more and more and more incidents.

“Never was this social phenomenon, of acts of terrorism stimulating other acts of terrorism, on and on, more apparent than at the beginning of the twentieth century.

“And television, or television news, at that point had not yet even been dreamed of.

“An act of terrorism is an event. It is news.

“And it is our job to bring the news to the people, whether we personally like that news, or not.”

Bob McConnell whispered, “Here it comes.”

“Blaming television,” Hy Litwack continued, “for causing acts of terrorism simply by reporting them is as bad as shooting the messenger simply because the news he brings is bad.…”

Eleven

In the privacy of their bedroom, Carol Litwack was saying to her husband, “… Live to be a hundred, I’ll never get over it.”

“Over what?”

“You. I don’t know.”

At a distance there was the sound of gargling.

Before leaving for dinner, Fletch had tuned the receiver to Leona Hatch’s room, Room 42, so he could check on her later, make sure she was as comfortable as possible. All he had expected to hear on the tape was snoring and “Errrrrrrr’s.”

But that wasn’t the way the marvelous machine worked.

Like all things governmental, it had its own system of priorities.

It took him a while to figure it out.

First he heard Leona Hatch snoring in Room 42, on Station 22, then Station 21 lit and he heard Sheldon Levi’s toilet flushing in Room 48, then Station 4 lit and he heard Eleanor Earles saying in Suite 9, “… Dressed to hear Hy Litwack’s stupid speech. Ugh! But if I don’t, I suppose there’ll be three pages in TV Guide about my snubbing the pan-fried son of a bitch at the American Journalism …” and then Station 2 lit and he heard Carol and Hy Litwack talking in Suite 5.

Any noise in any room in which he had placed a lower-numbered bug had precedence over any noise in any room in which he had placed a higher-numbered bug.

Fletch studied his telephone information sheet, and the notes he had made on it regarding which bugs he had put where, and discovered he had placed bugs instinctively more or less in accordance with the machine’s priorities.

To keep himself straight at what he was doing, and, in fear of eventually being caught as he let himself into other people’s rooms, he had planted the lower-numbered bugs in the rooms of the more important people: Station 1 was Suite 12, Lydia March and Walter March, Junior; Station 2, the Litwacks, in Suite 5; Station 3, Helena and Jake Williams, in Suite 7; Station 4, Eleanor Earles, in Suite 9. In Suite 3, now empty—it being where Walter March had been murdered—he had placed bug Number 5. And, in Room 77, Fredericka Arbuthnot’s, he had placed bug Number 23.

“My, my,” Fletch said of his marvelous machine, “it walks, it talks, cries ‘Mama!’ and piddles genuine orange juice!”

Hy Litwack spent a long time gargling his famous throat—every bubble and blurp of which Fletch faithfully recorded.

Carol Litwack was saying, “Here you are, the most successful, respected journalist in the country, in the whole world, a multimillionaire on top of that, and you still feel you can’t say what you want to say, what you think is the truth.”

“Like what?” Hy Litwack’s voice sounded tired and bored.

“Well, what you just said about terrorism and television downstairs is not what you’ve said to me about terrorism and television.”

Clearly, Hy Litwack was having a bedtime conversation with his wife which did not interest him much. “I mentioned the possibility that the more publicity we give terrorists and murderers the more other kooks are apt to commit acts of terror and murder for the publicity alone. Too many people want to be on television, even with a gun in hand, or in handcuffs, or lying face down in the street with their backs riddled with police bullets… how much more of my speech would you like me to repeat to you? I admitted all that. I said I worry about it. But I don’t know what to do about it. No one does. News is news, and it’s seldom good.”

There was a feminine sigh. “That’s not what you’ve said to me at