He was of indeterminable age, like most winos. Scabby, his clothes wrinkled from sleeping in them, parts of his beard three days old, parts four, he stood tottering in the doorway and yearning for some human contact to distract him from reveries of the things he had lost along the way to dreams unattainable. Is this my father, thought Beef, will I be him?
“Sure,” Beef said, and followed him into his room.
During the intermission between features, Rudy said, “We should pack her bag and take it so it would look like she left town.”
“Good idea,” said Goose. “You want a Jujy Fruit? I got two left.”
Rudy extended his hand and Goose gave him the black one.
“We should take her south somewhere,” said Rudy as though some unwritten code specified it.
“Okay. Can we give her a good screwing?”
“You ain’t even seen her yet. What if she’s ugly?”
“What if she is?”
Rudy laughed at him.
“When do we get started?” asked Danny.
“You got the balls for it, we can do it tonight.”
“I got grapefruits.”
“Okay, after the flick. We’ll see your grapefruits shrink to raisins.”
“What’re we gonna do with her?” asked Goose.
“I don’t know. Shoot her, I guess, and bury her somewhere.”
“You still got the gun?”
Rudy lifted up his jacket to show him. Then the house darkened and the film began.
Leaving the theater Goose said, “I had a bitch like that once. Flicked like a machine.”
“C’mon, not like that.”
“Yeah, only she had black hair.”
“And was built different, right?”
“Maybe a little bit fatter.”
“C’mon, Romeo, we got a date.”
They cut across a vacant field to the car. Midway they heard a dog whining. The dog was lying on his side, badly injured. He was a mongrel, terrier size, who had evidently been in a fight with a much bigger dog. The tip of an ear was gone. Blood oozed from several wounds.
“Jesus, Rudy, maybe you better plug ‘im and put the poor guy out of his misery.”
Rudy bent over the dog. “Easy boy, good doggy, I ain’t gonna hurt you.”
The dog looked frightened of him but had no power left to resist. Rudy caressed the dog’s head for a moment, then carefully lifted him and cradled him his chest.
They took him to a veterinarian. No one was there but the kennelboy, who called the doctor. Rudy and Goose waited until he arrived and stayed in his waiting room while he worked on the dog.
“Did he have a collar on him?” asked Goose.
“No.”
“He’s our dog then, right?”
“Let’s give him to Lupe. Her kids can take care of him.”
“Can we call him Chico?”
“Sure.”
The doctor finished with him and Chico seemed much better for it. His eyes conned them for sympathy with the streetwise technique of a mongrel on his own. They paid the doctor $12.50 out of the money Mrs. Wynn had given them to do a job which for the time being they had forgotten. They carried the dog to the car and drove him to Lupe Martinez’s house.
Beef raised the window in the wino’s room, put both hands on the sill, and leaned out, looking at the distance from him to the cold, hard concrete.
“You wouldn’t take a dive on me, young fella, would you?” said the wino from his bed.
“Sometimes it occurs to me,” answered Beef.
“A man would be a damn fool to do it by jumpin’ out a window.”
“What could be easier than crawlin’ out of a hole? Hell, that’s how I got here. Seems a fittin’ way to go.”
“What happens if you change your mind once you’re on the way down?”
“Huh”
“Let’s say you crawl out of that window and you see the ground coming up at you fast, and you decide that life is sweet and you don’t want to die?”
“Won’t matter. In a second it’d be all over.”
“But I got a feeling that would be the longest second any man ever lived.”
Beef backed slowly away from the open window, too aware of an eternity in that isolated second.
“You want my advice,” said the wino, “get yourself a single-barrel shotgun, grab the end of it in your mouth like it was your sweetheart’s nipple, and pull the trigger. There’s no time then to change your mind. You wouldn’t even hear the shot.”
Beef went to pour a drink. “Shut the window,” he told the wino, who got out of bed and did it. He looked down before he shut it. “Diving don’t appeal to me,” he said.
