40
I N T H E S H O W E R, Fletch thought he heard the doorbell ringing, but didn’t care much. Then definitely he heard a banging on the front door sufficient to wake the asleep in a burning building.
Having grabbed a towel around him, he opened the front door.
Two men stood in the corridor. One was small and well-dressed and had mean, glinty eyes. The second was large, not well-dressed, and had mean, glinty eyes.
“You have the wrong apartment,” Fletch said. “I hope.”
“Irwin Maurice Fletcher?”
“Well, as long as you asked.” Dimly, Fletch remembered the large man had been in the lobby of the apartment house when Fletch had entered, watched him pick up his mail, and came up in the elevator with him. Vaguely, Fletch had thought he looked like a carnival wrestler with much experience, and wondered if he might not make an interesting interview.
Now he thought avoiding an interview with this man might be the more prudent course.
The small man said, “I’m James St. Eustice Crandall.”
“You have something that belongs to me.”
“I have?” Like tanks the men entered the apartment. Like a wet, near-naked laborer, Fletch backed up before the tanks. “Oh, yes. So I have. Sort of.”
“What do you mean, ‘sort of?” the small man asked.
The large man closed the front door.
Fletch hitched his towel firmly around his waist.
“May I see proof you’re James St. Eustice Crandall?”
“Sure,” the small man said. “Sure. That’s reasonable.”
He took a driver’s licence from his wallet and handed it to Fletch.
Who held it in his hand and stared at it as long as he could.
“What’s the matter?” the small man asked.
“I’m sure it’s just a bureaucratic error, but your licence says James Reilly.”
The small man snatched it from him, stuffed it back into his wallet without glancing at it, took out another licence and shoved it into Fletch’s hand.
“Ah!” said Fletch, examining it. “You’re James St. E. Crandall, too! I can tell. The pictures match.” He handed the licence back. “It must be nice being a schizocarp. You can scratch your own back.”
“Come on,” the small man said. “I want my wallet.”
“Sure,” Fletch said. He stepped back into the livingroom. The large man stepped with him. The large man was keeping Fletch within striking range. “I was wondering how much of a reward you’re considering?”
“For what?”
“For finding your wallet and returning it to you.”
“You didn’t return it to me. I had to come get it.”
“I advertised,” Fletch said. “Two newspapers.”
“Bullshit you did. I didn’t see no advertisement.”
“Then how did you find me?”
“The San Francisco police. Some hotel manager turned you in. They said you were scarperin’ with my dough. They even showed me a picture of you in the newspapers, caught pushin’ an old lady off a bridge or somethin’. They said, ‘That’s the guy’. You, ya punk.”
“Oh, boy.”
Red appeared around the small man’s eyes. “I been waitin’ for you all week! Make with the wallet!”
“No reward?”
“Get outta here with that shit!”
“I’d like to.” The front door wasn’t even visible behind the large man. “I was just thinking a reward of about three thousand, nine hundred and eighty-two dollars might be nice.”
“Nice, mice!” The small man put his index finger against Fletch’s chest. “Tearin’ your skin off in strips would be nice.”
“That’s the amount I don’t have.”
The small man’s eyes popped. “You don’t have?”
“I spent it.”
“How could you spend my money? Son-of-a-bitch!”
“Something came up, you see. Had to take a jaunt.”
The small man shook his head and made every apparent effort to sound reasonable. “Listen, kid, this is my gambling money, got that? Know what that means?”
“Oh, no. Not that syndrome.”
“That’s my poke. My stake. That’s exactly where my winnin’s are, in a particular enterprise. I need the whole stake. Intact. Or it’s no good for me.”
Fletch sighed. “Oh, boy.”
“I lost my poke!” the man complained. “In the street somewhere. I can’t use no other money in this particular enterprise. Last two weeks, you’ve cost me a fortune!”
“Oh, yeah,” Fletch said.
“Maybe two, three hundred thousand dollars.”
“Yeah, yeah. Sure.”
“I gotta have every dime of it back! The original money I won!”
Fletch turned more sideways to them, so he would have a back leg to balance a blow. “I haven’t got three thousand, nine hundred and eighty-two dollars of it.”
“What right you got spending from my poke?”
“None,” Fletch admitted.
The small man’s little fist hit Fletch hard in the shoulder. The large man did not move. He just continued to pollute the environment with garlicky breath.
“You get my money back! Every damned dime of it! Or Lester here will use your head for a basketball!”
“Lester,” Fletch said sincerely. “I believe what the man says.”
To the small man, Fletch said, “I think I can make up the money, get it for you. But it will take a while.”
The small man threw himself petulantly into a chair. “We’ll give you an hour.”
***
“Enid?” Even turned away from Lester, speaking into the phone, Fletch could smell the garlic. “Fletch.”
“Hello, Fletch. How’s the jet lag? You must feel like a tennis ball at Wimbledon.”
“I’m as well as can be expected.”
“Your managing editor, Mister Jaffe called. I told him everything—confidentially, of course.”
