McNally's Bluff

by Vincent Lardo

  “The guy with the television show,” he shouted. “Sure. I flew him over that maze and would you believe what happened there? They say it was built on a Seminole burying ground and it’s haunted. Mr. Macurdy had a Seminole witch doctor on the show this morning and he thinks the dead lady was the reincarnation of a warrior’s squaw who rose up to claim her. The Seminoles are not happy about this.”

  Neither is Mrs. Macurdy, I refrained from saying. And where did Mack get the witch doctor from? Central Casting? My poor Marge. She must be ready to murder Mack.

  “Yes. It’s all very unnerving to say the least, Mister...?”

  “Martin. Like the flying dude in the comic strip, Smilin’ Jack Martin. Only I’m Tom Martin. Are you with the network, Mr. McNally?”

  “No, Tom. Like I said, I’m a friend of Mr. Macurdy and I have people coming to Palm Beach in a few weeks. Business associates. I’m in real estate, you see. I want to give them a bird’s-eye view, as it were, of parcels just west of here. I’d like to take along a cameraman, as did Mr. Macurdy.” I lie with great conviction, as you may have noticed, and never bother to cross my fingers. I am always believed because my face does not betray me. In the words of A.E.W. Mason’s Inspector Hanaud, It is a great advantage to be intelligent and not to look it.

  Tom nodded his head in agreement. “No problem, Mr. McNally. Would that be a video cameraman you had in mind?”

  “Yes. As I said, it would be just like the run you did for Mr. Macurdy.”

  “I asked because Mr. Macurdy took along a telescopic camera, too,” Tom informed me.

  “Who was taking snaps with a telescopic camera? Mr. Macurdy?”

  “That’s right, sir. He said it was to show what he called tight shots on the screen but I never saw them when I watched the show the next day. Maybe they didn’t come out so good.”

  On the contrary, Tommy boy, they came out picture perfect and I could hardly contain my excitement. I had followed my stomach and struck gold. Adding another to-do to my already busy schedule I decided there and then to fly over that maze for starters, and do it again with a telescopic camera if necessary. Where does one get a telescopic camera? From a paparazzo, who else?

  “If I wanted to make a test run, Tom, would you oblige me?”

  “Sure thing.” He flashed me his smilin’ Jack smile and promised, “I’ll also charge you.”

  As I made my way back to Palm Beach I gloated over my discovery. Mack had taken telescopic photos of the maze, maybe even had them blown up, then pieced them together like a jigsaw puzzle and got himself a clear picture of the grid which, incidentally, he did not share with his audience. He kept it all to himself and even had the audacity to brag to his wife that he would make the goal. What a devious bugger was Mack Macurdy.

  He went up in that chopper days before the party, so had no way of knowing there would be a search for the goal and a prize to the winners. No. He took those photos, memorized the key, and filed away the information for whatever use he could make of it in the future, and the future had arrived sooner than even Mack himself had expected. But it seems the prize turned out to be far more than just a few gift certificates to trendy Worth Avenue boutiques.

  What had Mack seen when he flew over the maze—either by the naked eye or courtesy of his high-powered equipment—to allow him to intimidate Hayes? Pay up or I’ll go public with the key to your maze? Surely not. Mack saw more than that and now Archy was going to learn what it was on Matthew Hayes’s dime even if it had nothing to do with Marlena Marvel’s murder.

  How much did Marge know about this? Mack liked to brag. Could he have resisted telling his wife what he had done? If she knew, why was she jerking me around? Did she suspect, like me, that he had learned more than just the key to the grid which he wasn’t sharing with her? Did she want Archy to learn what it was—gratis, no less?

  Freckles, moonlight and—guile?

  I retraced my route back across the Royal Palm Way bridge, this time pulling into the McNally Building’s underground garage. I greeted Herb with a thumbs-up as I hurried to the elevator and ascended to the mail room. I purposely avoided going to my office as I was certain the monster’s little red eye would be blinking furiously and should I retrieve my messages they would all be from Matthew Hayes protesting Tilly’s abduction by the police.

