The Vanished

‘That’s why I’m here-to find out.’

‘I don’t get this portrait you told me about. Hell, Roy isn’t the kind of guy to pose for a goddamn picture.’

‘He never mentioned it, then?’

‘Christ, no. We’d have kidded him into the next century.’

‘Do you have any idea who might have drawn it?’

‘Not hardly.’

‘What about this gallery here in Kitzingen?’

‘What was the name of it again?’

‘Galerie der Expressionisten.’

‘I didn’t even know it existed.’

I got out my cigarettes and offered MacVeagh one, and we sat smoking and drinking from the bottles of Lowenbrau. You could hear the gentle skittering of the rain on the building roof, and watch it flowing in streaked silver patterns down the panes of the window nearby, like tears on the smooth shining face of a child.

I said, ‘How did Sands get along with his buddies? Rosmond and Hendryx and Gilmartin, especially.’

‘Fine. Hell, everybody likes Roy.’

‘No trouble with any of them while they were here?’

‘No. Why-what are you getting at?’

‘Nothing in particular,’ I said. ‘Do you know an Army major named Jackson, Nick Jackson?’

‘Name’s not familiar. Why?’

‘Sands had some trouble with him once. I thought he might have mentioned the name in some context or other.’

‘Not to me.’ MacVeagh frowned. ‘What kind of trouble?’

‘It was over a girl,’ I said, and watched the frown change to a knowing grin. I took the conversation in another direction. ‘Did Sands spend a lot of time in Kitzingen?’

‘As much as the rest of us.’

‘Any special place?’

‘Not really,’ MacVeagh said, and began chuckling.

‘Something funny?’

‘Kind of, yeah. I just happened to think about the Dodge City Bar.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A Kneipe. A dive on the Am Pfuhl, in what passes for whoretown hereabouts.’

‘Sands used to frequent this place?’

‘Hell, no. But he lived there for three days.’

‘I don’t get the point.’

‘There isn’t one, really. Roy went on this three-day bender back in October-the end of the month, I think it was. And he picked the Dodge City Bar to do his drinking in, for some reason. Man, what a hole; he couldn’t have found a worse place if he’d tried.’

‘I was under the impression that Sands is a low-key drinker, that he leaves the booze pretty much alone.’

‘That’s right, he does. But he was really juiced this one weekend. I’ve never seen a guy-any guy-that juiced before or since. He was damn near pickled in alcohol. Funny as hell.’ He laughed. ‘Ed Botticelli and me had to go into town to bring him before the C.O. raised a flap. He was supposed to be back on duty that Sunday night, but when he didn’t show by next morning, Ed and me requisitioned a jeep and went looking for him. Took us a couple of hours to find him; who the hell would have figured the Dodge City?’

‘Why did he go on this bender?’

‘Who knows? I tried to talk to him about it once, a couple of days afterward, and he went cold and distant on me. So I dropped it. I guess he just got uptight about something and decided to tie one on.’

‘Did he usually drink heavily when he was uptight?’

‘No. Like you said, he was pretty much of a low-key boozer.’

‘Did he say anything at all to you while he was still drunk?’ I asked. ‘Like when you first found him, or when you brought him back here?’

‘Seems to me he kept repeating the word why, like he was asking a question. “Why? Why? Why?”-like that.’

‘That’s all?’

‘That’s the only thing I remember. Listen, why all the interest in a simple bender?’

‘Because it seems out of character.’

‘Hell, everybody does something out of character a time or two in their lives.’

‘Sure,’ I said, ‘but everybody doesn’t disappear without apparent reason. Do you have any idea where Sands had been before he went to this Dodge City Bar?’

MacVeagh shrugged. ‘He was there the whole weekend, like I told you; at least that’s what the barkeeper told Ed and me. He’d come staggering in early Saturday night, bought a bottle, and sat off in a corner drinking out of it until he passed out. There are some rooms in the back of the place, over an alley, and the barkeeper and a couple of corporals who were in there got Roy up in one of them to let him sleep it off. The next morning he came down and paid for the room and bought another bottle and started in all over again. It got to be a goddamn ritual until Ed and me came in on Monday-and it’s a good thing we did, too, because Roy was almost out of money and they would have dumped him flat in the alley the next time around. It’s a miracle he wasn’t rolled half a dozen times as it was.’

‘Did Sands say anything to the barkeeper, or to anyone else?’

‘We didn’t stick around to ask questions,’ MacVeagh said. ‘The main thing on our minds was getting Roy out of there and sobered up and back here.’

‘He go on any other benders after that one?’

‘No. He stuck pretty close to base until he left for the States last month.’

‘Anybody else he might have confided in?’

‘He’s pretty close-mouthed. If he didn’t tell me, it isn’t likely he told any of the other guys.’

I drained the last of my beer. ‘Do you happen to remember the exact date this drinking bout took place?’

‘Not offhand. Wait a minute.’ MacVeagh got up and went to where a Playboy calendar hung on one of the walls; it was last year’s, open on the month of December. He flipped back through it, and then said, ‘It was the last weekend in October-yeah, Saturday, the thirtieth, through Monday, November one.’

I made a mental note of the dates. ‘How do I find the Dodge City Bar?’

‘You planning on going there?’

‘I thought I might do that.’

‘Well, I guess you know what you’re doing.’

‘There’s not much else I can do until tomorrow,’ I said. ‘There may not be anything in this bender, but it can’t hurt to look into it a little.’

‘If you say so,’ MacVeagh said. ‘How’s your German?’

‘Rusty, but I think I can get by.’

‘Mine’s pretty good. Why don’t I come with you tonight? Might be a good idea anyway, since you don’t know whoretown and you don’t know the Kneipen. I haven’t got anything else to do, now.’

‘Thanks, I’d appreciate it,’ I told him. ‘I’m strictly a backwoods boy over here.’

‘I know a place where you can get a pretty good schnitzel,’ MacVeagh said. ‘Suppose we have dinner and a couple of beers, and then get around to the Dodge City before it jams up?’

‘Fine by me.’

‘You got a hotel yet?’

‘The Bayerischer Hof.’

‘Meet you there at six, in the bar.’

‘Good enough.’

The rain had slackened considerably, I saw as I went out to the Volkswagen; pale blue lines patterned the gray overcast above, like incisions carefully made by a surgeon. There was very little wind. I drove directly back to the Bayerischer Hof, ordered a hot brandy sent up to my room, and drank it lying propped up on the bed, thinking alternately of Elaine Kavanaugh and Cheryl and the inexplicable disappearance of Roy Sands.