The Vanished

by Bill Pronzini

  ‘Two years now. Two years last October sixth.’

  ‘And you’ve been living alone since then?’

  ‘Except when Doug comes home for the holidays, or on one of his vacation leaves,’ she said. ‘We’re very close, Doug and I. He’s all I have left.’

  She continued to stare into the fire, and I let her have a few moments with the privacy of her thoughts. The confessions each of us had made as to why we were the lonely people we were had established a bond and a foundation for our relationship, and I knew that when we spoke again, it would be much easier, more natural, between us. That was the way it was. She turned from the fire, and a moment later we were asking questions of each other and there were no hesitations with any of the answers.

  Cheryl told me she was a waitress-cashier at Saxon’s Coffee Shop on 19th Avenue-she made the statement almost defensively, as if I might attach some kind of stigma to her position, the old nonsense about waitresses being dim-witted pushovers-and that Tuesdays were her days off, which was why she had been free today and tonight. She told me she had been born and raised in Truckee, in the High Sierras, but that she and Doug had been orphaned in their teens and had both come to San Francisco shortly after the death of their parents. She had gone to college for a year, liberal arts because that was what all the other girls who had no idea what they wanted out of life had studied, but she had not had the money to continue with her education. For a time she had been a secretary in the Traffic Bureau at Southern Pacific, and then she had been a cocktail waitress, and then she had met this Tom and gotten married, ‘well, I told you about that, didn’t I?’

  I filled her in on my own background, my youth in the Noe Valley District, on the fringe of San Francisco’s tough Mission; my military and war service in Texas and Hawaii and the South Pacific; my desire to become a cop and my enrollment in the Police Academy; the fifteen years I had spent on the San Francisco police, and the afternoon I had gone out on a homicide squeal and found a guy who had hacked his wife and two kids to pieces with an ax and decided that I had had it with direct police work; the acceptance of my application to the State Board of Licenses for a private investigator’s certificate; the lean years since; a little more about Erika, ‘well, I told you about that, didn’t I?’

  We smiled at each other across the table, and there was more to say, more to ask. But we had talked enough for one night; part of any relationship is the anticipation of more knowledge, of stronger ties. She sensed it, too, and she said, ‘I’d better be going now. It’s almost eleven, and I have to be to work at eight in the morning.’

  I nodded. ‘When can I see you again, Cheryl?’

  ‘You can call, if you like.’

  ‘I have to go out of town for a day or two,’ I said. ‘I’ll call as soon as I get back, and we’ll have dinner together, and dancing or a show afterward-whatever you like to do.’

  ‘All right.’

  I helped her on with her coat, and we went through the long narrow section of the lounge and outside. A thick blanket of fog had come in off the ocean, and it was cold and damp on the sidewalk. I walked her to her car, at the end of the block, and it was there that we said good night.

  For the first time, but not for the last.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Fog drifted like tattered gossamer through the darkened streets of Pacific Heights. I had to leave my car a couple of blocks from my flat again, and trailing vapors of mist touched my face in a gray, feathery caress as I hurried along the wet sidewalk. They made me feel vaguely chill and apprehensive; it had been a night like this one, a fog like this one, that I had had my belly sliced open during the kidnapping business the previous autumn. The cut, which had required twenty-seven stitches, had scarred thin and white, and even though I had nightmares about it sometimes, I had for the most part been able to bury the terror of that night in my subconscious; but heavy fog, the feel and smell of it, always seemed to release the memory from the mental grave I had dug for it…

  I reached the foyer of my building and worked the latch-key and stepped into warmth and silence and the dying odors of a corned-beef supper. The anxiety went away as I climbed the stairs, and immediately I felt a return of the high spirits with which I had driven home from the Golden Door. This seemed to be my day for shifting moods, all right. Maudlin in the morning, buoyant at night. I reached the landing at the top of the stairs, and in the semi-darkness there, aimed my key at the lock on my door. Oh, what a difference a day makes-Sinatra hit the nail right on the head. Or was it Tony Bennett who sang that one? Or was it Ella-

  And that was when I heard the sounds inside my apartment.

