Authors: Gregory Mcdonald
“Was it?”
“Beg pardon, young man?”
Fletch headed the car back to Route 41. “Was it before your very eyes?”
“No. Really, I didn’t see a thing. I don’t see how such a thing could have happened.”
“Were you close?”
“Like brother and sister. Steve’s been with me years. Helping me. Through thick and thin. Through good times and bad times. Ups and downs.”
“Coming and going.”
“Coming and going.”
“Arrivals and departures.”
“Arrivals and departures.”
From the back seat, Frederick Mooney said, “Very good, girlie.”
Moxie pulled off her hat and veil and threw them on the backseat next to her father. She was grinning. “Thought you’d like it, O.L.”
“I understand if you don’t carry off this performance very well indeed, darling daughter, your next engagement might be a long one in the cooler.”
“He’s doing the role of Scanlon,” Moxie explained to Fletch.
“Oh.”
“The Saint on Murderers’ Row.”
“I see.”
“Was it you what busted the creep’s plumbing, daughter?”
“I didn’t mean to, honest, I didn’t. See I was parin’ my nails with this shiv when he come along real careless like and backed into me.” Moxie shook her head. “Real careless.”
“From what Peterman tells me,” Mooney said, “this is a serious matter.”
In the front seat, Fletch and Moxie looked at each other in sincere wonderment.
“Peterman?” Moxie asked.
Through the rear view mirror Fletch saw Mooney indicate he meant Fletch.
“Peterman,” Mooney said.
“O.L.” Moxie exhaled. “This man’s name is Fletcher. Peterman is the name of the man what got punctured.”
Mooney muttered, “I thought he said his name was Peterman.”
“Dear O.L.,” Moxie commented. “Always very up on my affairs. Makes a point of knowing everyone in my life. A friend to all my friends. All in all, a doting father.”
“So which one got stabbed?” Mooney asked.
Fletch said, “The other one.”
“Then you’re Peterman,” Mooney asserted.
“No,” said Fletch. “I’m Fletcher. I’m the one who told you about Peterman.”
“It doesn’t make any difference,” concluded Mooney after a pull on his bottle. “It’s a very serious matter.”
After a moment, seeing Mooney’s head nod in the rearview mirror, Fletch asked Moxie, “You call your father O.L.?”
“Only to his face.”
“I never heard that. You’ve always called him Freddy.”
“Originally it was O.L.O. Short for Oh, Luminous One. My mother started calling him that when they were first married, young, starting out. Still does. When her poor confused mind churns out anything at all. I visited her last month. At the home. Poor mama. Anyway, over the years it got shortened to O.L.”
“They call me Oh, Hell,” Mooney announced from the back seat, his voice resonating in the closed car. “For short, they call me Oh, Heck.” He tipped the bottle up to his mouth.
Moxie looked through the rain spotted window. They had turned north on Route 41. “Where we going?”
“Dinner.”
“And what do we do with the superstar in the back seat?”
“Take him with us.”
“You’ve never seen Freddy in a restaurant.”
“No.”
“People gasp and fall off their chairs. They send over drinks, competitively. They line up to shake his hand and have a few words with him, so he never gets anything to eat. They never seem to
realize how drunk he already is. I call it the Public Campaign To Kill Frederick Mooney.”
“He’s still alive.”
“Used to find it damned embarrassing, when I was small. Public Drunkenness Being Praised.”
Mooney said, “I
should e’en die with pity to see another thus.”
“Oh, God,” Moxie said. “Lear. What got him on Lear? Did I say something Regan-like?”
“I think it started when I first found him in the bar,” Fletch said. “The first thing I said to him was something like
‘your daughter sent me to fetch you’.”
“Yes,” Moxie said. “That would be enough of a cue to get him going on Lear. And did he recite to you?”
“Yes,” Fletch said. “It was marvelous. In thunder and lightning and pelting rain.”
Moxie reached back and patted Mooney on the knee. “That’s O.K., O.L., I never missed a meal.”
“Damned right you didn’t,” Mooney said.
“You put me in school and mama in the hospital but nobody ever missed a meal.”
Mooney shook his head in agreement. “It’s a damned serious matter. I told Fletcher that.”
