McNally's Secret

by Lawrence Sanders

  “You know, lad,” she said, “‘devious’ isn’t the word for you. You’re a solid-gold sonofabitch.”

  “I try,” I said modestly.

  Then there was a long silence while she pondered the risk-benefit ratio. I wondered if she had learned mulling from Prescott McNally.

  “Your father is something of a bore,” she said at last.

  “I know,” I agreed.

  “Do you?” she challenged. “Do you also know that he happens to be a very passionate lover?”

  “How on earth would I know that?” I asked, reasonably enough.

  She made up her mind. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll give your father a pink slip. And in return, you’ll keep your mouth shut and go along with the police opinion that Angus was the thief?”

  “Agreed.”

  “And that I was unaware the Inverted Jennies were fakes?”

  “Again, agreed.”

  “Then consider the contract signed,” she said. She lifted her arms above her head in a long, lazy stretch. The peignoir gaped open, a little. It could have been an accident. She looked at me thoughtfully. “Now I must find a replacement,” she said.

  “Not me,” I said hastily.

  “You have no desire to pinch-hit for your father?”

  “I think not. I am not in your class, Lady Cynthia. A lightweight wouldn’t go up against a heavyweight, would he?”

  She grinned at me. “I don’t weigh so much,” she said. “I wouldn’t hurt you.”

  “Tell it to the Marines,” I jeered.

  “I have,” she said. “Frequently. Are we still friends, lad?”

  “I devoutly hope so,” I said, and meant it. “I assure you that I have the greatest respect and admiration for you.”

  That naked leg inched toward total revelation.

  “Well, it’s a start,” she said, and I got out of there as fast as I could.

  I drove home in the rain, not caring that both I and the Miata were getting drenched. Along the way I sang, “Yes! We Have No Bananas,” never wondering why it gave me so much pleasure to finagle other people’s lives.

  Chapter 18

  BUT BY FRIDAY MORNING, my joy had evaporated, and I suffered a seizure of introspection and doubt.

  For the sake of McNally family unity I had brought an end to my father’s fling with Lady Horowitz. I termed it a “fling,” but what if it had been the world’s greatest romance since Bonnie and Clyde? In other words, I had played God—and who gave me the divine right to manipulate people? I was, I acknowledged briefly, guilty of hubris, if not chutzpah.

  It was a miserable day, and I had a mood to match. Flurries of rain came boiling in from the sea, and if there was a sun up there behind that fat mattress of clouds, there was no sign of it.

  After breakfast I went back to my haven and mooched around awhile. I decided there was no point in driving to the office and sitting in my cramped sepulcher creating fictions for my expense account. I came to the conclusion that to prevent a fatal onslaught of the megrims I absolutely had to see Jennifer Towley, for lunch or dinner. That wonderful woman would elevate my spirits and give me a reason to go on breathing.

  I called instanter and was rewarded with a mechanical message from her answering machine, followed by that damnable beep. I recited a piteous statement, pleading with her to call me as soon as possible. After I hung up, I wondered where on earth she might be so early in the morning on such a venomous day.

  I told myself that jealous suspicion was an unworthy emotion, perilously close to paranoia, and I would have none of it. So I resolutely set to work on my journal, completing the record of the Inverted Jenny Case. I didn’t call Jennifer again for almost an hour. Then, hoping she might have returned home and neglected to replay her messages, I phoned. All I got for my effort was the machine. Derisive, that gadget. I hung up, gnashing my molars in frustration.

  Finally, close to noon, my phone rang and I leaped for it.

  “Hello!” I caroled as melodiously as I could.

  “What the hell?” Sgt. Rogoff said. “Are you yodeling or something?”

  “Hello, Al,” I said sheepishly. “Just clearing my throat. What did you learn from Kenneth Bodin?”

  “His story’s the same as Sylvia’s. He says Wolfson gave him the stamps to sell and promised him a ten percent commission.”

  “Did Wolfson tell him how he got the stamps?”

  “He claims Wolfson said Lady Horowitz gave them to him to sell.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “You think I was born yesterday? Of course not. The chauffeur knew damned well that Wolfson had stolen the stamps. But he didn’t care; he just wanted a piece of the action.”

