McNally's Folly

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Sabrina Wright. What else do you know about her visit besides what your spy at the Chesterfield told you?”

  “My spy?” Lolly exploded. “You jest, young man. I don’t have any spies. Not that I wouldn’t if I could afford them. I have to scratch for every item and can show you the broken fingernails to prove it.”

  “Then how did you know she checked into the Chesterfield and asked if her husband was stopping there?”

  “So she is looking for her husband. What joy. Can I quote you?”

  Me and my big mouth. I had just told Lolly more than I was going to learn from him. It was too late to retrieve my words so I had to eat them, which did not sit well with Ursi’s stir-fry. “Quote me and kiss your foie gras goodbye. How did you get the item?”

  “From an anonymous caller,” Lolly answered. “He told me Sabrina Wright had just arrived in town and was staying at the Chesterfield. He said she was here looking for a certain man. I called the hotel and they confirmed that she was registered, but when I asked to be connected to her room I was informed that she was not taking calls. Like Garbo, she vanted to be alone.

  “I could tell my avid readers that Sabrina was in town, but I wouldn’t touch the bit about a certain man, which was pure hearsay and too specific. There are libel laws, so I dreamed up the man that got away, which could mean any man she had even so much as shook hands with.”

  “You didn’t recognize the caller?” I asked.

  “Not at all, and I don’t think he was disguising his voice.”

  “But you’re sure it was a man?”

  “Archy, when it comes to recognizing men, I have no equal.”

  “Thanks, Lol, I...”

  “Not so fast, Mr. Hit-’n’-Run. What is going on here? First I get an anonymous tip on Sabrina Wright, and then I get a follow-up call from Archy McNally of Discreet Inquiries. You don’t have to be a whiz kid to know that there’s something rotten in Palm Beach. Tell Lolly what you know or I will be very, very cruel to Archy.”

  “You’re bluffing,” I said with more bravado than conviction.

  “Really? Item: The girl dancing cheek-to-cheek with Archy McNally on the moonlit deck of Phil Meecham’s yacht, the oh-so-social Sans Souci, didn’t look like Connie Garcia, but then I wasn’t wearing my glasses, so I could be wrong.”

  “That’s blackmail,” I accused.

  “You bet your sweet tuchas it is, baby. Cross me and the item runs tomorrow.”

  Consuela Garcia is my light-o’-love and has been for longer than I care to remember. She is a Marielito who toils as social secretary to Lady Cynthia Horowitz, one of Palm Beach’s more obnoxious chatelaines. Connie is a lovely senorita with a figure that brings to mind the dancer Chita Rivera of West Side Story fame. The musical play, to be sure, not the film, as Chita was not given the film role she had created on Broadway. But then Hollywood has not made an astute casting decision since replacing Myrna Loy with Anna May Wong as the daughter of Fu Manchu.

  Connie and I have an open relationship, which I fear does not translate well into Español. I think it means I can dance cheek-to-cheek with a curvaceous blonde at one of Phil Meecham’s naughty mixes, and Connie thinks it means she can neuter me for doing so. Clearly, my need to head off Lolly’s item was of paramount importance to that which I hold near and dear.

  Thinking fast, which is something I do very well when Connie reaches for a carving knife, I blabbed, “Look, Lol, I’ll level with you.” Here I told him the same story I had told Ursi and Jamie.

  Recalling the laws of libel, Lolly demanded, “How do you know this?”

  “Ms. Wright has hired me to find the culprit and her daughter.” McNally’s luck held out when Lolly, like Ursi, did not ask why the couple had fled to Palm Beach.

  “My, my, Archy, aren’t you rubbing shoulders, and what a delicious tidbit,” was Lolly’s expected reaction. I could see him licking his lips and filling his Mont Blanc with acid. “Do you think he was my anonymous caller?”

  “I’m sure he was,” I answered.

  “Why did he expose himself to me, so to speak, dear heart?”

  “He didn’t. You wouldn’t know who he was if I hadn’t told you. I think he did it to goad Sabrina.”

  “This gets better by the moment. Ta, ta, Archy, see you in church.”

  I had to again head Lolly off at the pass and took my second chance of the case, a wild one, to accomplish this goal. “Lol, can I ask you not to print a word of this just yet?”

  “You could, lover, but your plea will fall on deaf ears.”

  “What if I told you I could set up an exclusive interview for you with Sabrina Wright?” There is nothing, besides bartenders and food, that Lolly Spindrift likes better than the word exclusive followed by a celebrated name. I could almost hear his brain calculating the pros and cons of my offer. “To publish or not to publish, that is the question,” I intruded upon his deliberations. “One quickie blurb or an exclusive with Sabrina that might very well be picked up by the wire services and attributed to Lolly Spindrift.”

  After a prolonged silence, he sighed, “She will speak to me? Promise?”

  “Scout’s honor.”

  “I’m not feeling too kindly toward the Scouts these days, Archy.”

  “Sorry, Lol. How ’bout my word as a gentleman?”

  “Good grief, that’s worse. You have forty-eight hours to deliver, dear heart.”

  “You’re on, Lol. And the bartender works the day shift.”

  “Why, you little devil,” Lolly giggled.

  I hung up, praying I could talk Sabrina into talking to Lolly Spindrift. My trump card was that anonymous caller who had to be Zack Ward trying to flush out Gillian’s father. Ward was a loose cannon, and I could see why Sabrina wanted him stopped before he learned all and told all. But how did he know she had come to Palm Beach and was asking for her husband when she registered at the Chesterfield?

