John D. MacDonald

The Accomplice

Garfield kept thinking about Mrs. Ennis whenever he had a chore to do that did not require thought. He had checked the open stock in Section D, the canned fruit juice and fruit, drawn the necessary cases from stores, checked the most recent retail sheet on brands and sizes, and was now razoring the cartons open and banging the top of each can with the purple calligraphy from the self-inking stamp 2/97¢ 2/97¢ 2/97¢ and putting the cans onto the open display. That was when he would think of how, when you saw her pushing a supermarket cart down one of the fluorescent aisles, pale hair long and thick and glossy, and wearing one of those bright beach coats of hers, and sandals, her legs bare and sturdy and a deeper golden brown each day, you could think she was one of the college kids home in Florida for summer vacation.

2/81¢ 2/81¢ 2/81¢ and he would have in his head the very vivid picture of that little trick she had of lowering her chin, tilting her head, looking up at him in a slanty amused way, and with a slow smile like a sharing of secrets when there were none to share, she would lift her head in a way that would snap the fair hair back, and, as the smile faded, give him a blue-eyed look of challenge before turning away.

He was squatting, sitting on his heels, doing the mechanical chore swiftly. There was a round and solid nudge against the back of his left shoulder, so that he had to put a hand quickly against the shelf in front of him. He looked up and saw Mrs. Ennis smiling down at him, and the abrupt intrusion of reality into his thoughts of her made his face and ears feel hot. She had nudged him off balance with her knee.

As he stood up she said, smiling, “So you don’t speak to your friends, huh, Jimmy?”

“Good morning, Mrs. Ennis.” He had not expected to see her on a Tuesday morning in the supermarket.

“Oh, I don’t mean now! I mean last night, like.”

“Last night?” he asked blankly.

“I didn’t know you lived on the beach, too, Jimmy. I took a long walk up the beach all by myself, and there you were on the screened porch of... one, two... yes, the third of those tiny little blue and gray cottages right beyond where the pink motel is. It was almost sunset, and you looked as if you were studying or something. You didn’t even look up at all.”

He said, “I took it when the summer rates started, and if I’m still here when the season starts again, I’ll find a room over on the mainland again. If I didn’t look up, I guess I didn’t have much of a chance to say hello.”

She gave him the sharing-secrets look and said, “You’ll get another chance, Jimmy, yes you will.” And she went off before he could answer. He went back to his work. When he rolled the cargo dolly back to get more cased stock he did not see her in the store. He kept wondering about her. He had seen her the first time when he had been filling in at check-out during a Saturday rush for a missing bag boy, three weeks ago, and had rolled her cart out to a blue convertible in the lot. He saw by the license it was a rental car. She had smiled at him, tipped him, asked him his name, and told him that she was Mrs. Ennis and she was on vacation, living on the beach not far away, and she thought the store was very nice. She had a wide pretty face and broad mouth and small tilted nose, and he guessed she would be maybe twenty-five or — six, but you could think she was eighteen from a little distance, or from the back. Somehow in the other times he had seen her and talked to her in those three weeks, it had become a curiously personal thing, in a way which made him uneasy. She seemed to be weighing and appraising him, and approving of him, but at the same time she did not seem to be making a pass. She seemed to want to be friends. He wondered how soon she would give him the chance to say hello...

He studied on the little screened porch again that July evening. The problems were all about store location, and his concentration was not good. He kept looking out at the wide slant of white beach beyond the sea oats, but he could not see her among all the people who were using the beach. He was working out one of the intricate formulae on development housing areas and anticipated gross when, over the gentle sound of the surf and the cries of gulls and children on the beach, Mrs. Ennis said, “So hello!”

She stood on the wooden step looking through the screen door at him, the sun behind her. She wore a blue-and-white checked beach jacket over a two-piece blue swimsuit, and she carried a white canvas beach bag. He got up quickly and accidentally kicked one leg of the old card table so that it collapsed and spilled his notebooks and papers across the narrow porch. She gave a little cry of concern and came in and helped him gather them up.

As they stood up together she said, “So you were studying, huh?”

“They call it the ATP. Administrative Trainee Program.”

“Well, don’t let me interrupt, Jimmy.”

He put the study materials on a wicker chair and folded the card table, saying, “I’m better than a month ahead of schedule on the courses as it is. Enough for tonight anyway. Would you like a cold beer maybe, Mrs. Ennis?”

“Love it! Look, it’s Julie. Okay?”

“Okay, Julie.”

She sat on the ratty old glider. It banged against the wooden wall behind it. He took the course materials inside and when he came out with the beers she was smoking a cigarette, and she laughed and shook her head and said, “I keep thinking how I tipped you two bits that time. I should have known you weren’t just a bag boy.”

“How could you know?”

“Well, you’re older, obviously. Twenty-two?”

“Three.”

“And you speak well... and you didn’t drop the cans into the bag on top of the tomatoes and the eggs.”

“I appreciated getting the two bits, Mrs... Julie.”

He sat in the wicker chair half facing her, the beach and sunset at his left. There was a red light of sunset on her face. She looked sad for a moment. “It’s lovely here, along this beach. I love it. You must think I’m a crazy or something, Jimmy. What it is, I’m lonely. I came down here alone... to do some thinking about... a lot of things. Where I’m staying, they’re all real old people. You know? I can’t go into a bar. Boy, that’s asking for trouble! If I’m a pest, just tell me to finish my beer and go. Okay? I just liked you when I saw you. That’s all. You just looked sort of... gentle. But I don’t want to be a pest or anything.”