  “Uh-huh. What are you going to do with Sylvia and Bodin?”

  “Not a whole hell of a lot. You want to bring assault charges against him?”

  “Good lord, no!”

  “Then I think we’ll just tell him to take his playmate and vamoose. If we get both of them out of the county I’ll be satisfied. By the way, he says Thomas Bingham wasn’t connected with the caper in any way, shape, or form. I think he’s telling the truth.”

  “Probably,” I said. “It was just a wacko idea. Thanks for checking it out. So you’re closing the file?”

  “You betcha. I gave the stamps to your father. He’s going to return them to Lady Horowitz this afternoon and tell her they’re fakes. Lucky man!”

  “Yes,” I said, “isn’t he. When are you leaving on your vacation?”

  “As soon as the rain lets up. And the way it’s coming down, that might be next year.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Lourdes,” he said. “My hemorrhoids are killing me.”

  It was the first laugh I had all day. “Have a jolly time, Al,” I said. “Give me a call when you get back and we’ll get hammered at the Pelican Club.”

  “Will do,” he said and hung up.

  It wasn’t the telephone call I wanted, but it soothed the fantods a bit. I wasn’t even depressed to learn that Tom Bingham had nothing to do with the theft of the Inverted Jennies. Thinking he might be involved had been a selfish wish on my part, very unprofessional, and I was happy to have been proved wrong before I made an even bigger ass of myself.

  I went down for lunch about twelve-thirty. Mother and I sat in the kitchen with the Olsons, and we all shared a big salad bowl of shrimp, crabmeat, and chunks of sautéed scallops, along with a basket of garlic toast. Mother was in a frolicsome mood and drank a glass of sauterne. No use telling her it was the wrong wine; it was right for her.

  I went back upstairs, looked out the window, and saw that the rain was slackening. But the sky was still clotted with clouds, and there was grumbling eastward and an occasional flash of lightning. It was not a scene to photograph for South Florida’s tourist brochures.

  I resolved to call Jennifer one more time, just once, and if she wasn’t in, the solution was simple: I’d just slit my wrists. Her phone rang twice, was grabbed up, and she said breathlessly, “Hello?”

  “Archy,” I said. “What have you been doing wandering about in this monsoon?”

  “Oh dear,” she said, “please let me call you back. I just got in, I’m soaked and have to change. Are you home or at the office?”

  “Home.”

  “Call you back in five minutes,” she said and hung up.

  It was more like fifteen minutes, but I waited patiently; I had no choice.

  “Listen, Archy,” she said, very businesslike, “I know it’s a rotten day, but I must talk to you. Could you come over?”

  “Now?” I said. “This minute? How about dinner tonight?”

  “No,” she said firmly, “no dinner. I’d like to speak to you as soon as possible.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Archy,” she said, voice tight, “let’s not discuss it on the phone. Can you or can you not come over now?”

  “All right,” I said, wondering what the crisis was. “I’ll be th
ere within the hour.”

  I pulled on a nylon golf jacket and my rain-hat. I went downstairs and found my mother and the Olsons still in the kitchen, laughing up a storm and sharing a plate of Ursi’s sinful chocolate-chip cookies.

  “Mother,” I said, “I’ve got to go out and don’t want to waste time raising the Miata’s roof. May I take the station wagon?”

  “In this weather, Archy?” she said. “Whatever for?”

  “An errand of mercy,” I said.

  She looked at me, suddenly worried. “I hope so,” she said. “Of course, take the Ford.” She paused. “I’m not sure about the gas,” she said doubtfully. “I think there’s some in the tank. You better check, dear.”

  “I shall,” I promised, leaned to kiss her cheek, and snaffled two of the cookies.

  She was right about the gas; the dial showed less than a quarter-tank. But the instruments on that antique vehicle had eroded over the years, and I could just as easily be starting out with Full or Empty. I took the chance, comforting myself with the old maxim that God protects fools and drunks.

