A Purple Place For Dying

by John D. MacDonald

  I took her through the late brass of sunlight and across the open square to where my rental car was parked in a street narrow as an alley, in a deep black of shade. I put her in, and when I went around and got behind the wheel, I realized she was shaking all over. I had the impression that if she unclamped her jaw, her teeth would chatter.

  "Isobel?"

  She wrenched around to face me, her mouth stretched into ugliness. "And what the hell do you know of relationships? Symbiotic! Limited contact with reality! How could you even pretend to recognize the intellectual position? Oh, you have your lousy little vanity, Mr. McGee. You have a shrewd quick mind, and little tag ends of wry attitudes, and a sort of deliberate irony, served up as if you were holding it on a tray. And you have the nerve to patronize me! You have all your snappy little answers to everything, but when they ask the wrong questions, you always have fists or kicking or fake superior laughter. You are a physical man, and in the best sense of being a man, you are not one tenth the man my brother was." Her eyes went wide and dazed. "Was," she repeated softly. She had sunk the barb herself, and chunked it deep, and she writhed on it.

  She huddled into her misery, face against her knees, grinding out the little rusty sobs. I pulled at her and gathered her in, against automatic resistance. I got her face tucked into the hollow of throat and shoulder, a hand pressed against the nape of her neck, an arm around the supple arch of her back. She clung. She was a foundering boat in a terrible sea. But she was still clamping down on the sobs, her back knotting. I was encouraging her. It was like getting a sick gagging child to vomit. "Come on. Let go. Let it go, dear."

  It was cool in the deep shade. She squeezed at grief, miserly, choking at it. I could feel a terrible tension building in her, rising, and then it broke at last, in a great yawning loosened yaffling animal sob. All the wires had broken, and she could lose herself in it, throwing herself into each spasm, all softened and steaming and hopeless, freed for a time from that terrible prison of the highly complex personality wherein they are condemned always to observe themselves as though standing a bit to one side, watching themselves.

  A clot of young boys came down the alley, stared, sniggered, guffawed, made obscene gestures and went on. She settled into a dull rhythm, and after a long time that began to die. With the slow persistence of the sick or the very drunk she began to push herself away from me, to sort herself out, dogged and weary.

  She sat apart from me. She was a mess. Her face was bloated, marked with angry patches of red. She got tissues from her purse. Every few moments a dry sob would shake her like a monstrous hiccup. The neat wings of hair were matted and in disarray. She looked closer to thirty-six than twenty-six. She looked at herself in her mirror, and with a slow and clumsy effort she fixed her hair. From time to time she sighed very deeply. She had made a sodden mare's nest of my shoulder.

  Watching her I was reminded of the way a fighter will get up - one of the good ones. He lands face down in a way that means he can't make it. But at the count of three he begins to move. He pushes the canvas away. He comes up onto one knee. At nine and a half he is up, tottering and drifting and dreaming, perhaps grinning foolishly, but he is up and moving and his pride brings his gloves up, and he can take a huge frail slow swing at the opponent charging in to knock him down again.

  She straightened humbled shoulders and said, "I... I guess there are some uses for the physical man."

  It was that kind of gallantry based on an iron pride.

  "The traditional handy shoulder."

  Her glance was swift and sidelong. "Thank you for the shoulder." She took the dark glasses from her purse and put them on. "Now I feel shy and funny."

  "To have been seen in that condition? Want one of my snappy comments, on a tray?"

  She tried to smile. "Please don't. Why am I so exhausted?"

  "You used yourself up. Want some coffee? Food? Drink?"

  "I want to be home in my bed."

  The square was in shadow. By the time I left the city the sun was gone behind the hills to the west, and the dusk land was blue. Her head kept drooping, and she would give little starts as she woke up. Finally she sagged over against the door on her side, head awkwardly cocked, hands loose in her lap, palms up, fingers curled.

  She awoke when I stopped in front of Hardee Three, but she was as dazed as a tripworn child. I walked her to the door. She said she would be all right. I said I would phone. She nodded absently. I took the key from her fumbling hand and unlocked the door for her. She turned and said, "Good night."

  I patted her shoulder. "Get a good sleep." She nodded and stood tall for a moment and kissed the corner of my mouth, a child's automatic kiss, the unconsidered gesture. I do not believe she was at all aware of having done it. She trudged in, turned on a light and closed the door. I guessed that she would be in bed and asleep in ten minutes. It was a little after eight. Twelve hours' sleep would be the best thing that could happen to her.

  Strange little button. Comforted by being held. Great reservoirs of affection. But blocked in every other direction.

  I pushed the little car on the way back to Esmerelda. The people at the Latigo Motel were nervous about their money. They were reassured to find out I now had a car. It comforted them. I showered and shaved and changed and went down to The Sage for two huge broiled lamb chops in their Sundowner Grille. A tipsy woman in a paper hat blundered by my table and chided me severely for not wearing my badge. I promised I would do better next time.

