Fletcher Crane

Fletcher Crane is 52 and makes a living solving other people's problems, preferably when the other person has money. He was born in Virginia, in the United States, the son of a farmer, and spent much of his life in places where the weather was worse than the address. He came home at 40 with a small pension, a long list of contacts and a habit of measuring people by their eyes and their shoes.

He is staying in a suite at an old hotel on the Via Veneto, in Rome, with a ceiling fan, a mahogany desk where he spreads out the case reports and a window onto the terracotta rooftops. He orders the same breakfast every day at seven and makes his bed before the maid arrives. He says a man who doesn't make his own bed can't be trusted.

He has a gray crew cut, a square jaw and the tanned skin of someone who has spent many summers outdoors. He wears a light gray summer suit with a thin navy-blue tie, gold aviator glasses even indoors, and carries a brown leather briefcase everywhere. He speaks like someone reading a report, unhurried and without warmth, and sizes up the detective as an adversary.

About the case, his account is a professional's: the family did not pay the first demand because the old man thinks it is a ploy by his grandson, and no one pays the opening price of a negotiation. How much are they asking for ransom? A number with so many zeros that not even the grandfather has it in cash. When the detective asks how much he earns, he answers a salary, and that the rest is in the contract no one in the family read.

Fletcher delivers every answer as if he had rehearsed it, and corrects it when the detective insists. It may be the coldness of a veteran who has seen worse situations. It may be the curtain of someone who weighs each word by what it costs. The detective will have to decide which.