  The landing was very quiet, and the scrape of my key at the lock was indistinct, like a rat chittering somewhere in a wall. But the other sounds were graphic, unmistakable-the creak of a loose floorboard, the rustle of clothing, the jangle of coins. There was somebody in there, somebody in my living room, and I turned the key reflexively without thinking about what I was letting myself in for and shoved the door wide.

  The knob cracked against a surface of the highboy set against the side wall, and I was two steps into heavy darkness, now thickly silent darkness. I got my hand up, fumbling along the wall to the right of the door for the light switch, and very suddenly a blinding, shimmering white hole appeared in the black fabric of the room, less than ten feet in front of me. Flashlight, I thought, large-cell flashlight-and I threw my left arm up and across my face to shield my eyes, still trying to locate the wall switch with my right hand.

  Something came out of the brilliant, diffused aureole of the flash beam, something dark and bulky, and I stumbled awkwardly to the right to get out of the way and collided with the drop-leaf table there, upsetting it. I went down onto my hands and knees, painfully, burning my palms on the worn nap of the carpet; above and behind me the something shattered hollowly against the rose wallpaper. Porcelain shards rained on the backs of my legs like thin, cold hailstones, and I thought: the shit, he threw the reading lamp at me, the goddam shit.

  The flash beam went out, abruptly, and the room once more diminished into a deep-black; the guy, whoever, was running through the flat now, banging into things in the darkness. I got my feet under me and lurched upright, turning back to the wall. I found the switch finally, and pale light from the glass ceiling bowl flooded the room. My eyes ached from the glare of the flash; it took a moment to focus them so I could see well enough to navigate the cluttered expanse to the doorway on the opposite side, and I could hear him out on the utility porch, trying to get the side door open.

  I kicked a footstool out of the way, viciously, and staggered into the kitchen and then out to the porch. The back door was standing wide open. Footsteps pounded down the flight of steep wooden stairs which jutted outward like a prominent rib cage from the old Victorian lady’s side wall. I swung through the door onto the pocket-sized platform which serves as a landing for my flat, and a dark man-shape wrapped in a trenchcoat and gloves and some kind of long-billed cap was down at the foot of the stairs; fog and deep shadow helped to camouflage his features, the size and shape of him.

  I yelled at him, foolishly, but he was already running along the narrow cement-floored alleyway where the garbage cans and storage bins for my building and the adjacent one were kept. The thought that he might have a gun, or another weapon, did not occur to me until some time later; I clambered down after him, hanging onto the side railing to maintain my footing on the mist-slick stairs, and went into the alley running. The dark figure had already turned the corner, east, at the building front by then; and when I made it up there and through onto the sidewalk, there was no sign of him.

  I ran up to the near corner. A car was coming toward me, its headlights magnified by the gray cloak of the fog, but there were four people in it and it was going much too slowly to mean anything. The car passed and I looked up and down the steepness of Octavia; but the area seemed deserted. Whoever he was, he had gotten away clean.

  I walked back to the alley
way, trying not to pay any attention to the burning in my lungs from the cold damp air and the exertion. Light spilled into the passage from several flats in both buildings now, and there were anxious faces behind the glass of locked doors and windows. The guy who lives below me, a retired fire captain named Litchak, was standing on his platform, wearing a plaid bathrobe and a sharp scowl. He had a bungstarter in his right hand-a souvenir he had collected somewhere or other.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he asked me as I started up the stairs.

  ‘I came home and found somebody in my apartment,’ I told him.

  ‘Sneak thief, huh?’

  ‘It looks that way.’

  ‘Figured that might be what it was all about. I heard all the banging around up in your flat, and then him come clattering down the stairs and you after him. He got away, I guess?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Sonsabitches,’ Litchak said. He made a motion with the bungstarter. ‘Well, it’s too bad the wife had the television blaring away or I might have heard him sooner. If I had, I’d have broken his goddamn head for him.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said again.

