I knew I would never be as erudite as he, and in turn he was not as streetwise as I. There had been and would be disagreements between us of course—how could there not be?—but never dark looks, clenched fists, and muttered imprecations.
Not once had we treated one another with less than civility, however formal, and there’s much to be said for it. And for a bemused love never verbally expressed but which was real and enduring. That I knew.
After my saltwater dip, the family cocktail hour, and dinner (shrimp and scallops sautéed with capers, roasted peppers and sundried tomatoes) I waddled upstairs with some effort and set to work bringing my journal current on the strange affair of the Whitcomb Funeral Homes. There was much to record, but none of my scribblings yielded a clue as to what was going on. All I had was an account of disparate facts and fancies that revealed no pattern or even a wild surmise.
I interrupted my labors to phone Connie Garcia, that paragon I had been neglecting shamefully. She was in a chipper mood and we gibbered for almost half an hour, exchanging tidbits of gossip and scurrilous opinions of close friends and local political muck-a-mucks.
“By the way,” Connie said, “about an hour before you called, one of my spies reported she spotted your pal Binky Watrous wining and dining an orange-haired judy at a Lauderdale McDonald’s.”
“How does one wine another at a McDonald’s?” I asked, reasonably enough.
“Just a figure of speech, doll. Anyway, my informant says she was all over Binky like a wet sheet.”
“He was probably imitating a lovesick whippoorwill.”
“No doubt,” Connie said. “Just thought you’d be interested.”
“Oh, I am. Mildly. Give you a call on Friday, Connie. Maybe we can tear a herring over the weekend.”
“Let’s,” she said. “Before all the snowbirds arrive and we can’t get a table.”
We disconnected and I hung up thinking Binky Watrous, the wannabe Inspector Javert, was taking my advice to heart and displaying energy and inspiration. I was sure the orange-haired judy was Rhoda, Ernest Gorton’s carrottop, but I doubted if birdcalls and a Big Mac would be sufficient to entice startling disclosures.
I finished my journalistic chores, skipped a nightcap and final ciggie, and went directly to bed. It wasn’t that I was physically weary but the McNally neurons were churning and I sought sleep to deliver me from all the bedeviling puzzles encountered during the day. I hoped I might awake the following morn with an apocalyptic inspiration that would solve the Whitcomb case, reveal the whereabouts of Atlantis, and explain why our laundry always withholds one of my socks.
Such was not the case of course. I awoke Thursday morning, peered out my window, and saw a world swaddled in murk. I mean, the fog was so thick you couldn’t see a foot in front of your face—which made things difficult for podiatrists.
Even worse, the weather mirrored my inner gloom. Sleep had brought no grand revelations; I was still mired in perplexity. Can you wonder why I was in such a grumpy mood and so silent at breakfast with my parents that mother inquired solicitously if I was coming down with something?
“Nothing serious,” I assured her. “Just a galloping case of frustration.”
“A lot of that going around these days,” father remarked, which was his version of Wildean wit.
I arrived at the McNally Building about an hour later, having tooled the Miata slowly through the swirling mist. I sulked in my office and wondered what to do next. Felo-de-se was one possibility, but I rejected it.
I was saved from a fatal attack of the megrims by a phone call from Sgt. Al Rogoff.
“How’re you doing, buddy?” he asked.
“Surviving,” I told him. “Barely. And you?”
“Lousy. This miserable fog. We’ve had more crashes than I can count. Mostly fender-benders but a few bloody messes. Listen, when can you and I get together?”
“You have information about Ernest Gorton?” I said, suddenly on the qui vive.
“Some,” he admitted. “And some questions for you. I should be home by four o’clock. How about dropping over to my chateau around then?”
“I’ll be there,” I promised.
I arrived at his mobile home later that afternoon, bearing a cold six-pack of Molson ale. He put out a bowl of honey-roasted cashews and we settled in. Al’s place always reminds me of a slightly tatty’s men’s club: lots of oak furniture, worn leather, and a total disregard of the trendy and uncomfortable. It made you want to kick off your shoes, and I did.
We sipped a little ale, popped a few cashews, talked lazily of this and that. Then the sergeant got down to business.
