The Vanished

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MacVeagh was twenty minutes late arriving at the bar in the Bayerischer Hof, which was not particularly surprising; he had struck me as anything but the punctual type. I was on my second bottle of Scheuernstuhl, Kitzingen’s personal contribution to the brewer’s art; the only other paying customers were two elderly types playing chess and drinking schnapps under an ornate brass lamp in one corner.

I saw MacVeagh come in and raised a hand at him, and he came over to where I was sitting. He was in uniform, a fur-lined greatcoat thrown carelessly over one shoulder; by the three chevrons above the single arc on the sleeve of his blouse, I could see that he was an E-6-a staff sergeant. I had the thought that he had held the non-com rank for some time, and that he would continue to hold it until he retired or perhaps died from one ailment or another. He was not exactly a world beater, and an extra stripe or two would have no special value in the pursuit of his true life’s work.

He sat down beside me and I bought him a bottle of Scheuernstuhl and we made a little small talk about nothing much. When the beer was gone, we left the hotel. MacVeagh said, ‘We can walk to the restaurant I mentioned this afternoon-it’s only a couple of blocks- but we’ll have to take your car to the Am Pfuhl later on unless you want to shell out for a taxi. I hitched in.’

‘That’s no problem.’

We walked to Mainstockheimer Strasse, which paralleled the Main River to the north. There was no rain, but the rifts in the clouds had been sutured with thick black thread; the wind had picked up and it was considerably colder than it had been earlier. The dark, still water of the river appeared frigid, as if it were at the point of freezing solid. You could see the bright clear lights of the houses strung along the opposite shore, and to the east the lighted runways at Harvey Barracks-the Army Air installation which flanked Kitzingen in that direction.

The restaurant MacVeagh steered me to was called Die Vier Jahreszeiten-The Four Seasons-and it was located in an ornately façaded brick building facing toward the river. We managed a table in the crowded main hall, and ordered Wiener schnitzel and green salad and German rye bread and bottles of Scheuernstuhl. The food arrived in a couple of minutes-Teutonic efficiency-and I had to admit that MacVeagh had a valid appreciation of the local cuisine.

Over cigarettes and coffee he said, ‘Well, what do you think of Germany so far?’

‘I haven’t seen enough of it to form much of an opinion.’

‘It grows on you, gets into your blood. I been here eight years now, at Larson and Mannheim and Bad Kreuznach, and I wouldn’t go back to the States on a bet. They got good beer, better food, and the best pussy in the world. What more could you want?’

I could think of a couple of things, but I said, ‘Not much, I guess.’

‘You married, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Smart boy. I been through the mill twice. American women don’t know how to treat a man. But a German chick-well, Jesus, I was shacked up with this one the last time I was in Munich…’

So I listened to him tell about the last time he was in Munich, his eyes glowing, and maybe it was the truth and maybe it wasn’t; it sounded very good and very false at the same time, so that you had the feeling that even if it was true, he was touching only the very highest points and maybe embellishing those a little. I wondered what he would say if I told him about Cheryl and the way it had been that first time at her house; but then I thought I knew what he would say and I kept my mouth shut and let him talk until he was finished inflating his ego. He let me pay the check and we got out of there.

At the Bayerischer Hof, we picked up my rented Volkswagen and drove south, following the curve of the river, until we came to an old, dark section of the town, near the rail tracks. The sound of a train whistle, low and wistful, punctuated an indication from MacVeagh for a left-hand turn, and I saw by the street sign that we were now on the Am Pfuhl.

It was a short, narrow, twisting street with a considerable amount of pedestrian traffic. Neon bar signs cast surrealistic red and blue and green shadows over the rough brick buildings standing shoulder to shoulder on both sides of the street, and there were black alleyways and small iron balconies at the stories above the pavement. Enlisted servicemen walked in pairs and groups, but seldom alone.

In the second block MacVeagh pointed to a heavy rococo door set between two milky-white globes on tarnished brass arms; black lettering on the lighted globes read: DODGE CITY BAR. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Some place, huh?’

‘Matt Dillon would be proud.’

We went another block, and Am Pfuhl ended at a well-lit thoroughfare. MacVeagh directed me to a spot under a streetlamp, for obvious reasons, and I parked there and locked the Volkswagen. We walked back to the Dodge City.

