The Archy McNally Series, Volume 1

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Uh-huh,” I said, and started to leave again. This time he stopped me.

  “Listen, Archy,” he said, the whine rising in pitch, “I hope you won’t mention anything about my problem to your father. I mean it’s just between us, isn’t it? Confidential and all that?”

  “Of course,” I said. “My lips are sealed.”

  “Good man,” he said.

  So that evening, after my ocean swim, the family cocktail hour and dinner, I followed the sire to his study.

  “Father,” I said, “may I have a word with you?”

  “Can’t it wait?” he said testily.

  I knew what irked him; I was delaying his nighttime routine. He was looking forward to having one or more glasses of port while he continued slogging his way through the entire oeuvre of Charles Dickens. I think he was currently deep in the complexities of Martin Chuzzlewit but it might have been Little Dorrit. The amazing thing was that he stayed awake while reading.

  “It’ll just take a few minutes,” I promised.

  “Oh, very well,” he said. “Come on in.”

  He stood erect behind his massive desk and I stood in front. As I delivered a report on my recent conversation with Chauncey Wilson Smythe-Hersforth, his face twisted with distaste.

  “A tawdry business,” he pronounced when I had finished.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, “but troubling. Was I correct in telling him that the woman had no legal grounds for a suit against him for Breach of Promise?”

  “You were quite right,” he said. “Breach of Promise actions were abolished by the Florida legislature in 1945. In fact, lawmakers had such an abhorrence of the practice that they decreed that anyone initiating such a suit would be guilty of a misdemeanor in the second degree. Shortly after the statute was passed, a law review published an article on the subject entitled ‘No More Torts for Tarts.’”

  “Not bad,” I said. “But now the question is how to handle CWs problem. I imagine the complainant will accept a cash settlement.”

  “A reasonable assumption,” father said dryly. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the affair. I can draw up a release she will be required to sign before she hands over the letters and gets paid. But a release never completely eliminates the possibility of her making another claim at some future date, especially if she’s shrewd enough to keep photocopies of the letters. It could go on and on. It’s really blackmail, Archy, and blackmailers rarely give up after one payoff.”

  “I concur,” I said. “I think I better meet the young woman, get a take on her, and perhaps a rough idea of how much she expects for the letters. After that, we can decide how to deal with it.”

  My father was silent, mulling over my suggestion. He was a champion muller; I have seen him spend three minutes deciding whether to furl his golf umbrella clockwise or counterclockwise.

  “Yes,” he said finally, “I think that would be best. Interview the lady, appear to be sympathetic and understanding, and find out exactly what she wants. Then report to me, and we’ll take it from there.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, resisting an urge to salute.

  I trudged upstairs to my nest, put on the reading specs, and set to work recording the details of that eventful day. I paused while I was scribbling a précis of the Chinless Wonder’s remarks about Hector Johnson: “Knows banking. Owned a Western bank.” Let’s see, I recapped, that made Theodosia’s father an expert on orchids, electronics and/or computer stuff, government service (possibly espionage), and banking. Why, the man was a veritable polymath, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if my next interviewee claimed that Hector was a master bialy maker.

  I finished my labors, closed my journal, and was preparing to relax by sipping a dram of marc and listening to a Patricia Kaas cassette when my blasted phone blasted. I glanced at my Mickey Mouse watch (an original, not a reproduction) and saw it was almost ten-thirty.

  “Archy McNally,” I said, expecting the worst. It was close.

  “Ah-ha!” Sgt. Al Rogoff, PBPD, said in his heavy rumble. “I have tracked the sherlock of Palm Beach to his elegant lair. How you doing, old buddy?”

  “Up to my nates in drudgery,” I said. “And you?”

  “Likewise,” he said. “But enough of this idle chitchat. You know the painter Silas Hawkin?”

  I hesitated for just the briefest. “Yes, I know him,” I said. “Matter of fact, I visited him at his studio this morning.”

  “Interesting,” Al said. “I think you better wheel your baby carriage back to his studio. Right now.”

