‘Roy disappeared for
‘At this point anything might be possible, Miss Kavanaugh,’ I said, and sighed inaudibly. I wanted to tell her that rhetorical questions, even though we all indulge in them from time to time, served no real purpose; but I thought that if I did, it would sound cruel. ‘Do you want me to check around up here another day?’
‘Is there any more you can do?’
‘Not really. I’ve covered everything I can think of.’
‘Then I suppose you’d best come back to San Francisco.’
‘Do you want me to come by your hotel when I get in?’
‘Yes, I think that would be a good idea.’
We said good-bye, and I went over to the motel coffee shop and ate a hot dinner and drank some hot coffee to go with it. A long soak in the bathtub and I was ready for bed. I buried myself between the warmth of fresh sheets and a quilted comforter, but for the second night in a row sleep came slowly, reluctantly. A nonsense thing kept running around inside my head:
CHAPTER EIGHT
The shuttle bus from San Francisco International Airport pulled in to the Downtown Terminal just before twelve the next day. I picked up my overnight bag, went across the street to the parking garage where I had left my car, and locked the bag in the trunk. Then I walked over and down to Powell Street, past the skin-flick houses and the porno bookstores-the new San Francisco, the decadent one, the ugly one. On Powell, I cut across the narrow street in front of one of the few remaining cable cars and entered the Royal Gate Hotel.
This was old San Francisco, vanished San Francisco, a part of the glorious and spirited city that had risen from the ashes of one of the world’s greatest tragedies. It was an unostentatious twelve-story building which had once numbered the likes of J. P. Morgan, Louis Bromfield, and Lillian Russell among its many distinguished guests-and had never forgotten them. The quiet, spacious lobby had been modernized just enough to keep it fashionable, but without losing any of its gentility. If you were a native of The City, coming into the Royal Hotel, you felt a little sad, a little wistful, for the things that once were, the traditions-such as the chattering, lurching, magnificent cable cars-that were one by one being returned to those ashes which they had survived or from which they had been reborn. It was that way for me.
I asked an elderly desk clerk, who might very possibly have carried the bags of Thomas Edison or Florenz Ziegfeld in his youth, for Miss Kavanaugh’s room; he told me politely that he would have to ring to find out if she would see me, and I gave him my name and waited while he had the switchboard call her. When he had her confirmation, he directed me to the elevators and told me Miss Kavanaugh was in 1012.
I rode up with a uniformed operator, another vanishing breed, and got off and walked through velvet plush past gold inlaid mirrors and rococo furnishings to 1012. Elaine opened the door immediately to my knock, and I went into a large room done in soft blues and dark wood, with a double bed and a writing desk and three chairs and a low, comfortable-looking divan. There was no television set, and that told you something right there.
Elaine wore a beige wool dress, simply cut, and a single stand of cultured pearls at her throat. She was not wearing the silver-rimmed glasses she had had on in my office, and her brown eyes were tired and faintly blood- shot- very probably from a lack of sleep. A vague smokiness seemed to be clouding the textured translucence of her skin, as if some inexplicable form of pollution had begun to consume her from within.
We said perfunctory amenities, and she motioned to one of the chairs and took one for herself and we sat facing each other with a glass-topped table between us. She had her hands folded on her knees and her knees drawn tightly together, the way she had sat in my office. Her head was erect, chin up, and I could see the cords in her slender throat, the faint pulse beating in its soft white hollow.
‘Well,’ she said with a certain firmness, ‘I’ve been thinking about things, and there doesn’t seem to be anything more you can do over here.’
‘Over here?’
‘I’d like you to go to Germany,’ she said.
I blinked at her. ‘What?’
‘Germany. To Kitzingen.’
‘For what reason?’
‘To find out about that gallery and that portrait of Roy. To find out if they have anything to do with his disappearance.’
‘We don’t know that the gallery is
‘You don’t need to,’ she said. ‘The Galerie der Expressionisten is an art gallery, and it is in Kitzingen. I called overseas information early this morning, and there was a listing for it.’
‘Then we can contact the gallery by telephone.’
‘I did that, too. I had to have something to do with myself, and so I placed a call to Germany and talked with a man named Ackermann; he owns the Galerie der Expressionisten. He spoke English-very good English.’
‘What did he have to say?’
‘He’d never heard of Roy,’ she answered thinly. ‘And he’d never heard of the portrait, at least he said he hadn’t from my description.’
I rubbed the back of my neck. ‘I see,’ I said. ‘Well, why do you want me to go to Germany, if that’s the case?’
Her eyes were steady on my face. ‘I think it’s very strange that anyone would want to steal that portrait, and because it
‘Yes,’ I admitted.
‘Well, Roy had the sketch and he had the address of the gallery, too, and now he’s missing-that all could be important, somehow, we don’t know that it isn’t. You can’t tell much by talking to someone on the telephone, and anyway, there are other places you might be able to go if you were over there. If that sketch means something in terms of Roy’s disappearance, maybe you can find out what it is in Germany.’
‘Your fiance vanished on this side of the Atlantic, Miss Kavanaugh.’
‘I know that, for God’s sake, but the portrait must mean
‘No, we don’t.’
‘Well, then?’
‘Do you realize how much it would cost you to get me over to Germany and back again?’
‘I told you before, I don’t care how much anything costs. Don’t you understand, finding Roy is the only important thing-nothing else is important, not money, not anything!’
‘All right, Miss Kavanaugh, take it easy.’
‘Will you go to Germany for me?’
‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’
‘Yes, I’m sure, I’m very sure.’
I thought: It may be a waste of time and money, but her arguments are valid enough: a connection between that portrait-the theft of it-and Sands’ disappearance might very well exist, and the connection could conceivably be found in Germany. One thing is sure: both are damned odd, and both need explanation. You can’t just walk out on her now, she’s half frantic and she’s got nobody and it’s her money after all; you owe it to her for her faith and her investment, you owe it to yourself for what happened the other night.
I said, ‘Then I’ll make the trip for you,’ and gave her a little smile to let her know I was on her side all the way.
She nodded, and relief was apparent on her pale face. ‘How soon can you leave?’
‘Probably tomorrow sometime,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to make arrangements.’
