McNally's Dare

by Lawrence Sanders

  I sat at my desk to record in my journal, and no sooner did I unscrew the top of the Montblanc than the phone rang. I shuddered. No one calls after ten in the evening bearing good news. With trepidation I picked up the dastardly instrument.

  “Archy McNally here.”

  “Georgy O’Hara here.”

  “Georgy? What’s wrong?”

  “I’m not sure. Joe Gallo just called me.”

  “I thought he was out of your life.”

  “He is. And it seems Vivian Emerson is now out of his life.”

  “She left him?”

  “You might say that. She’s disappeared, Archy, and Joe is scared.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  “I OUGHT TO RUN you in, pal.”

  “What for?”

  “Obstruction of justice, that’s what for.”

  Al Rogoff and I were seated on a bench at the Lake Worth pier, holding containers of coffee purchased from the breakfast emporium just across the A1A. It was a sunny Saturday morning and the beach was swarming with locals as well as visiting firemen. The surfers were out in force and the teenyboppers in thongs were roasting in the sun like sausages on a spit. It was a scene right out of a Hollywood beach film of a bygone era. Life imitating art.

  “I told you everything I know,” I said in my own defense.

  “After the fact,” Al countered. “Before I left the palace this morning the captain told us Lance Talbot was coming in with information about the swimming pool murder. As we speak, he’s telling the captain what you just told me.”

  The palace is Al’s pseudonym for the PBPD headquarters, which some say resembles a French chateau. I always thought the Bastille was a more likely metaphor. The police like to label their cases for easy reference, hence the swimming pool sobriquet for obvious reasons. I believe Sergeant Rogoff was a tad chagrined because I had not powwowed with him sooner. The big lug would never admit it but he prides himself on usually being one step ahead of his colleagues in cases involving the gentry, thanks to me.

  Seeking to placate my sidekick I said, “He’s not telling them that Malcolm MacNiff doubted his claim until yesterday, because he doesn’t know it. That’s just between us.”

  “Also after the fact, or should I say after the toe count? What a collection of clues,” Al moaned. “Nine toes, blackmail, drugs, sex and...”—he paused, thoughtfully—“did I leave anything out?”

  “The dead king,” I hinted.

  I had contacted Al at the palace just as he had come off the graveyard shift, therefore he wasn’t in uniform. For this reason we could meet openly instead of in our more clandestine venues, like supermarket parking lots. We weren’t doing anything wrong, but a man in blue conversing with a civilian cannot help but draw an audience, which we neither wanted nor needed. When cases finally go to trial, it’s not kosher for a potential witness for the prosecution to be asked by the defense what he was doing in private conversation with the arresting officer.

  “You think that king business means something, or nothing?” Al pondered.

  “I thought the king might be the old lady’s grandson, and she was trying to tell MacNiff that her grandson was dead and the guy calling himself Lance Talbot was a phony”

  “But he ain’t no phony,” Al stated, in his endearingly prosaic prose.

  “No, he ain’t,” I answered. “Everything checks. His passport, his appearance, and his feet. When Mrs. Talbot got the second call saying her grandson had not been killed along with his mother, she wired him to return to Palm Beach immediately. He responded to that wire and rushed to her bedside. And the von Brechts, who were friends of his mother, are now with him. So who else could he be?”

  “She’s some looker,” Al mused, sipping his coffee between chomps on his cigar butt. I wish he would toss the things after smoking them, but he once told me the only reason he smokes them is for the pleasure of noshing on the butt. Al also breakfasts on footlong hot dogs and Michelob while humming along with Placido Domingo. I try not to think of these things when I’m with him, but fail miserably.

  “When did you see her?” I asked.

  “They got to the palace just as I was leaving. The husband looks like a storm trooper.”

  “He was born well after the big war, Al.”

  So the von Brechts had accompanied Lance to his meeting with the police. Were those three joined at the hip?

  “How does a king talk?” Al wondered as he watched two bottle blondes roll over to toast their backs.