“What’s your name, dad?”
“Straight,” said the wino, smiling with the remnants of his teeth.
Beef shook his head and had to laugh. “Straight Arrow?” he asked. “You some kind of Indian?”
“Marvin Straight,” said the wino.
Beef laughed himself from the dresser to the rickety wooden chair to the stained linoleum floor.
Rudy Montalvo and Danny Yanez saw still another movie. Danny ate three boxes of buttered popcorn, frequently wiping his greasy fingers on his jeans. Rudy furtively drank half a pint of blackberry brandy.
Outside, they leaned against parking meters for a time, smoking cigarettes and watching the sparse traffic on Nevada Avenue. Out of boredom Danny put both hands on top of a parking meter, leapt, and cleared it. Rudy said, “I know a jerk tried that and left his balls hanging on the crank.”
It did not frighten Danny because he did not believe it. He repeated the performance. “The wild goose flies again!” he cried as he went over the top.
The usher set up a ladder and began to change the letters on the marquee. They watched him for a while, amused at how he tried to make use of the letters already there from last week’s feature, to save himself the work of going down and up the ladder.
“You still have the rod?” asked Danny.
Rudy opened his jacket to show it to him.
“We should knock this place over,” said Danny.
“There’s only this guy and the ticket girl and the candy girl.”
“For what? A lousy hundred bucks?”
Danny did not think there would be that much. It sounded fine to him.
“One of these days you’re gonna get your ass caught in the wringer,” said Rudy. “We got a job for five grand and you want to fuck around for peanuts.”
“So let’s get the five big ones.”
Rudy unfolded the slip of paper on which Ginny Wynn had written her daughter-in-law’s address. He flicked his finger at it.
“Half for you and half for me, right, Rudy?”
“Right down the middle, amigo.”
“You know what I’m gonna do with my share? I’m gonna get a set of wheels.”
“First we got to do what we said we’d do.”
“I ain’t afraid.”
“You don’t see me sweatin’ it, do you?” said Rudy.
Beef Buddusky sat on the wooden chair, his left leg crossed over his right, his left elbow on his leg, his forehead resting on his flat palm. “I opened myself up to her,” he was telling Straight. “I didn’t ask for nothin’. All I wanted was to love her and protect her, her and her baby both. But she was sick that she had to look at me, Straight. I got a right to be mad, don’t I?” He took another swallow of wine. “A man’s got a right to be mad when he opens himself up to a woman and she pushes it all back in his puss. So I’m just gonna sit here and be mad. I’m gonna think of Number One from now on.”
“There’s a lid for every pot,” observed Straight.
“Huh? ”
“She wasn’t meant for you.”
“I always knew that. But I thought I was meant for her.”
“It don’t work that way, son. Don’t worry, you’re still young.”
“I had a girl was crazy for me. But somehow it was never the same once I got this feel
ing for the other girl.”
And so Beef told him all about Mae, and Straight thought he was listening to another cunt-whipped kid. Straight set him straight. In their wine-soaked tour of many hours’ duration, Straight had told him the things he needed to know.
“Didn’t I tell you the proper way to suicide yourself?” asked Straight.
“Much obliged,” said Beef.
“Well, now I’m telling you something more important than that: a good woman is hard to find, pissant.”
“I already know that. You think I don’t know that?”
“So you walk out on a good woman just because she’s got a habit and you got the hots for somebody else’s woman. You oughta be ashamed.”
“Well, shame’s been comin’ on me slow but sure.” “Now you don’t have either one of them.”
“I didn’t have a choice. There’s more to it than I told you.”
“So tell me more.”
“I got my secrets,” said Beef.
“And soon you’ll have a lot of regrets too.”
“Whaddaya mean by that, Straight?”
“A good woman is hard to find!” shouted Straight impatiently.
