life.”

“You don’t take a hint very easily.”

“Not bad champagne. For domestic.”

“What is it you really want, Rolly? We can’t duplicate Vienna in the rain in Hendricks, Virginia, with an air conditioner blasting.”

“Let’s talk about Albania.”

“That’s even worse. I don’t like to talk about Albania.”

“But you do. You talk about Albania quite a lot.”

“Well, it made me famous, that incident. You know that. The network took damn good care of me after that. And damn well they should have. The twerps.”

“I’ve never believed your story about Albania, Eleanor. Sorry. Journalistic skepticism. I’m a good journalist. Fact, I just got a good review from a people. More champagne? Suddenly you’re being strangely unresponsive.”

“I haven’t anything to say.”

“You mean, you haven’t anything you’ve ever said.”

“You came here to find out something. Right, Rolly? You came here for a story. Rolly Wisham, with love and a bottle of champagne. Well, there is no story, Rolly.”

“Yes, there is, Eleanor. I wish you’d stop denying it. You’ve told the story so often, attributing what Walter March did for you to Walter March’s goodness, you’ve blinded everybody to the simple, glaring fact that Walter March wasn’t any good. He was a prick.”

“Even a prick can do one or two good things, Rolly.”

“Eleanor, I think you’ve just admitted something. I suspect I picked a fortunate metaphor.”

“Get out of here, Rolly.”

“Walter March had to have some reason for springing you out of Albania. He sent his own man in. His Rome bureau chief. You know what it must have cost him. Yet he never took credit for it. He didn’t even scoop the story. He let our old network take the credit. Come on, Eleanor.”

“Rolly. I’m going to say this once. If you don’t get out of here, I’m going to call the police.”

“The Hendricks, Virginia, police?”

“House security.”

“Come on, Eleanor. Tell old Rolly.”

“Jesus, I wish Walter had lived. He would have nailed you to the wall.”

“Yes,” Rolly Wisham said. “He would have. But he can’t now. Can he, Eleanor? There are a lot of things he can’t do now. Aren’t there, Eleanor?”

A phone was ringing. Lying on his bed, half-asleep, Fletch wasn’t sure whether the phone was ringing in Eleanor Earles? room, or his own.

“You’re.…”

“Shall I leave the champagne?”

“You know what to do with it.”

“Good night, Eleanor.”

It was Fletch’s own phone ringing.

Twenty-seven

“Ye Olde Listening Poste,” Fletch said.

He had sat up, on the edge of his bed, and thrown the switch on the marvelous machine before answering the phone.

“Hell, I’ve been trying to get you all night.”

“You succeeded. Are you calling from Boston?”

How many hours, days, weeks, months of his life in total had Fletch had to listen to this man’s voice on the phone?

“I’ve never known a switchboard to be so damned screwed up,” Jack Saunders said. “It’s easier to get through to the White House during a national emergency.”

“There’s a convention going on here. And the poor women on the switchboard have to work from only one room information sheet. Are you at the Star?”

Jack had been Fletch’s city editor for more than a year at a newspaper in Chicago.

More recently, they had met in Boston, where Jack was working as night city editor for the Star.

Fletch had even done Jack the minor favor of working a desk for him one night in Boston during an arsonist’s binge.

“Of course I’m at the Star. Would I be home with my god-awful wife if I could help it?”

“Ah,” Fletch said. “The Continuing Romance of Jack and Daphne Saunders. How is the old dear?”

“Fatter, meaner, and uglier than ever.”

“Don’t knock fat.”

“How can you?”

“Got her eyelashes stuck in a freezer’s door lately?”

“No, but she plumped into a door the other night Got the door knob stuck in her belly button. Had to have it surgically removed.” Fletch thought Jack remained married to Daphne simply to make up rotten stories about her. “I saw in the Washington newspaper you’re at the convention. Working for anyone?”

“Just the C.I.A.”

“Yeah. I bet. If you’re at a convention, you must be looking for a job. What’s the matter? Blow all that money you ripped off?”

“No, but I’m about to.”

“I figure you can give me some background on the Walter March murder.”

“You mean the Star doesn’t have people here at the convention?”

“Two of ’em. But if they weren’t perfectly useless, we wouldn’t have sent ’em.”

“Ah, members of the great sixteen-point-seven percent.”

“What?”

“Something a friend said.”

“So how about it?”

“How about what?”

“Briefing me.”

“Why?”

“How about ‘old times’ sake’ as a reason?”

“So I can win another award and you not even tell me