Where Is Bianca? (14 page)

“Carlton Ainsley.”

“Can you name another?”

“No,” Baer admitted. “Not unless by some fluke it was a man whose name we haven't run across yet.”

Corrigan thought of Jean Ainsley. His face was bleak at the prospect of doing what he had to do.

14

Carlton Ainsley dined and returned to his borrowed apartment shortly before 9
P
.
M
. As the actor entered the building, Corrigan slid out from behind the wheel. Chuck Baer remained in the police car.

Corrigan reached the second floor as Ainsley was keying open the Karam apartment. Corrigan moved silently along the deeply carpeted hallway. He came up behind Jean's father.

“Evening, Mr. Ainsley.”

The actor jerked about, falling into a crouch. The planes of his youthful face were a little soggy from the drinks he had consumed. The flare of his eyes indicated something more than mere surprise.

Ainsley straightened up quickly. “Captain Corrigan. Do you always creep up on a man?”

“I wanted to have a talk with you.”

“I have an appointment as soon as I've freshened up. Can't it wait?”

“I'm afraid not.”

Ainsley said stiffly, “Very well. Come in.”

It was a duplex apartment in the grand manner, furnished like a Hollywood set, with freakishly designed furniture and great swooping drapes to the high ceiling. Everything about it evoked a set designer, from the exotic bric-à-brac to the paintings on the walls. Some of them, Corrigan felt sure, were originals. He saw one that he thought was a Picasso, and another that could only have come from the brush of Jackson Pollock. There were few personal touches. It was the sterile way station of a rich and creative man who used it as a stopover in a life of constant travel.

“Drink?” Ainsley said as they stepped down into the sunken living room from the railed entrance balcony.

“No, thanks.”

Ainsley went over to a long chrome-and-plastic bar. The Scotch bottle chattered against the rim of the glass as he poured himself a stiff shot.

“Would you mind coming to the point, Captain? I'll be late for my appointment.”

Corrigan stood there. “We've pinned down the background of Noreen Gardner.”

The actor's eyes flicked away from Corrigan's face as he raised the glass. “Why should that interest me?”

“She started life as the unwanted brat of an unknown father and a degenerate mother. Her name was then Nancy Gavin. At fifteen she ran away with a man three times her age. Does that interest you, Mr. Ainsley?”

“I can't see how.” Ainsley drained his glass and turned away to pour himself another drink. His back told nothing.

Corrigan was annoyed. “I like the people I talk to to look at me. Would you mind?”

To his surprise, Ainsley turned around laughing. “I'm an actor, remember?”

“I remember. Nancy Gavin changed her name finally to Noreen Gardner and gravitated to the theater. The way it looks to me, her ambitions weren't entirely to become a star. She was trying to bury Nancy Gavin in a make-believe world. Any character she played was better than the one she'd started life out in.”

“Is this supposed to mean something to me, Captain?”

“You've stolen my line,” said Corrigan. “Answer your own question.”

“I don't know what you're trying to say,” the actor said, smiling. “Would you mind putting it in words of one syllable for this poor old ham?”

“Well, let's try this on for size. Shorly before her death Nancy-Noreen met some theatrical big shot who apparently impressed her enough to make her kick over Travers Proehl and lose interest in the new Frances Weatherly play. Does it fit, Mr. Ainsley?”

“Me?”

“You.”

“No,” Ainsley said shrilly. “I wasn't the man.”

“She met you at Fran Weatherly's. And she wasn't too hard to take. Especially by an aging actor who'd spent five years in the pen and whose life had been filled with women—who needed women, and still does.”

“She met lots of people there. I hardly knew the girl.”

“You were the man, Ainsley. Admit it.” Corrigan might have been talking about yesterday's weather. And, as always, he felt sorry for his victim. He deliberately let himself remember what the rats had left in the sewer.… He had seen and handled killers by the score, proved killers, and he had never been able to keep himself from feeling sorry for them. He had often felt the killing urge himself; he knew how little it took to snuff out a life. Most police officers felt otherwise. Like the eye-patch, it made him stand apart from the other men in Centre Street.… He introduced an ugly note into his voice, and took a step forward. “Admit it!”

