McNally's Chance

by Lawrence Sanders

  Silvester grimaced. “A caprice, nothing more. I’ve been dealing with Sabrina’s impulsive behavior for so long nothing she does surprises me, but, as I’m sure you know, she did not make that call.”

  “And neither did Zack Ward?”

  “No, Mr. McNally, I’m sure Sabrina painted a picture of Zack replete with twirling mustaches and black cape, but he’s not like that at all.

  He is a brash young man, but not a devious one. True, he works for a rag, and he is ambitious, but one has to start someplace. Even Raymond Chandler wrote for the pulps.”

  I didn’t tell him that I rather liked the original pulps with their lurid cover art and even had a few stashed away in a box of memorablia I intend to leave to my godson, Darcy. The one touting The Blue Dahlia on its cover must be worth a fortune.

  In keeping with Silvester’s white paper on Zack Ward, I stated rather than asked, “And he doesn’t court Gillian because of her famous mother.”

  Silvester shook his head. “Did Sabrina tell you Jill met Zack in a writers’ workshop?” When I acknowledged this with a nod, he asked,

  “Did she tell you that Jill was enrolled in that workshop under an alias?”

  He didn’t wait for a response because we both knew she hadn’t. As I had noted when I met her, Sabrina Wright is a package. Now I knew she never allowed anyone, including her husband, to get under the wrapping.

  Silvester explained, “Jill joined the workshop more as a diversion than with any serious intent to penning a novel. She also dabbled in acting classes, art classes, and yoga, all with a ‘no comment’ from her mother. It’s not easy being the daughter of a successful woman and less easy when the woman is Sabrina Wright. “Jill had learned early on that when people discovered her relationship to Sabrina they treated her with either indifference or scorn. In her early days as an actress, a noted producer offered her a big part in his next play if her mother would finance it. After that, she ventured out into the real world under an assumed name. As far as I know she and Zack saw each other for a few weeks before he knew who she really was.” “Then why,” I quizzed, ‘is Sabrina certain Zack Ward is more interested in a Sabrina Wright expose than in her daughter?” He wrestled with that one before capitualating, but not without reluctance. “Zack is young and rather attractive. He didn’t make a fuss over Sabrina, if you know what I mean. To compensate, she had to find a plausible excuse to make herself, and not Jill, the reason for Zack’s presence in our lives.

  Enough said?” The thought had crossed my mind but I had given motherhood and prudence the benefit of the doubt -and come up skunked, yet again. In my formative years I had dated both Polly and Anna.

  Together, they had made a lasting impression. If the writer and her editor were in a give-and-take relationship, poor Rob was coming away empty-handed.

  Even if what he was telling me was true, it didn’t mean that Zack Ward wasn’t the instigator behind Gillain’s search for her father, and I said as much to Silvester.

  “I honestly don’t know if he did or didn’t talk Jill into coming down here,” Silvester said. “But if it was Jill’s brainstorm, Zack is with her all the way. The two are in love, Mr. McNally. Make no mistake about that.”

  I wasn’t about to make any mistakes because I was no longer involved in the rather sordid affair, but as Silvester’s lunch guest I felt I had to feign interest. Okay, I’m not kvetching. Who’s above getting the inside scoop on the antics of the rich and famous? Not Archy.

  However, I couldn’t help but giving ol’ Rob a little nudge in the ribs.

  And if Gillian did happen to find her papa, Zack would pull the plug on his laptop?”

  Silvester signaled our waiter for the check. T’ll tell you what, Mr.

  NcNally. Why don’t you ask Zack that question?”

  I stood in the sitting room of Robert Silvester’s suite at The Breakers, staring at Gillian Wright and Zachary Ward. A line from the intro of an old song echoed in my brain: “Here I stand with deep regret, an innocent victim of etiquette.” That I was, and you could drop the innocent without doing bodily harm to the rhyme’s message.

