The Underground Man

by Ross Macdonald

  “What made you think that?”

  “I can remember when this picture was taken.” She smoothed it on her knee, as if it was a feather she had found. “Elizabeth took it, before she knew that Leo and I were lovers. It brings back everything. Everything I had and everything I lost.”

  There were romantic tears in her eyes. My own eyes remained quite dry. I was thinking of everything that Elizabeth Broadhurst had lost.

  chapter 27

  The gravel in the driveway crackled under the tires of a heavy car. Ellen lifted her head. I went to the front door, with her following close behind me.

  Martha Crandall was already on the veranda. Her face changed when she saw me.

  “They haven’t come?”

  “They never will if you don’t keep out of sight. This place is staked out.”

  Ellen gave me a bright suspicious look. I asked her to go back inside and take Martha with her. Then I went down the steps to Lester Crandall’s new bronze Sedan de Ville.

  He hadn’t moved from behind the wheel. “I told Mother it was a waste of time and energy. But she insisted on making the trip.” He surveyed the front of the house with a cold eye. “So this is where the famous Ellen lives. It’s practically falling down—”

  I cut him short: “How about moving the car out of sight? Or slide over and let me.”

  “You move it. I’m slightly pooped.”

  He maneuvered his heavy body out from under the wheel and let me park the car behind the house. The elements of the case were coming together, and I felt crowded and excited. Perhaps I was subliminally aware of the noise of the second car.

  When Lester Crandall and I went around to the front again, there was a figure at the foot of the driveway—an indeterminate bearded head surmounting a light triangle which looked like a warning sign. The figure was caught and drenched in approaching headlights. It was Jerry Kilpatrick, with one arm in a sling.

  He must have recognized Crandall and me at the same time. He turned toward the moving headlights and called out: “Susie! Split!”

  Her station wagon paused and went into reverse, backing up the road with a mounting roar of the engine. Jerry looked around uncertainly and ran stumbling out of the driveway into the arms of Willie Mackey and his large assistant Harold.

  By the time I got to them, the station wagon was turning in the entrance to Haven Road, its headlights swiping like long paintbrushes at the tree trunks. It started off in the direction of San Francisco.

  “I’ll phone the bridge,” Willie said.

  I ran up the road to my car and followed the wagon. When I reached the near end of the bridge, traffic was beginning to line up in the right-hand lanes. The station wagon was standing empty at the head of the line.

  I saw Susie out on the bridge, running hand in hand with the little boy toward the cable tower. A heavy man in patrolman’s uniform was jolting along some distance behind them.

  I went after them, running as hard as I could. Susie looked back once. She let go of Ronny’s hand, moved to the railing, and went over. I thought for a sickening instant that she had taken the final plunge. Then I saw her light hair blowing above the railing.

  The patrolman stopped before he got to her. The little boy loitered behind him, turning to me as I came up. He looked like an urchin, dirty-faced, in shorts and sweater that were too big for him.

  He gave me a small embarrassed smile as if I had caught him doing something that he could be punished for, like playing hooky.

  “Hello, Ronny.”

  “Hello. Look at what Susie’s doing.”

  She was holding on with both hands, leaning out against the gray night. Along the wall of clouds that rose behind her, lightning flickered and prowled like somebody trying to set fire to a building.

  I got a firm grip on the boy’s cold hand and moved toward her. She stared at me without apparent recognition or interest, as if I belonged to a different race, the kind that lived past the age of twenty.

  The patrolman turned to me: “You know her?”

  “I know who she is. Her name is Susan Crandall.”

  “I hear you talking about me,” she said. “Stop it or I’ll jump.”

  The man in uniform backed away a few feet.

  “Tell him to go further away,” she said to me.

  I told him, and he did. She looked at us with more interest, as part of a scene responding to her will. Her face appeared to be frozen except for her wide roving eyes. Her voice was flat:

  “What are you going to do with Ronny?”

  “Take him back to his mother.”

  “How do I know you will?”

  “Ask Ronny. Ronny knows me.”

  The boy lifted his voice: “He let me feed peanuts to his birds.”

  “So you’re the one,” she said. “He’s been talking about it all day.”

  She gave him a wan and patronizing smile, as if she herself had put off childish things. But with her white fingers clenching the railing, her hair blowing above it, she looked like half a child and half a bird perched over the long drop.

  “What would you do to me if I came back over there?”

  “Nothing.”

  She said as if I hadn’t spoken: “Shoot me? Or send me to prison?”

  “Neither of those things.”

  “What would you do?” she repeated.

  “Take you to a safer place.”

  She shook her head gravely. “There is no safe place in this world.”

  “A safer place, I said.”

  “And what would you do to me there?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re a dirty filthy liar!”

  She inclined her head to one side and looked down over her shoulder, into the depth of my lying and the terrible depth of her rage.

  Toward the San Francisco end of the bridge, the tow truck that carried the roving patrol came into view. I made a pushing signal with both hands, and the patrolman repeated it. The truck slowed down and stopped.

  “Come back, Susie,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Ronny said. “Come back. I’m afraid you’ll fall.”

