The Vanished - [Nameless Detective 02]

by Bill Pronzini

  I kicked my chair away and got on my feet, turning my body, bracing myself. I caught the guy on my left hip, stopping him cold, and then I put both hands on his shoulders and sent him back the way he had come. He ran into the one in lederhosen, and the two of them went down in a tangle of arms and legs. Two big Germans, bouncer-types, came out of nowhere and scooped the pair off the floor like they were bags of meal and got rid of them through the front door. Somebody shouted in German, and there were some cheers and a round of applause, and an American acid-rock thing came on the juke.

  I sat down again and MacVeagh looked at me as if he was seeing me for the first time. ‘You handle yourself damn nice, buddy.’

  ‘Yeah—well.’

  ‘You ever in the service?’

  ‘Pacific Theater, Second War.’

  ‘Infantry?’

  ‘Army Intelligence?’

  ‘Yeah?’ MacVeagh said, in a way that told me he was not particularly impressed.

  We had another beer, and MacVeagh wanted to talk about the war—he had been a private first on the beach at Normandy; but my headache had steadily worsened and the tightness had grown more painful in my chest, and I did not feel like talking. I was thinking about chucking the whole business for tonight when the ornate door opened and a black-haired girl in a short green dress came down the steps into the room.

  The mutton-chopped barkeeper saw her and made a signaling motion to MacVeagh from behind the plank. The girl stood looking things over at the bottom of the steps, and MacVeagh got up and waved to her with the same kind of contempt he had shown the two Flittchen earlier. She put on a professional smile, paused, and then walked with an exaggerated hip-sway to where we were sitting.

  She was maybe twenty-five, lush and ripe now like a piece of fruit at peak season, but it was only a matter of time before the first sweet flesh would turn into blotched and tasteless pulp, rotting and discarded at the base of the tree which had borne her. She had a wide mouth and bovine eyes and, characteristically, round dimpled cheeks literally whitewashed with makeup.

  MacVeagh asked her sharply if she spoke English. Distaste was apparent in his voice.

  She bobbed her head vigorously. ‘Sure, I can good English speak. Christ, yes!’

  ‘Your name is Sybille?’

  ‘You know me?’

  ‘Yeah, we know you,’ MacVeagh said. ‘Sit down, we want to talk to you awhile.’

  ‘You buy me a drink?’

  MacVeagh’s mouth twisted, but I said, ‘We’ll buy you a drink, Sybille. What do you want?’

  She pulled out a free chair and sat down and pressed her heavy breasts against the edge of the table. She looked directly at me, ignoring MacVeagh. She said, ‘I drink a gin fizz.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ MacVeagh said.

  ‘I’ll handle this, Jock,’ I told him, and his eyes answered, You know all about handling whores, huh, buddy? but he did not say anything. He lifted his beer and looked off in another direction.

  I got a gin fizz for Sybille and watched her drink a little of it; then I said slowly, ‘About three months ago, on a Saturday, there was an American soldier in here drinking. His name was Roy Sands. He spent the whole weekend here, drinking and passing out and sleeping it off in one of the rooms out back. Do you remember?’

  She smiled, frowned, smiled again. ‘Oh sure, I remember.’

  ‘You were sitting with him at one of the tables, weren’t you?’

  ‘For a little time,’ she said. ‘Then he wants to be alone.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To drink the schnapps.’

  ‘Why did he want to drink so much schnapps?’

  She shrugged. ‘I think he was unhappy.’

  ‘Did he tell you that?’

  ‘No, but his eyes and mouth are unhappy.’

  ‘Can you remember anything he said to you?’

  ‘He ask me why did it have to happen.’

  ‘Why did what have to happen?’

  ‘Ich weiss nicht. I don’t know.’

  ‘All right. What else did he say?’

  ‘That he wants to be alone. No more.’

  ‘Did you talk to him again on Sunday or Monday?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you see him at all after that weekend?’ I asked her. ‘Did he come in here again?’

  ‘I never see him any more.’

  ‘Do you know of anyone else who might have talked to him?’

  ‘Walter, the barkeeper.’

  ‘We’ve already spoken with Walter.’

  ‘Two amerikanische Soldaten helped to put him in a room.’

  ‘Do you know their names?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would Walter know their names?’

  ‘Walter does not even know his own name,’ she said, and laughed.

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘Ich weiss nicht.’

  ‘All right, Sybille. Thanks.’

  ‘You buy me another gin fuzz, huh?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, and I put a couple of D-marks on the table.

  She smiled wetly. ‘Thanks, man.’

  MacVeagh was on his feet. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said to me. ‘I can’t stand this goddamn hole any more.’

