Authors: Gregory Mcdonald
“I’d like to understand it myself. You’re smudging the American dream. The rich-and-famous dream.”
There were tears in her eyes. She ducked her head to her plate. “I work hard. I have to. So many people are counting on me. My work contributes
to the income of literally thousands of people now. We’ve got my mother in this fabulously expensive sanatorium in Kansas. I’ve taken over some of the cost from Freddy.” She lowered her voice. “And I don’t have to be much of a fortune teller to say that pretty soon I’m going to have to take it all over. And everyone knows this is just a crazy business I’m in!” she said more loudly. “No security. Bankable today, a bum tomorrow. A person like me can’t get so much out of herself if she thinks that next week, next month, next year sometime she’s going to be on the sidewalk!”
“Have some shrimp.”
“I have some shrimp.”
“Have some more shrimp.”
“I don’t want any more shrimp,” she said with annoyance. Then she looked at him. “Was that your Sympathetic Routine Number 12?”
“Number 9, actually. I wish you wouldn’t see through me so quickly. It makes me blush.”
“You’ve never blushed in your life.”
“Why don’t you try to tell me in some sort of narrative form, some sequence—”
“Can’t.”
“I’m just a simple journalist, temporarily out of work—”
“The whole thing landed on me like a big bomb just a couple of weeks ago. Just before I was due on location for
Midsummer Night’s Madness.
Hell of a way to start a picture. Looking drawn and haggard.”
“You’ve never looked drawn and haggard in your life.” He looked at the lights in her tanned,
blond skin, the lights in her blond hair. “Ashes and honey don’t mix.”
“Okay,” she said. “The story. A couple of weeks ago, I get a call from a man at the Internal Revenue Service who says he’s very sorry to bother me
but…”
“With them it’s the but that counts.”
“Right away I told him to call Steve Peterman, that Steve Peterman takes care of all my business affairs, taxes, etcetera, etcetera. And he said that was why he was calling me personally because maybe Mister Peterman hadn’t told me that if I didn’t do something within a matter of days, I was going to jail. Me going to jail—not Steve Peterman.”
“Oh, Moxie, the Internal Revenue Service always talks tough. I once had a very funny experience—”
“Right now, Fletch, I’m not interested in the comic side of the Internal Revenue Service. I asked the man what he was talking about. He said I had gone way beyond my last extension, and a lot of other things I didn’t understand. I asked him to slow down and speak in a language I could understand.”
“That’s asking a bit too much of any government.”
“Well, he did. He was really very kind. I sort of understood him, after a while. Instead of paying my taxes over the last years, Steve has been asking for extensions. So I’m years behind. I asked the man how much I owe. He said they don’t know. They think it’s a considerable whack of money. But then he said something or other about all the
money I’ve had going in and out of the country makes things rather confusing.”
“What money have you had going in and out of the country?”
“I have no idea.”
“Into
the country I understand, maybe. Being in the film business you probably have some foreign income.
Out of
the country I don’t understand. Do you have any investments abroad?”
“Not that I know of. Why should I?”
“Well, it’s possible Steve had you invested in French perfumery or something.”
“He never mentioned it. You haven’t heard the worst. I was greatly upset. I called Steve, and that made me more upset. He was distinctly dodgy, Fletch. On the telephone. He said,
Not to worry, Not to worry,
I was about to start principal photography on a film and I should keep my mind on that, he’d take care of everything else. I was so upset I screened
Being There
three times and
Why Shoot The Teacher?
twice.”
“Say, you were upset.”
“I called Steve back and told him I was taking the next plane to New York. He squacked and gobbled. By the time I got to the apartment in New York and called him, he’d been called away to Atlanta, Georgia. On business.”
“While we’re speaking of that, Moxie…”
Her eyes widened at the interruption.
“… You do live pretty well,” Fletch said. “You have that big place in Malibu, on the beach, with a pool and screening room. You have that real nice apartment in New York—”
“Look who’s talking!” she exclaimed. “A two-bit reporter with a gorgeous place on the Italian Riviera—”
“Oh. That again.”
“—who’s spent years on a book about some artist—”
“Edgar Arthur Tharp.”
She grinned wickedly. “How’s the book coming, Fletch?”
