MacVeagh said, ‘I had this little Fräulein set up in Stuttgart for the weekend, but when I got your wire about Roy having disappeared, I said to hell with it. A buddy’s more important than a piece of tail any day, and besides that, she’ll be around next weekend; they always are.’
I had some of the Löwenbräu, and it was cold and rich and very good; the Germans brew the best beer in the world. I watched MacVeagh over the tilted bottle, and I thought: He’s one of the good-time boys, too, like Hendryx and Rosmond and Gilmartin- one of the handsome ones, the popular ones, the ones with the right word, the right phrase, the right line; the lovers, the cocksmen, with the world their bedroom and the bed seldom empty and seldom silent. But now they’re fast approaching middle age, and some of their appeal is fading, and some of their virility perhaps, and they can see the end now; they can see the wrinkles and the arthritis and the dentures and the shriveled glands; and they can see, too, the scornful looks and hear the mocking laughter of the daughters of the girls who once flocked to them. That glimpse of the future terrifies them, haunts them, gnaws at them, becomes almost an obsession, and they need constant reassurance of their prowess, constant reaffirmation of their attractiveness- running scared, telling more lies, bragging more and exaggerating more, laughing louder and longer and increasingly more hollowly. And each time they go searching for a woman, they’re filled with the same terrible dread: Can I still attract the young ones, the pretty ones? And when they find that they can, if they can, the attendant dread is always there and always the same as well: Suppose, this time, I can’t get it up; suppose, this time, I can’t perform?
Every man around my age has harbored some fears of failing virility, and I was no exception; but I had never been a cocksman, never wanted to be one, and when I saw guys like MacVeagh and the rest, I was thankful for that. When you took sex away from them, you took away their main purpose-and without purpose, no matter what form it takes, what more can you do except simply to vegetate? That was one particularly frightening hell I did not think I would have to face.
I set the sweat-beaded bottle down on the table. ‘The pickings must be pretty good over here,’ I said, because that was what MacVeagh wanted to hear.
He grinned, and his black eyes sparkled. ‘The best,’ he said, nodding emphatically. ‘Listen, if you’re interested, I can fix you up with something hot and willing right here in Kitzingen. Guaranteed, baby-the original German Valkyrie.’
‘Well, if I can find the time.’
‘Yeah,’ MacVeagh said, and his expression sobered. ‘Roy. Why don’t you fill me in on the details? All I know is what you said in your wire.’
I filled him in on the details, leaving out the threatening telephone calls to Elaine and me and skipping lightly over the theft of the portrait. He listened attentively, a frown digging horizontal trenches in the red-hued skin above his eyebrows.
‘I don’t much like the sound of it,’ he said. ‘Roy was gone over the Kavanaugh chick, and if he hasn’t contacted her in three weeks, something must have happened to him. You really figure there’s some kind of connection between Kitzingen and him disappearing in Oregon?’
‘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 Löwenbräu. 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 dump
ed 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.
Five o’clock came and my call to San Francisco went through. Elaine was fine, bearing up admirably; she had not left her room at the Argonaut Hotel, and she had not been bothered by visitors or phone calls. Her voice seemed faintly listless, but I put that down to the prolonged inactivity, the constant waiting; apathy is just one of the mind’s defense mechanisms, and a far better one than screaming agitation. It made me feel better to know that she was unharmed and firmly anchored.
I told her about my talk with MacVeagh and asked her if Sands had ever mentioned the three-day bender; she said that he hadn’t, and seemed surprised that he had done a thing like that. He just didn’t care for liquor that much, she said, and she could offer no explanation for it. I said that I would check it further, and get down to the Galerie der Expressionisten first thing in the morning, and that I would call her again tomorrow night whether or not I had anything definite to report.
I cut the call short then, to alleviate expenses as much as possible, and went in to shave for my visit to Kitzingen’s whoretown.
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.<
br />
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?’
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