JAMIE WAS IN THE driveway hosing down mother’s wood-bodied Ford station wagon. The classic car would see duty this morning on one of three errands: a shopping expedition to the Publix for groceries, a tour of the nurseries in search of orphaned begonias in need of adoption or a run to transport mother’s prize specimens to a flower show. My Miata was where I had left it last night, on the graveled turnaround in front of our three-car garage, not blocking the left-hand bay that housed father’s Lexus. Even nearly concussed, wet, angry and hungry, I knew better than to thwart the Don from his appointed rounds.
Hobo ran happily through the puddles created by Jamie’s labors and stopped only briefly to sniff the cuff of my trousers before returning to his footbath. “Decimus Fortesque,” I spoke the name to Jamie.
Without a pause he mumbled, “The collector.”
“That’s the one,” I said.
“Sam Zimmermann is his houseman. He was hired by the first Mrs. Fortesque, outlasted her stay and the seven that followed.”
If the domestics of Palm Beach were formally organized, our Jamie would be the union boss. He knew them all intimately and therefore knew as much as they did about their employers—which was more than the employers knew about their respective spouses, significant others and blood kin. Jamie was often an invaluable source for my discreet inquiries.
“Maybe, he should have married Sam,” I speculated aloud but did not get a laugh, or even a smile, from the guy with the hose. “Where does he hang out, Jamie?” I asked.
“Fortesque or Sam?” Jamie responded in short, clipped grunts that did not get a laugh from me, nor, I imagine, were they intended to.
Rather than spend the morning watching Jamie playing fireman and Hobo splashing about the gravel, I stated my need in more pragmatic terms. “What’s Fortesque’s address, Jamie?”
Because God put more millionaires in Palm Beach than he made oceanfront lots, it was necessary for some moneyed folks to reside inland, which, on an island, is never very far from water, be it the briny or the Intracoastal Waterway, aka Lake Worth. Jamie told me that Fortesque’s digs were on the Intracoastal down toward South Palm Beach. I slipped Jamie a tenner, which, if he knew it, would outrage my father. The Olsons are handsomely rewarded for keeping us McNallys in the comfort to which we were not born, but as dispensing classified information was not in their job description I thought it only fair to recompense my informant with the extra quid or two.
I put the Miata in drive, lit an English Oval and headed south on the Al A, never thinking that I was taking the first step into a maze of deceit, chicanery, backbiting and murder most odious—but then one never knows, do one?
Chez Fortesque was a genuine Mizner. A pile of whitewashed stucco with red trim that I appraised at five mil—give or take a mil. The iron gates that separated the driveway from the road were wide open, and if there was an alarm system it was neither evident nor announced by one of those dreadful metal disks attached to a stake and bearing the security company’s logo. I’m afraid the likes of these were becoming more and more in vogue on our once pristine island in the sun.
Sam Zimmermann, who had seen eight wives come and go, greeted me at the front door almost before I had a chance to announce that I wished to gain entrance. In appearance Sam was every inch the English butler, but his accent bespoke Brooklyn rather than Berkeley Square. He wore a gray suit and black bow tie. “Good day, sir,” Sam said.
“Good day to you,” I responded. “Archy McNally here to see Mr. Fortesque.”
“Very good, sir.” Sam bowed from the waist. “He’s expecting you. Right this way, please.”
Expecting me? Did Sam mistake me for an invited guest? Could be, but that wasn’t going to stop me from having a word or two with Decimus Fortesque. In my line of work, gaining entrance by subterfuge was an accepted business practice. As I followed Sam from entrance foyer to drawing room I surmised the place was furnished in what I believe is called Mediterranean, but whether that made its provenance Barcelona or Beirut was Greek to me.
Thanks to mother I recognized Fortesque immediately, but even forewarned I was more than a little amazed at his likeness to the late Mischa Auer. Tall and lanky, he had a razor-thin mustache that must have been tedious to maintain and could have been a testimonial to the tonsorial talents of Sam Zimmermann. All Fortesque needed was one of my berets and a pad and pencil to take your order for the prix fixe grenouille Provençal. From the moment I entered the room, Fortesque’s striking eyes stared at me with such apprehension I feared he was about to upbraid me with, “Who the hell are you?” He did indeed pounce, but his words were, “Well, where is it?”