  Six

  THE SOUTHWEST section of the city was the old part, now the center of the Mexican-American community. The far newer and most desirable residential section was to the northwest where there was some contour to the land. I arrived at the Yeoman place at ten thirty. It was in a fold of the land, lushly irrigated, high enough so that when I got out of the car on the broad slick expanse of asphalt drive, I could look out across all the lights to the city in the clear cold night air. The house was low and huge, and something that bloomed in the night had an aromatic fragrance. Most of the house was dark. As I started toward the front a side door opened and Jass Yeoman said, "McGee? Come on in this way, boy."

  I crossed a small terrace and he let me into a comfortable study. A man's room. Leather and wood, stone and books and bar, cluttered desk, gun rack logs chuckling comfortably in a big deep fireplace. He had a glass in his hand. He told me to fix myself a drink. The expanse of wall behind the bar was dominated by a huge oil portrait of Mona Fox Yeoman. She wore a deep shiny blue, cut low. She sat on a bench and looked out at the room, wearing a small and knowing smile-a woman four or five years younger than the one I had seen die.

  Jass wore slippers, a gray flannel shirt, khakis faded almost white. I sat in the leather chair opposite his. He said, "Every Wednesday night of my life I'm down at the Cottonwood Club. Steak dinner and poker. Dealer's choice, but it's usually shotgun. Three cards down and bet, get one more down and bet, one more down and bet, then play it like draw poker from there on out. You play poker?"

  "Yes. And shotgun. It runs rough."

  "That Wednesday game is worth about three thousand a year to me." He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. "Cook and the maid and the houseman and the gardener are back there in quarters now, gabbling about it. El Patron is home on a Wednesday night. Or maybe they don't give a damn. Who knows?"

  "Are we playing poker now, Mr. Yeoman?" He studied me. I wondered at the blood heritage. Some Indian I guessed. Way back. I had not noticed his hands before. Thick hands, big-knuckled, with heavy veins. Hard labor, long ago. Nothing else will do it.

  "What makes you think you know the rules?" he asked.

  "I don't. I'm guessing at them. Things have a different flavor out here. Power is centralized in a different way. It's a feudal system. It goes against my grain, but I have the hunch that the solitary knight in his tin armor would take one hell of a thrashing. So I have to sign up, or I can't play. But I don't know how much cover I get."

  "It isn't all as simple as it u
sed to be."

  "Nothing is."

  "This solitary knight you brang up, boy. He rides in and picks a castle and signs up. You could be picking one with a busted moat and the towers falling down, and everybody out to lunch."

  "So the knight is the type who can't stay on the horse and he's scared of dragons. Maybe it's the best deal he can make."

  "You think I made an offer last night?"

  "Didn't you?"

  "You wouldn't have come around unless you had something."

  "Mr. Yeoman, if I give you a card and you play it wrong, I could be..."

  "For chrissake, McGee, you're signed on! Anybody moves against you, the whole castle gets dropped on them."

  I leaned back, turning the glass in my hand. "She wanted to hire me to pry her loose from you, based on half of what I could pressure you to settle on her. She heard about me from a mutual friend. I know you plundered her estate. I know she was your ward. I think I know why you thought it smart business to marry her. I also have the feeling it worked out a lot better than you counted on."

  "You're in a funny line of work, McGee."

  "I'm a salvage expert. But I didn't want this job."

  "Why not?"

  "Just a feeling I had about her, that actually she was hoping there was nothing I could do. But she felt obligated to go through the motions. I think she was setting herself up for the tragic renunciation scene, Jass. Tears, goodby to the lover, trudge home to the husband. I have the feeling that's what she wanted next. To moon around here until you were sufficiently impressed with her broken heart, and then settle down. Where she belonged. You look skeptical. Ask Mike Mazzari. He sensed that it was just a romantic game. I think the game was about over, for her at least. But they gave her no time to prove it."

  "They?"

  "The ones Buckelberry is looking for. They didn't clean up the area perfectly Jass. The lab crew found proof today. A fleck of lung tissue and the right blood type. The ones who took the plane were standins. Webb is probably dead too."

  He leaned his head back against the high back of the chair and looked as if he had gone to sleep. A log slipped into a new position, and sparks went up. He finished his drink and got up slowly. He went and stood with his hands jammed into his hip pockets, looking at her picture.

  "You know what kind of water we're pumping from those deep wells, son?"

  "What?"

  "Fossil water, sweet to the taste, laid down in the times when this was swamp and lakes and giant lizards, ferns like trees. We take it and when it's gone it's gone. Tomorrow all them pumps could give one big gassy belch and suck nothing but stale deep air. And this whole county would die."

  "I didn't know that."

  "They know it. They don't think about it. It scares the piss out of them to think about it. It's like a man never thinking he has to die. But the end is there. For this county, and for any man in it. They herd new folks in here and drill more wells and suck it away faster."

  "It seems stupid."

