McNally's Puzzle

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Will there be much left after tax?”

  “A great deal,” he said briefly. “If his children invest their inheritance wisely it should support them comfortably for the remainder of their lives.”

  “Sir, you mentioned minor bequests to his domestic staff. His chef and maid, Got and Mei Lee, have recently left the Gottschalk household. Will their leaving affect their legacy?”

  “No.”

  “You also mentioned bequests to his employees. Father, have you listened to the local news on radio or TV tonight?”

  “I have not. Why do you ask?”

  “The bodies of a young couple, former employees of Parrots Unlimited, were found in the Everglades. Both had been murdered, shot to death at close range in what was apparently an assassination-type slaying.”

  He stared at me, his expression growing increasingly bleak. “You believe there is a connection between their deaths and the murder of our client?”

  “Yes, sir, I believe that—and so does Sergeant Rogoff.”

  He was silent a few moments while he went into his mulling mode, mentally masticating information received, comparing it to past experience, essaying various explanations and hypotheses, and eventually arriving at his considered judgment. I would never dare attempt to hurry this process. It would be like urging a sphinx to get his rear in gear.

  “Archy,” he said at long last, “are you suggesting this unfortunate couple may have been slain because they were included in Mr. Gottschalk’s will? If so, I believe you are mistaken. Their bequests are five thousand each. People are not murdered for that sum.”

  “They’ve been killed for less,” I said tartly. “But no, I do not believe they were shot because of their inclusion in our client’s will. I doubt if their killers were even aware of it. I think another motive was at work. I cannot even guess what it might be but I have no doubt all three homicides are linked and were committed by or effected by the same person or persons.”

  (Why, after a few moments of conversation with Prescott McNally, Esq., do I begin to mimic his prolixity?)

  “Do you have any leads?” he asked.

  “Several but nothing substantive. I believe the key to the puzzle will eventually be found in the store.”

  He hoisted one bristly eyebrow. “The store? But all they sell are parrots.”

  “I’m aware of that, father, but Parrots Unlimited seems to be the nexus of all the deviltry going on.”

  He terminated me abruptly. “Very well,” he said. “Keep at it.” He picked up his glass of port and I departed.

  Being somewhat miffed by his cold dismissal, I treated myself to a brandy after climbing to my chamber. I sat at my battered desk and considered what he had revealed. He had described Mr. Gottschalk’s will as “an odd testament” but that was lawyerly opinion. He did not consider what those bequests might signify. He was deliberately an unemotional man because he felt in his profession emotion could not contravene reason.

  But emotion was my realm. It really was what I dealt with—all those sealed cans labeled love, hate, revenge, envy, jealousy, spite, fury, and so forth. And so I interpreted our client’s bequests as an index of his heart rather than his head. If you wish to call me Old Softy, you’re quite welcome.

  Leaving his home and its furnishings to Yvonne Chrisling—what did that signify? It was a munificent gift.

  Just as generous was his bequest of Parrots Unlimited to Yvonne’s stepson, Ricardo. Surely there was a hidden reason for that. The lad was, after all, merely an employee. Or was he more than that?

  The division of the major portion of his net worth to his three children seemed straightforward enough. But I had learned from experience the most beautiful Red Delicious apple might prove to be mealy.

  Sighing, I propped up my feet and started reading the entire record of the Gottschalk affair from the beginning. And you know, I found a tidbit that enlightened me. I am not pretending to be a Master Sleuth, because I have played fair and square and casually mentioned the item to you previously.

  I wouldn’t want you to think I’m cheating. Why, you’d never speak to me again.

  The following morning did not begin auspiciously. I do possess an electric shaver but I customarily follow my father’s traditional practice of using a porcelain mug containing a disk of soap, badger-haired brush, and single-edged safety razor to depilate the lower mandible. It was a fresh blade and I sliced my jaw. A styptic pencil saved me from exsanguination but I trotted downstairs to breakfast looking like a nineteenth-century duelist from the University of Heidelberg.

  “Did you cut yourself, Archy?” mother inquired solicitously.

