McNally's Alibi

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Archy,” he cut me off again, “I think you are in deep doo-doo, and until you’re ready to cooperate fully with the trooper in charge I think we should limit our conversation to things in general, like death and taxes. Does she know I called you about the APB on your car?”

  “She knows I was cautioned, so she knows I’ve got a contact with the Palm Beach police, but your name wasn’t mentioned. Can I buy you dinner at the Pelican tonight? We can discuss taxes, but death is not a topic I care to dwell on right now.”

  “I’ll take a rain check, pal. I don’t think you and me should be seen fraternizing—it may give Georgy ideas. No hard feelings.”

  My feelings weren’t hard, but they were certainly hurt. More so because Al was right. He had gone out on a limb to alert me to the APB, and I had repaid him by not being aboveboard with the police. The loss of Al’s shoulder and his expertise only sparked my determination to find Lester and Harrigan so I could hear their stories before turning them over to O’Hara and maybe redeem myself. Furthermore, I didn’t see how I could keep Fortesque out of it. Bottom line: I was in deeper than even Al Rogoff suspected.

  I could still count on Binky, I theorized when Al rang off, but I wasn’t about to bring him within firing range of a murder investigation. Binky had proved helpful in the past, but he did have his limitations. Right now the boy was besotted with finding a roommate of the opposite sex to share his trailer. Binky has arrived at the age where his unsurpassed collection of Victoria’s Secret catalogues no longer does the trick. I understand he now gets more of a kick trading them on eBay than ogling them. eBay being as relevant to me as Einstein’s calculations, I can only hope that Binky is trading up.

  The ringing telephone jarred my already taut nerves. I looked at the instrument as a harbinger of more bad news and was tempted to ignore it, but, having parked in our underground garage, Mrs. Trelawney knew I was in situ. My line defaults to hers in my absence, and eschewing the need to explain my negligence to duty, I picked up the transmitter of ill tidings and identified myself. “Archy McNally here.”

  “Deci Fortesque tells me you wish to speak with me.”

  She didn’t have to identify herself. Claudia Lester had the voice of an actress audiences immediately recognize as the tough babe with a heart of gold. “That, Ms. Lester, is the understatement of the new millennium. And I am on the end of a long line of those wishing to have words with you, among them the state troopers who patrol our highways and byways.”

  “You mean that unfortunate business at the Crescent Motel? I had nothing to do with it, Mr. McNally.”

  Unfortunate business? Was this lady for real? “Neither did I, Ms. Lester, but thanks to you and the parcel of lies you fed me, I am being considered a suspect in that unfortunate business. If you talked to Fortesque, you know that I am aware of what you and Harrigan were up to.”

  “I’m sorry, but things got out of hand, as I’m sure you know.” This was tossed out as if she were talking about a soufflé fall. “Matthew has fled with the manuscript and the money. I want you to find him.”

  I didn’t know whether I should laugh, cry, or jump out the window. As my closet is equipped with an air-conditioning duct in lieu of a window, my choices were limited. To spare the lady a salvo of expletives I chuckled stoically, but, as the old song had it, I was laughing on the outside and crying on the inside.

  “Ms. Lester, you couldn’t hire me to watch paint dry at double my usual fee. I was seen at the motel last night and have already been questioned by the police. I told them only that I was acting on your behalf, and what you told me your business was with Harrigan. They are most eager to speak to both of you. This unfortunate business is looked upon as a grievous offense here in Florida, with the accompanying dire consequences. You, Harrigan, and by association, me, are the chief suspects in a murder investigation.”

  “I would like to explain my position, Mr. McNally,” was her response to my tirade.

  “First explain why you checked out of the Ambassador last night,” I said.

  “I was scared, that’s why. When I heard about the murder—”

  “You heard about the murder last night?” I interrupted. “How?”

  “Why, Rodney Whitehead called me, of course.”

  Claudia Lester had a way of socking you with the improbable as if it were the obvious. I couldn’t hide my amazement when I asked, “You know Rodney Whitehead?”

