Where Is Bianca? (13 page)

Pelligrini was an overworked and overowed neighborhood doctor, deliverer of babies, patcher of lacerations, dealer in measles, arthritis, snifflles, and coronaries. His office was shabby and crowded.

A rumpled, rotund man, with a smile that suggested optimism in a lost cause, he bustled into the inner office where his nurse had parked Corrigan and Baer.

“It looks as if you're busy, Doctor,” Corrigan said. “We won't keep you long.”

“I'm always busy, Captain,” Pelligrini said, glancing casually at Corrigan's eye-patch. What can I do for you?”

“Almost a year ago you were called in an emergency by the proprietor of The Treasure Trove to treat a girl—Noreen Gardner—who had fainted.”

“Yes, I remember. It's easy to remember her.”

“Why?”

“Because she was a case of walking death. And wouldn't believe it. Is she dead, Captain?”

“Yes.”

Pelligrini's tired eyes ambled about his office, past the fly-specked medical diploma, across the shelves of faded books. “You try to tell them. But in the end they have to do some things for themselves. With this girl it was useless. She had a fixation more dangerous than her infirmity, because her mind ruled out any chance for physical repair. She absolutely refused to face, much less accept, the fact that she was ill. She insisted that heat had caused her to faint, and nothing I could say would convince her otherwise.”

“Why did she faint, Dr. Pelligrini?”

“She had a touch-and-go cardiac condition resulting from heart damage early in life. From the necessarily inadequate examination I was able to make I'd say that she suffered a severe attack of rheumatic fever at a very young age. I'm sure she received wholly inadequate treatment during and after her illness, maybe none at all. By the time she came to me, the young woman was a candidate for open-heart surgery.”

“Did you ten her?”

“Of course,” Pelligrini said. “But the girl was an emotional cripple. When I told her my diagnosis, she went into a rage—said I was a quack, and a lot of other unpleasant things. In my opinion she was paranoiac.”

“Ever see her again, Doctor?”

Pelligrini shook his head. “Not after the few visits when I made some tests. As a matter of fact, I took it on myself to inquire about her after she failed to keep a subsequent appointment Mr. Chellarn said she'd moved away. Some man, it seems, had come and removed her things.”

“Probably Travers Proehl,” Chuck Baer said to Corrigan.

Corrigan nodded. “He's a producer,” he said to the doctor. “Noreen Gardner appeared in some of his plays. Do you know Proehl?”

The doctor shook his head again. “I haven't had time to look at a playbill in fifteen years. No, I don't, but I wish I'd had the opportunity to meet him. If he was a friend of that girl, I might have been able to convince him that she was living on borrowed time. Maybe he could have convinced
her
.”

13

As Car 40 padded off East Houston Street to creep through the tenement jungle, Corrigan and Baer took stock.

“It's getting clearer, Tim,” Chuck Baer said. “Added to all the other stuff, this thing about Noreen Gardner having had rheumatic fever as a child sure ties in with the picture of Nancy Gavin, the kid who was dragged up in poverty.”

“It's still not proof,” Corrigan said, frowning. “But I'll admit it's a working hypothesis. Even so, how does that give us anything on the link between Nancy-Noreen and Bianca Lessard?”

“That damned Mayan ring.”

Corrigan pulled up at the curb. The car was instantly surrounded by a gang of lounging teenagers in T-shirts, tight pants, and boots. But they seemed more curious than belligerent, and Corrigan felt relieved. Anyway, he wasn't going to leave the unmarked car to their tender mercies.

He and Baer looked up at the face of the tenement. It glowered over the dirty sidewalk like an architectural delinquent, unwashed, unkempt—a pile of decomposing materials. Even the windows reflected the afternoon sun dully, as if begrudging the light they were supposed to admit.

“I talked to the old woman at the morgue,” Corrigan said. “She might remember me. She's never seen you, Chuck. Suppose you tackle her.”

“If it's still in her head,” Baer said, opening the car door, “I'll pick it out.”

He went up the stone steps outside, that had been ground down by the feet of decades, and entered a hallway so dark he had to grope his way. The sour stench made his stomach heave.

Inside, he climbed the decrepit stairs, past walls scribbled over and denuded to the bare laths, to the top floor. As he climbed the stench grew stronger—rat droppings, old bedding, garbage, unflushed toilets, cabbage soup.