  “Why on earth should I do that?”

  “Because the maid just found Silas with a knife stuck in his neck.”

  I swallowed. “Dead?”

  “Couldn’t be deader,” Rogoff said cheerfully.

  “But why pick on me, Al?”

  “Because your business card was on his desk. You coming or do I have to send a SWAT team after you?”

  “On my way,” I said.

  I paused long enough to take one sip of marc (a gulp would have demolished me) and bounced downstairs. I trotted out to the garage to board my pride and joy. It had been a sparkling day, and the night was still dulcet. As I drove, I admired Mother Nature while I pondered who might have stuck a shiv in the throat of Father Hawkin.

  People acquainted with my investigative career sometimes ask, “What was your first case?” To which I invariably reply, “A 1986 Haut Brion.” Actually, my first Discreet Inquiry that involved criminal behavior turned out to be a debacle because I hadn’t yet learned that in addition to lust, we all have murder in our hearts—or if not murder, at least larceny.

  So now I could easily come up with a Cast of Characters who might have put down Silas Hawkin, including wife, daughter, maid, gallery agent, and any of his clients. But, as in any homicide investigation, the prime question was Cui bono? Or who benefited from the artist’s death?

  When I arrived at the Villa Bile the studio building had already been festooned with crime scene tape. The bricked driveway was crowded with official vehicles including an ambulance, indicating they had not yet removed what Al Rogoff enjoys referring to as the corpus delicious.

  There was a uniformed officer standing guard at the studio door, inspecting the heavens and dreaming, no doubt, of Madonna.

  “Archy McNally,” I reported to this stalwart. “Sergeant Rogoff asked me to come over.”

  “Yeah?” he said, not very interested. “You stay here and I’ll go see.”

  I waited patiently, and in a few minutes the sergeant himself came trundling out, a cold cigar jutting from his meaty face. Al is built like an Ml-Al tank, and when he moves I always expect to hear the clanking of treads.

  “What were you doing here this morning?” he demanded, wasting no time on preliminaries.

  “Good evening, Al,” I said.

  “Good evening,” he said. “What were you doing here this morning? The maid, wife, and daughter don’t know—or maybe they do and aren’t saying.”

  “I’m doing a credit check on a man Hawkin knew,” I said. “I stopped by to get his opinion on the subject.”

  “And who is the subject?”

  I had calculated how much I could tell him and how much, in good conscience, I could withhold.

  “Hector Johnson,” I told him. “The father of one of the late artist’s customers.”

  “And why are you doing a credit check on him?”

  “At the request of a client of McNally and Son.”

  “What client?”

  “Nope,” I said. “Unethical. Confidentiality.”

  He looked at me. “You’re no lawyer and you know it.”

  “But I represent my father who is an attorney,” I pointed out. “And I can’t divulge the information you request without his permission.”

  “Son,” Al said heavily, “you’ve got more crap than a Christmas goose. All right, I won’t push it—for now. Let’s go up.”

  We entered through that oak and etched glass d
oor. I glanced into the ground floor area. Mrs. Louise Hawkin was slumped at one end of a sailcloth-covered couch and Marcia Hawkin was at the other end, both as far apart as ever. We tramped up the cast-iron staircase and walked into the studio. The techs were busy.

  Rogoff stopped me. “Wife was out playing bridge. Daughter went to a movie. They say. Silas didn’t go over to the main house for dinner, but everyone says that wasn’t unusual. When his work was going good he hated to stop. Finally, around nine o’clock, the maid called him to ask if he was coming over to eat or if he wanted her to bring him a plate. No answer. But she could see the lights on up here. So she came over and found him. Let’s go take a look.”

  He was lying supine, naked on that tattered sleigh bed. His eyes were still open. The knife was still in his throat. An assistant from the ME’s office was fussing over him. I knew the man. Thomas Bunion. One of the few people I’ve ever met who are simultaneously cantankerous and timid.