  “He’s the representative from the auction house in New York,” she said. “Or was the representative. If this brouhaha goes public, poor Rod will be looking for work.”

  Unfortunate incident. Brouhaha. What other cozy euphemisms did she have for murder? “I think we had better sit down and talk, Ms. Lester. The sooner, the better.”

  “Good,” she said. “It couldn’t be too soon for me. I’m at the Bradley House on Sunset. Do you know it?”

  I assured her I did. It was now near five and I wanted to have a word with father before leaving. I told Claudia Lester I would be there in half an hour. “And, Ms. Lester, you know I will have to tell the police where they can find you.”

  She laughed. “I’ll try not to stray, Mr. McNally.”

  I will say the lady had good taste when it came to lodgings. From the Ambassador to Bradley House. The latter was born the Algomac Hotel more than seventy years ago and founded by Col. E. R. Bradley, who also ran the famous Bradley’s Beach Club. For convenience the hotel was situated directly across the street from Bradley’s Casino, another winter oasis for the colonel’s pals. Metamorphosed into Bradley House, it became a first-class apartment hotel with all the amenities and a short stroll to the ocean.

  We all have to be good, and we all have to prosper. God grant you never have to choose,” was Claudia Lester’s toast as she handed me a bourbon and water.

  If I wasn’t mistaken she was quoting Moll Flanders, an apt role model for my lovely hostess. Was I going to hear how she had to kick and claw her way to Sutton Place without noticeable damage to her manicure? The mannish business suit she had worn for our previous meeting was abandoned for jeans, rather tight around the shapely hips, sharply pointed high heels and a white silk blouse that showed a lot of décolleté. If the outfit was intended to mix casual informality with a hint of feminine allure, it had succeeded admirably.

  She had taken an efficiency apartment, but it did contain a kitchenette. The modest bar setup was no doubt furnished by the occupant, not the management.

  “The sun is not officially over the yardarm, Mr. McNally, but under the circumstances we can dispense with the formalities,” she said as she mixed our drinks, joining me in a bourbon and water more, I suspected, to prove her mettle than out of a fondness for the sour mash. I say this because she sipped it gingerly, never emptying her glass during my stay. It also occurred to me that Ms. Lester did not want her thoughts beclouded by the brew. The sign of a serious orator or a crafty liar?

  When we were settled into comfortable chairs she opened the meeting with, “Deci told you of our business arrangement.”

  “He did, but he said he was dealing only with you. He didn’t know Matthew Harrigan or, I imagine, Whitehead or Swensen.”

  She nodded. “That’s true. Collecting is a very competitive business and often unscrupulous, as you’ve just learned. The less the customer knows, the less worry that he will try to negotiate a better deal with one of my associates the moment my back is turned. And not everything I told you was a lie, Mr. McNally. My CV was accurate, including the keeping of a diary. However, I wouldn’t be foolish enough to let the likes of Matthew Harrigan get his hands on it.”

  “Was Harrigan your boyfriend?” I blatantly asked.

  With a coy smile she answered, “I’m not saying. We met on the New York fringe circuit. My name for those who have no visible means of support other than their ability to oblige those who can afford to buy. What gets traded would make the bazaar in the Casbah look like a Wal-Mart. Matthew was in a position to gain the confidence of rich wom
en—and men; your sex is not immune to the Harrigans of this world—and learn what collectibles they might possess and not know it, and be induced to part with for a price. He’s a good contact for my operation, so I took him on as an apprentice, a position he was happy to accept as time was running out on poor Matthew.

  “I got into the business,” she went on, warming to her topic, “when I admired a glass paperweight in a friend’s apartment. She told me it was an old family piece made by the Mount Washington Glass Company. Later, at a dinner party, a man who collected paperweights had been to an auction at Sotheby’s and recounted how amazed he was when a Mount Washington Glass Company paperweight went for thirty thousand dollars. I asked him how much he would be willing to pay for a similar paperweight. He said ten thousand. Knowing my lady friend was a bit hard up for cash, I bought the paperweight from the unsuspecting woman for a thousand and, as they say, the rest is history.”