Moxie shook her head and turned around again just as they were passing a sign saying 41. “Damned Route 41. Came here to make a movie and it seems I’ve spent my whole time so far on Route 41. Going back and forth. Vanderbilt Beach to Bonita Beach. Bonita Beach to Vanderbilt Beach. Life’s damned hard on a working girl.”
“What’s this about a hit-and-run accident?” Fletch asked.
“You know about that?”
“Heard a reporter ask you something about it.”
“I don’t think it’s related,” Moxie said. “I mean, to Steve’s death. It was Geoffrey McKensie’s wife.”
“Why does that name seem familiar? Geoffrey McKensie?”
“Australian director.” Moxie yawned. “A very good Australian director. Maybe the best director in the whole world. He’s done three quiet pictures. Don’t think any of them have been seen much outside Australia. I’ve screened all three. They’re magnificent. He brings up character beautifully. Very sensitive. You know, he takes the time, the fraction of a second it takes, to permit a character to do something really revealing, maybe contradictory, uh … you know what I mean?”
“No.”
“Oh. Well. I was really hoping he’d direct this
Midsummer Night’s Madness.
I thought he was going to direct it. He came here to direct it.”
“And he’s not directing it.”
“Sy Koller is directing. Who is a nice man, and good enough.”
“You mean the man, this McKensie, came all the way from Australia thinking he had a job and didn’t have one?”
“With wife.”
“How can that happen?”
“Such things happen all the time in the industry. There’s a magic hex word in this industry—the word
bankable.”
“You mean investible?”
“Digestible. In this business when the noncreative people have to make a decision and don’t know how to make a decision based on creativity and talent they make the decision based on this word
bankable.
They argue that they can get bankers, investors interested in one property, or person, but not another. What it really comes down to is,
my property and friends are bankable, and your property and friends are not bankable.
You see?”
“And this Godfrey McKensie was declared not bankable?”
“Geoffrey McKensie. Yes.”
“After he got here?”
“After he got here Sy Koller became available. Another film he was working on fell through.”
“And Sy Koller is bankable?”
“Sy Koller’s last five films have all been failures. Financially and critically. Disasters.”
“And that makes him bankable?”
“Sure. Steve felt Sy was due to make a good picture.”
“And this poor Aussie who’s made three good pictures and has flown half way around the world to make a film is not bankable?”
“Right. Because nobody knows his name. Yet. Nobody here has seen his films. Everybody knows Sy Koller’s name.”
“They know him as a failed director. Pardon me for not believing a word of this.”
“It is incredible. Which is why a person like me has a person like Steve Peterman to deal with all this. Who can understand it? Who wants to understand it!”
“Doesn’t this man, McKensie, have any rights?”
“Sure. He has the right to sue. He probably is suing. But I don’t think a film has been made since
Birth Of A Nation
without people suing. And people should have sued over that, if they didn’t. Anyway, about ten days ago Geoffrey McKensie’s wife got run over. On Old Route 41. She had stopped at a fruit and flower stand, bought some flowers and was recrossing the road to her car when she got hit. The driver didn’t stop.”
“Killed?”
“Died three hours later in the hospital.”
“No witnesses?”
“Just the woman at the flower stand. She said the car that hit Mrs McKensie was going very fast. Was either blue or green. Driven by either a man or a woman. We’re going rather far for dinner, aren’t we? All the way into Fort Myers?”
“And McKensie is still around?”
“Sure.”
“The funeral… I should think he’d want to go home…”
“First he had to bury his wife. Then I suppose he had to get lawyers. I hope he’s suing. Maybe he has to be on location to make his suit good. I don’t know. I like him. This is all terrible.”
At a red light Fletch turned right.
“This is the airport,” Moxie said.
“Yes, it is.”
“We’re eating at an airport?”
“More or less.”
“We’ve gone out of our way to eat at an airport?”
Fletch didn’t answer.
“Irwin Maurice Fletcher, I have spent enough
of my life confronted with the utterly indifferent, unappetizing food served at airports.”
“Call me Oh, Wondrous One for short. Or, O-l-l.”
“I’ll never call you for dinner.”
“Be fair. You’ve never had a good meal at an airport?”
“Never.”
“Never ever?”
“Once.”
“Where? Which airport?”
“Why should I tell you? Look what you’re doing to me. Taking me to dinner at an airport!”
