The Underground Man

chapter 25

I accompanied him into the lobby and waited while he went upstairs to his suite. Joy Rawlins was behind the desk, taking things out of a drawer and putting them into a leatherette case. She was heavy-eyed and sallow as if she had suffered a loss of blood.

“He fired me,” she said in a flat voice. “He gave me fifteen minutes to get out. And I’ve been here more than fifteen years. I built this place up for him.”

“I’m sure he’ll reconsider.”

“You don’t know Les. He’s been getting awfully high and mighty since he started to make real money. He’s got a God complex, and it’s growing on him. It was just his good luck that his daddy’s ranch was between Petro City and Vandenberg AFB. But Les thinks that he did it all himself. And now he thinks he can wipe other people out like that.” She made a slicing motion with her hand. Her hand was trembling. “I need this job. I’ve got a boy in school.”

“What reason did he give for firing you?”

“No reason. But you know why and so do I. I was supposed to hog-tie Susie or something. He puts the blame on me because he hasn’t the guts to put it where it belongs – on him and his wife. They were the ones that brought her up. I could tell you things about Susie’s mother–”

Her face froze in a look of surprise, as if she had heard herself. She stopped talking. I tried to get her started again:

“What’s Mrs. Crandall’s background, anyway?”

“Nothing much. Her father was in the construction trades – dry-wall installation – and they batted around the state when she was a kid. She was still no more than a kid when she married Lester. He plucked her right out of high school. He was already a middle-aged man.”

“I noticed the difference in ages. And I wondered why she married him.”

“She had to.”

“You mean she was pregnant? That’s common enough.”

“There was more to it than that – a good deal more. She was running with a wild gang from Santa Teresa, and they stole Les’s car. She could have gone to jail if he had wanted to prosecute. One of the others did.”

“Albert Sweetner?”

Her face closed. “You’ve been putting me on. You already know all this.”

“Not all of it. But I ran into Sweetner yesterday. How did you happen to know him?”

“I didn’t, really. Only he came here last week. I’ve got a good memory for faces, and I remembered him from the other time. He wanted to know where to find her.”

“Find Mrs. Crandall?”

“Both the Crandalls.”

“And you told him?”

“No, I didn’t. But their address is no secret. It’s in the L.A. phone directory.” She added virtuously: “I didn’t even tell him that.”

“You mentioned another time that he came here.”

Her eyes shifted to longer focus. “It was a long time ago, when he was just a young guy hitching through. I wasn’t so old myself them.”

“How long ago?”

“Let’s see, I was pretty new on the job. And Susan was just about three. It must have been fifteen years, at least.” She grimaced. “I should have stood at home this week. Whenever that man passes through, he stirs up trouble.”

“What did he stir up fifteen years ago?”

“I don’t know exactly. He wanted to talk to Les – I figured he was hitting him for a loan. But after he left, all hell broke loose around here. Les and his wife had a knock-down drag-out fight.”

“What was the fight about?”

“I don’t know – all I heard was the shouting. You’ll have to take it up with them yourself. Only don’t quote me. I’ve got to ask the son-of-a-gun for references.”

Crandall called me from the top of the stairs. I went up, lifted by a certain excitement. I was eager for a second look at Martha Crandall, against the background I had been filling in.

The suite was furnished in cheap luxury. She was sitting in an overstuffed chair with her legs crossed in front of her and thick new makeup on her face.

I was struck again by the beauty and grace of her body. No matter how she placed herself, it seemed to organize the room around her, as a light or a fire does. But her eyes were strained and cold. They looked at me through her mask of makeup as if she had had a bad night and I had been responsible for it.

She gave me her hand and held on as she said: “You’ve got to get Susie back for me. She’s been gone for three days now and I can’t stand it.”

“I’m doing my best.”

“Lester says she’s on her way to Sausalito. Is that right?”

“It’s a fairly good possibility. Anyway, I’m acting on it. You may be able to help me.”

“How?” She leaned toward me in an eager posture, but her eyes didn’t change. They seemed jaded, as if she was watching her life repeat itself. “I’ll do anything I can, I mean it.” Her voice was rougher, taking on the accent of her surroundings.

“Do you know Ellen Kilpatrick?”