  Binky was at his desk, munching a sandwich not from Sandy James and reading a bodice ripper. Binky is addicted to the genre. His favorites seem to be sagas of virile Norsemen sailing up and down the coast of western Europe, laying waste to the land and ravishing all the farmer’s daughters. He once told me there are worse things one could read and I asked him to name two. I still await an answer.

  “Get your nose out of that tome and tell me how you and Joe Gallo found the exotic plant dealer in Boca.”

  Binky looked up at me with those brown eyes and blinked several times before saying, “Why don’t you give that purple shirt a rest, Archy?”

  The nerve. Since he’s become a stringer for a news-hound he has lost all respect for those he used to respect—like me. “I happen to like this shirt, not that I have to answer to you for what I choose to wear. Now let’s talk about that foxglove plant and the guy who sold it to you. Who told you he might have such a plant?”

  “I do believe it was the lovely Fitz who knew of Romeo’s nursery.”

  I should have guessed it was Fitz, the reigning princess of the Smart Set, who would know where to get anything exotic, be it animal, vegetable or mineral. “Romeo, is it? Well I’m here to warn you and Joe that the police are very interested in Romeo and his exotic plants. He’s suspected of growing cannabis and is under surveillance by the police from Boca to Juno.”

  Binky shrugged his bony shoulders. “You’re such a prude, Archy.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Everyone knows that Romeo is a dealer. But it’s just grass, no hard stuff, so what’s the problem?”

  This was infuriating. “The problem is that it’s illegal and a health hazard. Have you ever...”

  “I refuse to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate me.” With that he returned to his bacon, lettuce and tomato on toasted white with mayo. It looked scrumptious.

  It was clear that his time spent in the good offices of McNally & Son were not lost upon him. I had my say and what he and Joe did with it was their affair. “A word to the wise, Binky, but I see my caution falls on deaf ears.”

  “Relax, Archy,” he suggested. “Your generation is responsible for two world wars and that doesn’t bother you as much as a little pot to dull the sharp edges.”

  My generation? Two world wars? “We are contemporaries, if you please.” I have ten years on Binky, that’s all. Well—maybe fifteen.

  Binky finished his sandwich and sipped from a straw embedded in a can of Classic Coke. Such a diet helped maintain his twenty-eight-inch waist. I should have parked on the bridge and jumped off.

  “Joe’s no fool,” Binky crowed, and I was touched with nostalgia for the days when Binky Watrous sang my praises. “Getting the plant for show and tell was a great idea so who cares where it came from? The end justifies the means, Archy.”

  “That, Binky, is Machiavellian.”

  “No it’s not, Archy. It’s show business.”

  Well, I couldn’t refute that keen observation.

  Not being proud I gather my rose buds regardless from whose bush they fall, so inquired, “Has Gallo come up with anything new in his investigation?”

  “He has an idea but that Mack Macurdy won’t cooperate,” Binky complained.

  Now that was most interesting. “How so, Binky my boy?”

  He closed his paperback without bothering to mark his place but I surmised Binky had the page numbers of his favorite chapters etched into his memory. Binky needed a woman to dull those sharp edges and I suddenly wondered if he had tried the “personals” I understand are now so popular on the Internet. Employing code names, couples get to know each other via cor
respondence before actually meeting. They say many have ended in marriage, or affairs, but there are no statistics as to the duration of these liaisons.

  Binky once had a gal who told me he was dynamite in the boudoir. Would she write a recommendation? What could she say? There is more to Binky than meets the eye?

  “You heard Mack flatly refuses to have Joe back on the morning show,” Binky reported.

  “I have,” I assured him.

  “But the network is giving Joe a few minutes on the late news as a followup to the foxglove plant presentation, which was Joe’s idea.”

  “Is Macurdy trying to get Joe canned from the evening news spot?” I asked.

  Binky shook his head. “No. He doesn’t have that kind of influence with the network. Joe wants to have a look at the footage Mack shot of the maze from the air and Mack is not being cooperative.”

  This, to be sure, was of paramount importance to me. Joe Gallo was no fool, indeed, and what did he know, or was he just whistling in the dark? I got the feeling as I sometimes do in a case that things were rapidly coming to a head, but I couldn’t see the crown for the clouds.

