Fletch's Moxie

by Gregory Mcdonald

His back to the white, churning Gulf of Mexico, Mooney was sitting alone at a long table on the second floor verandah of a drinks-and-eat place on Bonita Beach. On the table in front of him was a half empty litre bottle. In his hand was a half empty glass.

  Fletch ambled to the bar. “Beer,” he said.

  “Don’t care which kind?” The bartender had the tight, permanently harrassed look of the retired military.

  “Yeah,” Fletch said. “Cold.”

  The bartender put a can of cold beer on the bar. “Some rain,” he said.

  “Enough.” Fletch popped the lid on the beer can. “Mister Mooney been here long?”

  No one else was on the verandah.

  “You come to collect him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Couple of hours.”

  “Has he had much to drink?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Fletch swallowed some beer. “You don’t know?”

  “Drinks out of his own bottle. Carries it with him. Five Star Fundador Cognac. I don’t keep such stuff.”

  At Frederick Mooney’s feet was an airlines travel bag.

  “You allow that?”

  “No. But he tips well. As long as he pays a big rent for the glass, I don’t care. After all, he is Frederick Mooney.”

  There was a roll of thunder from the northwest. Rain was blowing into the verandah.

  “Does he come here every day?”

  “No. I think he hits all the places on the beach.”

  “In what kind of shape was he when you rented him the glass?”

  “He’d been drinkin’ somewhere else before. Took him ten minutes to get up the stairs. Heard him comin’. Had to help him sit down and then bring his bag over to him.”

  The rain spray was passing over Mooney.

  “Think of a famous, talented man like that…”

  The bartender popped a can of beer for himself.

  “You an actor, too?”

  “Yeah,” said Fletch. “At this moment.”

  “I mean, you’ve come from the film crew, and all, to pick him up. What films you ever been in?”

  “Song of The South,” Fletch said. “You ever see it?”

  “That the one with Elizabeth Taylor?”

  “No,” said Fletch. “Maud Adams.”

  “Oh, yeah. I remember.”

  “He ever talk to anybody?” Fletch asked, nodding to Mooney.

  “Oh, yeah, he’s friendly. He talks to everybody. Usually the old ladies are six deep around him. Young people, too. Mostly he recites lines. Sometimes he gets loud.”

  “Good for business though, huh?”

  “Sure.”

  “A traveling tourist attraction.”

  “You’d think he’d be livin’ on the Riviera, or something. Superstar like that. He’s a lonely man.”

  “All the wrong people live on the Riviera.”

  Fletch walked over and stood at the edge of Mooney’s table.

  Mooney did not look up.

  Lightning flashed in the north sky.

  “Your daughter sent me for you, Mister Mooney.”

  Mooney still did not look up. He was breathing rapidly, shallowly. Spray was lightly in his hair and on his shirt.

  Suddenly, the great voice came out of this hunched over man, not loud, but with the compel ling vibrato of an awfully good cello played by an awfully good musician.

  “No, no, no, no.” He looked up at Fletch. He spoke companionably. “Come, let’s away to prison. We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage. When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down, and ask of thee forgiveness.”

  Fletch sat across from him at the empty table.

  “So we’ll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them, too: who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out; and take upon’s the mystery of things, as if we were God’s spies; and we’ll wear out, in a wall’d prison, packs and sects of great ones that ebb and flow by the moon.”

  Mooney, palm outward, passed his hand between the stormy sky and his face, turning his head as he did so, finally fixing Fletch with a mad stare. Mooney looked utterly insane.

  “Jeez.”

  Terror, horror had skittered up Fletch’s spine. He gulped beer and took a breath.

  “Actually…” Fletch cleared his throat. To his own ears his voice sounded like a flute played in a tin box. “I saw you in King Lear once. As an undergraduate. In Chicago. Not so long ago.”

  Mooney’s face turned puckish. “Only once?” he asked.

  “Only once. I had to sell my portable radio to afford that once.”

  “Lear,” said Mooney. “The role Charles Lamb said could not be acted.”