  Despite a few asthmatic coughs and wheezes, the old wood-bodied station wagon behaved admirably and, boasting high clearance, had no trouble navigating the flooded streets en route to Jennifer’s home. It had stopped raining, but I was forced to leap a few deep puddles to reach her door. I didn’t quite succeed; my Bally loafers were squishing.

  Inside, with her permission, I kicked off the shoes and left them in the umbrella drip-pan of her Victorian hall-tree. Then we looked at each other with very small and very tentative smiles. Jennifer was wearing an enormous white terry robe with the crest of a Monte Carlo hotel—the same cover-up she had donned the first night we were intimate.

  I wanted desperately to believe that a good omen, but her troubled appearance and agitated manner convinced me that there was to be no instant replay of our initial frolic. She led the way into her living room which, on the mournful day, seemed overdecorated with lumpish furniture and ancient tchotchkes.

  Before I quite knew what was happening, she had me seated and had thrust into my hand a double old-fashioned glass that appeared to contain ice cubes and a half-pint of vodka.

  “What?” I said, looking at that enormous drink. “No blindfold and a final cigarette?”

  “Archy,” she said without preliminaries, still standing, “I can’t see you anymore.”

  “Oh?” I said. “Ah?” Not a brilliant reply, I admit, but I felt as if I had just been examined by a doctor who then asked, “Mr. McNally, do you have a will?” I mean I was devastated. Talk about utterly; I was about as utter as one could get. “Why not?” I finally managed to croak.

  “I’ve been seeing Tom Bingham. I was with him last night and all this morning. I promised to remarry him.”

  I stared at her. Suddenly I realized her distress was not caused by vacillation about her decision; she was concerned that I might be hurt. Very kind of her, of course, but at the moment the last thing in the world I wanted was her solicitude.

  “Jennifer,” I said as steadily as I could, “why are you going to remarry Bingham?”

  She lifted her chin a trifle, once more the cool, complete woman she had been. “Because I love him,” she said.

  If there was an answer to that, I didn’t know it. I have a smattering of several foreign languages, but love isn’t one of them. When it comes to the tender passion, I am a total illiterate.

  “You’ve given it a lot of thought?” I asked.

  “Too much,” she said. “It’s had me in a whirl. And then I realized thought and logic can take you only so far. But if they don’t make you happy, what’s the point? Then it’s time to trust feelings and faith. I must do what my heart tells me to do.” Then, recognizing the soap-opera triteness of that final remark, she tried a timid smile.

  “Jennifer, you told me that life with him was a nightmare.”

  “It was. But I’m willing to gamble that he’s changed. He promised he has, that those years in prison have made him a different man.”

  “You’re willing to gamble?” I said, trying not to sound bitter and not succeeding. “You’re doing exactly what you divorced him for—compulsive betting.”

  I think she was startled, as if the idea had never occurred to her.

  “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “But even if you are, it doesn’t affect the way I feel. And if he begins gambling again, so be it. But this time I’ll stick by him. I must. Don’t you see that, Archy? Because life without him is simply unendurable to me. Empty and without meaning. I know that now.”

  Jennifer turned upside down! I listened to that brainy, self-possessed woman calmly tell me what she intended to do, and I couldn’t believe it. Where was her dignity, her self-esteem, her independence, her keen, cutting intelligence? All demolished by the virus of love for which, I had heard, there was no known cure.

  There were things I could have told her. I could have said that while we all may be created equal in the sight of God and the law, people have varying degrees of quality. There are such things as ambition, emotional depth, and intellectual curiosity. Some are born with these attributes, some acquire them over a lifetime, some remain deficient until they are deep-sixed. But we are not all equal.

  Thomas Bingham, it seemed to me, was a lowlife, simply not in Jennifer’s class. And if that is snobisme, I plead guilty. Yet here was this high-quality woman willing—nay, eager!—to sacrifice her life for a low-quality man. I swear I shall never fully comprehend the vagaries of human nature.

  I didn’t say all that to Jennifer, of course. Nor did I tell her that Bingham had already resumed his old habits. I realized that to her, at the moment, the truth was inconsequential. I merely put my drink aside without having tasted a sip, for which I was justly proud. I stood and in ringing tones I wished Jennifer Towley all the happiness in the world and thanked her for all the joy she had given me.

