The Accomplice: The Stairway Press Edition

by Darryl Ponicsan

  Danny Yanez had never taken a pulse in his life, but he enjoyed Rudy’s assuming his expertise in the prac­tice. He bent over her and took her thin, pale, bound wrists in hand, narrowing his eyes like a medic.

  “Finished off,” he said.

  In the long, endless corridors of madness and in the ease and calm and peace that foreran death, she felt a weight upon her breast and later heard the words spo­ken, as from a great distance and about another per­son: “Finished off.”

  Goose took the legs, Rudy the arms, and together they carried her to the trench and covered her with dirt. There was a witness to the crime. One curious steer that had strayed from the herd.

  Real killers now, they drove back toward the Springs through the snow, their hands and clothes wet and dirty and bloody, their world changed irrevoca­bly. Goose looked behind him at the bloodstained upholstery and saw one of Maria’s slippers on the floor. He threw it out the window.

  Rudy’s arms were shaking and he had trouble hold­ing the wheel steady. “Light me a cigarette, baby, I gotta have a cigarette,” he said.

  “Me too,” said Goose. “Christ, I gotta have a ciga­rette too.”

  Though the night was very cold they were sweating and felt as though hot air were being pumped into their veins, floating them away. Goose lit the cigarettes. They puffed rapidly.

  “Don’t cop out to nothing, Goose. That’s all you gotta remember. Can you remember that?”

  “I can remember, Rudy. I ain’t gonna cop out to nothin’.”

  Reluctant to look at each other, like first-time adulterers, they sat nervous, scared, and silent for nearly fifteen minutes, until Rudy wet his forefinger, reached over, and reamed Goose’s ear. Goose brought his foot up and slammed it against Rudy’s thigh. It caused him to floor the accelerator for an instant, and they fishtailed in the snow.

  “Watch the fuckin’ gas, birdbrain,” laughed Rudy, straightening out the slide of the car.

  Goose farted and said, “There’s some gas for you, pato,” and reached over to grab Rudy at his crotch. Rudy elbowed him in the ribs and said, “Watch the goddamn car! I’m drivin’ a car here, you silly son-of-a-bitch.”

  Goose mimicked his words in his Jerry Lewis voice and ran his hands over his contorted face.

  They found themselves elated, swept up in the matchless emotion of having to keep the, ultimate of secrets, and they insulted each other and grabbed at each other’s crotch all the way back to Colorado Springs.

  BOOK 3

  ONE

  Midnight. Gordon wanted to be with the warm, loving woman he believed was still waiting for him. Instead, he hovered in the doorway, looking at his mother. The light behind him extended only to the foot of her bed. Tomorrow new arrangements must exist, he thought, or...they must exist. The stalemate must be broken.

  “Mother?” he whispered. “You awake?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “I have an idea.”

  She was not eager to hear it. Lately all his ideas had three angles. She smiled in the dark. They would shortly take on a different shape. “What is it?” she said.

  “Can you keep an open mind?”

  “Well, I always try.”

  “What would you say to a larger apartment?”

  “But the expense...”

  “It would be cheaper than maintaining two apartments.”

  She still would not believe that that other apartment was in any way his, and consequently could not understand his proposal.

  “A big place,” he said, “with two bedrooms. It would require real effort in the beginning, I know, but if we all enter it in the spirit of good will, there’s no reason...”

  “Are you suggesting...?”

  “...why we can’t have some sort of happy, normal family life.”

  “Are you suggesting that we take in that...that...”

  “An open mind, Mother, remember?”

  The anger coiled tightly in every part of her body, and she wanted to call that other one by the proper names and describe the fitting fate for her, but for what? It was in the offing anyway, and now the less said about her the better.

  A wonderful opportunity presented itself. She could be magnanimous and at no real risk.

  She pretended to cry softly. “Gordie, do you think it could work out?”

  “I believe it could, if we all gave it an honest try.”

  “Do you think your...do you think she would be willing?”

  Gordon took one step into the bedroom. “She’s a very understanding girl, Mom, I’m sure she would try to be friends. She’s always wanted to be friends with you. She doesn’t want to take me out of your life, she never did.”

  “Lord knows, we can’t go on like this.”

  Gordon did not want to push too eagerly. “On that we all agree.” He held his breath, waiting for her de­cision. He knew that if he didn’t rush things, she’d eventually come around.

  “I’m willing if she is,” said Ginny, and she found herself shedding real tears. She liked this role of the great peacemaker. She had never before compromised, and now with the first, the graciousness and the humility of the act made her feel rather good. She had the fleeting thought of making it real. In any case, the tears were real, and they confounded her.

  “Gordie?”

  He went to her and found her hand in the darkness.

  “You’re the only thing in this life I’ve ever really loved, Son.”

  “I know, Mom, I know.”

  Real, the tears were real.

  In the morning, the landlady discovered in her routine chore of sweeping the snow off the balcony walkways that Maria’s door was open and the lights still on.

  “Maria?” she called through the doorway.

  It was a cold morning and had been a cold night. She stepped inside the apartment, but did not close the door behind her.

  “Maria?”