He harped on the subject so insistently that Beef finally said he would take Mae back, if she promised to kick the shit and rid her body of the dreaded poison. “And I’m gonna help you do it,” said Straight, who pushed his bony shoulder into Beef’s armpit and helped him stagger to the street. There he was sick in the gutter and had to go back to the room. Beef went on alone to the Ponderosa Pines.
He leaned against the bar. Ed was tending.
“Well,” said Beef, “where the hell is she?”
“She ain’t been in. She’s gonna get her ass canned.”
Beef imagined the man on the next stool laughing at him. He shoved him into the bar. The man, who had some size even on Beef, threw a right hook, which Beef blocked and countered, knocking him to the floor. Beef was summarily eighty-sixed from the Ponderosa Pines. He told Ed to stick the crummy place up his ass. He nursed his sore hand drinking T-bird with Straight.
Rudy Montalvo and Danny Yanez drove to the address on the slip of paper. Yanez got into the back seat and curled up, his face against the back cushion.
“This is it, baby,” said Rudy, giving him the opportunity to chicken out.
“I’m ready.”
“Yeah,” said Rudy, the first hint of nervousness in his voice. He walked into the courtyard and up the steps. He could see her moving around in the apartment. One pair of the gloves he had bought for the job stuck out of his hip pocket. Goose had lost the other pair only hours after receiving them.
Maria went to the glass door. She looked at him, but was not afraid.
“Yes?” she asked, sliding open the door.
Rudy was taken off guard. He did not expect to see a Chicano.
“Are you Mrs. Wynn?”
“Yes, I am.”
His first impulse was to excuse himself and go down to the car to discuss this new development with Goose. Ginny never told them the girl was a Chicano, and since she was married to a cop, Rudy never considered she was, in spite of the name Maria. It was a complication he resented, and he was angry with Ginny for failing to be entirely forthright. Unfortunately, he could not think fast enough to say anything other than what he had planned.
“I was having some drinks with your husband downtown in a bar and he’s pretty drunk. He asked me to drive him home. Anyhow, he’s passed out down in the car. Can you give me a hand with him?”
“Oh, my goodness,” she said.
She looked for her bedroom slippers. She was dressed for bed and wore a robe over her pajamas, but she had been walking around the apartment in bare feet. She stepped into the slippers and said, “¿Está bien?”
He was nearly disarmed by the intimacy of their common first language. “Si, tomó mucho.”
Rudy tried to laugh but his throat was too dry. If he let her get down to the car he would have to go through with this thing.
She followed him down the stairs, without sliding shut the door to her apartment. They walked to the car side by side. When Rudy bent forward to open the rear door he paused and looked back over his shoulder at the stranger named Maria. “¿Qué Pasa?” she asked.
She leaned into the back of the car with her arms stretched forward to shake her drunken husband awake. Yanez spun over, grabbed her hands, and pulled her into the car. At the same time Rudy Montalvo hit her on the back of the head with his gun and slammed the door. He raced around the car and got behind the wheel and pulled away.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” said Yanez.
“Oh, man,” cried Rudy. “I didn’t think we would, Goose!”
She was not knocked unconscious. She fought with Yanez and screamed, “She’s done it! She’s actually done it! !Mi Dios, me está mantando!”
She thought then of her baby who would never have a life outside her own body, and in that moment entered into insanity. Her strength redoubled in madness, even as the blood streamed down her neck.
“Shut her up, Goose! Please!”
Montalvo sped through the deserted streets of the city, making for Route 25. Yanez wrestled with her, hitting her repeatedly in the face with his fist until her face was covered with blood, but still she did not weaken and she would not stop screaming.
“Rudy, Rudy! I can’t hold her!” yelled Yanez.
They were out of the town. Montalvo pulled to the side of the road. He turned around so that he was on his knees, pointed the gun at her heart, and pulled the trigger. When he heard the click, he pulled the trigger again. Now for the first time he broke open the gun and discovered it had come without bullets. He hit her over the head with the pistol. The handle came apart. Rudy looked at the useless weapon and threw it down next to him. He pulled back onto the highway and sped south.