  I nodded and we left Sybille tucking the D-marks into the loose bodice of her dress. Outside, the clean, chill air blowing along the Am Pfuhl was like dry ice in my lungs, and my head throbbed painfully. MacVeagh said nothing, sullenly, as we walked to where I had parked the Volkswagen on the thoroughfare. He had not approved of the way I had handled Sybille, and he thought he had me pegged because of it; I was a slob in his book now, even if I did know how to handle myself. He was even shallower than I had previously thought.

  When we got to the car and I had the engine warmed up, I said, ‘I’m ready to call it a night. You want me to drop you back to Larson?’

  ‘No, it’s too damned early. I’ll get out at the Bayerischer Hof.’

  He directed me back there, in clipped sentences, and I put the Volkswagen away in their garage area. On the street in front I said, ‘I’ll let you know if I turn anything on Sands tomorrow—or if there’s anything else you might give me a hand on.’

  ‘Yeah, you do that,’ MacVeagh said, and he went away without looking at me again.

  I watched him go, and then I coughed and spat phlegm into the street and entered the lobby, listening to the blood pound in my ears ...

  * * * *

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Blumenstrasse was a little cobblestoned street in a semi-residential area a few blocks from the Bayerischer Hof, and number fifteen was a dust-colored building with intricate wood-studding from sidewalk to peaked roof. A rounded arch gave on a short vestibule, and above the arc was a small sign lettered in pale blue: Galerie der Expressionisten.

  I parked the Volkswagen across the narrow street and sat looking over there for a time. It was a few minutes past ten, and rain fell in a light, steady drizzle; but the sky to the west was ominous, the color of a dusty school blackboard, pregnant with heavy water. I felt cold and irritable. I still had the cough and the constriction in my chest, but I kept trying to convince myself they were psychosomatic; hadn’t the damned headache dissolved sometime during the night?

  I pulled up the collar on my overcoat and got out and crossed the cobblestones. In the vestibule beyond the arch, a wood-and-glass-paned door let me into a small room with a parqueted wood floor, brightly lighted by ceiling fluorescents; a mellifluous bell above the door announced my entry. Directly across from me was another arch, with maroon curtains swept and tied like portieres at each jamb; beyond, there was another room, identical to the one in which I now stood.

  The white-painted walls of both were filled with dozens of squares and rectangles and oblongs of various dimensions, some alive in vivid color, some brooding darkly—things imitative of Renoir and Monet and Degas; of German impressionists Kirchner, Beckmann, Nolde; of Surrealists such as Dali and Miró. There were also se
veral new ideas and styles that defied categorizing, and no landscapes or seascapes or conventional portraiture. All of it was oil, and all of it original, and all of it—the good, the bad, and the ugly—done by amateurs or unrecognized professionals.

  I was looking at a pyrotechnic study in diverse shades of blue, which had both a name and a meaning I did not understand, when a slender, distinguished-looking little man in a neatly trimmed Vandyke beard came through the curtained arch. He wore a dark suit and a multihued tie that might have been painted by one of the artists represented on the gallery walls; his eyes and his carefully brushed hair were the same slate-gray color.

  ‘Guten Morgen,’ he said, and smiled.

  ‘Guten Morgen,’ I answered. ‘Are you Herr Ackermann?’

  ‘Herr Norbert Ackermann, at your service,’ he said in precise British-accented English. ‘You are an American?’

  ‘Yes.’ I introduced myself, and then I said, ‘A couple of days ago you received a telephone call from a woman named Elaine Kavanaugh—from San Francisco. She asked you about a man named Roy Sands, and about a portrait of him.’

  The smile chameleoned into a slight frown. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I represent Miss Kavanaugh,’ I told him. ‘I’m investigating the disappearance of her fiancé.’

  Herr Ackermann’s frown deepened. ‘Surely you cannot think I know anything about this disappearance...’

  ‘No, of course not. But Sands did have the name of the Galerie der Expressionisten, and the portrait, as I’m sure Miss Kavanaugh mentioned, was stolen from my apartment. We thought there might be a connection somehow.’

  ‘I do not know anyone named Sands. Nor am I aware of a portrait of the type she described. I made this quite clear to her.’

  ‘No one is doubting your word, Herr Ackermann,’ I said. ‘But I do have a few additional questions, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Do you have anyone else working for you, someone who might perhaps have seen or spoken with Sands in some capacity during your absence?’

  ‘I am the sole employee of the Galerie der Expressionisten. In my absence, the front door is locked and no one is admitted.’

  ‘Well, do you have any idea why Sands would have been carrying the name and address of your place?’

  ‘Perhaps it was recommended to him by a friend,’ Herr Ackermann said. ‘We are quite well known in this area.’

  ‘That’s a possibility, I guess.’

  ‘Your Mr. Sands may have intended to visit the gallery at one time, and did not manage to do so. Or perhaps he did come, and stayed only a short while. There are times when I am busy with other customers.’