  I stared down at the remains of Silas Hawkin. There was an ocean of blood. An ocean. I am not a total stranger to violent death and thought I had learned to view a corpse with some dispassion, without needing to scurry away and upchuck in private. But I admit I was spooked by the sight of the murdered artist. So pale. For some reason his beard looked fake, as if it had been spirit-gummed to his face.

  A wooden handle protruded from his neck.

  “It looks like a palette knife,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

  “Uh-huh,” Rogoff said. “We already figured that.”

  “But a palette knife doesn’t have a cutting edge,” I said. “And the blade is usually thin and pliable, something like a spatula. It’s difficult to believe it was driven in so deeply and killed him.”

  “Well, it did,” Bunion said crossly. “Looks like an artery was severed, but we won’t know for sure until we get him on a slab. Thin blade or not, it was a lucky hit.”

  “Not for Silas,” Al said.

  “Poor devil,” I muttered, turned away, and took a deep breath.

  The sergeant inspected me. “Want to go outside, Archy?” he asked quietly.

  “No, I’m fine,” I told him. “But thanks.” I looked around the studio. A plainclothesman was seated behind the decrepit desk, slowly turning pages of the ledger Si had slammed shut when I visited him that morning.

  “What is he doing?” I asked.

  Rogoff answered: “Hawkin may have been a nutsy artist, but he was a helluva businessman. He kept a record of every painting he did: date started, date finished, and disposition. If it was sold, he wrote down the size of the painting, name and address of the buyer, and the price paid. What we’ll do is check his ledger against those finished works stacked against the wall and see if anything is missing.”

  “That makes sense,” I said, but then I thought about it. “Al, are you figuring Hawkin was sleeping naked on that ugly bed and a burglar broke in to grab something he could fence? Then the artist wakes up and the crook grabs the nearest deadly weapon, a palette knife, and shoves it into the victim’s throat to keep him quiet?”

  He shrugged. “The wife and daughter were away. The maid was in the kitchen at the far side of the maid house with her radio going full blast. She couldn’t have heard or seen an intruder. The door to the studio building was unlocked. It could have been a grab-and-run scumbag. Maybe a junkie.”

  “Do you really believe that?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said.

  We went downstairs together. “Excuse me a moment,” I said to the sergeant. I went over to the couch where wife and daughter were still sitting, isolated from each other. “May I express my sympathy and my deepest sorrow at this horrible tragedy,” I said. It came out more floridly than I had intended.

  Only Mrs. Louise Hawkin looked up. “Thank you,” she said faintly.

  Al and I moved outside. He used a wooden kitchen match to light his cold cigar and I borrowed the flame for my third cigarette of the day, resolving it would be the last.

  Rogoff jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the ground floor of the studio building. “Not much love lost there,” he said.

  “No,” I agreed, “not much. It was a sex scene, wasn’t it, Al?”

  He nodded. “That’s the way I see it. The guy’s in bed with someone, woman or man. There’s an argument. She or he grabs up the nearest tool, the palette knife. I think it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Not planned. They started out making love and then things went sour.”

  “Where do you go from here?”

  “Check his inventory of paintings. Check the alibis of wife, daughter, maid, agent, clients, friends, enemies, and everyone connected with him.”

  “When did it happen—do you know that?”

  “Tom Bunion figures it was about an hour before we got the squeal. That would put the time of death around nine o’clock, give or take.”

  “I was home,” I told him. “Upstairs in my rooms. I had just talked with my father in his study.”

  “We’ll check it out,” he said with ponderous good humor. Then, suddenly serious, he added, “You got any wild ideas?”

  “Not at the moment,” I said. “Except that it must have required a great deal of strength to drive a blunt blade into Hawkin’s throat. That would suggest a male assailant.”

  “Yeah,” the sergeant said. “Or a furious woman.”

  “One never knows, do one?”

  “There you go again,” he said.

  I returned home that night to find the house darkened except for the bulb burning over the rear entrance. I went directly to my quarters and finished that marc I had started aeons ago. Also my fourth English Oval. Then I went to bed hoping I wouldn’t have nightmares involving palette knives and oceans of blood. I didn’t. Instead I had a dotty dream about Zasu Pitts. Don’t ask me why.

