Where Is Bianca? (3 page)

“My God, you make it sound as bad as Bianca did!” The phony British accent was noticeably sloppy now.

“You mean you wife didn't share your view that playing with dolls is a harmless pastime?”

“What's this all about? Why am I being treated as if I were a criminal? See here, Captain Corrigan, if you know something about my wife, I want to know it, and I want to know it now!”

“Your wife accused you of tiring of her,” Corrigan said thoughtfully.

“I
wasn't
. When she turns up, I'll convince her of that. Not that it's any of your business, Captain! Where is she?”

It was still an act, Corrigan decided. But was it an act to cover up guilt, or simply a way of life so ingrained that it permeated everything he said and did, even innocence?

“I haven't asked enough questions yet, Mr. Lessard,” Corrigan said, smiling. “Of course, you don't have to answer any of them. But then I won't feel any particular inclination to pass out official information. It's up to you.”

The sweat drops along Lessard's hairline fattened visibly. A sudden thought struck Corrigan. Could the man be wearing a top piece? He tried to picture Lessard bald, and failed. He decided it was Lessard's own hair.

Lessard lit a cigarette. His hands were trembling slightly. Over the second puff he said in a flat voice, “All right, fire away.”

“Let's go back to the last time you saw your wife. That was a week ago tonight, wasn't it?”

“Yes.”

“How heated was the argument?”

“Hot enough.”

“How hot? Did it come to blows?”

Lessard choked over the cigarette. “Blows! Certainly
not
. I don't hit women. And even if I did, you don't hit a woman like Bianca.”

“Why not?” Corrigan asked curiously, as if woman-hitting were the most natural sport in the world.

“You just don't. She's so—so ethereal. I mean, she's like a butterfly. I know that sounds corny, but it's the only comparison I can think of. Who'd swat a butterfly?”

“You ought to sit behind this desk,” said Corrigan. “So it was a hot argument that didn't come to blows. The subject was Frances Weatherly?”

“Yes. I tried to explain to Bianca that a man sometimes gets involved with a woman before he really knows what's happening. With a certain sort of woman.”

“What sort is that?”

“Frances Weatherly. No … no sense of moral values. And she doesn't give a—she doesn't care whom she hurts. I said it wasn't my fault, just a combination of circumstances that I was helpless to stand up against.”

“Your wife,” said Corrigan dryly, “didn't buy it?”

“She wouldn't
listen
. It's the first time I wasn't able to
reason
with Bianca. She was all
emotion
.”

Brother, thought Corrigan, you have just described the
différence
that the Frenchmen
vive
.

“How,” he asked, “did Mrs. Lessard find out about you and Miss Weatherly? It is Miss Weatherly, by the way, not Mrs.?”

“Miss. How did Bianca find out? I don't know—gossip, I suppose.” Lessard suddenly seemed conscious of his hairline. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and blotted the sweat away, then sat holding the handkerchief tightly. “How does any wife find out? Anyway, she followed me—it was on the night before our row. She saw Frances and me in a cocktail lounge together, saw us go up to Fran's place afterward. Waited for me to come out. I still can't understand it. It's so
unlike
Bianca. I was flabbergasted.”

“Let's stick to the night she followed you. She waited for you to come out. How long did she have to wait?”

“Well,” said Lessard, “a pretty long time.”

“And the next night, when you got home, you had your quarrel, and Mrs. Lessard walked out on you?”

“That's correct, Captain.”

“And you haven't seen or heard anything from her from that moment to this?”

“Yes. I mean, no!”

“Does your wife have any distinguishing marks? Scars? Birthmarks?”

“No.”

“Bridgework?”

“No, no.”

“How about dental work generally? Who is her dentist?”

“Her teeth were taken care of in Europe, I don't know by whom. She hasn't had time—I mean she hasn't needed—to see an American dentist since she got back.”

And that, Corrigan thought, is a really tough break.

“How about a ring? An unusual ring, I mean—not an engagement or wedding ring.”

