“Cecilia’s Boutique. Cecilia speaking. Have you considered jodhpurs?”
“I’m thinking very seriously about jodhpurs,” Fletch said into his car phone.
“They’re just coming in, sir. In another month they’ll be all the rage. I’m sure your wife would be really impressed if you bought her jodhpurs now. Impressed by your prescience.”
“So should the jodhpurs be impressed. I haven’t got a wife.” Waiting at the red light at the intersection of Washington and Twenty-third, Fletch saw that all was peaceful at the liquor store. Plywood had been nailed over the shattered breakproof glass of the door. They were ready for their next attack. “May I speak with Barbara Ralton, please?”
Cecilia hesitated. “Sales personnel are not to take personal phone calls. May I take a message for her?”
“Sure. This is Fletcher. Tell her I can’t see her for lunch today. Please also tell her I look forward to buying her a pair of jodhpurs, at Saks.”
“Here I am,” Fletch said.
“Here who is?” Ann McGarrahan, society editor of the News-Tribune, was a tall, broad-shouldered woman in her forties. She sat behind a desk that was too small for her in an office that was distinctly too small for her.
“I thought you people in Society knew everyone.”
“Everyone who is anyone,” Ann said softly. The corners of her mouth twinged with a smile. “Which obliges me to repeat: Who are you?”
“I.M. Fletcher.” Fletch looked at the dead, brown fern on Ann’s windowsill. “A nobody. Beneath your attention. May I go now?”
“Where have you been?”
“Oh, I changed clothes.” Fletch held out the skirts of Donald Habeck’s suit coat. “Frank said something about my needing a suit and tie for this job.”
Ann studied him over her half-lenses. “And that’s the suit? That’s the tie?”
“Good material in it.”
“I daresay. Clearly you made your investment in the material, and not the tailoring.”
“I’ve lost weight.”
“Gotten taller, too. Your trouser cuffs are a half-foot above your ankles.”
“Have you heard that in another month jodhpurs will be all the rage? Lord, what I bring to this department.”
“I see. Your sleeves are modified knickers, too, are they? They stop halfway down your forearms.”
“I’m ready to cover the social scene.”
“The young women around here call you Fletch, don’t they?”
“When they call me at all.” Fletch sat in a curved-back wooden chair.
“Why don’t they use your first name?”
“Irwin?”
“What’s wrong with Irwin?”
“Sounds like a hesitant cheer.”
“Your middle name then. Don’t you have a middle name?”
“Maurice.”
“I know lots of nice people called Maury.”
“I’m not one of ’em.”
“Okay. You’re a Fletch. It just sounds so much like a verb.”
“To fletch, or not to fletch: that is the copulative.”
“Guess I’ll have to fletch. Well, Fletch. Not only has Frank Jaffe sent me you, with warnings regarding your appearance which, however dire, were still insufficient, he also sent me a strong suggestion as to what your first assignment might be.”
“I know what it is.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. Stay on this story concerning the five million dollars Donald Habeck and his wife decided to donate to the art museum. To stay right on it until I get to the bottom of it and everything else concerning the Habecks. Right?”
“Wrong. Of course.”
“That was my assignment, for about a minute and a half this morning.”
“Wasn’t Donald Habeck the man murdered in our parking lot this morning?”
Fletch shrugged. “Just makes the story more interesting.”
“Oh, we have an interesting story for you to work on, Fletch. It was Frank’s suggestion. In fact, he mentioned the suggestion originally came from you.”
“From me? A story for the society pages?”
“We don’t really think of this section as being society anymore, Fletch. Although, of course, there’s always the social aspect of it. We think of it more as human interest, with the emphasis on women’s interests.”
“That’s why I brought up the latest scoop on jodhpurs.”
“It’s not just fashion anymore, it’s more lifestyle. It’s not just beauty, it’s health.”
“Right: women’s healthy lifestyles.”
“You’d be surprised at some of the topics some of our younger women writers want to discuss these days.” Ann picked up some copy off her desk. “Here’s an article comparing the relative merits of manufactured dildos. With pictures, supplied by the manufacturers, I expect. Do you think we should run an article comparing dildos, Fletch?”
“Uh…”
“Which do you think is the best dildo in the world today?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“I couldn’t be disinterested. I’m attached to it. It would be a subjective opinion.”
“I see.” Again Ann McGarrahan struggled to keep the corners of her mouth straight. She dropped the copy onto her desk. “Ah, the woes of being an editor. Needless to say, I’ve had that story on my desk for some time.”
“Dildo?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sure you’ll find space for it.”
“So, you see, we’re into all sorts of areas of interest to you. We are not just concerned with little old ladies who slip vodka into their tea.”
“So you haven’t yet figured out what your assignment is? I was hoping it would come to you, on your own.”
“Something about sexual aids? I know: you want me to do a report on what sexual aids do two out of three gynecologists recommend.”
“You ran in the Sardinal Race yesterday.”