  He turned to the bar, replenished his drink and came slowly back to the chair. "Hell, it is stupid." He wiped his face, forehead to chin, in a slow gesture. "Waste. Hope. I don't know. You take a quick look, there you are with the world by the balls. Look again a minute later and you're an old fart thinking of the ten thousand ways you had it and blew it, every time. One day it turns out to be too much trouble. That's all. Just too much goddamn trouble. You see, boy I knew it last night. Forty years of poker. I saw it in your eyes. I saw the way it put the hooks into your mouth and changed your mouth. Freddy Buckelberry, for the love of Christ! I got his call tonight, Jass, boy, everything is like we thought. Yup. She took off with the professor, sure enough. What the silly son of a bitch doesn't know is that last night was the night. Not tonight. I was a little stoned last night. And I shall get a little stoned tonight, son. Last night I took the Chrysler out, way over onto the mesa road. It was a political son of a bitch, from nowhere to nowhere, and I got me a piece of the state money when they put it through. Cold moonlight up there, son, and forty miles of it like an arrow. It was moving up close to a hundred when I turned the lights off, and it went up one hell of a way from there, until that big car was a very tender little dancing thing. Hit a big bull jackrabbit. Hit him on the rise with a crack like a shot and he kept going right up. Damndest thing you ever saw. He was blood and bone too. Maybe his clan saw him go, and they'll have legends about him. I took my foot off, banged it into neutral, took that long coast back on down, stopped by a runty tree. I set for a time, got out and looked at the front end, rabbit-size welt on top of the curve there, deep, with blood drying there and some hair caught in the edge. I fingered that hair, pale stuff and soft. I walked over by the runty tree and pissed into the sand and stood and looked at the stars. I told myself there would be times I would draw to four hearts and ease the hand open and see that fifth one. I told myself there would be the brandy and the cigar after the good steak, that feeling of ease. I told myself I was still the old he-coon, and I'd have that big warm swing of a knowing woman under me, that time when you know it's near and nothing in creation is going to be able to stop either one of you. I whistled pieces of tunes and worked the car around and drove back, slow as an old lady, lights on. Long after I thought I would have passed the rabbit I came up on him and stopped with the lights on him, and I got out for some fool reason I will never know. I had exploded him pretty good, but there was clean fur on him, solid meat on him. I felt him and he was warm still. I picked him up and crossed the ditch and got down on my knees and dug like a dog does, dug him a deep hole and put him in and covered him over with my handkerchief before I filled it in. Like, for God's sake, a kid with a dead bird. I patted the dirt down, and still on my knees I looked up at the stars and asked them what kind of damn fool they were making of me. I knew it wasn't any good, boy. Poker and brandy, cigars and fresh clean tail. No good."

  He finished the drink, took both our glasses back to the bar and made fresh. I knew it was no time to say anything.

  He handed me my drink and sat down. "Know what I keep remembering the most about her?" His grin made him look younger.

  "Three years ago. I was in the market for some brood mares and took her on up to Montana with me to look some over. There was good spring grass and flowers where we were. We walked up a hill and down the other side. I liked the mares. She didn't like the man selling them. My God, we'd start jawing at each other about any small thing sometimes. There wasn't a soul within two miles of us. The horses were grazing back by a brook. We were in that green bowl of grass and flowers. And there we were, nose to nose, yelling at each other. Suddenly she gave me a crack with her open hand that spun me halfway around. Usually I could guess about when it was coming, but she fooled me that time. I had a sore tooth and it hurt like hell. I gave her back a good one that turned her eyes empty for a half a second. She collected herself and swang again and I took it. I swear to God we must have whammed each other six times, and I saw her mouth twitching just about the same time I was beginning to see how funny it was. Then we were howling with laughter at each other, crying with it, like kids. And just about ninety seconds later we had both pair of riding britches off and we were nested down into that sweet grass and flowers like teenagers. Now isn't that the damndest thing to keep remembering?" He chuckled. "We both puffed up on the side of the face like ground squirrels taking a nut home."

  He went over and poked the fire up. "Love? What the hell is love, son? I married her because I was nervous about stripping her estate. She married me because she was drowning and I came within reach. This professor thing, I felt exasperated the way you do when you see any good friend being a damn fool about something. She brang that lawyer over from Belasco, and after he snuffed around, he knew it would be uphill all the way, and a damned long trip. She sicked an investigator onto me, and I told the chief of police, and they taught that fellow local manners. Then she got you, whatever the hell you are. Salvage expert?"

  "I'm a high-level
Robin Hood. I steal from thieves."

  "That wouldn't be a crowded occupation."

  "Jass, isn't it pretty damned plain that the shot was really fired at you?"

  He heaved up out of the chair and went over to a mounted pair of bull horns. They were on a long plaque that swiveled at one end. He turned them up out of the way. I caught a glimpse of the cylindrical wall safe before he stepped in front of it. I heard the chunking sound when he closed it and spun the dial. He came back to the chair. Without warning he flipped the stack of money at my face. I got my arm up. It bounced off onto the floor. It was paper-taped fifties, with the $5,000 imprint, and the initials of whoever had counted it.

  "Let's not fake what kind of interest you've got in this thing, McGee. Now you're saved the trouble of trying to con me."

  I pushed myself up out of the chair just far enough to aim the kick. I kicked the money at the fire. I was trying to kick it in. It fell short. But it fell close. "Don't try to tell me what I'm interested in, Jass."