“I didn't kill her,” Ainsley chattered. “I took her to bed but I didn't kill her.” Then he saw the light in Corrigan's eye, and seized his head in both hands. “Oh, God, you didn't know. You weren't sure.…”

“I am now,” Corrigan said in a tired voice. “We'd better have a talk downtown.”

Ainsley backed up against the bar. He was plainly in panic. “No.… Not where the windows have bars.…”

“Just a talk downtown,” Corrigan said, closing in on him.

“No, no! I didn't kill Noreen, I tell you—I can't stand those cell bars.”

“Let's get it on the record, Ainsley. If you didn't kill her, you've got nothing to worry about.”

Corrigan touched Ainsley's left biceps. And then the actor swept up a heavy beaten-silver icebucket from the bar with his right hand. The bucket arced savagely. Corrigan jerked his head aside, but he was an instant too late. The bucket struck him above the left ear. He went down. The other side of his head struck against the face of the bar. It felt like lightning. He pitched onto his back as darkness closed in.

After a while he became aware of muscle tremors and the ache in his head. He pulled himself over and struggled to his hands and knees. A wave of nausea washed over him. He crouched there for a few seconds, on all fours, until it went away. Then he groped for a bar stool, touched its seat, and pulled himself to his feet All the while he was pulling himself up a cold voice was saying in his ringing ear, That's what comes of feeling sorry for them. And he's Jean's father. I ought to get a demotion for this.…

He gripped the back of the chair until the room settled down. Then he turned around. The door on the balcony was wide open.

Carlton Ainsley had made a run for it.

Corrigan was pressing a bloody handkerchief to his head when he reached the lobby. The doorman stared at him.

“Did you see Mr. Ainsley come down?”

“Yes, sir. You're hurt, sir? There's a doctor in the building across the street.”

“It's nothing. Which way did he go?”

“He started to leave by the front door here. He must have seen something on the street that changed his mind, because he didn't go out that way.”

Baer and Car 40. “Where did he go?” Corrigan asked through his teeth.

“He headed toward the service entrance, sir. He looked kind of wild—”

“Which way is the service entrance? Hurry up, man!”

The doorman said hastily, “That last door on the left.”

“Did he go back up? Or out of the building?”

“Out. He looked so queer that I followed him and asked him if anything was wrong. He said no. I knew something was wrong—I'm paid to protect the security of this building—and I was about to check the Karam apartment when you came down. Is there anything you want me to do, Captain?”

“No,” Corrigan said. “Did you notice which way Ainsley went?”

“He started east. Unless he changed directions, he should be on Lexington Avenue by this time.”

Corrigan stuffed his handkerchief in his pocket and hurried out to the black car.

“Slide over, Chuck; take the wheel. Our boy panicked, flattened me, and got out of the building. He's heading for a cab or the subway.”

“That powder puff flattened
you?
” Baer said incredulously.

“With an icebucket. Step on it, Chuck, will you?”

There were few people on the street in the midevening lull. Corrigan's eyes kept raking the sidewalks. He did not spot Ainsley, and he reached for the microphone. At Lexington, Baer hesitated. Corrigan was talking fast, putting out the radio alert to pick up Ainsley. As he hung up, Baer said, “Where to now?”

“If he wasn't lucky enough to spot an empty taxi, he probably headed for the nearest subway entrance. Turn, Chuck.”

Street yardage slid past as Corrigan examined the flow of light and shadow.

“There he is!”

“Where, Tim?”

“He just ducked down into the subway. Pull up here!”

Baer curbed the car near the subway entrance, and they both jumped out and made a dive for the stairs.

On the platform below they pulled up. Only three other people were waiting at the local stop. And there was Ainsley, one of them, a little way down the platform, his toes projecting over the tracks. He was glaring at Corrigan with animal fear.

“Don't come near me!” the actor screamed. “Or I'll jump onto the third rail!”

The other two people, a man and a woman, ran back toward the turnstiles, collided trying to get through and away. They finally straightened themselves out and vanished up the stairway.

