Ross MACDONALD - The Underground Man

Mrs. Broadhurst nodded curtly. “Jean mentioned on the telephone that you’re some kind of detective. Is that correct?”

“The private kind.”

She raked me with a look that moved from my eyes down to my shoes and back up to my face again. “I’ve never set much store by private detectives, frankly. But under the circumstances perhaps you can be useful. If the radio can be believed, the fire has passed the Mountain House and left it untouched. Would you like to come up there with me?”

“I would. After I talk to the gardener.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“But I understand he gave your son a key to the Mountain House. He may know why they wanted it.”

“He doesn’t. I’ve questioned Fritz. We’re wasting time, and I’ve already wasted a good deal. I stayed by the telephone until you and Jean got here.”

“Where is Fritz?”

“You’re persistent, aren’t you? He may be in the lath house.”

We left Jean standing white-faced and apprehensive in the shadow of the veranda. The lath house was in a walled garden behind one wing of the ranchhouse. Mrs. Broadhurst followed me in under the striped shadows cast by the roof.

“Fritz? Mr. Archer wants to ask you a question.”

A soft-looking man in dungarees straightened up from the plants he was tending. He had emotional green eyes and a skittish way of holding his body, as if he was ready to avoid a threatened blow. There was a livid scar connecting his mouth and his nose which looked as if he had been born with a harelip.

“What is it this time?” he said.

“I’m trying to find out what Stanley Broadhurst is up to. Why do you think he wanted the key to the guest house?”

Fritz shrugged his thick loose shoulders. “I don’t know. I can’t read people’s minds, can I?”

“You must have some idea.”

He glanced uncomfortably at Mrs. Broadhurst. “Am I supposed to spit it all out?”

“Please tell the truth,” she said in a forced tone.

“Well, naturally I thought him and the chick had hanky-panky in mind. Why else would they want to go up there?”

“With my grandson along?” Mrs. Broadhurst said.

“They wanted me to keep the boy with me. But I didn’t want the responsibility. That’s the way you get in trouble,” he said with stupid wisdom.

“You didn’t mention that before. You should have told me, Fritz.”

“I can’t remember everything at once, can I?”

“How was the boy behaving?” I asked him.

“Okay. He didn’t say much.”

“Neither do you.”

“What do you want me to say? You think I did something to the boy?” His voice rose, and his eyes grew moist and suddenly overflowed.

“Nobody suggested anything like that.”

“Then why do you keep at me and at me? The boy was here with his father. His father took him away. Does that make me responsible?”

“Take it easy.”

Mrs. Broadhurst touched my arm. “We’re getting nowhere.”

We left the gardener complaining among his plants. The striped shadow fell from the roof, jailbirding him.

The carport was attached to an old red barn at the back of the house. Below the barn was a dry creekbed at the bottom of a shallow ravine which was thickly grown with oaks and eucalyptus. Band-tailed pigeons and sweet-voiced red-winged blackbirds were foraging under the trees and around a feeder. I stepped on fallen eucalyptus pods which looked like ornate bronze nailheads set in the dust.

An aging Cadillac and an old pickup truck stood under the carport. Mrs. Broadhurst drove the pickup, wrestling it angrily around the curves in the avocado grove and turning left on the road toward the mountains. Beyond the avocados were ancient olive trees, and beyond them was pasture gone to brush.

We were approaching the head of the canyon. The smell of burning grew stronger in my nostrils. I felt as though we were going against nature, but I didn’t mention my qualms to Mrs. Broadhurst. She wasn’t the sort of woman you confessed human weakness to.

The road degenerated as we climbed. It was narrow and inset with boulders. Mrs. Broadhurst jerked at the wheel of the truck as if it was a male animal resisting control. For some reason I was reminded of Mrs. Roger Armistead’s voice on the phone, and I asked Mrs. Broadhurst if she knew the woman.

She answered shortly: “I’ve seen her at the beach club. Why do you ask?”

“The Armistead name came up in connection with your son’s friend, the blond girl.”

“How?”

“She was using their Mercedes.”

“I’m not surprised at the connection. The Armisteads are nouveaux riches from down south – not my kind of people.” Without really changing the subject, she went on: “We’ve lived here for quite a long time, you know. My grandfather Falconer’s ranch took in a good part of the coastal plain and the whole mountainside, all the way to the top of the first range. All I have left is a few hundred acres.”

While I was trying to think of an appropriate comment, she said in a more immediate voice: “Stanley phoned me last night and asked me for fifteen hundred dollars cash, today.”

“What for?”

“He said something vague, about buying information. As you may or may not know, my son is somewhat hipped on the subject of his father’s desertion.” Her voice was dry and careful.

“His wife told me that.”

“Did she? It occurred to me that the fifteen hundred dollars might have something to do with you.”

“It doesn’t.” I thought of Al, the pale man in the dark suit, but decided not to bring him up right now.

“Who’s paying you?” the woman said rather sharply.

“I haven’t been paid.”

“I see.” She sounded as if she distrusted what she saw. “Are you and my daughter-in-law good friends?”

“I met her this morning. We have friends in common.”

“Then you probably know that Stanley and she have been close to breaking up. I never did think that their marriage would last.”

“Why?”

“Jean is an intelligent girl but she comes from an entirely different class. I don’t believe she’s ever understood my son, though I’ve tried to explain something about our family traditions.” She turned her head from the road to glance at me. “Is Stanley really interested in this blond girl?”

“Obviously he is, but maybe not in the way you mean. He wouldn’t have brought your grandson along–”

“Don’t be too sure of that. He brought Ronny because he knows I love the boy, and because he wants money from me. Remember when he found I wasn’t here, he tried to leave Ronny with Fritz. I’d give a lot to know what they’re up to.”

At the base of a sandstone bluff where the road petered out entirely, she stopped the pickup and we got out.

“This is where we shift to shanks’ mare,” she said. “Ordinarily we could have driven around by way of Rattlesnake Road, but that’s where they’re fighting the fire.”

In the lee of the bluff was a brown wooden sign, “Falconer Trail.” The trail was a dusty track bulldozed out of the steep side of the canyon. As Mrs. Broadhurst went up ahead of me, she explained that her father had given the land for the trail to the Forest Service. She sounded as if she was trying to cheer herself in any way she could.

I ate her dust until I was looking down into the tops of the tallest sycamores in the canyon below. A daytime moon hung over the bluff, and we went on climbing toward it. When we reached the top I was wet under my clothes.

About a hundred yards back from the edge, a large weathered redwood cabin stood against a grove of trees. Some of the trees had been blackened and maimed where the fire had burned an erratic swath through the grove. The cabin itself was partly red and looked as if it had been splashed with blood.