  One of them unhooked her bra, as those in search of a seamless tan often do, and I theorized upon what would happen if I went down there, tickled the sole of her foot, and caused her to jump up, screaming. Why do I harbor such thoughts? But then, why shouldn’t I?

  “For one thing, kings never say ain’t,” I told him.

  With a menacing stare, he puzzled, “She said he don’t talk like no king. If he ain’t no king, why should he talk like one?”

  I tried to count the grammatical errors in those two sentences but couldn’t keep up with the deluge. “MacNiff now thinks it’s all blather, Al.”

  “What do you think?”

  “MacNiff’s suspicions were all based on believing the old lady was trying to tell him the boy wasn’t her grandson. Now that we have a positive ID on him, her words make no sense. What do the police think?”

  “Us?” Al boomed. “We weren’t apprised of this privileged information, remember? We don’t know beans about Lance Talbot, his grandmother or his nine toes.”

  “I mean what have the police learned about Jeff Rodgers’s murder?”

  “You want me to tell you what we know in exchange for diddlysquat.” He dropped the cigar butt into his coffee container. I assumed he didn’t intend to drink any more.

  Going on the offense, I retaliated. “You haven’t been very forthright with me, Al.”

  He gave this a moment’s thought, then smiled. “You’ve met Izzy.”

  Al Rogoff is a quick study and the department’s most valuable asset. He never rose above the rank of sergeant for the simple reason that the noncom status suited him. Al was a servant of the people, as he liked to boast, and his favorite poet was that champion of the common man, Rudyard Kipling, who defined a veritable man as one who could walk with kings and not lose the common touch. Al had seen too many of his superiors fail that test.

  “The last time we met you knew she had moved in next door and was running around with Binky.”

  “They don’t do much running, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know,” I maintained. “And why didn’t you report this?”

  “Because I ain’t Lolly Spindrift, and because she’s got a jones on for Binky. I didn’t want you raiding the love nest wielding your six-shooter.”

  Working all night had certainly fueled his powers of suggestive imagery. “She’s not my type, Al.”

  “But her bank balance is.”

  “You know she’s loaded?”

  “Binky has mentioned the fact. She likes to shop and Binky is the willing benefactor of her conspicuous consumption.”

  Al borrowed the phrase from me and used it whenever possible. “She bought him an Armani suit,” I said, masking my envy with a show of disdain for a man who would allow a woman to dress him at her expense. Binky had become a Pal Joey, as John O’Hara had labeled such a cad—and I begrudged him every thread of that suit, and the pearl links to boot.

  “He’s looking at Ferraris,” Al said, like they were shopping for an electric can opener.

  Out of control, I shouted, “A what?”

  “Don’t bust a gut, pal. Izzy thinks it’ll go with her Maserati. Cute, no?”

  “No! And I think you’re deriving some weird vicarious pleasure out of this romance.”

  “If that means I’m liking it, the answer is a big yes. It keeps Binky out of what’s left of my hair, and he don’t come calling every morning in search of a teaspoon of sugar or a dram of milk. I hope they marry and settle in Kalamazoo.”
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br />   “You know they have literary aspirations, Sergeant.”

  “I figured they was up to something. They keep asking questions about the murder.”

  I was relieved that he didn’t know they were snooping on behalf of Skip McGuire and kept my own counsel on that score. Al would razz me like a dog gnawing a bone. “Don’t tell them anything, Al,” I ordered.

  He pulled a face. “I don’t know nothing to tell,” said the champ of the double negative. “We questioned everyone that was at the party and came up with nothing. Not even a long shot. Now, all that’s changed. You’ve given us Lance Talbot.”

  “Correction. Lance Talbot has come forth as a concerned citizen—and you never questioned me.”

  Al folded his massive arms across his massive chest, which was covered in a blue shirt embossed with palm trees. His silence spoke volumes, as the hacks say, which, like most trite locutions, says it all.

  “My name was on your list and to save yourself time, effort and shoe leather, you crossed it off because I’m your friend and above suspicion. Obstruction of justice, Sergeant. If you don’t squeal on me I won’t squeal on you.”

  “I’m questioning you now, pal, and look what I got out of you.”