“About Ernest Gorton,” he started. “You told me a client thinks this guy is clipping him and that’s why you wanted a trace. Was that the truth?”
“No,” I said.
“Didn’t figure it was,” Rogoff said equably. “You lie even when you don’t have to—just to keep in practice.”
“That’s what Connie Garcia keeps telling me.”
“She’s right. Okay, sonny boy, let’s have it: what’s your interest in Ernest Gorton?”
“It’s a long story.”
“We have a six-pack; take your time.”
I told him about the Whitcomb Funeral Homes investigation. Not everything of course. I said nothing about the conflict between Horace and Oliver, the anguish being endured by Sarah Whitcomb, or my uneasiness about the role Sunny Fogarty was playing. Al had no need to know. But I did give him the bare bones, including Oliver’s close friendship with Ernest Gorton and the activities of Dr. Omar K. Pflug and Rhoda, who was no more a nurse than I was a nuclear physicist.
I finished speaking. The sergeant opened another ale, took a deep draft, and looked at me reflectively.
“Beautiful,” he said. “I just love these swamps you drag me into. Nothing as simple as a post office massacre or a terrorist plot to blow up City Hall. You only get involved in the wheels-within-wheels cases.”
“That’s not fair,” I protested. “When this thing was first brought to our attention, both my father and I thought it was nothing. Now we both think it’s for real.”
“Yeah,” he conceded. “It does sound like something is going down.”
“That seems plausible to me.”
Rogoff’s smile was cold. “Let me tell you about Monsieur Gorton. From what I heard from my Miami pals, this guy has megabucks. They say he’s got green eyes: all he sees is money. He’s into everything rancid you can think of. Drugs, money laundering, ripoffs of high-priced labels, prostitution, guns. Is that enough for you? If not, how about this one: He’s also suspected of killing horses.”
“Of what!?”
“Rich no-goodniks who own a valuable Thoroughbred, trotter, or jumper that’s not performing up to snuff want the animal put down so they can collect the insurance. Gorton has the rep of providing experts who can make the slaughter look like an accident.”
I gulped. “That’s nice,” I said.
“Oh yeah,” Al said. “Sweet people.”
I recalled what Binky had told me about Oliver and Gorton flying to Ocala to inspect a horse. But I related nothing of that to Rogoff. It might have been an innocent trip. Maybe.
“He is one active villain,” the sergeant continued. “And the kicker is that he’s never done time. Archy, the man is no dummy. He’s got layers of management, and if his soldiers or sub-bosses have to take a fall, he provides money for their defense and takes care of their families I while they’re inside. Loyalty up and loyalty down. I mean, the guy’s got a tight organization. It’s not as big as the Mafia or the Colombian drug cartels—although he’s worked with both of them—but his outfit is lean and mean. He’s been busted a hundred times and always walks away singing ‘Who Cares?’”
“A charmed life,” I observed.
“Yeah,” Al said. “But what the hell, it’s rumored he has local pols on the pad. Now here he is palsy-walsy with the chief executive officer of a chain of funeral homes th
at’s shipping north a lot of dead people from Florida. What’s going on?”
“He’s getting rid of his victims?” I suggested.
Rogoff thought about that a moment. “Maybe,” he said.
“Illegal immigrants? He’s charging for airlifting them north in caskets? No, scratch that. They’d probably never survive in sealed containers packed into an airliner’s cargo bay.”
We looked at each other and both of us shrugged.
“Two problems,” Rogoff said. “One: What is Ernie boy doing? And two: Why is Oliver Whitcomb apparently cooperating? Blackmail?”
“Perhaps,” I said, but I didn’t think so. I was beginning to get a glimmer of Oliver’s motives, but I didn’t want to mention it to Al; he’d be convinced I had played too many games without a helmet.
I stayed for an additional hour. We each had another ale and wolfed cashews while we reviewed again all the known facts and discussed possible scenarios that might account for them. Our conclusions. Zero, zip, and zilch.
I drove home in a weighty mood. I believed I knew Oliver’s reason for cultivating a friendship with such a scurvy knave as Ernest Gorton, but I shared Sgt. Rogoff’s bewilderment as to what exactly those two wiseguys were doing.
