The Underground Man

by Ross Macdonald

  “Does this have to do with the trouble at the harbor yesterday morning?”

  “I’m afraid it does, and it’s getting worse. May I come and talk to you?”

  “You still haven’t said what about. Is a girl involved in this?”

  “Yes. She’s a young blond named Susan Crandall. Susan and your son and a little boy named Ron Broadhurst have taken off—”

  “Is that Mrs. Broadhurst’s grandson?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Where in the name of heaven have they gone?”

  “To sea. They took the Armistead yacht.”

  “Does Roger Armistead know about this?”

  “Not yet. I called you first.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “You’d better come over as you suggest. Do you know where I live?” He gave me the address, twice.

  I called a cab and repeated the address to the driver. He was one of the loquacious ones. He talked about fires and floods, earthquakes and oil spills. Why, he wanted to know, would anyone want to live in California? If things got any worse, he was going to move his family back to Motown. That was a city.

  He took me to an upper-middle residential area on the side of the city which was not yet threatened by the fire. Kilpatrick’s modern ranch house lay on a floodlit pad on the side of a brush-covered slope. I had left the cool air lower in the city, and hot wind blew in my face when I got out of the cab. I told the driver to wait.

  Kilpatrick came out to meet me. He was a big man wearing an open-necked sport shirt over slacks. There was graying red hair on both his head and his chest. In spite of the drink in his hand, and the dead-fish gleam of previous drinks in his eyes, his large handsome face was sober, almost lugubrious.

  He offered me his hand, and peered at my injured head. “What happened to you?”

  “Your son Jerry happened to me. He hit me with a gun-butt.”

  Kilpatrick made a commiserating face. “I want to say right now I’m heartily sorry. But,” he added, “I’m not responsible for what Jerry does. He’s gotten beyond my control.”

  “So I gather. Can we go inside?”

  “By all means. You’ll be wanting a drink.”

  He ushered me into a bar and game room which overlooked a brilliantly lighted pool. Beside the pool a woman with black hair and gleaming copper-colored legs was sitting in a long chair which concealed the rest of her. A portable radio on a table beside her was talking to her like a familiar spirit. A silver cocktail shaker stood by the radio.

  Kilpatrick closed the venetian blinds before he turned up the light. He said that he was drinking martinis, and I asked for scotch and water, which he poured. We sat facing each other across a round table which had a chessboard made of light and dark squares of wood inlaid in its center.

  He said in a cautious measured voice: “I suppose I better tell you that I heard from the girl’s father earlier today. He found my son’s name in his daughter’s address book.”

  “How long has the girl been missing from home? Did Crandall say?”

  Kilpatrick nodded. “A couple of days. She walked out on her parents Thursday.”

  “Did Crandall say why?”

  “He doesn’t know why, any more than I do.” He added in a discouraged voice which made him sound like an old man: “We’re losing a whole generation. They’re punishing us for bringing them into the world.”

  “Do the Crandalls live in town here?”

  “No.”

  “How do your son and their daughter happen to know each other?”

  “I have no idea. All I know is what Crandall told me.”

  “What’s Crandall’s full name and where does he live?”

  Kilpatrick lifted his palm in a traffic-halting gesture. “Before I tell you anything more, you’d better fill me in on the ramifications. How does the Broadhurst boy come into this? What are they planning to do with him?”

  “There may not be any plan at all. It looks as if they’re playing it by ear. But on the other hand it may be a kidnaping. It is now, in the legal sense.”

  “For money? Jerry claims that he despises money.”

  “Money isn’t the only motive for kidnaping.”

  “What else is there?” Kilpatrick said.

  “Revenge. Power. Kicks.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Jerry.”

  “What about the girl?”

  “I gather she’s a fairly nice girl from a fairly nice family. Maybe not a happy girl, her father said, but a girl you can depend on.”

  “That’s what Lizzie Borden’s father used to say about her.”

  Kilpatrick gave me a shocked look. “It’s a pretty farfetched comparison, isn’t it?”

  “I hope so. The man she was traveling with today—the little boy’s father—was killed with a pickax.”

  Kilpatrick’s face grew pale, setting its broken veins in relief. He finished his martini, and sucked audibly at the dry glass.

  “Are you telling me Stanley Broadhurst has been killed?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think she murdered him?”

  “I don’t know. But if she did, the Broadhurst boy is probably a witness.”

  “Was Jerry there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where did this murder take place?”

  “At the head of Mrs. Broadhurst’s canyon, near a cabin called Mountain House. Apparently the fire was started at the same time.”

  Kilpatrick began to drum on the table with his glass. He got up and went to the bar, searching along the shelves of bottles behind it for something guaranteed to relieve anxiety. He came back to the table empty-handed, and soberer than ever.

  “You should have told me about this when you called me in the first place. I never would have—” His voice broke off, and he glared at me distrustfully.

  “You never would have let me in or talked to me,” I said. “Where does Crandall live?”

  “I’m not saying.”

  “You might as well. None of this will be a secret for long. The only positive thing we can do is try and head off Jerry and the girl before they make more trouble.”