  I waved that off. “After the fact, Sergeant. The guy at the palace is giving your chief the same information, and what do you think they will do with it?”

  “Take notes,” Al answered. “You think he done it, Archy?”

  “With his own hands? No. I can swear to that. But Dennis Darling and I think there’s a link between the blackmail and Jeff’s murder. There has to be.”

  “Dennis Darling,” Al guffawed. “Do you call him Darling, Archy?”

  “Only when we’re alone, Sergeant.”

  “You said Jeff never opened up to Darling?”

  “Never. And I’m not holding anything back, Al. My word of honor.”

  “You got anything better to swear on, Archy?”

  “My virginity?”

  With a yawn and a shrug he sallied, “You wanna try again, pal?” I remembered that he had been patrolling our little island all night and had yet to close his eyes. Returning to business, I stated, “Lance Talbot is now your number one suspect, yes?”

  “By his own admission he’s elevated himself to numero uno,” Al said. “Not to mention that there ain’t no numero dos. But handing him the blue ribbon is another matter. You and a hundred other solid citizens are his alibi. You say the fancy broad was also in the immediate vicinity and nowhere near that pool?”

  Al means no disrespect for the fair sex. He thinks “broads” and “dames” are complimentary terms. “Aren’t you interested in knowing the true reason Jeff was blackmailing Talbot?”

  “Not really. Talbot was being blackmailed and he killed the guy trying to milk him for big bucks. The reason ain’t relevant, like they say. Besides, it’s you and your Darling who think Talbot got more to hide than he’s fessing up to.”

  “But what Talbot is admitting to is no reason to kill for. It’s got to be more than that,” I argued.

  Al remained unimpressed. “Maybe he thought it was reason enough to kill Jeff at the time, and when he discovered Jeff had tipped his hand to the reporter guy, Talbot thought he better come clean and pretend he wasn’t worried about his mother’s reputation or his family’s good name. He ain’t got nothing to lose because he has people like you to swear he didn’t do it.”

  It made sense and I offered no rebuttal—but I wasn’t convinced.

  “You get an answer from the lawyer in Switzerland?”

  “From his secretary,” I reported. “He’s in Berlin and she didn’t know just when he would be back. We’re closed today but I’ll stop at the office and check the machine.”

  “What we gotta do,” Al preached, forecasting his colleagues’ stratagem after hearing Lance Talbot’s story, “is link Talbot to someone at that party. Someone who could have acted for him. I think we’ll have another go at the catering staff. Talbot is rich and those kids are always looking to make a fast buck. MacNiff’s guests ain’t in need.”

  I had been debating on whether I should tell Al Rogoff about Vivian Emerson’s supposed disappearance before I learned more than Georgy was able to tell me last night. Hearing Al dismiss the MacNiff crowd as innocent by divine right, I changed my mind. Also, if her disappearance was connected to Jeff’s murder, I didn’t want Al to again accuse me of purposely keeping him, and the police, ignorant of the facts.

  “Speaking of MacNiff’s guests,” I started, “one of them has gone missing.”

  That revived his interest in what Archy had to say. “How so?” he questioned.

  I had neglected to tell him of my encounter with Vivian Emerson and Joe Gallo at the MacNiff benefit, and now I did.

  “You think this von Brecht dame and the Emerson dame knew each other?” Al asked.

  “I wouldn’t swear to it in a court of law, but Vivian Emerson looked daggers at Holga von Brecht when we all shook hands across the net. Gallo called Georgy last night telling her that Vivian Emerson had disappeared.”

  “Back up, pal,” Al directed, as if he were on traffic duty. “Did this Gallo call the troopers? Is that how Georgy got in on it?”

  I didn’t want to go into the nitty-gritty details, but one couldn’t get away with glossing over the facts with Sergeant Rogoff calling the shorts. “Actually, Gallo and Georgy were tight at one time.”

  “How tight?”

  I sighed and capitulated. “He used to live with her.”

  Al looked pensive before snapping his fingers as if he had come up with a formula for curing patent baldness. “Euphemism,” he barked in triumph. “You are full of euphemisms, Archy. Tight? He was your girl’s boyfriend.”

