The Underground Man (3 page)

The depth of feeling in her voice surprised me. She cared for her husband more than she admitted.

We crossed the low pass and began the descent into the valley. Above its floor, layers of brown dust were stacked in the air, obscuring the mountains on the far side. Like something in an old movie, a World War Two bomber labored up from Van Nuys Airport and turned north. It was probably headed for the fire in Santa Teresa.

I didn’t mention this to the woman beside me. Another thought had begun to nag at my mind. If Stanley was following in his father’s footsteps and running away with a girl, he wouldn’t be likely to head straight for the town where his mother lived. Las Vegas, or possibly Mexico, was a more likely destination.

We passed a “Northridge” sign. I glanced at the woman. She was bent forward, unwinding her invisible ball of string.

“How far is your house from the freeway?”

“About five minutes. Why?”

“We ought to check there. We don’t know that Stanley took the boy to Santa Teresa.”

“You think they may be at the house?”

“It isn’t likely, but it’s possible. Let’s have a look, anyway.”

It was on a street named College Circle, one of a group of brand new houses with two-story porticoes supported by large wooden pillars. They were differentiated by their colors. The Broadhurst house was dark blue with light blue pillars.

Jean went in at the front door. I found when I followed the driveway around to the back that behind its imposing front it was just another tract house, as if the architect had tried to combine a southern plantation mansion with the slave quarters. A grape-stake fence separated the back yard from the neighbors’.

The garage door was locked. I went around to the window
at the side. The only car in the double garage, a green Mercedes sedan, bore no resemblance to the black convertible Stanley had been driving.

Jean opened the back door of the house from the inside. She gave me an appalled look, and came running across the grass to the garage window.

“They’re not
in
there, are they?”

“No.”

“Thank heaven. I thought for a minute they’d committed suicide or something.” She stood beside me at the window. “That’s not our car.”

“Whose is it?”

“It must be hers. I remember now—she and Stanley came in separate cars last night. She has her nerve—leaving her car in my garage.” Jean turned toward me, her face hardening. “Incidentally, she slept in Ronny’s bed. I don’t like that.”

“Show me.”

I followed her in through the back door. The house was already showing signs of abandonment. In the kitchen, unwashed dishes were piled in the sink and on the counters. On the top of the free-standing stove were a skillet half full of congealed grease and a saucepan containing something that smelled like pea soup but looked like cracked green mud. And there were flies.

The boy’s room on the second floor was papered with pictures of friendly animals. The bedclothes were rumpled and twisted, as if the girl visitor had spent a troubled night. The red marks of her mouth were on the pillow, like a signature, and under the pillow was a copy of the novel
Green Mansions
bound in faded green cloth.

I examined the flyleaf of the book. It had a bookplate with an engraving of an angel or a muse writing in a scroll with a peacock-plume pen. The name on the bookplate was
Ellen Strome. Under it another name was inscribed in pencil: Jerry Kilpatrick.

I closed the book and slipped it into my jacket pocket.

Jean Broadhurst came into the room behind me. “At least he didn’t sleep with her.”

“Where did your husband sleep?”

“In his study.”

She showed me the little room on the ground floor. It contained a few shelves of books, a closed rolltop desk, an unmade daybed, and a gray steel filing cabinet standing like a cenotaph at the head of the bed. I turned to the woman:

“Does Stanley usually sleep in here?”

“You ask some pretty personal questions.”

“You’ll get used to it. I take it that he does usually sleep in here.”

She colored. “He’s been working at night on his files. He doesn’t like to disturb me.”

I gave the top drawer of the filing cabinet a tentative pull. It was locked.

“What kind of files does he keep in this?”

“It’s his father’s file,” she said.

“His father’s file?”

“Stanley keeps a file on his father—everything he’s been
able to dig up about him, which isn’t much. And all the false leads—the dozens of people he’s talked to or written to, trying to find out where his father is. It’s been his main occupation these last couple of years.” She added wryly: “At least I’ve known where he was keeping himself nights.”

“What sort of a man was his father?”

