Bill Pronzini: The Vanished

‘I can’t think of any.’

‘This money he wired you just before Christmas, to pay off his poker losses-do you happen to have the message that came with it?’

‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ Rosmond said. ‘I’m one of these guys who never likes to throw anything out, and after it came I put it with some papers in one of my bags.’

‘Would you mind if I had a look at it?’

‘Not at all. I’ll get it for you.’

He left the room and there was the sound of a door opening, and closing, and then there was only silence. I sat smoking, listening to the quiet, and I had this foolish impulse to go out into the kitchen, to see if Cheryl was there. I got up and took a couple of steps and stopped and thought: What the hell are you doing? Christ! I sat down again.

I could not get her out of my mind. It happens that way sometimes, and there’s no explanation for it, no rationality involved. You meet a woman, however briefly, and you can’t stop thinking about her, touching her with your mind, examining some distinctive feature over and over again. With Cheryl it was her eyes, it would always be her eyes; I could see them once more, mentally, and all the things they had contained, and the reflection in them of what she had in turn discovered in my own eyes…

I heard the opening and closing of a door again, reverse process. Rosmond came back into the room with a folded square of paper in his right hand.

‘Here it is,’ he said, and gave me the paper and went over by the television-and-stereo unit again. I unfolded the square and spread it open on my knee. It read:

eunmx xlt 1960 js nl pd eugene ore 12/21 830p

douglas rosmond

2579 vicente st san francisco/calif

here is the 27 i owe you buddy, merry christmas roy

It told me nothing that I was not already aware of, except that the wires had been sent around 8:30 p.m. on the twenty-first of last month. I handed the telegram back to Rosmond.

He said, ‘Not much help, is it?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘not much.’

‘Roy was forever doing crazy things like that. I had three weeks leave in Italy once, and he sent me twenty bucks in cash that he’d borrowed from me, instead of waiting till I got back to Germany.’ Rosmond worried a hand through his hair. ‘I wish I could give you something that would help, but I just can’t. Roy never talked much about his personal life-except for Elaine Kavanaugh. He didn’t have much choice there, since we all knew about him dating her and planning to marry her when his twenty was up.’

‘I don’t suppose there’s a chance that he could have been dangling another woman here in the States,’ I said. ‘That might explain his trip to Oregon.’

‘No chance at all,’ Rosmond said positively. ‘Roy used to cat around as much as the rest of us until he met Elaine, but he was a changed guy after she came on the scene. When he fell, he fell hard.’

‘Is there anybody else in this area who might know something about Sands’ disappearance or whereabouts? Another close friend of his? An acquaintance?’

‘Just Rich and Chuck and me. Nobody else-except maybe Jock MacVeagh, but he’s still at Larson. The five of us used to buddy around regularly over there.’

‘Well, I guess that’s it, then.’

‘Are you planning to go up to Oregon to look for Roy?’

‘I guess I will. I haven’t learned anything that might help down here, and Eugene is the next logical step.’

Rosmond rumpled his hair again. ‘I’d hate to… Oh, the hell with that kind of thinking. Roy can take care of himself.’ He came away from the console unit. ‘Luck, huh?’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

I got on my feet and we shook hands and there was nothing I could do then but cross the room to the door with him. I wanted to say something about Cheryl, but what could I say? I wanted to see her again, if only for a moment, before I left-but I could figure no plausible way to work that. All that was left was for me to open the door and exchange good-byes with Rosmond, and then I was outside in the cold wind coming off the ocean, walking down to my car, stopping and turning and looking up at the house for a moment.

I thought I saw movement at the window, behind the curtains, a flash of trailing reddish-gold, a flash of lavender-and-white, but it may have been only my imagination.

When I got back to my office on Taylor Street, a couple of blocks up from Market, it was a quarter past three. I put the morning coffee on the reheat, and while I waited for it to come to a boil, I rang up my answering service to find out if anyone had called during my absence. No one had.

I stood back and looked the place over with a critical eye: the old oak desk and a couple of chairs, like a general and two enlisted men of a badly defeated army, weary and battle-scarred; outside the rail divider a dusty couch and a table with some back-date magazines that had never been opened by me or by anyone else; a narrow alcove with a sink and some shelves for stationery supplies-bathroom facilities down the hall, turn to your right, but somehow the janitor never remembers to refill the paper dispenser, so you had better bring something of your own; and a single metal file cabinet with the hot plate and the coffee pot resting on top of it and nothing much inside. It was always cold in there, even with the valve on the steam radiator opened wide, and the air was always a little musty, a little stale. Some place, I thought. Some occupant, too.

Knock it off, I thought.

I rescued the coffee and carried a mug of it back to the desk and sat down and stared out the window for a time. There was nothing much to see except the stone-and-glass buildings outlined against a cold gray winter sky. It seemed that every time I looked, another sky-scraper was going up, taller and taller, like mushrooms or toadstools sprouting with that alarming rapidity after a heavy rain- the fungi of the cities…

Well, nuts to that too. Come down again, for Christ’s sake. Did she get to you that much?

Yeah, I thought, she got to me that much.

All right then.

I pulled the phone in front of me and took the note pad from my suit jacket. I dialed the number I had looked up earlier, and it rang once, twice, and the palm of my hand was faintly moist around the receiver. Another ring, and a soft click, and she said, ‘Hello?’

‘Miss Rosmond?’

I heard the intake of her breath, and then I listened to silence and the hammering of the radiator. Pretty soon she said, ‘Yes, who is this?’ even though I was certain she already knew.

I said my name for her, just to make it absolute. Then: ‘I was wondering if I could see you tonight? I thought, since you know Roy Sands personally, you might be able to tell me something that would help my investigation-’

‘I don’t know anything that would help. What could I possibly know that my brother doesn’t?’

‘I just thought-’

‘I’m sorry.’

I had the feeling that she was about to hang up. I said quickly, ‘I’d like to see you tonight anyway. For dinner and a show, or just for a drink. Whatever you say.’

Ten seconds crawled away. And she said, ‘I… don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

‘I just… don’t think so.’

‘Miss Rosmond-Cheryl-I’d like to see you.’

No response.

‘I could meet you for a drink,’ I said. ‘Just for an hour or so. Anywhere you like.’

I did some more waiting, and the palms of my hands were still moist. She said finally, in a low voice, ‘I suppose… I guess we could have a drink.’

‘Shall I meet you somewhere?’

‘Do you know the Golden Door, on Irving off Nineteenth?’

‘Yes, I know it.’

‘I’ll be there at nine.’