Later, of course, I realized what Rogoff had told me about Ernest Gorton that afternoon contained sufficient clues to solve the mystery. But at the time neither the sergeant nor I was perspicacious enough to see it.
I blame it on good ale and honey-roasted cashews.
22.
IT HAD BEEN A curiously condensed day—Rogoff had given me a great deal to ponder—but it wasn’t over yet. I was in my belfry, preparing to descend for the family cocktail hour, when my phone began ringing. For some peculiar reason I thought it a particularly insistent clangor and was briefly tempted to ignore it. But who can resist a ringing phone? I picked up.
“Oliver Whitcomb, Archy,” he said, positively burbling with bonhomie. “How you doing, fella?”
“Very well, thank you,” I said. “And you?”
“Got the world on a string,” he said breezily. “Listen, Mitzi and I just decided to have a spur-of-the-moment minibash tonight. Nothing fancy. Very informal. Very casual. Come as you are. We’ll have a few drinks and laugh it up. You’re cordially invited. Can you make it?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Sure I can. Thanks for the invitation.”
“Great! Anytime after nine o’clock. Binky Watrous promised to show up. You have our address? If not, we’re in the Boca book.”
“I’ll find you.”
We hung up and I decided Oliver was making a determined effort to be friendly. My ego is not emaciated, as you well know, but I could not believe he sought my palship simply because of my sterling character or aftershave lotion. The lad was eager for my attendance at his “minibash,” but for what reason I could not then have said. Four hours later I knew.
All of which explains why, at about nine-twenty that evening, I pulled into the white graveled courtyard of the Whitcomb mansion in Boca Raton. There were already a dozen parked cars but the one that caught my eye, other than Binky’s moldering Cabriolet, was a custom-made silver Cadillac stretch limousine. That thing was so long it should have been articulated with a separate driver to operate the wheels of the rear section.
A thug in chauffeur’s garb was leaning against the front fender, smoking a cigarette and staring at the heavens. Trying to locate Cassiopeia, no doubt. His uniform was shiny silver to match the car’s finish.
I strolled over. “Quite a yacht,” I observed.
He looked at me without interest. Brutish chap. “Yeah,” he said.
“How on earth do you turn a corner?” I asked.
“It ain’t easy.”
I made a guess: “Ernest Gorton’s car?”
“You got it,” he said, flicked his cigarette butt away, and yawned in my face. Mr. Congeniality.
I entered the tessellated front door, disappointed that I wasn’t greeted by a periwigged flunky in knee breeches. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t greeted by anyone but heard a cackle of talk and laughter coming from a chamber at the end of a marble-floored entrance hall. As Binky had told me, everything in this polished dwelling seemed to be constructed of mirrors, stainless steel, white leather, and tinted glass. Obviously “brown furniture” was anathema to the younger Whitcombs.
I entered a crowded living room with a wet bar along one wall with enough bottles on display to grace a luxe hotel. Few guests paused quaffing to inspect the newcomer, but Oliver came bustling forward to shake my hand heartily and give me a welcoming grin.
“Great you could make it,” he said. “Just great! What do you think of our place?”
“Impressive,” I said.
“You don’t think it’s too architectural, too stark?”
“Not at all,” I lied. “If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it.”
His laugh was almost a roar and he clapped me on the shoulder. “You’ve got a great sense of humor, Archy,” he enthused. “Great! Listen, I’m not going to introduce you to all these fun people. Just mingle and introduce yourself. The bar is open for business, but you’ll have to mix your own poison. Live it up!”
He was trying too hard.
He drifted away and I headed for the pharmacy wondering if I was a fun person, qualified to mingle with this pot-smoking assembly most of whom looked ten years younger and a hundred years more with-it than I. I was certain they could identify all the current rock stars, which I couldn’t. But I consoled myself with the thought that not one of them could name America’s greatest war song, which I could. In case you’re wondering, it’s a 1918 classic entitled “Would You Rather Be a Colonel with an Eagle on Your Shoulder or a Private with a Chicken on Your Knee?”
