“Nothing else?”
“Well, she lived alone in a studio apartment. Married sister, living in Toronto, four children. Her husband owns a gun shop. Sally—that is, Alice Elizabeth Shields; she called herself Sally—had been engaged a couple of times, once to a Chicago policeman who got another girl pregnant and decided he’d better go marry her. Sally never married.”
“Is that all you’ve got?”
“She had something like thirty-seven hundred dollars in a savings account. So she quit her job, sublet her apartment, packed up her Volkswagen, and came a-wandering.”
“You didn’t get much out of her.”
“Just civilities over toast.”
“What was her Social Security number?”
“You think I’m nosy?”
“You are a reporter, after all.”
“I wasn’t interviewing her.”
“Why was she following the campaign?”
“Didn’t know she was, at that point.”
“While you were having breakfast with her, did she mention anyone who is traveling with the campaign by name?”
Betsy thought. “No. But she did seem to know I’m a reporter.”
“I wonder if it was something you said.”
The bus, at high speed, was climbing a left-curved hill. Fletch had to push off the seat backs not to land on Betsy.
“I mean, she didn’t ask me anything about myself.”
“You think she had a chance?”
“We were just talking.”
“While you were at breakfast with her, did anyone from the campaign say hello to her, nod to her as he went by, wave from across the breakfast room?”
“Not that I remember. She seemed a lonely person.”
“Eager to talk.”
“As long as she didn’t have to be assertive about it.”
“You were in the motel bar last night.”
“Yes. Drinking rum toffs.”
“What’s a rum toff?”
“Yummy.”
“At any time did you see this girl—Sally, you called her—in the bar with anybody, or leave the bar with anybody, anything?”
“I’m not aware of ever having seen her again since I had breakfast with her in Springfield.”
“But you saw her Volkswagen trailing the caravan.”
“No. I don’t know a Volkswagen from an aircraft carrier.”
“They’re different.”
“I expect so.”
“Sea gulls seldom follow a Volkswagen.”
“Oh. Well, at least I know the connection between the Shields woman and the campaign.”
“What?”
“There isn’t one. At least, as far as you can find out. So I won’t worry about it. As a story. Yet. Will you tell me if you discover there is a connection?”
“Probably not.”
“After all I just told you?”
“Not much. You said so yourself.”
“Now I have a question for you.”
“You just asked one.”
“Walsh has never married, has he?”
“Yes, he likes girls.”
“Oh, I can see that. Why don’t you introduce me to him? You’re his friend.”
“You don’t know him?”
“Not really. I mean, I’ve never been introduced as a woman to a man. As a reporter I know him.”
“I see.”
“He looks like he might go for the homebody type.”
“You’re a homebody?”
“I could be. If the home had a nice address on Pennsylvania Avenue.”
“Sixteen-hundred block.”
“Right.”
“Lots of rooms to clean.”
“You’ve never seen me with a mop.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Pink lightning. Flushed with excitement. Ecstasy. You ought to introduce us.”
“I will.”
“Somebody in a presidential family ought to marry a Ginsberg. We do nice table settings.”
“Agreed.”
“Tell him you and I worked together in Atlanta.”
The bus slowed. The bus driver was looking through the rearview mirror at Fletch.
“I never worked in Atlanta.”
“I did.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Irwin!” the bus driver shouted.
“Irwin!” Roy Filby echoed. “I’d rather see one than be one!”
“Telephone!” the bus driver shouted. In fact, a black wire led from the dashboard onto his lap.
Fletch said, “We have a telephone?”
“Not for the use of reporters,” Betsy said. “Staff only. Want to hear what James said about the duplicating machine?”
“I’ve heard.”
Fletch went forward. The bus driver handed him the phone from his lap.
“Hello?” Fletch said. “Nice of you to call.”
Barry Hines said, “You’d better come forward, Fletcher.”
“I’ve always been forward.”
“I mean into this bus. Watch the noon news with us.”
“Sure. Why?”
“Just heard from a friendly at U.B.C. New York that something unsavory is coming across the airwaves at us.”
“What?”
The phone went dead.
Brake lights went on at the rear of the campaign bus. It headed for the soft shoulder of the highway.
Fletch looked for a place to hang up the phone.
“Guess we’re stopping for a second. Got to go to the other bus.”
The press bus was following the campaign bus onto the soft shoulder.
“Just put the phone back in my lap,” the driver said. “I’m not expecting any calls at the moment.”
Fletch put the phone in the bus driver’s lap.
“How did you know my name is Irwin?” Fletch asked.
The bus driver said: “Just guessed.”
13
“We’re almost late for the rally in Winslow,” The Man Who commented.
“A band will be playing, Dad.”
Again the governor tried to see the world through the steamy bus window. “But it’s cold out there.”
The buses pulled back onto the highway and were gathering speed.
On the campaign bus a small-screened television set had been swung out behind the driver, high up. It faced the back of the bus. A commercial was running for feminine sanitary devices.
“My apologies, ma’am,” the presidential candidate said to the congressperson, “for the bad taste displayed by my television set. Not a thing I can do about it.” They were sitting next to each other on an upholstered bench at the side of the bus. “Not a damned thing.”
Fletch stepped over the governor’s feet. He stood near Walsh. “What is it?” He hung on to a luggage rack.
The television newsperson came on and mentioned the news leads: “Coming up: Senator Upton’s advance man killed in automobile accident in Pennsylvania; aftermath of a hockey riot, numbers injured and arrested; presidential candidate Caxton Wheeler hands out money to schoolchildren on the campaign trail.”
“Jeez!” Fletch turned toward the back of the bus. Arms akimbo, Flash Grasselli stood against the stateroom’s closed door. “Would you believe this?”
“Sure,” Walsh said. “It’s true.”
“At least I’m not the number-one news lead,” the governor said. “Guess they don’t think too badly of bribing schoolchildren.”
“‘Bribing schoolchildren,’” echoed Fletch.
Phil Nolting said, “That’s what they’re gonna make out of it.”
A commercial was running for “Sweet Wheat, the breakfast cereal that makes kiddies yell for more.”
“Yell with the toothache,” Paul Dobson said. “They’re yelling because it makes their teeth hurt!”
“Make ’em hypertensive with sugar at breakfast,” Phil Nolting intoned, as if quoting, “then slap ’em down at school.”
Except for Barry Hines, who was talking quietly on the telephone, those aboard the campaign bus suffered silently as a few more details were given of Victor Robbins’s death, film was run; of the hockey riot, film was run. Then: “This morning at Conroy Regional School Governor Caxton Wheeler, while on his campaign for the presidency, handed out coins to the primary school students.” Film was run. The Man Who, surrounded by excited children, was doing some trickery with his hands. Then the camera zoomed in to show in close-up the governor’s hand pressing a coin into the hand of a child. “Some received dimes, others quarters, others half dollars. And some got none at all….”