The Underground Man

chapter 17

Kilpatrick was standing inside the wire gate. He looked at me like a suspect waiting to be released.

“Armistead’s bitter, isn’t he? He’ll throw the book at Jerry.”

“That I doubt. He’s more let down than angry.”

“I’m the one that’s really let down,” Kilpatrick said competitively.

I changed the subject. “Do you know where Sheriff Tremaine is this morning?”

“I know where he was an hour ago – at the main fire camp on the college grounds.”

Kilpatrick volunteered to take me up there. Driving a new black Cadillac, he led me in my not-so-recent Ford to the eastern edge of the city and onto a county road which climbed into the foothills through areas where the fire had been and gone. Just before we reached the campus, we passed a walled Forest Service compound where tanker trucks and tractors were being repaired.

We were stopped at double iron gates which stood open between iron gateposts. A brass sign was bolted to one post: Santa Teresa College. The ranger who stopped us knew Kilpatrick and told us to drive on through – the sheriff was on the athletic field with the fire boss. Joe Kelsey, whom I also asked him about, had passed that way not long before in a deputy coroner’s truck.

Kilpatrick and I parked behind the bleachers that overlooked the athletic field. Before I left my car I got the green-covered book out of the trunk and put it in my jacket pocket. We made our way among official cars and trucks that had assembled from all over Southern California, from the Tehachapis in the north to the Mexican border.

The athletic field resembled a staging area just back of the lines in a major battle. On the grass oval inside the cinder track, bubble copters were landing and taking off with reinforcements.

Undisturbed by their din, smoke-jumpers lay on the grass with their closed and soot-blurred faces to the sky. There were men of every color there – Indians and blacks and weathered whites – hard-nosed, stoic, working stiffs with nothing to lose but their bedrolls and their lives.

We found Sheriff Tremaine in the main command post, which was a plain gray Forest Service trailer. The sheriff-coroner was a big-bellied man wearing a tan uniform and a Stetson. The flesh of his face hung in folds like a bloodhound’s dewlaps and made his smile a strange and complex thing. He gave Kilpatrick an old-fashioned politician’s handshake, with his left hand on the elbow as he pumped.

“What can I do for you, Brian?”

Kilpatrick cleared his throat. His voice came out tinny and uncertain. “My son Jerry’s in a spot of trouble. He’s taken Roger Armistead’s sloop and gone to sea with a girl.”

The Sheriff smiled his complicated smile. “It doesn’t sound so serious. He’ll come back.”

“I was hoping you could alert the people up and down the coast.”

“Maybe if there were two of me. Take it up with the men at the courthouse, Brian. We’re planning to move base within twenty-four hours. And on top of everything else, I hear we’ve got a dead man on our hands.”

“Stanley Broadhurst?” I said.

“Yessir. Do you know him?”

“I was with Joe Kelsey when his body was found. The girl that Mr. Kilpatrick is talking about is a material witness in that killing. And she and Jerry have Stanley Broadhurst’s son with them.”

Tremaine became more attentive, but he seemed too tired to react fully. “What do the two of you want me to do?”

“Put out an all-points alarm, as Kilpatrick suggested, with emphasis on the coastal cities and seaports. The missing boat is a sloop named ‘Ariadne’.” I spelled it out. “Do you have an aero-squadron?”

“I have, but the volunteer pilots are up to their necks.”

“You could detach one plane and send it out to the islands. They may have anchored out there.” From where I stood I could see the islands, embossed on the slanting sea.

“I’ll consider it,” the sheriff said. “If there’s anything else, you can take it up with Joe Kelsey. He has the full cooperation of my office.”

“There’s one other thing, sheriff.”

He bowed his head in weary patience. I produced the green-covered book and got out Stanley Broadhurst’s ad from the San Francisco Chronicle.

The sheriff took the clipping in his hands and studied it. Kilpatrick moved to his shoulder and looked at it, too. The two men lifted their eyes at the same time and exchanged a glance of dubious recognition.

“The man is Leo Broadhurst, of course,” the sheriff said. “Who’s the woman, Brian? Your eyes are better than mine.”

Kilpatrick swallowed. “My wife,” he said. “My ex-wife, that is.”

“I thought it was Ellen. Where is she now?”

“I have no idea.”

The sheriff handed the clipping back to me. “Is this connected with Stanley Broadhurst’s death?”

“I think so.”

I started to tell Tremaine something about the background of the case, and the dead man Al. He waved me into silence. “Take it up with somebody else. Take it up with Kelsey. Will you do me that favor, both of you? The fire boss expects to be out of here before noon tomorrow, and I’m helping him plan the move.”

“Where are you moving to?” Kilpatrick said.

“Buckhorn Meadow, about sixteen miles east of here.”

“Does that mean that the city is out of danger?”

“I think it should be by tomorrow, anyway. But the worst is yet to come.” He looked up at the bare black slope of the mountain above us. “The first real rain, and we’ll all be drowning in mud.”

The sheriff opened the door of the trailer. As he levered his bulk through the narrow opening, I caught a glimpse of a tall man in a Forest Service jacket bowed over a map. He had a graying Scandinavian head, and he looked like a Viking trying to navigate a sea of land.

I turned to Kilpatrick. “You didn’t tell me Leo Broadhurst ran away with your wife.”

“I told you last night she left me. I don’t usually bare my bosom to strangers.”

“Is she still with Broadhurst?”

“I wouldn’t know about that. They don’t report to me.”

“Did you divorce her?”

“She divorced me soon after she left here.”

“And married him?”

“I assume so. They didn’t send me a wedding invitation.”