  ‘You think he made off with much?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll check that now.’

  I started past him, moving up the stairs. He called after me, ‘Keep your valuables in a safe deposit box, like I do. No sneak thief can hurt you when you’ve got your valuables locked up in one of those babies.’

  I reached my own landing and went inside and looked at the door. The lock had been jimmied, hurriedly and unprofessionally; this was the way he had come in, then. I wedged the door closed with a broom handle and a piece of copper wire, and then I went into the kitchen and poured myself a couple of fingers of brandy to ease the jangling of my nerves. When I had that down, I walked through the apartment to see what, if anything, was missing.

  Ten minutes later I rang up the Hall of Justice and told a desk sergeant that I had had a prowler, giving my name and address. He had already received one call pertaining to the disturbance, he said, and had dispatched a unit to the area. I could make a report to the investigating officers.

  So I sat down on the couch in the living room to wait-and to think about the three items I had found were missing from the flat: twenty dollars in silver dimes and quarters from a wooden bank shaped like a beer keg that I kept on the bedroom dresser; a small case full of cuff links and tie clasps and the like, also from the dresser.

  And the sketch of Roy Sands that Elaine Kavanaugh had given me that morning, from the inside pocket of the suit coat I had worn that day.

  What the bloody hell?

  Twenty bucks in coins and a case of cheap men’s jewelry might incidentally interest a sneak thief, but why would one take a rolled-up chalk portrait that was obviously of no real and immediate value-and neglect such easily pawnable items as a clock radio and a radium-dial wristwatch in a nightstand drawer? For that matter, why would a sneak thief take the chance of coming down an open alleyway and up stairs past one door, with three sets of doors and porch windows facing him across the passage? Why would he take the chance of standing fully exposed on the platform while he jimmied open the side door, and of doing it quietly enough so as not to alert any of the neighbors? And why would he choose a time well before midnight, when most people are awake if not still up and around?

  The answers were all the same: he wouldn’t.

  Unless he was not a sneak thief at all.

  Unless he was a guy after something in particular, something important enough to make all that risk worthwhile.

  The portrait of Roy Sands?

  It had to be that. I had nothing else that would interest anybody-certainly nothing of special value. I had not had another case in over a month, and that one a simple skip-trace. It had to be the portrait, all right. Coincidence was the only other explanation, and if a lifelong distrust of coincidence was not enough to discredit that possibility, the facts as I saw them were enough.

  But what made the portrait important enough to steal? A lot of silly and melodramatic ideas crossed my mind-some kind of coded message, a microdot, a concealed masterpiece of some type-and I discarded them all for those very reasons. It had been a simple head-and-shoulders sketch of Roy Sands, and that’s all it had been.

  Who, then? Elaine Kavanaugh knew I had it, obviously; but because she had given it to me, there seemed to be no conceivable reason why she would want to steal it back again, or have it stolen by someone else. Chuck Hendryx and Rich Gilmartin also knew I had it-and maybe Doug Rosmond as well; he could have spoken to one of them during the day, and that one could have mentioned the portrait. It was likely that Rosmond had known I would be out with his sister tonight, and either Hendryx or Gilmartin could have come over from Marin County and watched my flat and waited until I left, plus a little longer because of the hour, and then broken in.

  All of which told me nothing definite. Hell, it did not have to be one of those three at all. At this point, there was simply no way of knowing. But there was one thing I did know, one fact which seemed certain: the theft of the sketch had something to do with the disappearance of Roy Sands, directly or indirectly. And it made that disappearance seem a hell of a lot stranger than it had sounded that morning.

  I got up and paced the room, smoking and brooding and getting nowhere, and when the doorbell finally rang I jumped half a foot. I let in two uniformed cops, neither of whom I knew, and showed them around the flat and told them what had happened and what had been stolen, without elaborating on any of my theories. They were polite and solicitous, especially after they found out what I did for a living and that I had been on the cops for fifteen years, and I tried to answer their questions without letting my impatience show through. No, I hadn’t gotten a good look at the man. No, I didn’t know if he had gotten away on foot or in a car. Yes, I was certain he had been wearing gloves. No, I could not tell them anything more than I already had.