“You’re not. I’m glad you stopped by.”

“Honest? So okay then, we’re friends.” She leaned forward and held her hand out and they shook hands. “Now tell me about the PTA.”

They talked as the sun went down and until the last light in the west was gone, and the sky was full of stars. He told her about the chances he’d had to make more money right away when he got out of college, but how he decided to go with this chain because their program had the reputation of being tough and good and fair. This was the third outlet they had sent him to, the biggest yet, and the newest, and he did not know if he would go to another store after this, or be sent to one of the Regional Control offices. She made it easy to talk.

At last she said, “Jimmy, I have the feeling you won’t take anything I say wrong. Here’s what I’d really like to do, and if it doesn’t hit you right, you just say so, huh? What I want to do is walk back down the beach to my place and do a real fast job of getting all glossed up and come back here in the car and we go over to Tampa to Ybor City and eat Spanish. On me. I got a dozen problems, but thank God money isn’t one of them lately. What about it?”

“Well...”

“Please? Please, Jimmy?”

He drove her in the blue convertible across the Courtney Campbell Causeway, and they ate well at the Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City. He had never dated anyone quite like her. She had a tough, skeptical confidence, a talent for irony. She told him, saying she hadn’t intended to tell him, that she was not exactly on vacation, that she had come down from Detroit to try to sort out her life a little. She said her marriage was sour. She said she and her husband had been convinced the difference in their ages wouldn’t mean a thing. But after a while it created funny emotional problems being married to a man who could be your father. It made you act too elfin and girly-girl. It made the old man push himself to go disco when he’d rather put his feet up and watch the late show.

They got back to her place at two in the morning. He was going to walk back up the beach to his cottage. She had a cabana by a big resort motel pool. All the cabanas were dark. He walked her to the door. She unlocked it, turned to him, pulled him gently into the air-conditioned coolness. The door clicked shut. She was sturdy and resilient and fragrant in his arms. The Spanish wine was singing in his head. She whispered, after the vivid kissings, that she hadn’t meant it to be like this at all, honest. Over the top of her shiny head he saw star reflections in the black swimming pool, and he said that things happened the way they had to happen. It felt like a profound thought, as he bent to her mouth once more.

He was with her Wednesday evening and Thursday evening. He had to work Friday evening and Saturday evening. When they were together, and when they were not involved with the miracles of mutual discovery, she liked to have him talk about the work, the behind-the-scenes problems of purchasing, display, cash, pilferage, bad checks, personnel problems.

On Friday he worked from eleven in the morning until midnight, an hour after closing. He made several mistakes during the long day. D. A. Camden, the store manager, took him aside late on Friday afternoon and asked him if anything was the matter. Jim Garfield said there was something on his mind, yes. A personal problem. He would get it worked out. He said he was sorry about the goofs. Camden said that if Garfield could explain the personal problem, maybe he could leave any comment about today off the monthly ATP Rating Report. Gar-held asked as a personal favor to let it go until Monday and then he would tell Camden what had been bothering him. Camden shrugged, looked unpleasant, and walked away.

On Saturday morning, having finally made up his mind, Jim Garfield asked for an hour off. Camden granted it gracelessly, and was uglier than necessary when the hour became an hour and a half. But the two men arrived in the late afternoon, and spent some time with Camden in his office, and only one of them left.

At midnight on Saturday, as always, Jim Garfield pulled the private door at the rear of the market shut, and checked to make certain it was locked while the man who was usually D. A. Camden, but on this night was not, stood holding the paper bag that would have contained twenty-two thousand in currency and twelve thousand in checks, but on this night contained only the green canvas deposit bag stuffed with several bundles of Soft-Line Paper Dinner Napkins 2/59¢.

When the two men with sheer nylon stockings over their faces appeared as if they had suddenly grown out of the asphalt, guns in hand, the waiting floodlights went on, freezing everyone like bugs on a kitchen floor, and a hugely amplified and official voice demanded instant surrender. But as Jim Garfield dropped flat, as directed, the man who was not D. A. Camden, but was of about the same size, had to shoot one of the pair, not fatally but seriously. The other one put his hands high. Tires screamed as the waiting car tried to catapult on out of the parking lot to safety, but there were shots from elsewhere, authoritative and heavy, and the sedan swerved, climbed a curbing, bent a steel light pole, and rolled over, throwing the driver out, and then rolling across the driver.

The shots brought the people. The police held them back. Yes, thought Jimmy Garfield, I had to realize I was just not all that attractive, not to that kind of a woman. They could write it up as a study problem. A formula for suspicion of robbery. She wanted to keep me talking about the store, about every part of the routine, knowing I’d cover this part of it.

D. A. Camden was beside Jimmy, plucking at his arm, saying, “Great job! Great! Marvelous!” Camden’s voice was shaky and squeaky. Yes indeed, thought Jimmy. I am a company man, through and through.

But the bright floods were still on and he could not stop looking where the wounded car had rolled, and at what it had left. If you squinched your eyes a little, and didn’t see the details, she still looked young. Like a girl home from college for vacation.

It helped the illusion if you thought of stars reflected in the blackness of an unlighted swimming pool, and the memory filled the squinched eyes with tears. He wished Camden would stop squeaking and go away.

Content

John D. MacDonald
The Accomplice