  “Why can’t Joe just run the tape of the show for the morning that footage was aired? Those shots were even repeated a few times after the murder, and I bet a zillion people have it on tape, too. What’s the problem?”

  “You don’t understand, Archy,” Binky began to explain. “The cameraman took about ten minutes of film that day he went up with Mack, but it was edited down to what was seen on the show, which was exactly ninety seconds of tape. Joe wants to see the unused footage.”

  Now I was more than interested. I was ecstatic. “And where is it?” I asked, anticipating the answer.

  “It’s disappeared,” Binky said. “Or the cameraman has disappeared, according to Mack. Either way it’s a dead end.”

  “But isn’t the cameraman a network employee?”

  “No,” came the answer. “Like all shows, Mack’s has a budget and the producer didn’t want to okay the cost of the chopper and cameraman so Mack did it on his own. It’s not so unusual for a star to spend his own money to boost his ratings and it sure paid off for Mack.”

  “Macurdy hired his own cameraman who he now says has disappeared along with the film,” I finished the story. “If you believe that, Binky, you believe in Santa, the tooth fairy and the sincerity of politicians.”

  Macurdy had that film and he didn’t want anyone to see it because it contained something amazin’ about the Amazin’ Maze of Matthew Hayes. “What was Joe looking for, Binky, do you know?”

  “Nothing special,” Binky said. “He can’t get into the maze because Hayes has barred all newsmen from the place and the police aren’t giving away anything they may have discovered in their search. Joe thought the unseen footage might be worm having a look at.”

  Or was Joe on to something he wasn’t sharing with Binky, or anyone else? Everyone was playing this close to the vest. And did Macurdy just luck out when he decided to pay for the chopper and cameraman, or did he know what to look for? So many questions.

  Now I pondered over what to do with Joe Gallo and his stringer who had stumbled onto something that might be injurious to their wellbeing and didn’t know it. There is nothing as frightening as two amateur sleuths following a hot fuse attached to a stick of TNT. If I told Joe to forget trying to locate the unused footage, he would become more determined than ever to badger Macurdy for its whereabouts, and Macurdy might well be the TNT at the end of the fuse. If I said nothing I would be derelict of my duty. Contrary to my blabbering, I harbor a soft spot for Binky and Joe Gallo.

  I compromised thusly, “I’d like to sit down with Joe and compare notes, Binky. What do you think?”

  As I had hoped, he jumped at the offer. “Great, Archy. I’ll tell Joe and get back to you.”

  17

  WHEN I RETURNED TO the garage, Herb, in his glass kiosk, gave me a thumbs-up. This was not sign language for “have a nice day” but to inform me that Mrs. Trelawney was hot on my trail. How did she know I was in the building? Guess.

  I didn’t need a clairvoyant to tell me that Hayes, tired of leaving messages with the red eyed monster, had somehow gotten through to the executive suite where he protested my truancy to our leader’s girl Friday. Before getting into my Miata I answered Herb with a thumbs-down.

  The master of Le Maze himself opened the door to me. This said he didn’t employ any full-time help except for Tilly, who was otherwise engaged this afternoon. It also said that Matthew Hayes coveted his privacy. Those who are not fortunate enough to have a domestic staff fail to realize that their presence turns the homestead into a fish-bowl. If you doubt this, just consider the number of butlers, equerries, security guards, etc., who have penned exposes of the English royal family.

  Before inviting me in, the little guy shouted, “They arrested Tilly. I need a lawyer...”

  Father’s words echoed in my head, Don’t give him my name.

  “Where have you been?” Hayes continued to rant. “I’ve been trying to get you all morning. What’s your cell number?”

  When he ran out of breath, or questions, I said, “Tilly has not been arrested. She was taken in for questioning.”

  “How do you know that?” he demanded.

  “Because I provoked the police to do so.”

  He started and touched his cheek as if I had slapped him in the kisser. This, clearly, was not the answer he expected. “Whose side are you on, McNally?”

  “I usually root for the Dolphins,” I admitted.

  “You’re fired,” he bellowed, loud enough for all of Ocean Boulevard to know I just got the sack.