“Slowly.”
“Slowly! Have you started Chapter Two yet?”
“There have been a lot of distractions.”
“I need the house in California, Fletch, for my work. I live there. I need the apartment in New York. For my work. I live there. Neither place is a sun-and-sport
palacia
in Italy!”
“Well, I’ve had my troubles with the Internal Revenue Service, too.”
“No more of your sympathy, thank you. I do believe the Internal Revenue Service, in this case, is right. In New York, I go over to Steve’s office, even though I’ve been told he’s not there. Everybody recognizes me, of course. They’ve been dealing with my stuff for years. I request a quiet office and all the books, all the figures which relate to me and my affairs.”
“They had to give them to you.”
“They did.”
“But why did you ask?”
“Why not? I had to.”
“Moxie, there is no way you can understand
such books and figures, as you call them, without training. You needed a professional accountant.”
“I could understand enough.”
“You could understand nothing.”
“For years Steve has been telling me I must borrow money, I must borrow money, being in debt was good for me, paying interest greatly improved my tax situation. I hated the whole thought of being in debt. He explained to me it was just paper debt. So every time he shoved papers in front of me, I signed them. Fletch, I discovered that he had borrowed millions of dollars in my name.”
“Entirely possible. Probably right… I think. I don’t know either.”
“Fletch, what’s a tax shelter?”
“It’s a little stick house where you go to live once the Internal Revenue Service is done with you.”
“He had borrowed money in my name from foreign banks. Geneva, Paris, Mexico City.”
“That seems odd. I really don’t know.”
“He bought stock with my money, all of which seemed to diminish rapidly in value.”
“Bad luck.”
“Real estate in Atlantic City. A horse farm somewhere, film companies…”
“Moxie, the figures mean nothing to you. They wouldn’t mean anything to me either. The way these business types do up their figures is meant to baffle all normal human beings.”
“Fletch,” she said like a scared child. “I am
millions of dollars in debt. To the banks. To the Internal Revenue Service.”
She turned her chair and looked out the window.
Fletch gave her the moment of silence.
Frederick Mooney had opened another bottle from his flight bag and had poured into a champagne glass.
“Oh, look,” Moxie said finally. “The moon is rising.”
“It is?” Fletch said.
“Perfect timing.”
He leaned forward to look through the window. The moon really was rising. “How very romantic of me.”
“Right in the right spot in my window, too,” she said. “Mister Fletcher, are you trying to seduce me?”
“No. You’re too drawn and haggard.”
She shrugged. “It’s always the ones I’m attracted to who won’t have me.”
After a while, Fletch asked, “What did Steve Peterman say when you confronted him with all this?”
“Just what you said. That I didn’t know what I was talking about, everything was too complicated for me to understand, that after principal photography of the film was over he’d go over the books with me and explain everything.”
“And the Internal Revenue Service?”
“He said he’d take care of that.”
“And you left everything that way?”
“I spent a week trying to find you. I asked you to come down.”
“I’m not an accountant. I wish I were. I see three figures together and suffer vertigo.”
“I needed a shoulder to cry on.”
“I’ve got two of them.”
“Also, Fletch, I hate to speak well of you to your face but you did have one or two successes as an investigative reporter.”
“Only recognized as such in retrospect, I fear.”
“You’ve told me a few things you’ve done.”
“Anything to while away the time.”
“I thought maybe I’d get your opinion of Steve Peterman.”
“He was an annoying son of a bitch.”
Frederick Mooney swiveled around in his chair, to face them. “How could I have been seeing Broadway?” he asked.
“That’s a good question,” Fletch answered.
“We’ve been flying over Broadway,” Frederick Mooney told his daughter. “The Great White Way. The Star Spangled Street. The Magnificent Road Of Light In An Ocean Of Darkness.”
“Oh,” Fletch said. “We’ve been flying over the Florida Keys.”
“Well, young man.” Frederick Mooney burped. “I suspect we’re about to land on Herald Square.”
“Fletch! What have you done?”
“What do you mean, what have I done?”
In the dark, Moxie was squinting at the airport where they had landed. “Where are we?”
“Here.”
“We’re not in Fort Myers.”
