Fletch and the Man Who by Gregory McDonald Page B

news.”

15
    Approaching him, Governor Caxton Wheeler grinned at Fletch. “How do you feel?”
    “Like Adam’s grandfather.”
    At the foot of the campaign bus’s steps, the governor was still grinning when he turned to his son. Walsh and Phil Nolting and Paul Dobson looked like a wall that had come tumbling down at the blast of a single trumpet. Each face had the same expression of stressed shock.
    “How’d I do?” the governor asked.
    Walsh’s eyes darted around, seeing if any of the press were within earshot. Outside their little circle was a group of thirty to forty retarded adults who had been brought from their institution to meet the presidential candidate.
    “You’ve got to tell us when you’re going to do something like that, Dad.”
    “I told you I had an idea.”
    “Yeah, but you didn’t mention you were going to drop a bomb—a whole new departure.”
    “A new speech.” Phil Nolting’s eyes were slits.
    “Sorry,” the governor said. “Guess I was really thinking about it while that congressperson was babbling on about the waterway.”
    “The question always is—” Paul Dobson said in the manner of a bright teacher. “You see, we’ve got to be prepared to defend everything you say before you say it.”
    “You can’t defend the truth, anyway?” the governor asked simply. “I can.”
    “Hi, Governor,” one of the retarded persons, a man about thirty-five, said. “My name is John.”
    “Hi, John,” the governor said.
    “It might have been a great speech, Dad, I don’t know. We all just feel sort of punched out by your not telling us you were going to do it.”
    “I wasn’t sure I was going to do it.” The governor smiled. “It just came out.”
    “We’ll get a transcript as fast as we can,” Dobson said. “See what we can do about it.”
    The governor shrugged. “It felt right.” He put out his hand to one of the retarded persons, a woman about thirty. “Hi,” he said. “Are you a friend of John’s?”
    Aboard the campaign bus, coordinator of volunteers Lee Allen Parke was connecting a small tape recorder to a headset. A typist was at her little desk, ready to work.
    “Lee Allen,” Fletch said. Parke didn’t answer. “Just a simple question.”
    “Not now,” Lee Allen said. “No questions now, please.” He said to the typist, “We’ve got to have an exact transcript of whatever the governor just said, sooner than soonest.” He placed the headset over the typist’s ears. She settled the earphones more comfortably on herself.
    All the buttons on the telephone in Barry Hines’s chair were flashing. The phone was not ringing. Barry Hines was nowhere in sight.
    “Ah, Lee Allen—” Fletch began.
    Lee Allen pressed the
play
button and listened through a third earphone. “Loud and clear?” he asked the typist. She nodded in the affirmative. “My God,” he said, listening. “What is the man saying?”
    “Lee Allen, I need to know about Sally Shields, Alice Elizabeth Shields—”
    “Not now, Fletcher! All hell has broken loose! The governor just went off half-cocked, in case you didn’t know.”
    “No. I didn’t know.”
    “First he’s caught bribing schoolkids. Then the hard-drinkin’, sexpot congressman we were told to expect turns out to be somebody’s great-grandmother. By the way, there’s a pitcher of Bloody Marys in the galley, if you want it. Then he makes like Lincoln at Gettysburg at Winslow in a snowstorm. And the day’s barely begun!”
    “Well begun,” Fletch consoled, “is half done.”
    “Not by my watch.” To the typist, who was listening and typing, Lee Allen Parke shouted, “Can you hear?” She nodded yes with annoyance. “We need every word,” he said. “Every word.”
    “You could have answered me by now,” Fletch said firmly.
    Lee Allen Parke still held the earphone to his head. “What? What, what, what?”
    “Did Alice Elizabeth Shields apply to you for a job as a volunteer, paid or otherwise?”
    “How do you