The Underground Man

chapter 5

Before we reached Santa Teresa I could smell smoke. Then I could see it dragging like a veil across the face of the mountain behind the city.

Under and through the smoke I caught glimpses of fire like the flashes of heavy guns too far away to be heard. The illusion of war was completed by an old two-engine bomber which flew in low over the mountain’s shoulder. The plane was lost in the smoke for a long instant, then climbed out trailing a pastel red cloud of fire retardant.

On the freeway ahead the traffic thickened rapidly and stopped us. I reached over to turn on the car radio but then decided not to. The woman beside me had enough on her mind without having to listen to fire reports.

At the head of the line, a highway patrolman was directing the movement of traffic from a side road onto the freeway. There were quite a few cars coming down out of the hills, many of them with Santa Teresa College decals. I noticed several trucks piled with furniture and mattresses, children and dogs.

When the patrolman let us pass, we turned onto the road that led to the hills. It took us in a gradual climb between lemon groves and subdivisions toward what Jean described as Mrs. Broadhurst’s canyon.

A man wearing a Forest Service jacket and a yellow hard hat stopped the Mercedes at the entrance to the canyon. Jean climbed out and introduced herself as Mrs. Broadhurst’s daughter-in-law.

“I hope you’re not planning to stay, ma’am. We may have to evacuate this area.”

“Have you seen my husband and little boy?” She described Ronny – six years old, blue-eyed, black-haired, wearing a light-blue suit.

He shook his head. “I’ve seen a lot of people leaving with their kids. It isn’t a bad idea. Once the fire starts spilling down one of these canyons she can outrace you.”

“How bad is it?” I said.

“It depends on the wind. If the wind stays quiet we could get her fully contained before nightfall. We’ve got a lot of equipment up on the mountain. But if she starts to blow–” He lifted his hand in a kind of resigned goodbye to everything in sight.

We drove into the canyon between fieldstone gate posts emblazoned with the name Canyon Estates. New and expensive houses were scattered along the canyonside among the oaks and boulders. Men and women with hoses were watering their yards and buildings and the surrounding brush. Their children were watching them, or sitting quietly in cars, ready to go. The smoke towering up from the mountain stood over them like a threat and changed the color of the light.

The Broadhurst ranch lay between these houses and the fire. We went up the canyon toward it, and left the county road at Mrs. Broadhurst’s mailbox. Her private asphalt lane wound through acres of mature avocado trees. Their broad leaves were shriveling at the tips as if the fire had already touched them. Darkening fruit hung down from their branches like green hand grenades.

The lane broadened into a circular drive in front of a large and simple white stucco ranchhouse. Under the deep porch, red fuchsias dripped from hanging redwood baskets. At a red glass hummingbird feeder suspended among the baskets, a hummingbird which also seemed suspended was sipping from a spout and treading air.

The bird didn’t move perceptibly when a woman opened the screen door and came out. She had on a white shirt and dark slacks which showed off her narrow waist. She moved across the veranda with rapid disciplined energy, making the high heels of her riding boots click.

“Jean darling.”

“Mother.”

They shook hands briefly like competitors before a match of some kind. Mrs. Broadhurst’s neat dark head was touched with gray, but she was younger than I’d imagined, no more than fifty or so.

Only her eyes looked older. Without moving them from Jean’s face, she shook her head from side to side.

“No, they haven’t come back. And they haven’t been seen in the area for some time. Who’s the blond girl?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is Stanley having an affair with her?”

“I don’t know, Mother.” She turned to me. “This is Mr. Archer.”

Mrs. Broadhurst nodded curtly. “Jean mentioned on the telephone that you’re some kind of detective. Is that correct?”

“The private kind.”

She raked me with a look that moved from my eyes down to my shoes and back up to my face again. “I’ve never set much store by private detectives, frankly. But under the circumstances perhaps you can be useful. If the radio can be believed, the fire has passed the Mountain House and left it untouched. Would you like to come up there with me?”

“I would. After I talk to the gardener.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“But I understand he gave your son a key to the Mountain House. He may know why they wanted it.”

“He doesn’t. I’ve questioned Fritz. We’re wasting time, and I’ve already wasted a good deal. I stayed by the telephone until you and Jean got here.”

“Where is Fritz?”

“You’re persistent, aren’t you? He may be in the lath house.”

We left Jean standing white-faced and apprehensive in the shadow of the veranda. The lath house was in a walled garden behind one wing of the ranchhouse. Mrs. Broadhurst followed me in under the striped shadows cast by the roof.

“Fritz? Mr. Archer wants to ask you a question.”