The number was gone from Anna Gavin's door, but its silhouette remained in the decaying paint.

Baer rapped.

He rapped again.

He heard the grind of bedsprings. A cracked old voice seeped through the door: “Who is it? Who's there?”

“Miss Gavin,” Baer called, “I've come to pay my respects. I'm an admirer of your work.”

An eager rustle came through the door. It made him think of a crab creeping across sand.

The door opened. Watery eyes in a shriveled face peered up at him. She clung to the doorjamb for support.

“My poems? You've read them?”

“A lot of people have read your poems, Miss Gavin. May I come in?”

“Of course!” Her cackle was excited. “Though I wasn't expecting company. You'll have to forgive the untidiness.”

The understatement of the year, Baer thought as he gingerly stepped inside. Cracked blinds that had once been green were pulled down over the windows. Even so, he could make out a swaybacked bed, unmade; a scarred cripple of a dresser, one leg missing and half its tarnished mirror gone; a couple of mismatched rickety chairs; a heap of rags on a card table (good God, Baer thought, could that be her underclothing?); some bedcovers thrown on the floor, exposing a vermin-stained mattress.

She actually took Baer by the arm—he tried not to pull away from her claws—and led him to one of the chairs. Her eyesight seemed better here than in the darkness of the hall. She gave him a coy little push as he sat down.

“You're a big, big man, aren't you? I like big men.” She perched on the edge of the bed, leering at him. Baer felt his stomach turn over. “What's your name, Mr.—?”

“Baer. Chuck Baer.”

“Lovely.
Lovely
. It suits you. It's the name of a womanchaser. The only kind of man worth his giblets is the man who's out for a tumble. Don't you agree?”

For once in his life Baer was at a loss for words.

“I'd offer you a drink, Chuck,” the old woman said, “but I just happen to be out.” An aged little mouse of a tongue peered out of her toothless mouth and popped back in again. “There's a package store on the corner. Wouldn't a bottle of
vino
make this visit more friendly?”

“Why don't I run down to the store when I get my breath back?” Baer said. He had the lungs of a whale. “It was a long climb up those stairs.”

She made a coquettish face, like a little girl pretending not to be disappointed.

“Are you publishing another volume soon?” He was finding himself childishly anxious to complete the mission and make his escape.

“Oh, certainly. I always have a volume on the hod.”

“Your last book was quite successful, I understand.”

“All my books are.” One claw patted the mattress. “Don't you want to sit down here, by me?”

Baer swallowed. “I don't think the bed would take my weight, Miss Gavin. But let's get back to your books—”

It was incredible. She pouted. “You don't like me.”

“Oh, but I do—”

Mercifully, she wandered off. She seemed bewildered suddenly. “It was so long ago.”

“What was?”

“My book. My last book.”

“You're mistaken. Think back, Miss Gavin. Think hard.”

“My head hurts,” she whined. “I need a drink. Goddam it, are you going after that stinking bottle of wine or aren't you?”

“Pretty soon,” said Baer. “Aren't you feeling well?”

“Of course I'm feeling well.” She seemed suspicious. “Why shouldn't I be feeling well?”

“The party was a little late breaking up.”

“What party?”

“Last night. The one to celebrate your book.”

Her eyes began to water again. He could see reasonably well now in the gloom. Tears were running down the sides of her nose. She felt her temples. He could have wept himself.

“Were you there?” she asked uncertainly.

“I couldn't make it. I'm sorry.”

“But wasn't that party a long time ago?”

He forced a chuckle. “That's very good, Miss Gavin.”

She peered at him. “It is?”

“I suppose no poet takes time very seriously. That's what you were expressing, wasn't it?”

“Oh, yes. Of course! The party … I came home and dreamed. So many dreams. I dreamed time. Time passing.”

“Now you're on the beam,” Baer said, hating himself.

“I left early for the party. I wore a lovely gown.”

“And all the men flocked around you?”

“Of
course
.” She touched her wiry gray hair, which looked like a nestful of snakes. “You men. You lusty men.”

“We're something, all right,” said Baer. “I suppose it's hard, having a daughter who envies her mother.”

“That mewling brat,” Anna Gavin snarled.