“Thank you. Listen, do you remember I mentioned to you and Francine that I sort of borrowed money to do all the travelling?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the thugs I sort of borrowed it from—” There was suddenly a sharp pain just below Fletch’s right rib cage.“—I mean the philosophers I took it from are here, wanting it back, right away.”
“Fletch, you went to the loan sharks. Oh, dear. You should have said something.”
“I’m saying something now.”
“How much?”
“Let’s phrase it as three thousand, nine hundred and eighty-two dollars in crisp, new one thousand dollar bills. In a big hurry.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can. What’s your address?”
Fletch told her and then said, “Enid, this isn’t blackmail.”
“I know that, Fletch. We gave you every opportunity for that. I’ll be right there.”
After he hung up, rubbing his side, Fletch said, “May I go put some clothes on?”
“No sense in spoiling ‘em,” the large man said. “They’ll just get all bloody, most likely.”
“Yeah,” said the small man in the armchair. “You might as well leave ‘em clean, so someone else can use ‘em. Salvation Army.”
They waited just over an hour. During that time the large man remained standing over where Fletch sat on the couch.
Lester seemed to have a fascination for Fletch’s ears. He kept staring at them. Every time Fletch looked at him, Lester nodded at Fletch’s ears and grinned. Obviously Lester’s own ears had been maliciously treated. There were teeth marks in them.
Fletch tried to turn his mind to other matters.
On the coffee table, among many bills, was a letter from the Office of The Mayor. It read,
Dear Mister Fletcher:
This letter expresses the extreme displeasure of this office, and of The Mayor himself, at your failure to appear to receive your Good Citizenship of the Month Award last Friday morning. The Mayor and the press were looking forward to seeing you. Your indifferent attitude (you did not even contact this office ahead of time to notify us of your inability to appear) has gone a long way toward jeopardizing the Mayors entire Good Citizenship of the Month Award program.
The Mayor has directed me to inform you that your award has been rescinded.
Sincerely,
The Office of The Mayor
Fletch looked toward his own front door, and said, in a small voice, “Help! Police!”
Not succeeding in turning his mind to other matters, Fletch asked the small man, “When I called you from the lobby of the Park Worth Hotel, and told you I had your wallet, why didn’t you come right down and take it from me? I mean, seeing you want it so much?”
“That wasn’t you.”
“Of course it was me.”
“Naw.” The small man was definite. “There was this other guy, see? He knew I had the wallet with the twenty five grand in it. At that particular time I owed this other guy considerably more than the twenty five grand. He was just connin’ me, to get me down into the lobby. I got another friend to check out for me. I went out the back way.”
“But you knew you’d lost your wallet.”
“I thought it was in the car. I’d left it under the car seat. It must have fell out. Or you, or the other guy stole it.”
Fletch sighed. “Now do you know it was me—trying to give you your money back?”
The small man grinned. “I know it wasn’t.”
“Why?”
“You find twenty-five grand in cash and try to give it back to me? Come on. You think I’m crazy?”
Fletch reflected a moment, and then said, “You shouldn’t ask personal questions.”
When the doorbell rang, Lester moved quickly to open the door. He said nothing. Enid’s voice said, “Fletch! Are you all right?”
Lester slammed the door. When he turned he had four one-thousand dollar bills in his hand.
“Sure!” Fletch yelled. “Thank you!”
“Ugly old broad,” Lester said.
The small man had rushed to Lester and grabbed the money. He counted the four bills five times.
“Where’s the rest?” he asked Fletch.
Fletch got up and went into the bedroom closet and took the wallet from where he had hidden it in Moxie’s purse and brought it back to the livingroom. He tossed it to the small man.
After catching it the small man gave Fletch a look of outrage. His gambling money shouldn’t be so desecrated.
And the short man counted the twenty one bills five times. Then he placed the four one thousand dollar bills neatly and smoothly in his wallet, and put the wallet in his jacket pocket.
Before opening the front door, the small man said, “Work him over, Lester. Break his head. All the trouble he’s caused me. And four of these bills—” He tapped his wallet through his suit jacket. “—just aren’t the originals! It will cost me, you bet! You bastard!”
“Lester?” Fletch asked. “Did you hear the one about the nearsighted veternarian and the garden hose?”
Fletch’s observation had been correct: Lester had a fascination for ears. He beat on other parts of Fletch’s body as well, but most of those blows were merely intended to get Fletch’s forearms down from protecting his head. Lester hit Fletch’s left ear repeatedly, then his right ear repeatedly, then alternated between the left ear and the right ear.
The large man might have become bored with his task sooner, if Fletch had not landed a hard one on his nose, making it bleed.
The small man came back, stuck his head through the open front door, and said, “Lester, come on! I’ve got the elevator waiting.”
Wiping his nose on his sleeve, Lester left, closing the front door behind him.
From the floor, which was the only place Fletch had found he could retreat from Lester’s final enthusiasm for his job, Fletch heard the men, small and large, walk down the corridor. He heard the elevator door slide shut.
Fletch said, “Finders weepers.”