A soft-looking man in dungarees straightened up from the plants he was tending. He had emotional green eyes and a skittish way of holding his body, as if he was ready to avoid a threatened blow. There was a livid scar connecting his mouth and his nose which looked as if he had been born with a harelip.

“What is it this time?” he said.

“I’m trying to find out what Stanley Broadhurst is up to. Why do you think he wanted the key to the guest house?”

Fritz shrugged his thick loose shoulders. “I don’t know. I can’t read people’s minds, can I?”

“You must have some idea.”

He glanced uncomfortably at Mrs. Broadhurst. “Am I supposed to spit it all out?”

“Please tell the truth,” she said in a forced tone.

“Well, naturally I thought him and the chick had hanky-panky in mind. Why else would they want to go up there?”

“With my grandson along?” Mrs. Broadhurst said.

“They wanted me to keep the boy with me. But I didn’t want the responsibility. That’s the way you get in trouble,” he said with stupid wisdom.

“You didn’t mention that before. You should have told me, Fritz.”

“I can’t remember everything at once, can I?”

“How was the boy behaving?” I asked him.

“Okay. He didn’t say much.”

“Neither do you.”

“What do you want me to say? You think I did something to the boy?” His voice rose, and his eyes grew moist and suddenly overflowed.

“Nobody suggested anything like that.”

“Then why do you keep at me and at me? The boy was here with his father. His father took him away. Does that make me responsible?”

“Take it easy.”

Mrs. Broadhurst touched my arm. “We’re getting nowhere.”

We left the gardener complaining among his plants. The striped shadow fell from the roof, jailbirding him.

The carport was attached to an old red barn at the back of the house. Below the barn was a dry creekbed at the bottom of a shallow ravine which was thickly grown with oaks and eucalyptus. Band-tailed pigeons and sweet-voiced red-winged blackbirds were foraging under the trees and around a feeder. I stepped on fallen eucalyptus pods which looked like ornate bronze nailheads set in the dust.

An aging Cadillac and an old pickup truck stood under the carport. Mrs. Broadhurst drove the pickup, wrestling it angrily around the curves in the avocado grove and turning left on the road toward the mountains. Beyond the avocados were ancient olive trees, and beyond them was pasture gone to brush.

We were approaching the head of the canyon. The smell of burning grew stronger in my nostrils. I felt as though we were going against nature, but I didn’t mention my qualms to Mrs. Broadhurst. She wasn’t the sort of woman you confessed human weakness to.

The road degenerated as we climbed. It was narrow and inset with boulders. Mrs. Broadhurst jerked at the wheel of the truck as if it was a male animal resisting control. For some reason I was reminded of Mrs. Roger Armistead’s voice on the phone, and I asked Mrs. Broadhurst if she knew the woman.

She answered shortly: “I’ve seen her at the beach club. Why do you ask?”

“The Armistead name came up in connection with your son’s friend, the blond girl.”

“How?”

“She was using their Mercedes.”

“I’m not surprised at the connection. The Armisteads are nouveaux riches from down south – not my kind of people.” Without really changing the subject, she went on: “We’ve lived here for quite a long time, you know. My grandfather Falconer’s ranch took in a good part of the coastal plain and the whole mountainside, all the way to the top of the first range. All I have left is a few hundred acres.”

While I was trying to think of an appropriate comment, she said in a more immediate voice: “Stanley phoned me last night and asked me for fifteen hundred dollars cash, today.”

“What for?”

“He said something vague, about buying information. As you may or may not know, my son is somewhat hipped on the subject of his father’s desertion.” Her voice was dry and careful.

“His wife told me that.”

“Did she? It occurred to me that the fifteen hundred dollars might have something to do with you.”

“It doesn’t.” I thought of Al, the pale man in the dark suit, but decided not to bring him up right now.

“Who’s paying you?” the woman said rather sharply.

“I haven’t been paid.”

“I see.” She sounded as if she distrusted what she saw. “Are you and my daughter-in-law good friends?”

“I met her this morning. We have friends in common.”

“Then you probably know that Stanley and she have been close to breaking up. I never did think that their marriage would last.”

“Why?”

“Jean is an intelligent girl but she comes from an entirely different class. I don’t believe she’s ever understood my son, though I’ve tried to explain something about our family traditions.” She turned her head from the road to glance at me. “Is Stanley really interested in this blond girl?”

“Obviously he is, but maybe not in the way you mean. He wouldn’t have brought your grandson along–”

“Don’t be too sure of that. He brought Ronny because he knows I love the boy, and because he wants money from me. Remember when he found I wasn’t here, he tried to leave Ronny with Fritz. I’d give a lot to know what they’re up to.”