  “What more could they do?”

  “Lose the boy,” I said. “Or kill him.”

  He looked at me narrow-eyed. “Just what’s your interest in the boy?”

  “Mrs. Stanley Broadhurst hired me to get him back.”

  “So you’re on the other side.”

  “The boy’s side.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Slightly.”

  “And you care about him personally?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Then you have some faint idea of how I feel about my son.”

  “I’d have a better idea if you’d cooperate fully. I’m trying to head off trouble for you and your son.”

  “You smell like trouble to me,” he said.

  That stopped me for a minute. He had a salesman’s insight into human weakness, and he’d touched on a fact which I didn’t always admit to myself—that I sometimes served as a catalyst for trouble, not unwillingly.

  With some idea of changing the subject a little, I brought out the green-covered book with his son’s name penciled on the flyleaf.

  “How did Sue Crandall get hold of this?”

  After some thought, he said: “I suppose Jerry took it when he left. I don’t pay too much attention to the books. My wife was the intellectual in the family. She graduated from Stanford.”

  “Is Mrs. Kilpatrick at home?”

  He shook his head. “Ellen left me years ago. The girl out by the pool is my fiancée.”

  “How long ago did Jerry leave?”

  “A couple of months. He moved onto the yacht in June. But actually he left me a year ago, as far as any real relationship is concerned. That was when he went away to college.”

  “He’s in college?”

  “Not any more,” Kilpatrick said in a disappointed voice. “He could have handled it easily. I was all set to send him rig
ht through to a master’s in business administration. But he refused to make the effort. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know the answer.” He reached across the table for the book and closed it on his son’s name.

  “Is Jerry on drugs?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  But his eyes were dubious and avoided mine. The conversation was running down, and it wasn’t hard to guess why. He was afraid of involving his son in murder.

  “You knew about the incident on the yacht,” I said. “When the girl jumped overboard.”

  “That’s right. I got the word from the harbor people. But I didn’t know that drugs were involved.”

  Kilpatrick leaned toward me abruptly and took hold of my untouched scotch and water. “If you’re not going to use that, I am,” he said, and drank it down.

  We sat in opposing silences. He was studying the inlaid board as if there were chessmen on it, most of them mine. Finally he looked up and met my eyes.

  “You think she got drugs from Jerry, don’t you?” he said.

  “You’re the authority on Jerry.”

  “No more,” he said. “But I suspected he was using drugs. It was one of the bones of contention between us.”

  “What kind of drugs?”

  “I don’t really know. But he talked and acted as if he had blown his mind.” The phrase was strange on his lips, and somehow touching, like a statement of fellow-feeling with his lost son. He added nervously: “I’ve told you more than I should have.”

  “You might as well tell me the rest of it.”

  “There is no rest of it. That’s all there is. I had a bright promising boy and one day he decided to change all that and go and live like a waterfront bum.”

  “What’s his in with Roger Armistead?”

  “I sold some property to Armistead, and Armistead’s always liked him. He taught him to sail. Last year Jerry crewed for him in the Ensenada race.”

  “Jerry must be a pretty good sailor.”

  “He is. He could sail that sloop to Hawaii if he had to.” His mood swung down: “Unless he’s forgotten his navigation along with everything else.”

  He rose and went to the blinded window, separating the slats with his fingers and peering out, like a man in a building under attack.

  “Dammit,” he said. “I was supposed to take my fiancée to dinner.” He turned on me in quick anger. “I suppose you realize you’re wrecking my evening?”

  The question didn’t deserve an answer, and he knew it. He drifted to the bar as if he might find a ghostly bartender to complain to. There was a telephone on the bar, with a little blue book beside it. He opened the book as if to look up a number, then dropped it again. Instead he got out a fresh glass and poured a scotch and water and rapped it down in front of me.

  I thanked him for the gesture, though I didn’t need the drink. I could feel a long night coming on. So could Kilpatrick. He stood above me leaning on the table, his hands splayed out, his face expanding with emotion.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m not the swinging bastard I—you think I am. When Jerry was just a tot my wife ran out on me. I never gave her any good reason to leave me, except that I couldn’t provide the life romantic. But Jerry blamed me for the breakup. He’s always blamed me for everything.” He drew in a deep mournful breath. “I really do care about him. I wanted the best for him, and knocked myself out to provide it. But things don’t work out like that any more, do they? No more happy endings.”

  He leaned above me, listening to the silence as if he was hearing it for the first time. I said:

  “What can we do to get him and Susan back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I thought of calling the FBI.”

  “Don’t do that. It would be the end of Jerry.”

  I felt his heavy hand on my shoulder. He removed it and went to the bar again, moving like a caged animal that had paced out the short distance many times. He poured himself a scotch and resumed his place at the round table.

  “Give him a chance to bring the sloop back on his own. We don’t have to make a federal case out of it.”

  “We’re going to have to tell the local police.”

  “Let me do that,” he said. “I’ll talk to Sheriff Tremaine—he’s a friend of mine.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Of course tonight. I’m more concerned than you are. Jerry’s my son. What happens to him happens to me.” He sounded as if he wanted to mean it, but couldn’t quite feel the full sense of the words.

