report it.”
“You have never earned more than a reporter’s salary—about the price of that Porsche in your driveway—in any one year… legally.”
“Who reports gambling earnings?”
“Where did you get the money? Over two million dollars, possibly three, maybe more.”
“I went scuba diving off the Bahamas and found a Spanish galleon loaded with trading stamps.”
“Crime on top of crime.” Fabens put his cigar stub in the ash tray. “Ten, twenty, thirty years in prison.”
“Maybe by the time you get out,” laughed Eggers, “the girl next door will be divorced.”
“Oh, Gordon,” Fabens said. “We forgot to tell Mister Irwin Maurice Fletcher that in one of my pockets I have his T.W.A. ticket to Hendricks, Virginia. In my other pocket I have his extradition papers.”
Eggers slapped his kidney. “And I, Richard, have a warm pair of Italian handcuffs.”
Fletch sat down.
“Gee, guys, these are my friends. You’re asking me to bug my friends.”
Fabens said, “I thought a good journalist didn’t have any friends.”
Fletch muttered, “Just other journalists.”
Eggers said, “You don’t have a choice, Fletcher.”
“Damn.” Fletch was turning the baggage locker key over in his hands. “I thought you C.I.A. guys stopped all this: domestic spying, bugging journalists.…”
“Who’s spying?” said Eggers.
“You’ve got us all wrong,” said Fabens. “This is simply a public relations effort. We’re permitted to do public relations. All we want are a few friends in the American press.”
“You never know,” said Eggers. “If we know what some of their personal problems are, we might even be able to help them out.”
“All we want is to be friendly,” said Fabens. “Especially do we want to be friendly with Walter March. You know him?”
“Publisher. March Newspapers. I used to work for him.”
“That’s right. A very powerful man. I don’t suppose you happen to know what goes on in his bedroom?”
“Christ,” said Fletch. “He must be over seventy.”
“So what,” said Eggers. “I’ve been reading a book.…”
“Walter March,” repeated Fabens. “We wish to make good friends with Walter March.”
“So I do this thing for you, and what then?” Fletch asked. “Then I go to jail?”
“No, no. Then your tax problems disappear as if by magic. They fall in the Potomac River, never to surface again.”
“How?”
“We take care of it,” answered Eggers.
“Can I have that in writing?”
“No.”
“Can I have anything in writing?”
“No.”
Fabens put the Trans World Airlines ticket folder on the coffee table.
“Genoa, London, Washington, Hendricks, Virginia. Your plane leaves at four o’clock.”
Fletch looked at his sunburned arm.
“I need a shower.”
Eggers laughed. “Putting on a pair of pants wouldn’t hurt any, either.”
Fabens said, “I take it you choose to go home without handcuffs?”
Fletch said, “Does Pruella the pig pucker her pussy when she poops in the woods?”
Two
“So you’re going to bug the entire American press establishment? Just because someone asked you to?”
Gibbs’ voice was barely audible. Fletch had had a better connection when he had called from London.
Across the National Airport waiting room a brass quartet was beginning to play “America.”
Fletch pushed the brown suitcase he had taken from Locker Number 719 out of the telephone booth with his foot and slammed the door.
“Fletch?”
“Hello? I was closing the door.”
“Are you in Washington now?”
“Yes.”
“Did you have a nice flight?”
“No.”
“Sorry to hear that. Why not?”
“Sat next to a Methodist minister.”
“What’s wrong with sitting next to a Methodist minister?”
“Are you kidding? The closer to heaven we got, the smugger he got.”
“Jesus, Fletch.”
“That’s what I say.”
“Can you still sing a few bars of the old Northwestern fight song?”
“Never could.”
In college, Don Gibbs had believed in the football team (he was a second-string tackle), beer (a case between Saturday night and Monday morning), the Chevrolet car (he had a sedan, painted blue and yellow), the Methodist Church (for women and children), and applied physics (for an eventual guaranteed income from American industry, which he also believed in, but which, upon his graduation, had not returned his faith by offering him a job). He had not believed in poetry, painting, philosophy, people, or any of the other p’s treated in the humanities—an attitude generally accepted by American industry, but not when manifested by the candidate for a job so obviously.
He and Fletch had been roommates in their freshman year.
“The only thing I learned in college,” Fletch said into the phone, “is that all our less successful classmates went to work for the government.”
“Who placed this call?” Gibbs’ throat muscles had tightened. “Tell me that, Fletcher. Did you call me, or did I call you? Are you asking me to help you, or am I asking you to help me?”
“Gee whiz, Don. You forgot to