The Underground Man

chapter 11

A concrete breakwater extended by a sandbar curved like a sheltering arm around the harbor and marina. A few boats, under motor or sail, were coming in from the sea through the marked channel. A multitude of other boats lay in the slips, from racing yachts to superannuated landing craft.

I walked along beside the high woven-wire fence which divided the marina from the public parking lot. There were several gates in it but they all had automatic locks. I found a boat rental dock near the foot of the breakwater and asked the man in charge how to get to Ariadne.

He gave me a suspicious look which took in my bare feet and the shoes I had tied together and slung over my shoulder.

“Mr. Armistead’s not aboard, if he’s the one you’re looking for.”

“What about Jerry Kilpatrick?”

“I wouldn’t know about him. Go down to the third gate and try giving him a yell. You can see the boat from there, about halfway along the float on the left.”

I put on my shoes and found the gate and the boat. She was a white sloop, poised on the quiet water in a way that made my breath come a little faster. A thin young man with straggling hair and a furred lower face was working over the auxiliary motor near her stern. I called to him through the locked gate.

“Jerry?”

His head came up. I waved him toward me. He jumped down onto the slip and moved along it in a swift barefoot shamble. He was naked to the waist, and he walked with his bearded head thrust forward as though to cancel out his boy’s shoulders and his narrow hairless chest. His hands were so fouled with engine oil that he seemed to be wearing black gloves.

He regarded me somberly through the wire gate. “What can I do for you?”

“You lost your book.” I got out the copy of Green Mansions with his name on the flyleaf. “This is yours, isn’t it?”

“Let me see.” He started to open the gate, then clicked it emphatically shut again. “If my father sent you, he can drop dead. And you can go back and tell him that I said that.”

“I don’t know your father.”

“Neither do I know him. I never knew him. And I don’t want to know him.”

“That takes care of your father. What about me?”

“That’s your problem.”

“Don’t you want your book?”

“Keep it, if you can read. It’ll improve your mind, if you have a mind.”

He was a very hostile young man. I reminded myself that he was a witness, and there was no point in getting angry with him through a fence.

“I can always get somebody to read it to me,” I said.

He smiled quickly. The smile in the midst of his reddish beard seemed extraordinarily bright.

I said:

“There’s a small boy missing. His father was killed this morning–”

“You think I killed him?”

“Did you?”

“I don’t believe in violence.” His look implied that I did.

“Then you’ll want to help me find whoever killed him. Why don’t you let me in? Or come out and we can talk.”

“I like it this way.” He fingered the wire gate. “You look like the violent type to me.”

“The situation isn’t funny,” I said. “The missing boy is six years old. His name is Ronald Broadhurst. Do you know anything about him?”

He shook his tangled head. The beard that covered his lower face seemed to have overgrown his mouth and left him only his eyes to speak with. They were brown, and slightly starred, like damaged glass.

“A girl was with him,” I went on. “She was reading this book of yours last night in bed. Her name is Sue Crandall.”

“I don’t know her.”

“I’ve been told you do. She was here night before last.”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

“I think you would. You lent her this book, and you lent her Armistead’s Mercedes. What else did you lend her?”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“She got stoned on something and climbed the mast. What did you give her, Jerry?”

A shadow of fear crossed his face. He converted it into anger. His brown eyes became reddish and hot, as if there was fire behind them. “I thought you were fuzz,” he said in a stylized way. “Why don’t you go away?”

“I want to talk to you seriously. You’re in trouble.”

“Go to hell.”

He trotted away along the slip. His hairy head seemed enormous and grotesque on his boy’s body, like a papier-mâché saint’s head on a stick. I stood and watched him vault into the cockpit of the boat and go back to work on the motor.

The sun was almost down now. When it reached the water, the entire sea and sky seemed to ignite, burning red in a larger fire than Rattlesnake.

Before it got dark I went through the parking lot looking for Fritz Snow’s old Chevrolet sedan. I couldn’t find it, but I had a persistent feeling that it had to be in the neighborhood. I began to search along the boulevard which paralleled the shore.

The western sky lost its color like a face going suddenly pale. The light faded gradually from the air. It clung for a long time to the surface of the water, which stretched out like a faint and fallen sky.

I walked for several blocks without finding the old Chevrolet. Street lights came on, and the waterfront was bleakly lit by the neon signs of motels and hamburger joints. I crossed to one of the latter and had a double hamburger with a paper sack of French fried potatoes, and coffee. I ate and drank like a starved man, and remembered that I hadn’t eaten since morning.

