Where Is Bianca? (16 page)

“Recommend,” his report concluded, “that security measures continue in this case. Formal charges against Carlton Ainsley will temporarily pend to keep his name and full details of the death of Nancy Gavin, alias Noreen Gardner, from appearing immediately in the public record. The press will be briefed at the proper time. Meanwhile, Carlton Ainsley will be under close surveillance.

“The reason for these measures stems from the Mayan ring taken from the body of ‘Noreen Gardner.' Mrs. Bianca Fielding Lessard was wearing this same ring at the time she disappeared, approximately seventy-two hours prior to the death of ‘Noreen.'

“It is possible, therefore, that a person unknown is following the case carefully to ascertain whether or not we can pinpoint the time and place of the transfer of the Mayan ring.”

Corrigan was sliding the report into a manila envelope when Baer walked into the office. Corrigan dropped the report into the. OUT basket, Interdepartmental, for delivery by police messenger.

“I am freshly come from my esteemed client, Vincent Lessard,” the big man announced, dropping into a chair. “Wouldst have the scoop?”

“Is he ready to file a formal complaint on his wife's disappearance?”

“Not yet. His excuse, Tim, is that the Fielding name would grab too much publicity, which might not set well with Bianca when she shows up.”

“When she shows up?” Corrigan said.

He and Baer looked at each other for a moment.

“Let's add it up again,” Corrigan said. “This is the morning of the nineteenth. Bianca Fielding Lessard accused her husband of adultery and ran out on him the night of the eighth. Nancy-Noreen, wearing Bianca's Mayan ring, died on the night of the eleventh or in the small hours of the twelfth. Her body was dropped into the sewer by Ainsley, and it was discovered by a sanitation worker on the evening of the fifteenth. Record of the unidentified body crossed my desk in the morning report of the sixteenth. On that date—the six-teenth—your client identified the body as that of his wife Bianca on the basis of the Mayan ring.”

Baer's craggy face screwed up as he winked. “Is this what you're getting at? That if Anna Gavin and Peggy Simpson had never turned up to dispute the ID, the body in the morgue might have been buried as Bianca Fielding Lessard, victim of some unknown mugger?”

Corrigan said, “And Vincent Lessard would have been an overnight millionaire widower.”

“But he came to me. He put a private detective on his wife's trail.”

“If he was sure the case would go down as an unsolved mugging, what better way to cover his own guilt?”

“You're charging the man with murder, Tim.”

“I'm not charging him with anything yet. He's an unprincipled heel whose wife was about to declare him an adulterer in a divorce court and take all that Fielding bread away from him. I'm just assessing what we have. We have a body, that of Nancy-Noreen, but no murder. In the light of Bianca's continued absence I'm convinced the contrary may be true. We may have a murder, but no body.”

“If Lessard was slick enough to cover it, Tim, he'll be tough to break.”

“Fine,” Corrigan grinned. “The tougher they are, the worse they fracture.”

Corrigan reached for the telephone.

It began for Vincent Lessard with an ordinary-looking man standing idly across the street. Lessard noticed the man at mid-morning.

An hour later Lessard made a call from his living room to the office of Fielding Theatrical Realty. He happened to glance through the front window while he waited for the switchboard girl to put him through to Jean Ainsley. The same man occupied the same position on the same sidewalk.

Funny, Lessard thought. The police were quick to discourage loungers in this high-rent neighborhood.

Lessard spoke to Jean Ainsley about the Kansas City land-use contract. He had difficulty focusing on the matter. Finally he told Jean he would call her back, and he hung up.

He went to the second floor of the town house, telling himself he was being a fool. Still, he made for the tall arched window at the end of the hall. He drew the drape back and scanned the street. A chilling certainty invaded his mind. The house was being watched. And the watcher was obviously a policeman, or he would have been chased away long ago.

Lessard hurried into the Louis XVI bedroom, stripped off his smoking jacket, and hustled into a sports jacket. Then he strode to the front door. Here he paused, warning himself to act natural.

