  Heavy--light mesons are described in an effective quark theory with a
two--body vector--type interaction. The bilocal interaction is taken to be
instantaneous in the rest frame of the bound state, but formulated covariantly
through the use of a boost vector. The chiral symmetry of the light flavor is
broken spontaneously at mean field level. The framework for our discussion of
bound states is the effective bilocal meson action obtained by bosonization of
the quark theory. Mesons are described by 3--dimensional wave functions
satisfying Salpeter equations, which exhibit both Goldstone solutions in the
chiral limit and heavy--quark symmetry for $m_Q\rightarrow\infty$. We present
numerical solutions for pseudoscalar $D$-- and $B$--mesons. Heavy--light meson
spectra and decay constants are seen to be sensitive to the description of
chiral symmetry breaking (dynamically generated vs.\ constant quark mass).