  “A mere nick,” I assured her.

  “Perhaps you stood too close to the razor,” father remarked.

  I find his attempts at humor somewhat heavy-handed, don’t you?

  We had a satisfying morning meal (blueberry pancakes with heather honey) and discussed plans for Thanksgiving Day, fast approaching. Mother suggested it would be nice to enable the Olsons to enjoy a private holiday by not requiring Ursi to provide the usual turkey feast. Unexpectedly father concurred, and it was decided the family would gobble a gobbler at a restaurant that had the sense to serve a sauce of whole cranberries rather than an effete jelly.

  “You might invite Connie,” mother said, beaming. “If she has no other plans I’m sure she’d love to join us and we’d like to have her.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

  I drove to the office intending to spend a few hours creating my expense account for the month. I cannot compose madrigals and my expertise at heroic couplets is limited but when it comes to expense accounts I am a veritable Jules Verne. Imagination? You wouldn’t believe!

  I was happily at work, wondering if I might charge McNally & Son for a haircut, when I heard a tentative rap at my office door. I rose to open it and found Judd Wilkins. He was bearing a roll of bumf bound with a low-tech rubber band.

  He looked at me with his dreamy eyes. “What happened to your chin?” he asked.

  “Attempted suicide,” I said.

  He accepted that. “Here’s the download you wanted,” he said, proffering the bundle. “About parrots.”

  I was astounded. “So soon? I asked for this stuff just yesterday.”

  He gave me a glance I could only interpret as pitying. “It’s not snail mail you know. There may be some late factoids coming in but I think you’ll find what you want here.”

  “Interesting?” I asked.

  “I thought so.”

  “Anything illegal going on?”

  “Yep,” he said cheerfully.

  “Judd, thank you for your fast work. I appreciate it.”

  “No problem,” he said, and was gone.

  I put aside my expense account and began reading the information he had gleaned from cyberspace. It required concentration because the printouts contained misspellings, ellipses, and abbreviations foreign to me. I read the entire record twice to get a general feel of the material and then perused it a third time with close attention to those elements I thought might be significant in solving the Gottschalk puzzle.

  Up to that point my interest in matters psittacine had been limited. I mean parrots are beautiful birds, no denying it, but I am usually concerned with more weighty subjects—such as whether or not to drizzle vinegar on potato chips. But after studying the computer-generated skinny provided by Judd Wilkins I became fascinated by the fate of those gorgeously feathered creatures and I hope you will be similarly intrigued.

  Here is the gist of what I learned:

  The U.S. is signatory to the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, a mouthful usually mercifully shortened to CITES. Under that agreement more than a hundred nations attempt to regulate transnational commerce in plants and animals threatened or potentially threatened with extinction.

  In addition, our federal and state governments maintain lists of endangered species, about a thousand in
number. Overseeing all the multitudinous regulations is the Department of Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service, and their Department of Law Enforcement when needed.

  It has been estimated that 250,000 parrots are imported annually and legally into the U.S., despite the numbing quantity of permits required. Many of these birds become part of domestic breeding programs by legitimate and licensed parrot fanners.

  But there are approximately fifty species of wild parrots whose importation is verboten. And that’s where the smugglers take over. Rare and expensive birds are sneaked in from Brazil, Australia, and Africa. Main ports of entry are Miami and Los Angeles. One authority guesses this illicit trade probably exceeds $25 million annually.

  The smugglers’ methods are gruesome. Fully grown and fledgling parrots are hidden in luggage, stuffed into plastic piping, concealed in furniture and machinery, buried in mounds of grain, even sealed in ventilated cans. The mortality rate is horrendous. There is a tale of a smuggler apprehended at L.A. who was wearing a specially constructed vest of many small pockets each of which contained the egg of an endangered Australian cockatiel.

  Allow me a spot of editorializing.

  Apparently in our enlightened land there are people willing—nay, eager—to pay any amount for a brilliantly colored wild parrot, the rarer the better—with no interest whatsoever in the exotic bird’s antecedents or how it arrived on our shores. It becomes a status symbol, not a pet.

