The Pelican Club is a private dining and drinking establishment housed in a somewhat dilapidated, two-story shingled house near the airport and is the favorite watering hole of the young, the bad, and the beautiful of Palm Beach and vicinity. Founded by a group of like-minded men, yrs. truly among them, who find the traditional clubs a bit too fussy and stuffy and, let’s face it, unobtainable to the likes of us, the Pelican does not discriminate in any way, even to those who find us declasse. For proof I give you the astounding number of traditional club regulars who find the Pelican an intriguing diversion.
“Get real, Archy. I wouldn’t be caught dead in that joint.”
If Lolly’s roving eye roved in the wrong direction at the Pelican, he might get caught just that way on his initial visit.
“I hear thefoiegms at Testa’s will leave you panting,” he informed me.
So will the bill, I thought. “Look, Lol, I can’t make it tonight,” I lied, ‘but I’ll advance you a rain check if you advance me a little info.”
“Can I trust you, Archy?”
“Of course not. That’s what makes me so irresistible.”
“That’s what my bartender said and he was right. Okay, Archibald, what do you want to know about whom and why?”
“Sabrina Wright. What else do you know about her visit besides what your spy at the Chesterfield told you?”
“My spy?” Lolly exploded. “You jest, young man. I don’t have any spies. Not that I wouldn’t if I could afford them. I have to scratch for every item and can show you the broken fingernails to prove it.”
“Then how did you know she checked into the Chesterfield and asked if her husband was stopping there?”
“So she is looking for her husband. What joy. Can I quote you?”
Me and my big mouth. I had just told Lolly more than I was going to learn from him. It was too late to retrieve my words so I had to eat them, which did not sit well with Ursi’s stir-fry. “Quote me and kiss your foie gras good-bye. How did you get the item?”
“From an anonymous caller,” Lolly answered. “He told me Sabrina Wright had just arrived in town and was staying at the Chesterfield. He said she was here looking for a certain man. I called the hotel and they confirmed that she was registered, but when I asked to be connected to her room I was informed that she was not taking calls. Like Garbo, she van ted to be alone.
“I could tell my avid readers that Sabrina was in town but I wouldn’t touch the bit about a certain man, which was pure hearsay and too specific. There are libel laws, so I dreamed up the man that got away, which could mean any man she had even so much as shook hands with.”
“You didn’t recognize the caller?” I asked.
“Not at all, and I don’t think he was disguising his voice.”
“But you’re sure it was a man?”
“Archy, when it comes to recognizing men, I have no equal.”
“Thanks, Lol, I.. ”
“Not so fast, Mr. Hit-‘n’-Run. What is going on here? First I get an anonymous tip on Sabrina Wright and then I get a follow-up call from Archy McNally of Discreet Inquiries. You don’t have to be a whiz kid to know that there’s something rotten in Palm Beach. Tell Lolly what you know or I will be very, very cruel to Archy.”
“You’re bluffing,” I said with more bravado than conviction.
“Really? Item: The girl dancing cheek-to-cheek with 37pt
Archy McNally on the moonlit deck of Phil Meecham’s yacht, the oh-so-social Sans Souci, didn’t look like Connie Garcia but then I wasn’t wearing my glasses, so I could be wrong.”
“That’s blackmail,” I accused.
“You bet your sweet tuchas it is, baby. Cross me and the item runs tomorrow.”
Consuela Garcia is my light-o’-love and has been for longer than I care to remember. She is a Marielito who toils as social secretary to Lady Cynthia Horowitz, one of Palm Beach’s more obnoxious chatelaines.
Connie is a lovely senorita with a figure that brings to mind the dancer Chita Rivera of West Side Story fame. The musical play, to be sure, not the film, as Chita was not given the film role she had created on Broadway. But then Hollywood has not made an astute casting decision since replacing Myrna Loy with Anna May Wong as the daughter of Fu Manchu.
Connie and I have an open relationship, which I fear does not translate well into Espanol. I think it means I can dance cheek-to-cheek with a curvaceous blonde at one of Phil Meecham’s naughty mixes, and Connie thinks it means she can neuter me for doing so. Clearly, my need to head off Lolly’s item was of paramount importance to that which I hold near and dear.
Thinking fast, which is something I do very well when Connie reaches for a carving knife, I blabbed, “Look, Lol, I’ll level with you.” Here I told him the same story I had told Ursi and Jamie.
Recalling the laws of libel, Lolly demanded, “How do you know this?”
“Ms Wright has hired me to find the culprit and her daughter.”
McNally’s luck held out when Lolly, like Ursi, did not ask why the couple had fled to Palm Beach.
“My, my, Archy, aren’t you rubbing shoulders, and what a delicious tidbit,” was Lolly’s expected reaction. I could see him licking his lips and filling his Mont Blanc with acid. “Do you think he was my anonymous caller?”
“I’m sure he was,” I answered.
“Why did he expose himself to me, so to speak, dear heart?”
“He didn’t. You wouldn’t know who he was if I hadn’t told you. I think he did it to goad Sabrina.”
“This gets better by the moment. Ta, ta, Archy, see you in church.”
I had to again head Lolly off at the pass and took my second chance of the case, a wild one, to accomplish this goal. “Lol, can I ask you not to print a word of this just yet?”
“You could, lover, but your plea will fall on deaf ears.”
“What if I told you I could set up an exclusive interview for you with Sabrina Wright?” There is nothing, besides bartenders and food, that Lolly Spindrift likes better than the word exclusive followed by a celebrated name. I could almost hear his brain calculating the pros and cons of my offer. “To publish or not to publish, that is the question,” I intruded upon his deliberations. “One quickie blurb or an exclusive with Sabrina that might very well be picked up by the wire services and attributed to Lolly Spindrift.”
After a prolonged silence he sighed, “She will speak to me? Promise?”
“Scout’s honor.”
“I’m not feeling too kindly toward the Scouts these days, Archy.”
“Sorry, Lol. How ‘bout my word as a gentleman.”
“Good grief, that’s worse. You have forty-eight hours to deliver, dear heart
“You’re on, Lol. And the bartender works the day shift.”
“Why, you little devil,” Lolly giggled.
I hung up praying I could talk Sabrina into talking to Lolly Spindrift.
My trump card was that anonymous caller who had to be Zack Ward trying to flush out Gillian’s father. Ward was a loose cannon, and I could see why Sabrina wanted him stopped before he learned all and told all.
But how did he know she had come to Palm Beach and was asking for her husband when she registered at the Chesterfield?
Sabrina would see the necessity of keeping Lolly from writing anything further until we had time to figure out what to tell him that would both defuse the man-that-got-away item and keep Lolly from learning the true reason for Gillian’s coming here.
What to tell Lolly I would leave to Sabrina’s creative genius.
Remember, I had only consented to look for her husband. Never had a case taken so many diverse paths so quickly with so little hope for a quick solution. On that ominous note, enter Binky Watrous pushing his mail cart, a wagon that is indistinguishable from those that clog the aisles of supermarkets from coast to coast. Binky’s, mercifully, does not contain a screaming two-year-old reaching for everything he has seen advertised on the telly.
“Hi, Archy.”