  Fletch raised his beer can. “Nuts to Charles Lamb.”

  The hand that reached for the glass of cognac shook badly. “Nuts to Charles Lamb.”

  They drank.

  “Do you act?” Mooney asked.

  “No.”

  “What?” Mooney asked. “Not even badly?”

  “There’s been some trouble,” Fletch said slowly, carefully. “On location. Someone’s been stabbed.”

  Mooney’s eyes were half-closed. Again his breath was coming in short, shallow strokes.

  “There’s been a murder,” Fletch said.

  Mooney sat back. He looked around, at the bar, at the verandah’s roof, at the storm outside. His eyes were huge, with huge pupils, dark brown and wide set. Together they were the tragi-comic masks, each capable of holding a different expression simultaneously, one sombre, sad, emotional, the other, objective, thinking. Looking at him closely, Fletch wondered if one eye might actually be lower in the man’s head than the other. He wondered if it was an actor’s trick or an accident of birth. He wondered if it was an expression of the man’s personality.

  Mooney said, “Do not abuse me.”

  “Did you hear me? There’s been a murder.”

  “I gather Marilyn is all right.”

  “Marilyn? Yes. She’s okay. But she was sitting next to the victim when he was stabbed.”

  “And who was the victim?”

  “Steven Peterman.”

  Mooney frowned. He scratched his gray, grizzly hair.

  “Your daughter’s manager, producer, whatever.”

  Mooney nodded.

  “They were taping The Dan Buckley Show. In the middle of Midsummer Night’s Madness location.”

  “Not a play within a play,” commented Mooney, “but a stage within a stage.”

  “Within a stage,” added Fletch. “Because the press was there, too, taking videotapes and still photographs.”

  “And no live audience.”

  “Not much of a one.”

  “How removed our art has become. No longer do we perform for the groundlings. For human beings we must distract from playing blackjacks in the dirt. No longer for the Dress Circle or The Balcony. But for banks and banks of cameras.” Mooney leaned forward, picked up his glass and chuckled. “For the banks. Peterkin?”

  “Peterman. Steven Peterman.”

  “Peterman was in camera.” Mooney drained his glass. His eyes glazed. They crossed, slightly. He reached for the bottle with a very shakey hand. “Do you know the expression?”

  “The thing is, Moxie’s waiting for us.”

  “We’ll just have a drink together, you and I. Talk of who’s in and who’s out. Get yourself a drink.”

  “I have one.”

  Mooney’s eyes narrowed to find Fletch’s beer can. “So you have.”

  He had poured himself a good three ounces.

  “So who was this Peterperson. Much of a loss to the world, do you think?”

  Fletch shrugged. “Moxie’s manager. A producer of the film.”

  “And how did he die?”

  “He got stabbed in the back.”

  Mooney laughed. “Typical of the business. The hindustry, as it’s now called.”

  “I’m af
raid your daughter is one of the prime suspects.”

  “Marilyn?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her.” Mooney looked speculatively over the railing through the storm, not seeing it.

  Fletch hesitated. For such a genius, how drunk was drunk; was he seeing lucidity or Lear; was the subject Regan or Moxie? “You wouldn’t put what past whom?”

  “Murder.” Mooney’s eyes came back to Fletch. “Past Marilyn.”

  A worse shiver went down Fletch’s spine, and up again where it hit the back of his head like a fistful of feathers.

  Mooney lowered his eyes to the scarred table. “She’s done it before.”

  “Done what?” Fletch blurted.

  Mooney dug into a scar on the table with his thumb nail. “Murder,” he said.

  The surf pounded three times on the beach before Fletch had enough easy breath to say, “What are you talking about?”

  “That incident at the school,” Mooney said. “When Marilyn was thirteen, fourteen. The year her benign Daddy—yours truly—decided to transfer her to a school in England at mid-term. November, I think it was. No one is supposed to know what precipitated the sudden transfer, of course. I said I wanted her near me. I was scarcely in England at all that year.”

  Fletch said, “I knew she spent a year or two in school in England.”