Had I entered a loony bin whose inmates masqueraded as deceased character actors reciting lines from imaginary scripts? Standing between Jeeves and Mischa I had no place to run, so I joined the cast. “Where is what, Mr. Fortesque?”
Eyeing me like a Boston bull pup who was expecting a bone and got a pat on the head instead, he moaned, “My manuscript, man, my manuscript.”
Clearly, it was time to end the charade. “Mr. Fortesque, you and your butler have mistaken me for someone you were expecting this morning. I have nothing for you.”
Fortesque took a step back and looked at me as if I were daft. “You are Archy McNally?” he asked.
“I am, sir.”
“The Archy McNally that woman hired to deliver the fifty thousand in return for the manuscript?”
Woman? Fifty thousand? Mazel tov! “May we sit down, sir, and talk about this?”
“Of course. Of course,” he muttered. “I was so intent on getting my hands on the manuscript, I seem to have forgotten the basic civilities. Please, do have a seat.” With a wave of his long arm he addressed his servant. “Sam, why don’t you get us some coffee.”
The room was slightly smaller than an airplane hangar, with floor-to-ceiling windows for a west wall that opened to a balcony and a majestic view of Lake Worth. The day being one we Floridians like to think is typical, and isn’t, a profusion of pleasure crafts and catamarans, with colorfully billowing sails, lazily traversed the sparkling waterway. All the scene lacked was a sound track rendering the haunting refrains of Offenbach’s Barcarolle.
The vast space was divided into several sitting areas, some obviously designed for reading, others for a game of cards or, in the case of the grouping featuring an antique captain’s chest bookended by a pair of comfortable club chairs, for polite chitchat. I took one of the clubs as my host settled into the other. Leaning across the chest that separated us, he sighed. “I gather, you don’t have the manuscript.”
“Before we go any further, sir, may I know if the woman in question is Claudia Lester?”
“But of course it is, man. When she asked me to recommend someone she could trust to close the deal—actually a bagman, but no offense, I’m sure—I recommended you.”
Bagman? Insult had just been added to injury. I felt the bump on my head quiver. Claudia Lester deserved to be hanged by the thumbs, and I was ready to donate the rope. “And who recommended me to you, sir?”
“I won’t say,” he snapped, “and in your profession I’m sure you understand why.”
Not certain he didn’t mean the bag profession, I let that one go and had my say. “Claudia Lester hired me to deliver fifty thousand dollars she said was hers, to a man in a motel she said was her ex-lover, in return for a diary she said was hers.”
Fortesque grinned like a schoolboy who has just been told a naughty story. “Is that what she said? Clever minx, I’ll say that for her. What she was doing, you see, was keeping our business all in the family, as they say. The less people knew, the better the chances of getting our hands on the manuscript. With something like this, you don’t want a lot of avid collectors with deep pockets bidding on the item, not to mention the tabloid press.”
“Will you tell me what this is all about, sir?”
Fortesque waved a finger at me. “Oh, no. Not just yet. First tell me what became of my fifty thousand and the manuscript.”
“Gladly,” I began. “In fact, it’s the reason for my visit. I delivered the fifty thousand to the Crescent Motel, unit nine if you care to know, and gave it to Matthew Harrigan, Claudia’s ex-gigolo.”
“Never heard the name,” Fortesque informed me. “Did he give you the manuscript?”
“Harrigan showed me a stack of bond paper, some covered in type, some in script, which I believed to be the lady’s diary because I had been told that’s what it was. He rewrapped the package in brown paper tied with string and handed it to me. Naturally, he kept the fifty thousand.”
“So where’s the bundle of brown paper tied with a string?” Fortesque interrupted.
“I’m not finished with my story, Mr. Fortesque,” I protested.
“Sorry, man. Do go on.”
“I carried the package out into the rain and to the motel’s guest parking area to retrieve my car. Here, I was attacked from behind—hit on the noggin with a rock or lead pipe, is my guess. When I awoke the diary was gone. Meanwhile, back at unit nine, the door was locked and the carport reserved for number nine empty. I assumed Harrigan had done me in and absconded with Claudia’s loot and the diary.”
