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…
CHAPTER TWELVE
Blumenstrasse was a little cobblestoned street in a semi-residential area a few blocks from the Bayerischer Hof, and number fifteen was a dust-colored building with intricate wood-studding from sidewalk to peaked roof. A rounded arch gave on a short vestibule, and above the arc was a small sign lettered in pale blue: Galerie der Expressionisten.
I parked the Volkswagen across the narrow street and sat looking over there for a time. It was a few minutes past ten, and rain fell in a light, steady drizzle; but the sky to the west was ominous, the color of a dusty school blackboard, pregnant with heavy water. I felt cold and irritable. I still had the cough and the constriction in my chest, but I kept trying to convince myself they were psychosomatic; hadn’t the damned headache dissolved sometime during the night?