Authors: Gregory Mcdonald
“From your appearance I would have taken you for something less than a managing editor.”
“Didn’t you know?” Fletch said. “Everyone is something less than a managing editor—star athletes, heads of state, reporters, chiefs of detectives—”
“You said no one else was in the pavillion except you and Mrs Peterman. Not even a bartender?”
“No. We were alone.”
“Did Mrs Peterman know you were there?”
“I don’t think so. I wasn’t wearing shoes. I had been told to be quiet during the taping. She was engrossed in watching the monitor…”
“If she didn’t know you were there, to whom was she speaking when she said, ‘What happened to Steve?’ or whatever it was she said?”
“She said, ‘What happened to Steve?’,” Fletch said, firmly.
“Sorry. I’m used to dealing with less, uh, professional witnesses.”
“I think Mrs Peterman was talking to herself. From her tone of voice I would say she was frightened, alarmed. Which is why I moved over behind her, to see what she was seeing.”
“Had you ever seen Marjory Peterman before?”
“No.”
“During the time you took her away from the pavillion, got her coffee, sat with her, what did she say?”
“Nothing, really. Just little things, like ‘What’s taking so long?’, ‘Why doesn’t someone come and tell me what happened?’ Oh, yeah, she said she wanted to go in the ambulance with Steve.”
“So she knew her husband had been wounded, shall we say?”
Fletch hesitated. “She may have known in her heart her husband was dead. He certainly looked dead on the monitor.”
“Did she say anything to indicate she knew her husband had been dealt with violently? Murdered?”
Fletch thought. “No. I don’t think she said anything more than I’ve told you.”
“‘Don’t think’?”
“I know. I know she didn’t say anything more.” On the foot of the leg crossed over his knee, the moccasin was half off. “Except to identify herself to me as Marge Peterman.”
“In response to a question?”
“I had asked her if she was Peterman’s wife.”
“You saw roughly the same thing Marjory Peterman saw, Mister Fletcher. What did you think had happened to Peterman?”
“I was trying to think what could have happened to him. I guess I was thinking he had suffered some kind of an internal hemorrhage. To account for the blood on his lips.”
“You did not consider the possibility of murder?”
“No way. The son of a bitch was on television. I hadn’t heard a gunshot. Who’d think of anyone sticking a knife into someone else on an open, daylit stage, with three cameras running?”
“That, Mister Fletcher,” said Nachman looking down at her blotter, “is why I’ve called this meeting. So.” She swiveled her chair sideways to the desk. “You had never seen Marjory Peterman before. But you did know Steven Peterman?”
“Ah.” Fletch felt color come to his cheeks. “You say that because I called the son of a bitch a son of a bitch.”
“Yes,” Nachman nodded. “I could characterize that as a clue of your having a previous, personal opinion of the deceased.”
“I knew him slightly.”
“How’s that?” She turned her head and smiled at him. “I think it’s time for another one of your concise statements, Mister Reporter.”
“About nine months ago, he spent a longish weekend at my home in Italy. Cagna, Italy.”
“Italy? Are you Italian?”
“I’m a citizen of the United States. Voting age, too.”
“Is Italy where you got those shorts?”
Fletch looked down at his shorts and lifted the hands in his pockets. “They have good pockets. You can carry books in them, notebooks, sandwiches…”
“Or a knife,” she said simply. “In most of the clothes these film people are wearing you couldn’t conceal a vulgar thought. So. Are you going to tell me why Peterman visited you in Italy?”
“Of course.”
“Tell me first why you have a house in Italy. I mean, a struggling young reporter, no matter how precise you are… Cagna’s on the Italian Riviera, isn’t it?”
“I have a little extra money.”
“Must be nice to be born rich.”
“Must be,” Fletch said. “I wasn’t.”
She waited for a further explanation, but Fletch offered none.
“Now, I’d like to know why Peterman visited you at your Italian palace.”
“He was travelling with Moxie Mooney. She was on a press tour of Europe. Moxie visited me. At my little villa. He was with her.”
Her eyebrows rose. “So? You knew Moxie Mooney before?”
“I’ve always known Moxie Mooney. We were in school together.”
“Some humble reporter,” Nachman commented. “Entertain big movie stars and film producers at his Italian estate. Wait until I tell the guys and gals on the local police beat. They can’t even afford to go to the movies twice a week. You must spell better than they do.”
