The Underground Man

chapter 29

Her parents were waiting in front of the twin-towered house. Susan got out of my car and went toward them, feet dragging, head down. Her mother took her in her arms and called her pet names. Their warm coming together gave me a flicker of hope for both of them.

Lester Crandall stood off to one side, looking shut out. He moved toward me with an uncertain light in his eye, an uncertain gait, as if the world was moving away from under him and I was the one who had set it spinning.

“Your sidekick”– he gestured toward the house, and I assumed he meant Willie –“your sidekick told me you talked her in off the bridge. I’m very grateful to you.”

“I’m glad I reached her in time. Why don’t you say something to her, Mr. Crandall?”

He stole a sideways look at her. “I wouldn’t know what to say.”

“Tell her you’re glad she didn’t kill herself.”

He shook the idea off. “I wouldn’t dignify it. She had to be faking.”

“She wasn’t. She’s attempted suicide twice in the last four days. It won’t be safe to take her home unless you get her proper medical care.”

He turned to look at the two women, who were moving across the veranda into the house. “Susie didn’t get hurt, did she?”

“She’s physically and mentally hurt. She’s been drugged and raped. She’s witnessed at least one murder and possibly two. You can’t expect her to handle these things without psychiatric help.”

“Who raped her, for God’s sake?”

“Albert Sweetner.”

Crandall became very still. I sensed the core of force in his aging body. “I’ll kill the dirty son.”

“He’s already dead. Maybe you knew that.”

“No.”

“You haven’t seen him in the past few days?”

“I only saw him once in my life. That was about eighteen years ago, when they sent him up to Preston for stealing my car. I was a witness at the trial.”

“I heard he paid a visit to the Yucca Tree Inn the summer he got out of Preston. Don’t you remember?”

“All right, I saw him twice. What does that prove?”

“You can tell me what happened.”

“You know what happened,” he said, “or you wouldn’t be bringing it up. He tried to wreck my marriage. He probably spent his three years in Preston figuring out how to do it. He said he was Susie’s father, and he was going to make a legal claim to her. I beat him up.” He struck the palm of his left hand with his right fist, more than once. “I hit Martha, too. And she took Susie and left me. I don’t blame her. She didn’t come back for a long time after that.”

“Did she go with Albert Sweetner?”

“I don’t know. She never told me. I thought I was never going to see Susie or her again. It was like my life had gone to pieces. Now it’s gone to pieces for sure.”

“You have a chance to put it back together. You’re the only one who can.”

His eyes caught my meaning and held it. But he said: “I don’t know, Archer. I’m getting old – I’ll be sixty on my next birthday. I shouldn’t have taken on the two of them in the first place.”

“Who else would have?”

He answered me emphatically. “Plenty of men would have married Martha. She was a raving beauty. She still is.”

“We won’t argue about that. Have you thought about where you’re going to spend the night?”

“I thought we’d drive back as far as the Yucca Tree. I’m pretty worn out myself, but Martha always seems to have something left.”

“And tomorrow?”

“Back to the Palisades. One thing, it’s handy to the Medical Center. I thought I’d take her in there and have her checked,” he said, as if it was entirely his own idea.

“Do that, Lester. And take good care of her. She witnessed a murder yesterday, as I said, and the murderer may try to silence her.” I told him about the bearded man and the false hair I had found on Al Sweetner’s body.

“Does that mean Sweetner did the Broadhurst killing?”

“Whoever did it wants us to think so. But it’s hardly possible. I saw Sweetner in Northridge around the time that Stanley Broadhurst was killed.” I hesitated. “Where were you about that time, by the way?”

“Somewhere in Los Angeles, looking for Susie.”

I didn’t ask him if he could prove it. Perhaps in recognition of this, he got out his wallet and offered me several hundred-dollar bills. But I didn’t want to take anything from him or owe him anything before the case was ended.

“Put your money away,” I said.

“Don’t you like money?”

“I may send you a bill when this thing is over.”

I went inside. Willie Mackey was sitting in the front hall with Ronny on his knee. He was telling the boy about an old con he had known who had tried to swim ashore from Alcatraz.

I found Martha Crandall and her daughter in the front room. They were sitting side by side in the bay window, their pretty blonde heads close together.

An hour or so ago the big old house had been as quiet as a hermitage. Now it seemed more like a family service agency. I was hoping that the whole thing wouldn’t blow up in my face.

Deciding to risk it, I caught Martha Crandall’s eye and beckoned her over to my side of the room.

“What is it?” she said impatiently, with a backward look at Susan. “I hate to leave her.”

“You may have to, though.”

She looked at me in dismay. “You mean you’re going to put her away?”

“You may decide to, temporarily. She’s got a lot on her mind, and she’s suicidal.”

The woman’s shoulders made a heavy movement which was meant to be lighter. “That was just a grandstand play, she says so herself.”

“So are a lot of successful suicides. Nobody knows where the grandstanding leaves off and the thing turns dead serious. Anyone who even threatens suicide needs counseling.”

“That’s what I’m trying to give her. Counseling.”

“I mean professional counseling, from a psychiatrist. I’ve discussed this with your husband, and he says he’ll take her to the Medical Center tomorrow. But you’re the one who will have to carry the ball and follow through. It might be a good idea if you talked to the shrinks together.”