  “Which has nothing to do with the lady’s disappearance, Sergeant.”

  Not unexpected, the next query was, “What’s Emerson’s relationship to this Joe Gallo?”

  Knowing when to concede to the inevitable, I briefed Al on the shoddy details of Joe’s leaving Georgy’s cottage for Vivian’s commodious villa.

  “You people got the morals of the barnyard,” Al criticized.

  Why I was counted among the iniquitous I don’t know, and did not ask. When Al pontificates I lie low, but I couldn’t help zapping his holier-than-thou gambit with, “Didn’t someone say something about casting the first stone?”

  Al pulled a stogie out of his shirt pocket and stuck it between his teeth. I didn’t know if was going to smoke it or eat it. “I ain’t casting no stones, pal, just calling it like I see it. So what happened to this Vivian Emerson?”

  “Joe said she went out Thursday night, about six, and never came back. He called Georgy last night about ten. She’s been gone for over twenty-four hours.”

  “Did she tell Gallo where she was going when she left?”

  “I don’t know any details, Al. I’m going to see Georgy this afternoon. She gets off duty at four. I told her to call Gallo and have him meet me at her place. I’ll get the facts from him.”

  “Funny he didn’t call the police,” Al speculated. “They could check to see if she had an accident and was laid up in a hospital.”

  “I expect Georgy did that first thing this morning,” I said.

  “You think this has something to do with the swimming pool murder, Archy?”

  “Right now I don’t know what to think. But Jeff was blackmailing Lance Talbot and he got wasted. Vivian Emerson looked askance at Holga von Brecht and she disappears. Would you say it was worth your hindquarters to cross paths with our Swiss visitors?”

  “Could be,” he said, looking at his watch.

  “You wanted a link between Lance Talbot and someone at the MacNiff benefit. This could be it.”

  “Suppose Vivian Emerson had designs on the young, handsome and rich Lance Talbot, and the von Brecht dame didn’t like it. Woman are very territorial when it comes to sons and lovers.”

  I remember thinking the ladies were squabbling over Joe Gallo.
Chances were Vivian Emerson had spent the night with a friend and forgot to tell her roommate her plans, or Gallo wasn’t listening when she told him.

  I had kept Al long enough. I promised to keep him posted on anything Denny or I picked up regarding Jeff’s murder, and what I learned from Joe Gallo that might connect Vivian Emerson to Lance or Holga von Brecht.

  “Before you go, have a look at this, Al.” I handed him the photo of Lance Talbot and Jeff Rodgers. “It was taken when they were enrolled at the Day School.”

  Al put on his specs, looked at the photo and handed it back to me. “They’re dressed pour le sport” was his keen observation.

  Herb, our security person, was off for the weekend as was most of the office staff, but there was a number of cars in the underground garage of the McNally Building, which was not unusual for a Saturday. Those working on cases found it expedient to labor at the office on a day when they would not be interrupted by ringing telephones and gabby cohorts. I went directly to the executive suite to check Mrs. Trelawney’s fax machine. The basket that holds the incoming faxes as they fall from the printer was empty.

  I doubted the Swiss worked on weekends either, so I was resigned to waiting until Monday to send Herr Hermann a reminder if I had not received his reply by then.

  The morning sun and surf vistas had me thinking about putting in my two miles before meeting with Georgy. Leaving the office, I decided to pick up a newspaper and stop at the club, where I could indulge myself in a leisurely read while nibbling on one of Leroy’s light lunch specials. Jell-0 and cottage cheese? A slice of melon and cottage cheese? How tempting. I couldn’t wait.

  All droughts of a relaxing interlude in my life in the fast lane evaporated at the sight of Binky Watrous and Izzy Duhane lunching at my favorite table. When the gods were kind, they were very kind. When they were vindictive, they knew no mercy.

  “Archy,” Izzy waved. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  “I wish I could say the same,” I rejoined cheerfully.

  “Come sit with us,” Izzy invited. “We’re waiting for our burgers and fries.”