If I thought I was going to get a bit of solace from Decimus Fortesque, I was wrong. Instead of asking after my noggin, he reminded me that “it was my money and my manuscript, man. Does Claudia know about this?”
“I called the Ambassador to report in and was told that Ms. Lester had flown the coop. I’m here because she told me you had steered her my way, which makes you my only link to the lady. As you can imagine, I’m most eager to have a word with her.”
“You think she stiffed you,” he quipped.
“If it was your fifty grand, Mr. Fortesque, I would say it was you who got stiffed. When was the last time you spoke to Claudia Lester?”
“Last night,” he confessed, “just before you arrived at her hotel. She told me that she had hired you to make the exchange, so when you showed up on my doorstep this morning I assumed you had come to deliver the manuscript.”
At that moment Sam came into the room wheeling a tea cart burdened with a carafe of coffee, bone china cups and saucers that I was certain bore the logo of the potter Josiah Spode, and an array of delectable-looking miniature pastries. My connoisseur’s eye spotted napoleons, babas au rum, cream puffs and biscuits à la cuiller, or ladyfingers to the common folks.
As Fortesque poured he explained, “Sam is a Cordon Bleu with a specialty in French pastries. He makes them by the dozens, freezes them and then pops them in a warm oven, never a microwave, for ten minutes before serving them up. Help yourself.”
I did as ordered. A cream puff, light as air, and a rum baba, equally palatable. It was no wonder Sam had not gone the way of his master’s harem. “He’s a find,” I said, reaching for a napoleon.
“He also sings,” Fortesque confided. “Says he’s related to the great Broadway star.”
I couldn’t imagine which one but didn’t challenge Sam’s claim. I was here to trace Claudia Lester, not the butler’s family tree. The possible loss of fifty thousand big ones didn’t seem to affect Fortesque’s appetite, but then a loss of fifty thousand to a man like Decimus Fortesque was like Joe Blow taking a hit for fifty bucks at the track. “How do you keep your figure with these goodies crowding your freezer?” I asked.
Fortesque shrugged. “Metabolism is my guess. I can make a meal of these things and drop five pounds in the process.”
Bully for you, I thought with envy. Knowing I would gain five pounds if I had one more, I stopped reaching for the specialties of the house, pulled in my tummy, and pleaded my case. “As I’m the innocent victim of your dealings with Claudia Lester, I think it’s only fair that you tell me what the deuce this is all about, Mr. Fortesque. I might even come up with a clever plan to get back your fifty or this manuscript you seem besotted to possess.”
Fortesque put down his cup and nodded sagely. “And I will, but before I do may I ask the extent of your knowledge on the art of collecting, Mr. McNally?”
Collecting, which I doubt is a bona fide art form, is a very popular couch sport in Palm Beach. The more outré the objects of desire, the more zealous the team players. At one time I collected crystal shot glasses, my piece de resistance being a Lalique two-ounce jigger. I then plunged into swizzle sticks and managed to acquire a Stork Club, a Park
Casino, a Romanoff’s and a Kit Kat Klub. I was told the latter cabaret existed only in Christopher Isherwood’s mind and, were this true, I wouldn’t be the first collector to be duped. After hearing Fortesque’s story, I knew I wouldn’t be the last, either.
One of my favorite musical shows, which I have preserved on vinyl so the music goes round and round, has a very clever song that pokes fun at collecting mania. Some of the coveted items vocalized are, “A hat that belonged to Wally Simpson before the Prince of Wales was in the bag... A shirt with Henry Richmond’s laundry tag,” and even “A G-string Sally Rand wore at a stag.”
I told Fortesque about my jigger and swizzle-stick combinations but spared him the witty lyrics, as I didn’t think he would be amused.
“Besotted is the operative word, Mr. McNally,” he mused. “Louis Auchincloss—do you know him?”
“I know his work,” I answered.
“Louis Auchincloss writes about people like us,” he lectured.
Auchincloss writes novels about New York society with a capital S. If by “us” Fortesque meant me, I was a bagman with expectations.