“Oh. Yes,” said Lessard. “She has a Mayan ring—of silver—I mean of Mayan design; it's a copy in sterling silver of what's supposed to be a very old one. It was given to Bianca by a close friend, a Mexican girl, daughter of a diplomat, who attended finishing school with Bianca in Switzerland.”

“Was Mrs. Lessard wearing this ring the night she walked out on you?”

“She always wore the ring.” Lessard suddenly sat up straight. He had become very pale. “Are you telling me that you've found the ring, Captain?”

So Corrigan told him.

3

“I suppose I'd better warn you, Mr. Lessard,” Corrigan said on their way to the morgue. “The body is in very poor condition.”

Lessard swallowed.

“Do I have to?” he gulped. “Do I have to?”

“I'm afraid so. Not that I'm very hopeful, considering. But it's just possible you may see something that will enable you to make an ID—an identification.”

“Her face,” began Lessard.

Chuck Baer said suddenly, “She has no face.”

Lessard looked at the big detective, but not as if he saw him. The beautiful eyes were rolled back slightly. His complexion by now was pale green.

Corrigan said nothing.

The drawer in the morgue had a Jane Doe tag on it. The attendant in the white smock slid it open. Even he looked a little sick at the sight of the bleached muslin shroud. He twitched it off. He had seen the body before.

Between Korea and the Main Office Squad Corrigan had seen enough mutilations of the human housing to harden him—he would have said—against anything. But this time he found himself fighting his stomach. Even a body blown apart by a direct mortar hit was not so traumatic a sight; in such tragedies nothing human was left.

The girl's body had been half eaten away.

There's something about rats, Corrigan thought. To this day, for all his experience with the vile, he could not see a technician pick up a laboratory rat without wondering how the man was able to do it. He remembered a story his paternal grandfather had once told him. It had happened in his grandfather's boyhood on the East Side, in the '80s, when the boy had been locked in an empty coal bin of the public school cellar for some infraction of the rules, and the janitor had forgotten about him and gone home. The boy had sat up all night in a corner of the filthy bin fighting off rats as long as his arm. Corrigan remembered as a child wondering if that was why his grandfather had snow-colored hair. He still had nightmares about it.

Chuck Baer took one look and turned away.

Vincent Lessard took one look and fainted.

Corrigan caught the man under an armpit as he slumped. Baer reacted almost as quickly. Lessard dangled between them.

The attendant hastily restored the shroud and shut the drawer. Dr. Samuelson, a city pathologist, the other member of the group, gestured and said, “Take him in there.” He preceded them to a nearby office, Lessard's toetips dragging.

They laid him on a couch, neck and head flat, feet resting in an elevated position on the arm of the couch, at Dr. Samuelson's direction.

The doctor administered aromatic spirits of ammonia to Lessard's nose. At the first whiff, Lessard thrashed back to consciousness.

“My God,” he mumbled. “My God.”

He tried to sit up.

“Easy,” the doctor said. “Don't rush it. Lie there a few minutes.”

Lessard lay staring at the ceiling.

“No,” he said. “No.” Then he said, “It couldn't be Bianca. Not my lovely Bianca. Is it Bianca, Captain?”

“That's what we hoped you could tell us,” Corrigan said.

“But her face.” Lessard began to breathe rapidly. Samuelson stooped to give him another whiff. Lessard pushed the doctor's hand away.

“Bianca.… No wonder she didn't come back. She went out. It was late. The streets were dark. She was alone. And some mugger.…”

“We don't know what happened to her,” Corrigan said. “Not yet. Are you up to looking at the ring now?”

“Ring?”

“The Mayan ring. You said she was wearing it when you last saw her.”

“All right,” Lessard said listlessly.

Dr. Samuelson went out.

“The ring is unique. Without duplicate. It was handmade by an old family retainer for the Mexican girl. If that … thing in there was wearing it.…”

Samuelson returned with a manila envelope. He handed the envelope to Corrigan.

A silver ring slid from the envelope to Corrigan's palm. Attached to the ring was a tag marked with an identification number. Corrigan offered the ring to Lessard.

Lessard stared at it without touching it. Then he shut his eyes.