  Tears came to her eyes, she rushed to hug me, kiss my lips, touch my cheek.

  The third embrace.

  I reclaimed my sodden shoes, golf jacket, rainhat, and exchanged a final wave with Jennifer. What brave smilers we were! Then I drove home, determinedly not brooding on what my dithering had cost me. But I could almost hear my mother’s sorrowful, “Oh, Archy!”

  I stopped on the way to fill up the Ford’s tank (it had been half-full—or half-empty, depending on your philosophy) and then continued on to the McNally stage set. I garaged the station wagon and entered the house through the kitchen. Ursi was at the range stirring up a bouillabaisse in a big cast-iron pot.

  “Smells sensational,” I told her, “but unfortunately I’m going out for dinner tonight. If there’s any left, will you put it aside for my breakfast tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” she said, seeing nothing unusual in someone wishing to breakfast on her fish stew.

  “And also, Ursi,” I added, “please tell my parents I’m feeling a bit mangy and won’t be able to join them for the cocktail hour.”

  She stopped stirring the stew to look at me. “If you say so,” she said.

  I trudged up to my hideout, feeling like something the cat dragged in. After I locked the door, which I rarely do, I stripped off damp jacket and hat, kicked off soaked loafers, peeled away sodden socks. Then I lay on my bed and wished for a quick and merciful quietus. People would cluck and say, “He died of unrequited love,” little knowing that I had croaked from chronic indecision.

  I am, as you may have gathered, a social creature. I can endure solitude, but it is not my favorite indoor sport. I much prefer the company of others and the reassurance that they are as screwed-up as I.

  But now, staring at a water stain on the ceiling that resembled a map of Iceland, I told myself there was a lot to be said for solitude. I told myself that man is not necessarily a herd animal. I told myself that self-knowledge is of utmost importance and can only be achieved through solitary rumination, a sort of mental cud-chewing.

  I therefore resolved to spend a
quiet, reflective evening alone, pondering my shortcomings and planning how I might become a kinder, gentler human being.

  After about twenty minutes of this mawkish self-flagellation, I decided the hell with it and spake aloud Popeye’s admirable dictum: “I yam what I yam.” Invigorated, I rose and poured myself a very small marc. Then, in honor of Jennifer Towley, I put on a tape of Frank Sinatra singing “It Was a Very Good Year.” I needed to hear it. His reading of that line “...and it came undone” is the perfect elegy for a lost love.

  I played more Sinatra, and Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, early Bing Crosby (“Just a Gigolo”), and Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter. Then I listened to my favorite balladeer: Fred Astaire. Most people remember Astaire as a dancer, but no one has ever done a better vocal of “A Fine Romance.”

  While I listened to all this swell stuff, I took a shower, washed my hair, trimmed my toenails, and generally reconstructed my life. The cocktail hour passed, the dinner hour passed, and I dressed and was thinking vaguely of making a run to the Pelican Club when I heard a tentative knock on my door. I unlocked to find my father standing on the landing.

  I was surprised to see him because he infrequently invaded my sanctum. I stared at him, wondering if his hairy eyebrows and mustache were drooping dispiritedly. They definitely were, I decided—which meant that Lady Horowitz had given him his marching papers. Not as her attorney, as her paramour.

  “Ursi said you were feeling peakish,” he said. “Mother asked me to stop by. May I come in?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I was feeling somewhat bilious, but I’m better now.”

  “Glad to hear it,” he said, entering.

  He was carrying two crystal wineglasses and an opened bottle of Cockburn’s port. Considering what had happened to both of us that afternoon, it seemed a fitting brand.

  He poured us full glasses, then took the chair behind my desk. I sat on the edge of the bed. He offered no toast, nor did I.

  “I saw Lady Horowitz today,” he said. “I returned the Inverted Jennies and informed her they were counterfeit.”

  “And how did she take the news?”

  “Amazingly well. Disappointed, naturally, but willing to accept the loss. We discussed whether the grantor—her first husband, Max Kirschner—had gulled her or if he himself was swindled when he purchased the stamps in Trieste.”