McNally's Alibi

by Lawrence Sanders

  “I know his work,” I answered.

  “Louis Auchincloss writes about people like us,” he lectured.

  Auchincloss writes novels about New York society with a capital S. If by “us” Fortesque meant me, I was a bagman with expectations.

  “Auchincloss has written,” Fortesque picked up where he had left off, “that collecting is much like a sexual drive much more potent than any love for the baby produced. Very apt in my case, as I’ve never had children, not from lack of trying, believe me, and perhaps have substituted collectibles for progeny. Like any parent, I want my children to stand out like diamonds in a coal mine. Some collectors, like yourself, focus in on one or two items such as autographs or antique cars. My children are more a rainbow ensemble, but each must be the best of its kind.”

  Fortesque paused to sip from his cup. “Examples of the avocation’s fervor,” he went on, “are evident by the anonymous collector who paid twelve thousand dollars for the ruby slippers Garland wore when she played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, or the one who paid a million for the dress Marilyn Monroe wore when she sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to President Kennedy. Just recently, Bette Davis’s Oscar for Jezebel brought five hundred and seventy-eight thousand at Christie’s in New York.”

  The satisfied, almost gloating, look on Fortesque’s face made me wonder if his trophy room contained Judy’s slippers, Marilyn’s dress and Bette’s Oscar. No doubt he was rich enough to be the avid Mr. Anonymous.

  “Claudia Lester is an agent, or broker, in the sometimes shady world of collecting,” he said. “Nothing actually illegal, mind you, but agents like Claudia have a reputation for being able to get their hands on collectibles being offered where the buyer won’t ask too many questions about the seller or how he or she came in possession of the article. ’Nuff said, Mr. McNally?”

  “More than enough, sir. In the real world it’s called the fencing of stolen goods.”

  “Oh, don’t be so unctuous, man,” Fortesque chided. “Not necessarily stolen. Let’s say legally acquired by Machiavellian tactics.”

  No doubt Il Principe was Deci’s favorite tome. “And just what did Ms. Lester acquire, legally or otherwise, sir?”

  Fortesque took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and spoke as if he were trying to raise up Beelzebub. What he raised was the hairs on my bump. “Nothing less than the complete text of Answered Prayers by Truman Capote,” he bellowed.

  What I knew of this particular Capote book was that it was started some years before the author’s death and, surrounded by controversy and scandal, never finished. When I reminded Fortesque of this fact he went into a detailed history of the notorious novel.

  Capote sold the first chapter of Answered Prayers to a popular magazine in 1975, drawing the wrath of his society and celebrity friends whose exploits, mostly sexual, he had written about in detail; some characters were thinly disguised and many boldly named. In retaliation, the beautiful people who had lionized the author (and obviously whispered titillating secrets in his receptive ears) joined forces and labeled Capote persona non grata.

  Devastated by their snub, it was believed, Capote never finished the novel, but in 1976 he published two more chapters in the same magazine. Fortesque noted that in his Music for Chameleons Capote stated, “I returned to Answered Prayers, I removed one chapter and rewrote two others.” This had many believing that he did continue working on the book. According to Fortesque, Capote wrote the final chapters at his beach house in Sagaponack, the posh Hamptons community.

  “At the time,” Fortesque said, “he employed a house-boy who did for him. No pun intended, Mr. McNally. Getting back at his former friends, he wrote with a vengeance, exposing the indiscretions of those who now snubbed him, as well as all he had heard from them about the shenanigans of their forerunners. No holds barred, man.

  “The antics at Cielito Lindo here in Palm Beach in the good old days. That was Jessie Donahue’s place on South Ocean Boulevard. She was Barbara Hutton’s aunt, in case you don’t know. It had a tunnel that ran under the highway to the beach and was torn down to make way for miniestates, but I believe two wings of the old mansion are still standing. If walls could talk,” Fortesque lamented.

  The old geezer was really getting off on this.

  “The Duke and Duchess of Windsor spent more time at Jessie’s place than governing Bermuda,” the collector rambled on. “Jessie’s son, Jimmy, made up the royal couple’s ménage à trois, and how I would love to know what they were getting up to, although I understand the poor Duke couldn’t get up to very much. Then there’s the true story of the late James Dean and...”