  When Silvester invited me up to meet the couple I refused with the lame excuse of having an appointment with my tons or He insisted it wouldn’t take long and said so while signing the check. Not wishing to bite the hand that feeds, I acquiesced. “But just for a minute,” I said, running a hand through my hair. Leaving the restaurant he admitted, “I told them I was lunching with you here and they’re anxious to meet you.” I didn’t need a crystal ball to know that Gillian Wright wanted to dub me her knight-errant in charge of her crusade to unearth Daddy Warbucks. Sorry, kid, but I misplaced my DNA-testing kit. Why me? Because they were the new kids on the block and believed I was the only game in town. Having crossed another bridge I didn’t want to leave in flames, I agreed to the meeting for the chance to politely refuse my investiture in person. Silvester called from the desk and told them we were coming up. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr.

  McNally,” Sabrina’s daughter welcomed me. Gillian Wright could be called plain only in contrast to her showy mom. On her own, the young lady was rather pleasing to the eye and this eye is a connoisseur of the species. She had her mother’s dark eyes and a mop of curly light-brown hair. As a child she must have been a true blonde. She sported a healthy tan and wore a pair of indi-chic bell-bottom slacks and a man’s dress shirt with the tails hanging out. Rather than emulate or compete with her high-fashion mother, Gillian chose to dress down in a more subtle, yet edgy style in an attempt to appear as if she had better things to occupy her mind than the current length of madam’s hem line. Unfortunately it didn’t work.

  I’m a very social animal in the Palm Beach area and as such come in contact with the local citizenry on tennis courts and golf courses, and crowded rooms. I could not help but look at Gillian Wright without trying to ascertain if she bore a resemblance to one of the prominent men in my circle. My chances of coming up with a match were hampered by the fact that in Palm Beach we are blessed with more prominent men than grace the hallowed halls of the Racquet and Tennis Club on New York’s Park Avenue. Gillian’s wry smile told me she probably knew what I was thinking.

  It was very clever of you to find Rob.” This from Zack Ward who, with his black-rimmed glasses and a head of expensively layered brown hair, brought to mind a young college instructor bucking for tenure.

  “I didn’t find him,” I quickly corrected. “He called me and gave directions.”

  “But,” Zack Ward amended, ‘if Rob hadn’t called you, how would you have gone about looking for him? I ask as an investigative reporter.”

  “I don’t give away trade secrets. I answer as an investigative snoop.”

  This garnered a nervous laugh all around and saved me the embarrassment of telling the pushy young man that I hadn’t a clue as to how I was going to locate Robert Silvester.

  “Won’t you sit down?” Gillian invited.

  “Sorry, but as I told Mr. Silvester I have an engagement and would come up just long enough to meet you and Mr. Ward. It’s been a pleasure, however brief.”

  This left Gillian no choice but to pounce. “Mr. McNally, you know why I’m here, and I would like to hire you to help me find my father.”

  I think the statement took every bit of courage she possessed, which wasn’t much to begin with. If Sabrina was a brazen peacock, her daughter had all the verve and color of a dormouse. It was heartening to see Zack Ward take her hand as she made her plea.

  “Ms Wright,” I said, ‘you could advertise or make a statement to the press. That would flush him out.”

  “Oh,” she exclaimed as if I had suggested removing a wart with a stick of dynamite. “I would never do that. Did you see the piece in the paper the other day announcing mother’s arrival? I was mortified. How did the reporter know she was here?”

  “I think a clerk at your mother’s hotel is the guilty party,” I answered.

  “I don’t want the pre
ss involved in this in any way, Mr. McNally. It would prove humiliating to both me and my father.”

  “Not to mention Sabrina,” Silvester wisely stated.

  “Sabrina has nothing to do with this,” Ward said with a belligerent edge to his delivery.

  “I beg your pardon, Zack,” Silvester addressed the bespectacled young man, ‘but Sabrina has everything to do with this. She made a bargain and she intends to keep it. Why can’t you respect her position?”

  This verbal salvo had obviously passed among the trio ad nauseam since Silvester had caught up with the pair. I felt like what I was, an outsider trapped in the inside of a family feud. “May I say something?” I cut in before the furniture began to take wing.