Fletch craned his head lower and looked up through the windshield. “Above an airport, actually.”
“Great. Dinner in a Control Tower. Very relaxing.”
“Weather’s clearing, you see. Thought it might be nice to go up in an airplane, have a leisurely snack while we watch the moon rise.”
“Serious?”
“Should time out just about right.”
He pulled into a parking space.
She was staring across the front seat at him. “You’ve hired an airplane for dinner?”
He turned off the motor. “Where else can you two superstars go tonight? One of you has been drinking all day—”
“—all life—”
“—and the other one’s as jittery as a talking doll in the hands of a small boy.”
“Fletcher, you’re something else.”
“I know that.
What
else is the question.”
He got out and opened the car’s trunk. She followed him behind the car. “What’s that?” she asked.
“A picnic basket. Had it made up while I was looking for Freddy. Lots of goodies. Chopped ham and pickle. Shrimp. Champagne.”
He took the hamper out and slammed the trunk’s lid.
He opened a back door of the car. “Mister Mooney?”
He shook Mooney’s arm. The bottle in Mooney’s lap was almost empty.
“We’re at the airport, sir.” Mooney blinked at him. “Thought we’d get high for dinner, sir.”
“Very thoughtful of you.” Mooney began to climb out of the car. “Very thoughtful indeed, Mister Peterman.”
“I don’t see the moon,” Moxie said.
“Complaints! Have to be patient.” Fletch was pouring champagne into long-stemmed glasses. “A little bubbly, Mister Mooney?”
“Never touch the stuff,” Mooney said. “Upsets my cognac.”
They were sitting in large leather swivel chairs. Each had a safety belt strapped across the lap. The passenger section of the airplane was furnished and decorated partly as a living room, partly as an office.
At first, the pilot who had escorted them across the dark runway had watched worriedly Frederick Mooney’s stumbling gait. It did not make him less worried that Frederick Mooney was singing, very
loudly and very badly,
If I had the wings of an angel
… As they were passing under a light, the pilot’s face did a double-look and expressed shock at recognizing Moxie Mooney. He looked sharply and recognized Frederick Mooney. Solicitiously, he helped Frederick Mooney up the steps and strapped him into the seat himself.
The plane took off immediately.
“I presume we’re to fly in circles,” Moxie said.
“How on earth can you fly any other way?” Fletch asked.
Seated, Fletch was setting the pull-out table within easy reach of their chairs with things from the picnic basket. He removed the protective cellophane from the plates of cut, assorted sandwiches. Opened the containers of iced shrimp, lobster tails, their sauces, salads. Dealt plates and cutlery and napkins around the table. Last out of the basket was a little white vase and a long-stemmed red rose. He poured champagne into the vase, put the rose in it, and set the rose in the middle of the table.
Watching him, Moxie said, “You would make an interesting husband, after all.”
“I did,” Fletch said. “Twice.”
“As the lady said,” intoned Frederick Mooney, with a cold look at his daughter, “just as they were leading her away, ‘I was cursed by marriage to an interesting man’.”
Fletch looked from one to another, then said, “Anyone for eats?”
Both Mooneys wordlessly heaped their plates with every food in sight. “Enough for the vanity of
film stars,” Fletch muttered, helping himself from the remainders. “Good thing I bought for six.”
Plate in lap, Mooney swiveled his chair to look out the window while he ate.
“Now,” Fletch said to Moxie, after she had downed six quarter-sandwiches, four lobster tails and half her shrimp, “want to tell me why you asked me to come down here? Or have you had enough for today? Or maybe it isn’t relevent any more… ?”
“You’re hard enough to find,” grumbled Moxie. “It took me the better part of a week to trace you down.”
“I was in Washington,” Fletch said, “trying to find The Bureau of Indian Affairs.”
“Did you find it?” She was chewing a lobster tail.
“I narrowed it down to one of three telephone booths.”
She wiped her hands on a napkin. “I seem to be in real financial trouble.”
“How is that possible?”
“You tell me.”
“Some nights you’re on two television channels simultaneously. You’re on the cables so much I should think you’d twang. Your films play the theaters. Last Christmas you did the first one hundred days of
A Broadway Hit—”
“And I’m drowning in debt. Explain that to me.”