McNally's Alibi

by Lawrence Sanders

  “And alive,” I reiterated.

  The young man stood when we arrived and I introduced him to Georgy, leaving out her profession and rank. Given Tyler’s rather precarious emotional state, I didn’t want him to think I had come to arrest him. “You told me you didn’t have a girl, Mr. McNally, and you turn up with Miss America.”

  “Girl? Oh, Georgy. I picked her up on my way here. She was hitchhiking on Ocean Boulevard. Shall we sit?”

  “I’m delighted he gave you a ride, Ms. O’Hara.”

  Georgy seemed to enjoy being the centerpiece of conversation and, with a toothy grin, told Tyler how thrilled she was to meet him. Georgy girl is a bit ingenuous when it comes to the social graces. One can be “thrilled” to meet a person of note. A celebrity, as it were. Tyler’s only claim to fame was his wealth, which was now clearly the reason for Georgy’s elation. The rich don’t like to be reminded of the fact. They want to be loved for themselves.

  But what could one expect from a little girl from Little Rock? Come to think of it, Georgy wasn’t such a little girl. With her in heels, we could walk shoulder to shoulder. However, like a diamond in the rough, her charm lay in the expectation of things to come. To pipe poetically, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter...”

  Tyler had a beer before him, in a fine pilsner glass, and, summoning a waiter, asked us what our pleasure would be. Eschewing negronis, Georgy went for a white wine, saying a Pinot would be fine, and I joined Tyler in a beer. After ordering, we lapsed into one of those embarrassed silences that descend upon strangers in social situations. With smiling faces we were all thinking, Where do we go from here? In the universal language of resort communities, we spoke of the weather.

  After giving Tyler a blow-by-blow of our Palm Beach summer, he favored us with the droughts, rains and sun-filled days experienced on the east end of Long Island. We refrained from telling him what we expected this winter, as it was very much like what we experienced this past summer. Besides, Tyler would have no comeback, as he never stepped foot in the Hamptons between the days Labor and Memorial.

  When our drinks came, Georgy announced her acquisition of Hotel Berlin on tape. Explaining her find, Tyler was immediately interested and made her promise to send him a copy. The ice broken, there followed a lively and interesting conversation on topics ranging from the classics to the comics and a few stops between. Thanks to Georgy, our impromptu cocktail party was a roaring success. Tyler Beaumont was bright, witty, interesting and, yes, even adorable.

  We ordered another round and were so engrossed in our repartee that we didn’t notice the man standing over our table until Tyler looked up, spotted him and blanched. All conversation ceased.

  “I didn’t know you were in Palm Beach,” Tyler said.

  “I didn’t know you were till this morning. Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?”

  The party broke up shortly thereafter. “Who do you suppose that was?” Georgy asked of the uninvited one.

  “I would guess he’s Tyler’s caretaker.”

  “What?”

  “Can’t explain right now, Georgy, but I will when next we meet. I’ll call you at home after my next meeting. Did you secure extra help?”

  “I’m working on it. Why didn’t you say hello to your friend in there?”

  “What friend?”

  “The lovely Latina lady you spoke to at the Pelican Club the other night.”

  It was my turn to blanch. “Connie? Are you telling me Connie was in the Colony Lounge tonight?”

  Georgy shrugged. “If that’s her name. She was sitting a few tables from us, having a drink with a girlfriend.”

  “Did she see me?”

  “I know she saw me,” Georgy answered. “She looked right at me.”

  O death, where is thy sting?

  21

  DECI FORTESQUE GAVE A performance worthy of a Barrymore. The set was the great room of his Lake Worth home. Bigger than life—as drama should be—and reeking of money, it put the audience in a position of supplicants come to hear their fate. Mother Nature, in charge of the lighting and special effects, had turned off the stars and caused a mist to rise from the lake, dappling the party lights of the occasional craft navigating the waterway to give it the eerie appearance of a Flying Dutchman.

  But even with this support, it was the leading man who stole the show. Dressed in a green velvet smoking jacket, with black lapels, over a tuxedo shirt and hand-knotted black bow tie, Deci was every inch Mr. Noblesse Oblige, ready to surfer the poor, sink his hands into his deep pockets and come up with pardons and compensation for his wayward serfs.