Her glance caromed off her husband, and came back to me. “It’s strange you should ask me that. I was thinking of calling her.”

“Why?”

“She lives in Sausalito.”

“Under what name?”

“Ellen Storm. She’s an artist, she uses that name.”

“She calls herself an artist,” Crandall said. “But she’s a phony. She can’t even draw.”

His voice was choked, and his face reddened. I wondered if he had reason to be angry with Ellen, or if he had simply attached his general anger to her.

“Have you seen her work?” I said.

“I’ve seen a sample of it. She wrote us a letter in the summer offering to sell us a painting. So I sent her some money, and she sent back this painting.”

“Do you have it here?”

“I chucked it out. It was just a piece of junk – an excuse to ask me for money.”

“It was not,” his wife said. “She said she wanted to give us first chance.”

“Nobody was standing in line.”

I turned to her. “Have you seen Ellen recently?”

She glanced nervously at her husband. “She was my homeroom teacher. Isn’t that right, Les?”

He didn’t answer her. He seemed to be absorbed in his own glum thoughts.

“And she’s Jerry Kilpatrick’s mother,” I said. “Did you know that?”

“No.” She looked at her husband again and added after an embarrassed pause: “Not until I figured it out, I mean.”

Crandall moved between his wife and me, standing over her like a prosecutor. “Did you invite Jerry Kilpatrick to the house?”

“What if I did? It was a nice thing to do.”

“It was a lousy thing to do. You can see what’s come of it. Who put you up to it? Did she?”

“It’s none of your business. And don’t loom over me like that.”

Intent on their intramural game, they seemed to have forgotten me. Partly to break it up and partly because the question needed asking, I said to her:

“Was Albert Sweetner in your home room in high school?”

She sat very still and quiet for a time. Her husband was quiet, too, his eyes rather absent-looking as if he had been sandbagged by the past.

“It was a big class,” she said. “What was that name again?”

“Albert Sweetner.”

She uncrossed and recrossed her legs like soft and elegant scissors and looked up at her husband. “Don’t stare at me like that. How can I think with you staring at me?”

“I’m not staring.” He tried to remove his gaze from her, and couldn’t.

“Why don’t you go and have a drink?” she said. “I forget how to talk with you standing there staring.”

He put out his hand. Without quite touching her, it traced the contour of her head. “Take it easy now, Mother. We’ve got to stick together – you and me against the world.”

“Sure. Only give me a chance to think for a minute, will you? Go have a drink.”

He left the room slowly. I waited until I heard the click of the latch behind him, and his reluctant footsteps going downstairs.

“What are you trying to do?” the woman said. “Break up my marriage?”

“It seems to be slightly bent already.”

“That isn’t true. I’ve been a good wife to Lester, and he knows it. I’ve done my best to make up for any harm I did him in the past.”

“Such as stealing his car?”

“That was nearly twenty years ago. You’ve got your nerve raking it up, and throwing Albert Sweetner in my face.”

“I brought him up last night. Remember? You said you didn’t know him.”

“All you gave me was his first name. And I haven’t even seen him since high school.”

“Are you sure, Mrs. Crandall? He came here to your motor inn fifteen years ago.”

“A lot of people come to this place.”

“And just this week he took your daughter to another motel.”

She pushed the idea back with her hands. “Susan wouldn’t go with a man like that.”

“I’m afraid she did.”

She stood up in agitation. “What was he trying to do? Get back at me for turning him in?”

“You turned him in?”

“I had to. It was that or go to Juvenile Hall. But that was before Susie was even born.”

“Al wouldn’t forget it, though.”

“No. He wouldn’t forget it. He came here fifteen years ago like you said, to try and break up my marriage. That was right after he got out of Preston.”

“How did he try to break up your marriage?”

“He told my husband a lot of lies about me. I don’t want to go into what he said. In fact, I don’t know why I’m talking to you at all.”

“Al Sweetner was murdered last night.”

She looked at me in silence. Her eyes were frightened. Her body kept its feline confidence.

“I see. You think I killed him.”

I neither affirmed nor denied this. Her look grew chillier: “Susan? You think it was Susan?”

“She isn’t a suspect. I don’t have a logical suspect.”

“Then why did you throw it at me like that?”

“It’s something I thought you ought to know.”