“We aren’t?” He was trying to hustle Moxie and Frederick Mooney from the airplane to the taxi stand. Unfortunately there were signs in all the appropriate places saying KEY WEST.
“We’re in Key West!” Moxie said.
“We are?” Fletch took Mooney’s clanging flight bag from him. “Darned pilot. Must have landed us in the wrong place.”
“Union Square?” enquired Mooney.
“What are we doing in Key West?”
Fletch was walking them around the terminal rather than through it. “You said you were tired of Route 41.”
“So?”
“All roads end in Key West. Usually in a pile-up.”
There were two taxis at the stand.
“Fletch,” Moxie said seriously. “That woman. The Chief of Detectives. She told us not to leave the Fort Myers area. At least she told me not to leave the Fort Myers area.”
“She mentioned something of the same to me, too.”
Moxie faced Fletch on the sidewalk. “Then what are we doing in Key West?”
“Escaping.”
“We were told—”
“That has no force in law, you know.”
“It hasn’t?”
“No. It hasn’t. We’re not out on bail, or on parole. We haven’t been charged with anything.”
Frederick Mooney was climbing into the backseat of a taxi.
“Are we fugitives from justice?” she asked.
“Ah, that we may be. It’s just that if you run away under such circumstances people are more apt to think you’re guilty.”
“And we’ve run away. Great.”
“Well, hell, Moxie, aren’t you guilty?” Her eyes went from him to the patient taxi driver to Mooney’s dark bulk in the backseat. “Not too many people had the opportunity, given the unique circumstances
which then prevailed, of sticking ol’ Steve. Up there—” Fletch pointed to the sky, “—you gave heavy enough reasons for killing him to bring the airplane down anywhere. Opportunity,” Fletch said. “Motive,” Fletch said.
“You mean I shouldn’t have told you all that?”
“Justification,” Fletch said. “Sounded a milimeter away from a confession, to me.”
For a moment under the arc lights, Moxie Mooney almost looked drawn and haggard.
“Come on,” Fletch said. “Let’s go with Freddy. Otherwise, he might not know where he’s going.”
Moxie sat between them in the backseat of the taxi.
“The Blue House,” Fletch said to the driver. “On Duval Street.”
The taxi started off.
To Moxie, Fletch said, “I’ve borrowed a house. From a friend.”
Mooney took a drink.
“Listen,” Fletch said to Moxie. “A few days of peace and quiet…”
Moxie got out of the taxi while Fletch was paying the driver through the side window. She looked up at the lit house.
“Irwin,” she said. “This Blue House is not blue.”
“It isn’t?”
“Am I going crazy? Even in this light I can tell this Blue House is not blue.”
Fletch helped Frederick Mooney out of the taxi.
“Key West is an eccentric town,” Fletch said.
“Doubt you’ll be here long enough to get used to it.”
Moxie hesitated on the sidewalk. She raised her head and spoke to the sky. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Be nice,” Fletch answered, helping Mooney up the three steps.
“Mister Peterson,” Mooney said at the top of the stairs. “You are a nice young man, but if you don’t stop helping me, I will brain you.”
“Sorry.” Fletch let go of him.
Mooney swayed on the verandah. “You’re up-setting my balance.”
Moxie followed them through the doorway. “Why is this Blue House white?”
“Jeez,” Fletch said. “You couldn’t call it The White House. Wouldn’t be respectful.”
The Lopezes, who took care of The Blue House, were not in the house. Fletch knew they lived in their own house behind the garden wall. The front door had been left unlocked, the lights on. In the dining room a tray of cut sandwiches had been set out along with a fancy ice bucket full of cans of beer. Lights were on even at the back of the house, in the billiard room.
Fletch zipped around the house turning out the lights. “I’ll show you to your rooms.”
Moxie said, “It’s not even nine o’clock.”
“Time means nothing in Key West.” He started up the stairs. “Never believe a clock in Key West.”
Mooney attacked the stairs. “Charge!” he said.
Plodding after him, Moxie said, “Dear O. L.
Your allusion to
Arsenic and Old Lace
under these circumstances is decidedly in poor taste.”
Fletch pointed to the first door on the right. “This is your room, Ms Mooney. I think you’ll find everything in order. Towels in the bathroom.”