  One of Judd’s contributors remarked that parrots suffer when taken from the wild, deprived of their mates, and thrust into a cage. Many of the captured birds develop neuroses, adopt self-destructive habits, or become aggressive. They sometimes bite and claw their new owners. Bully!

  It really is a depressing record. As I’ve told you, I have no special fondness for parrots but the cruel trapping, smuggling, and profitable sale of wild and endangered species seem to me a particularly heinous practice. Especially since so many of those birds die shortly after being wrenched from their homes and imprisoned.

  It was time for lunch and I fled to the Pelican Club as relieved as a schoolchild anticipating recess. The joint was sparsely occupied and so I was able to sit at the bar and order a gin and bitters from Simon Pettibone. Our estimable bartender and club manager gave me a puzzled look.

  “Feeling ginnish this morning, Mr. McNally?” he inquired.

  “Feeling bitterish,” I replied. He served my drink and I said, “Mr. Pettibone, I know you to be a man of vast erudition and experience. Tell me something. What do you think of birds?”

  “Love ’em,” he said promptly. “Chickens, ducks, turkeys, all roasted, fried, or broiled. Any which way. I once ate a pigeon and very tasty it was.”

  “Oh, I concur,” I said, “but I framed my question awkwardly. I was not referring to edible species raised for the table. What do you think of birds kept in cages? As pets or sometimes just as interior decoration.”

  “Ah,” he said, suddenly serious, “that’s something else again. I don’t hold with caging dumb creatures. I’ve never had a bird as a pet and never will. It’s cruel to my way of thinking. Ever see an eagle soar? Now that’s something.”

  “I understand what you’re saying but it’s a difficult moral choice, isn’t it? I mean I enjoy a roasted duck with a nice sauce of wild cherries as much as you. Never give the poor fowl’s fate a second thought. But the idea of keeping a bird in a cage turns me off.”

  He looked at me. “No one keeps a duck in a cage, Mr. McNally.”

  “I hope not. But I’m thinking about parrots. Especially beautiful and rare parrots taken from the wild and put behind bars.”

  “No,” he said firmly, “I don’t hold with that.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Pettibone,” I said gratefully. “I respect your opinion.”

  Then I lunched alone but, mirabile dictu, I cannot recollect what I had. This is astonishing, even shocking to relate for I have almost total recall of past breakfasts, brunches, luncheons, dinners, and late suppers. Why, I distinctly remember an excellent braised oxtail I consumed in 1984.

  The reason for this memory lapse, I think, is heavy and insistent pondering as I scarfed. The knowledge that rare birds were captured in the wild, smuggled abroad, and sold to moneyed collectors distressed me. For the moment, I put aside how this illegal trade might possibly affect the homicides I was investigating. I was disturbed by the birdnapping itself.

  I have, I suppose, a very limited personal code of moral conduct. To wit: I strive to behave in a manner that gives me pleasure but doesn’t harm anyone else. I mean I’m a live-and-let-live bloke. I’ve never been an -ist of any sort, not sexist, racist, leftist, rightist, idealist, realist, and so forth. Well, on occasion I act as an egoist—but only on occasion.

  What my dilemma amounted to was something you may find ridiculous and I admit had a slightly farcical tone. If I objected to the capture and imprisonment of birds for profit, how could I justify my enjoyment of a baked free-range chicken, much more flavorful than the factory-raised variety?

  I agreed with Mr. Pettibone that it was okay to feast on domesticated fowl but wrong to ensnare and incarcerate exotic parrots. But they’re all birds, aren’t they, and where is the moral justification for the difference in their treatment?

  Finally I gave up on my mental maunderings. I could find no way out of the maze of imponderables. It was, I decided, a question with no final answer. Similar to the problem of whether brandied apples or broiled oranges go better with roasted goose.

  CHAPTER 25

  I ARRIVED BACK AT THE McNally Building to find on my desk a handwritten note from Yvonne Chrisling. It was an invitation to attend a “joyous tribute” to Hiram Gottschalk to be held that evening beginning at eight p.m. Not to mourn, she wrote, but to remember and celebrate the life of a wonderful man. “I want it to be more like a cheerful wake,” she added.

