Fletch, Too

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “Last night I read the previous two days’ newspaper reports on the murder you saw at the airport,” Carr said as he and Fletch ambled along the riverbank. “I also talked with Dan Dawes.”

  “You talk to Dan Dawes?”

  “Why not? He’s a schoolteacher.”

  “He’s also a paralegal executioner.”

  “That, too. Here we refer to him as being ‘very close to the police.’”

  “He’s a hit man for the cops.”

  “There is great diversity in this world, Irwin. One must not expect the same standards everywhere.”

  “Sorry. Go on.” As he walked, Fletch slapped at the flies on his arms, his legs.

  “The murder victim’s name was Louis Ramon. He was carrying a French passport. In a money belt he was also carrying an extraordinary amount of German marks—about one hundred thousand United States dollars’ worth.”

  “He wasn’t robbed?”

  “No. They found the money on him.”

  Fletch marveled softly, “He wasn’t even robbed by the police.”

  “Interpol’s return cable said that Louis Ramon was some sort of a low-life currency trader, opportunist, possibly smuggler. He first came to their attention five years ago when he was suspected of moving a large amount of Italian lire into Switzerland, and again, three years ago, of moving a large amount of French francs into Albania. He has been fined and admonished, but has never served time in prison, as far as they know. Here, come this way. I’ll show you what we’re doing.”

  They turned right into the jungle and followed a track wide enough for a Jeep about twenty-five meters from the river. Foliage was beginning to overgrow the track.

  At the end of the track they came to a circular clearing.

  In the center of the clearing was a hole in the ground so small Fletch wouldn’t have noticed it if it weren’t for the settling mound of dirt surrounding it.

  “We dig holes with a giant corkscrew,” Carr said seriously, “see what comes up. What we use is actually a sort of primitive machine they use to look for water, before digging a well. We can only go down about fifteen meters. Do you think fifteen meters, forty-five feet, is enough to reach back two or three thousand years? I doubt it.” He kicked the earth with his boot. “Soft earth. Jungle growth.”

  Carr led the way back toward the river. “Every hundred meters or so along the river, we go about twenty-five meters into the jungle and dig our little hole. Do you think that’s far enough from the river? Too far? I think it’s more likely a settlement would have been on the west side of the river, the inland side from the sea, don’t you? We’re apt to dig more holes anywhere there’s an elevation in the land.”

  “How long have you been doing this?” Fletch asked.

  “About eighteen months. Lots of holes, up and down both sides of the river.”

  They headed south along the river again.

  “Anyway,” Carr continued, “Louis Ramon was on your plane from London. The suspicion is that he came to Kenya to pull off some sort of a currency scheme, and his partner, or accomplice, or whoever he met at the airport in Nairobi, simply did him in.”

  “Not his partner,” Fletch said. “Not his accomplice.”

  “Oh? Why not?”

  “Because a partner or an accomplice would have known Ramon was carrying a hundred thousand dollars in German marks, and taken them. He had plenty of time. He wasn’t that conscious that I was there. I mean, if you’re going to stab someone in a men’s room, you might as well rob him, right?”

  “I forgot you’re an investigative reporter,” Carr said. “Old Josie Fletcher must be proud of you. You have her brain.”

  “I deal in reality,” Fletch muttered. They were passing another track into the jungle. “I think it was more of an accidental meeting. There was no prologue to the argument I heard. The voices were surprised. Immediately enraged. It was all very fast. It was as if two men met accidentally, two men who had known each other, hated each other before, had some ancient, powerful grudge between them, or maybe even saw each other as an immediate danger to each other, or one to the other. It was too fast,” Fletch said. “I wish I understood Portuguese.”

  Carr was leading him up another jungle track.

  In the clearing was what appeared certainly to be a giant corkscrew. An aluminum frame sat on the ground, four meters square at its base, one meter square at its top, about three meters tall. Sticking through it and twelve meters above it was a slim screw shaft. On each of the four sides of the frame was a wheel one meter in diameter with a perpendicular handle of the sort found on coffee grinders.

