McNally's Dare

by Lawrence Sanders

  “I will pretend to be gathering information for my Palm Beach story,” Denny was saying, “and continue being snubbed by all the right people and patronized by those who don’t matter.”

  That reminded me of Lolly. “Have you met Lolly Spindrift?”

  Denny thought a moment. “You mean the little guy in the white suit at MacNiff’s?”

  “That’s him. He’s our local gossip columnist,” I said, “and you might interview him as part of your cover.”

  “He gave me the cold shoulder,” Denny complained, “like everyone else at the MacNiff party.”

  “I happen to know that Lolly can’t refuse an invitation to be wined and dined at someone else’s expense. Cafe L’Europe is his favorite.”

  Denny nodded. “I’ll give it a try. Would you like to be wined and dined at my expense right here? The food is excellent.”

  “Thanks, but I have a dinner date.”

  At that moment, from out of nowhere, the sound of a shaky but robust tenor rose above the din, belting out Verdi’s rousing drinking song from La Traviata. I turned to see one of the waiters, a little older and a little stouter than the rest of Daniel’s crew, playing Alfredo in the middle of the small parquet dance floor and, appropriately enough, wielding a glass of champagne to the delight of his audience.

  “The room’s singing waiter and main attraction,” Denny informed me. “They call him the fourth tenor.”

  Our Caruso wanna-be finished with a theatrical flourish to his imaginary Violetta and to a standing ovation. I couldn’t wait to drag Al Rogoff to the next performance.

  EIGHT

  I CROSSED BACK TO the island and drove north on Ocean Boulevard with the top of my red Miata down, under a canopy of glittering stars and a new moon. I have traveled this route countless times but have yet to become jaded to the sights and sounds and splendor of my hometown on a balmy winter night when a gentle ocean breeze sets the palm trees swaying to the music coming from my car’s radio.

  I drove past sumptuous white brick condos with terraces overlooking the Atlantic and grand homes with their windows ablaze as limos and sports cars with foreign plates pulled in and out of gated driveways. Farther along, the island widens to accommodate palatial villas on both sides of the highway and I found myself sandwiched between the rich and the richer in the land of Oz, on my way to see the Wizard.

  Forgive the blather, but the easy listening music beneath the stars and swaying palms had me waxing poetic—as do two martinis, unsolved murders and singing waiters. I was actually on my way to the land of Juno to see my current flame, Georgy girl, known to her coworkers as Georgy and to her parents as Georgia. My green-eyed blonde is the happy result of a union between Ireland and Italy. I speak of her parents, not the nations. I read that this mix, especially in New York, is the most popular in our melting pot but has not, thanks to the blessed memory of Georges Auguste Escoffier, led to the joining of boiled potatoes and pasta.

  Instead, it has given us handsome lads and gorgeous colleens with attitude. There are those who, in the garden of love, always manage to get hit on the noggin with a falling lemon. I was struck by a peach who packs heat and is licensed to kill. Lieutenant O’Hara, a state trooper if you please, and even if you don’t please. We met over a corpse in a seedy motel room. Given that beginning I figured the relationship had no place to go but up, so I invited her to dinner. We’ve been an item ever since.

  Georgy’s electronic message this afternoon had instantly reminded me where and when I had heard the name Joe Gallo, the affable young man Holga von Brecht and I had beat two games out of three before the discovery of Jeff Rodgers’s body in the MacNiffs’ pool. The name came not from a wine commercial as one might expect, but from the ruby lips of Georgy girl. Gallo was her ex-lover who had forsaken her for the good life with a rich divorcée of advanced years whom I now suspected was none other than Vivian Emerson. Really! In Palm Beach in season one needs a dramatis personae to tell who’s who, but that’s what we have Lolly Spindrift for.

  Driving past Mar-a-Lago, I thought of my lunch with Malcolm MacNiff, which, in turn, led to thoughts of the meeting I had just left with Dennis Darling. Odd, how all the names rattling around in my head on this enchanting evening, with the exception of Georgy girl, were present when Jeff Rodgers met his maker. Now I knew of a link, however tenuous, between the dead boy and one of Nifty’s guests, namely Lance Talbot; and between Joe Gallo, Vivian Emerson and Georgy. If one dug deep enough, would everyone at the MacNiff house yesterday afternoon emerge holding hands like paper dolls stretched the distance from the tennis courts to the pool?