  Now, no thinking gentleman would receive guests in a smoking jacket, but Deci was playing to the stalls and, by gum, getting away with it. His audience, awed and expectant, stared and listened in rapt attention as he made his offer.

  However, lest we forget, this audience was also playing a part. Three swindlers posing as victims, all eager to get what they had come for—more money—without libeling themselves. One of them had what Fortesque was willing to trade for another fifty thousand, but how to get their hands on the cash without soiling them was the question. Oh, what a fine fiddle they were in.

  Arriving separately, they chose to sit as far from each other as availability allowed, which was very far indeed. Claudia Lester, looking very smart in black, sat with her shapely legs crossed at the knee, chain-smoking. When she wasn’t looking at Fortesque her eyes darted about the room, appraising its worth and regretting that she had never had the old geezer to comfort on a nonstop from L.A. to Sydney. Had she, she would now be sitting beside him, not before him or, at the very least, on his monthly payroll.

  Rodney Whitehead had thought to get his suit pressed for the occasion, but it didn’t help the sad sack look any happier. Twice he removed his rimless glasses to give them, and his forehead, a wipe with his handkerchief. Each time he replaced the glasses, his ample frame heaved with an audible sigh. Surely he was envisioning what Fortesque’s house and its contents would buy him in Costa Rica.

  Poor Matthew Harrigan looked the worst of the lot. Tired, drawn and unable to sit still for two consecutive minutes, he kept watching the door as if expecting the police to raid the joint with weapons drawn, ready to cart him off to Death Row. When Sam wheeled in the tea trolley, now serving as a portable bar, Harrigan actually rose from his seat, hovered in the air, then fell back into it. I thought he had fainted.

  Lester took a scotch and soda; Harrigan a neat scotch; Whitehead a bourbon and branch water. I stood behind Fortesque, who faced his audience with Lester on his right, Harrigan to his left and Whitehead between the two.

  Fortesque made his offer with all the pathos of a rich collector determined to get his spoils and damn the cost. I think he did it so well because he was typecast for the part and the surroundings spoke for his ability to deliver the cash if they, or one of them, would deliver the goods.

  Naturally, it was Claudia Lester who broke the silence after Fortesque made his offer. “Mr. Fortesque,” she opened, “as a professional with her reputation at stake, I want you to know that I carried out, to the letter, the bargain we struck. Mr. McNally can vouch for the fact that I had him count the money in my presence and gave it to him to be used for the purchase of the manuscript from Lawrence Swensen at the agreed-upon price.”

  Harrigan was out of his seat, spilling scotch down the front of his shirt as he pointed a threatening finger at his former partner. “She’s a liar,” he shouted. “A damn liar. She had me go to the motel and drug Swensen. That’s why she had to tell McNally he was buying her diary from a young guy. McNally gave me the cash and I gave him the manuscript—”

  “Mr. Harrigan,” I broke in, “please don’t shout and be seated. We’re not here to—”

  “No way,” he bellowed. “She had her say, now let me have mine. These bastards are setting me up to take the murder rap, too. I drugged Swensen, that’s all. I gave her the money,” here he pointed at Cl
audia Lester as if there were another “her” in the room, soiling his shirt with more scotch, “and she told me Mr. McNally brought her the manuscript. I didn’t even know Whitehead was in Palm Beach. She told me he was back in New York.”

  Looking bored with Harrigan’s oft-told tale, Lester blew smoke rings at the high ceiling, secure in the fact that he who shouts the loudest loses.

  “Please be seated, Mr. Harrigan,” I tried again. “Sam, perhaps you can freshen Mr. Harrigan’s drink.” Sam nodded woefully, no doubt enjoying all the misery Answered Prayers had visited upon those who lusted after it. “I did not deliver the manuscript to Ms. Lester,” I told Harrigan, and the room in general. “Someone took it from me in the Crescent’s parking lot.”

  Now seated and swilling the scotch Sam had just poured for him, Harrigan cried, “Not me. I got in my car and drove back to the Ambassador to deliver the cash to Claudia. Whitehead showed up after I took off, or maybe he was there all the time.”