He stepped out into the sun and strolled along the sidewalk, keeping the stakeout within view. He saw the man lift his hand from his thigh. Could it be a signal?

Lessard looked toward the corner. Another ordinary-looking man was standing there. This man started to walk at a pace that would permit Lessard to overtake him.

The sun began to feel very warm.

Lessard strolled on for several blocks. Pedestrian traffic thickened. He paused at the window of a shoe store and stole a glance in the direction from which he had come. For a moment he enjoyed the thought that he had been imagining things. The second man was no longer behind him. He studied the passersby and the sidewalk beyond to make sure. Relieved, he turned to continue his walk.

But he did not take a step. There was the bird dog, ahead of him, looking innocently into the window of a tobacconist's shop.

Lessard felt a curious panic. He dodged over to the curb, almost stepped into the path of the cars rushing by. He had to fight himself with long breaths, saying silently, Take it easy. This may be nothing. Don't commit an act of folly.…

When he re-entered the Fielding house, he stood for a moment behind the closed door, panting. Damn them! What right did they have to put detectives on his trail?

He pecked at lunch, finally abandoning it. During the afternoon he tried to amuse himself at the billiard table, a relic of the old days of Grandfather Fielding, who, according to Bianca, had been a pool shark, one of his many accomplishments. But the balls refused to roll true. The cue kept slipping and skidding. Once it slipped and ripped a six-inch tear in the felt.

Lessard made frequent trips to the window. The first man was still at his station. “Sonofabitch,” Lessard mumbled, and returned to the table and savagely scattered the balls. Finally he threw down the cue and left the house.

He hailed a taxi and drove to a midtown bar. Here he hunched on a barstool, sipping his Scotch and water tastelessly.
Follow me in, you goddam fuzz, and gape all you want.…

Nevertheless, he kept watching the door. The detective did not appear. Lessard gulped the rest of his drink. They'd given up, thank God.

Smiling at his anxieties, Lessard dropped a dollar on the bar and got off the stool. He was halfway to the entrance when he heard a voice that was at once sharp and stealthy say behind him, “Hold it, barkeep. I'll pay for the glass. Police business.”

Lessard felt the old panic again. He contrived a complicated maneuver, turning toward the mirror on the wall opposite the bar and running his hand over his jaws as if to speculate whether he needed a shave or not. In the mirror he had a view of the bar, with its mirror; and he saw a new man standing at the bar and dropping a handkerchief over the glass he had just handled. They had switched detectives on him!

Lessard watched the man wrap the glass carefully, slip it into his pocket, toss a bill on the bar, and walk out without a side or backward glance.

What was going on? Lessard found himself leaning against the wall. What the hell was going on? If they wanted his fingerprints, why didn't they haul him down to headquarters and take them? Unless.… A man could excercise his constitutional rights at headquarters. This was the easier way. Damned stupid cops! They were so eager that their third man hadn't taken the elementary precaution of waiting until his victim had left the premises.

During the night Lessard suddenly awoke. He was in a profound sweat. He tossed and turned, trying to get back to sleep. Finally he got out of bed and went to the bathroom for some water.

He silently cursed his own weakness. Why should he give a damn whether they were out there or not? He returned to the bedroom with angry strides. But he merely sat down on the edge of the bed, gripping the mattress. After a while he got up and went to the window. He had begun to hate the window.

On the street below, under a street lamp, a lone man sat patiently in an unmarked black car.

Lessard fled from the window, bumping into a chair and barking his shin. He swore, rubbing the shin. What were the bastards after? What were they trying to pin on him?

He shuffled to the bathroom, yanked the medicine cabinet open. He took down a bottle and shook out two sleeping pills. He hurled them into his mouth, chased them down with tepid tap water.

Lessard awoke groggily the next morning. He had some difficulty clearing his head. He reared from the bed and went to the hated window.

The stakeout was still there, standing across the street like a monument that neither time nor weather could influence.

Frances Weatherly met him for lunch at the Algonquin. Rubbing shoulders with the writers and wits of New York failed for once to stimulate him. He hardly spoke to Fran. He kept watching the newcomers.