“Is Nancy feeling better?”

“Better?”

“That fever she had,” Baer said.

She paid no attention. “I don't know what I'm going to do with her. She's always puking around, hanging on to my skirt.”

“I understood Nancy had the fever.”

“Oh, a little cold. I gave her some aspirin and put her to bed, with a smack in the face to make her remember who I am. You've been listening to those nosy neighbors of mine. You know what that nervy bitch down the hall said to me? She said if I wouldn't do it, she'd have her family doctor look at Nancy. Can you imagine?”

“What did she think was the matter with Nancy?” Baer was sitting very still.

“Oh, she said one of her kids once got rheumatic fever. She said the symptoms were just like Nancy's. I told her to go to hell.” The old woman cackled.

Baer sat in silence, listening. It's like something out of one of those foreign movies, he thought. But no Italian director could get the flavor of the scene. Not unless he had some way of conveying the smell. Rotten sour wine. The sweet stench of bugs and mice. Old underwear. I'll have to go to a Turkish bath, he thought, to get the stink out. Burn my clothes.

He got up.

“It's been a fine talk, Miss Gavin,” he said. “But I'm afraid I'll have to be going.”

She jumped off the bed. Her spryness only added to the horror. Then she was clinging to him, her hands all over him. He jerked back and she almost fell. I'm going to throw up if I don't get out of here fast, he thought. He edged toward the door. She ran after him, screaming.

“You walking out on me, you eunuch?” There was nothing young about her pretenses now. Her writhered face was all darkness and hell fumes. “Men don't turn their backs on me, Mr. Baer! Not on Anna Gavin! I'll bet you haven't been able to get it up for years! Eunuch, eunuch,
eunuch!
”

She stopped, exhausted.

“I'm sorry you found it out, Miss Gavin,” Baer said. He could feel the sweat, hot as the old woman's breath, crawling down his back. “Here.” He was all thumbs as he tried to get the wallet out of his breast pocket. “I won't have time to stop for the wine. Why don't you drop down yourself and pick it up? I'll be glad to pay for it.”

He dropped the five-dollar bill into Anna Gavin's hand and got out of there.

He piled into Car 40, exhaling hard, wiping his face. Corrigan was grinning.

“How did you like Miss Gavin, Chuck?”

“Damn you,” Baer growled. “You know what the old harpy called me? A eunuch.”

“Now that,” said Corrigan, “I know isn't true.”

“I was glad! It took me off the hook.” The big man shuddered, “I'll feel her hands on me in my nightmares.… Don't ever ask me to do a job like that again, Tim.”

“I gather you got results, or you'd still be up there. Or would you?”

“I don't know if I could have taken her five more seconds. As it happens, I got it out of her. Nancy Gavin seems to have had rheumatic fever as a kid—I can't give you an M.D.'s affidavit, but a neighbor thought Nancy had it, and the neighbor'd had experience with a child of her own. Anna gave her aspirin for it. So there's a confirmation of sorts. It was a good hunch.”

“More than a hunch, Chuck.” Corrigan started the car, and the teenagers began reluctantly to slide off the fenders. “Noreen's sneak thievery, the way she gobbled her food, her vicious moods, her greed and slyness, her lack of any moral sense—her entire personality fitted in with how a Nancy Gavin would have developed, the way and where she was brought up. Then we see Nancy, the fifteen-year-old mistress of a creep, as a movie bug, living in a dream world, aping actresses. And Noreen winds up an actress. It all fits.”

“Maybe she'd have made it big,” Baer said, “if she'd had more time.” He shrugged his big shoulders. “So she winds up in the morgue.”

“A short life and an unhappy one.” Corrigan nodded. “I wish to hell I knew who put her there.”

His tone was thoughtful, and Chuck Baer looked at him.

“You've got another hunch,” Baer said. “Your voice tells me you've got another hunch.”

Corrigan tapped the horn to scatter a stickball game.

“We've got more pointers,” Corrigan said. “We've got Nancy-Noreen on the last night of her life keeping a date with a man who was going to do big things for her in the theater. We've got a group of people who use Frances Weatherly's apartment as a public pad. In the group is a man whose theatrical past is shiny enough to make a little trout like Nancy-Noreen swallow the hook on the end of the line he's handing her.”