“Where did she divorce you?”

“In Nevada.”

“Where is she now – in the Bay area?”

“I haven’t the slightest notion where she is. Now if you don’t mind we’ll change the subject.”

But he couldn’t leave it alone. Anger or some other emotion was running through him in a gross vibration which made his voice tremble.

“That was a dirty trick you pulled on me just now, showing that picture to Sheriff Tremaine.”

“What was dirty about it?”

“It put me on the spot in front of him. You could at least have brought it up in private. You didn’t have to shoot me down in public.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was your wife.”

He gave me a look of disbelief so naked that it made me question myself. Perhaps I had had a hunch just below the level of consciousness.

“Let me have another look at that picture,” he said.

I handed him the clipping. He stood and examined it, oblivious of the action around him and the clatter of helicopters overhead, like a man on the rim of the present peering down into the deep past. When he looked up, his face had been changed by it. It seemed older and more defensive.

He gave me back the clipping. “Where did you get this? From Jerry?”

“No.”

“Did Stanley Broadhurst put that ad in the Chronicle?”

“Apparently,” I said. “Have you seen it before?”

“I may have. I don’t remember if I did.”

“Then how would you know it was printed in the Chronicle?”

He answered smoothly: “I simply took it for granted. The styling looks like the Chronicle.” After a moment’s intense thought, he added: “San Francisco is mentioned in the text.”

It was too good an answer, but I let it pass. “What made you ask if I got the ad from your son Jerry?”

“It was just a thought,” he said with a one-sided grimace. “Jerry’s been very much on my mind, and I happen to know he reads the Chronicle. He thinks San Francisco is the center of the known world.”

“Did Jerry see a copy of this ad?”

“He may have. How would I know?”

“I think you do know, Kilpatrick.”

“I don’t give a damn what you think.”

He brought up his clenched fist, ready to swing at me. I got ready to block it. He pulled his fist in to his chest and looked down at it as if it was a small animal which had momentarily got out of control. Then he turned abruptly and went behind the bleachers, moving in hurried uncertainty as if he was going to be sick.

I went after him at a little distance. He was leaning against a supporting post with his head hanging. The look I surprised on his face was one of terrible disappointment.

He straightened up and put on an expression of weary patience which fitted the lines of his face. “You’re giving me a hard time,” he said to me. “Why?”

“You’re a hard man to get information from.”

“Really? I’ve practically told you my life story. It isn’t all that interesting.”

“I think it is. You’ve as good as admitted that Jerry saw a copy of this ad. It could explain a number of things.”

“I’m not admitting anything, but give me a for-instance.”

“He may have got in touch with Stanley Broadhurst and helped to stir him up.”

“Stanley didn’t need any stirring up. He’s been hipped on this subject for years. He never forgave his father for leaving him and his mother.”

“Did you ever discuss it with Stanley?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Did you tell him that your wife ran off with his father?”

“I didn’t have to. He knew it very well. Everyone knew it.”

“Who do you mean by ‘everyone’?”

“All the people concerned. The affair was no great secret in town, but at least most people have forgotten it by now.” Kilpatrick was beginning to look sick again. “Couldn’t we forget it, too? It isn’t my favorite subject.”

“How does Jerry feel about it?”

“He blames me – I told you that. It suits him to believe that his mother left me because I deserved it.”

“Has he ever visited her?”

“Not to my knowledge. You don’t quite understand the situation. Ellen left me fifteen years ago and cut off all contact. The last word I had from her was her divorce notice, and that came from her lawyer in Reno.”

“What was the lawyer’s name?”

“I couldn’t tell you at this late date.”

I got out the green-covered book again, opened it to the flyleaf, and showed Kilpatrick the bookplate with the peacock-plume engraving.

“Ellen Strome was your ex-wife’s maiden name, I gather.”

“Yes.”

“If Jerry hasn’t seen her, where did he get this book?”

“She left it in the house. She left a lot of her things behind.”

“Why did she go so abruptly?”

“It wasn’t so abrupt. I saw it coming. She didn’t really like me, and she didn’t like my business. I was just another real estate salesman in those days. She didn’t approve of my seven-day week, with the phone ringing all the time and having to be nice to little old ladies from Dubuque. Ellen wanted something more refined. More romantic.” His voice was laced with sarcasm and regret.

“Is that what Leo Broadhurst was – romantic?”

“I wouldn’t know, I’m not a woman. Broadhurst didn’t come in on my wave-length that way.”

“How did he come in?”

“He went for women the way some men go deer-hunting – pitting his skills, you know? Ellen shouldn’t have taken him so seriously. Neither should his son Stanley. But I think maybe Stanley was trying to convince himself that there was some deep significance to his father’s affair. He wanted to find his father and get an explanation out of him.”

“Who killed Stanley?”

Kilpatrick lifted his heavy shoulders and let them drop. “Who knows? I doubt that the murder’s connected with that old business.”

“It almost has to be,” I said.

Kilpatrick looked at me levelly. A kind of angry brotherhood had been growing between us. It was partly based on the fact, which he didn’t know, that my wife had walked out on me and sent me divorce papers through a lawyer. And partly that we were two middle-aging men, and three young people had slipped away over the curve of the world.

“Okay,” he said. “Jerry saw the ad in the Chronicle. That was around the end of June. He recognized his mother from her pictures, and he seemed to think I should do something about it. I told him he was simply making trouble for himself. It was his mother’s choice to walk out on us. We couldn’t do anything now but try to forget it.”

“What was his reaction?”

“He walked out on me, too. But you know all this.” Kilpatrick seemed to be losing interest in his own life.