  “I’ve already fallen,” she said bitterly. “I’ve got no place to go.”

  “I’ll take you to your mother.”

  “I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to live with those two ever again.”

  “Tell them that,” I said. “You’re old enough to live with other people. You don’t have to stay over there to prove it.”

  “I like it over here.” But after a moment she said: “What other people?”

  “The world is full of them.”

  “But I’m afraid.”

  “After what you’ve been through, you’re still afraid?”

  She nodded. Then she looked down once more. I was afraid I’d lost her.

  But she was saying goodbye to the long drop. She climbed back over the railing and rested against it, breathing quickly and lightly. The little boy moved toward her, pulling me along by the hand, and took her hand.

  We walked back to the head of the bridge, where Willie Mackey and his assistant were talking to some local officers. Willie appeared to have some clout with them. They took our names, asked a few pointed questions, and let us go.

  chapter 28

  Willie took Ronny with him in the station wagon. I hated to let the boy out of my sight. But I wanted a chance to question Susan before she saw her parents.

  She sat inert while I extricated my car. The patrolman who had chased her out the walkway stopped the northbound traffic. He looked relieved to see us go.

  She said in some alarm: “Where are you taking me?”

  “To Ellen Storm’s house. Isn’t that where you wanted to go?”

  “I guess so. My mother and father are there, aren’t they?”

  “They arrived just before you did.”

  “Don’t tell them I tried to jump, will you?” she said in a low voice.

  “You can hardly keep it a secret. Any of it.” I paused to
let the fact sink in. “I still don’t understand why you ran away like that.”

  “They stopped me at the head of the bridge. They wouldn’t let me through. They started yelling at me and asking me questions. Don’t you ask me any questions, either,” she added breathlessly. “I don’t have to answer.”

  “It’s true, you don’t. But if you won’t tell me what happened, I wonder who will.”

  “When are we talking about? On the bridge?”

  “Yesterday, on the mountain, when you went there with Stanley Broadhurst and Ronny. Why did you go up there?”

  “Mr. Broadhurst asked me to. That Sweetner man told him about me—the things I said when I blew my mind.”

  “What things?”

  “I don’t want to talk about them. I don’t even want to think about them. You can’t make me.”

  There was a wild note in her voice which made me slow the car and watch her out of the corner of my eye. “Okay. Why did you go to Mr. Broadhurst’s house on Friday? Did Albert Sweetner send you?”

  “No. It was Jerry’s idea. He said I ought to go and talk to Mr. Broadhurst, and I did. Then we went up the mountain Saturday morning.”

  “What for?”

  “We wanted to see if something was buried there.”

  “Something?”

  “A little red car. We went up there in a little red car.”

  Her voice had changed in pitch and register. It sounded as if her mind had regressed, or shifted to a different level of reality. I said:

  “Who’s we?”

  “Mommy and me. But I don’t want to talk about what happened then. It was a long time ago when I blew my mind.”

  “We’re talking about yesterday morning,” I said. “Was Stanley Broadhurst digging for a car?”

  “That’s right—a little red sports car. But he never got down deep enough.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Ronny had to go to the john. I got the key from Mr. Broadhurst and took him to the one in the Mountain House. Then I heard Mr. Broadhurst yell. I thought he was calling me, and I went outside. I could see Mr. Broadhurst lying in the dirt. Another man was standing over him—a man with a black beard and long hippie hair. He was hitting Mr. Broadhurst with the pickax. I could see the blood on Mr. Broadhurst’s back. It made a red pattern, and then there was a fire under the trees, and that made an orange pattern. The man dragged Mr. Broadhurst in the hole and shoveled dirt on him.”

  “What did you do, Susan?”

  “I went back in and got Ronny, and we ran away. We sneaked down the trail into the canyon. The man didn’t see us.”

  “Can you describe him? Was he young or old?”

  “I couldn’t tell, he was too far away. And he had on big dark glasses—wraparounds—so I couldn’t make out his face. He must have been young, though, with all that hair.”

  “Could it have been Albert Sweetner?”

  “No. He doesn’t have long hair.”

  “What if he was wearing a wig?”

  She considered the question. “I still don’t think it was him. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about him. He said if I talked about him he would kill me.”

  “When did he tell you that?”

  “I said I didn’t want to talk about it. You can’t make me.”

  Her face was struck white by the headlights of a passing car. She turned away as if they had been searching out her secrets.

  We were approaching the entrance to Haven Road. I pulled off the pavement and stopped under the trees. The girl crouched against the door on the far side.

  “You stay away from me,” she said between spasms of shivering. “Don’t you do anything to me.”

  “What makes you think I would, Susan?”

  “You’re the same as that Sweetner man. He said all he wanted me to do was tell him what I remembered. But he pushed me down onto the dirty old bed.”

  “In the loft of the Mountain House?”

  “Yes. He hurt me. He made me bleed.” Her eyes looked through me as if I was made of cloud and she was peering into the night behind me. “Something went bang. I could see the blood on his head. It made a red pattern. Mommy ran out the door and didn’t come back. She didn’t come back all night.”

  “What night are you talking about?”