  “But you don’t know why.” Mooney then used the tired voice of someone reciting sad, ancient history. “At the private boarding school she was attending in California, her drama coach… maybe I could remember his name…” He gulped some of his drink. “… Can’t. No matter. Little creep. Was found drowned at the edge of the school pond, his feet sticking out. Someone had bopped him on the head with a rock. Knocked unconscious. School authorities investigated. There were only three girls anywhere near the pond that afternoon. Marilyn was the closest. Marilyn was the only one of the three who knew the creep, was a student of his. Marilyn was the pitcher on the school’s ballteam, entirely capable of forcefully beaning someone with a rock.” Mooney hiccoughed. Then he sighed. “She did not like that drama coach. She had written me so—in flaming red pose. I mean, prose.”

  “The man could have slipped …”

  “He was face down in the water. He had been hit on the back of the head. Murder most foul…and deliberate. Couldn’t prove for a certainty who did it… that Marilyn did it. She was questioned. Good actress even then. Had her old man’s blood, you know. Born with it. Veins are stuffed with it.”

  “So you hustled her to a school in England.”

  “Yes,” Mooney said slowly. “She was being questioned, questioned, questioned. Don’t object to questions, mind you. One or two of the answers might have been…” Mooney’s voice went up the long trail.

  “But if she was guilty of murder—”

  Mooney jerked to attention. “She’d still be my daughter, damn it. Brilliant future. All that blood in her veins. Talent shouldn’t be wasted.” His shoulders eased into a more relaxed posture. “I think of the incident as nothing more than Ulysses bashing in his teacher’s head with a lyre. There comes a time when one must do away with one’s teacher, one way or another. Granted, Ulysses and Marilyn took a more dramatic approach than others…”

  Fletch said, “She was having some trouble with Peterman. Which is why she asked me to come down to see her.”

  “What?” Mooney asked crisply. “You mean you’re not in the hindustry at all?”

  “No. I’m a reporter.”

  “Oops. Must mind my manners. Am I being interviewed?”

  “No. You’re not.”

  “I’m offended. Why not?”

  “Because, sir, you’re drunk.”

  “In your opinion…” Mooney paused. He blinked slowly. “… I’m drunk?”

  “No offense.”

  “I’m always drunk,” Mooney said. “No offense. It’s my way of life. My being drunk has never stopped my giving a good interview. Or performance.”

  “I once read that you’d said you’ve made as many as thirty films dead drunk and don’t remember anything about any of them. Is that true?”

  Mooney’s head seemed loose. Then he nodded sharply. “Tha’s true.”

  “How can such a thing be true?”

  “I love to see movies I know nothing about. Especially when I’m in them.”

  “I don’t get it. How can you get yourself up for a scene, appear not drunk on the screen, when you’re drunk?”

  “Unreality,” Mooney said. “Reality. The distortion of reality. You see?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “I made a whole film, once, in Ankara. A year later, I told a reporter I’d never been in Turkey. Widely quoted. The studio said I’d been misquoted. That I’d said I had never been in a turkey.” Mooney laughed. “I’ve been in turkeys. I guess I’ve also been in Turkey. Nice place, Turkey. I live in a nice place, in my mind. Filming’s easy. It only takes a few minutes a day. I can always get myself up for it.”

  “Always?”

  The pupils of Mooney’s eyes were shaking, or glimmering with challenge. “Want to see me get myself up right now?”

  Fletch said, “I think I just saw you do it. You were just Lear, in front of my eyes.”

  “I was? I did? I’ll do it again.” Mooney composed his face. He took a slow, deep breath. Behind his face something was pulling him to sleep. “I don’t feel like it,” he said.

  He took a drink.

  “Sorry, sir,” Fletch said. “Don’t mean to badger you. Just stupid curiosity, on my part.”

  “’S all right,” Mooney said cheerily. “I’m used to being an object of ururosity. Cure-urosity.”

  “You’re a great man.”

  “Like any other,” said Mooney.

  “Shall we go to the car? It’s not raining so hard now.”

