The Underground Man

chapter 35

I dropped them off at a downtown restaurant and drove back through the ghetto to Mrs. Snow’s house. Brown water was running in the road in front of it. I parked on the blacktop driveway behind her old white Rambler and locked my car.

Mrs. Snow opened the front door before I could knock. She looked past me into rain as if there might be other men behind me.

“Where’s Fritz?” I said.

“He’s in his room. But I can do any talking that needs to be done. I always have – I guess I always will.”

“He’ll have to do his own talking, Mrs. Snow.”

I went past her into the kitchen and opened the door of her son’s room. He was crouched on the iron bed, hiding part of his face with his hands.

He was a helpless foolish man, and I hated what I had to do. A trial would make a public show of him. In prison he would be the bottom man, as his mother feared. I could feel her anxious presence close behind me.

I said to him: “Did you buy a wig a month or so ago? A wig and a beard and a mustache?”

He dropped his hands away from his face. “Maybe I did.”

“I happen to know you did.”

“Then what are you asking me for?”

“I want to know why you bought those things.”

“To make my hair look long. And to cover this.” He lifted his right forefinger to his scarred upper lip. “The girls won’t let me kiss them. I only kissed a girl once in my life.”

“Martha?”

“Yeah. She let me do it to her. But that was a long time ago, about sixteen or eighteen years. I read about these wigs and stuff in a movie magazine, so I went down to Hollywood and bought an outfit. I wanted to chase the chicks on Sunset Strip. And be a swinger.”

“Did you catch any?”

He shook his doleful head. “I only got to go the once. She doesn’t want me to have a girlfriend.”

His gaze moved past me to his mother.

“I’m your girlfriend,” she said brightly. “And you’re my boyfriend.” She smiled and winked. There were tears in her eyes.

I said: “What happened to your wig, Fritz?”

“I don’t know. I hid it under my mattress. But somebody took it.”

His mother said: “Albert Sweetner must have taken it. He was in the house last week.”

“It was gone long before last week. It was gone about a month ago. I only got to chase the chicks the once.”

“Are you sure about that?” I said.

“Yessir.”

“You didn’t drive down to Northridge Saturday night and put it on Albert’s head?”

“No sir.”

“Or wear it up the mountain Saturday morning – when you knifed Stanley Broadhurst?”

“I liked Stanley. Why would I knife him?”

“Because he was digging up his father’s body. Didn’t you kill his father, too?”

He shook his head violently, like a mop. His mother said: “Don’t, Fritz. You’ll do yourself an injury.”

He stayed with his head hanging, as if he had broken his neck. After a time he spoke again: “I buried Mr. Broadhurst – I told you that. But I never killed him. I never killed none of them.”

“Any of them,” Mrs. Snow said. “You never killed any of them.”

“I never killed any of them,” he repeated. “I didn’t kill Mr. Broadhurst, or Stanley, or–” He lifted his head. “Who was the other one?”

“Albert Sweetner.”

“I didn’t kill him, neither.”

“Either,” his mother said.

I turned to her. “Let him do his own talking, please.”

The sharpness in my voice seemed to encourage her son: “Yeah. Let me do my own talking.”

“I’m only trying to help,” she said.

“Yeah. Sure.” But there was a dubious questioning note in his voice. It issued in speech, though he kept his hangdog posture on the bed: “What happened to my wig and stuff?”

“Somebody must have taken it,” she said.

“Albert Sweetner?”

“It may have been Albert.”

“I don’t believe that. I think you took it,” he said.

“That’s crazy talk.”

His eyes came up to her face, slowly, like snails ascending a wall. “You swiped it from under the mattress.” He struck the bed under him with his hand to emphasize the point. “And I’m not crazy.”

“You’re talking that way,” she said. “What reason would I have to take your wig?”

“Because you didn’t want me to chase the chicks. You were jealous.”

She let out a high little titter, with no amusement in it. I looked at her face. It was stiff and gray, as if it had frozen.

“My son’s upset. He’s talking foolishly.”

I said to Fritz: “What makes you think your mother took your wig?”

“Nobody else comes in here. There’s just the two of us. As soon as it was gone, I knew who took it.”

“Did you ask her if she took it?”

“I was afraid to.”

“My son has never been afraid of his mother,” she said. “And he knows I didn’t take his blessed wig. Albert Sweetner must have. I remember now, he was here a month ago.”

“He was in prison a month ago, Mrs. Snow. You’ve been blaming Albert for quite a number of things.” In the ensuing silence I could hear all three of us breathing. I turned to Fritz. “You told me earlier that Albert put you up to burying Leo Broadhurst. Is that still true?”

“Albert was there,” he answered haltingly. “He was sleeping in the stable near the Mountain House. He said the shot woke him up, and he hung around to see what would come of it. When I brought the tractor down from the compound, he helped me with the digging.”

Mrs. Snow moved past me and stood over him. “Albert told you to do it, didn’t he?”

“No,” he said. “It was you. You said that Martha wanted me to do it.”

“Did Martha kill Mr. Broadhurst?” I said.