  Everyone has family problems. People are always threatening those they hate. Nothing ever comes of it. But she found herself too afraid to open the bedroom door. She knocked on it.

  “Maria?”

  She sensed someone behind her and her heart seemed to rise inside her. She spun around and saw Gordon. Weakened by fright, she leaned against the bedroom door.

  “What are you doing in here?” he asked. He slid the door shut behind him. “My God, this place is freezing.”

  She had to catch her breath. “Mr. Wynn, the door was open and, look, the lights are on. I was worried.”

  “Where’s Maria?”

  “I called.”

  Gordon brushed past her and opened the bedroom door. The lights were on, the bed neatly made.

  “Where is she?” asked Gordon.

  “Don’t you know?” asked the landlady.

  He called her office. She had not arrived, they said. He went back into the bedroom to look for her suitcases. They were in the closet.

  “Where could she be?” he said.

  Suddenly the landlady was screaming at him. “Ask your mother! Ask your mother!”

  For a moment he hadn’t a notion what she was ranting about.

  Rudy Montalvo and Danny Yanez managed to get a few hours’ sleep in Danny’s room. They threw their bloodstained clothes into a neighbor’s garbage can and drove the old Buick to a barranca, where they tore the bloodstained rear upholstery out of the car. They sprayed the area with a can of black paint they had bought at an auto parts store.

  They drove to the snooker parlor and explained to their friend that they had to bash in the head of a gas station attendant with his gun and the gun proved sec­ond best. They gave him the pieces and twenty dol­lars for a new one.

  They returned the car to Lupe Martinez. She was in the midst of a birthday party for one of her chil­dren, and the house was full of kids, the little dog Chico happily begging from all of them. Rudy gave the birthday boy $5. He and Danny led Lupe away from the party and showed her the damage to her car.

  “Oh, shit.”

  “
One of us flipped a cigarette out,” explained Rudy, “and it blew back there, set it on fire. We were lucky we could pull the stuff out before the whole car went up in smoke. It don’t look so bad now.”

  “Shit it don’t,” said Lupe. “When Hernandez gets out of jail he’s going to break your arms.” She looked from them to the car. “Assholes,” she said. “See if you get to borrow it again.”

  “We’re gonna have some money soon,” said Goose. “We’ll have it reupholstered for you. Hernandez won’t know the difference.” He did not want his arms broken.

  Lupe called them several more uncomplimentary names, and that out of her system invited them to have cake and ice cream with the rest of the ten-year-olds.

  Goose performed a number of his Jerry Lewis routines for the children. He had them dropping their punch and rolling on the floor. Later that day he learned his estranged wife had given birth to a baby girl in Pueblo. He hitched down there to try to see them and his other two children.

  Gordon ordered Mrs. Liter to go home. He had to speak with his mother alone. Ginny told her to stay, she had no secrets from her old friend.

  “Well, am I going or am I staying?” asked Mrs. Lister.

  “You’re going, goddammit!” shouted Gordon, and Mrs. Lister wasted no time in saying so long.

  “You shouldn’t yell at her like that,” said Ginny. “The poor thing’s afraid of you the way it is.”

  “Why does she have to be around here all the time?”

  “Company...”

  “I’m sick of seeing her. She should be in a home somewhere, old as she is. Why don’t you make friends your own age? You’re either with an old biddy on the far side of senility or someone twenty years younger than you.”

  “If you’re referring to Bomba the Jungle Boy, he’s no twenty years younger than me. Why, when I had you I was only...”

  “Sit down, Mother.”

  “What a mood you’re in! After last night I thought your disposition might change. I don’t know what else I can do to please you.”

  “Sit down.”

  “I’ve given in to all your demands.”

  “Please sit down.

  Reluctantly, she took a seat, but she would not look at him. She folded her arms in front of her and rebelliously escaped his attempts at eye contact.

  He grabbed her face between his hands and anchored it inches from his own. “Maria is missing,” he said. He watched her carefully for her first reaction.

  It was of true disbelief, and Gordon thought he detected an element of sorrow. For a moment he allowed himself some hope. He released his hold on her.

  “She probably ran off with another man,” she said.

  The momentary hope he enjoyed plummeted and was replaced by a fear he had never known before. Had any man ever known such a fear? Had any other man ever lost his wife at the hand of his mother?

  He could hardly speak. “Honey, if something’s happened to her, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  “You’ll do just fine.”

  “Listen close,” he said. “This is a time we have to have the absolute truth between us, maybe for the first time in our lives.”

  “What do you mean by that? We always...”

  “Now, don’t interrupt me, Mother. Not this time. You killed her, didn’t you?”

  “No,” she answered, without a second’s hesitation. “But I’m not sorry she’s dead.”

  “What do you mean, dead? A minute ago she was off with another man.”

  “Well, you’re the one who said ‘killed.”

  “Tell me, Mom. God, let me know now.”

  “I was here with you last night.”

  “Did you have someone kill her? Bomba the Jungle Boy?”

  Ginny laughed. “What an imagination you have! Bomba couldn’t kill a fly if it landed on his nose.”

  “He went through that annulment with you, maybe he did this for you.”

