The Underground Man

chapter 2

I walked past the closed door of the Wallers’ apartment and down the street to the nearest newsstand, where I bought the weekend edition of the Los Angeles Times. I lugged it home and spent most of the morning reading it. All of it, including the classified ads, which sometimes tell you more about Los Angeles than the news.

I had a cold shower. Then I sat down at the desk in my front room, looked at the balance in my checkbook, and paid the phone and light bills. Neither was overdue, and it made me feel dominant and controlled.

While I was putting my checks in envelopes, I heard a woman’s steps approaching the door.

“Mr. Archer?”

I opened the door. Her hair was up, and she had on a short stylish multicolored dress and white textured stockings. There was blue shadow on her eyelids and carmine lipstick on her mouth. Behind all this she looked tense and vulnerable.

“I don’t want to disturb you if you’re busy.”

“I’m not busy. Come in.”

She stepped into the room and gave it a sweeping glance which lit up its contents like radar blips, one thing after another, and made me realize that the furniture was rather worn. I closed the door behind her and pulled the chair out from the desk.

“Won’t you sit down?”

“Thank you.” But she remained standing. “There’s a fire in Santa Teresa. A forest fire. Did you know that?”

“No, but it’s fire weather.”

“According to the radio report it flared up quite near to Grandma Nell’s – to my mother-in-law’s estate. I’ve been trying to get her on the phone. Nobody answers. Ronny’s supposed to be there, and I’m terribly worried.”

“Why?”

She bit her lower lip and got a trace of lipstick on her teeth. “I don’t trust Stanley to look after him properly. I should never have let him take Ronny away.”

“Why did you?”

“I have no right to deprive Stanley of his son. And a boy needs his father’s companionship.”

“Not Stanley’s, in his present mood.”

She looked at me soberly and leaned toward me with one tentative hand extended. “Help me to get him back, Mr. Archer.”

“Ronny,” I said, “or Stanley?”

“Both of them. But it’s Ronny I’m most concerned about. The man on the radio said they may have to evacuate some of the houses. I don’t know what’s going on in Santa Teresa.”

She raised her hand to her forehead and covered her eyes. I led her to the chesterfield and persuaded her to sit down. Then I went out to the kitchen and rinsed a glass and filled it with water. Her throat vibrated as she drank. Her long white-stockinged dancer’s legs protruded into the shabby room as if from some more theatrical dimension.

I sat at the desk, half-turned to face her. “What’s your mother-in-law’s number?”

She gave it to me, with the area code, and I dialed direct. The phone at the other end buzzed urgently nine or ten times.

The gentle crash of the receiver being lifted took me by surprise. A woman’s voice said: “Yes?”

“Is that Mrs. Broadhurst?”

“Yes, it is.” Her voice was firm but polite.

“Stanley’s wife wants to talk to you. Hold on.”

I handed the receiver to the young woman, and she took my place at the desk. I went into the bedroom, closing the door behind me, and picked up the extension phone by my bed.

The older woman was saying: “I haven’t seen Stanley. Saturday is my Pink Lady day, as he well knows, and I just got back from the hospital.”

“Aren’t you expecting him?”

“Perhaps later in the day, Jean.”

“But he said he had a date with you this morning, that he had promised to take Ronny to see you.”

“Then I presume he will.” The older woman’s voice had become guarded and more precise. “I fail to see why it’s so important–”

“They left here hours ago,” Jean said. “And I understand there’s a fire in your neighborhood.”

“There is. It’s why I rushed home from the hospital. You’ll forgive me now if I say goodbye, Jean.”

She hung up, and so did I. When I went back into the living room, Jean was frowning at the receiver in her hand, as if it was a live thing which had died on her.

“Stan lied to me,” she said. “His mother was at the hospital all morning. He took that girl to an empty house.”

“Are you and Stanley breaking up?”

“I guess maybe we are. I don’t want to.”

“Who is the blond girl?”

She lifted the receiver in her hand and slammed it down rather violently. I felt as if she was hanging up on me.

“We won’t discuss it,” she said.

I changed the subject, slightly. “How long have you and Stanley been separated?”

“Just since yesterday. We’re not really separated. I thought if Stanley talked to his mother–” She paused.

“That she’d take your side? I wouldn’t count on it.”

She looked at me in some surprise. “Do you know Mrs. Broadhurst?”

“No. But I still wouldn’t count on it. Does Mrs. Broadhurst have money?”

“Am I – is it so obvious?”

“No. But there has to be a reason for everything. Your husband sort of used his mother’s name to get Ronny away from you.”

It sounded like an accusation, and she bowed her head under it. “Someone’s been talking to you about us.”

“You have.”

“But I didn’t say anything about Mrs. Broadhurst. Or the blond.”

“I thought you did.”

She went into deep thought. It sat prettily on her, softening the anxious angularity of her posture. “I know. Last night, after I called the Wallers in Tahoe, they called you and filled you in on me. What did Laura say, or was it Bob?”

“Nothing. They didn’t call me.”

“Then how do you know about the blond girl?”

“Isn’t there always a blond girl?”

“You’re putting me on,” she said in a younger voice. “And under the circumstances it isn’t very nice.”

“Okay. I saw her.” I realized as I spoke that I was volunteering as a witness – her witness – and my last hope or pretense of staying out of her life was being talked away. “She was in the car with them when they left here.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I would have stopped them.”

“How?”

“I don’t know how.” She looked at her hands. All of a sudden her face was disorganized by a rueful flash of humor. “I could carry a wife sign, I guess, or sit down in front of the car. Or write a letter to an astronaut.”

I interrupted her before she got hysterical. “At least he’s being open about it. And with the boy along, they’re not likely to do anything–” I let the sentence trail off.

She shook her lovely head. “I don’t know what they’re likely to do. The fact that they’re being so open, as you say, is one of the things that worries me. I think they’re both crazy. I mean it. He brought her home from the office last night, and asked her to stay for dinner without consulting me. She was high on something when she arrived, and pretty vague in her answers.”

“What kind of an office does Stanley have?”

“He works for an insurance firm in Northridge – that’s where we live. She doesn’t work in the office – I don’t mean that. She wouldn’t last a day. Possibly she’s a student at the college or even a high school student. She’s young enough.”

“How young?”

“She can’t be more than nineteen. That was one of the things that made me suspicious right off. According to Stanley, she was an old school friend who’d got in touch with him at the office. But he’s at least seven or eight years older than she is.”

“What was she high on?”

“I have no idea. But I didn’t like the things she said to Ronny. I didn’t like them at all. I asked Stanley to get rid of her. He refused. So I called Laura Waller – and came here.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have.”

“I know that now. I should have stayed in my own house and had it out with them. The trouble is, Stanley and I haven’t been close for a long time. He’s been wrapped up in his own concerns and completely uninterested in me. It sort of deprives a girl of any ground to stand on.”

“Did you want out of the marriage?”

She considered the question soberly. “It never occurred to me. But maybe I do. I’ll have to think about it.” She stood up, leaning like a model on my desk, with one hip out. “But not now, Mr. Archer. I have to go to Santa Teresa. Will you drive me there, and help me get Ronny back?”

“I’m a private detective. I do these things for a living.”

“Laura Waller told me. It’s why I asked you. And of course I expect to pay you.”

I opened the door and set the self-lock. “What else did Mrs. Waller tell you about me?”

She said with her bright disorganized smile: “That you were a lonely man.”