Tell No Lie, We Watched Her Die

by Richard Sanders

  “I don’t think I ever really slept,” she said. “Not until dawn, when I could get a couple of hours at most. But less and less of that as time went by. And the less sleep, the more I’d think about it during waking time. I’d think about killing myself all day long. Once I even tried to time the intervals—I was thinking about suicide every three or four minutes. They’d never go away. All I could hear in my head was death thoughts.”

  “And after a while they start sounding like they make sense.”

  “That’s it. Very persuasive. Good sales techniques. That’s when I realized, that point, I needed help. I wasn’t going to make it unless I got help. I couldn’t stop it by myself.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Went to see a specialist, a psychiatrist who dealt with suicide attempts, suicidal ideation. She made me sign a No Suicide contract.”

  “That help?”

  “It sounds ridiculous, but, yeah, it did. It’s like a promise, you know? And she made me tell my story, my family’s story. She made me tell it over and over and fucking over again. I thought that was ridiculous too, a billable waste of time, but gradually, the more I told it, the better I felt. The more I told it, I don’t know, my mind just seemed to adjust.”

  “Sometimes that’s all you need. A tiny adjustment. You change the way you look at things, just a bit, just an inch, and things that were terrifying are suddenly all right.”

  “An inch, right. Just an inch.”

  “Just an inch, and tragedy turns to comedy.”

  Tasha looked at me. “This happened to you?”

  I laughed. “One of the times I tried to kill myself? Only thing that stopped me was I couldn’t decide what to wear.”

  She kept looking. “It doesn’t sound like you’re getting this stuff from Oprah.”

  I turned and checked her balcony. Darkness was settling over the Hills.

  I told her about my past—the booze, the meth, the manslaughter. I told her about getting into AA, getting into Buddhism in prison. I told her about dying to yourself to be reborn, how we’re in the hands of something, how if you give yourself up enough to it you find out it’s God, the moving mystery of God, always in motion.

  “You go back,” I said, “anthropology, you look at the old initiation rites? They all ended the same way. The ancient rites always ended the same way. With an acceptance of reality, an embrace of ordinary, everyday reality. That was the whole point of the rites, that was the big secret waiting to be discovered. The person getting initiated would always end up embracing the world just as it is.”

  She sipped her coffee, smiling. “You’re kind of an interesting guy, you know that?”

  “You know, I’ve always suspected something like that might be true.”

  >>>>>>

  We never made it to dinner, never made it out of the apartment. Instead we stayed in the kitchen and just kept talking about our lives, the things we’d learned, the things we were still trying to learn. But we did get hungry. Tasha had two-thirds of a blueberry pie in the fridge. Organic, of course. Sapphire Highbush berries from Fresno, grown in low, 4.8 pH soil, two-and-a-half feet between each plant. The pie was fantastic. Every bite sent my endorphins into a Niagra release.

  The evening took a lazy drift into night. Who knew what time it was? I was feeling more relaxed than I’d been in a long, long time.

  “I’m glad we know what we’re saying to each other,” Tasha said. “It’s good to know, good to understand, right? Cause isn’t that why we’re saying these things to each other?”

  The more she talked, the more attractive I found her. For me, nothing is sexier than character, and she had a lot of character.

  I was telling her I needed to work on my patience, work on living one day at a time. Every morning I try to read a daily meditation? But I always keep skipping ahead, looking to see what the next days have to say.

  She was rinsing the dishes in the sink, her back to me, while I was talking. Naturally I was staring at her ass. Incredible shape—completely organic, I’m sure. I don’t know how it happened, but somehow she sensed where my eyes were. She quickly turned around and gave me this I-know-what-you’re-doing look. Busted. She didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything except turn back around and finish with the dishes.

  She ripped off a paper towel—unbleached, undyed—dried her hands and walked over to the table. Not angry, not pleased, not nothing. I didn’t know what she was going to do or say, and I was a little surprised when she asked did I want to go out on the balcony. The view, she said, was pretty nice.

  It was. Moving into the living room area, you could see that the night sky was a dark purple, with a nearly perfect half-moon hanging high over the Hills. The view was so beautiful it could break your heart.

  We never made it out to the balcony. As we walked toward the sliding door her leg brushed against mine. I took another step, trying to calculate if this was an accident. She brushed against my leg again. Uh-huh.

  I took her hand, turned her toward me and pressed my mouth against hers. She smelled like nutmeg and lemon and night and wet earth. She hid her face under my jaw and nuzzled the flesh of my neck. I unbuttoned her top, slowly, no hurry, kissed her again, deeper this time, took off her top. It was all slow, very slow, taking relaxed time, undressing each other in suspended motion. I thought about Jimmy Reed singing Caress Me. That was the rhythm we were in, and the blues couldn’t get any slower than that.

  >>>>>>

  We never made it into the bedroom. I woke up on the area rug in the living room, about as rested as I’ve ever been. She was sitting up next to me, knees bent, gazing out past the balcony. The moon was getting ready to disappear behind the Hills now. You could almost see stars in the sky.