  And on and on he droned like a man possessed. Fortesque was clearly a scandalmonger whose eight wives couldn’t compete with the vicarious pleasures a work like this offered. Given his enthusiasm, he was an easy mark for unscrupulous brokers of collectibles. After listening to Fortesque drop names about those who dropped their clothes, he finally got back to our central theme—Ms. Claudia Lester.

  Again, according to Fortesque, Capote went to California in ’84, leaving the manuscript at his home in Sagaponack and the boy in charge of the house. Capote died in California eight years after the second installment of Answered Prayers was published.

  “One can spew a lot of rancor on paper in eight years,” Fortesque noted with glee. “The boy kept the manuscript, not knowing its value. Now a man of some fifty years and in need of money, the former houseboy called an auction house in New York, telling them only that he had an original Capote manuscript.

  “The auction house sent a representative to Florida—the houseboy now lives in Key West—to look at the manuscript. When the man saw what it was, he quickly decided to make a profit from the discovery. He put out the word of its existence on the collectors’ black market, telling the auction house the manuscript was nothing more than a typed version of the published Answered Prayers.

  “Enter Claudia Lester,” I prompted.

  “Exactly,” Fortesque said. “She’s a friend of one of my ex-wives.”

  “Vera,” I reminded him. “Number three.”

  “Correct, man. But how did you know?”

  “Claudia told me,” I admitted.

  Pop-eyed, he commented, “You and Claudia certainly got intimate rather quickly.”

  “Not in the biblical sense, sir.”

  Knowing Fortesque’s obsession with acquiring rare objects, especially of the more racy variety, Vera Fortesque put Claudia in touch with her ex-husband—and Archy sees stars on a rainy night.

  “And you trusted her with fifty thousand dollars?” I asked.

  “Why not?” he challenged. “She’s a friend of Vera’s, and the name Claudia Lester is not unknown in the collecting trade.”

  Also, I was thinking, you were so hot to get your hands on that manuscript you would have handed over the money to anyone who promised to deliver the goods. A fact Vera and Claudia must have known. “Who was the guy in the motel room who handed me the manuscript and kept the money, if it wasn’t Harrigan?”

  Fortesque shrugged. “Don’t know. Could be the houseboy who owned it or the rep from the auction house. All I know is that the manuscript would cost me fifty thousand. The details, like how the money was to be divided, I left to her. That’s her job.”

  “The guy was too young to be the houseboy, so it must be the rep. I think the lady skunked you, Mr. Fortesque.”

  He started at that one. “I don’t believe it. She has her reputation in the collecting community to think about. Why would she chuck it all for a lousy fifty thousand?”

  Decimus Fortesque was not a quick study, and thus an easy mark for the grifters. “Her reputation is no better or worse than it was before last night,” I explained, “thanks to me. She showed me the money and even made me count it. Then I delivered it to the motel and was shown a manuscript. The exchange, as she promised you, was made with me to bear witness to the fact. Once it was a done deal, I’m mugged and the loot and manuscript disappear. />
  “If asked why she fled, she’ll say that when I didn’t return with the manuscript she feared a double-cross by the houseboy or the rep and went undercover. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Claudia Lester, sir. If she wants to stay in business, she’ll have to surface and tell her side of the story.”

  Fortesque looked dismayed, to say the least. I think I had finally made it clear to him that he was the victim of a new twist to the old Ponzi scheme. For fifty thousand he gets a tantalizing look at the dessert cart. For another fifty he gets the charlotte russe—maybe. “If you think you can recover my money or the manuscript, Mr. McNally, I’d like to hire you to represent me in this fiasco.”

  If I was going to go after Claudia Lester, why not get paid for my trouble? The way I saw it, both the lady and Fortesque owed me big. It took me a nanosecond to stick out my hand and take on a new client. “If Claudia Lester contacts you, and I’m sure she will, you’ll let me know before you have any more dealings with her,” I cautioned the collector.