  “The car!” exclaimed Mooney. He looked around himself, then out at the beach. “What, have they stopped shooting for the day. Lose their light?”

  “We’ve been sitting through a hell of a storm. Pouring rain. Thunder. Lightning.”

  Mooney looked confused, curious. He said, “I thought that was in King Lear.”

  “Come on.” Fletch stood up. “Your daughter’s waiting.”

  “Involved in a murder…”

  “Something like that.”

  “I wonder… if she has a black veil in her wardrobe.”

  “I don’t know,” Fletch said. “Time to go.”

  “That bottle…” Mooney pointed at it. “… goes in that bag.” He pointed at the wrong spot on the floor, to his right rather than his left, to where the airlines bag wasn’t.

  Fletch capped the bottle and put it in the bag.

  There were three other full bottles in the bag, one empty, and some bulky odd rags.

  Mooney swallowed the rest of his drink, stood up and lurched.

  Fletch grabbed his arm.

  “Going now?” the bartender asked.

  “Thank you, Innkeeper,” Mooney said, “for your superb horse.”

  “‘Night, Mister Mooney.”

  “Horsepitality.”

  Fletch said, “Will’t please your highness walk?”

  Bent over, clutching Fletch’s arm, Mooney grinned up at him. “You must bear with me. Pray you now, forget and forgive. I am old and foolish.”

  Getting him down the stairs was a chore. It took almost ten minutes.

  When Mooney stepped out from under the roof he looked at the day, at the Gulf, at the rain as if he’d never seen it all before.

  “Wet day,” he said. “Think I’ll go back to the hotel and slip into a dry martini.”

  “Think I’ll go back to the hotel,” Fletch said, “and slip into your daughter.”

  Mooney did not look at Fletch or turn his head but the skin just forward of his ear turned red.

  Fletch put him in the back seat of the rented car.

  On the drive to Vanderbilt Beach, Frederick Mooney took two swigs from his bottle and f
ell asleep. He snored loudly enough to awake anyone dozing in any balcony, anywhere.

  7

  “May I help you, sir?”

  Through the glass of the front door of Hotel La Playa, the red jacketed bellman had seen Fletch drive up, get out of the car, and hesitate. It was after dark and Fletch was shoeless, in wet shorts and shirt.

  “Yeah. Will you please tell Ms Mooney her father and driver are waiting for her?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Fletch leaned against the wet car. Even with doors and windows closed he could hear Frederick Mooney snoring in the back seat.

  Within five minutes Moxie came through the door and down the steps.

  She was wearing a simple, short, black dress. And a black veil.

  Fletch held the passenger seat’s door open for her and got in the driver’s side.

  In the back seat Frederick Mooney turned quiet.

  “My God,” Moxie expostulated. “What’s the world coming to? Think of a man like Steve Peterman being stabbed to death right before my very eyes!”

  “Was it?”

  “Beg pardon, young man?”

  Fletch headed the car back to Route 41. “Was it before your very eyes?”

  “No. Really, I didn’t see a thing. I don’t see how such a thing could have happened.”

  “Were you close?”

  “Like brother and sister. Steve’s been with me years. Helping me. Through thick and thin. Through good times and bad times. Ups and downs.”

  “Coming and going.”

  “Coming and going.”

  “Arrivals and departures.”

  “Arrivals and departures.”

  From the back seat, Frederick Mooney said, “Very good, girlie.”

  Moxie pulled off her hat and veil and threw them on the backseat next to her father. She was grinning. “Thought you’d like it, O.L.”

  “I understand if you don’t carry off this performance very well indeed, darling daughter, your next engagement might be a long one in the cooler.”

  “He’s doing the role of Scanlon,” Moxie explained to Fletch.

  “Oh.”

  “The Saint on Murderers’ Row.”

  “I see.”

  “Was it you what busted the creep’s plumbing, daughter?”

  “I didn’t mean to, honest, I didn’t. See I was parin’ my nails with this shiv when he come along real careless like and backed into me.” Moxie shook her head. “Real careless.”