  ‘Also a possibility,’ I said. ‘Tell me, Herr Ackermann, do you handle the work of a large or small number of artists?’

  ‘A fairly large number, I would say. At various times in the past year, at least fifty promising young German artists have been represented in my gallery.’

  ‘All impressionists?’

  ‘If you prefer the broad label, yes.’

  ‘Do any of them do portraiture?’

  ‘I should suppose some may have at one point or another in their careers attempted portraiture, yes. Do you think one of my artists made this stolen sketch of Mr. Sands?’

  ‘It might explain why he had your gallery’s name and address,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, so it might.’

  On the chance that Elaine had not mentioned the portrait’s bold lines, heavy shadows, and somewhat enlarged, exaggerated masculine features, I related these characteristics to Herr Ackermann. ‘Do they strike a familiar chord?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. I might possibly be able to recognize the style if I could see the sketch itself—assuming that it was done by someone with whose work I am familiar. However, there are, you must realize, hundreds upon hundreds of would-be or successful artists who may have drawn it, none of whom would be known to me.’

  I nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘I would like to help you,’ Herr Ackermann said, ‘but I simply do not know this man Sands; and if he once posed for a sketch done by one of my artists, I have no knowledge of it whatsoever.’

  I saw no purpose in pressing him further; there was nothing he could or would tell me. I thanked him for his time, politely declined his offer to conduct me through the gallery, and returned to the Volkswagen.

  I drove around until I found aKonditorei that had a lot of pastry in its front window and a service bar along one wall. I went in and had a cup of coffee and a doughnut with powdered sugar. Afterward I tried my first cigarette of the day, but the coughing began again after three drags; I put it out quickly and brooded into the coffee to keep my mind off my lungs.

  It had not been a particularly illuminating trip thus far—and yet, as I had told Elaine, those threatening telephone calls had to mean that there was something important to be found out here. I had hoped that I would learn something further at the Galerie der Expressionisten—a possibility, a direction— but I had apparently been armed with too little information and too much hope. As for the three-day bender MacVeagh had told me about ... well, there just may have been something in that; it was a puzzling occurrence, in any event.

  I thought about what Sands had asked Sybille in the Dodge City Bar: Why did it have to happen? All right, why did what have to happen? Walter the barkeeper had told MacVeagh and me that Sands looked very weary, like an old man, and Sybille had said that he was unhappy. All of which amounted to what?

  Saturday, October 30. What had happened on that day that could have put Sands into the kind of low-down blue funk that provokes a guy into a major session with a bottle? Apparently he had been all right when he’d left Larson Barracks to come into Kitzingen that day, so whatever it was was unlikely to be connected with the military installation. Something in Kitzingen, or in the surrounding area, then? That was an angle—not much, maybe, but it was worth looking into.

  I returned to the Bayerischer Hof and asked the desk man if there was a daily newspaper circulated in Kitzingen that covered the local news. He told me that the Main-Post, which was published in Würzburg to the north, carried all news pertaining to the Main River region. The Main-Post had an office in Kitzingen, and he gave me directions to it.

  I drove over there, and they had a guy in the small office who spoke English. I told him what I wanted and why, and he put me at an unused desk and disappeared into another room. He came back with a stack of papers covering the week prior to the thirtieth of October, and the Monday and Tuesday following it; after depositing them in front of me, he hovered nearby—either out of curiosity or to make sure that I did not damage any of the editions.

  I went through them laboriously, beginning with the paper dated the thirtieth, working backward to the twenty-sixth. I had recalled enough German by now to be able to read most of the headlines and, if anything looked promising, the lead paragraph or two of the accompanying story; when I came to something I could not understand, I asked the guy about it. At the end of an hour, however, I had learned nothing.

  I sighed and spread out the issue dated November 1. I went through the initial two pages and half of page three. And I came to the headline spread over three columns at the left-hand margin:

  AMERIKANISCHES MÄDCHEN

  ERHÄNGT SICH IN KITZINGEN

  Translated, that read: AMERICAN GIRL HANGS SELF IN KITZINGEN. I frowned and called the English-speaking guy over and opened my notebook and had him translate the story slowly, so I could write it down as he did so in a form of shorthand I had worked out over the years. It reads this way:

  Diane Emery, a young American girl and promising artist, hanged herself in her Kitzingen studio at Gartenweg 19 early last Saturday. Suspended from a ceiling fixture by a length of clothesline, her body was discovered by Mrs. Ursula Mende, another tenant of the building.

  Miss Emery had lived in Kitzingen for the past year, having studied in Paris for the three years previous. Her oil work ha
s been exhibited in Munich and Paris, as well as locally, and has drawn high praise from critics.

  No suicide note was found, and no immediate explanation could be determined for Miss Emery having taken her own life. However, it was conjectured by Kriminalbeamter Franz Hüssner that she may have been despondent with personal problems.