“Yes.”
“Immediately thereafter, Kriegel spent some years based in Poland, without known employment, with frequent trips to Germany, France, and England. After that big riot in Munich on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, if you remember, in which forty-eight people—Jews, Slavs, homosexuals—were stabbed and beaten to death randomly in the streets, nine Pakistanis were burned to death in their boardinghouse, Kriegel came to this country, essentially as a fugitive from justice. The German government wanted to ‘interview’ him regarding these murders. Almost immediately after his arrival in this country he was apprehended, indicted, tried, found guilty, and sentenced for murder in the second degree of a prostitute in his hotel room. I guess in the throes of some sort of sexual whatever, maybe frustration, he strangled her to death. Incidentally, she was a black woman.”
“You’re making me sick.”
“And Kris Kriegel seems like such a friendly name. Doesn’t it? Kris Kringle. Sleigh bells ring, all that.”
“Roasting …”
“In prison, incidentally, Kriegel has continued his old ways. He took to calling himself ‘Reverend’ and preaching ‘ethnic cleansing,’ racism, I guess, the same old ordure of the anal retentive. There have been two race riots in the federal penitentiary at Tomaston, Kentucky, in the last five months.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“The prison system tries not to give such incidents much PR. A black guard was murdered in one. He was hung upside down until dead.”
Sitting in his car in the Alabama parking lot, his door open to catch a breeze, Fletch envisioned the pudgy, little man, gray hair standing out above his ears, the blue birthmark saddle over the bridge of his nose, whom he had seen mostly quietly asleep, sitting up, hands folded in his lap, like any grandfather dreaming up plans for his grandchildren and their friends.
He had plans for the children, all right.
“Juan Moreno, thirty-eight years old, a citizen of Colombia,” Andy Cyst droned on, “believed to be a member of the Medellín drug cartel. It is believed Juan Moreno is not his real name. Mostly, it says here, his job was to buy airplanes and boats for smuggling, and to establish landing situations in this country. He was caught driving an ambulance loaded with cocaine in east Texas. The uniformed driver of the ambulance was dead on the gurney in back. He had bled to death from the hole made by a screwdriver through his throat. Moreno was not found guilty of his murder, but of just about everything else. A full briefcase of bankbooks, real estate deeds, other documentation was found in the front seat of the ambulance with him. Various names were on the documents, but all the significant signatures were in his handwriting.”
And Fletch thought of “Moreno,” his throat swollen, his body bloating, twisted among the debris in the gully, snake-bitten, drowned, blank brown eyes staring up at a blank blue sky.
Fletch said, “Moreno has been found, right?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No report of it. And our last report is twenty minutes old.”
“Oh, boy.” Tiredness flowed against Fletch like a warm breeze.
“John Leary,” Andy Cyst said. “He almost doesn’t exist as a person. He’s just a rap sheet. He’s almost never been free. Thirty-two years old. He has been in institutions since he was eight years old. He was first institutionalized as an ‘unruly child.’”
“At age eight?”
“There is a notation here that he is a very large and physically dangerous person.”
“Even at age eight no one could handle him?”
“While waiting for Juvenile Court in Pennsylvania to dispose of him, as it were, he fractured the skull of a child psychologist assigned to test him. Wouldn’t you call that just a bit ‘unruly’ of an eight-year-old child?”
“Pesky.”
“His rap sheet is amazing. The authorities would put him out in foster care, and he would attack someone. They’d institutionalize him, and he’d attack someone. A great one for inflicting bodily harm.”
“Antisocial.”
“Psychotic? ‘Armed robbery, armed robbery, armed robbery,’” Andy read. “‘General mayhem, assault, assault, assault. Arson. Assault upon an officer of the law.’ His last conviction was for kidnapping a teenaged girl, transporting her across state lines for immoral purposes, keeping her captive for immoral purposes, multiple rapes, and slavery. What does ‘slavery’ mean?”
“He tried to sell her in a bar. A pool hall or something.”
“Oh, you do know something?”
“Of course. Why do you think I need to know more?”
“Mister Fletcher, you haven’t come across these people, have you? I mean, do you know where they are?”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Fletch said.
“What’s that?”
“Leary hasn’t much future as a matador, either. Even a bull he attacks from the wrong end. I remain puzzled. You’re only telling me about three escapees, Andy. The local sheriff said there were four.”
“There are only three.”
“Isn’t there another name on the printout you’re reading?”
“I’ve read you everything I have. There are three escapees: Kriegel, Moreno, Leary. This isn’t a new story now. It’s almost twenty-four hours old. These are the facts. There were only three escapees from the federal penitentiary at Tomaston, Mister Fletcher.”
“I don’t get it. Why did the sheriff say four? He even had a name.”
“You know better than I, news stories at first are often garbled.”
“Yeah, but.”
“I will say that this printout I’m reading from looks like it might have had a deletion.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a big space between Moreno and Leary. It looks like something was deleted and the space wasn’t closed up. Probably just some kind of a human error.”
Fletch said, “Probably.”
“Regarding Ms. Crystal Faoni,” Andy said. He recited to Fletch her age, home address in Bloomington, Indiana, office address, the call letters and addresses of the five radio stations she owns around the state, the fact that she was never known to have married, has one son, John Faoni, who has graduated from Northwestern University, attended Boston University, currently is traveling in Greece; Ms. Faoni has no criminal record, a perfect credit record, and currently is spending time at a health spa in Wisconsin.
The sunlight glared on and through the windshield of the station wagon. Fletch closed his eyes. He left them closed.
Greece.
“I called her home,” Andy Cyst said. “Someone working for a cleaning service answered. Her office said she has gone to this health spa for two weeks. She is not to be disturbed under any circumstances. Her secretary said Ms. Faoni is concentrating on a weight-loss program which involves meditation. What meditation?” Andy asked. “Not thinking about hunger and food is called meditation now?”
“Omm,” Fletch said, eyes still closed. “Think yourself to a slimmer you.”
“She must be a shapely woman, to care this much about her weight.”
“She is shapely,” Fletch agreed.
“The secretary did not want to give me the name and number of the health spa, but I used my great charm, and won her over. She knew the staff at the health spa would block me anyway. They did. Ms. Faoni is not to be disturbed. She is concentrating. Meditating. Whatever.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s called Blythe Spirit.”
“No.”
“In a place called Forward, Wisconsin.”
“America,” Fletch said.
“About a hundred miles from Chicago.”
“Sounds like a story, Andy.”
“What?”
“An interesting feature story for GCN.” Fletch opened his eyes. “I might want a crew to go there with me.”