“Auchincloss has written,” Fortesque picked up where he had left off, “that collecting is much like a sexual drive much more potent than any love for the baby produced. Very apt in my case, as I’ve never had children, not from lack of trying, believe me, and perhaps have substituted collectibles for progeny. Like any parent, I want my children to stand out like diamonds in a coal mine. Some collectors, like yourself, focus in on one or two items such as autographs or antique cars. My children are more a rainbow ensemble, but each must be the best of its kind.”
Fortesque paused to sip from his cup. “Examples of the avocation’s fervor,” he went on, “are evident by the anonymous collector who paid twelve thousand dollars for the ruby slippers Garland wore when she played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, or the one who paid a million for the dress Marilyn Monroe wore when she sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to President Kennedy. Just recently, Bette Davis’s Oscar for Jezebel brought five hundred and seventy-eight thousand at Christie’s in New York.”
The satisfied, almost gloating, look on Fortesque’s face made me wonder if his trophy room contained Judy’s slippers, Marilyn’s dress and Bette’s Oscar. No doubt he was rich enough to be the avid Mr. Anonymous.
“Claudia Lester is an agent, or broker, in the sometimes shady world of collecting,” he said. “Nothing actually illegal, mind you, but agents like Claudia have a reputation for being able to get their hands on collectibles being offered where the buyer won’t ask too many questions about the seller or how he or she came in possession of the article. ’Nuff said, Mr. McNally?”
“More than enough, sir. In the real world it’s called the fencing of stolen goods.”
“Oh, don’t be so unctuous, man,” Fortesque chided. “Not necessarily stolen. Let’s say legally acquired by Machiavellian tactics.”
No doubt Il Principe was Deci’s favorite tome. “And just what did Ms. Lester acquire, legally or otherwise, sir?”
Fortesque took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and spoke as if he were trying to raise up Beelzebub. What he raised was the hairs on my bump. “Nothing less than the complete text of Answered Prayers by Truman Capote,” he bellowed.
What I knew of this particular Capote book was that it was started some years before the author’s death and, surrounded by controversy and scandal, never finished. When I reminded Fortesque of this fact he went into a detailed history of the notorious novel.
Capote sold the first chapter of Answered Prayers to a popular magazine in 1975, drawing the wrath of his society and celebrity friends whose exploits, mostly sexual, he had written about in detail; some characters were thinly disguised and many boldly named. In retaliation, the beautiful people who had lionized the author (and obviously whispered titillating secrets in his receptive ears) joined forces and labeled Capote persona non grata.
Devastated by their snub, it was believed, Capote never finished the novel, but in 1976 he published two more chapters in the same magazine. Fortesque noted that in his Music for Chameleons Capote stated, “I returned to Answered Prayers, I removed one chapter and rewrote two others.” This had many believing that he did continue working on the book. According to Fortesque, Capote wrote the final chapters at his beach house in Sagaponack, the posh Hamptons community.
“At the time,” Fortesque said, “he employed a house-boy who did for him. No pun intended, Mr. McNally. Getting back at his former friends, he wrote with a vengeance, exposing the indiscretions of those who now snubbed him, as well as all he had heard from them about the shenanigans of their forerunners. No holds barred, man.
“The antics at Cielito Lindo here in Palm Beach in the good old days. That was Jessie Donahue’s place on South Ocean Boulevard. She was Barbara Hutton’s aunt, in case you don’t know. It had a tunnel that ran under the highway to the beach and was torn down to make way for miniestates, but I believe two wings of the old mansion are still standing. If walls could talk,” Fortesque lamented.
The old geezer was really getting off on this.
“The Duke and Duchess of Windsor spent more time at Jessie’s place than governing Bermuda,” the collector rambled on. “Jessie’s son, Jimmy, made up the royal couple’s ménage à trois, and how I would love to know what they were getting up to, although I understand the poor Duke couldn’t get up to very much. Then there’s the true story of the late James Dean and...”
And on and on he droned like a man possessed. Fortesque was clearly a scandalmonger whose eight wives couldn’t compete with the vicarious pleasures a work like this offered. Given his enthusiasm, he was an easy mark for unscrupulous brokers of collectibles. After listening to Fortesque drop names about those who dropped their clothes, he finally got back to our central theme—Ms. Claudia Lester.
