Bill Pronzini: The Vanished

‘You don’t have to apologize,’ I said without turning.

‘I don’t usually lose control of myself like that…’

I faced her then. The crying had been good for her, a kind of catharsis; there was more animation in her face now, color in her cheeks, life in her eyes. ‘You’ve been under a heavy strain, Miss Kavanaugh.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’

‘In all honesty, I don’t know or even think that your fiancé is dead. What I found out in Germany may not even have anything to do with his disappearance. It’s just something that I want to look into a little further, and after I have, then I’ll tell you about it. I know it’s rough, but I’m asking you to do this my way; and I promise you that the minute I find out something definite on his whereabouts, I’ll let you know.’

She nodded convulsively. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I… I trust you.’

I felt even more like a heel. I got another cigarette into my mouth and said, ‘I’ll be leaving for Roxbury first thing tomorrow morning. Do you think you can stand it here another day or two?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. I’ll be fine.’ She looked away from me. ‘What I said about Roy and me, well, I mean…’

‘If I heard anything,’ I told her, ‘I’ve already forgotten what it was.’

‘Thank you.’

I suggested, pointlessly, that she try to relax, and said that I would call her from Roxbury sometime the next day. Then I touched her shoulder, lightly, and left her alone again…

I picked up my car at the parking garage across from the Downtown Terminal, and it was almost five-thirty when I drove out into the heavy rush-hour traffic which clogs downtown San Francisco between four and six on weekday afternoons. I thought briefly about going home for a shower and a change of clothes, decided I did not really feel much like looking at the emptiness of my flat, and found myself on Geary Boulevard, heading west toward the ocean.

Saxon’s 19th Avenue Coffee Shop was out that way, on the other side of the Park.

I had not had much time to think about Cheryl the past couple of days, but she had been there in a corner of my mind nonetheless. I wanted to see her tonight, I wanted to talk to her. I had no idea if she was working the day or the night shift; but even with the traffic, I knew I could get to 19th Avenue by six o’clock and that way meet her either coming or going.

I preferred seeing her at Saxon’s to calling or stopping by her home for the simple reason that I did not want to talk to her brother. He was a suspect in the theft of the portrait of Roy Sands, the threatening telephone calls, just as Chuck Hendryx and Rich Gilmartin were suspects. I was also not forgetting about Nick Jackson, even though there did not seem to be any way Jackson could have known that I had the sketch, that I was going to Germany at the behest of Elaine Kavanaugh. The truth was, I had had difficulty envisioning Rosmond as the one responsible-simply because he was Cheryl’s brother, and yet I still did not want to talk to him on this day. If he and Hendryx and Gilmartin thought I was still in Germany, I would feel better about things; it seemed important that I make the trip to Roxbury without any of them knowing I had even returned to the country.

When I reached Saxon’s, it was five before six. I parked around the first corner beyond the coffee shop, illegally, and walked back through a cold, light fog-and Cheryl was just coming out of the front door. She came to a complete standstill when she saw me, and then a small, faintly shy smile gently curved the corners of her mouth.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Hi.’

‘Day shift today?’

She nodded, and her fingers were nervous at the buttons of the dark beige coat she wore. Under it was a simple beige wool jersey-she had obviously changed out of whatever uniform she was required to wear at Saxon’s- and her autumn-hued hair was tied with a bright turquoise ribbon well below the neck, so that the soft reddish-gold was like a fan behind her head and like a proud and sleekly curried tail extending down her back. She looked very lovely.

‘When did you get home from Germany?’ she asked.

‘This afternoon.’

‘Did you learn anything more about Roy?’

‘Not much,’ I said. ‘Nothing definite.’ I looked into her eyes, kept on looking into them; they said a lot of things, some of the same things mine were saying to her. ‘I hope you don’t mind my coming out here like this, but I wanted to see you tonight, if only for just a few minutes. I left downtown at five-thirty, and it seemed easier to just drive out here rather than wait until later to call.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t mind. I’m glad you did.’

I wanted to touch her; instead I kept my hands firmly in the pockets of my coat. ‘Were you going any place special now? Or just home?’

‘Home.’

‘Would you like to have a drink with me? And then dinner? I know it’s kind of short notice, and if you’re busy tonight I’ll understand.’

‘I’m not busy,’ Cheryl said. ‘I hadn’t planned on anything at all this evening. Doug had to go to the Presidio for something today and he probably won’t be back until very late.’

There was a pleasant warmth in the core of my stomach. ‘Shall we go now?’

‘Do you think I ought to change first?’

‘You look fine, Cheryl. You look wonderful.’

We went to the Cossack, on Clement, and had two cocktails in the lounge and then dinner in one of the private booths in the restaurant section: chicken Kiev and sour red cabbage and demitasse cups of bitter Turkish coffee afterward. It was dark and quiet in there. The waiters wore Russian Cossack uniforms replete with scimitars, and hidden speakers gave out with Moussorgsky and Shostakovich and some of the other Russian composers at low volume.

It was fine between us, easy and warm. When I touched her hand with the tips of my fingers once during dinner, she did not stiffen and her eyes reflected in the glow of the candelight a growing trust and a growing need that was exciting and touching and very real.

We talked about many things, impersonal and personal, jumping from this to that as each of us sought to explore the other’s depths, the interests and prejudices and likes and dislikes that each of us had, seeking the common bonds and dwelling on them when we found them. She laughed when I told her about my collection of pulp magazines, and the tenacity with which I had pursued the hobby, but it was not a mocking laugh or a censorious one-as Erika’s had been; it was a pleased, curious laugh, as if she were fascinated by the idea of anyone indulging in that sort of hobby. And then she wanted to know if I thought the idea of a grown woman collecting dolls from foreign lands was silly. No, I didn’t think that was silly at all. Well, she said, she had sixteen dolls in her bedroom, from such countries as Spain and Holland and France and England and Mexico and Germany and Japan, maybe she would show them to me one day if I was interested. Yes, I was interested, and did she want to see some of my pulp magazines?- making a small joke about their being the lure to my apartment instead of etchings. She laughed softly and we went on to something else without any pauses or awkwardness.

We discovered that we both liked hiking in the woods, old movies-Charlie Chan and The Falcon and Bogart and Peter Lorre and Lloyd Nolan-brandy old-fashioneds, football, and good soul jazz. We disliked parking meters, junk mail, the drug culture, peanut butter, and the travesties of war. We touched on religion and politics just long enough to determine that our ideas were similar on one and dissimilar on the other.

We talked and we talked, open and natural, like old friends, like new lovers, and I forgot for a little while about Roy Sands and poor Elaine Kavanaugh and all the ugliness and suspected ugliness that had touched my life in the past week. All at once, then, it was midnight and they were about to close up. We asked each other where the time had gone, the way you do, and I paid the check and then I drove her directly back to 19th Avenue, parking in front of her car a half block from Saxon’s.