McNally's Chance

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Just you, Archy.” She spoke without a trace of shame.

  “You missed your calling, Mrs. Trelawney. One of those alphabet organizations is where you would have risen to the top of the class.

  FBI, CIA, KGB, G-E-S-“I-A-P-O.”

  She nodded knowingly, as if agreeing with me. Mrs. Trelawney has the irritating habit of defusing a barb with a smile. And you should have been a hairdresser,” she shot back. “Love your suit.”

  She referred, no doubt, to my three-buttoned, pale pink linen ensemble of which I was particularly fond. Growing more conservative with the passing years, I no longer wore it with my lavender suede loafers but now opted for a pair of shiny black brogues with cooling perforations at the tips. I thought I looked smashing, but Mrs. Trelawney was the kind of gal who would gladly kick the crutch from Tiny Tim’s grip and tell him to walk like a man.

  Round one. I declared it a tie and made to depart. “See you in court, Mrs. Trelawney.”

  “Just make sure you bring the microwave with you.”

  I froze. “Okay, I give up. Am I supposed to say, “What microwave?”

  “Binky’s microwave.”

  “Binky?” I echoed. “Do you mean…”

  “I mean, we’re giving Binky a housewarming and I have you down for a microwave oven. Is that clear?”

  Nothing could be clearer. I glanced at my watch. Mickey’s small hand was on the ten and his big hand was on the three. I was aghast.

  Minutes after ten in the morning and everyone knew that Binky had rented living space last night and a housewarming was already being planned? “Did he distribute change of address notices this morning?” I complained.

  “He told Evelyn Sharif in Records that he found a place last night, with your help. Evelyn told Sofia Richmond in the library, and Sofia passed it on to me. The housewarming was my idea,” she concluded, as if she had just invented the wheel.

  From Sharif to Richmond to Trelawney, a perfect double play. Binky had a gaggle of middle-aged women vying to make him comfy, like doting mothers gussying up a dorm room for their little freshman. It was those Bambi eyes that evoked the mother instinct in older women and indifference in their daughters.

  There are two things I detest in this vale of tears, and they are eggs Benedict over heather-gray briefs and office parties. Being the scion of the firm’s ruler, I am forced to contribute financially to the latter but reserve my right to be a no-show at the gala. There is something almost morbid about seeing those you toil with in their cups.

  Bottoms are pinched, tops are ogled, and, on occasion, romance by misadventure follows. This differs from death by misadventure in that both parties can get up and walk away from the scene of the crime.

  “Why should I give Binky Watrous a microwave oven?” I wanted to know.

  We did not have such an appliance in our home, thank you. Mother would never force a begonia and Ursi would never force a baked potato. Like Julian, the last Roman emperor to defend the old gods against the Christian hordes, so we McNallys fought valiantly to keep the digital world from encroaching upon our doorstep.

  No fax, no e-mail, no voice mail, no PC, no WP, no CD, and no DVD.

  However, you might find the odd pair of BVD’s in father’s chiffonier.

  “Remember, you’re Binky’s best friend,” she announced.

  “Says who?”

  “Says Binky,” she argued. Binky has diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of ideas. Not wanting to singe Mrs. Trelawney’s ears and, by propinquity, her darnel tresses, I toned it down to, “Binky speaks with a profusion of words and a paucity of facts.” “You’re still down for a microwave oven.” With this she ticked my name off her list of donors. “Your father is giving china. Service for four. A starter set, don’t you know.” “Father? You spoke to the boss?” “This morning at half-past nine, as usual. I told him I would give you his regards as soon as you come in.” “You are a national treasure, Mrs.

  Trelawney, and will take your rightful place in history alongside Pearl Harbor, the Lusitania, and The Fall of the House of Usher,” I was losing my cool. “Flattery will get you wherever you want to go.”

  “Right now I want to go to my office and cry.” “Fine. Then go for the microwave.” “Just how much does one cost?” I asked. “About a hundred, but it depends on the size. And go with a known manufacturer; you don’t want to go cheap on this. Remember, he’s your best friend.” “I don’t have a hundred to spare,” I pleaded like one being audited by the IRS. “You will when you cash in that swindle sheet. Have a nice day, love.” The phone was ringing when I entered my office.