  Fortesque had the right take on her operation. Not illegal but not exactly kosher. After the paperweight sale it was onward and upward for our modern Moll. She gained a reputation with the fringe crowd, whose tentacles stretched from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high. When Rodney Whitehead, the representative from the auction house, stumbled on the Capote manuscript he decided to stop playing middleman for his boss and get in on the action. Who else to contact but Claudia Lester, a broker of collectibles who didn’t ask too many questions about the provenance of the acquisition?

  When Claudia told her Sutton Place neighbor, the third Mrs. Fortesque, what was afoot, Mrs. Fortesque told Claudia about Deci’s passion for collecting esoterica. Thus, Swensen is strangled, Harrigan is on the lam, Whitehead is out of a job and Archy is suspected of murder. Only Claudia Lester is sitting pretty in her Bradley House bed-sitter on Sunset Avenue in posh Palm Beach. Didn’t Moll end up going to the New World? If so, I think I have found her direct descendant.

  “Is the manuscript fact or fiction, Ms. Lester?” When those blue eyes shot daggers at me, I added, “The truth, please.”

  “Rodney is an expert in the field of old manuscripts. That’s why he was sent to investigate the claim. It’s real, Mr. McNally. Trust me.”

  Trust her? To comment would only legitimize the request. “I take it Swensen is Capote’s former houseboy who kept the manuscript.”

  She took a cigarette from her pack. “Should I offer you one?”

  I shook my head. “Not until after dinner, thank you.”

  “I admire your fortitude, even in the face of murder,” she said as she struck a match.

  I inhaled secondhand smoke, gladly, and almost lost my fortitude. “You fed me the story of the diary to protect Fortesque and keep as few people as possible from knowing about the manuscript, because it might not have been Swensen’s to sell, as he wasn’t Capote’s heir. Correct?”

  “Correct,” she exhaled along with an aromatic cloud of smoke.

  Now for the jackpot question. “But why did you hire me to make the exchange?”

  Without missing a beat she said, “Oh, didn’t I explain?”

  “No, ma’am, you did not.”

  “Well, as the buyer, Deci Fortesque, was in Palm Beach, Swensen came here with the manuscript, checking into the Crescent. Matthew would take him the money and pick up the manuscript. Later, Rodney would go to the Crescent and get his share from Swensen. I don’t know what that amount was to be. I would get my percent directly from Deci.

  “Before we finalized the plan, Rodney advised that we should use caution. He didn’t know Swensen very well, you see. What if Swensen was planning to take the money without handing over the manuscript? What if he pulled a gun on Matthew or was holed up at the motel with a gang to do his bidding? Matthew is not the hero type, as you may have guessed. Heeding the warning, I hired some muscle to take Matthew’s place and ensure no one got hurt.”

  So a man got iced and the muscle got whacked on the head. I quickly reminded her, “But I was expecting to see Matthew Harrigan, a young man, and I did see him. What if it had gone as planned and I walked in to find Swensen, who did not answer the description of your ex-flame?”

  She shrugged this off with a wave of her cigarette, giving me another snort. “Come, come, Mr. McNally. Where are your gumshoe smarts? Before leaving me Ambassador, didn’t I tell you to call me if you encountered any problems? I would have told you there was a change in plans and the gentleman in room nine was acting for Matthew Harrigan. When you didn’t call is when I began to smell a rat, if you’ll forgive the cliché.”

  I forgave her the cliché but not the misnomer—and her story was plausible, nothing more.

  “Matthew was also at the Ambassador, at my expense. Of course, he knew I had hired you,” she said with ire. “When Rodney called and told me Swensen was dead and no sign of either the money or the manuscript was in the room, I called Matthew and was told he had checked out. I knew then what had happened.”

  So did I. Or at least I thought I did. “Matthew went to the motel, did in Swensen, made the exchange with me and then followed me out to the parking lot, zonked me on the head and made off with the manuscript.”

  She looked startled. “Is that how he did it? I wasn’t sure. When I didn’t hear from you in a reasonable amount of time I knew something was wrong. After Rodney’s call and Matthew’s disappearance, I panicked and ran. Who knew what else Matthew had in mind? I expect he had help when he came after you. Matthew has some very rough friends.”