She moaned softly, but struggled no more. Yanez taped her hands in front of her and taped her mouth shut, but it did not silence the plaintive moaning. He did not want to rape her. He wanted to be away from her.
“Can’t we dump her here on the side of the road, Rudy?” he asked.
“They’d find her.”
“I don’t care, man.”
“She’s still alive.”
“Shit, Rudy...oh, shit, Rudy.”
Twenty miles out of town, in barren and deserted cow country, the car started to miss and sputter.
“This thing ain’t gonna get us very far,” said Rudy.
“We shoulda hot-wired one,” said Yanez.
“Shut the fuck up!”
“Shut the fuck up yourself,” said Yanez. “You’re so goddamn smart. Here we are in a car about to shit out and we got a woman not dead or alive with us, and...oh, shit.”
Outside it started to snow.
“All right, all right,” said Rudy, “we got to find a place to get rid of her—quick.”
They could see the Pike’s Peak Turf Club off to their right. Rudy wanted to get out of sight of it. No place along the road offered enough concealment. They were forced to drive on. Maria was slowly regaining consciousness. Her moans became louder.
“Rudy, get us out of this!” pleaded Yanez. “I can’t listen to her anymore.”
He left Route 25 at County Line Road and circled under the highway to the other side, out of sight of traffic. They found a deep dry wash and pulled the car to the side, killing the engine and lights.
They carried her out of the car and down into the wash. Her moans made her heavier. Thirty yards back from the road was a railroad trestle. They dragged her toward it.
“We can bury her under that,” said Rudy.
She began to kick and struggle again and fought to scream through her taped mouth. Her hair was caked with blood, some of which had hardened around her eyes.
“She’s strong as hell, for a lady,” said Goose Yanez.
“Go get a rock and bash her head in,” said Rudy.
Maria’s eyes flared wide in terror. They laid
her on the ground and held down her struggling shoulders and legs.
Yanez looked around him. “It’s too damn dark out here to find a good rock,” he said. “You wanna bash her head in, find a rock yourself.”
“All right, all right, pick her up. Let’s get her under cover.”
The snow was beginning to fall heavily. They dragged her, still fighting, under the trestle. On the other side of it they could see the lights of a ranch house far off in the distance. Yanez sat behind her and held her in a hammerlock, trying to cut off her air. Rudy began digging a hole, first with a stick, then with his hands. They heard the mooing of cattle. It took a long time to make any progress without a shovel.
“Goddamn,” said Yanez, “I never knew it was so hard to kill a person.”
“You want to dig for a while?” asked Rudy. “See how easy this is.”
So they traded places. Rudy took over the hammerlock on Maria, and Yanez began digging with his hands.
“Why won’t she die?” said Rudy.
They traded twice again before they decided the grave was deep enough. By that time she was motionless.
Goose’s hands were raw and the left one was bruised and sore from the pounding he had given her face. From the grave he had dug, he called to Rudy in a whisper, “Is she gone?”
Montalvo relaxed his grip and moved away from her, letting her fall flat to the ground. His biceps were weary and sore. He knelt beside her and laid his ear against her breast.
“Can you hear it?” asked Yanez.
“Keep quiet. Shhhhhhh.”
Rudy heard something. He looked at Goose. “Yeah, I hear it too.” It was a train, and in a moment it was roaring above their heads, sending them huddling against the walls of their refuge like two shell-shocked veterans.
When it had passed and they were able to compose themselves, Rudy went back to Maria.
Danny Yanez squatted next to the grave, waiting.
Though the train had gone, the sound of it remained in their ears. “Hell, how are you supposed to hear it?” said Rudy.
“Take her pulse,” said Yanez.
“I could never find pulses. You do it, you were in the Army,” said Montalvo, attributing to military experience vast stores of practical knowledge otherwise unattainable.
The Accomplice: The Stairway Press Edition Page 14