McNally's Puzzle (5 page)

I called her office at ten o’clock and, as usual, she answered the phone herself.

“Dr. Pearlberg,” she said in her raspy voice. She has, I regret to report, a two-pack-a-day habit.

“Dr. Gussie,” I said, “this is Archy McNally.”

“Bubeleh!” she cried. “You have been neglecting me shamefully, you naughty boy.”

“I have,” I admitted, “and I apologize. How is your health, dear?”

“I am alive,” she said, “and so my health is excellent. And you? Your family?”

“All in the pink,” I assured her. “Doctor, when may I see you?”

“Personal?”

“Not me,” I protested. “I’m the most normal and well-adjusted of men.”

She coughed a laugh. “Let’s just say you’ve come to terms with your madness. So it’s professional?”

“Yes. One of my discreet inquiries. To be billed to McNally and Son. Can you fit me in?”

“I have a cancellation this morning at noon. You can make it?”

“Of course I can and shall with great pleasure. The couch won’t be necessary.”

She laughed again in her rattly voice. “Don’t be so sure, bubeleh. Remember: The older the violin, the sweeter the music.”

I had plenty of time to stop at a gourmet bakery and buy a pound of raspberry rugalach, which I knew Dr. Gussie dearly loved. Then I pointed the Miata’s nose southward. It was a day designed for convertibles, for the sky was unblemished and a ten-knot breeze smelled faintly of salt. I don’t remember singing but if I did, it was probably “It’s a Most Unusual Day.” Or it might have been “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts.”

The psychiatrist’s office in Lantana always reminded me of the New York aphorism: “If I had my life to live over again, I’d like to live it over a delicatessen.” Not that Dr. Pearlberg worked over a deli, but her second-floor office was atop an antique shop. Rather fitting, wouldn’t you say, since they were both dealing with the past.

In fact, her office might have been furnished by her downstairs neighbor. It was all flocked wallpaper, dusty velvet drapes, lumpy brown furniture, and a couch covered with what appeared to be crackled black horse-hide. Dim diplomas hung on the walls and there were chipped plaster busts of Freud, Beethoven, and one I could not identify but which looked unaccountably like Zero Mostel.

The entire chamber resembled a photo of a Viennese psychiatrist’s consulting room of the 1920s. Adding to this illusion was the light, for no matter what time of day I visited, the office seemed suffused with a sepia tone, everything gently faded. That room deserved to be preserved in an album, the way things were in the bygone.

“Bubeleh!” Dr. Pearlberg said, and, as was her wont, kissed the tip of a forefinger and pressed it against my cheek. “What a delight to see you again. How handsome you look!”

I proffered the box of pastries. She ripped it open immediately and popped one into her mouth, groaning with contentment. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said. “What a treat for a relic like me.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “Dr. Gussie, you’re getting younger as I get older. Do you think that’s fair?”

“What a scamp you are,” she said, “fooling a fat bobbeh. Now sit down and light a cigarette so I can have one.”

I did as she directed. I sat in a sagging armchair alongside her elephantine desk. We both lighted up, blowing plumes of smoke toward the stained ceiling.

“So?” she said. “What’s the problem?”

“A client, who shall be nameless, thinks his life is being threatened. I believe his fear is justified.”

I then described the three untoward acts to which Hiram Gottschalk had been subjected: the slashed photo, the mass card, the strangled bird. Dr. Pearlberg listened to my recital intently. She finished her cigarette and lighted another from the butt of the first.

She was a squatty woman, almost as broad as she was tall. Pillowy face. Her wig was a virulent orange and she did have a hazy but discernible mustache, neither of which bothered her or anyone else who knew and admired her. She may have looked like a granny but she had a mental prowess that made the rest of us feel like village idiots.

When I had concluded, she said, “I don’t like it.”

“Nor do I,” I said, and told her that although I had only started my investigation I had come to a preliminary conclusion: The threat against our client came from a member of his staff or his family.

“The family,” she repeated, her harsh voice a mixture of scorn and sadness. “Always the family.”

“Doctor,” I said, “regarding the three incidents I have described, can you discern any pattern?”

“Perhaps,” she said. “Usually in cases of this nature there is a progression from the subtle to the obvious. An acceleration of disturbed passion. The slashing of the photograph of the client and his deceased wife appears to be an attempt to destroy a happy memory, demolish a remembered relationship. The posting of the mass card with the client’s name I interpret as a warning he is in danger if he does not mend his ways. The third act, the killing of his beloved bird, escalates the pressure. This, the bird strangler is saying, will be your fate if you persist in doing what you are now doing.”