  Hearing his name prompted Whitehead to take the floor. “Mr. Fortesque, I must protest Matthew’s insinuation. I went to the Crescent to get my finder’s fee from Swensen and found him dead. I did not clobber Mr. McNally or remove the manuscript from his car. I don’t have it or your money. Furthermore, Mr. Fortesque, I am out of a job and have no hope of getting another in my chosen field.

  “Unlike others I could name, I am a true professional, an expert on old manuscripts who could be very helpful to you in acquiring texts from private collections. Texts one has heard of but never hoped to—”

  “Mr. Whitehead,” I said, cutting him off in his bid to become Deci’s personal purveyor of purple prose, “I must again remind you and the others that we are here for one reason only—to initiate an exchange of fifty thousand dollars, in cash, for the completed and unpublished manuscript of Truman Capote’s Answered Prayers.”

  “I don’t have it, Mr. McNally,” Whitehead stated.

  “Nor do I,” Claudia Lester joined in.

  Harrigan laughed, the sound more hysterical than joyous. “One of them has it,” he said, and giggled. “Give them a lie-detector test. Would you be willing to take one, Claudia? You, Whitehead? I would.” He offered his arm. “Go on, hook me up.” This, of course, unhooked more scotch from his glass, this time anointing a most embarrassing portion of his trousers.

  At the start of our little theatrical I was ready to give Decimus Fortesque the Tony for his performance. Now, I wanted to call it a three-way split and hand one to Claudia Lester, one to Matthew Harrigan and one to Rodney Whitehead for the most convincing portrayals of our young century. They were making it perfectly clear that they had nothing to lose by sticking to their squalid tales. At worst, they could walk away with the money and the manuscript. I had to show them how they could double the ante without risk of exposure.

  Their refusal to cave under pressure had me toying with the idea of aborting my C.S.O. Why risk making a fool of myself—yet again—on this evening of ignominy? There was no stopping now, as one of them had latched onto the line we tossed out and turned it into a noose—not with a lie, but with the truth.

  “It seems to me, Mr. Fortesque, and Mr. McNally, that this meeting has served no purpose in getting any of us what we want,” Claudia Lester wisely announced. “I don’t have the manuscript or the money, so I thank you for your hospitality and now I really have to run.”

  She began to rise, and Whitehead followed her lead. “I don’t have what you want either, Mr. Fortesque.”

  “They’re both lying,” Harrigan ranted, not wanting the party to break up until he had been absolved of all sin.

  Fortesque, who had not spoken a word since making his offer, now tugged on my sleeve. “Get on with it, man,” he ordered.

  Arms raised as if I were about to conduct the Boston Pops, I began my pitch. “Please, keep your seats for just another few minutes and listen to our proposition.” That got their attention. “Mr. Fortesque and I don’t believe any of you.” There was some grumbling and a shuffling of feet. “If we did, we wouldn’t have called this conclave. One of you has what Mr. Fortesque wants, and we aim to get it without putting any of you in an awkward position.”

  “I don’t have it,” Harrigan shouted.

  Again, I raised my arms. “Please hear me out. Mr. Fortesque, as he has just told you, is willing to double the price for the manuscript, which, I believe, was the original asking price. He doesn’t care who’s doing what to whom, or why. Least of all does he want to get involved with a murder investigation. He just wants what’s owed him, albeit at a premium, after which you can all go on your merry ways, or as far as the police are willing to let you go.

  “None of you have the manuscript? Fine. If you happen to be in contact with the person who does have it, tell said person that I will deliver fifty thousand dollars, in cash, to him or her in return for the manuscript. To show Mr. Fortesque’s good faith, the exchange will be made as follows.

  “I will be in front of my club, the Pelican Club, at eight tomorrow evening. Said person can hire a car and driver to pick me up and take me to wherever said person awaits with the manuscript. The driver will make sure he is not being followed. No tricks, no traps. After the exchange, said person can ride off into the sunset, but not before arranging transportation for me back to the club. Any questions?”