  We both sat there for a minute, still naked, not saying anything, just letting the time zen by.

  She shifted to me. “I was thinking of something. There’s somebody maybe you should talk to.”

  Back down to earth.

  “Who’s that?”

  “My sister’s bodyguard.”

  “You know where he is?”

  “She. And, yeah, we’re still close. I know how to get her.”

  “Might help.”

  “She’s never talked to anybody about that night. I mean, outside of the police, me, L.C. She’s always refused to talk to anybody else, especially the media.”

  “She’ll talk now?”

  “I can call her, talk her around, tell her you’re all right. Maybe she’ll be around tomorrow.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Pear Wicinski.”

  “What do you mean Pear? Like the fruit?”

  “It was supposed to be Pearl, but they left the L off the birth certificate.”

  “Hell of a name to go through life with.”

  Tasha shrugged, I don’t know. “She’s done all right with it.”

  >>>>>>

  THE FLYING WIG-RIPPER BODY SLAM

  The building was an old, six-story tenement in Huntington Park, just off the Harbor Freeway, and with the weedy vegetation out front and the rope bridges of drying wash strung from the upper windows, it still gave off a late 60’s crash pad vibe. I found a scotch-taped strip of paper handwritten P. Wicinski, pressed the button next to it and got buzzed in.

  A9—the ground floor. A hallway lit with naked light bulbs, rusted sprinkler pipes crossing overhead, old wood redolent of aged urine and cheap cigars. Some cartoon soundtrack—it might’ve been Chop Socky Chooks—blared from one of the upper floors.

  Pear Wicinski stood I’d say maybe only 5-3, but she had a big, broad face and even bigger, broader shoulders. Woman was built like a septuagenarian pork chop. She was wearing a faded, floral-print, smock-like housecoat and she walked with a cane.

  “Quinn McShane?” I said. “Real Story?”

  “Well whoopdee fucking doo.”

  “Tasha Eston called?”

  “I know, I know. She spoke highly, as a matter of fact.”

&nb
sp; Pear let me in. I saw a ceiling fan circulating warm air through a cramped apartment, every square inch jammed with ancient furniture. A big red bottle of Kriss-Mist all natural liquid laxative sat on the coffee table.

  “Why is it,” Pear wanted to know, “at my age, people still keep bothering me about this thing?”

  Then I saw the walls. Her life story was on the walls. The spaces were all taken up by title belts, championship medals, certificates, photos of a much-younger Pear dressed in leopard print leotards, sequined one-piece bathing suits, leather gowns, Carmen Miranda headdresses, framed newspaper clippings and wrestling magazine covers, posters billing her as The Wild Wicinski or The Wild Pear.

  “You were a wrestler?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Wiseass.

  I moved closer to one of the newspaper stories, scanned the display type—the headlines and captions. “Says you were a leading figure on the women’s circuit.”

  “No. I was queen of the women’s circuit. Twelve-year period, except for a few months here and there, I held one version or another of every world championship title.”

  “Jesus that’s some career.”

  She limped over to me. “My dad loved pro wrestling, started taking me to matches when I was, oh, 8, 9. One night I saw Baby Burgess, she was the reigning women’s top dog at the time. She was short of stature, just like me, but she could bring it. That’s when I got the calling, seeing Baby Burgess. I was an inch shorter than her, only weighed like 116 my first matches.”

  “And they said you wouldn’t make it.”

  “But I had the moves. I had my specialties. The flying 180 drop kick. The flying backward head scissors. The flying wig-ripper body slam. I made them my own. I’d get the house on its feet every time I did them.”

  She pointed her cane at a newspaper clipping showing her and another wrestler in a sequence of photos.

  “This is the flying 180 drop kick. You see? You’ve got your back to your opponent, looks like you’re open for an attack. Then you make a flat-footed jump as high as you can, turn 180 degrees at the top of the jump and kick your opponent in the face or chest as the case may be. I could do a six-foot vertical from a flat-foot start.”

  “Looks like you had some fun.”

  “I wish I was still doing it. Age and injury said otherwise.” She did a 180 and hobbled away from the walls. “Now look at this, 72 rat bastard years old and I’m gimping around like Walter Brennan in The Real McCoys.”

  Her limp reminded me of Grady Alexander, dealing RD-17 or TT-44 or ABC-123 up in Topanga Canyon.

  “Everybody’s getting old,” I said.

  “I’m not getting old. I got old.” Pear gestured to some indefinite part of the apartment. “I keep a folder with all my medical bills. Every year it keeps getting thicker and thicker.”

  I stepped next to her. “So after wrestling, a bodyguard?”

  “Gradually. I stayed on the circuit for a while—trainer, manager, promoter. Then I got tired of all the sloppola. A few of the men fighters I knew, they’d gotten into security. Most of these guys, their heads were as empty as a coolie dental plan. I thought if they could do it, why not me?”

  “For how long?”

  “I was bodyguarding for a few years. Had some decent clients, some not so.”

  “Like?”