I mixed a very mild vodka and water at the bar, reckoning it was going to be a long night. Then I turned to inspect the other guests. I spotted Binky Watrous in one corner sitting on the lap of Mitzi Whitcomb. Yes, he was sitting on her lap. I don’t believe Sherlock Holmes ever did that with Irene Adler.
In another corner I saw Ernest Gorton looking as rumpled as he had the first time we met. He was wearing an undoubtedly costly three-piece suit of black silk, Italian cut, but it was so wrinkled I could only conclude he slept fully clothed. He had one meaty arm about the bare shoulders of the orangy-haired young woman I had last seen in the office of Dr. Omar K. Pflug—Rhoda, the carrottop, wearing a tight sheath of silver sequins, to match Gorton’s stretch limo, I supposed. The man had an incredible lust for color coordination.
Following the host’s instructions, I circulated assiduously, introduced myself, and met a great number of people I devoutly hoped I would never meet again. I suffer from snobisme, as you may have guessed, and I found the Whitcombs’ guests agonizingly superficial. Conversation? Complete piffle, concerned mostly with holidays taken or planned, new in restaurants in Palm Beach County, the latest local political scandal, which movie heroes were gay, and the possibility of curing impotence by acupuncture. I shan’t go into details about that.
And so I had another drink, or two, simply to endure until I could make a decent departure. Binky had vanished with Mitzi Whitcomb before I had a chance to speak to him. I wasn’t even certain he was aware of my appearance. He had the glassy look he gets when he’s addled by unrequited love or a surfeit of beef Stroganoff.
But Ernest Gorton was mindful of my presence.
“Glad to see you, Archy boy!” he shouted, clamping one of those fleshy arms about my waist. “Having fun?”
“A plenitude,” I assured him.
“Love the way you talk,” he marveled. “Just love it! Hey, you got time for a private confab?”
“Of course.”
He looked around the living room. More invitees had arrived, the decibels were rising. In addition, despite the air conditioning, the atmosphere had become fuggy with the smell of burning grass. Oliver’s friends, I concluded, definitely did not smoke cigarettes from packs labeled with the Surgeo
n General’s warnings.
What truly surprised me was the expression of distaste on Gorton’s phiz as he inspected the scene. If Al Rogoff’s information was accurate, these fun people were Ernie Boy’s customers. But there was no mistaking the contempt in his glower.
“Let’s get out of this circus,” he said. “We’ll talk in my buggy.”
He led the way outside to the Cadillac limousine. Some buggy! The glittery chauffeur was still leaning against a fender.
“Take a walk, Jake,” Gorton said gruffly. The bruiser nodded and moved away.
We entered the wheeled cathedral. You don’t crouch or slide into a car like that; you step in reverently, resisting an urge to cross yourself. We sat in the back, and I noted a little refrigerator, a little bar, a little TV set, a little cellular phone and fax machine. If that car had a little Port-o-John you could have lived there comfortably and never emerged.
“I got some Martell cognac here,” Ernest said. “Okay by you?”
“Excellent.”
He poured our drinks into outsized crystal snifters. Good cognac should be as much inhaled as tasted, and one ounce is a gentleman’s tot. But he must have poured at least three ounces into each glass, and I had visions of enrolling for the 12 Steps the very next day.
“Have I got this right?” Gorton said abruptly. “Your father is an attorney but doesn’t do litigation. You started out to be a lawyer but got kicked out of school. You’re single and live with your parents. You drink but you’re no doper. You do investigations for your father’s firm. How’m I doing?”
“You’re correct,” I acknowledged, realizing he had gone to some trouble to learn my record. But I supposed that was one reason for his success. He was careful and he was thorough: a man of many talents, most of them feculent, and an overwhelming greed.
“I got a proposition for you,” he said. He paused to give me an arctic grin. “An offer you can’t refuse. I got this business in Miami. Import-export, like I told you. I got some good lawyers, courtroom guys, who know how to protect my interests. But my business is getting so big I need a sharp operator, someone who knows the laws but at the same time knows how to ask the right questions. I mean, I’m into a lot of things, this and that, and I’m always getting these business projects thrown at me. They all require an investment of capital on my part. You know? Now what I need is someone who’s got the know-how to evaluate these deals. Do they have a profit potential or are they just scams? I think you’re the man to handle the job.”
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