“What's the matter with you?” Frances asked peevishly.

“I've a headache,” Lessard said. “I think I'll go home and lie down. Please excuse me, Fran.”

“Go and be damned to you. You're lousy company today. I'll see you this evening.” Fran stared after him, frowning.

When he got home, Lessard was met by the manservant. “Any calls for me?”

“No, Mr. Lessard, but the repairman was here.”

“Repairman?”

“To fix the telephone, sir.”

“I ordered no repairs. You should never have let him in!”

“I'm sorry, sir.”

“Get the hell out of here!”

When he was alone, Lessard sank into a chair and pressed his hands to his temples. Now they had bugged his phone.

17

Corrigan rocked back in his chair as Lessard shoved into the office and slammed the door.

“Mr. Lessard,” Corrigan said innocently. “You look all excited. Is something wrong?”

Lessard pressed against Corrigan's desk. He was angry white to the tip of his nose. “The tap on my phone was too much. You want to defend a lawsuit for invasion of privacy?”

“Is anyone invading your privacy?”

“You know damned well
you
are. Putting detectives on my trail. Bugging my phone. Keeping me under surveillance day and night!”

“Without prejudice,” Corrigan smiled, “and without witnesses, I'll admit we're keeping an eye on you.”

“Why, for God's sake?”

“Sit down,” Corrigan said with an abrupt change of tone.

“I tell you I won't take any more of this, Corrigan!” But Lessard took his hands off Corrigan's desk and sank into a chair. “What do you want of me?” he asked weakly.

“The true story about your wife.”

“But I've told you everything there is to tell! And I've hired a private detective to find her, as you very well know. What more can I do?”

“You can come clean. Let me tell you something, Lessard. We don't need a formal complaint on your part. We can move any time we feel there's enough evidence that a crime has been committed.”

The man seemed startled. “You've uncovered evidence? If you have, I'm entitled to know what it is. Bianca was my wife—”

“Was?”

“I mean … she may be in Mexico City divorcing me at this moment.”

“If she is,” Corrigan said, “she must have teleported herself out of New York. This private detective, Chuck Baer, is a thorough operator. He's run down every possible lead—travel agents, ticket sellers, cab drivers, people she's met since returning from the sanitorium. He even made a trip to Adirondacks Hall and talked personally with the staff and others up there. No trace of your wife has turned up. Can you explain her continued absence, Lessard?”

“With men following me, watching every move I make and listening to every word I say?” Lessard hesitated. Then he burst out, “You've even had one of your men sneak my fingerprints from a bar glass. My God, Captain, you're treating me as if you suspected me of having murdered Bianca, or something!”

“Did you?”

“
No!
”

“We have your record,” Corrigan said. “We know who and what you've been, Lessard. And a sordid story it is.”

Lessard was silent. Then he said, “All right, Captain. I made a living out of lonely women. But I gave service for my take. I brought romance into their lives. They were glad to pay the tab. Is that why you're persecuting
me?
”

“We're interested in only one thing: What happened to your wife. And what part, if any, you played in it.”

“Captain, I swear I've leveled with you. Bianca walked out unharmed the night we had the Donnybrook. And I haven't seen or heard from her since.”

“Nor submitted to a shakedown by Noreen Gardner?”

Lessard shrank. The anger that had carried him to the office had long since left him. “The girl in the morgue … Noreen … Bianca's ring.… You think because Noreen was wearing Bianca's ring.…”

Corrigan had risen. The quiet brown eye regarded Lessard steadily.

“I think your wife is dead, Lessard. I think she was murdered. I think her body has been expertly disposed of.

“The Mayan ring puts Noreen Gardner at the scene of Bianca's death. It's inconceivable that a sensitive woman like your wife would have given a cherished possession like that ring to a girl she hardly knew. Noreen Gardner had to come into possession of that ring after Bianca was beyond having anything to say in the matter.”

“You've got to believe me, Captain! Noreen was nowhere near our house the night Bianca walked out. I hardly said a dozen words to Noreen in the next few days. I don't think I said more than hello to her the last time I saw her.”