Two cars on my trail? This was getting weirder by the moment. If I didn’t know the guy from a myriad of newspaper photographs and countless TV shots of him and the First Man forever hurrying from a copter to a waiting limo I would think he was a rich PB eccentric having fun.
When he offered me coffee I refused with, “No, thanks, I just had a cup.”
“With the charming lady, no doubt.” Cranston had a reputation for being something of a Romeo. Tall, lanky and square-jawed, he emanated a boyish charm some women find irresistible. If he played the field he did so with practiced circumspection. His marriage was solid, with three lovely and eligible daughters to keep the paparazzi and the gossips in business. “What about a proper drink?” he tried again.
“The sun’s not over the yardarm but I’ll never tell.”
With what I hoped was a show of displeasure, I said, “Mr. Cranston, may I know why you followed me here and what you want from me?”
He took a silver box from the bar, removed the lid, and offered me a cigarette. Without a qualm I accepted. It wasn’t an English Oval I was now leaving home without them but any port in a storm, eh, what?
Giving me a light, he said, “I would have contacted you through your father but he’s away at the moment.”
“He’s traveling
“On the Pearl of the Antilles cruise ship with your mother,” he cut me short. “I know that. The next best thing was to corner you in a place were I would least likely be recognized and you led me right to it.
However, if your friend Sergeant Rogoff was at home we would have aborted the mission, but not for long.”
The guy was telling me how much he knew, which was a lot. As for the unconventional meeting, I said earlier that local patricians in need of my help did not like to advertise the fact, but this near hijacking was an all-time first.
“You seem to know a lot about me, sir, so I assume you know what I do for a living, such as it is.” He liked that and smiled his appreciation. “I take it you want to hire me?”
“I want information from you and I’m willing to pay for it,” he said.
“Consider me a client and start billing me.”
This made as much sense as Einstein looking for the answer to the cosmos in a crystal ball. “Why me when you seem to have unlimited resources at your disposal to tell you what you want to know?”
“Because, Mr. McNally, you have access to a resource I neither possess nor wish to approach.”
“Namely, sir?”
“Namely, Sabrina Wright.”
My flabber-was too startled to be — gas ted Was there no end to this woman’s liaisons? When her plane touched down in Florida the sound must have been heard around the world. Was she involved with the government on the highest level? Espionage? Now I wanted that drink but, like much I wanted in life, I had let my chances pass me by. “You speak of the popular writer, Mr. Cranston?”
“You know damn well of whom I speak, Archy. Tell me what she’s doing in Palm Beach with her family?”
As with Thomas Appleton, we were suddenly on a first name basis.
Appleton? Was there a connection? Oy vey! I thought it best to play dumb until I knew just what was coming down the pike. I puffed deeply on the weed and choked. Mr. Richard Cranston slapped my back hard.
“How would I know what she’s doing here, with or without her family?” I coughed.
Archy, I’m a busy man and I’ve spent all morning getting you where I want you, so spare me the crap. The moment Sabrina arrived in Palm Beach she contacted you. You met in a sleaze joint where she enjoyed a Pink Lady and you had a vodka and tonic. The next day you had lunch with her husband, after which Sabrina left the Chesterfield Hotel and moved into The Breakers with her hubby, daughter, and one Zachary Ward, a stringer for a tabloid. Have I got it right?”
He had it so right I felt violated. Was that insolent bartender in his employ? The waiter at Harry’s Place? The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker? I noticed that the driver was still outside the car and well out of hearing range. This powwow was top-priority hush-hush, and I didn’t like it one lousy bit. People who know too much are expendable.
“What’s she after, Archy? I don’t believe that bull in Spindrift’s column. If Sabrina wanted me, she knows where to find me. So what is she after?”
My deja was now so vu my head was spinning. “Why would she want you, Dick?” If I called him mister or sir, I would be the schoolboy playing to his master. No way. You give these guys an inch and they walk off with your life.
He puffed away, adding to the smoke we had both been exhaling. The air conditioner was now blowing it back in our faces and irritating my eyes. Was this the complaint of a true ex-smoker or of a guy who wanted out of this stretch limo?
“More to the point, Archy, what did she want from you?”
Seeing an ashtray on the bar I tapped the ash off my cigarette as I answered, “I asked you first, Dick.”
I had touched a raw nerve for which I was verbally trounced. The guy turned into a raging bull and ranted, “Don’t get wise with me, buddy.
Don’t ever get wise with me. You tell me what I want to know or.. ”
“Or what?” I trounced back. The bull had picked the wrong matador to snort at. “You rub shoulders with a few hotshots and you think you can stalk citizens, drag them into your fancy car, and threaten them to learn what you want to know. Well, think again, buddy. The charming lady is at her window with a video camera in one hand and a telephone in the other. On a signal from me, she’ll dial the police. Would you like to explain this meeting to the press?”
The guy turned the color of the long ash at the end of his cigarette.
“I don’t believe you.”
“All you have to do is try to stop me from getting out of this car and you’ll know if I’m lying or not.” I reached for the door.
When his arm shot out to restrain me the ash fell onto his lap. There is nothing like a hidden camcorder to drive a politician bonkers. “My apologies,” he muttered, shaking his head. The man was in a bad way.
“Please, hear me out.”
Keeping on the offensive, I informed him, “I haven’t got all day, but I’ll give you ten more minutes.”
He spoke very quietly when he said, “I’m going to be offered the post of ambassador to the Court of Saint James.” So, he was truly following in Joseph Kennedy’s footsteps. Good thing he didn’t have any sons or perhaps he harbored political expectations for his daughters. “Any hint of a scandal, especially of a sexual nature, could put my confirmation in doubt, or I would have to withdraw my name out of loyalty to certain parties.”
I trashed my cigarette with Sabrina’s words echoing in my head, ‘became au fait with the ways of the world, which is to say with the rich, the super rich, and the mega rich.” She even hinted at her many sexual conquests along the way. Was Richard Cranston one of them?
Almost in answer to my silent musings, Cranston was saying, “Sabrina and I had a brief tryst awhile back.”
Finally. “Your wife, of course, didn’t know about it.”
He looked at me as if I were retarded. “My wife? I didn’t even know my wife at the time.” He finally got rid of his cigarette before it singed his fingers. “Now that my name is newsworthy, is she trying to muscle in on the publicity? Is that why she’s here?”
Dickey’s ego was bigger than this car. “If you’ll excuse my saying so, I believe Sabrina Wright is a far bigger name than Richard Cranston, if you’re talking on a global scale. In short, she doesn’t need you to get her name in print. She’s not only a household word, she’s an icon.”
Imagination having no greater stimulus than a guilty conscience, he implored, “Then why is she here?”
Believing I would put his mind at ease and give the Court of St. James what it deserved, I said, “Sabrina’s daughter, Gillian, was adopted.
The girl is here looking for her father. Sabrina wants her to stop the search and return home. Why she hired me is too complicated to repeat and it has nothing to do with your affair with the lady. The end.”
e bowed his head and shielded his eyes. “The end,” he repeated. “The end of the line,”