When I turned away from the bright counter, it was almost fully dark. I glanced up at the mountains, and was shocked by what I saw. The fire had grown and spread as if it fed on darkness. It hung around the city like the bivouacs of a besieging army.

I took up my search for the Chevrolet again, working through the motel parking lots and up the side streets toward the railroad tracks. As soon as I left the boulevard, I was in a ghetto. Black and brown children were playing quiet games in the near-darkness. From the broken-down porches of the little houses, their mothers and grandmothers watched them and me.

I found Fritz Snow’s half-painted Chevrolet in a rutted lane behind a dusty oleander hedge. There was music leaking out of it. A small man in a baseball cap was sitting behind the wheel.

“What are you doing, friend?”

“Playing my organ.” He put a mouth organ to his lips again and played a few bars of wheezy blue music. I’m guilty, it seemed to say, but I’ve suffered enough – so have you.

“You play very well.”

“It’s a gift.”

He pointed skyward through the roof of the car. Then he blew a few more bars, and shook the spit out of his mouth organ. He smelled of wine.

“Is this your car?” I asked him.

“I’m watching it for a friend.”

I got in beside him. The key was in the ignition, and I took it. He gave me a glinting apprehensive look.

“My name is Archer. What’s your name?”

“Amos Johnstone. You got no right or reason to bust me. I’m really and truly watching it for a friend.”

“I’m not a cop. Is your friend a young woman with a little boy?”

“That’s her. She gave me a dollar – told me to sit in the car till she came back.”

“How long ago was that?”

“I dunno, I don’t carry a watch. Only thing I can swear to, it was today.”

“Before dark?”

He peered at the sky as if nightfall had taken him by surprise. “Must have been. I bought some wine with the dollar, and it’s gone.” He glanced around at me. “I could use another dollar.”

“Maybe we’ll get to that. Where did the young lady go?”

“Down the street.” He gestured in the direction of the marina.

“And she took the boy with her?”

“Yessir.”

“Was he all right?”

“He was scared.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He didn’t say a word to me. But he was shivering like a puppy.”

I gave the man a dollar and started back to the marina. He played me some farewell music which merged with the voices of the children playing in the dark.

There were a few scattered lights on the boats along the slips. A steadier, more brilliant light shone over the wire gate from the top of a metal pole. I took a quick look around and went over the gate, snagging one leg on the barbed wire across the top of it and coming down hard on my back on the slanting gangway. It shook me, and I stayed down for a minute.

My blood was beating in my ears and eyes as I approached the sloop. There was a light in the cabin, but no one on deck that I could see. In spite of the circumstances, there was something secret and sweet about the dark water, and something beautiful about the boat, like a corralled horse at night. I climbed over the railing into the cockpit. The mast towered up against the obscure sky.

There was a scuffling noise in the cabin. “Who’s that?” It was Jerry’s voice. He opened the hatchway and stuck out his head. His eyes were wide and glaring, and his open mouth was like a dark hole in his beard. He looked like Lazarus coming out of the tomb.

I reached for him, got hold of his body under the arms, lifted him up, and set him down hard in the cockpit on his back. He stayed down, as if he had hit his head. I felt a twinge of shame at hurting a boy.

I went down the ladder into the cabin, past a ship-to-shore radio and a chart table. On one of the two lower bunks a girl-shaped body was lying under a red blanket with only its blond hair showing, spilling like twisted gold across the pillow.

I pulled the blanket off her face. Her expression was queerly impassive. Her eyes looked at me from some other place, almost as if she was ready to die or perhaps already had.

Something besides her body was moving under the blanket. I stripped it off. She was holding the small boy against her, with one arm curled around his head and her hand over his mouth. He lay still beside her. Even his round blue eyes were perfectly still.

They flickered past me. I turned in the cramped space. Jerry was crouched on the ladder with a revolver held in both his hands.

“Get off this boat, you grungy pig.”

“Put the gun away. You’ll hurt somebody.”

“You,” he said. “Unless you get off here now. I’m in charge of this boat, and you’re trespassing.”

It was hard to take him seriously, but the gun helped. He waved it at me, and moved to one side. I climbed out past him, undecided whether I should try to take him or pass.

My indecision made me slow. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him shift the gun in his hands and swing it up by the barrel. I failed to avoid its fall. The scene spun away.