“I don’t actually know. It’s funny, with all this information”—she tapped the metal side of the filing cabinet—“Stanley doesn’t really talk about him at all. He has long silences on the subject. His mother has even longer silences. I do know he was a captain of infantry in the Pacific. Stanley has a picture of him in uniform. He was a good-looking man with a nice smile.”

I looked around at the paneled plywood walls. They were empty except for a business calendar which alleged that it was still the month of June.

“Where does he keep the picture of his father?”

“In plexiglass, so it doesn’t get worn out.”

“What would wear it out?”

“Showing it to people. He also has pictures of him playing tennis, and riding a polo pony, and one at the wheel of his yacht.”

“I gather his father had a lot of money?”

“Quite a lot. At least Mrs. Broadhurst has.”

“And her husband walked out on it and her for the sake of a woman?”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Who was the woman?”

“I have no idea. Stanley and his mother don’t discuss the subject. All I know is that Mr. Broadhurst and the woman eloped to San Francisco. Stanley and I spent two weeks in San Francisco last June. Stanley tramped around the city with his pictures. He covered most of the downtown district
before he was through. I had quite a time getting him to come back with us. He wanted to quit his job and go on searching the Bay area.”

“Assuming he finds his father, what then?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think Stanley knows, either.”

“You said he was eleven or twelve when his father left. How long ago was that?”

“Stanley’s twenty-seven now. Fifteen years.”

“Can he afford to quit his job?”

“No, he can’t. We owe a good deal of money, to his mother and other people. But he’s getting so irresponsible, it’s all I can do to keep him on the job.” She was quiet for a moment, looking at the blank walls of the room, the calendar which hadn’t been changed in several months.

I said: “Do you have a key to the filing cabinet?”

“No. There’s only the one, and Stanley keeps it. He keeps the rolltop desk locked, too. He doesn’t like me to look at his correspondence.”

“Do you think he’s been corresponding with the girl?”

“I have no idea. He gets letters from all over. I don’t open them.”

“What’s her name, do you know?”

“She said her name was Sue, at least she told Ronny that.”

“I’d like to take a look at the registration of that Mercedes. What about a key to the garage?”

“That I have. I keep it in the kitchen.”

I followed her out to the kitchen, where she opened a cupboard and took the key off a nail. I used it to open up the garage. The key of the Mercedes was in the ignition. There was no registration, but crumpled in the back of the dash compartment I found an auto insurance invoice made out to a Mr. Roger Armistead of 10 Crescent Drive in Santa
Teresa. I copied the name and address in my black notebook and climbed out of the car.

“What did you find?” Jean said.

I showed her my open notebook. “Do you know Roger Armistead?”

“I’m afraid not. Crescent Drive is a good address, though.”

“And that Mercedes is worth a lot of money. Stanley’s old school friend seems to be loaded. Or else she stole it.”

Jean made a quick quelling motion with her hand. “Please don’t talk so loudly.” She went on in a voice that was conscious of the neighbors beyond the grape-stake fence: “That story of his was ridiculous. She couldn’t possibly be his old school friend. She’s at least six or seven years younger, as I said. Besides, he attended a private boys’ school in Santa Teresa.”

I flipped open my notebook again. “Give me a description of her.”

“She’s a good-looking blond girl, about my height, five foot six. Nice figure. Perhaps she weighs 115 pounds or so. Her eyes are a shade of blue. They’re her best feature, really—and also her strangest.”

“Strange in what way?”

“I couldn’t read them,” she said. “I couldn’t tell if she was absolutely innocent or absolutely cold and amoral. That isn’t an afterthought, either. It was my first reaction when she came in with Stanley.”

“Did he give any clue as to why he brought her home with him?”

“He said she needed food and rest, and he expected me to serve her dinner. Which I did. But she hardly ate a thing—a little pea soup.”

“Did she talk much?”

“Not to me. She talked to Ronny.”

“What about?”