  Sabrina would see the necessity of keeping Lolly from writing anything further until we had time to figure out what to tell him that would both defuse the man-that-got-away item and keep Lolly from learning the true reason for Gillian’s coming here.

  What to tell Lolly I would leave to Sabrina’s creative genius. Remember, I had only consented to look for her husband. Never had a case taken so many diverse paths so quickly with so little hope for a quick solution. On that ominous note, enter Binky Watrous pushing his mail cart, a wagon that is indistinguishable from those that clog the aisles of supermarkets from coast to coast. Binky’s, mercifully, does not contain a screaming two-year-old reaching for everything he has seen advertised on the telly.

  “Hi, Archy.”

  “Good afternoon, Binky, my boy.”

  Depositing a small packet of envelopes encased in a rubber band on my desk, Binky gave me a depressing forecast of my afternoon epistles. “The usual fast-food menus, requests for charitable donations, and a flyer from an X-rated video distributor in Miami.”

  “Your job, Binky, is to deliver the mail, not read it,” I reminded him.

  Binky suffers from EDS. Employment Deficiency Syndrome. Since leaving school he has held more jobs than Mother has begonias, all terminating disastrously for both employer and employee. While clerking in a liquor store in Delray Beach, Binky was held up at gunpoint. Ordered to empty the cash register, Binky told the intruder that the register was controlled by the digital scanner that reads the price labels, therefore the thief would have to make a purchase if he wanted to get his hands on the loot.

  Remembering the dinner party he was giving that very evening, the miscreant asked Binky to recommend a pretentious vin blanc to complement his poached salmon. Summoning all he had learned while training to be a liquor store clerk, Binky talked the man into a pricey white Graves. Pleased, the bandit took home a case, along with the contents of the cash register. This is just one painful example of the entries on Binky’s CV. The full picture is available from the U.S. Department of Unemployment under the Freedom of Information Act
of 1966.

  I had been instrumental in securing Binky the position of mail person at McNally & Son, and the appointment seemed to be working rather well to date—touch wood, cross fingers, toes, eyes, and remember to light a candle to St. Jude, the hope of the hopeless. Binky is a personable young man, some ten years my junior, who looks remarkably like that famous movie star, Bambi. Older women, like Mrs. Trelawney and Sofia Richmond, find his liquid-brown eyes to die for. Binky’s contemporaries of the fair sex, alas, do not.

  Ignoring my grievance, Binky asked me if I was free after work. “What do you have in mind, Binky?”

  “Apartment hunting” is what he came up with.

  Since securing employment with us and optimistic about the future, Binky is eager to move into his own pad with cohabitation very much the driving force of his quest. He recently spent his last dime having his collection of Victoria’s Secret catalogues bound in vellum. This is not a healthy sign. Binky lives with the Duchess, the sobriquet of his maiden aunt, who has supported him since the death of his parents when Binky was just a tad and who is as eager to be rid of her ward as he is to find a soul mate.

  Removing a tiny scrap of newspaper from his jacket pocket, Binky proceeded to read aloud: “‘For rent with option to buy...’”

  “You can’t afford to buy,” I cut in.

  “I will some day,” Binky assured me. “By virtue of my unique talents, I am destined to be an entrepreneur, not an employee.”

  The only talent I have ever recognized in Binky Watrous is one for fatuity. “And how do you envision moving from the mailroom to the boardroom?” I foolishly asked.

  “I intend to modernize the mailroom, Archy.”

  Never knowing when to withdraw while ahead, I rushed in where wiser men would dare not tread. “How, may I ask?”

  “Pneumatic tubing,” he proclaimed with great pride.

  Had I the room, I would have fainted.

  “From my desk I will be able to shoot the mail all over the building in record-breaking time,” he went on, like a pitchman in a carny show.

  In spite of our glass-and-chrome facade, McNally & Son is a Victorian enterprise within, thanks to its founder and CEO. Prescott McNally has been playing the part of the squire for so long that he actually believes he is one. A rectitudinous attorney, he reads only Dickens and sports an unruly guardsman’s mustache, hoping to emulate the English actor Sir C. Aubrey Smith. However, in my humble opinion, he comes off as Groucho Marx, especially when enjoying an ear of corn.

  “The only thing pneumatic tubing will help break around here, Binky, is your neck,” I assured him.

  Not heeding the warning, as is his wont, Binky continued to read the advert: “‘For rent with option to buy. Mobile home...’”

  “You’re going to live in a trailer park?” I cried.

  “What’s wrong with that? The Duchess thinks it’s perfect for me.”

  The Duchess would put her stamp of approval on an opium den in Macao if she thought it would get Binky out of the house. I was, for reasons that will soon be clear, getting a bit anxious over Binky’s find.

  “‘Kitchen,’” he continued, “‘dining area, parlor, bedroom, and bath, partially furnished. Contact Hermioni Rutherford at the Palm Court.’”

  Like I always say, expect the worst and you’re seldom disappointed. Sgt. Al Rogoff of the PBPD, my friend and sometimes partner in crime busting, resides at the Palm. Was I to be spared nothing this dastardly day?

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher and the estate of Lawrence Sanders have chosen Vincent Lardo to create this novel based on Lawrence Sanders’s beloved character, Archy McNally, and his fictional world.

  copyright © 2000 by Lawrence A. Sanders Enterprises, Inc.

  cover design by Jason Gabbert

  978-1-4532-9831-2

  This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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  EBOOKS BY LAWRENCE SANDERS

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