  If it was sympathy I was after, I would get it only from my mother and I wasn’t permitted to show her my boo-boo. “Have you heard from Matthew?”

  “No. And I don’t expect to. That’s why I want you to find him and get back what is mine.”

  I didn’t know if she meant the manuscript, which wasn’t hers, or the money, which also wasn’t hers, but in Claudia Lester’s fringe world the words “legal owner” were a mere formality if not a nuisance. I was on Fortesque’s payroll to find Lester, and now I was being offered the job of finding Harrigan on Lester’s dime. If I wasn’t careful I would end up chasing myself.

  “I think the police will do a better job of that than I can, Ms. Lester—with your help, to be sure. I’m going to give you the phone number of Officer O’Hara. I suggest you call as soon as I leave.”

  I had written O’Hara’s name and phone number on a piece of notepaper before leaving the office. Not wanting to take away Georgy’s shock appeal, I purposely omitted her first name. This I now placed on the glass-topped coffee table we had been talking across.

  Picking it up, she said with a lot of attitude, “I will. And am I to assume you are now out of my employ, Mr. McNally?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Case closed.”

  I got that mocking smile and, “Deci told me you were now working for him. It seems we are two of a kind, Mr. McNally—both for sale to the highest bidder. Case closed.”

  9

  THE MURDER AT THE Crescent Motel made the local TV news that evening. It’s a program my parents view religiously before the cocktail hour, but much to father’s relief, my name was not mentioned. The police were not giving away even what little they knew. What they had released to the press was strictly S.O.P. for a murder case.

  The victim was identified as Lawrence Swensen from Key West. The Key West police reported that Swensen managed a guest house there that catered to an all-male clientele. He had checked into the Crescent yesterday afternoon and his body was discovered by a business associate that evening shortly after 10 P.M. Swensen had been strangled. One person had been questioned in connection with the crime, and two more were being sought for questioning.

  The report did not state that Swensen had been drugged, nor did it say where the body was found. This would save having to check out all the kooks calling to confess to the crime who couldn’t accurately describe their modus operandi. The two sought for questioning were not named for fear they might flee, and I was not named because I was associated with those wanted. Like I said, this was
still the honeymoon stage of the case. The finger-pointing and hard sell would follow.

  Mother’s only comment was to reiterate her lament for the good old days when there was no need to lock the front door or fear strolling the beach at midnight. Terror was not solely a foreign import. All the above was reported to me by father that evening over a glass of his best port after mother had retired.

  I missed the news and the cocktail hour due to my harangue with the lovely Ms. Lester. After getting in the last word, she showed me to the door. Our parting was less than affable. In fact, I don’t remember ever leaving a former client so indignant at my refusal to continue working on their behalf. But then, I seldom had clients who called murder an unfortunate business and whose only interest in apprehending the assassin was in taking from him that which did not belong to them.

  And if Harrigan had made off with the cash and manuscript, as she claimed, he would be as far from Palm Beach tonight as a plane could take him in twenty-four hours—which was very far indeed. I hadn’t the resources to trace Harrigan’s movements since last night, but the police did, and I wished them luck.

  My obligation now was to my remaining client, Decimus Fortesque. He had taken my advice and directed Claudia Lester to me, but I had no idea what Lester had told him. Unless Deci was lost in a lurid account of some movie star’s shenanigans, he would have heard about the murder by now whether Lester had given him the news or not. As the rich did not like to see their names in the press unless pictured bestowing largesse, Deci would be in a dither. I would have to call him in the morning to report that Lester was talking to the police, and his name was sure to come up in their conversation. In short, Deci, the jig is up and Answered Prayers will once more make headlines.

  To make sure that Lester would be talking to the police, I pulled up to the first public phone I came to on my way south and called the Juno barracks. Covering my tail, I gave the officer on duty my name and left a message for O’Hara stating that I had seen Claudia Lester, that she was staying at the Bradley House apartments, and that she had promised to contact O’Hara the soonest.