  “I guess Sheila decided to backtrack,” Carr said.

  He stooped over the fresh mound of dirt and combed through it with his fingers. “Nothing. Do you think we’re crazy?”

  “What does it matter? Everyone’s thought crazy until proven right.”

  Carr stood up and dusted off his hands. “Usually people are proven wrong, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah,” Fletch said. “I guess most people are crazy.”

  “To choose your own way of being crazy,” Carr said, stepping out again. “That’s the thing.”

  When they were back walking the riverbank south, Fletch asked Carr, “How would such a currency scheme as Louis Ramon seemed to be attempting work?”

  “I don’t know,” Carr said. “I’m not sure I want to know. But I do know that having that much foreign currency in Kenya is illegal.”

  “Why?”

  “As far as its currency is concerned, Kenya’s economy is closed. You may not take more than ten shillingi in Kenyan currency out of Kenya. The truth is, the Kenyan shilling doesn’t exist outside Kenya. It’s like casino money. It only has reality within its own closed environment. Kenyan money is pegged to the English pound, but there is no international trading or market in the currency itself.”

  “How do they manage that?”

  “By strict enforcement of the law. A while ago, an Indian lawyer was discovered by the police to have thirteen United States dollars in his pocket. He was sentenced to seven years in prison for currency violations.”

  “I’d call that strict enforcement of the law.”

  “Let’s cross the river here. Walk back on the other side.”

  They stripped. Carrying their clothes head high, they waded across the sluggish river. The water was armpit high on them both.

  Carr said, “You can see all sorts of signs this river used to be deeper. Can’t you?”

  While they were waiting on the eastern riverbank to dry off, Carr glanced at the black and blue mark on Fletch’s lower belly, but said nothing.

  Carr pointed back across the river, further south. “See that baobab tree there? Tomorrow I think we’ll make a trail into the jungle past that. But we mustn’t disturb the tree. Baobab trees are sacred here. Rather than disturb them, people here build major highways around them.”

  After dressing, they walked faster northward along the riverbank. They ignored the many trails into the jungle.

  “Kenyans take anything having to do with the government very seriously indeed,” Carr said.

  “Juma says his father is in prison for a year and a half for parking a government car outside a bar. He used to be a government driver.”

  “Not long ago,” Carr said, “one of your fellow Americans had dinner in a Nairobi restaurant. Two men waited on him. At the end of dinner, the man wanted to tip them both, but he only had a one-hundred-shillingi note. I guess he thought he was making a joke. He tore the one-hundred-shillingi note in half and tried to give half to each waiter. The newspaper report I read said, ‘Shocked and embarrassed at this desecration of Kenyan money, the waiters called the police.’ The man was arrested. He spent the night in jail. He was tried the next morning, fined one thousand dollars, and escorted by the police to the airport and put aboard the next airplane leaving Kenya.”

  “Some joke.”

  “It’s illegal, of course,” Carr said, “but here, in
the bush, girls are still circumcised. But you tear a piece of paper money in half and you get yourself written up in The Standard.”

  Fletch asked, “So how would you work a currency scheme?”

  Carr walked a long way before answering. “Generally it’s true,” he said slowly, “that the stricter such currency laws are, the greater are the rewards for violating them successfully.”

  The camp came into sight just at full dark. The live fire at the back of the cook tent was bright.

  As they were wading back across the river, Carr said, “I guess we’re crazy. Looking for a lost Roman city. But the past fascinates. Doesn’t the past fascinate you? The past, where we came from, who we were, tells us so much about who we are. Don’t you think so?”

  Fletch ducked below the surface of the water to get some of the sweat out of his hair.

  While they were drying on the western riverbank, Carr said, “I guess I’m just messing up the jungle.”

  “Not much.”

  “I’ve promised myself one thing, though.” He was looking downriver. “The instant I find anything, the slightest evidence I’m right, if I ever do, I’ll turn the whole thing over to proper scientists. If I’m right, I swear I won’t muck the site up.”