  “Then tell me where I can reach Sue Crandall’s parents. I particularly want to talk to her father.”

  “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t feel right about it.”

  I hit him with the hardest words I could think of: “You may never feel right about anything again. The situation is going to hell in a handcar, and you won’t lift a finger to stop it. Still you expect some kind of happy ending.”

  “I don’t expect one. I said that.” He wiped his eyes and cheeks with a downward motion of his palms, which stayed pressed together at his chin in a prayerful attitude. “You’ve got to give me time to think this through.”

  “Sure. Take several hours. I’ll sit here and wonder what’s happening to the Broadhurst boy.”

  Kilpatrick gave me a grave look across his peaked fingers. I caught a glimpse of the broken seriousness which lived in him like a spoiled priest in hiding.

  The doorbell chimed, and he left the room, closing the door behind him. I picked up the small blue book beside the phone. It contained a handwritten list of numbers. A Lester Crandall was listed among the C’s, with a Pacific Palisades number. The listing probably wasn’t new—there were other names below it on the page.

  As I was making a note of it, the door was flung open behind me. It was the dark-haired woman from the pool-side. She was a handsome woman, but a little old for the bikini she was wearing. And she was smashed.

  “Where’s the action?” she said boisterously.

  “There is none.”

  The corners of her mouth drooped like a disappointed child’s. “Brian promised to take me dancing.”

  She did a few experimental steps, and almost fell down. I led her to one of the chairs, but she didn’t want to sit still. She wanted to dance.

  Kilpatrick came into the room. He gave no sign of noticing the woman. Moving like something mechanical and preaimed, he went behind the bar and opened a drawer and took out a heavy revolver.

  “What goes on?” I asked him.

  He gave no answer, but I didn’t like the look of inert cold anger on his face. I followed him out to the front of the house, letting him know I was there. A rather wild-eyed young man with soot on his forehead was waiting at the front door.

  Kilpatrick showed him the gun. “Get out of here. I don’t have to put up with this kind of nonsense.”

  “You call it nonsense, do you?” the young man said. “I lost my house and my furniture. My family’s clothes. Everything. And I’m holding you responsible, Mr. Kilpatrick.”

  “How am I responsible?”

  “I talked to a fireman after my house burned down—too bad he wasn’t there when it burned, but he wasn’t—and he said that canyon should never have been built in, with the high fire hazard. You never even mentioned that when you sold it to me.”

  “It’s a risk we all run,” Kilpatrick said. “I could be burned out tonight or tomorrow myself.”

  “I hope you are. I hope your house burns down.”

  “Is that what you came here to tell me?”

  “Not exactly.” The young man sounded a little ashamed. “But I’ve got no place to spend the night.”

  “You’re not going to spend it here.”

  “No. I realize that.”

  He ran out of words. With a parting look at the gun in Kilpatrick’s hand, he walked quickly to a station wagon which was parked beside my taxicab. A number of children peered out through the back windows of the wagon, like prisoners wondering where they might
be taken next. A woman sat in the front seat, looking straight ahead.

  I said to Kilpatrick: “I’m glad you didn’t shoot him.”

  “I had no intention of shooting him. But you should have heard the names he was calling me. I don’t have to take—”

  I cut in: “What area did he live in?”

  “Canyon Estates. I’m the developer.”

  “Did the canyon go?”

  “Not all of it. But several houses burned, including his.” Kilpatrick jerked his angry head toward the departing station wagon. “He isn’t the only one who took a beating. I’m still paying interest on some of those houses, and I’ll never be able to move them now.”

  “Do you know what happened to Elizabeth Broadhurst’s house?”

  “The last I heard it was still standing. Those old Spanish-type structures were built to resist fire.”

  The dark-haired woman came up behind Kilpatrick. She had put on a light coat over her bikini and she looked quite sober, but sick.

  “For heaven’s sake,” she said to him, “put that gun away. It scares the living hell out of me when you wave that gun around.”

  “I’m not waving it around.” But he shoved it down out of sight in his pocket.

  The three of us stepped out onto the asphalt pad. The cabdriver was watching us like an observer from Mars.

  Kilpatrick wet his finger in his mouth and held it up. A cool wind was blowing up the canyon.

  “That’s sea air,” he said. “If it keeps blowing from that direction we’re going to be A-O.K.”

  I hoped he was right. But the eastern edges of the sky were still burning like curtains.

  chapter 13

  It cost me fifty dollars, paid in advance, to be driven to Northridge, where I’d left my car in Stanley Broadhurst’s garage. The driver wanted to talk, but I shut him off and caught an hour’s sleep.

  I woke up with a pounding head when we left the Ventura Freeway. I told the driver to stop at a public pay phone. He found one and gave me change for a dollar. I dialed Lester Crandall’s number.

  A woman’s voice which sounded as if it was being kept under strict control said: “This is the Crandall residence.”

  “Is Mr. Crandall home?”

  “I’m afraid he isn’t. I don’t know when he’ll be back.”