“All right. Tell me about your arriving back at the hotel last night.”
The governor swiveled his chair forward again. “Okay. Willy drove me back to the hotel after the Chamber of Commerce speech.”
“Willy Finn, your advance man?”
“Yeah. He flew in as soon as he heard James was out on his ear. We had a chance to talk in the car. After he left me last night, he flew on to California.”
“Any idea what time you got to the hotel?”
“None at all. I think Willy was to be on an eleven-o’clock flight.”
“You entered the hotel alone?”
“Sure. Presidential candidates aren’t so special. There are a lot of us around. At this point.”
“Go straight to the elevator?”
“Of course. Shook a few hands on the way. When I got to the suite and opened the door, I saw flashing blue lights in the air outside. Through the living room window. I turned on the lights and changed into my robe. I looked through things people had stuffed into that briefcase.”
“You weren’t interested in what caused the flashing blue lights, the sirens?”
“My life is full of flashing blue lights and sirens. I’m a walking police emergency.”
“Are you sure?”
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t go out onto the balcony, lean over the rail and look down?”
“No.”
“Why weren’t you wearing your shoes when I got there?”
The governor grinned puckishly. “I always take my shoes off before I go to bed. Don’t you?”
“It wasn’t because they were wet from your being out on the balcony?”
“I wasn’t out on the balcony.”
“Someone was. The snow out there was all messed up.”
“As I said, a great many people were in that room earlier. I might have even gone out on the balcony myself earlier. That I don’t remember.”
“You didn’t stop at any point on your way to your suite? On another floor, to see someone? Anything?”
“Nope. What’s the problem?”
“It doesn’t work out, Governor.”
“Why not?”
“Time-wise. Either you passed a mob on the sidewalk gathered around a dead girl …”
“Possible, I suppose.”
“But not likely.”
“No. Not likely.”
“Or, while you were in the lobby, people—including Dr. Thom— rushed out of the bar to the sidewalk to see what had happened.”
“I didn’t see either thing.”
“One thing or the other had to be true, for you to see the flashing police and ambulance lights from your suite when you got there.”
The governor shrugged. “I bored the Chamber of Commerce people to death, but I don’t think I killed anybody after that.”
“How come Flash wasn’t with you last night? Isn’t he sort of your valet-bodyguard?”
“I don’t like having Flash around all the time. Sometimes I like to sneak a cigar. Also, he doesn’t get along too well with Bob.”
“Dr. Thom.”
“Yes. Bob calls Flash a cretin.”
Fletch sat more forward on the edge of the bed. “Hate to sound like a prosecutor, Governor, but did you have personal knowledge of Alice Elizabeth Shields?”
The governor looked Fletch in the eye. “No.”
“Do you know anything at all about her murder?”
Again the steady look. “No.” In an easier tone, he said, “You seem awfully worried. What should I do? Do you think I should make a statement?”
“Not if it looks like this.”
“What should I do? You say we’ve got these two crime writers attached to us. They’re going to write something, sometime …”
Fletch said, “I think it would look politically good for you to make a special request; ask the Federal Bureau of Investigation to come in and investigate.”
“God, no.” The governor pressed back in his chair and then forward. He bounced. “F.B.I. crawling all around us with tape recorders and magnifying glasses? No way! Nothing else would get reported. Nothing I say or do. The story of this campaign would become the story of a crime investigation. It would overwhelm everything I’m doing.”
“I’m sure a discreet enquiry—”
“Discreet, my eye. Just one of those gumshoes comes near this campaign … The press would sniff him out before he got off the plane.”
“At some point in the campaign, you get to have Secret Service protection—”
“I’m not going to call for it before anybody else does. I’m in no more danger than any of the other candidates. What would be my excuse? I saw a man at the Chamber of Commerce dinner last night carrying a gun?”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a man named Flynn, used to this upper-level sort of thing, I think—”
“No, no, no. Aren’t my reasons for not doing so clear?”
“Two women have been murdered—”
“‘On the fringes of the campaign’—your own words.”
“It might happen again.”
“You run a big campaign like this through the country, and everything happens. Advance men fall off bridges into icy rivers—”
Flash stuck his head around the stateroom’s door again. “Coming up to that school, Governor.”
“Okay.”
Flash came in, closing the door behind him.
“You straight-arm this, Fletch. I’m sorry about the whole thing. I do not take it lightly. But we cannot let this campaign get sidetracked by something that is utterly irrelevant to it. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
The governor stood up. Flash had taken the governor’s suitcoat off a hanger on the back of the door, brushed it, and was holding it out for him. “Interesting talking to you,” the governor muttered.
“My privilege,” Fletch said quietly.
The governor had his hands in the pockets of his suit coat. “Got any money?” he asked.
“Sir?”
“I mean coins. Quarters. Nickels. Dimes. Thought I’d try something out at the school. Got any coins, Flash?”
“Sure.” Fletch gave the governor all the coins he had, except for one quarter. Flash gave the governor all his coins.
“And, Fletch, keep those two crime writers away from me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Arbuthnot and Hanrahan.” The governor was smoothing his jacket. “Sounds like a manufacturer of pneumatic drills.”
11
“Yeah, that made pictures,” Walsh was to say to his father at the end of the Conroy School visit. “Good for local consumption. Nothing compared to Robbins’s dumping himself in the Susquehanna River, though. That will lead the national news. In Winslow you’ve got to come up with something new, Dad. Say something new. You’ve got to.”
Clearly, The Man Who enjoyed his stop at Conroy Regional Primary School.
All the little kids were agog, but not, at first, at The Man Who might be the next President of the United States.
At first they were dazzled by the big buses with fancy antennas and cars and station wagons in the campaign caravan, all these people from Washington.
About Stella Kirchner: Look at that lady’s boots! They got red lines in them! That lady’s boots got veins all on their own!
About Fenella Baker: Ever see so much face powder? Why don’t she itch? ’Spose she’s dead?
About Bill Dieckmann, Roy Philby, etc.: Bet not one of those dudes could dribble a basketball a half a whole minute.
About the photographers, wearing more than one camera around their necks: What they need so many cameras for? They only got two eyes!
In the school auditorium, while Walsh kept glancing at his watch, the school band played “America” six times, the last no better than the first. The school principal made a speech of introduction, asking the students if they all knew where Washington is. “On the news programs!” The little girl with the gold star on her collar, officially called upon, answered, “There’s one in the upper left by Seattle, and one in the middle right by the District of Columbia.”