  Chapter 4

  I GLANCED AT LOCAL newspapers the next morning and watched a few TV news programs. I learned nothing about the homicide I didn’t already know.

  But after reading the obits on Silas Hawkin, I was surprised to discover that Louise was his third wife, and Marcia his daughter by his first. She was his only child. Wife No. 1 had died of cancer. Divorce had ended Marriage No. 2.

  I was even more startled to read of the professional career of the artist. He had studied at prestigious academies in New York and Paris. His work was owned and exhibited by several museums. He had been honored with awards from artists’ guilds. In other words, the man had been far from a hack. I had underestimated his talents because I thought him a dunce. But then the creative juices have no relation to intelligence, personality, or character, do they?

  Finally, a little before noon, I decided I needed a change of subject and a change of venue. So I determined to wheel down to Fort Lauderdale and have a chat with Shirley Feebling, the young woman who was causing Chauncey Wilson Smythe-Hersforth to suffer an acute attack of the fantods.

  In my innocence it never occurred to me the two investigations might be connected. But as A. Pope remarked, “Fools rush in...” Right on, Alex!

  Less than two hours later I was in a mini-mall north of Ft. Liquordale, staring with some bemusement at a large sign that advertised in block letters: TOPLESS CAR WASH. And below, in a chaste script: “No touching allowed.” The activities within were hidden from prurient passers-by by a canvas curtain slit down the middle. Customers’ cars were driven through the curtain to the interior, where vehicles and drivers were presumably rejuvenated.

  I decided my flag-red Miata convertible would be abashed by such intimate attention, so I parked nearby and returned on foot to push my way through the slit curtain. I was confronted by a woolly mammoth, who appeared to be either the manager or a hired sentinel assigned to halt sightseers who didn’t arrive on wheels.

  “I’d like to speak to Miss Shirley Feebling, please,” I said.

  “Yeah?” he said belligerently. “Who’re you?”

  “Andrew Jackson,” I said, proffering a twenty-dollar bill. “Here is my bu
siness card.”

  “Oh yeah,” he said, grabbing it. “I thought I recognized you. She’s over there washing down the Tuchas.”

  I turned to look. “Taurus,” I said.

  “Whatever,” he said, shrugging.

  I was a bit taken aback by my first sight of Ms. Feebling. I suppose I had expected a brazen hussy and instead I saw a small, demure brunet who looked rather sweet and vulnerable. There was a waifish innocence about her that made her costume even more outré. She was wearing the bottom section of a pink thong bikini, and she was indeed topless.

  It would be indelicate to describe those gifts that qualified her for employment in a topless car wash. Suffice to say that she was well-qualified.

  I waited until she finished wiping the Taurus dry and had been handed what appeared to be a generous tip by the pop-eyed driver. Then I approached and offered her my business card, a legitimate one this time.

  “My name is Archibald McNally,” I said with a restrained 100-watt smile. “My law firm represents Mr. Smythe-Hersforth. I was hoping to have a friendly talk with you so that we might arrive at some mutually beneficial solution of your misunderstanding with our client.”

  “There’s no misunderstanding,” she said, inspecting my card. “Chauncey said he’d marry me, and I’ve got the letters to prove it.”

  “Of course,” I said, “but I hope you’ll be willing to discuss it. I drove down from Palm Beach specifically to meet you and learn your side of this disagreement. Could we go somewhere reasonably private where we can chat? I would be more than willing to recompense you or your employer for the time you are absent from work.”

  She looked up at me. “Will you buy me a pizza?” she asked.

  “Delighted,” I told her.

  “Then I’ll ask Jake,” she said. She went over to the woolly mammoth, talked a moment, then came back. “He wants fifty for an hour. Okay?”

  “Certainly,” I said, imagining my father’s reaction when he saw this item on my expense account.

  “That’s neat,” she said, and her smile sparkled. “I’ll go get dressed. Just take a minute.”