  There were no questions, only blank stares. Then a foghorn wailed across the lake and, as if it were a furtive signal, the three of them were on their feet, all suddenly eager to be off and running. But to where? Or to whom?

  They thanked Fortesque for his hospitality, except Harrigan, who was hot on Claudia Lester’s tail, babbling at the back of her head. Whitehead, mumbling inaudibly, brought up the rear. Curtain.

  “How did I do?” Fortesque erupted like a neophyte after an audition.

  “Splendid,” I complimented. “And me?”

  “I don’t think they believed you.”

  I called Georgy from my garret and told her that we were on for eight tomorrow night.

  “How did it go?” she asked.

  “I think they took the bait. Did you get more help?”

  “Swathmoore and another rookie. Neither will be officially on duty, Archy. All they can do is observe. And I told Delaney what we were up to.”

  That was a shock. “Why, Georgy?”

  “He was going to bring in Harrigan tomorrow for another interrogation and maybe even hold him overnight. You wanted them all on the loose, didn’t you?”

  “It’s essential,” I said. “How did Delaney take it?”

  “He wasn’t overjoyed, but he has to turn the case over to the big boys on Monday and this is his last hope of handing them something more than an empty plate. There’s a lot of competition on the force, Archy.”

  So Al Rogoff had often told me. “Let’s hope we don’t disappoint, Georgy.”

  “Do you have a cell phone?”

  “No. But I can borrow Binky’s.”

  “You really should get one, Archy.”

  There were a lot of things I really should do, and getting a cell phone was the least of them. I told Georgy what position I wanted her to take.

  “Why that particular one?” she questioned.

  “An educated guess. How was Hotel Berlin?”

  “Divine,” she gushed. “When this is over, we’ll watch it together.”

  When what is over? I pondered, as I bid her good night.

  I washed, brushed, undressed and wrapped myself in a comfy robe. I poured a generous mark and lit an English Oval. I sat at my desk, opened my journal and stared at the blank page. I was miserable.

  In all the years I had lied to Connie about my extracurricular activities, and got away with them, I never dreamed that the truth would trip me up. But it was a client meeting, I heard myself insisting.

  In answer, all I heard was Georgy saying, I know she saw me. She looked right at me.

  And the truth shall set you free. From what? From having to make the decision I had b
een putting off all week because it had now been thrust upon me? I didn’t even have a daisy to tell me I love her; I love her not. Right now I was certain only that Consuela Garcia loved me not.

  The other certainty was that I would have another cigarette before bed. When one goes, one should go all the way.

  William Riley Burnett, the distinguished writer of gangster novels and screenplays, summed up life in this vale of tears in eight words: “You’re born, you get in trouble, you die.”

  22

  I WAS LATE FOR breakfast by design, not torpor. I just didn’t want to face the mater and pater, who might ask if I had plans to see Connie this weekend. Alas, I was not late enough. Father had delayed his departure to await my arrival. Mother had delayed her morning visit to the greenhouse for the same reason. Ursi was standing before her stove, and Jamie stood guard at the back door. Conversation ceased when I entered and eight eyeballs focused on me.

  Blessed mother of Maude Adams, had they heard about last night’s faux pas? It’s my attire that usually gets the gawks, but this Saturday morning I couldn’t be more pedestrian in jeans and T-shirt emblazoned with a silk screen print of Batman and Robin on the hoof, capes billowing in the breeze.

  Father cleared his throat and announced, “The Beaumont house was raided last night,” thus opening the floodgate.

  Mother: “Were you there, Archy?”

  Ursi: “Binky was on the TV.”

  Father: “Perhaps ‘raided’ is too strong a word. They apprehended the drug ring as they prepared to vacate.”

  Ursi: “Binky said you had him casing the place because you knew something was going on.”

  Jamie: “Not in the papers yet. Too early. We got it on the morning news.”

  Mother: “I was so worried, Archy, I sneaked up to your room to make sure you were home and safe. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Ursi: “I told her the Miata was here so you must be here, but she had to make sure.”

  Father: “Sergeant Rogoff refused to comment, but his commanding officer said it was a joint effort. Did he mean the police and you, Archy?”