I sighed. “Not a happy prospect,” I said. “In effect you’re saying the client’s death may be the only option left to his enemy.”

“Yes, Archy,” she said. “That is what I feel. The client has received no written or phoned threats?”

“No. None.”

“Then there is little the police can do.”

“But what can
I
do?” I said desperately.

“Do what you do best,” she advised. “Pry. Meet everyone he’s connected with. Ask questions. Get to know them all. Then come back and we’ll talk again. This troubles me.”

“Yes,” I said. “Me, too.”

I rose to depart but she grasped my arm, stared with those lucid hazel eyes.

“Sonny, you haven’t asked the most interesting thing.”

I was startled. “Oh? What is it?”

“Is the psychopath responsible for these acts of aggression a man or a woman?”

I looked into those knowing eyes. “Which do you think, Dr. Gussie?”

“Either,” she said. “Or both.”

And I had to be content with that Delphic utterance.

I drove home in a mood somewhat less than gruntled. Dr. Pearlberg had told me little more than I had already suspected but her reaction to Mr. Gottschalk’s predicament had raised my anxiety level. And I was grateful for her suggestion that the perpetrator might possibly be female. I am such a romantic cove I usually leap to the conclusion that practicers of viciousness are limited solely to the masculine sex. Alas, dear reader, ’tis not so. Consider the career of the charming lady who made lampshades of human skin during the Holocaust.

Ursi was puttering about the kitchen when I arrived. She was preparing a bouillabaisse for our dinner and if you could have bottled that fragrance your fortune would be made. Call it Eau d’Poisson and every trendsetter in the world would put dabs behind the earlobes.

She interrupted her labors long enough to construct a towering Dagwood for me. Thick slices of sour rye served as bookends, and the literature within included slices of smoked turkey, beefsteak tomato, and Bermuda onion: all with a healthy dollop of Ursi’s homemade mayo containing a jolt of Dijon mustard. I carried this masterpiece up to my suite, silently giving thanks to John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich. I also lugged two bottles of chilled Dos Equis.

I was seated at my desk, devouring my delayed lunch with eye-rolling rapture, when the damn phone shrilled. I was tempted to let it ring itself to smithereens, but then I imagined it could be an invitation to a social affair during which I might meet the current Girl of My Dreams who bore a remarkable resemblance to Theda Bara. No such luck. The caller was Binky Watrous.

“Archy,” he said excitedly, “I got the job at Parrots Unlimited!”

“Delighted to hear it,” I said, munching away.

“They hired me around noon and I started work immediately!”

“Excellent. And how are you getting along?”

“Wonderfully!”

“Meet everyone?”

“Uh-huh. Archy,” he added soulfully, “I’m in love.”

“Oh?” I said. “Which parrot?”

“No, no. It’s Bridget Houlihan.”

“Ah,” I said. “The Hibernian crumpet. Fancy her, do you?”

“She’s such a marvelous female,” he enthused. “Sweet and charming. And talented. She plays the tambourine.”

“Binky,” I said, “I’m not sure one can
play
a tambourine. Don’t you just shake it or bang it? I mean Brahms never wrote a lullaby for tambourine, did he?”

“Oh, you can play it,” he said with great certainty. “Bridget and I are thinking of getting up an act. I’ll do my birdcalls while she accompanies me on her tambourine.”

I hastily finished my first beer. For some unexplainable reason I recalled the comment of a Hollywood wit who remarked on the natural affinity between Rin-Tin-Tin and Helen Twelve-trees. In my relationship with Binky I seemed to be playing the actress. But I resolutely put this nuttiness from my mind.

“What about the other employees?” I asked him.

“There are two clerks in addition to Bridget. Young kids. Boy and girl. Tony Sutcliffe and Emma Gompertz. I think they may have a thing going.”

“Cohabiting?” I suggested.

“What does that mean?”

“Living together.”

“Like me and the Duchess?”

“Not quite. Living together as husband and wife.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, yes, they may be cohabiting. Did you ever cohabit, Archy?”

“No,” I said.

“I did,” he said. “Once. For a weekend in Glasgow.”

“What on earth were you doing in Glasgow?”