She seemed appalled. “Am I such a rotten mother?”

“I didn’t say that. But I don’t think you’ve ever leveled with her, have you?”

“What about?”

“Your own bad times.”

“I couldn’t,” she said with vehemence.

“Why not?”

“I’d be ashamed.”

“Let her know you’re human, anyway.”

“I am that,” she said. “All right, I’ll do it.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Sure it is. I love her, you know. Susie’s my little girl. Not so little any more, either.”

She turned back toward her daughter, but I stopped her and led her into the furthest corner of the room. Ellen’s canvases hung along the wall like imperfectly remembered hallucinations.

She said: “What else do you want from me?”

“A few words of truth. I want to know what happened fifteen years ago, when Albert Sweetner visited the Yucca Tree.”

She looked at me as if I’d slapped her. “This is a lousy time to bring that up.”

“It’s the only time we have. I understand you left your husband. What happened after that?”

The woman pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “Has Lester been talking?”

“Some. But not enough. He knows you walked out on him and took Susan along. And he knows you came back eventually. But he doesn’t know what happened in between.”

“Nothing happened. I thought it through and changed my mind, that’s all. Anyway, this is strictly my private business.”

“Maybe it would be if you’d kept it strictly private. But other people got mixed up in it. One of them was Susan, and she was old enough to remember.”

Martha Crandall looked at her daughter with guilty curiosity. The girl said:

“You’re talking about me, aren’t you? It isn’t very nice.”

Her tone was quite impersonal and remote. She sat very still in the embrasure like an actress forbidden to step out through the proscenium into the welter of reality. Her mother shook her head at her, and then at me.

“I can’t take this. And I don’t have to,” she said.

“What do you propose to do? Let Susan work it out for herself without any help from you?”

Martha hung her head like a naughty child. “Nobody ever helped me.”

“Maybe I can help you, Mrs. Crandall. Al Sweetner told your husband that he was Susan’s father. But I don’t think he could have been. Not even an Al Sweetner would force his own daughter.”

“Who told you he did that?”

“Susan told me.”

“Do we have to talk about these things?” Her look was reproachful, as if I’d made them real by naming them.

“If Susan could, we can.”

“When did you talk to her?”

“Between the bridge and here.”

“You had no right–”

“The hell I didn’t. She’s been under terrible pressure. She had to let it out some way.”

“Pressure from what?”

“Too many deaths,” I said. “Too many memories.”

Her eyes widened like lenses, as if they were trying to pick up faint light from the past. But all I could see in their centers was my own head reflected in miniature, twice.

“What did Susan tell you?” she said.

“Not very much. She really didn’t intend to tell me anything, but the memories forced their way out. Wasn’t she with you in the Mountain House one night in the summer of 1955?”

“I don’t know what night you’re talking about.”

“The night Leo Broadhurst was shot.”

Her fringed eyelids came down over her eyes. She swayed a little, as if the memory of the shot had wounded her. I held her upright, and felt the warmth of her living flesh on my hands.

“Does Susan remember? How could she? She was only three.”

“She remembers enough. Too much. Was Broadhurst killed?”

“I don’t know. I ran away and left him in the cabin. I was drunk, and I couldn’t get his car to start. But it was gone in the morning, and so was he.”

“What kind of a car was it?”

“A Porsche. A little red Porsche. It wouldn’t start, so I ran away on foot. I forgot all about Susan. I don’t even remember where I went.” She moved away from my hands as if they carried the contagion of that night. “What happened to Susie?”

“Didn’t you go back for her?”

“I did in the morning. I found her asleep in the loft. How could she remember the shooting if she was asleep in the loft?”

“She was awake when it happened, and in the room. She didn’t make it up.”

“Is Leo dead?”

“I think so.”

Martha looked at her daughter, and I turned to look. The girl was watching us intently, less like an actress now than a spectator. Our voices were too low for her to hear, but she seemed to know what we were talking about.

“Does she remember who shot him?” her mother said.

“No. Do you?”

“I never saw who it was. Leo and I were making love, and I was drunk–”

“Didn’t you hear the shot?”

“I guess I did, but I didn’t believe it. You know? I didn’t know he was hurt until I tasted the blood on his face.” Her tongue moved over her lips. “God, what you’re dragging out of me. I thought I’d blanked out on that night. It was the worst night of my life, and I thought that it was going to be the best. We were going to go away, all three of us, and start a new life together in Hawaii. Leo bought the tickets that same day.”

“Was he Susan’s father?”

“I think so. I’ve always thought so. That’s why I went back to him when Lester threw me out. He was the first man I ever let touch me.”

“It wasn’t Al Sweetner? Or Fritz Snow?”

She shook her head rather fiercely. “I was already pregnant when I went to L.A. with them. That was why I went.”

“And you let them take the rap.”

“Leo had a lot to lose. What did they have to lose?”

“Their whole lives.”

She lifted her hands as though to examine them for dirt or scars. A darkness and sadness had risen in her eyes. She ducked her head and hid her face in her hands.

Susan stepped out of her niche as if a spell had broken, and came toward us. Her face was unnaturally bright, like a radiant substance with a short half-life.

“You’re making my mother cry.”

“It won’t do her any harm. She’s human like the rest of us.”

The girl looked at the woman in faint surprise.