  “Please, Mr. McNally,” Gillian Wright said in earnest. “I would value your opinion.”

  “You do me a great honor, but I don’t know the solution to your problem. What I do know is that if your father wanted to establish contact with you he would have done so a long time ago, and is still very capable of doing so if he wishes. Your mother is a famous woman.

  He wouldn’t have to hire Archy McNally to find you.”

  “We thought of that.. .” Ward began, but Gillian cut him off.

  “Let me tell it, Zack,” she insisted. “It takes two to make a bargain, Mr. McNally, and two to uphold it. Maybe my father is as reluctant to go back on his word as my mother is and for the same reason. Each thinking the other wants to stick to the agreement.

  “He may even think my mother never told me the truth, as she hadn’t until a few weeks ago, and felt he had no right to do so if she desired not to. Or, if she had, that I have no desire to know him. You see how many variables there are in this situation? I don’t think we can assume anything. All I want is to meet with my father privately, without causing harm to any concerned, and if he refuses to acknowledge me I will accept that and walk away without sorrow or malice. That I swear to you.”

  I wanted to applaud, but felt it would undermine her sincerity. “You don’t have to swear anything to me, Ms Wright. I’m not an interested party.” Thank God, I thought to myself.

  “Then you won’t help?” she said, clearly struggling to hold back tears.

  “You have to appreciate my position,” I lectured. “Your mother is my client and she is vehemently opposed to what you’re doing. Even if I were so inclined, I can’t take your case. It would be a conflict of interest on par with a divorce lawyer representing both husband and wife.”

  “You told me earlier the case was through,” Silvester noted. I wondered whose side he was on.

  “It is,” I said. “With regards to all of you, I’m afraid.” Softening my tone I went on, Take my advice, Ms Wright, or Jill, if I may: Run off with your beau and give “happily ever after” a try. It’s worked for others.”

  “I’m not going to give up looking for my father, Mr. McNally.”

  “That may prove a very foolish decision, young lady, and a very dangerous one.” And with that, I took my leave.

  Seven

  Herb flagged me from his kiosk as I pulled into our underground garage.

  When I reached his post he was standing by the door displaying a shiny chrome object with the lid open that might have been a relic from the Spanish Inquisition.

  “How do you like it?” He asked.

  “I would hate to get my foot caught in it,” I assured him. “What are you trapping?”

  “Trapping?” he cried. “I’m not trapping anything. It’s a waffle iron.”

  I’m a pancake man myself, but not wishing to offend I said, “Whatever turns you on, Herb.”

  “It’s not for me, Archy. I bought it for Binky’s housewarming.”

  Words failed me. This was clearly getting out of hand. If everyone in the McNally Building bought Binky a gift he could open a Circuit City.

  “Did Mrs. Trelawney suggest the waffle iron?”

  “She did,” he answered.

  “Rather pushy, don’t you think?”

  “You have to admit, Archy, it’s better than having to decide for yourself. I would have bought him a bottle of hooch.”

  “Well, you should have. Binky won’t know what to do with that contraption.”

  “It comes with an instruction book,” herb said as if he represented the waffle-iron industry.

  “Binky Watrous can’t read,” I declared disparagingly.

  “Then how does he deliver the mail?”

  “Pneumatic tubing, that’s how.”

  Herb scratched his head and grunted, “Sometimes, Archy, I don’t get your drift.”

  “Sometimes, Herb, neither do I.”

  In my office I found a message telling me that Connie had called.

  Sandwiched between the afternoon mail I also found a consumer guide magazine opened to the page rating microwave ovens. I dropped it in my wastebasket.

  Before calling Connie, I asked our switchboard to connect me with the Chesterfield. The desk clerk told me that Ms Wright was no longer in residence. True to his word, Silvester must have called his wife as soon as I left The Breakers, and Sabrina had lost no time in joining her family. By now mother and daughter would be locking horns, with Silvester and Ward acting as intermediaries when they weren’t tossing a few stink bombs of their own into the melee. And people wonder why I refuse to get spliced.