  “I will,” he promised. “If you return my money or the manuscript, I’ll be very generous, Mr. McNally.”

  Now, that’s the sort of pep talk that gets me where I this. “I’ll do my best to oblige, sir.” Rising, I added, “Tell Sam he should open a bakery on Worth Avenue and grow rich off the fat of the land.”

  “I’ll tell him no such thing, and don’t you go putting ideas into his head.”

  He walked me to the door, and there, unable to stop myself, I boldly asked, “Your given name, sir. Is it a family name?”

  “Oh, that.” He chuckled. “I was born on the tenth day of the tenth month, which was my parents’ wedding anniversary day. What choice did they have, man?”

  6

  I HAD A LOT to think about on the drive back to Royal Palm Way. Based on what I had learned from Fortesque, several scenarios could fit the plot of last night’s events, all of them starring Claudia Lester. First, I was sticking to my belief that the lady was defrauding her client and using me to vouch for her innocence. What better witness to the validity of her securing the manuscript with Fortesque’s money than the man Fortesque had recommended as a reliable assistant?

  She had made up the story of her stolen diary not to keep the deal confidential, as Fortesque had suggested, but to provide an excuse for needing a middleman (or the invidious bagman): she didn’t want to confront her ex-lover. It appears intrigue is an accepted business tool in Ms. Lester’s line of work. I now believed that the man I met at the Crescent was the representative from the auction house whose name might or might not be Matthew Harrigan.

  When Claudia Lester surfaced, she would tell Fortesque that the rep double-crossed her and was holding the manuscript for another fifty thousand. The rep had probably told the old houseboy the manuscript was worthless but he would take it off the poor man’s hands for a few hundred bucks.

  When I got to Vita Serena I careened west, off South Ocean Boulevard, and continued north on South County Road, heading for the Everglades Golf Course like they were expecting me.

  Knowing Fortesque’s passion for collecting and his predilection for prurient hearsay, she had no doubt but that the old fool would hand over another Crouch and Fitzgerald attaché case filled with greenbacks. And who, I extrapolated, but a former wife would have such intrinsic knowledge of Fortesque’s obsessions? Vera Fortesque had put Claudia in touch with the old lech, so one had to wonder if Vera also had her hand in the till.

  If it was all an elaborate scheme to separate Fortesque from his money, it was doubtful that such a thing as the complete text of Answered Prayers truly existed. Thinking I was being shown the lady’s diary, I didn’t bother to check a single word of the manuscript revealed to me. Of course, anyone could have typed the chapters of the book already published, and passed it off as Capote’s original. I would have to visit the library and do some research, though any references to the additional chapters of the book would be pure speculation. If someone wanted to pull a sting, I couldn’t think of a better lure than the wily author’s most infamous work.

  Finally, giving both my clients the benefit of the doubt, one had to acknowledge that such a manuscript could exist, however improbable, and that Claudia Lester had been duped by her contact. After all, the lady did have her shady but reliable reputation to consider, and if that isn’t an oxymoron I’ll eat my berets. The point being, it was too early in the game to rule out anything. Where money is concerned, all things are possible.

  Speaking of money, I got off South County and drove up Worth Avenue to assure myself that conspicuous consumption was alive and thriving in our humble realm. The shops, the strollers, the pets being aired and the chauffeurs being kept waiting served to remind me how pleased father would be when I told him Decimus Fortesque was now a client of McNally & Son. I turned north on Coconut Row and onward to Royal Palm Way, where I would powwow with the chief and, I hoped, share a peace pipe.

  As I drove into the McNally Building’s underground garage our sentinel, Herb, gave me the thumbs-up sign from his glass-enclosed kiosk to warn me that Mrs. Trelawney was inquiring as to my whereabouts. However, even if father’s secretary did not want to see me, Herb would call up to announce my arrival. In this way our girl Friday could keep abreast of everyone’s coming and going without the bother and expense of installing television cameras in strategic places. To break the Herb/Trelawney connection one had to give up using the company garage.

