“Nothing about the waterway?” Filby looked about to faint.
“Nothing about the waterway,” Fletch said.
“Shit,” said Filby. “I already reported what he said about the waterway—what he didn’t say about the waterway.”
Fletch led her onto the campaign bus.
“Oooo,” said Betsy in fake cockney. “Don’t they live well, though? Telly and everything.”
Walsh was chatting with Lee Allen Parke.
“Walsh,” Fletch said, “this is Betsy Ginsberg.”
“I know Betsy.” Walsh gave Fletch an odd, questioning look. “Not as a person,” Betsy said.
“Yeah,” said Fletch. “She does nice table settings.”
The governor got on the bus while Fletch was collecting copies of the transcripts from the volunteers.
“Come on back here, clean-and-lean,” the governor said.
They went into the stateroom together. The governor closed the door. “Sit a minute.”
“I’m supposed to be handing these out.” Fletch indicated the transcripts in his hand. “Sir.”
“They can wait.” The governor took off his overcoat and dropped it on the bed. “Tell me what you think.”
“I think you’re damned eloquent. Sir.”
The governor dropped himself into the swivel chair. Fletch did not sit.
“Thank you.”
“Take a germ of an idea like that—”
“More than a germ, I think.”
“You’re brilliant,” Fletch blurted.
“Thank you. Now tell me what you think.”
Fletch felt himself turning warm. “Frankly, I, ah—”
“You—ah?” The governor was looking at him with patient interest.
“I—ah—didn’t know a presidential campaign is so impoverished for ideas. Sir.” The governor laughed. “I mean, I thought everything was sort of worked out from the beginning; you knew what you were saying, had to say, from the start.”
“You were wrong. Does that surprise you?”
“I’m never surprised when I’m wrong.”
“Part of the process of a political campaign is to go around the country listening to people. At least, a good politician listens. You said something this morning that struck me as eminently sensible. Something probably everybody knows is true, but no one has yet said. Probably only the young have grown up with this new reality in their guts, really knowing it to be true.”
“Yes, sir. Maybe.”
“I think people vote for the man who tells them the truth. What do you think?”
“I hope so. Sir.”
“I do too. Politicians aren’t philosophers, Fletch. They’re not supposed to be. No one wants Tom Paine in the White House. Or Marx. Or Eric Hoffer. Or Marcuse. But they don’t want anyone in the White House who doesn’t pursue general truths, or know a general truth when he trips over one, either.” Rocking gently in his swivel chair the governor watched Fletch standing stiffly at the stateroom door, and chuckled. “I think I enjoy shakin’ you up. I bet everybody who has ever met you before has thought you real cool, boy.” Fletch swallowed hard. “That right?”
“I … may … I … ah—”
The governor laughed and held out his hand for a transcript. “Let me have one of those.”
Fletch handed him one from the top. He nearly dropped the pile.
The governor began reading it. “Better see what I said.”
16
“Get your damned ass up here.” It was clear from Walsh’s voice that he meant to be taken seriously.
“Yes, sir, Lieutenant, sir,” Fletch said into the hotel room phone. “Please tell me where I’m to get my damned ass up to, sir.”
“Room 1220.”
Instantly the phone went dead.
Fletch tripped over his unopened suitcase in his scramble for the door.
Fletch had spent the afternoon popping back and forth between the press bus and the campaign bus.
Using the phone on the press bus, he had spent a long time talking with the governor’s advance man, Willy Finn, in California, about the arrangements made for that day in Spiersville, that night in Farming-dale, the next day in Kimberly and Melville. Finn had nothing to say about the governor’s Winslow speech, although he had already heard of it. He seemed sincerely upset by the death of Victor Robbins.
With the others Fletch visited Spiersville. He grabbed a bag of stale donuts from a drugstore, ate four of them, spent time with the local press, provided them with whatever material they requested. On the wall of a warehouse was scrawled: LIFE IS NO FUN. Fletch had first seen that message, in English, on walls and sidewalks in northern Europe in the early 1980s. After the Spiersville visit, it was discovered that someone had broken a window of the press bus with a rock.
During the hour-long ride to Farmingdale, Fletch played poker with Bill Dieckmann, Roy Filby, and Tony Rice. He won twenty-seven dollars.
In the corridor of the Farmingdale hotel, the doors to an elevator were open.
Hanrahan was in the elevator. He either smiled or grimaced at Fletch.
“Up?” Fletch asked.
Hanrahan didn’t answer, just kept whatever that facial expression of his was.
A lady on the elevator finally said, “No, we’re going down.” She was wearing a purple cocktail dress and brown shoes.
Fletch pushed the button for the next elevator.
Walsh flung open the door of Room 1220 immediately Fletch knocked on it. “What’s going on?” he asked.
Door closed, they stood in the short, dark corridor outside the bathroom. “Okay,” Fletch answered. “I’ll give the twenty-seven dollars back.”
“Some foul-smelling, crude, filthy-looking reporter was in my room before I ever got here. He was in here when I arrived.”
“A foul-smelling, crude, filthy-looking reporter?”
“Said he was from Newsbill, for Chrissake.”
“Oh, that foul-smelling, crude, filthy-looking reporter. Hanrahan, by name. Michael J.”
“He was waiting for me when the bellhop let me in. Sitting in that chair.” Walsh stepped into the bedroom and pointed at one of the chairs near the window. “Smoking a cigar.” The ashtray on the side table had a little cigar ash in it. “Bastard. Wanted to show me how very, very resourceful he is, I suppose. Privacy, locked doors don’t mean a thing to Mr. Newsbill. ”
“He was trying to intimidate you.”
“He doesn’t intimidate me. He makes me damned mad.”
Walsh was saying he was mad, but his eyes were not particularly angry. They appeared more restless, as if he would have preferred thinking about something else. His voice was not hot with anger, but more cold with annoyance.
Fletch was hearing a complaint being lodged more as a matter of form rather than from emotion.
“Michael J. Hanrahan is a foul-smelling, crude, filthy-looking bastard,” Fletch agreed. “He writes for Newsbill I wouldn’t dignify him by calling him a reporter.”
“I thought we had someone else from Newsbill—that thoroughly stupid woman, what’s her name?”
“Mary Rice.”
“Is she any relation to Tony?”
“No. Mary is writing for Newsbill. On the campaign supposedly, but I see her reports seldom get above the blatantly sensational. I mean, one report she did reported that one of Lee Allen Parke’s great-great-great-grandfathers was a slave owner.”
“Jeez.”
“Meaningless stuff.”
“Does Newsbill ever report from anywhere but the bedroom?”
“Bedrooms, bars, police courts. Runs pages of horoscopes. Stars on the stars. As news.”
“Not only that,” Walsh said, “but while I was downstairs I was attacked by some gorgeous broad who said she was a reporter for Newsworld.”