The Underground Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 turningleft 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 onthe 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.”