“Never mind,” Fletch said. “They don’t like me already.”
“So on that weekend at your little villa’ in Italy, who slept with whom?”
“What a question.”
“Yes,” Nachman said. “It’s a question. Were Moxie Mooney and Steven Peterman intimate?”
“No.”
“You’re making me ask every question, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Were you and Ms Mooney intimate?”
“Sure.”
“Why ‘sure’? Are you and Ms Mooney lovers?”
“Off and on.”
“‘Off and on’.” Chin on hand, elbow on desk
blotter, Roz Nachman contemplated what
off and on
could mean. Finally, she shook her head. “I think you should explain.”
“Not sure I can.”
“Try,” she said. “So the hems of Justice will be neat.”
“You see.” Fletch looked at the ceiling. “Each time Moxie and I meet, here and there, now and then, we pretend we’ve never met before. We pretend we’re just meeting for the first time.”
Roz frowned. “No. I don’t really see.”
“Okay.”
“Would you walk that past me again?”
“It’s simple.” Fletch took another long look at the ceiling. “We’ve known each other a long time and well. I suppose we love each other. So each time we meet, we pretend we’ve never met before. Which is true, you see. We never really have met before. Because people today aren’t really the same people they were yesterday or the day before. Every day you’re a new person; you have new thoughts, new experiences. You should never meet a person and presume she’s the same person she was last week. Because she’s not. It’s just the reality of existence.”
“I see,” Roz Nachman said, staring at him. “And
then
you jump into bed together?”
“Shucks.” Fletch lowered his eyelids.
“If you two have so much fun together, why don’t you stay together?”
“Oh, no.” Fletch glanced at the tape recorder. “You see, we probably can’t stand each other. I mean, in reality.”
“Because you’re both much too beautiful,” Roz Nachman said. “Physically.”
“No, no,” Fletch said. “Moxie’s the most beautiful crittur who’s ever eaten a french fry.”
“Has she ever eaten a french fry?”
“One or two. When she can get ’em.”
“She doesn’t look like she’s ever eaten a french fry.”
“It’s more complex than all that. Maybe it’s that we both play the same kind of games. We make a poor audience for each other.”
“‘Games’.” Nachman had picked up a pencil and was running its point loosely back and forth over a piece of paper. “I wonder what that means.”
“Why do I feel like I’m sitting in the office of a public school Guidance Counselor?”
“The statement you gave when you first came in here, Mister Fletcher, was factually accurate.” Nachman waved her pencil at the tape recorder. “And a complete lie.”
“Me? Lie?”
“No wonder you’re such a rich reporter you can live on the Italian Riviera.”
“I know I flunked Mechanical Drawing, Ms Frobisher,” Fletch said, “but I really want to take Auto Repair a second year.”
“You certainly gave the impression you came to Bonita Beach as a reporter to interview Ms Mooney. You certainly did not volunteer the information that you knew the murder victim, or Ms Mooney—the latter intimately. Is all this part of some game you’re playing?”
“All the information you’ve elicited from me is irrelevent. I didn’t kill anybody.”
“I wonder if you’d mind leaving that decision to the authorities?”
“I sure would mind. All I’m saying is that Marge Peterman didn’t kill him either. I was with her at the moment Peterman was being murdered.”
“The truth, Mister Fletcher, is that no one I’ve talked with so far on this list testifies to having seen either you or Marge Peterman from shortly after three until shortly before four.”
“What are you saying?”
“And I’ve never known a reporter who can afford a house of any kind on the Italian Riviera.”
Fletch said, “I write good.”
“Was Ms Mooney expecting you today?”
“Yes.”
“And what kind of a game is she playing?”
“She’s not playing any kind of a game. You’re turning two-penny psychoanalysis into—”
“Let’s go on.” Sitting straight at her desk, Nachman referred to some handwritten notes.
“At least I’m answering your questions.”
Nachman glared at him. “You know what happens to you if you don’t.”
“Yeah,” said Fletch. “I don’t get to take Auto Repair next semester.”
“What was your impression of Steven Peterman when he spent the weekend at your house in Italy?”
“You’re asking for an opinion.”
“Something tells me you have one.”
“I do.”
“What is it?”