  Ginny jumped to her feet, angry. “Who told you about that? Did she tell you that?”

  “Her landlady told her and she told me. By now half the people in town must know about it. But forget about that. I don’t care about that. What I want to know is, did you kill her? If ever you loved me, tell me the truth.”

  A lie could not have come so quickly, thought Gordon.

  “I hate her, but I didn’t kill her.”

  And yet he still could not believe her.

  “What about all those threats?”

  “Just talk,” she said.

  Gordon felt a strange calmness settle over him. He could not explain it, especially since in his heart he knew his wife was dead and his mother was the cause. His fear had vanished. He even imagined his body temperature dropping rapidly and his movements slowing down. Soon he would be without any feelings of any sort, save self-preservation.

  “Well, then,” he said, “I guess I better go in and report this.”

  “Why do you have to do that? I mean, why don’t you wait a few days and see if she comes back?”

  “I better do it before the landlady does.”

  He stopped once more at the apartment before going back to the station house. The carpet in front of the door was wet where some snow had blown in and melted. The door was undamaged. Nothing in the apartment itself had been disturbed. He looked in the living room closet. Her heavy car coat was there. She would not have gone out on so cold a night without it. He looked in the bedroom closet but could not tell what clothes, if any, were missing. He tried to clear his mind as he sat on the bed and looked into the open closet. His eyes fell upon the closet floor. The bedroom slippers were missing.

  He looked all over the apartment, including the wastebaskets, for those slippers. If that was the case, what else might she be wearing? Up again, he looked for her robe and could not find it.

  Dressed in slippers and robe, she must have answered a knock on the door or opened it for some other reason, for there was no forced entry. He looked for a safe conclusion. Could she have opened the door, left it open, and dashed to a neighbor’s apartment? She could have, but they knew none of the neighbors. Could she have run a quick errand somewhere else? But where, dressed like that? And why didn’t she close the door, unless she intended to carry something out or in that would require both hands? Whatever the reason for her leaving the apartment, she obviously did not return. Clearly, someone had taken her away. He felt his limbs hang like dead things.

  At the station, upon stepping inside, he knew that the entire place had changed and because of him. The usual noises ceased as soon as he came inside. One cop who was on his way outside found reason to divert to the bulletin board. The desk sergeant, Sergeant Murphy, looked up from his work, conscious of the change in atmosphere.

  “Hey, Wynn, c’mere.”

  Gordon went over to him.

  “What the fuck is going on, Wynn?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, for one thing the DA’s office in Pueblo keeps calling for you.”

  “Christ, I'll take care of that.”

  “Yeah, now what about this other thing?”

  “What other thing?”

  “The skinny here is that your old lady is missing.”

  At first Gordon thought he meant his mother.

  “I just came in to file a missing persons report.”

  “We already had two citizen calls on it. The chief wants to talk to you and your mother.”

  “Why my mother?”

  Murphy looked at him in a great show of confusion. “I don’t know what to make of you, Wynn. I never did.”

  “Look, Murphy, you got something to say, say it.”

  “You mean, like man to man?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Yeah,” said Gordon.

  “With you?”

  It was a short step and a jump to the elevated desk. Gordon got him by the shirt front and pulled him over the top and to the floor, where he dropped his knee into Murphy’s groin. The other cops dragged him off Murphy an
d into the chief’s office.

  Ginny Wynn and Mrs. Lister met Rudy Montalvo at Woolworth’s.

  “Can I buy you a sandwich?” she asked brightly. “The job is done,” he said in a whisper, ominously, like a killer.

  Ginny smiled and closed her eyes for a few seconds. “How did you do it?”

  “We just did it, you don’t have to know how. I’m not feeling very proud about this.”

  “I knew you could do it.”

  “Just let me have the money, please.”

  Three five-and-dime shoppers, they ambled the aisles of Woolworth’s, fingering the goods. Ginny read the labels of various bottles of cheap perfume, her back to Montalvo. “I’ve got some money for you, boy,” she said. “You know Ginny isn’t going to stick you.”

  He picked up a toy racer and tested its friction motor along the flat of his hand. “I hope not, ‘cause we did our job and now we’d like our payday.”

  Down the aisle, Mrs. Lister said, “I remember when you could buy a good paring knife for a nickel.”

  Ginny turned around and stood next to Rudy and touched him with her shoulder. “How’d you do it?” she asked.

  “Never mind,” he said.

  They walked to the next counter and looked at key cases, wallets, and imitation leather goods.

  “Did you use acid, like I said?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Did you dope her up?”

  “Mrs. Wynn, I don’t want to talk about it, can’s you see?”

  “Do you feel all right?”

  “Fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure, I feel fine.”

  “You’re not irregular?”

  “Hey, Mrs. Wynn...”

  “Go to the next counter,” she said and they walked, stopping to examine the notions. “Because if you are irregular I’d recommend prune juice. If that doesn’t work, try Phillips Milk of Magnesia.”

  “I don’t pay attention. I don’t know if I’m regular or I ain’t.”

  “You shouldn’t ignore these things.”

  “Look,” he said, “all I want is the rest of the money and then you’ll never see me again.”

  “Patience, my sweet beaner.”