  In retrospect, I had no regrets terminating the case and my association with Sabrina Wright. Her lure was sirenic, and best enjoyed from a safe distance. Get too close and you’re caught in the undertow. She was a survivor, for which I admired her, but in rough seas survivors toss cargo and crew overboard to lighten the load. That’s how they survive. Silvester had given me the answers to the questions that had been bothering me. How Sabrina had gotten my name and the reason for the covert meeting at a pub in West Palm. Having met Gillian and Zack I was convinced that they did not make the call to Lolly Spindrift and stuck to the premise that the leak had come from the hotel. True, the evidence was circumstantial, but men have been known to hang on less convincing evidence. Silvester had also filled me in on why he had arrived in Palm Beach without his wife and why he tried to keep Sabrina at bay while he talked to his stepdaughter. The pieces all seemed to fit, but as I cogitated over the events of the last two days I wasn’t satisfied with the picture that emerged. There was something missing.

  Was it something I had forgotten to ask? If so, what it was kept eluding me. I knew it would surface when least expected but, as the case was no longer on my docket, there was no urgency. Final thoughts on “The Man That Got Away’: What was Gillian’s father thinking at this moment and what wouldn’t I give to know his name? Also, what wouldn’t I give not to have to tell Lolly Spindrift his interview with Sabrina Wright was caput?

  When I got Connie on the line, she said she had called to see if I was still among the living. It’s Connie’s way of asking for a date. I invited her to join me for a cocktail at the Pelican after work. That’s my way of accepting.

  “I was there this afternoon, hoping to see you and buy you lunch,” she said.

  This was just the thing I had cautioned against when the Pelican board members decided to make the club coed. At Yale the rash move manifested itself in the fact that one now had to wear trunks in the swimming pool. If Connie had been planning to stand me lunch what could I do but say, “Let’s make it a night and have dinner.”

  “Why, Archy, what a nice idea,” she said and rang off.

  When my phone rang moments later, I thought it might be Connie calling to say she just remembered she was meeting a girlfriend that evening and could she have a rain check? I would pout, beg her to cancel, and issue a rain check good for a year and a day from the date noted above.

  Imagine my surprise when our switchboard person announced that Mr.

  Thomas Appleton was on the line, waiting to speak to me.

  Are you sure he doesn’t want my father, Milly?”

  “No, Archy. He asked for Mr. Archy McNally.”

 
“Put him on,” I said, not without a flutter of apprehension.

  The Appleton family were to Palm Beach what the Cabots were to Boston and the Astors were to New

  York. Thomas was the current patriarch with a son in politics everyone said showed promise. With the Appleton money behind any future campaign, young Troy, I believe that was his name, would no doubt fulfill his destiny. I had seen both father and son around town on a number of occasions and had even watched Troy Appleton on his polo pony in a 22-goal challenge at the Palm Beach Polo and Country Club.

  If Thomas Appleton wanted this McNally, he wanted Discreet Inquiries.

  If he wanted Discreet Inquiries, there was trouble in paradise. The only question was who had taken a chunk out of the apple, pere or fils

  Archy McNally here.”

  “Mr. McNally, I hope I’m not intruding.”

  “Not at all, sir. How may I help you?”

  “I would like to have a word with you at a time and place we can mutually agree upon.”

  This meant that he did not want to come to the McNally Building or meet at one of his clubs and certainly not at mine. It was not an unusual request from one of his ilk. Experience taught me that he had already selected our mutually agreed upon turf so I lobbed the ball gently back into his court.

  “I leave the time and place to you, sir.”

  “How thoughtful, Mr. McNally. Are you familiar with the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art?”

  “I’ve heard of it, certainly, and have been meaning to visit but haven’t got around to doing so.”

  “Then your time has come,” Appleton said, ‘and you’re in for a treat.

  I’m a patron and often take people around, so our meeting won’t cause raised eyebrows should we chance to be seen. You understand, of course.”

  “I do, sir.”

  “Lake Avenue in Lake Worth,” he told me. “They open their doors at noon; shall we be among the early birds?”