“Cohabiting. And drinking Glenlivet.”

“Binky,” I said, sighing, “can we get back to business? What about the manager?”

“Ricardo Chrisling? A very slick character.”

“Slick? In what sense? Slippery?”

“Oh no, I wouldn’t say that. More like sleek—you know? Hair carefully brushed and shining. Silk suit and all that. Might even have a manicure.”

“Handsome?”

“I suppose impressionable dolls might think so. I find him a bit on the gigoloish side.”

“Smooth?” I suggested.

“Very smooth,” Binky said. “Exceedingly smooth.”

I asked him if employees had been invited to attend the party welcoming home Mr. Gottschalk’s twin daughters.

“We have indeed,” he said happily. “Even I, the most recent and lowliest of the peons. You’ll be there?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” I assured him. “Don’t get hammered, Binky. Behave yourself.”

“So I shall, old boy,” he vowed. “I’ll be the very soul of decorum. By the way, while I was being interviewed by the owner he told me the most amazing story about two macaws who prayed all the time. It seems this woman had bought—”

“Stop right there,” I said. “He told me the same tale.”

“Do you believe it, Archy?”

“Of course. Indubitably.”

“I do too,” he said. “It just proves what incredible creatures birds are. Equal or superior in intelligence to many humans.”

“How right you are,” I agreed. “Keep up the good work, Binky. See you at the bash tomorrow night.”

We hung up and I hastened to add the names Tony Sutcliffe and Emma Gompertz to my journal before I forgot them. I doubted if this young couple had any connection with the threats against Hiram Gottschalk. But one never knows, do one?

Then I finished my lunch and because the radio and TV had warned about riptides I skipped my ocean swim that afternoon. I took a nap instead and slept fitfully, troubled by wild images: a black crow stalking into the shadows, a strangled mynah, a beady-eyed parrot condemning me to Hades.

I blamed the nightmarish snooze on the smoked turkey in my luncheon sandwich. All those damnable fowl seemed determined to make my life miserable. My discomfiture, I decided, was definitely for the birds.

M
R. GOTTSCHALK HAD TOLD ME
this party was to be informal, without swank, and so I dressed accordingly. I had recently purchased a lightweight wool sport jacket in a houndstooth check of olive, gold, and blue. Sounds rather citified, does it not? Dullsville in fact. But it had suede buttonholes. It’s the details that seduce me.

I perked up my subdued jacket with a pink Lacoste and slacks of a lemonade shade. Plus loafers in a hellish vermilion. No socks. When I inspected the complete ensemble in the bathroom door mirror I decided the effect was twee but not too. The stodgy jacket marked me as a man of substance but the accoutrements proved I was capable of frivolity. Oh lordy, how we deceive ourselves.

The client’s home was located in an upscale neighborhood of Palm Beach which appeared to be a small territory inhabited solely by fanatic horticulturists. I mean, I have never in my life seen such a profusion of tropical foliage. It was like driving through a South Florida rain forest, and if I had heard the chattering of monkeys and the snorting of wild boars I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised.

The Gottschalk manse was quite a sight. It had been built, I judged, in the 1930s as a Mediterranean-style villa. More recently, additions had been made that were more Lake Okeechobee than Mediterranean. There were two wings, a guest house, an enlarged garage. The original edifice had also been embellished with bays, turrets, a widow’s walk, and a tall, battered cupola which seemed to have no reason for existence other than providing a comfort station for migrating fowl.

It was an eccentric dwelling and, I thought, probably suited the owner just fine.

There were several cars already parked in the slated driveway. One of the vehicles, I noted, was Binky Watrous’s dinged 1970 Mercedes-Benz 280 SE cabriolet. Trust my loopy Dr. Watson to be early when free booze and tasty viands were available.

I entered into a brightly lighted interior, a circus of bustle, loud talk, hefty laughter, and the recorded voice of Tony Bennett singing “It Don’t Mean a Thing.” I was somewhat taken aback by this jollity only because I was privy to the grave problems of the host. The dichotomy was disturbing and I decided my wisest course was to dull my unease with a dram or two of suitably diluted ethanol at the earliest possible moment.

I had those two drams during a chaotic party. But my libations were minuscule—infinitesimal one might even say—and I assure you the McNally mental faculties were not hazed. I smiled, conversed, joked, and followed Dr. Gussie Pearlberg’s instructions to pry, ask questions, get to know them all.