Ross MACDONALD - The Underground Man

Jerry looked up in dismay. “What do you think I did to him? I was trying to save his life.”

“You almost lost it for him.”

Jerry got his feet under him and rose awkwardly, grimacing with pain. “You don’t have to tell me that. I know I wrecked the yacht. But I didn’t steal her. Mr. Armistead left me in charge of her. Ask him.”

“You better talk to him yourself. But not tonight.” I said to his mother: “Why don’t you put him to bed?”

He didn’t argue. She walked him out with her arm around his shoulders. There was a look of acceptance on her face, almost as if she had lived too long without external trouble.

I knew it wasn’t a solution. Ellen was far gone in solitude, and he was too old to need a mother, really. He had to live out his time of trouble, as she had. And there was no assurance that he would. He belonged to a generation whose elders had been poisoned, like the pelicans, with a kind of moral DDT that damaged the lives of their young.

But I had no more time to worry about Jerry. I pulled the swivel chair around to face the phone and dialed Mrs. Broadhurst’s ranch in Santa Teresa. Jean answered immediately, in a voice that hung almost toneless between expectation and despair:

“This is the Broadhurst residence.”

“Archer speaking. I have your boy Ronny. He’s all right.”

She didn’t answer right away. Through the faint buzz and clamor on the line I could hear her breathing, as if she was the only life in an electronic universe.

“Where are you, Mr. Archer?”

“Sausalito. Ronny’s safe and in good condition.”

“Yes, I heard you.” Another silence. She said in a rather grudging tone: “What about the girl?”

“I have her safe. She isn’t in very good emotional shape.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so.”

“But she didn’t really intend to steal your son. She was running away from the man who killed your husband.”

“All the way to Sausalito?” she said incredulously.

“Yes.”

“Who was the man?”

“A bearded type with shoulder-length black hair, wearing dark wraparound glasses. Does that suggest anyone to you?”

“There are plenty of longhairs in Northridge. Here, too, for that matter. I haven’t had many contacts with them in the last few years. I don’t know who it would be.”

“He may be one of the crazies, a random killer. I’m going to make a suggestion which I want you to act on as soon as I hang up. Call the sheriff and ask him to send a man out. Insist on having him stay there. If he won’t, take a taxi downtown and check into a good hotel.”

“But you told me to stay here in this house.”

“That isn’t necessary any more. I’ve got your boy. I’ll bring him home tomorrow.”

“Could I possibly speak to him tonight? I just want to hear his voice.”

I opened the door and called the boy. He slid off Willie’s knee and came running, taking the receiver in both hands.

“Is that you, Mommy? … The boat got sunk, but I came in on a surfboard.… I’m not cold. Mrs. Rawlins gave me her little boy’s clothes, and a hamburger. Susie bought me another hamburger in San Francisco.… Susie? She’s all right, I guess. She wanted to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. But we talked her out of it.”

He listened for a moment, his face growing sober and concerned, then handed me the receiver as if it was hot. “Mommy’s sad.”

I said to her: “Are you all right?”

She answered in an emotion-clogged voice: “I’m fine. And I’m deeply grateful. When will I see you and Ronny?”

“About noon tomorrow, I’d say. We both need some rest before we drive south.”

A short while later, after the others had left, Ellen and I put Ronny to bed in a room which she said had been hers when she was a child. An old toy phone was standing on the table beside the cot. As if to demonstrate that he never got tired, the boy picked it up and spoke into it distinctly:

“Calling Space Control. Calling Space Control. Do you hear me? Do you hear me?”

We closed the door on his fantasy and faced each other in the upstairs hall. The hanging yellow electric light, the stains of old rainstorms on the walls and ceiling, and the shadows that imitated them seemed to generate other fantasies. The rest of the world was cut off and far away. I felt shipwrecked on the dim shores of the past.

“How’s Jerry?”

“He’s worried about what Armistead will do to him. But he quieted down. I gave him a back rub and a sleeping pill.”

“I’ll talk to Armistead when I get the chance.”

“I was hoping you would. Jerry’s pretty tense about it. He feels terribly guilty.”

“What did you do with the rest of the sleeping pills?”

“I have them.”

She touched the place between her breasts. She must have seen my eyes rest there and travel down her body. Both of us moved, so that her body was resting rather sleepily against mine. I felt her hand moving on my back, giving me a kind of sample back rub.

“I don’t have a bed made up for you. You can sleep with me if you like.”

“Thanks, but it wouldn’t be a good idea. You do all your living on canvas, remember?”

“I have a large unused canvas that I’ve been saving,” she said rather obscurely. “What are you afraid of, Archer?”

It was hard to say. I liked the woman. I almost trusted her. But I was already working deep in her life. I didn’t want to buy a piece of it or commit myself to her until I knew what the consequences would be.

Instead of answering her in words, I kissed her and disengaged myself.

She looked more rejected than deprived. “I don’t sleep with many men, in case you’re wondering. Leo was the only real lover I ever had.”

She was quiet for a while. Then she said: “I gave you a false impression earlier. I was forgetting, lying to myself. Whatever I had with Leo was real – just about the realest thing in my life.” Her eyes lit up with the memory as they hadn’t lit for me. “I was in love with him. And he loved me while it lasted. I didn’t believe that he would ever stop. But it ended, quite suddenly.”

Her eyes closed, and opened again with a changed expression, of wary loss. She leaned on the watermarked wall. The night was running down like a transplanted heart.

“There’s something I want to tell you,” I said. “I don’t know if I should.”

“Is it something painful?”

“Yes. Maybe not immediately painful.”

“About Leo?”

“I think he’s dead.”

Her eyes didn’t waver. Only a kind of shadow crossed her face, as if the hanging light above her head had moved.

“How long dead?”

“The whole fifteen years.”

“And that’s why he never came to join me?”

“I think so.” It was partly true, anyway. As for the other part of the truth, I was trying to decide whether to bring up Martha Crandall. “Unless my witnesses are hallucinating, somebody shot Leo and buried him.”

“Where?”

“Near the Mountain House. Do you have any idea who might have killed him?”

“No.” After a moment’s hesitation, she said: “It wasn’t I.”

I waited for her to go on. She said finally:

“You mentioned witnesses. Who are they?”

“Martha Crandall and her daughter.”

“Did he go back to Martha?”

She raised one hand to her mouth, as if she had made a damaging admission. On the heels of it, I said bluntly:

“He was in bed with Martha when he was shot. Apparently she was the one who came back to him . Her husband threw her out.” I hesitated. “You knew about their earlier affair?”

“Did I not. I first got to know Leo through it. Martha came to me when she got into trouble.” She was silent for a moment, then said with some irony: “I interposed my body between them.”