The Underground Man

chapter 24

I hadn’t eaten for seven or eight hours. I went into the restaurant-bar from which the music emanated and hung my hat on the brass-studded tip of a mounted longhorn.

While my steak was being grilled, I shut myself up in a phone booth and put in another call to Willie Mackey.

Willie answered the phone himself. “Mackey Services.”

“This is Archer. Have you put your finger on Ellen?”

“Not yet, but I’ve traced the dog.”

“The dog?”

“The Great Dane,” Willie said impatiently. “He was lost all right. I’ve been in touch with the owner, who lives outside Mill Valley. He advertised for his dog last week, and somebody found it in Sausalito. That’s a long way from the Peninsula, Lew.”

“My informant was an acid freak, I think.”

“I was wondering,” Willie said. “Anyway, I have a man over in Sausalito now. You know Harold.”

“Can you contact him?”

“I should be able to. He has one of the radio cars.”

“Tell him to watch for a blue Chevy station wagon with three young people in it.” I gave him their names and descriptions, and the license number of the car.

“What is Harold supposed to do if he sees them?”

“Stay with them. Get the little boy, if he can do it without endangering him.”

“I better get over to Marin County myself,” Willie said. “You didn’t tell me this was a snatch.”

“It isn’t an ordinary one.”

“Then what are these people up to?”

I had no ready answer. After a moment I said:

“The little boy’s father was murdered yesterday. He was probably a witness to the killing.”

“The other two did it?”

“I don’t know.” I felt a growing ambivalence about Susan and Jerry – I wanted to end their wild flight, not only for the child’s sake but for their own. “We have to go on that assumption, though.”

I went back into the restaurant. My steak was ready, and I washed it down with draft beer. Behind the semi-elliptical bar four cowboys who had never been near a cow sang western songs which sounded as if they had originated in the far east.

I ordered a second beer and looked around the place. It was a noisy mixture of the real west and the imitation west. The mixture included cowboys both dude and actual, off-duty servicemen with their wives and girls, tourists, oil-workers wearing high-heeled boots like the cowboys, a few men in business suits with wide ties and narrow sun-crinkled eyes.

Some of the eyes seemed to brighten like electronic sensors when Lester Crandall came in from the lobby. Electronic money sensors. He paused in the doorway, looking around the room. I raised my hand. He came over and shook it.

“You’re Archer, aren’t you? How did you get here so fast?”

I told him, watching his face as I talked. His reactions seemed dull and sluggish, as if he hadn’t slept the night before. Still he seemed more at home in his motor inn than in his big house in the Palisades.

The waitresses had sprung to attention when he entered, and one of them came to the table:

“Can I get you anything, Mr. Crandall?”

“Bourbon. You know my brand. And hold Mr. Archer’s check.”

“That isn’t necessary,” I said. “But thanks.”

“My pleasure.” He bent forward, regarding me through puffed eyelids. “If you’ve told me and I’ve forgotten, please excuse me. I’m a little slow today. It still isn’t clear to me what your interest is.”

“I’m working for Mrs. Stanley Broadhurst. I’m trying to get her boy back before he’s hurt – and before she goes off the deep end.”

“I’m pretty close to the deep end myself.” He took hold of my wrist with his work-scarred hand in a sudden gesture of intimacy. Just as suddenly, he let go. “But let me set your mind at rest about one thing. My Susan isn’t the kind of girl who would hurt a little boy.”

“Perhaps not intentionally. But she’s exposing him to danger. It’s a wonder he wasn’t drowned today.”

“That’s what Mrs. Rawlins said. I wish she’d had the intestinal fortitude to keep them here. She said she would.”

“It wasn’t her fault she couldn’t. Didn’t you tell her not to call in the police?”

Crandall gave me a look of unguarded cold anger. “I know the police in this part of the world. I was born and brought up here. They shoot first and ask questions afterwards. I’m not turning them loose on my young daughter.”

I couldn’t help agreeing with him. “We won’t argue. Anyway, they’re well on their way to the Bay area by now.”

“Where in the Bay area?”

“Probably Sausalito.”

He clenched his fists and shook them as if he had dice in both hands. “Why aren’t you after them?”

“I thought you might say something useful.”

His eyes were still stained with anger. “Is that a crack?”

“It’s the truth. Why don’t you calm down? A friend of mine in San Francisco will be looking out for them.”

“A friend of yours?”

“A private detective named Willie Mackey.”

“What’s he going to do with them if he catches them?”

“Use his good judgment. Take the boy away from them if he can.”

“That sounds dangerous to me. What about my daughter?”

“It’s a dangerous life she’s chosen.”

“Don’t give me that. I want her protected, you understand?”

“Then protect her.”

He gave me a dreary look. The waitress came running with his drink, smiling desperately in an effort to counteract the boss’s mood. The drink was more effective than her smile. It heightened his color and made his eyes glisten with moisture. Even his sideburns seemed to take on a bristling new life of their own.

“It’s not my fault,” he said. “I gave her everything a girl could want. It’s Jerry Kilpatrick’s fault. He took an innocent girl and corrupted her.”

“Somebody did.”

“You mean it wasn’t him?”

“I mean he wasn’t the only one. One day last week – I think it was probably Thursday – she paid a visit to the Star Motel.”

“The one on the coast highway? Susie wouldn’t go there.”

“She was seen there. She spent some time with an escaped convict named Albert Sweetner. Does the name mean anything to you?”

“No, it doesn’t, and neither does the rest of your story. I just plain don’t believe it.” But his face was adjusting to it like an old fighter’s who had taken a lot of punishment and expected to have to take more. “Why are you telling me this?”

“You need to do some thinking, and a man can’t think without the facts. Al Sweetner was murdered Saturday night.”

“And you’re accusing Susan?”

“No. She was probably out at sea when it happened. I’m trying to get across to you the kind of trouble she’s in.”

“I know she’s in bad trouble.” He rested his folded arms on the table and looked at me over them like a man behind a barricade. “What can I do to get her out of it? I’ve been running around in circles since she left home. But she keeps on moving away out of my reach.”

He was silent for a minute. His gaze moved past me and grew distant as if he was watching his daughter slip away over a receding horizon. I had no children, but I had given up envying people who had.

“Have you any idea what she’s running from?”

He shook his head. “We gave her everything. I thought she was okay. But something happened – I don’t know what.”

He moved his head obtusely from side to side, groping for his daughter in a kind of blind man’s buff. It filled me with a tedious sorrow, perhaps not unlike his own.

I pushed back my chair and stood up. “Thanks for the steak.”

Crandall stood up facing me, shorter, wider, older, sadder, richer.

“Where are you going, Mr. Archer?”

“Sausalito.”

“Take Mother and I with you.”

“Mother?”

“Mrs. Crandall.” He was one of those men who seldom referred to their wives by their Christian names.

“I didn’t know you had her along.”

“She’s freshening up in the suite. But we can be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. I’ll pay all expenses. In fact,” he added, “let’s not beat around the bush – I want to buy your services.”

“I already have a client. But I’d like to talk to Mrs. Crandall.”

“Of course. Why not?”

I put down a dollar tip. Crandall picked up the bill, rolled it carefully, and, rising on his toes, tucked it into my outside breast pocket.

“Your money is no good in my place.”

“This is for the waitress.”

I unrolled the dollar bill and put it back on the table. Crandall started to get angry, and then decided not to let himself. He wanted me to take Mother and him along.