“I dunno. I wasn’t there when it happened. Mother got me up in the middle of the night and said I had to bury him deep, or Martha would go to the gas chamber.” He looked around the narrow walls of the room as if he was in that chamber now, with the pellet about to drop. “She told me I should blame it all on Albert, if anybody asked me.”

“You’re a crazy fool,” his mother said. “If you go on telling lies like this, I’ll have to leave you and you’ll be all alone. They’ll put you in jail, or in the mental hospital.”

Both of them could end up there, I was thinking. I said: “Don’t let her scare you, Fritz. You won’t be put in jail for anything you did because she made you.”

“I won’t stand for this!” she cried. “You’re turning him against me.”

“Maybe it’s time, Mrs. Snow. You’ve been using your son as a scapegoat, telling yourself that you’ve been looking after him.”

“Who else would look after him?” Her voice was rough and rueful.

“He could get better treatment from a stranger.” I turned back to him: “What happened Saturday morning, when Stanley Broadhurst borrowed the pick and shovel?”

“He borrowed the pick and shovel,” Fritz repeated, “and after a while I got nervous. I went up the trail to see what they were doing up there. Stanley was digging right where his father was buried.”

“What did you do?”

“I went back down to the ranch and phoned her.”

His wet green gaze rested on his mother. She made a shushing noise which narrowed into a hiss. I said over it:

“What about Saturday night, Fritz? Did you drive down to Northridge?”

“No sir. I was here in bed all night.”

“Where was your mother?”

“I don’t know. She gave me sleeping pills right after Albert phoned. She always gives me sleeping pills when she leaves me by myself at night.”

“Albert phoned here Saturday night?”

“Yessir. I answered the phone, but it was her he wanted to talk to.”

“What about?”

“They were talking about money. She said she had no money–”

“Shut up!”

Mrs. Snow raised her fist in a threat to her son. Though he was bigger and younger and probably stronger, he crawled away from her on the bed and huddled crying in the corner.

I took hold of Mrs. Snow’s arm. She was taut and trembling. I drew her into the kitchen and shut the door on the dissolving man. She leaned on the counter beside the kitchen sink, shivering as though the house was chilly.

“You killed Leo Broadhurst, didn’t you?”

Mrs. Snow didn’t answer me. She seemed to have been overcome by a terrible embarrassment that tied her tongue.

“You didn’t stay in the ranch house that night when Elizabeth Broadhurst and Stanley went up the mountain. You went up there after them and found Leo lying unconscious and stabbed him to death. Then you came back here and told your son to bury him and his car.

“Unfortunately Albert Sweetner knew where the body was buried, and eventually he came back here hoping to turn his knowledge into money. When Stanley failed to show up with the money Saturday night, Albert phoned here and tried to get some more out of you. You drove down to Northridge and killed him.”

“How could I kill him – a big strong man like Albert?”

“He was probably dead drunk when you got to him. And it never occurred to him that he was in danger from you. It never occurred to Stanley, either, did it?”

She remained silent, though her mouth was working.

“I can understand why you killed Albert and Stanley,” I said. “You were trying to cover up what you’d done in the past. But why did Leo Broadhurst have to die?”

Her eyes met mine and blurred like cold windows. “He was half dead already, lying there in his blood. All I did was put him out of his misery.” Her clenched right hand jerked downward convulsively, reenacting the stabbing. “I’d do the same for a dying animal.”

“It wasn’t compassion that made you murder him.”

“You can’t call it murder. He deserved to die. He was a wicked man, a cheat and a fornicator. He got Marty Nickerson pregnant and let my boy take the blame. Frederick has never been the same since then.”

There was no use arguing with her. She was one of those paranoid souls who kept her conscience clear by blaming everything on other people. Her violence and malice appeared to her as emanations from the external world.

I crossed the room to the phone and called the police. While the receiver was still in my hand, Mrs. Snow opened a drawer and took out a butcher knife. She came at me in a quick little dance, moving to jangled music I couldn’t hear.

I caught her by the wrist. She had the kind of exploding strength that insane anger releases. But her strength soon ran out. The knife clattered on the floor. I pinned her arms and held her until the police arrived.

“You’ll shame me in front of the neighbors,” she said desperately.

I was the only one watching as the patrol car moved away through the brown water with Fritz and his mother sitting behind a screen in the back seat. I followed them downtown, thinking that quite often nowadays the low-life subplots were taking over the tragedies. I gave a more prosaic explanation to a team of police detectives and a stenotypist.

My statement was interrupted by a phone call from Brian Kilpatrick’s fiancee. Kilpatrick had walked into his game room and shot himself.

The briefcase I took from him, containing Elizabeth Broadhurst’s guns and records, was in the trunk of my car. I let it stay there unreported for the present, though I knew all the facts of Leo Broadhurst’s death would have to come out at Edna Snow’s trial.

Before night fell, Jean and I and Ronny drove out of town.

“It’s over,” I said.

Ronny said, “That’s good.” His mother sighed.

I hoped it was over. I hoped that Ronny’s life wouldn’t turn back toward his father’s death as his father’s life had turned, in a narrowing circle. I wished the boy a benign failure of memory.

As though she sensed my thoughts, Jean reached behind him and touched the back of my neck with her cold fingers. We passed the steaming remnants of the fire and drove on south through the rain.