  “The night they buried him near the sycamore tree.”

  “That happened in the daytime, didn’t it?”

  “No. It was dark night. I could see the light moving around in the trees. It was some kind of a big machine. It made a noise like a monster. I was afraid it would come and bury me. But it didn’t know I was there,” she said in her regressive fairy-tale voice.

  “Where were you?”

  “I hid in the loft until my mommy came back. She didn’t come back all night. She told me not to tell anybody, ever.”

  “You’ve seen her, then, since it happened?”

  “Of course I’ve seen her.”

  “When?”

  “All my life,” she said.

  “I’m talking about the last thirty-six hours. Mr. Broadhurst was buried yesterday.”

  “You’re trying to mix me up, like that Sweetner man.” She hugged her hands between her legs, and shuddered. “Don’t tell my mother what he did to me. I’m not supposed to let a man come near me. And I never will again.”

  She looked at me with deep distrust. I was overcome by angry pity—pity for her and anger against myself. It was cruel to question her under the circumstances, stirring up the memories and the fears that had driven her almost out of life.

  I sat beside her without speaking and considered her answers. They had seemed at first like a flight of ideas which took off from the facts and never returned to them. But as I sorted through the ideas and images, they seemed to refer to several different events which were linked and overlapping in her consciousness.

  “How many times have you been in the Mountain House, Susie?”

  Her lips moved, silently counting the occasions. “Three times, that I remember. Yesterday, when I took Ronny to the john. And a couple of days ago, when that man Sweetner hurt me in the loft. And once with my mother when I was a little girl, younger than Ronny. The gun went bang and she ran away and I hid in the loft all night.” The girl began to sob dryly and brokenly. “I want my mother.”

  chapter 29

  Her parents were waiting in front of the twin-towered house. Susan got out of my car and went toward them, feet dragging, head down. Her mother took her in her arms and called her pet names. Their warm coming together gave me a flicker of hope for both of them.

  Lester Crandall stood off to one side, looking shut out. He moved toward me with an uncertain light in his eye, an uncertain gait, as if the world was moving away from under him and I was the one who had set it spinning.

  “Your sidekick”—he gestured toward the house, and I assumed he meant Willie—“your sidekick told me you talked her in off the bridge. I’m very grateful to you.”

  “I’m glad I reached her in time. Why don’t you say something to her, Mr. Crandall?”

  He stole a sideways look at her. “I wouldn’t know what to say.”

  “Tell her you’re glad she didn’t kill herself.”

  He shook the idea off. “I wouldn’t dignify it. She had to be faking.”

  “She wasn’t. She’s attempted suicide twice in the last four days. It won’t be safe to take her home unless you get her proper medical care.”

  He turned to look at the two women, who were moving across the veranda into the house. “Susie didn’t get hurt, did she?”

  “She’s physically and mentally hurt. She’s been drugged and raped. She’s witnessed at least one murder and possibly two. You can’t expect her to handle these things without psychiatric help.”

  “Who raped her, for God’s sake?”

  “Albert Sweetner.”

  Crandall became very still. I sensed the core of force in his aging body. “I’ll kill the dirty son.”

>   “He’s already dead. Maybe you knew that.”

  “No.”

  “You haven’t seen him in the past few days?”

  “I only saw him once in my life. That was about eighteen years ago, when they sent him up to Preston for stealing my car. I was a witness at the trial.”

  “I heard he paid a visit to the Yucca Tree Inn the summer he got out of Preston. Don’t you remember?”

  “All right, I saw him twice. What does that prove?”

  “You can tell me what happened.”

  “You know what happened,” he said, “or you wouldn’t be bringing it up. He tried to wreck my marriage. He probably spent his three years in Preston figuring out how to do it. He said he was Susie’s father, and he was going to make a legal claim to her. I beat him up.” He struck the palm of his left hand with his right fist, more than once. “I hit Martha, too. And she took Susie and left me. I don’t blame her. She didn’t come back for a long time after that.”

  “Did she go with Albert Sweetner?”

  “I don’t know. She never told me. I thought I was never going to see Susie or her again. It was like my life had gone to pieces. Now it’s gone to pieces for sure.”

  “You have a chance to put it back together. You’re the only one who can.”

  His eyes caught my meaning and held it. But he said: “I don’t know, Archer. I’m getting old—I’ll be sixty on my next birthday. I shouldn’t have taken on the two of them in the first place.”

  “Who else would have?”

  He answered me emphatically. “Plenty of men would have married Martha. She was a raving beauty. She still is.”

  “We won’t argue about that. Have you thought about where you’re going to spend the night?”

  “I thought we’d drive back as far as the Yucca Tree. I’m pretty worn out myself, but Martha always seems to have something left.”

  “And tomorrow?”

  “Back to the Palisades. One thing, it’s handy to the Medical Center. I thought I’d take her in there and have her checked,” he said, as if it was entirely his own idea.

  “Do that, Lester. And take good care of her. She witnessed a murder yesterday, as I said, and the murderer may try to silence her.” I told him about the bearded man and the false hair I had found on Al Sweetner’s body.