  “Right,” Fletch said. “What this place needs is Dr. McCoy. You won’t catch him clipping off anybody’s toes.”

  “As soon as you and Barbara are ready,” Carr said, “join us for a whiskey. Bring your own ice.”

  Conversationally, Sheila said to Barbara, “You’re enjoying your honeymoon?”

  “He drives me nuts.”

  “Yes. There’s always that.”

  They were sitting in a semicircle in camp chairs just outside the long stretch of canvas on four poles. Carr had provided each with a Scotch and soda. Bug-repellent candles were here and there around them. Over them hung a moon such as Fletch had never seen before. It was a black orb within a perfect silver circumference. The noises from the jungle were absolutely raucous. As he listened to the conversation, Fletch watched the monkeys playing about here and there in the candlelight. Under the canvas behind them, a man named Winston had set the dining table for four.

  “He complains I speak nicely to him in public and nastily to him in private,” Barbara said.

  “There’s a lot of that goes on in marriage,” Sheila said.

  Carr said, “We’re not exactly married.”

  “So I’ve decided to speak nastily to him in public, too.” Barbara giggled.

  “Will you speak nicely to me in private?” Fletch asked.

  “If there is ever anything to speak nicely to you about, I will say it both in public and in private.”

  Juma came out of the dark carrying a camp chair. He sat down with them.

  Carr asked, “Would you like a whiskey, Juma?”

  “No. Thank you. I don’t like whiskey. It makes me drunk.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  Fletch said to Sheila, “Our honeymoon has not worked out as planned.”

  “Barbara mentioned something about your planning a skiing honeymoon. In Colorado.”

  “She did?” Fletch mocked surprise.

  “Yes. She did mention it.”

  “Our wedding was not as planned, either,” Barbara said. “It was on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Fletch was late. The wedding got rained out. He spent the day with his mother.”

  Carr shot Fletch a quick glance.

  “Weddings aren’t all they’re cracked up to be,” Fletch advised Carr. “You haven’t missed much.”

  “He showed up at his wedding in blue jeans, a well-used T-shirt, and torn sneakers.”

  “I’d shaved. You must understand, I’d been working day and night. I have a job.”

  Juma leaned close to Fletch and asked quietly, “Is Barbara your first wife?”

  Fletch blinked. “Yes.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Clothes don’t make the couple,” Sheila said. “At least, not until later in life.”

  Carr said, “You both look hot.”

  Because of the flies, Barbara and Fletch had decided to wear long ski pants, sweaters with sleeves, and ski boots to dinner.

  “I’m boiling,” Barbara said. “Are you sure you’re not having me for dinner?”

  They had been surprised to find Sheila and Carr dressed only in pajamas and mosquito boots.

  “Dining in pajamas is an old Kenyan custom,” Carr said. “A natural result of safarini. After spending a day in the bush, the thing you most want, after a drink, is a bath. After a bath, what’s more natural than slipping into cool, cotton pajamas? They even look more formal than our usual short-pants rig. In the bad old days, people used to go dine at each other’s houses in pajamas. They’d even go out to dine at a hotel or restaurant in pajamas.”

  Close by, a lion roared.

  “Good God!” Barbara said. “I’m being boiled for a lion!”

  “Think of it as a tape recording, if you wish,” Carr said.

  “I shall be eaten alive.”

  “Whatever shall I tell your mother?” Fletch asked.

  “No, no,” Carr said. “Hungry lions are quiet lions. That roar sounds like he’s had his kill, his fill, his sleep, and now he’s calling around to see where his pride is, where his friends are.” Either the lion roared more loudly, or the lion was closer. “Your average wild beast has seen man and doesn’t think much of us.”

  “Even as dessert?” Barbara asked.

  “Even as a snack.”

  A man named Raffles came by to freshen their drinks.

  “We came out to Africa to meet my father,” Fletch said to Sheila. “At our wedding a man showed up with a letter from him.”

  “A letter written in disappearing ink,” Barbara added.