Inside, there was not much to differentiate it from its brother establishments in two dozen countries around the world. You went down three steps into a dark smoke-filled room with a long bar and tables and booths in the rear. There were red and green lamps on the bare walls, and candles in wine bottles on the tables. Behind the bar were three huge wine casks draped with imitation grapes on wilted vines, and a short, fat barkeeper sporting muttonchop whiskers and wearing a tattered red coat and a bow tie as wilted as the grape vines.

The place was about a quarter filled, but it was early yet and they would pack them in later on-you had that feeling. Bar girls in low-cut shiny dresses numbered fifteen or twenty, and there was a lot of laughter and a lot of sporadic singing in accompaniment to discordant German rock music emanating from a garishly lighted jukebox. I followed MacVeagh up to the bar, and we got some looks from three Flittchen painted like Barnum clowns sitting off on our right.

The barkeeper came down and nodded and said, ‘Ja, bitte?’

In German, MacVeagh ordered a couple of beers and then said that he wanted to ask him some questions about a friends of ours, a soldier. The barkeeper started to protest that he didn’t have time for talking, saw the way MacVeagh was looking at him, and closed his mouth. He opened two bottles of Scheuernstuhl and set them in front of us. Was ist es?’

MacVeagh asked him if he remembered the American soldier who had been drunk in there about three months ago-the one they had had to keep putting in a room in the back each time he passed out. The barkeeper grinned a little and touched his muttonchops and said that he remembered him very well, yes, and weren’t you one of the men who came to take him back to the Flakgelände? MacVeagh admitted that he was.

He said, ‘Did you talk to the soldier while he was drinking in here?’

‘Only to sell him another bottle of schnapps,’ the barkeeper answered, and shrugged. ‘He did not want conversation.’

‘Then he didn’t say where he had been before he came here?’

‘Not to me.’

‘Or why he was drinking as he was?’

‘No.’

‘Did he talk to anyone while he was here?’

‘No-ah well, perhaps to Sybille.’

‘Sybille?’

The barkeeper shrugged again. ‘Ein Flittchen,’ he said.

‘Is she here now?’

The guy let his eyes move slowly over the room, squinting against the pall of smoke. He shook his head.

‘Will she be in tonight?’

‘It is possible. One never knows with Sybille.’

I said slowly, in German, ‘Why do you think the soldier may have talked to her?’

‘She sat with him for a time, the first night- Saturday.’

‘And after that?’ MacVeagh asked.

‘He sat alone,’ the barkeeper said. ‘He sent the girls away when they came to his table. Some soldiers and myself carried him to one of the rooms in back two or three times. Once I had to take him alone.’

‘Was the soldier drunk when he arrived that first night?’ I asked. ‘Or did he become drunk in here?’

‘I think he was not drunk when he came.’

‘Was he nervous or afraid or angry?’

‘He appeared very weary-an old man.’

‘That’s all?’

‘I can remember nothing more.’ The barkeeper glanced over his shoulder, and there were a couple of customers yelling for service at the other end of the bar. His eyes flicked over MacVeagh and me again. ‘I have no more time for talking now.’

‘Okay,’ MacVeagh said. ‘But you point out Sybille to us if she comes in. We’ll be at one of the tables.’

‘Ja, Ja.’ He turned his back to us and hurried away along the boards.

MacVeagh and I carried our beers to one of the empty tables and sat down, and immediately two of the girls who had been sitting to the right of us at the bar came over. MacVeagh looked them up and down with plain contempt-they were nothing for his ego-and said something in German that I did not understand. One of them laughed shrilly, and the other looked offended; they both shuffled away.

A half-hour passed, and the place began to fill up with soldiers and civilians alike, pressing two- and three-deep at the bar. The stale, steam-heated air was bloated with shouts and laughter and the strident electronic discord bursting forth from the juke. I began to get a headache, and there was a tightness in my chest from too many cigarettes and the sour atmosphere. I coughed a couple of times and spat up phlegm into my handkerchief, and I thought: Oh God, not this again.

At the bar in front of our table, there was some kind of commotion. The knot of humanity split into two halves, flowing away, like an amoeba reproducing. Two guys, both of them wearing civilian clothes, one in lederhosen, were shoving at one another, yelling. Then the one in the lederhosen put his back to the bar and hit the other in the stomach, bending him double. He followed up with a looping right hand, and the first guy came windmilling backward, in a direct line to where I was sitting.

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…