“Thanks very much,” she said bitterly. “What was Al doing with my daughter, anyway?”

“Mainly, I think, he was trying to use her as a source of information. Al was on the run, and he came south looking for money. He was trying to finance a trip to Mexico.”

“Came south from where?”

“Sacramento. I think he stopped in Sausalito on the way.”

She stood in a listening attitude, like a woman hearing footsteps in a graveyard. “Did Ellen point him in our direction?”

“I don’t know what she did. But I’m reasonably certain he went to see her before he came south. He was after a reward which Stanley Broadhurst offered for her and his father.”

“What kind of a reward?”

“A thousand dollars cash. Al probably hoped to get more.” I produced my clipping of the ad, which was gradually wearing out. “This is Ellen, isn’t it?”

“Yes. That’s the way she used to look when she was teaching high school in Santa Teresa.”

“Have you seen her since those days?”

She was slow in answering the question. “I went to see her last month after we bought that picture from her. Please don’t mention this to Les – he doesn’t know about it. We were in San Francisco for the weekend, and I got away from him and drove across the bridge to Sausalito.” She added after a moment’s hesitation: “I took Susie with me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know – it seemed like a good idea. Ellen seemed to want to get in touch with me, and she did a lot for me when I was a young girl. If it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t even have lived all the way through my teens. And Susan was starting to show the same signs. She wasn’t ever a happy girl, but she was starting to get desperate. You know?”

I didn’t know, and said so. It was her first admission that something had been seriously wrong in Susan’s life.

“She was scared of other people, really scared, the way I used to be when I was a kid. And they were scared of her in a way – the other kids couldn’t figure what was bugging her. I knew, or I thought I knew, but I couldn’t talk about it.”

“Can you talk about it now?”

“I might as well. The whole thing’s going to pieces anyway.” She looked around the stuffy ornate room as if earthquake cracks were widening in the walls. “Les isn’t Susie’s father. He’s done his best to be a father to her, but it just didn’t get through to her. And I’ve felt funny about it, too – kind of embarrassed, you know? We’ve been sitting around like ninnies in our own house.”

“Who is Susan’s father?”

“It’s none of your business.” She regarded me levelly, without much heat. “It could be I don’t even know the answer to that. My life was pretty much of a mess at one time. That was when I was younger than Susan is now.”

“Was Fritz Snow her father?”

The woman’s eyes grew sharper. “I’m not answering any questions on that subject, so forget it. Anyway, you’re interrupting what I started out to tell you. I was worried about Susan, like I said, and I thought maybe Ellen would have some suggestions.”

“Did she?”

“Not really. She did a lot of talking, and Susan did a lot of listening. But I didn’t think too much of her ideas. She thought we should send Susan away and let other people look after her. Or turn her loose and let her look after herself. But you can’t do that. Young people need protection in this world.”

“What did Susan think about it?”

“She wanted to stay with Ellen. But it wouldn’t have been a good idea at all. Ellen’s changed since she was young. She lives in that creepy old house in the woods like some kind of a hermit.”

“No men?”

“Not that I saw. If you mean Leo Broadhurst, he’s long gone. The two of them didn’t stick together. It was one of those love affairs that only lasted as long as the wife was there to keep it hot.” She looked a little embarrassed by her knowledge.

“Where did he go?”

“Out of the country, she said.”

“You knew Leo before he left Santa Teresa, right?”

“I worked in his house, if you call that knowing him.”

“What kind of a man was he?”

“He was the kind of man that couldn’t keep his hands off women.”

She spoke with a certain rancor, and I said: “Did he ever make a pass at you?”

“Once. I hit him in his pretty face.” She looked at me defiantly, as if I had made a pass at her myself. “He kept his hot little hands to himself after that.”

Remembered anger surged up in her, and made her rosy. Perhaps it was tinged with some other passion. She was a more complex woman than had appeared at first meeting.

But I was eager to be on my way. I went downstairs and called Willie Mackey again. While I waited on the line, he looked up Ellen Storm in a Marin directory. She lived in a house on Haven Road on the outskirts of Sausalito. Willie said he would have her house watched until I got there.

I slipped out to my car without saying goodbye to either of the Crandalls. I didn’t want to have to take them along, with all the years of their lives dragging behind them.