“That’s because in her novels Sabrina is calling the shots. In real life, Ursi, she can’t do that.”
My ragout was placed before me, along with several thick slices of Ursi’s own sourdough bread, and a bottle of ice-cold Brooklyn lager.
Nirvana.
“Then she should let her daughter follow her heart,” Ursi offered with my lunch.
It was clear that Ursi Olson had read too many Sabrina Wright novels.
When I returned to the office the first thing I did was call Lolly Spindrift to see if he knew anything more about Sabrina Wright’s visit to our Eden than his blind item intimated. I was not too sanguine as gossip columnists in general, and Lolly Spindrift in particular, tell all they know or think they know, keeping secret only their own libidinous behavior. Lolly’s column is called “Hither and Yon,” which in other words means Palm Beach and anyplace else he can beg, borrow, steal, or invent a scoop about the rich and famous.
“Lol? Archy McNally here.”
“You cad,” he attacked. “You never call to whisper sweet nothings into my eager ear even after I gave you three mentions this month.”
“Getting a mention in this town in July, Lol, is as newsworthy as telling your readers the pope attended mass last Sunday.”
“But unlike the pope, dear heart, your dalliances bring a blush to my cheek and a longing to my savage breast; however, I never tell although I have a file with your name on it that would make the contents of Pandora’s box look benign.”
“Let’s keep it under lock and key, Lol.”
“It depends, Archy.”
“On what?”
“How nice you are to Lolly.”
Deflecting having to take him to dinner at some expensive bistro, I announced, “There’s a new bartender at Bar Anticipation who’s right up your alley.”
And how would you know?”
A wild guess, Lol.”
“Well, guess again. I’ve sworn off bartenders. The last one…”
It was a half hour before I was able to stifle his account of unrequited love. After making the necessary sympathetic sounds, I posed, “A favor, Lol?”
“I knew you wanted to pick my brains, Archy. What about pumping me over dinner this evening?”
The guy’s conversation was peppered with all kinds of innuendo that, believe me, was intentional. Lolly Spindrift is small of stature and favors white double-breasted suits, ascots, Panama hats, and expensive restaurants. His petite size belies a ravenous appetite and the word
‘abstemious’ is not in his lexicon. At a buffet dinner party given by a PB matron of great wealth and little charm, I watched him consume healthy portions of all twenty delicacies on the smorgasbord table, belch daintily, and in lieu of a doggy bag he took home the chef.
“The Pelican Club?” I offered.
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?”