  Today saw the first time two clients had hired me to investigate the same person for different reasons. Nifty wanted me to prove that Lance Talbot was, or was not, Lance Talbot and, incidently, to learn what I could about his backyard murder. Denny wanted me to find out what the murdered boy had on Lance Talbot, not knowing that Lance Talbot might not be who he claimed to be.

  Clearly, what I needed to learn were the elements and circumstances in which the crime was committed. In this instance, the number one element is, Why was Jeff killed? The leading circumstance is, Who was able to go from the tennis courts to the pool, without being missed or seen, to commit the dastardly deed?

  I believed the answers would K two B’s with one S: solve Jeff’s murder and old Mrs. Talbot’s tantalizing riddle, “The king is dead.” The latter, I suddenly decided, would be the title of the case I would begin recording in my journal when I arrived home this evening, or, with a little bit of McNally luck, tomorrow morning.

  Georgy girl lives in what was once the guest cottage of an antebellum mansion that has seen better days. Her old landlady, a recluse who is the sole occupant of the manor house, checks the traffic in the driveway leading to Georgy’s digs by peering surreptitiously from behind a beaded curtain. In the months I have been calling on Georgy, the old lady and I have devised a coded form of communication. She peeks through the beads and I beep the Miata’s horn in reply.

  The first time I spent the night with Georgy, leaving in the early morning, I do believe the old biddy shook a fist at me from behind her beaded shield. In the weeks that followed she seems to have come to terms with the facts of life, or the facts of her tenant’s life, and we are once again on nonspeaking terms.

  Georgy invited me to supper, which, given her cooking skills, is tantamount to playing Russian roulette with your digestive system. Georgy holds the “Fast Food Queen of Florida” title and has been short-listed to take the world title faster than you can nuke a weenie in your microwave.

  When I entered the cottage she was at the stove in her cute galley kitchen emptying a can of tuna into a pot of cooked noodles. Turning, she lovingly greeted me with, “I hope that’s not an alligator shirt.”

  “I hope that’s not a tuna ’n’ noodle casserole.”

  “What you see is what you get,” she assured me.

  What I saw was a blond creature in white shorts and T-shirt that allowed for an inch or two of bare midriff. When, as now, Georgy putters around the cottage barefoot, she reminds me of the comic strip character Daisy Mae, whose charms were lost on Lil’ Abner. Georgy’s allure is not lost on Lil’ Archy.

  Coming behind her I parted the blond tresses like a curtain and kissed the back of her neck. She smelled of jasmine-scented soap and tuna fish. “Let me take you away from all this,” I whispered into her ear.

  “How far?” she wanted to know.

  “The bedroom?”

  “That’s what I thought,” she replied, elbowing me aside to put the odious casserole in the oven. “Help yourself to a drink and then start preparing the salad.”

  Since I brought a toothbrush, shaving kit and change of shorts and socks into Georgy’s home, she thoughtfully purchased a tea trolley in antiquated Formica—there truly is such a thing—on which to set up a portable bar. Remembering my two vodka martinis, I poured myself a light vodka and tonic and mixed the same for my hostess, earning me a misch
ievous wink of her green eye.

  “Cheers,” she said, taking a sip. “Hmmmm, good. I’ve been cruising in the patrol car all day, terrifying speeders.”

  “Did you catch any?”

  “Not enough to justify the gas I used.” She took a salad bowl from one of the cupboards and placed it on the kitchen drain board. “How was your day?”

  “Lunch at Mar-a-Lago with Malcolm MacNiff and cocktails at the GulfStream with Dennis Darling of Bare Facts magazine.”

  “You poor, poor dear. Do you want me to make the salad while you take a snooze until I ring the dinner bell?”

  “My job might seem like a piece of cake,” I said, not for the first time, “but murder was on the agenda at both meetings. It’s emotionally exhausting.”