  When they were gone-leaving me with the empty assurance that they would do what they could to recover my stolen property-I had another brandy for my nerves and then went into the bedroom and dialed the number of the Royal Gate Hotel. The switchboard rang Elaine Kavanaugh’s room and she answered immediately, as if she had been lying tensely awake in the darkness, waiting for the telephone to ring. ‘Yes? What is it?’

  I told her who was calling; then: ‘Somebody broke into my apartment tonight while I was out. I came home and caught him at it and chased him out, but he got away without me getting a look at him.’

  I could hear her breathing over the wire. She said at length, ‘I don’t understand. I’m sorry for you, but why did you call me?’

  ‘I have my doubts that this was an ordinary burglary attempt,’ I said. ‘The only thing stolen, except for a couple of inconsequential items that seem more like an afterthought than anything else, was that sketch of your fiancé you gave me this morning.’

  ‘The sketch? Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘But-why would anybody want to steal that?’

  ‘I was about to ask you the same question.’

  ‘I have no idea. None at all.’

  ‘What can you tell about that sketch, Miss Kavanaugh?’

  ‘Just what I told you at your office. I found it among Roy’s things when I was looking through them. That’s all.’

  ‘Where exactly among his things?’

  ‘Inside his duffel bag.’

  ‘Was there anything else in there that might connect with the sketch?’

  ‘No, just clothing and such. Do you really think this is important?’

  ‘It might be,’ I said. ‘Are you sure he never told you about the portrait in any of his letters?’

  ‘Yes, I’m certain he never mentioned it.’

  ‘Then you don’t have any idea where he had it done?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or when?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or who drew it?’

  ‘No
, I’m sorry, no.’

  ‘Do you remember a signature? I can’t recall seeing one.’

  ‘I don’t think it was signed.’

  I shifted the receiver to my left hand. ‘Did you tell anyone about the sketch? That you’d found it, that you’d given it to me?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Is your fiancé interested in painting, can you tell me that?’

  ‘Painting? No… not really. He likes sports, hunting, masculine things.’

  ‘Why do you suppose he sat for the sketch, then?’

  ‘Why-to surprise me, I suppose. He knows how much something like that would please me, and I… well, I just assumed he had it done for me.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Do you… think the theft of the sketch has something to do with his disappearance? Really think so?’ Her voice had grown very soft, and there was anguish in it now.

  ‘I don’t know. It might have.’

  ‘But I don’t see what! It was just a good portrait of Roy, that’s all.’

  ‘So it would seem,’ I said. ‘Did your fiancé happen to mention in any of his letters how he got along with his buddies-Hendryx and Gilmartin and Rosmond, in particular?’

  ‘How he got along with them? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Was he on good terms with each of them?’

  ‘Well, of course he was. They’ve been friends for years, all of them. I don’t see-’

  ‘I’m just fishing in the dark, Miss Kavanaugh. I’m sorry if I upset you, but I thought you’d want to know about the theft and I did want to ask you some questions about the portrait.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, of course. But I… oh God, this is so confusing, so frightening on top of everything else. What does it mean? What can it mean?’

  I had no answer for her. I said, ‘I’ll call you tomorrow from Eugene, Miss Kavanaugh. Maybe some of the answers are up there.’

  ‘I hope so. I can’t take much more of this waiting, this not knowing.’

  I said a few gentle parting words, replaced the receiver, and released an audible breath. My watch told me it was almost 1:00 a.m. I thought: She’s not going to sleep much tonight, maybe you should have waited until tomorrow to tell her about it. Well, it was too late now; I had called her, and she had had nothing to tell me. A lot depended now on what I was able to find out in Oregon; if I ran into a blank up there, there was not much more I could do for Elaine Kavanaugh short of interrogating Hendryx and Gilmartin and Rosmond-and if one of them had stolen the sketch, he would not be likely to admit it to me.