  I wanted to call Connie and see if she would lunch with me at the Pelican. To stifle the rumors making the rounds, thanks to her dinner with Alejandro the other night, I thought it prudent to be seen breaking bread with my girl at our usual corner table. Be that as it may, I thought it more prudent to report to Mrs. Trelawney before making my lunch date. I took the elevator directly to the executive suite and, upon arriving, said, “You wanted to see me, Mrs. Trelawney?”

  She shook her gray head of pseudohair and sassed, “Not really, but your father does and so does Sergeant Rogoff of our police department.”

  “Al Rogoff called?” I asked, not masking my amazement. Al and I see each other socially and we have worked together on a number of cases, in a complementary rather than competing fashion, to both our advantages. We keep both aspects of our relationship as low key as possible in chatty Palm Beach, because the police and private investigators are far from bosom buddies. For this reason, we seldom contact each other at our respective places of business and confine our work meetings to such places as the parking lot at the Publix and a popular juice stand in PB. Our social meetings are confined to the Pelican Club and Al’s trailer home.

  “Is he free?” I asked, with a nod at our CEO’s door.

  “He is, and he’s expecting you, but I think you had better contact Sergeant Rogoff first. He called twice and both times said it was urgent that you get back to him ASAP. You can use the phone in the conference room—it’s not in use at the moment.”

  I went to the room where I had first encountered Claudia Lester, without asking if Al had left a number. No matter the urgency, he would never call me from the palace—Al’s sobriquet for the police station, which looks more like the home of a French nobleman than a hangout for the men in blue—but before punching out Al’s home number I put a call through to Connie.

  After telling me I was in communication with Lady Cynthia’s residence, I asked Connie if she wanted to have a burger and suds with me at the Pelican.

  “You paying?” she asked.

  “Of course I’m paying. Would I ask you if it wasn’t my treat?”

  “Sure you would,” she shot back.

  That hurt, but hurting Archy seemed to be in vogue this week. “About two,” I said. “I’m sorry I can’t make it any earlier.”

  “Two is fine, Archy. Will you pick me up or meet me at the club?”

  “I’ll come for you, Connie.” I’m sure that’s what Alejandro would do.

  “Gotta go,” she suddenly cried. “See you at two. Bye.”


  In the past, when Connie cut me off with an abrupt “Gotta go,” I always believed I was being usurped by an incoming call for her boss. Now I had to wonder if the call was for Connie from her Cuban conquistador. Paradoxically, the green-eyed monster makes the heart grow fonder as it fosters distrust. But having secured my lunch date, it was an optimistic suitor who called Al Rogoff.

  “It’s about time,” came that gruff voice. “I pulled the graveyard shift and ain’t had no shut-eye waiting on your call.”

  “I trust you didn’t intrude upon any romantic interludes during your nocturnal rounds.”

  “Oh, you read about that, did you?”

  “Indeed I did, and so did most of Palm Beach and vicinity,” I goaded him. “Was Tom Mitland able to raise bail and go home to get out of that skirt and into a suitable morning frock?”

  “Some fancy lawyer from Jupiter sprung him, but the counselor ain’t saying who put up the moola.”

  “I’m glad to know chivalry is not a lost virtue,” I offered, “but if a guy in a blond wig doesn’t inspire gallantry, who will?”

  “Funny thing about that light in the old Beaumont place,” Al told me, “is that we’ve been getting reports from people who thought they saw one in an upstairs window, but we never paid no attention to ’em. Now I would swear I seen it myself.”

  You may have noticed that Al Rogoff assassinates the King’s English, but don’t be lulled into a false sense of superiority. Al’s mind is as sharp as his grammar is wanting, and his leisure pursuits include ballet, opera and string quartets. He’s been known to fly to New York to catch a performance at the Met or Carnegie Hall, a fact to which only I am privy. He tells his cohorts Las Vegas is his destination and lets them fill in the blanks.

  “Is that the reason for your urgent call, Al?”

  “Oh, I almost forgot. The state troopers have an APB out on your car.”

  An APB is an all points bulletin, which is police-speak for “We’re after you.” And the owner, not the vehicle, is what they would be after. “I had a lousy night, Al, and a trying morning, so spare me the police lingo. What’s up?”