“He was a son of a bitch.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you asked me.”
“Why do you characterize Steven Peterman as ‘a son of a bitch’?”
“He was a nuisance. Look,” Fletch said, “the house there is on the beach. Above the beach. It’s a beach house.”
“You’re loosing your conciseness.”
“People hang around in swim suits. Pasta and fish for supper on the patio. A little wine. Music.”
“You’re saying Peterman didn’t fit in.”
“Always in a three-piece suit. He wore a cravat. Wouldn’t go on the beach because he didn’t want sand against his Gucci loafers.”
“Intolerable behavior.”
“Always on the telephone. Calling Rome, Geneva, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires. I know. I got the phone bill. It would have been cheaper to have had the entire French government for the weekend.”
“All right. He was an inconsiderate houseguest.”
“Every night he insisted everybody get dressed up and plod through the most expensive cafes, restaurants, night clubs, casinos on the Riviera.”
“And you paid?”
“Everytime a bill came, he was on the telephone somewhere.”
“Okay.”
“Worse. Everytime he saw Moxie, he bothered her with some clause of some contract, or some detail of her schedule, ran over the names of
people she was to meet in Berlin two weeks from then, Brussels, who, what, where, when, why. He never left her alone. She was there to relax.”
“And play games with you. You two avoided him?”
“As much as we could. It’s hard to ignore a government-in-residence.”
“You played hide-and-seek with him.”
“Yeah.”
“Marjory Peterman was not with you that weekend. Right?”
“Right.”
“Where was she?”
Fletch shrugged. “Home milking her minks, for all I know.”
“I repeat the question: you have never seen or spoken with Marjory Peterman before today?”
“Right. No. Never.”
“You knew the victim, Steven Peterman, and admit not liking him.”
“I would never murder anyone over a phone bill. Instead, I just wouldn’t pay it. I’d move to Spain.”
“And you have this complicated love-slash-hate relationship with Moxie Mooney.”
Fletch looked at her from under lowered eyelids. “Don’t make too much of that.”
She looked evenly back at him. “Frankly, Mister Fletcher, I think you and Ms Mooney are capable of anything… together.” She glanced at the tape recorder, at Fletch, and at the typewritten list on
her desk. “Okay, Mister Fletcher. I guess I don’t need to tell you not to leave the Fort Myers area.”
“You don’t need to tell me.”
Roz Nachman turned off the tape recorder.
Soaking wet from running through the heavy rain, Fletch slowed at the top of the outside, sheltered stairs when he recognized Frederick Mooney’s famous profile.
His back to the white, churning Gulf of Mexico, Mooney was sitting alone at a long table on the second floor verandah of a drinks-and-eat place on Bonita Beach. On the table in front of him was a half empty litre bottle. In his hand was a half empty glass.
Fletch ambled to the bar. “Beer,” he said.
“Don’t care which kind?” The bartender had the tight, permanently harrassed look of the retired military.
“Yeah,” Fletch said. “Cold.”
The bartender put a can of cold beer on the bar. “Some rain,” he said.
“Enough.” Fletch popped the lid on the beer can. “Mister Mooney been here long?”
No one else was on the verandah.
“You come to collect him?”
“Yeah.”
“Couple of hours.”
“Has he had much to drink?”
“I don’t know.”
Fletch swallowed some beer. “You don’t know?”
“Drinks out of his own bottle. Carries it with him. Five Star Fundador Cognac. I don’t keep such stuff.”
At Frederick Mooney’s feet was an airlines travel bag.
“You allow that?”
“No. But he tips well. As long as he pays a big rent for the glass, I don’t care. After all, he is Frederick Mooney.”
There was a roll of thunder from the northwest. Rain was blowing into the verandah.
“Does he come here every day?”
“No. I think he hits all the places on the beach.”
“In what kind of shape was he when you rented him the glass?”
“He’d been drinkin’ somewhere else before. Took him ten minutes to get up the stairs. Heard him comin’. Had to help him sit down and then bring his bag over to him.”
The rain spray was passing over Mooney.
“Think of a famous, talented man like that…”
The bartender popped a can of beer for himself.
“You an actor, too?”
“Yeah,” said Fletch. “At this moment.”
“I mean, you’ve come from the film crew, and all, to pick him up. What films you ever been in?”