“It was nonsense talk, really. She told him a wild story about a little girl who was left alone all night in a house in the mountains. Her parents were killed by monsters and the little girl was carried off by a big bird like a condor. She said that had happened to her when she was his age. She asked my son if he would like it to happen to him. It was fantasy, of course, but it had an ugly element, as if she was trying to unload her hysteria on Ronny.”

“What was his reaction? Was he frightened?”

“Not exactly. He seemed to be kind of fascinated by her. I was not. I broke it up and sent him to his room.”

“Did she say anything about taking him away?”

“She didn’t say it directly. But that was the message, wasn’t it? It scared me at the time. I should have acted on it and got rid of her.”

“What scared you?”

She looked up at the sky, which was full of blowing dust. “She was afraid, I think, and I caught it from her. Of course, I was upset already. It was so unusual for Stanley to do what he did, bringing her home like some kind of child bride. I realized that here my life was changing, and there was nothing I could do about it.”

“It’s been changing for some time, hasn’t it? Since June.”

Her gaze came down, full of darkened sky. “June was the month we went to San Francisco. Why do
you
say June?”

“It was the last month your husband tore off the calendar in his study.”

A car with a noisy engine pulled up in front, and a man appeared at the corner of the house. His body seemed ill at ease in his dark rumpled suit. His long pale face had cornices of scar tissue over the eyes.

He came toward us along the driveway. “Is Stanley Broadhurst here?”

“I’m afraid he isn’t,” Jean said uneasily.

“Would you be Mrs. Broadhurst, by any chance?” The man spoke with elaborate politeness, but an undertone of aggression buzzed in his voice.

“Yes, I’m Mrs. Broadhurst.”

“When do you expect your husband back?”

“I really don’t know.”

“You must have a rough idea.”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“If you don’t, who does?”

He sounded like a man who was full of trouble. I stepped between him and Jean:

“Broadhurst’s left town for the weekend. Who are you and what do you want?”

The man didn’t answer me right away. He went into an intense quiet rage, swinging his hand up and slapping his own face. The blow left a four-fingered mark burning red on his cheek.

“Who I am is my concern,” he said. “I want my money. You better get in touch and tell him that. I’m blowing this town tonight and taking the money with me.”

“What money are you talking about?”

“That’s between he and I. Just give him the message. I’m willing to take the even thousand if I get it by tonight. Otherwise the sky will be the limit. Tell him that.”

His cold eyes didn’t believe what his mouth was saying. I guessed he was an old con. He had the prison pallor, and he appeared ill at ease in the open daylight. He was sticking close to the wall as if he needed something to contain him.

“My husband doesn’t have that kind of money.”

“His mother has.”

“What do you know about his mother?” Jean said in a thin voice.

“I happen to know she’s loaded. He said he’d get it from her today and have it for me tonight.”

I said: “You’re a little early, aren’t you?”

“It’s a good thing I am, with him out of town and all.”

“What’s he buying from you?”

“If I told you, I couldn’t sell it, could I?” He gave me the tricky look of a half-smart man who had never learned the limits of his own intelligence. “Tell him I’ll be back here tonight. If he don’t pay me then, the sky’s the limit.”

“There may not be anyone here then,” I said. “Why don’t you give me your name and address, and we’ll get in touch with you?”

He considered my proposal, and finally said: “You can reach me at the Star Motel. That’s below Topanga Canyon on the coast highway. Ask for Al.”

I made a note of the address. “No phone?”

“You can’t deliver money over the phone.”

He gave us a dim eroded smile and went. I followed him to the corner of the house and watched him drive off in an old black Volkswagen. It had a missing front fender and a license plate so dirty I couldn’t read it.

“Do you think he’s telling the truth?” Jean said.

“I doubt if he knows, himself. He’d have to take a lie-detector test to find out. And he’d probably flunk it.”

“What’s Stanley doing with that kind of person?”

“You know Stanley better than I do.”

“I’m beginning to wonder.”

We went into the house, and I asked Jean’s permission to use the phone in the study again. I wanted to get in touch with the owner of the Mercedes. Santa Teresa Information gave me Armistead’s number, and I dialed it.

A woman’s voice answered impatiently: “Yes?”