  “Mr. McNally? This is Robert Silvester. I believe you’re looking for me.”

  I wanted to say I was looking for a microwave oven but refrained from doing so. After a significant pause I decided to play it with moxie and answered, “As a matter of fact, Mr. Silvester, I was just about to call you.”

  “Really? And do you know where I am?”

  “I do now. I have caller I.D.”

  Robert Silvester laughed. “I don’t believe you, but you have a whimsical sense of humor, and if you’re going to be dealing with Sabrina you’ll need that in great abundance.”

  “You know I’ve seen your wife?”

  “I do now.” Again the laugh. It was a pleasant sound, not at all mocking. “It was me who gave Sabrina your name.”

  I got the feeling I was being jerked around with humor and I didn’t like it. “You told your wife to hire me to look for you? How clever.”

  “So, I am the man that got away.”

  “Let’s say you’re in the running, Mr. Silvester.”

  “How did Ms Spindrift know Sabrina had come down here looking for me?”

  Silvester asked.

  “Mr. Spindrift. Lolly is a he.”

  “How quaint.”

  “I’ll tell him.” Not wishing to get into a discussion about men named Carroll and Adrian I asked, “Why did Zack Ward tip off Lolly that Sabrina was in town looking for some guy?”

  “He didn’t.” came Silvester’s immediate reply.

  “Then who did?”

  “For all I know it may have been Sabrina herself.”

  Lolly had told me the caller was a man, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. Instead I told him what I thought of the inference. “I’m not amused, Mr. Silvester.”

  “Please, call me Rob.”

  “I’m still not amused, Rob.”

  “If you give me a chance, I’ll tell you what I know,” he said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Not on the phone, it would take too long. Besides, I’d like to meet you in person. Do you lunch?”

  “Only when I’m hungry.”

  “Would Harry’s Place at The Breakers suit?”

  To a “I.”

  “Good. Let’s say twelve-thirty or one.”

  Six

  The Breakers was originally created as Henry Flagler’s Palm Beach Inn.

  Originally build of wood, it twice burned to the ground before the current phoenix rose from the ashes. It’s said that the second conflagration was started by a PB matron giving herself a home perm with a curling iron.

  I don’t know which came first, Cornelius Vanderbilt’s weekend cottage in Newport, also called The Breakers, or Flagler’s inn. I do know Cornelius never ran a B-&-B at his place, but then Cornelius never had a drawbridge named after him. Henry’s Palm Beach cottage, Whitehall, is now the home of the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum. Its size and opulence makes Versailles look like a pretentious bed-sitter with formal gardens.

  Besides the Ponce de Leon ballroom where revelers usually gather in support of some charity rather than seeking eternal youth that they leave to skilled laser wielders The Breakers also houses several fine restaurants. Harry’s Place bills itself as a genuine English pub and is the closest thing to fast-food dining a place like The Breakers would admit to. I told the maitre d’ I was joining Mr. Silvester and as he showed me to the table, my host ro
se to greet me.

  “Mr. McNally,” he said, extending his hand as he eyed my apparel. “I was certain it was you.”

  There are times when my reputation proceeds me. Had I known I was to meet with Robert Silvester today I would have worn the summer uniform

  -chinos, dark blue blazer, and loafers by the Italian shoemaker currently in fashion. (If you get caught in a pair of Mr. Gucci’s flats, you’re giving your age away.) The winter uniform finds the toffs in gray flannels, dark blue blazer, and loafers by etc. As it happened, I was happy to have come as myself as Robert Silvester had come as Everyman.

  Not surprising, the guy was a good fifteen years younger than his wife with the kind of clean-cut good looks popular with Hollywood teenage idols of the forties and fifties. Think of a blond Farley Granger, e.g. Silvester’s hair was an attractive reddish brown, worn parted on the left and showing a hint of gray at the temples. I got the feeling that, contrary to the norm, the gray came from a bottle, perhaps in an attempt to look more like his wife’s husband than her son. A dozen years ago, on his honeymoon, he would have had to show proof before he could order a bottle of champagne to toast his bride. Still, his bright blue eyes and genial smile rendered him more cute than classically handsome.