  “Yes,” Sheila said. “Peter told me there’d been some trouble at the Thorn Tree Cafe. It doesn’t sound too serious.”

  Fletch looked at Juma. “It sounds to me that any trouble with the law in Kenya is very serious.”

  “A wonderfully attractive man, your father,” Sheila said.

  “He is?” Carr asked.

  “Don’t you think so?”

  “No.”

  “A little immature, perhaps. But some societies prize immaturity in a man.”

  “Irresponsible,” said Carr. “When he was flying for me, I never knew where the hell he was.”

  “Well,” Sheila admitted, “he is a bit of a will-o’-the-wisp.”

  Barbara said, “I’ll say.”

  “Enormously popular,” Sheila said.

  “Maybe with the ladies,” Carr said.

  “Oh, come on, Peter. You men like him, too.”

  Carr shook his head. “Too much the iconoclast.”

  Sheila said, “He does have his own way of doing things. But, after all, most of the people who have settled in Africa have done so because they’re a bit too individualistic for other places. Take you, for example, Peter.”

  “Right,” said Carr. “I have my own way of doing things. But usually I stay out of the beds of other chaps’ wives, and keep my fists out of other chaps’ faces.”

  Fletch winced. “How come you’re friends?”

  There was a moment before Carr answered. “What are friends? The international fraternity of fliers. Roughly the same age. We find ourselves in the same place at the same time.”

  Sheila said, “Walter Fletcher is a man of great personal energy.”

  “Mostly misspent,” Carr muttered.

  “Why do you say that?” Sheila asked. “He has his own plane, plenty of work-”

  “There’s a reverse spin to everything he does,” Carr said. “He flies in our faces, is what he does. Last year, as a group, we decided to stop flying in and out of Uganda. Too much paperwork. Too dangerous for our equipment and passengers. Your Walter Fletcher takes to flying in and out of Uganda like a hawk. Makes three years’ pay in one year, at least.” Looking at the moon, Carr asked, “And where is he now?”

&nb
sp; “But you came with him to the hotel,” Fletch said, “to meet us.”

  “Exactly,” Carr said. “I was there, and he wasn’t.”

  “You said you were there to be his moral support.”

  “Right.” Carr put down his glass. “Walter’s morals need propping up. Care to eat with us, Juma?”

  Juma glanced at Sheila. “No, thank you. I’ve eaten.”

  In the candlelight, Carr was looking into Fletch’s eyes. “All this has nothing to do with you, you know.”

  Fletch said, “Oh. I see.”

  “Will you be able to spend a few days with us, Peter?” Sheila asked.

  “A few days. Then I have to fly some French hôteliers up to the Masai Mara. Pick them up in Nairobi. They’re traveling around, studying the Block Hotels. I’ll be gone two nights.”

  “The Masai Mara,” Fletch said. “I hear it’s nice there.”

  “Welcome to join me,” Carr said. “There’ll be room in the plane.”

  “If we don’t hear from Walter first,” Sheila said.

  “Yeah. I told his lawyer where we’d all be.”

  “Who flies your other plane?” Fletch asked.

  “A young Kenyan. He’s flying hard for us these days, while I’m down here wasting time and money. The perks of age and ownership. He can’t make the Masai Mara trip, though. He’s chartered to fly to Madagascar.”

  “I’m afraid we’re imposing,” said Fletch.

  “Why? Good company is worth anything in the bush. Tomorrow well all get some hard work in.”

  “Would you rather be sitting in a hotel room in Nairobi?” Sheila asked.

  For the fifth time, Barbara waved flies away from her rice.

  “Went to see the witch doctor of Thika, old dear,” Carr said to Sheila. “Barbara and young Irwin here came with me. Actually, that’s where Juma attached himself to us, too.”

  “Was she encouraging?” Sheila’s gold bracelets jangled as she ate.

  “Right on. Straightaway, she said I was looking for something I hadn’t lost. When I said it was a place, she said I must go south where there are hills and a river.”

  “That’s where we are,” Sheila said.

  “She said the people who used to live here want us to find their place, so they’ll be remembered.”