Fletch and the Man Who by Gregory McDonald Read Free Book Online

“So how do you like your new job now?”
    “Not much. Freddie, let’s you and I agree not to be adversaries on this matter. Tell me what you know as you find out.”
    “Okay,” she said. “If you tell me what you know.”
    “I will. At least I think I will.”
    “And you know downright well, Fletch, that the moment’s going to come when I have to print what I know.”
    “Sure. But I know you won’t go off half-cocked. I’m not too keen on people who beat up women.”
    The bus was beginning to slow. There was an enormous metal tire standing on the roof of the factory.
    “What are you thinking now?” she asked.
    “It’s your job to report. It’s my job to protect the candidate and his campaign as much as I can. If the murderer is a member of the press, then it’s no problem for the candidate. The press is assigned to the campaign. If the murderer is a volunteer”—Fletch waggled his hands just above his lap—“then it’s not so bad. The candidate didn’t necessarily have anything to do with his selection. If the murderer is a member of his immediate staff, then it’s very, very bad. It would mean his judgment of people isn’t too reliable. People would say, ‘If he put such a person on his staff, think whom he might name Secretary of Defense.’”
    Still studying him, Freddie asked, “And if the murderer is the candidate himself?”
    Fletch was looking at his still hands in his lap. “Then you’d have one helluva story,” he said quietly.

8
    By the time he got off the bus, Fletch could see the governor’s nose was already red with cold. Snow was blowing from the northwest and there was a fresh inch or two on the ground. Lights were on in the old red-brick factory. Not a bit dwarfed by the big factory, the governor stood in the main gate, shaking hands with most of the factory workers as they arrived. He was wearing a red-and-black checked, wool hunting jacket over his suit vest, and thick-soled black workers’ boots. To the workers who shook his hand as they passed by, the governor said such things as “
Mornin’, everything okay with you? Gimme a chance to be your President, will ya?”
and the workers answered such things as “
Mornin’, Governor, like your stand on the waterway.” “Got to make more jobs, you know? My brother hasn’t found a job in over two years.” “With ya all the way; my aunt’s runnin’ your campaign over in Shreve, ya know?” “Hey, tell Wohlman we don’t want a strike, okay?”
Some of those who did not shake hands waved as they passed by and said such things as “
How’re doin’, Caxton? Good luck! You’ll never make it!”
Others were too shy to shake the governor’s hand, or say anything. And others scowled at him or at their boots as they went through the gate.
    Ten meters away, close enough to see everything and hear almost everything, the press stood shivering in a herd, their noses aimed into the wind like sheep hunkered in a stormy pasture, in case The Man Who got shot, or seized by his heart, or overtaken by some indiscretion.
    Standing in the factory gate, the governor looked peculiarly alone. No one was standing near him—not his wife, not Walsh, not his speechwriters, volunteers….
    The campaign staff were all on the warm, well-lit bus.
    “Where do we pick up the congressman?” Lee Allen Parke yelled. He was standing in the front of the bus with two women volunteers, one about thirty, the other about sixty.
    “At the school,” Walsh said. In his shirt sleeves, he stood in the middle of the bus, revolving slowly, like a teacher during students’ workbook time.
    From the folders he had studied, Fletch could match names to faces.
    At a little table, speechwriters Phil Nolting and Paul Dobson were in heavy, quiet discussion. They were both drawing lines on a single piece of paper on the table. They looked like architects roughly designing the structure of a building.
    Barry Hines, the campaign’s communication chief, sat in a