Ainsley uttered a wild laugh.

The tunnel began filling with the roar of an approaching train.

“You circle him, Chuck,” Corrigan said. “Take it easy, though. He's gone off his rocker.”

“Or it's an act.”

“No act. Not with that kind of exit.”

He was moving quietly forward, a few inches at a time. Baer began to circle.

I mustn't lose him, Corrigan was thinking. She'd curse the day she ever laid eyes on me.

“Hold it!” Ainsley shrieked above the rising noise. “Not another step, Corrigan, or I swear I'll do it!”

“I'd think about it,” Chuck Baer said. He was widening the spread between him and Corrigan, approaching on Ainsley's left. “It's one of those things you don't get a second chance to think about.”

Baer had the actor's attention. Corrigan moved in another yard. The roar of the nearing train swelled.

“Stay back, stay back!” Ainsley screamed at Baer.

Baer stopped. He had so maneuvered that Ainsley had to turn away from Corrigan to keep an eye on him.

“Okay, pal,” Baer said in a soothing voice. “Let's talk this over.…”

Ainsley jerked around like a rabbit.

Corrigan saw the despair in the actor's eyes as he threw himself forward. Ainsley opened his mouth, but whatever he was shouting was drowned in the thunder of the train. He batted at Corrigan's reaching hands, trying to twist away. He was teetering on the edge of the platform when Corrigan enveloped him like a blanket.

He was in time by a layer of molecules between his back and the side of the train. The cars rushed past in a hellish wind, and Corrigan threw his weight away from them and onto Ainsley. He managed to flip the struggling actor onto his back. Then Baer fell on them both, and it was over.

“What in hell did they do to him in that pen?” Chuck Baer grunted as he pulled Corrigan off and sat down on Ainsley's chest.

“Whatever it was, he didn't care for it,” Corrigan said, brushing himself off. “It's all right, Chuck, the fight's out of him. Get off him.”

Between them they hauled the mumbling actor to his feet and half carried him up the subway stairs. They had to drag him to Car 40. Corrigan got in the rear seat with him, and Baer took the wheel.

Ainsley sat with his shoulders caved in, his chin on his chest His face was gray and old.

“I don't feel well,” he said dimly.

“Can you hang on till we get to your apartment?” Corrigan asked him.

Even Baer was surprised. Ainsley's head jerked up. “You're not taking me to prison?”

“Not now.”

“Thank you, thank you!”

“Are you all right?”

“I think I can make it. I'll try not to mess up your car.” The actor swallowed, hard. He swallowed again. Corrigan nodded to Chuck Baer, and Baer started the car and headed it back.

“I want to thank you again, Captain Corrigan,” Ainsley muttered. “I can't tell you the horrors I get in a place with bars on it. I can hardly bear to go into a bank. You wouldn't know what a thing like that feels like. You've got guts. I haven't I need some, badly.”

“You damn well do,” Corrigan said. He reached over and took the two-way mike. He told Communications that he had the actor and was returning him to his apartment, and hung up. “You damn well do, Ainsley,” he repeated.

“I didn't even have the guts to throw myself under that train.”

“I wasn't referring to that.”

Ainsley stared at him, bewildered.

“Do you still say you didn't kill Noreen?”

“I didn't kill her.”

Corrigan said nothing more until Car 40 pulled up before the apartment building. He got out and yanked Ainsley out after him, holding on to his arm.

“Chuck, locate Jean Ainsley and bring her here, will you?”

Baer looked at him. “Sure thing,” was all he said.

Corrigan seemed to feel a need to explain.

“It may be a little easier on her than a ride in a squad car.”

“Sure it will,” the private detective said, and he drove the black Ford away.

15

Carlton Ainsley slumped in the plastic chair in the Karam living room. Corrigan came back from the bar carrying a straight shot.

“Drink this.”

Ainsley cupped the glass with both trembling hands.

Corrigan waited patiently until the actor set the glass down empty.

“I want it from the top,” Corrigan said. “And I want it straight. I warn you you don't have to talk here. But if you refuse, I'll have no choice. I'll have to take you downtown.”