  She shook her head. “Discretion. Say one thing, though. A lot of them? They were just camera trash, nothing more than that. Not Amanda, though. I was honestly fond of her. She was my last client, in fact. I retired after her, became a pensioner.”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about. About Amanda.”

  “No shit,” she sighed. “I know—Tasha said you were someone who could be trusted.”

  “I guess you’ve heard all the stories about her death.”

  “You mean have I talked to L.C.?” she laughed. “Yes, I’ve heard them all. He’s bent my ear for many an hour, though I have to say I’m fond of him too. Him and Tasha both.”

  “What do you think about the stories?”

  Pear sighed. “We’re all different, no one’s the same. We all have different dreams, different desires, different fabric softeners.”

  She picked something up from the coffee table, next to the Kriss-Mist—a small, delicate, lace handkerchief, which she pinned to her housecoat. An improbable accessory for her blue-collar body.

  “We can talk,” she said, “but not today. Some other time maybe.”

  “Mood’s not right?”

  “Not that a-tall. I’m on my way to the store. Got to get my shopping done.”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  “I’m walking. I prefer to walk. I need the exercise.”

  “How about if I walk with you? I’d appreciate it.”

  She sighed again. “If you want to do some walking, I’ll do some talking.”

  >>>>>>

  The streets were teeming, hundreds of people doing a heavy stroll under the hot sun. Angry traffic, horns and brakes snarling at each other. The smell of sweat mixed with street garbage. We took bulging, rippling sidewalks past liquor stores, bodegas, take-outs from every country in Asia, windows with herb-jars of borraja, gordolobo, tejocotes, ginseng and St. John’s wort, hair-straightening places, signs for acupuncture and acupressure, nail salons, The ReSouled Shop—a second-hand clothing store, bars, check-cashing joints, AME storefront churches, Pentacostal storefront churches. People were sitting on stoops, crates or aluminum chairs wherever shade was to be found. Dope-sick stoners slumped against the walls.

  Pear, with her cane and lace handkerchief, was promenading along like we were walking down Rodeo Drive.

  “I took it in my face,” she was saying. “Really, that’s where I felt it. The moment I walked into that room, found her lying there, I remember my cheeks turning solid and heavy. I could feel all the weight of my years in my face.”

  “You saw her when last?”

  “That afternoon. She had a meeting in Century City, talking about Purple Blues. I took her over there, brought her home, went inside for a few minutes, we talked, I left.”

  “You called that night, but no answer.”

  “That’s when I rushed over.”

  “Why did you call?”

  “I called every night, at least once. That was the ritual we had. She was a bad sleeper, always waking up. And every time she woke up—this was sometimes seven, eight times a night—she’d check the alarm and the locks. She had a mania about it. Every time she got up, she’d check the doors, the windows, the security. I’d call to make sure everything was all right.”

  “Even if she had company?”

  “Every night. She wanted me to call at least once a night. Most times she’d say everything was fine, but check back in an hour or two.”

  “So when you called that night, you knew something was wrong.”

  Pear nodded. “No answer, I knew. Rushed over right away. The doors were all locked, the windows. The alarm was still on. If anybody else had been there that night, she let them in.”

  “You know what L.C. thinks, right? Somebody had keys made, knew the codes?”

  “There we disagree. One of the many things L.C. and I disagree on. She was too light a sleeper. Anybody trying to get in, any sound, she would’ve purely panicked. She would’ve woken bolt up and called me or 911.”

  “And she didn’t.”

  “No call made, no locks opened, no alarm turned off. If anybody was in there, it was someone she knew.”

  A homeless woman stumbled up to us. She had skin the texture of Astroturf and was wearing a Hillcrest Country Club T-shirt. “The Lord be with you don’t touch me,” she said.

  Pear never broke stride and limped right past her. I followed. The woman muttered something and walked away.

  “You ever meet Robby Walsh?” I said.

  “Plenty of times. He was over there three, four times a week. Must’ve always had a boner on. Or, as the French say, a bonair.”

  “Y
ou think she could’ve heard him talking about things, the pressures he was under?”

  She laughed. “We’re back to L.C. now? All his jabber-wabber? I’ll tell you something, my opinion, if Robby had anything to do with her dying, nobody will ever prove it.”

  “Why not?”

  “You ever know a Peeping Tom who kept his blinds open?” She knocked a stone out of the way with her cane. “I’ll say one thing about Robby, though. She seemed pretty happy when he was around. I don’t know for sure, we didn’t discuss her specific intake, but I don’t think she was as stoned when he was around. She just seemed a lot less irritable and argumentative.”

  “No fighting?”

  “No fighting?” Pear stopped, looked at the cracked sidewalk. “The afternoon I dropped her off, the last time? We were talking, she got a call. Took it in the bedroom, but I could hear her hotting it up with somebody. Saying, I’m tired of this, no more of this shit, I’ve had it.”

  “You don’t know who?”

  She shook her head and began walking again. “And she didn’t say anything about it when she came out. Wasn’t my place to ask.”