Ross MACDONALD - The Underground Man

“He won’t get you,” I said.

His mother took him in her arms, and for a little while he seemed content. Then he grew impatient of purely female comfort. He freed himself and stood up on the high bed, his eyes close to the level of mine. He bounced, and was temporarily taller than I was.

“Is Fritz the bogy man?” I said.

He looked at me in confusion. “I don’t know.”

“Did you ever see him wearing a long black wig?”

He nodded. “And whiskers, too,” he said a little breathlessly. “And a whatchamacallit.” He touched his upper lip.

“When was this, Ronny?”

“The last time that I visited Grandma Nell. I went into the barn and Fritz was there with long black hair and whiskers. He was looking at a picture of a lady.”

“Did you know the lady?”

“No. She had no clothes on.” He looked embarrassed, and scared. “Don’t tell him I told you. He said if I told anybody that something bad would happen.”

“Nothing bad will happen.” Not to him. “Did you see Fritz on Saturday wearing his wig?”

“When?”

“Up on the mountain.”

He looked at me in confusion. “I saw a bogy man with long black hair. He was away far off. I couldn’t tell if it was Fritz or not.”

“But you thought it was, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

His voice sounded strained, as if his clear childish memory had registered more than he was able to cope with. He turned to his mother and said that he was hungry.

I dropped them off at a downtown restaurant and drove back through the ghetto to Mrs. Snow’s house. Brown water was running in the road in front of it. I parked on the blacktop driveway behind her old white Rambler and locked my car.

Mrs. Snow opened the front door before I could knock. She looked past me into rain as if there might be other men behind me.

“Where’s Fritz?” I said.

“He’s in his room. But I can do any talking that needs to be done. I always have – I guess I always will.”

“He’ll have to do his own talking, Mrs. Snow.”

I went past her into the kitchen and opened the door of her son’s room. He was crouched on the iron bed, hiding part of his face with his hands.

He was a helpless foolish man, and I hated what I had to do. A trial would make a public show of him. In prison he would be the bottom man, as his mother feared. I could feel her anxious presence close behind me.

I said to him: “Did you buy a wig a month or so ago? A wig and a beard and a mustache?”

He dropped his hands away from his face. “Maybe I did.”

“I happen to know you did.”

“Then what are you asking me for?”

“I want to know why you bought those things.”

“To make my hair look long. And to cover this.” He lifted his right forefinger to his scarred upper lip. “The girls won’t let me kiss them. I only kissed a girl once in my life.”

“Martha?”

“Yeah. She let me do it to her. But that was a long time ago, about sixteen or eighteen years. I read about these wigs and stuff in a movie magazine, so I went down to Hollywood and bought an outfit. I wanted to chase the chicks on Sunset Strip. And be a swinger.”

“Did you catch any?”

He shook his doleful head. “I only got to go the once. She doesn’t want me to have a girlfriend.”

His gaze moved past me to his mother.

“I’m your girlfriend,” she said brightly. “And you’re my boyfriend.” She smiled and winked. There were tears in her eyes.

I said: “What happened to your wig, Fritz?”

“I don’t know. I hid it under my mattress. But somebody took it.”

His mother said: “Albert Sweetner must have taken it. He was in the house last week.”

“It was gone long before last week. It was gone about a month ago. I only got to chase the chicks the once.”

“Are you sure about that?” I said.

“Yessir.”

“You didn’t drive down to Northridge Saturday night and put it on Albert’s head?”

“No sir.”

“Or wear it up the mountain Saturday morning – when you knifed Stanley Broadhurst?”

“I liked Stanley. Why would I knife him?”

“Because he was digging up his father’s body. Didn’t you kill his father, too?”

He shook his head violently, like a mop. His mother said: “Don’t, Fritz. You’ll do yourself an injury.”

He stayed with his head hanging, as if he had broken his neck. After a time he spoke again: “I buried Mr. Broadhurst – I told you that. But I never killed him. I never killed none of them.”

“Any of them,” Mrs. Snow said. “You never killed any of them.”

“I never killed any of them,” he repeated. “I didn’t kill Mr. Broadhurst, or Stanley, or–” He lifted his head. “Who was the other one?”

“Albert Sweetner.”

“I didn’t kill him, neither.”

“Either,” his mother said.

I turned to her. “Let him do his own talking, please.”

The sharpness in my voice seemed to encourage her son: “Yeah. Let me do my own talking.”

“I’m only trying to help,” she said.

“Yeah. Sure.” But there was a dubious questioning note in his voice. It issued in speech, though he kept his hangdog posture on the bed: “What happened to my wig and stuff?”

“Somebody must have taken it,” she said.

“Albert Sweetner?”

“It may have been Albert.”

“I don’t believe that. I think you took it,” he said.

“That’s crazy talk.”

His eyes came up to her face, slowly, like snails ascending a wall. “You swiped it from under the mattress.” He struck the bed under him with his hand to emphasize the point. “And I’m not crazy.”

“You’re talking that way,” she said. “What reason would I have to take your wig?”

“Because you didn’t want me to chase the chicks. You were jealous.”

She let out a high little titter, with no amusement in it. I looked at her face. It was stiff and gray, as if it had frozen.

“My son’s upset. He’s talking foolishly.”

I said to Fritz: “What makes you think your mother took your wig?”

“Nobody else comes in here. There’s just the two of us. As soon as it was gone, I knew who took it.”

“Did you ask her if she took it?”

“I was afraid to.”

“My son has never been afraid of his mother,” she said. “And he knows I didn’t take his blessed wig. Albert Sweetner must have. I remember now, he was here a month ago.”

“He was in prison a month ago, Mrs. Snow. You’ve been blaming Albert for quite a number of things.” In the ensuing silence I could hear all three of us breathing. I turned to Fritz. “You told me earlier that Albert put you up to burying Leo Broadhurst. Is that still true?”

“Albert was there,” he answered haltingly. “He was sleeping in the stable near the Mountain House. He said the shot woke him up, and he hung around to see what would come of it. When I brought the tractor down from the compound, he helped me with the digging.”

Mrs. Snow moved past me and stood over him. “Albert told you to do it, didn’t he?”

“No,” he said. “It was you. You said that Martha wanted me to do it.”

“Did Martha kill Mr. Broadhurst?” I said.

“I dunno. I wasn’t there when it happened. Mother got me up in the middle of the night and said I had to bury him deep, or Martha would go to the gas chamber.” He looked around the narrow walls of the room as if he was in that chamber now, with the pellet about to drop. “She told me I should blame it all on Albert, if anybody asked me.”

“You’re a crazy fool,” his mother said. “If you go on telling lies like this, I’ll have to leave you and you’ll be all alone. They’ll put you in jail, or in the mental hospital.”