McNally's Chance Read Online Free PDF

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