Again, according to Fortesque, Capote went to California in ’84, leaving the manuscript at his home in Sagaponack and the boy in charge of the house. Capote died in California eight years after the second installment of Answered Prayers was published.
“One can spew a lot of rancor on paper in eight years,” Fortesque noted with glee. “The boy kept the manuscript, not knowing its value. Now a man of some fifty years and in need of money, the former houseboy called an auction house in New York, telling them only that he had an original Capote manuscript.
“The auction house sent a representative to Florida—the houseboy now lives in Key West—to look at the manuscript. When the man saw what it was, he quickly decided to make a profit from the discovery. He put out the word of its existence on the collectors’ black market, telling the auction house the manuscript was nothing more than a typed version of the published Answered Prayers.
“Enter Claudia Lester,” I prompted.
“Exactly,” Fortesque said. “She’s a friend of one of my ex-wives.”
“Vera,” I reminded him. “Number three.”
“Correct, man. But how did you know?”
“Claudia told me,” I admitted.
Pop-eyed, he commented, “You and Claudia certainly got intimate rather quickly.”
“Not in the biblical sense, sir.”
Knowing Fortesque’s obsession with acquiring rare objects, especially of the more racy variety, Vera Fortesque put Claudia in touch with her ex-husband—and Archy sees stars on a rainy night.
“And you trusted her with fifty thousand dollars?” I asked.
“Why not?” he challenged. “She’s a friend of Vera’s, and the name Claudia Lester is not unknown in the collecting trade.”
Also, I was thinking, you were so hot to get your hands on that manuscript you would have handed over the money to anyone who promised to deliver the goods. A fact Vera and Claudia must have known. “Who was the guy in the motel room who handed me the manuscript and kept the money, if it wasn’t Harrigan?”
Fortesque shrugged. “Don’t know. Could be the houseboy who owned it or the rep from the auction house. All I know is that the manuscript would cost me fifty thousand. The details, like how the money was to be divided, I left to her. That’s her job.”
“The guy was too young to be the houseboy, so it must be the rep. I think the lady skunked you, Mr. Fortesque.”
He started at that one. “I don’t believe it. She has her reputation in the collecting community to think about. Why would she chuck it all for a lousy fifty thousand?”
Decimus Fortesque was not a quick study, and thus an easy mark for the grifters. “Her reputation is no better or worse than it was before last night,” I explained, “thanks to me. She showed me the money and even made me count it. Then I delivered it to the motel and was shown a manuscript. The exchange, as she promised you, was made with me to bear witness to the fact. Once it was a done deal, I’m mugged and the loot and manuscript disappear.
“If asked why she fled, she’ll say that when I didn’t return with the manuscript she feared a double-cross by the houseboy or the rep and went undercover. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Claudia Lester, sir. If she wants to stay in business, she’ll have to surface and tell her side of the story.”
Fortesque looked dismayed, to say the least. I think I had finally made it clear to him that he was the victim of a new twist to the old Ponzi scheme. For fifty thousand he gets a tantalizing look at the dessert cart. For another fifty he gets the charlotte russe—maybe. “If you think you can recover my money or the manuscript, Mr. McNally, I’d like to hire you to represent me in this fiasco.”
If I was going to go after Claudia Lester, why not get paid for my trouble? The way I saw it, both the lady and Fortesque owed me big. It took me a nanosecond to stick out my hand and take on a new client. “If Claudia Lester contacts you, and I’m sure she will, you’ll let me know before you have any more dealings with her,” I cautioned the collector.
“I will,” he promised. “If you return my money or the manuscript, I’ll be very generous, Mr. McNally.”
Now, that’s the sort of pep talk that gets me where I this. “I’ll do my best to oblige, sir.” Rising, I added, “Tell Sam he should open a bakery on Worth Avenue and grow rich off the fat of the land.”
“I’ll tell him no such thing, and don’t you go putting ideas into his head.”
He walked me to the door, and there, unable to stop myself, I boldly asked, “Your given name, sir. Is it a family name?”
“Oh, that.” He chuckled. “I was born on the tenth day of the tenth month, which was my parents’ wedding anniversary day. What choice did they have, man?”