  Uh-huh.

  She finished with a fanfare: “Archy, I’ll be devastated if you don’t come. I want so much to see you again!”

  Double uh-huh. I wondered again what game the Dragon Lady was playing and determined to present myself in all my sockless glory at the soiree that evening at the Gottschalk manse. It might, I reckoned, prove as educational and entertaining as a visit to a zoo.

  I phoned Sgt. Al Rogoff and was put on hold for at least three minutes. He finally came on the line.

  “What took you so long?” I asked. “Finishing an anchovy pizza and a can of Sprite?”

  “Close but no cigar,” he said. “Actually I was beating a suspect with a short length of rubber hose. What’s up?”

  “That’s why I called. Anything happening?”

  “Nope. Nothing of any great interest.”

  “C’mon, Al, you must be doing something.”

  “Just routine. We got an alleged eyewitness who lives in the same condo as Sutcliffe and Gompertz. She claims she saw the two of them leaving at night with two guys she describes as ‘goons.’ She says the four of them got in a car and drove away.”

  “Is this eyewitness a middle-aged lady carrying a ton of mascara?”

  “You’ve got it. You know her?”

  “Met her briefly during my last visit. She let me in—a stupid thing to do. I thought her a bit loopy.”

  “That’s the word.”

  “Can she identify the car they used?”

  “Says it was white. Isn’t that beautiful? How many white cars are there in South Florida—a zillion?”

  “Possibly more. Al, does the apparent abduction and murder of Gompertz and Sutcliffe take Peter Gottschalk off the hook for the killing of his father?”

  “Well... maybe,” he admitted grudgingly. “I can’t find anything linking him to the Everglades cases. But that’s assuming all three homicides are somehow connected.”

  “You believe it, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he said, sighing heavily, “I guess I do. Have you come up with anything?”

  “Parrots,” I said. “I think parrots may be the k
ey to the whole megillah.”

  Short silence. “Parrots,” he repeated. “Archy, have you ever considered a brain transplant?”

  “‘O ye of little faith.’ Believe me, parrots hold the answer.”

  I was hoping he wouldn’t say it but he did.

  “That’s for the birds,” he said, laughed, and hung up.

  I tried to get back to fiddling with my expense account but found I had lost interest. My creative juices were still flowing but whereas, at lunch, I had put aside the Gottschalk puzzle to ruminate on the moral implications of gnawing a chicken’s crispy drumstick, now I postponed my monthly raid on McNally & Son’s bottom line to concentrate on the perplexities of my current discreet inquiry.

  I went back to fundamentals, the start of everything. It all began with the acts of personal terrorism and vandalism that frightened Hiram: the slashed photograph, the mass card, the strangled mynah, the shattered phonograph record. They were all deliberate acts of cruelty. If I could determine the motive involved I might be able to identify the perpetrator.

  Dr. Gussie had said the destroyed photo was an attempt to eliminate Hiram’s happy memory. The same could be said of the smashed Caruso recording, a gift from his beloved wife, now long gone. The posted mass card and killing of his favorite bird were more serious: warnings of a possible impending doom. Those explanations made a grisly kind of sense but led precisely nowhere. They yielded no clues as to who might be responsible for inflicting such grievous pain.

  Just as puzzling was the manner of his death. It seemed obvious the killer had chosen to stab the hapless victim through the eyes because he had seen too much. In some benighted countries the hand of a convicted thief is lopped off. Mr. Gottschalk’s eyes were destroyed and his life taken because his slayer could not endure his continued observation or witnessing of—what?

  But again, all that might be an explanation but it was not a solution, was it? I wrestled with the riddles for the remainder of the afternoon, doodling on a pad of scratch paper and finding myself making crude drawings of eyes and birds. I waited for an inspired flash of insight that never arrived. And so I closed up shop and went home wondering if I might be better suited for another profession. Stuffing strudel was one possibility.