  Opening the refrigerator door I knew better than to go to the vegetable bin in search of a good, old fashioned solid head of iceberg. Experience taught me to reach for a Ziploc bag of precut, prewashed mixed greens, the contents of which I emptied into the salad bowl. “You wouldn’t happen to have a nice, ripe tomato I could cut up and put in the salad?”

  “I don’t think so,” Georgy said, opening a package of frozen crescent rolls and arranging them on a baking dish.

  “Cucumber?”

  “I’m a policewoman, Archy, not your Ursi,” she complained.

  “A tomato and a cucumber do not an Ursi make,” I informed her, putting the bowl in the refrigerator. “French, Russian or Italian?” I asked, eyeing the three squeezable plastic bottles lined up on the inside of the fridge door.

  She put the crescent rolls in the oven, next to our casserole that was beginning to bubble, making tiny popping sounds that could put a horse off its feed.

  “This is the last time I’m making you dinner,” she sassed.

  “Your lips to God’s ear” I said, and she burst into tears.

  I took her in my arms and patted her back. “There, there, Georgy girl. I was only kidding.”

  “You were not. I’m a lousy cook and we both know it.”

  “But you have other worthy attributes,” I told her.

  “Name two,” she demanded.

  “I would rather show you than tell you.”

  “All you ever think of is your stomach and your...”

  “Don’t say it. I evoked God’s ear and He’s listening.”

  “You’re a snob, Archy McNally. And an egotist.” She paused for breath as my hand kneaded her lower back where T-shirt did not meet shorts. “And you’re stuck on yourself.”

  “My favorite wit said, ‘to love yourself is the beginning of a life-long romance.’”

  Ignoring Mr. Wilde’s observation, she continued her attack with, “Getting photographed in a jacket that looks like a botanical garden in full bloom and confusing me with your dog. I could scream.”

  Now we were nearing the heart of the matter. “You saw the interview.”

  “I did,” she said, “and so did everyone in the Juno barracks. I am now known as Hobo, thanks to you.”

  Not wishing to add insult to injury, I suppressed a chuckle and suggested we sit in the parlor and enjoy our drinks while we bashed each other, like proper married folks. “You’re overreacting,” I diagnosed.

  “Am I? Name one of Augusta Apple’s films,” she challenged.

  “Who in the name of jumping Jehovah is Augusta Apple?”

  “Lila Lee, your favorite movie star, that’s who. You’re a phony, McNally.”

  Did I mention that besides being the Fast Food Queen of Florida, Georgy girl is also the undisputed champ of movie trivia? It was a title I thought I held until meeting up with Officer O’Hara.

  “She was the mother of the writer James Kirkwood,” I offered.

  She shrugged that off with, “Everyone knows that.”

  “I doubt it, but let’s not argue the point.” Taking her hand I proposed, again, we sit, “But first lower the oven temperature to warm, we don’t want to char the tuna ’n’ noodle casserole.”

  “The rolls won’t rise,” she said.

  “We’ll declare them crepes and have them for dessert.”

  The parlor, galley kitchen and breakfast nook are all one room and take up half the cottage’s square footage. The other half comprises the bedroom and bath, located through a doorway just to the left of the kitchen. We settled on the couch, which was upholstered in a tan, corded fabric; a material that is serviceable and a color that goes with everything.

  “Now tell me what the tears are all about,” I said, once we were side by side with her blond head resting on my shoulder.

  “I just told you,” she lied.

  Georgy girl was a policewoman to the core, proud of the fact, and a credit to her chosen profession. This did not compromise her femininity one iota. She was any man’s equal, but did not shrink from using her charisma to charm the pants off her beau. (Metaphor not coincidental.) Under ordinary circumstances, and from past experience, I knew she would register her displeasure with my interview by crowning me with the casserole after draping the crescent rolls around my neck. But tears? Never.

  Voicing my suspicions, I casually inquired, “How did you know I played tennis with Joe Gallo?”

  “Did you actually play with him? I knew he was at your fancy party, but I didn’t know you met him.”

  My chin being higher than her head I couldn’t see her face but I envisioned those emerald eyes, wide with curiosity. Did she imagine Joe Gallo and me doing battle across a net for her favors? And she called me an egotist? Before she had me forgetting the question, I repeated, “So how did you know I was at a fancy party with Joe Gallo?”