“It's Bianca's ring,” he said.

Corrigan returned the ring to the envelope and handed it to Samuelson. The doctor glanced briefly at Lessard. Then he went out. He did not come back.

Lessard struggled to his feet His face looked like soft putty that was perceptibly losing shape. He looked ten years older than when he had come in.

“Aside from the ring,” Corrigan said. He felt sorry for the man, regardless of other considerations. The fellow had slept with what lay in the drawer. He would have nightmares for the rest of his life, dreams in which he embraced what the rats had left. “Aside from the ring, did you spot anything that pinpoints the body as your wife's?”

Lessard shuddered. “No. No.”

“Well.” Corrigan shrugged. “We'll have to keep going until we pin the ID down.”

“The ring,” Chuck Baer said.

“We can't accept it as conclusive, Chuck, although of course it's a long step in Mrs. Lessard's direction. By the way, Mr. Lessard, who is in charge of the Fielding enterprises? Who's taken care of the administration of the business since the death of your wife's parents?”

“What?”

Corrigan repeated himself patiently.

“Oh.” Lessard's color was coming back. “A girl named Jean Ainsley. One of those bright young career women. I believe she's been with the Fielding enterprises for five or six years. Hails from California. Do I have to answer any more questions, Captain?”

“No, of course not. Sorry I've had to put you through this. We'll be in touch.”

Baer said, “I'll drop you off at your place if you'd like, Mr Lessard.”

“Would you?” Lessard said emptily.

After they left, Corrigan consulted a Manhattan directory and found that Fielding Theatrical Realty had offices in a building in the 1600 block on Broadway. He dialed, identified himself, and asked for Miss Ainsley. The girl at the switchboard kept him waiting a full minute.

He listened to a warmly pleasant voice identify its owner as Jean Ainsley. Somehow, it did not fit in with his image of a career girl.

“What can I possibly do for a police officer, Captain Corrigan?”

“There's a matter concerning your employer I have to discuss with you. How soon can we get together?”

The other end of the line went silent. Then the warm voice said, “Right after lunch, if that's all right with you. I get back at two.”

Jean Ainsley turned from the phone on her blond wood desk to the man standing at the tall window in her office. He stood in a contemplative, almost brooding, posture, as if he were philosophizing over the vanity of the minute movements on the streets below.

Like some statue by Rodin, Jean thought. But it's just a pose. He's the model, not the sculpture. Philosophy was far from his thoughts. He was engaged in his favorite pastime, contemplating himself. And she loved him anyway. That was the hell of it.

At fifty-two, Carlton Ainsley still presented a young man's waistline; his broad shoulders were still without a hint of curvature. The profile, the walking stick, the elkskin gloves, the carnation in his lapel, shrieked “actor.” There were dozens like him at the Lambs' Club. His hair was a mane thrown back from the high forehead. Its coloration was striking, an intense black dusted with pulverized silver.

Just look at him, Jean thought, the youth of him, after all those years of drinking and women and Hollywood parties; even the years in that other horrid place hadn't left a mark on him, at least not physically.

How could such a mature, handsome body and face conceal such a child?

Ainsley said to the traffic below, “I don't blame you for being angry with me, Jeanie.”

“Let's not go through the promises and resolutions bit again, Daddy, shall we?”

“Very well.”

“Sometimes you do more than make me angry,” she said in a too-quiet voice. “Sometimes you almost make me wish.…”

Carlton Ainsley turned, his electric blue eyes full of affection. His beautifully modulated baritone sounded sad. “I wish it, too, my dear. For your sake. Unfortunately, I've never been able to get up enough nerve to do it.”

“That's not what I meant, and you know it,” Jean said wearily. “What am I going to do with you, Daddy?”

The corners of his mouth turned down, the child upbraided. But it would pass, Jean thought. He had a sort of built-in emotional sieve for straining out unpleasantness. In and out, and away we go.

She banged down in her white leather desk chair and reached for a cigarette. “I do wish you'd stop playing games and tell me what's been bothering you the past few days.”

“Jeanie dear,” he said, making for her. “You're imagining things.”