  “What will you have?” he asked as I sat. “This.” pointing at the drink in front of him, ‘is a pint of Guinness stout. When in Rome ..

  .”

  I wasn’t in Rome so I ordered a frozen daiquiri before playing my first, and only, card. “You know your wife hired me to find you, so I’m obligated to report this meeting to her and tell her you’re staying at The Breakers.”

  He smiled his Hollywood smile, exposing his Hollywood pearly whites.

  “You stopped at the desk before coming in here and asked them if I was registered.”

  I flashed him my jumbo charmer 150-watt smile and assured him that I had. “Zachary Ward and Gillian Wright are also registered, with all of you in separate rooms. How sad for the lovers.”

  My drink arrived and the waiter hovered. “Give us a few minutes,”

  Silvester told him. Alone once more, he said to me, “You’re very good at your job, Mr. McNally. I see I made a wise choice. And I will probably call Sabrina and tell her we’re here before you do.” He lifted his stein. “Your health, Mr. McNally.”

  I drank to that and decided not to tell him he could call me Archy. “So much for my case. Do I still get fed?”

  “But of course. Does a ploughman’s lunch interest you?”

  “Not in the least, but the shepherd’s pie is the best you’ll get this side of the Atlantic.”

  He signaled the waiter and ordered the shepherd’s pie for two. “I’m sure Sabrina filled you in on what we’re all doing here.”

  “She did. But she was rather coy on how she got my name.”

  Silvester nodded knowingly. Typical Sabrina. Never give anything away on page one that you might need later on. It’s the writer’s instinct.

  The less you tell, the more the reader must turn pages to find out what he wants to know. With Sabrina, life imitates art.” He drank his Guinness and managed it without leaving a trace on his upper lip. “When Jill left New York, Sabrina guessed she had come here. You do know why?”

  “I do.”

  “Sabrina wanted to follow immediately and drag Jill home. I talked her into letting me come down alone, find Jill, and see if I could talk her into coming home. I have been acting as arbitrator between Jill and her mother since Sabrina and I were married.” He seemed to think this over, then said, “Perhaps referee would be a more apt job description.”

  As he spoke I filled in the blanks. Fresh out of some Ivy League college with a baccalaureate in English lit, Silvester went to work for a big publishing house with a dream of trees that grow in Brooklyn and valleys full of dolls. He moved rapidly from assistant to associate editor to editor. One day the dream landed on his desk in the form of four hundred laser-printed pages. Robert Silvester had a winner and he showed his appreciation by falling in love with the fictional heroine of Darling Desire.

  When he met the author he experienced a classic case of transference.

  Sabrina Wright had been places and done things Robert Silvester had only read about in the novels he usually returned with the customary

  “Not for us’ rejection letter. If Silvester was bewitched by the fictional Darling Desire he was dazzled by her flesh-and-blood counterpart. This one was not only ‘for us, it was for him.”

  Sabrina’s interest in the bartender at Bar Anticipation told me she had a thing for younger men. Robert Silvester was prime and as an added attraction, as if any were necessary, he was the guy who could shape her novel into a bestseller and guide her career. Not wanting to share her editor, she had married him. Both must have thought they were getting the best of all possible worlds and if fame, fortune, and sex were the criteria, they had.

  During the early days, Gillian was in Switzerland, learning how to speak French atrociously and ski beautifully. When she finished being finished she returned to a famous mother and a stepfather who resembled the ski instructor in Lausanne, who had introduced her to the arts of sex and the slalom.

  “Sabrina is headstrong and adamant when it comes to getting her way,”

  Silvester was saying. “She’s always dictated to Jill rather than reason with her and poor Jill was ready to make the break. Sabrina’s disclosure gave the girl just the excuse she was looking for to act on her own. There is nothing like a worthy cause to justify our actions.

  Jill’s quest is her own Holy Grail.