  “Good day, sir.” I touched the brim of my hat and turned to go.

  “Just where do you think you’re going, McNally?” he cried, following me out.

  “To the unemployment office. Where else?”

  “Get your tail back in here, pronto, or I’ll fire you.”

  “You just did,” I reminded him.

  Suddenly he was all contrite. The little boy caught in the act of something devilish and promising never to do it again if I would only spare the rod. I feared that if I applauded his performance he would actually take a bow. This was all most unseemly for the front steps of an Ocean Boulevard villa in the broad light of day. My red Miata in the driveway was a sure giveaway as to the identity of the guy Hayes was indulging in a pas de deux. I thought it best to lead the little boy back into the house—by the hand if need be.

  “Let’s take this from the top, Mr. Hayes,” I said, in the manner of a director requesting a retake. “I ring the front doorbell, you open the door and invite me in.”

  “No need to be surly,” he had the nerve to accuse. He turned and headed back to the open door, and I followed.

  No sooner were we in the entrance foyer than he attacked. “Why did you tell them to bring in Tilly? They’ve been questioning her for the past three days. She told them all she knows.”

  “Are we going to stand here, in the hall, Mr. Hayes, or can we go into the den and play this painful scene in a modicum of comfort?”

  With a pout and a shrug, Hayes buried his hands deep in the pockets of his corduroy trousers and led the way. (Georgy would say he “was doing” Jackie Cooper in The Champ.) We passed through the great room where those gaudy, giant four-color posters still lined the walls. I took it they were part of the permanent decor and were not hung just for the party. In the words of Lolly Spindrift, “It gives new meaning to the word gauche.” Forgive the cliché but if hindsight were foresight I would have paid closer attention to those garish placards.

  Once in the den Hayes hopped onto the divan as if he were mounting a horse sidesaddle. He was shod in his elevator pumps and I wondered how high he stood in his stocking feet. Knee-high to a grasshopper I imagined, perhaps unkindly.

  I took the seat I had occupied on my last visit and, before he could get on Tilly’s case, I got on his. “Your wife knew one of the guests at the p
arty,” was how I began the interrogation of my diffident client.

  If my intention was to shock, I failed miserably. Hayes simply returned my gaze and said, “You mean Carolyn? Sure, they went back a long ways. I knew her back then, too. Marlena and Carolyn were stewardesses...”

  “They were cocktail waitresses in the Cockatoo Lounge, Mr. Hayes. Let’s cut the do-do and talk turkey. Okay? If not, I’ll quit before you fire me again.”

  Still blasé, he uttered, “Gobble, gobble,” and chuckled. “Who told you that? Carolyn, I guess. I thought she didn’t want it known around this piss-elegant town where she came from. And what’s this got to do with Marlena’s death? That’s what I’m paying you for, McNally, not to dig up gossip like that Spendthrift guy.”

  Was it possible that he truly didn’t know the connection? To give him the benefit of the doubt, I reasoned that he was new in town and he had not been lionized by the welcome wagon ladies. In fact, he and his household had been given the PBCS (Palm Beach cold shoulder) since he had announced the construction of his maze, his profession and what he had in store for Palm Beach.

  Laddy Taylor’s accusations against his stepmother had never been put in print. Laddy griped to local insiders, who blabbed to each other—and outsiders, like Hayes, could very well be ignorant of the Taylor vs. Taylor scandal.

  But Hayes was an actor. A superb actor, and possibly a writer and director as well. I must keep this in mind, but it wasn’t easy. I was always a sucker for the underdog but, this time around, would it suck me under? So many questions.

  “Did you know that Carolyn Taylor and Marlena were meeting in secret?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he told me. “I told you Carolyn didn’t want her relationship with Marlena known now that she’s a snooty Palm Beach rich widow and Marlena respected that, so they met outside the town. What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal, sir, is that Tilly claims she saw Carolyn upstairs just before Marlena gave her last performance as Venus.”

  Finally, I got him in the solar plexus and he flinched. I followed with a jab to the jaw. “Just about the time Tilly had filled the perk for Marlena’s tea and left it to attend to Marlena.”