“Oh, no.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Frank told me you ran behind a group of about a dozen women you couldn’t bring yourself to pass.”
“Oh, no.”
“These same women received rather wide publicity, it seems, on this morning’s sports pages of the News-Tribune.” As she was saying this, Ann McGarrahan opened the News-Tribune to the sports section and looked at the two large photographs, on facing pages, of this group of women, coming, and going. “My, they are attractive, healthy young women, aren’t they?”
“Not too shabby.”
“For some reason, Frank takes this spread on his sports pages as some sort of personal affront. Also, I suspect he is in his office right now getting considerable flak for it, from the usual groups.”
“Oh, boy.”
“ ‘Ben Franklyn Friend Service. A service company,’ ” Ann appeared to read from the newspaper. “What sort of service do you suppose they provide, Fletch, to have Frank so upset?”
“You’re kidding.”
Ann jutted her large face across the desk and asked, “Does it have something to do with men?”
“I suspect so.”
“Tell me what.”
Fletch felt the back of his chair pressing against his shoulder blades. “It’s an escort service of the traveling-whorehouse variety, and I suspect you know that.”
“Ah! Sounds like there’s a story here.”
“What? No story …”
“As I’ve outlined to you,” Ann said, “on these pages we’re concerned with women’s interests, their health, how they make their livings—”
“This is a family newspaper!”
“Nice to hear you say so. Your investigation, of course, will be discreetly reported.”
“You want me to investigate a whorehouse?”
“Who better?”
“I’m getting married, Saturday!”
“Have you already passed your blood test?”
Fletch took a deep breath.
Ann held up the flat of her hand to him. “This is a new thing, as I understand it: prostitutes who are obliged to stay in prime physical condition. Goes along with several articles we’ve run on organic gardening, I think. How does this Ben Franklyn Friend Service operate? What is the source of their discipline? How do they entertain men professionally without having to drink a lot themselves? If they are not dependent upon drugs themselves, why are they prostitutes? How much money do they make?” Ann continued to hold up her hand. “Of most importance, who owns Ben Franklyn Friend Service? Who derives the profit?”
Fletch let out his breath, and said nothing.
Ann said, “I think we could have a story here.”
“Best way to do it,” said Fletch, “might be to send one of your young women writers in to apply for a position with Ben Franklyn Friend Service.”
“Ah, but it was your story idea, Fletch. Frank said so himself. It wouldn’t be right for us to take it away from you. Of course, we may send a young woman in, too, for a preliminary investigation, that side of the story.”
“I said I’m getting married Saturday.”
“Doesn’t give you much time, does it?”
“Ann—”
“Besides that,” Ann said, refolding the newspaper on her desk, “I think Frank feels that such a story—well done, of course—would go a long way toward getting him off the hook for these unfortunate pictures that ran on the sports pages this morning.” She folded her hands on the desk. “Not all is tea and biscuits on the lifestyle pages, Fletcher. Definitely, you’re the man for the job.”
Fletch was looking out the window. “P.S., your fern is dead.”
“I happen to like brown fern,” Ann said, without looking around. “I feel they make a statement: despair springs eternal.”
“Oh, boy.”
“Happy to have you in the department, young Mr. Fletcher. At least you won’t have your purse snatched.”
“It’s not my purse I’m worried about.” He stood up.
“It will be interesting to see what you turn in.”
“You’re asking me to ‘turn in’ under wicked circumstances.”
“Oh, and, Fletcher…?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Be careful of Biff Wilson. Don’t get in his way. You do, and he’ll run over you like a fifty-car railroad train. He is a mean, vicious bastard. I ought to know. I was married to him, once.”
“Fletch, there’s a call waiting for you.” The young woman outside Ann McGarrahan’s office jangled her bracelets at him. “Line 303. Nice suit. ‘Fraid you’re goin’ to get raped ’round here?”
“Hello,” Fletch said into the phone.
“Hello,” said Barbara. “I’m furious.”
“I’d rather be Fletch.”
“What the hell do you mean by chewing out my employer?”
“Did I do that?”
“Cecilia’s very serious about jodhpurs just now. She overbought.”
“I care. She wouldn’t let you come to the phone.”
“Company policy. The phone’s for the business, not for the employees.”
“But I’m the fianc? of her number-one salesperson.”
“And what do you mean you can’t have lunch with me?”
“Things are a little confused here.”
“This is Monday, Fletch. We’re getting married Saturday. We have things to discuss, you know?”
“Anyway, I’d already agreed to have lunch with Alston. We want him as my best man, don’t I?”
“That’s the least of my worries. We don’t have much time. You’ve got to get with it.”
“I’m with it.”
“I mean, really with it. Look at all you’ve got to do. Cindy says—”
“Barbara! Cool it! Don’t chew me out now!”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve just been chewed out by absolutely the best. Next to her, you sound tin-horn.”
“Then why don’t you marry her, whoever she is?”
“I would,” answered Fletch, “except she has other ambitions for my proclivities.”