  “I thought if I could keep mother and daughter apart until I had a chance to talk to Jill it would save a confrontation between the two that would settle nothing. My error was to call Sabrina and tell her I had located Jill and Zack. She insisted on coming down immediately.”

  “She didn’t tell me that,” I thought aloud.

  Silvester’s shrug said that was a given. “Knowing Sabrina was practically on her way here the minute I said I had located Jill, I checked out of the Chesterfield and into here with Jill and Zack, without telling Sabrina. My purpose was to keep the warring parties from hand-to-hand combat until I had some time alone with Jill. I’d reconciled the two before and hoped I could do it again.”

  “And have you?” I asked.

  Silvester shook his head. “No. Jill is more determined than ever to find her father.”

  Our lunch arrived and Silvester eyed his mound of mashed potatoes suspiciously. “I should have had the tossed green salad.”

  Having no such scruples, I asked the waiter to bring me a beer to go with the meal. “Dig in,” I told Silvester. “It’ll put lead in your pencil.”

  “My pencil, Mr. McNally, is not wanting.” As if to prove it he went at his shepherd’s pie with gusto.

  Tell me, do you know who Gillian’s father is?”

  Without skipping a beat he responded, “Cross my heart and hope to die, I don’t. Sabrina will take the secret to her grave.”

  “And when did you learn that Sabrina was Gillian’s natural mother?”

  Not looking me in the eye, he stated, “At the same time Jill got the news.”

  I wanted to know if he had shared in the champagne toast, but the guy was embarrassed enough at the disclosure, and I saw no reason to add insult to injury. I wondered what other secrets Sabrina Wright kept from those she loved and, no doubt, so did they. As far as I was concerned the case, which I didn’t want from the beginning, was closed.

  I would bill Ms Wright for twenty-four hours, plus expenses, and leave her and her kin to sort out their differences while running up a tab at The Breakers your average Joe might mistake for a telephone number. But I did want a few answers before I left the clan to their fate.

  “Will you tell me how you got my name?” was number one on my list.

  Silvester waved his hand as if shooing a pesky fly. “Of course.” He gave me a name that sounded vaguely familiar and went on to say, “We were
at college together. He’s from these parts and in our junior year he got himself into a bit of a jam during the Christmas break. A little booze, a little pot, a fast car, and an underage girl in the passenger seat is the way it went, I think. His father hired you to patch things up and he returned to school singing your praises. I never forgot your name or the fact that you owned a collection of silk berets in a variety of pastel shades.”

  I recalled my silk-beret period with a nostalgia I’m sure Picasso must have felt for his blue period. This link brought to mind my former client and his son. Good people and it was the boy’s first offense, which is why I agreed to help him. “What did he do after college?”

  “Wall Street,” Silvester answered. “I called him to see if you were still in business down here. He contacted his father and that’s how I got your number. I told Sabrina I was going to enlist your help, but as it turned out that wasn’t necessary. Having given her your name I was sure she would contact you when she got here.”

  Next query. “She asked me to meet her in a bar of dubious reputation.

  Any idea how she knew the place?”

  Like a weary martyr he sighed audibly. “My guess is she got one of the Chesterfield’s employees to give her a rundown of the area’s more notorious watering holes and then chose the one most renowned as a meeting place. Even under stress, Sabrina Wright must amaze, amuse, and mystify her gentlemen callers. I take it she treated you to all three, Mr. McNally.”

  She had, and with great style. After years of poking around in other people’s dirty laundry, I can say with considerable confidence that the answers to most of life’s mysteries are simplistic and obvious, from the pyramids to Sabrina Wright, as Robert Silvester had just confirmed.

  It’s the commonplace that’s more likely to contain surprises behind its familiar facade.

  My first thought regarding Lolly’s anonymous caller was that he or she was a clerk at the Chesterfield, who knew Sabrina Wright had registered at the hotel and had heard her ask for Robert Silvester. The informer made a grab for his, or her, fifteen minutes and settled happily for anonymous fame when Lolly printed the item. Simple and obvious. Yet I couldn’t help but ask, “Why did you suggest Sabrina herself might have made that call to Lolly Spindrift?”