Bill Pronzini: The Vanished

Gilmartin started away toward one of the chairs, hesitated, and turned back to me. He looked down at the partially unrolled sketch in my left hand-I hadn’t had time to put it away-and said, ‘Isn’t that Roy?’

I admitted that it was.

‘You mind?’

‘No, go ahead.’

He took the sketch and held it up and looked at it, cocking his head to one side. ‘Damn fine likeness,’ he said at length. ‘Where’d you get it?’

‘From his fiancée.’

‘He send it to her from Germany?’

‘In a way,’ I said. ‘It was among the things he forwarded to Fresno. She didn’t have an extra photo, and this serves the purpose just as well.’

‘Who would have figured old Roy for an artist’s model?’ Gilmartin said. He took the sketch over to Hendryx. ‘What do you think, Chucko?’

‘Pretty good, all right.’

‘Damn fine likeness,’ Gilmartin said again. He took the drink Hendryx gave him and came back and returned the sketch to me. ‘So you’ve joined the hunt for Roy?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I hope to Christ you can do more than the cops have been able to. He’s just another name on the Missing Persons blotter as far as they’re concerned.’

‘I’ll do what I can.’

‘Sure, that’s all anybody can expect.’

‘Do you have any idea where Sands could be, Mr. Gilmartin?’

‘Rich-that’s why we got Christian names, right? No, I don’t know where Roy could be. I’ve kicked this disappearance around with Dougie and Chucko, but it just doesn’t make any sense. No sense at all.’

Hendryx brought over a fresh drink for himself. ‘Sure you won’t have one?’ he asked me.

‘A little early, thanks.’

‘It’s never a little early for good Scotch,’ Gilmartin said. He drank deeply from his glass. ‘I needed this, Chucko. Hell of a night last night.’

‘Yeah?’

‘You remember that redhead works at the Mill?’

‘Don’t tell me you finally scored with that?’

‘Oh baby! And she was just like I said she’d be: a French postcard. A real French postcard, Chucko.’

‘No lie, huh?’

‘Oh baby!’

The three of us sat down. I rolled up the sketch of Roy Sands and put it away inside my jacket, and then listened to Gilmartin explain in detail what had taken place with the redhead the night before. Hendryx absorbed every word in rapt attention. From somewhere at the rear of the house, I could hear the faint rumble of an automatic dryer and the half-muffled voice of a woman reprimanding a child; I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

I said, ‘Do you mind if we talk about Roy Sands?’

They both looked at me, and Hendryx said, ‘Well, sure, go ahead.’

‘What can you tell me about these wires from Oregon?’

‘Not much. He sent them to me and Doug and Rich a couple of days before Christmas.’

‘It was to pay off some money he’d lost in a poker game, is that right?’

‘Right,’ Gilmartin said. ‘We’d played a little stud the night before we left Larson, and he had lousy cards all night. He was a little strapped then, Christmas and mustering out, the whole bag, and so he wrote out some IOU’s and said he’d get the money to us as soon as he could.’

‘Did it seem odd that he would pay off minor gambling debts by wire?’

‘Why should it? Roy likes to keep his debts current. We used to play stud and gin rummy, a bunch of us, a couple-three times a week over there, and if Roy lost and couldn’t settle then and there, he’d always have the money first thing on payday.’

‘Well, he could have paid all of you when he saw you before his wedding, couldn’t he?’

‘Yeah, right, but like I told you, Roy is funny that way. He likes everything even up, him into nobody and nobody into him.’

I looked at Hendryx. ‘Did he mention the debts when you saw him at the Presidio?’

‘Not that I remember.’

‘If he’d had the money then, he’d have paid you, wouldn’t he?’

‘Sure, if he’d had it.’

‘He had it two days later,’ I said.

Hendryx frowned. ‘Say, that’s right.’

‘Would he have gotten his mustering-out pay by that time?’

‘No chance,’ Gilmartin said. ‘Besides, he was having everything sent to his chick in Fresno.’

I thought that over a little. ‘He didn’t get any money from her,’ I said, ‘and he didn’t go near his savings or checking account. But he had to have gotten the money he paid you with from somewhere.’

‘Yeah, he did.’

‘Would you know if he had a private account here in the States, something he might not have told Elaine Kavanaugh about?’

‘Not old Roy. Hell, I know for a fact most of his pay went to her for banking. He was really hooked, poor bastard.’

I shifted position on the chair to get rid of a cramp forming in my left hip. ‘Was there a message along with the money Sands wired you?’

‘Just a few words on mine.’

‘Did you happen to save it?’

‘No reason to at the time.’

‘What about you?’ I asked Hendryx.

‘Same thing. Mine went into the fireplace.’

‘Can either of you remember what was said?’

‘Here’s the thirty I owe you and have a Merry Christmas-something like that.’

‘Ditto,’ Gilmartin said.

I nodded, and did some more thinking. At length I said, ‘Is there anything at all you can think of that might help me locate Sands? Something in his past, something he may have let slip at one time or another?’

Hendryx frowned and ran a hand carefully over the thinning hair on the crown of his head. He said, ‘No, nothing.’ Gilmartin rolled the sweating surface of his glass over his forehead; with his other hand he made a negative gesture.

I could not think of anything else I wanted to ask either of them, and so I said, ‘I guess that’s it,’ and got on my feet. I thanked them for their time, shook hands with them, promised to let them know if I learned anything definite. Hendryx said I could call on Rich and him any time if there was anything further they could do, and then I went out and down the steps to my car.

I sat there for a moment, listening to the wind sing a sad, humming song through the high green trees. I wondered, oddly, if the topic of conversation behind the glass up there was Roy Sands or a redheaded French postcard; then I got the thing going and went away without looking back.

As I slowed to pay the southbound toll on the Golden Gate Bridge, I thought it might be an idea to drive over to Vicente Street-not far from there-and see if Doug Rosmond had come home. I did not much feel like going back to the dusty emptiness of my office, and the car was running all right since I had stopped to put water in the radiator after leaving Pinewood Lane.

I took the 19th Avenue exit off the toll plaza and drove through Golden Gate Park and turned westward on Vicente. There was no fog today-not yet anyway-and from the vicinity of Cheryl Rosmond’s home you could see the slate-gray water of the Pacific beyond Ocean Beach. It had the kind of desolate appearance the sea achieves in winter, primitive and unsettling, like looking at something out of the dim past. Like the deserts and the majestic mountain ranges, the oceans were something else that did not change with the passage of time.

The number Elaine Kavanaugh had given me was a white box-shaped rough-stucco house identical to its neighbors on both sides of the street, crowded together in long rows like beads on a tightly strung necklace. It had a small square of lawn, and a wide set of wooden stairs inside a stucco frame leading up to the front entrance. White filmy curtains covered the rectangular window to one side.

I parked my car at the curb and got out and climbed the steps. The wind blowing in from the sea was harsh and penetrating, and I hunched my neck in the collar of my topcoat as I pressed the doorbell. I stood waiting, shivering a little, but no one opened the door. I put my thumb against the bell and rang it again, and then there were faint sounds within, someone approaching. I was in luck after all. A night bolt scraped inside and the door parted inward.