Read Online Fletch's Fortune by Gregory McDonald - Free Book Online Page A

famous voice, now sleepy.
    “This afternoon you rushed down here to Virginia early, and immediately taped that phony eulogy on Walter March for the network evening news. ‘The great journalist, Walter March of March Newspapers, is dead,’ you intoned, ‘shockingly murdered at the convention of the American Journalism Alliance, of which March was the elected president.’”
    “I never said ‘shockingly murdered.’”
    “You even put on your tight-throat bit.”
    “You can check the tape.”
    “Whatever you said.”
    “Whatever I said.”
    “You didn’t even know Walter March. Really.”
    “No man is an island.”
    “The few times you met him you told me the same thing about him. He was a cold fish.”
    “Carol? Would you mind if we went to sleep now?”
    “You’re not listening.”
    “No. I’m not.”
    “Just because all you famous newspeople are here,because it’s a cheap story, cheap drama, because you’re competing with each other between martinis, you’re giving Walter March’s murder more publicity than World War Two!”
    “Carol!”
    The famous voice was no longer sleepy. It sounded as if someone had just declared World War Three.
    “You still don’t know what I’m saying.”
    “Do I have to sleep in the living room?”
    “You don’t know what you’re doing,” Carol said. “You can’t”
    “Carol.…”
    “Giving March’s murder all this publicity—all you’re doing is inciting some other kook—maybe hundreds of publicity-hungry kooks—to see if they can stick a knife, or scissors, or whatever, into the back of some other quote great American journalist unquote.”
    “Carol, for God’s sake!”
    There was another long silence.
    Then Carol Litwack’s voice said, “I just hope the next quote great American journalist unquote murdered isn’t you.”
    Fletch switched to Station 22, and heard only one “Errrrrrr” in three minutes of snores.
    He discovered that if he depressed a station button, and shoved it up a little, it would catch and remain on that station.
    On Station 23 he heard the shower running and Fredericka Arbuthnot singing a little ditty that apparently went, “Hoo, boy, now I wash my left knee; Hoo, boy, now I wash my right knee.…”
    Fletch said, “Hoo, boy. Nice knees. Treacherous heart.”
    Fletch scanned the other stations.
    There was conversation on Station 8, in syndicated humorist Oscar Perlman’s suite.
    “… like this and five dollars and you couldn’t even get a good dollar cigar.”
    “There’s a good dollar cigar now?”
    “I’m in. Two.”
    “Three little words. Make ’em nice.”
    “Nice? One, two, three. Those are nice?”
    “You’re asking? You dealt ’em.”
    “I deal without prejudice.”
    “… Litwack.”
    Oscar Perlman had written a play and a few books and had been on television often and his was the only voice Fletch recognized.
    Listening, Fletch could not even be sure how many men were in the room.
    He presumed they were all Washington newspapermen.
    “Fuckin’ phony.”
    “Who’s talking about Litwack?”
    “You recognized the description? I’m out.”
    “He’s just good-lookin’,” said Perlman.
    “He’s no journalist. He’s just an actor.”
    “All us plug-uglies are jealous of him,” said Perlman, “‘cause he’s good-lookin’.”
    “He’s no actor, either. Anybody see him jerking himself off over March’s death on the evening ersatz news show?”
    “Ersatz? Wha’s’at, ersatz?”
    “There’s no business, like show business,’ that’s news.…”
    “How much of Litwack’s income comes from his face, Walter?”
    “His face and his voice? Thirty percent.”
    “Ninety percent, Oscar. Ninety percent.”
    “He looks like everybody’s father. As last seen. Laid out in the coffin.”
    “Whose deal?”
    “Something all you guys are too jealous to recognize,” said Oscar Perlman, “is that Hy Litwack is a good journalist.”
    “A good journalist?”
    “Don’t bother. I’m folding