The Underground Man

chapter 27

The gravel in the driveway crackled under the tires of a heavy car. Ellen lifted her head. I went to the front door, with her following close behind me.

Martha Crandall was already on the veranda. Her face changed when she saw me.

“They haven’t come?”

“They never will if you don’t keep out of sight. This place is staked out.”

Ellen gave me a bright suspicious look. I asked her to go back inside and take Martha with her. Then I went down the steps to Lester Crandall’s new bronze Sedan de Ville.

He hadn’t moved from behind the wheel. “I told Mother it was a waste of time and energy. But she insisted on making the trip.” He surveyed the front of the house with a cold eye. “So this is where the famous Ellen lives. It’s practically falling down–”

I cut him short: “How about moving the car out of sight? Or slide over and let me.”

“You move it. I’m slightly pooped.”

He maneuvered his heavy body out from under the wheel and let me park the car behind the house. The elements of the case were coming together, and I felt crowded and excited. Perhaps I was subliminally aware of the noise of the second car.

When Lester Crandall and I went around to the front again, there was a figure at the foot of the driveway – an indeterminate bearded head surmounting a light triangle which looked like a warning sign. The figure was caught and drenched in approaching headlights. It was Jerry Kilpatrick, with one arm in a sling.

He must have recognized Crandall and me at the same time. He turned toward the moving headlights and called out: “Susie! Split!”

Her station wagon paused and went into reverse, backing up the road with a mounting roar of the engine. Jerry looked around uncertainly and ran stumbling out of the driveway into the arms of Willie Mackey and his large assistant Harold.

By the time I got to them, the station wagon was turning in the entrance to Haven Road, its headlights swiping like long paintbrushes at the tree trunks. It started off in the direction of San Francisco.

“I’ll phone the bridge,” Willie said.

I ran up the road to my car and followed the wagon. When I reached the near end of the bridge, traffic was beginning to line up in the right-hand lanes. The station wagon was standing empty at the head of the line.

I saw Susie out on the bridge, running hand in hand with the little boy toward the cable tower. A heavy man in patrolman’s uniform was jolting along some distance behind them.

I went after them, running as hard as I could. Susie looked back once. She let go of Ronny’s hand, moved to the railing, and went over. I thought for a sickening instant that she had taken the final plunge. Then I saw her light hair blowing above the railing.

The patrolman stopped before he got to her. The little boy loitered behind him, turning to me as I came up. He looked like an urchin, dirty-faced, in shorts and sweater that were too big for him.

He gave me a small embarrassed smile as if I had caught him doing something that he could be punished for, like playing hooky.

“Hello, Ronny.”

“Hello. Look at what Susie’s doing.”

She was holding on with both hands, leaning out against the gray night. Along the wall of clouds that rose behind her, lightning flickered and prowled like somebody trying to set fire to a building.

I got a firm grip on the boy’s cold hand and moved toward her. She stared at me without apparent recognition or interest, as if I belonged to a different race, the kind that lived past the age of twenty.

The patrolman turned to me: “You know her?”

“I know who she is. Her name is Susan Crandall.”

“I hear you talking about me,” she said. “Stop it or I’ll jump.”

The man in uniform backed away a few feet.

“Tell him to go further away,” she said to me.

I told him, and he did. She looked at us with more interest, as part of a scene responding to her will. Her face appeared to be frozen except for her wide roving eyes. Her voice was flat:

“What are you going to do with Ronny?”

“Take him back to his mother.”

“How do I know you will?”

“Ask Ronny. Ronny knows me.”

The boy lifted his voice: “He let me feed peanuts to his birds.”

“So you’re the one,” she said. “He’s been talking about it all day.”

She gave him a wan and patronizing smile, as if she herself had put off childish things. But with her white fingers clenching the railing, her hair blowing above it, she looked like half a child and half a bird perched over the long drop.

“What would you do to me if I came back over there?”

“Nothing.”

She said as if I hadn’t spoken: “Shoot me? Or send me to prison?”

“Neither of those things.”

“What would you do?” she repeated.

“Take you to a safer place.”

She shook her head gravely. “There is no safe place in this world.”

“A safer place, I said.”

“And what would you do to me there?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re a dirty filthy liar!”

She inclined her head to one side and looked down over her shoulder, into the depth of my lying and the terrible depth of her rage.

Toward the San Francisco end of the bridge, the tow truck that carried the roving patrol came into view. I made a pushing signal with both hands, and the patrolman repeated it. The truck slowed down and stopped.

“Come back, Susie,” I said.

“Yeah,” Ronny said. “Come back. I’m afraid you’ll fall.”

“I’ve already fallen,” she said bitterly. “I’ve got no place to go.”

“I’ll take you to your mother.”

“I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to live with those two ever again.”

“Tell them that,” I said. “You’re old enough to live with other people. You don’t have to stay over there to prove it.”

“I like it over here.” But after a moment she said: “What other people?”

“The world is full of them.”

“But I’m afraid.”

“After what you’ve been through, you’re still afraid?”

She nodded. Then she looked down once more. I was afraid I’d lost her.

But she was saying goodbye to the long drop. She climbed back over the railing and rested against it, breathing quickly and lightly. The little boy moved toward her, pulling me along by the hand, and took her hand.

We walked back to the head of the bridge, where Willie Mackey and his assistant were talking to some local officers. Willie appeared to have some clout with them. They took our names, asked a few pointed questions, and let us go.