  She mumbled something. “Speak up, missy,” I ordered.

  “Connie called me,” she said, an octave higher, but painfully audible.

  Well—am I to be spared nothing? Introduce two women and the next thing you know they are discussing you on one of those wireless contraptions while chasing vehicular speeders and, no doubt, running over au pairs wheeling prams. This, I thought, is what comes from playing goody two shoes and thinking we can all be friends. Well, it’s clear, we can’t.

  Connie Garcia, who is social secretary to Lady Cynthia Horowitz, a septuagenarian with a face that could stop a clock and a figure that could stop traffic, and I were once an item. In fact we were a staple on the PB social scene until nasty words, like marriage, passed between us. When Connie told me to move in, legally, or move out, permanently, Georgy girl and I struck up a conversation over a corpse. At the same time, the gods, who work in strange ways, had Connie hook up with Alejandro Gomez y Zapata on a conga line in South Beach.

  Alex is a rebel whose cause is to free Cuba from Mr. Castro. It is not clear how Alex is going to do this. In the meantime he leads political rallies, parades and conga lines. It’s rumored that Alex is going to make a run for mayor of Miami. If he wins, Connie will be Mrs. Mayor. I sincerely hope Alex invades Cuba, taking Connie with him, before this comes to pass.

  One evening, dining with Georgy girl at my club, the Pelican, we found ourselves at a table next to Connie and her Spanish dancer. This could happen because the Pelican is also Connie’s club. Ignoring my chauvinistic instincts, I invited my former to join our table and meet my current. Now I learn they talk behind my back and, if Connie knows that Joe Gallo and Georgy were once an item, they talk quite intimately. And if Georgy talked about Joe, did Connie talk about moi? I think I blushed, which is not a good thing for a discreet inquirer to do.

  Here you have the result of allowing women to join men’s clubs, compete in manly sports, enter manly professions and vote. Wise Queen Bess said the suffragette movement would end civilization as we know it—and she was right. A pox on equality.

  Probing further into this treachery, I ventured, “So how did Connie know I was at a fancy party with Joe Gallo?”

  “A friend of Lady C’s was there and she called Lady C to report on all the hot young men in their tennis shorts. This woman and Lady C trade, so Connie tells me.”

  Tr
ade? Does the women’s movement know no bounds? “And Joe Gallo was on the hot young men list, I take it.”

  “You know it,” she said.

  That I wasn’t on the list was implied, if not stated. Was remembrance of things past the reason for Georgy girl’s melancholia? Giving her a jolt that would either cure or kill, I said, “I also met Vivian Emerson.”

  Georgy sat up, reached for the drink she had deposited on the glass-top coffee table, and imbibed. “Archy, can you honestly say you never think about Connie—remembering the good times—and wondering what went wrong, and why?”

  Now we were hitting below the belt, and it hurt. “I can’t honestly say I don’t,” I told her.

  “Then get off my case.”

  Now, that was the Georgy girl I knew and loved. Never beat around a bush when you can pull it up by the roots with a few well-chosen words. If confession is good for the soul, it also has a profound effect on the appetite. “Should we get the one-pot extravaganza out of the oven and check on the crepes?”

  “Not until you tell me about the murder. Is that why you had lunch with MacNiff? It happened at his house, right?”

  “Didn’t Lady C’s talent scout have anything to say about it? She was there when it happened.”

  “She only reported that one of the caterer’s boys drowned in the pool. She thought it was an accident. Now we all know it wasn’t. Are you acting for MacNiff?”

  I saw no harm in telling her that MacNiff had asked me to look into the matter, as it had occurred on his turf. When I get a case, such at this one, that is also being investigated by the police, I have to play it very close to the vest when discussing it with Al Rogoff and Georgy girl. Of course this did not prohibit me from asking, “What do you hear about the boy’s murder?”

  “Are you looking for privileged information, McNally?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Well, save your breath. I know that the boy was chloroformed and pushed into the pool to drown.”

  “That, I’m sure, is in the police press release,” I said.