A Purple Place For Dying

by John D. MacDonald

  "Hate to interrupt a man when he's out back someplace bailing up money," Jass said. Rupert stared at me. He came slowly into the room. He made me feel as if I wanted to apologize for something.

  "Meet Travis McGee," Jass said. "He works for me."

  Rupert stared until he had finished his exhaustive inventory, and then went to the bar and fixed himself a tall glass of soda without ice. As he fixed it, he said, "I was trying to think of the last time you were here, Jasper." His voice was shocking. Apparently something was wrong with his throat. Each word was spaced, given equal weight and emphasis, as though a machine had been taught to talk.

  "When Catherine died."

  "Long time ago," Rupert said. He sat in one of the leather chairs, his face in shadow.

  Jass leaned forward. "I come onto some information, Wally. The government is building a tax case against me. A big one. I find out you've been cooperating with them."

  "Yes."

  "Couldn't you've tipped me off?"

  "Why?"

  "Goddammit, it would have been the decent thing to do."

  Rupert was silent for what seemed to me a long time. "Long ago, Jasper, we helped each other. Not out of love. We did some things. So we could survive. The things we did were dangerous. There is no statute of limitations about fraud. Now it is up to each of us to save ourself, not the other fellow. You wonder if I made a deal. Certainly. What was the deal? I testified under oath to all I could remember. The records are gone. You know that. I agreed not to inform you. I made a settlement with them. Larger than I'd hoped it would be. But I'm in the clear now, Jasper. They won't smash me or jail me. If they bring criminal charges against you, I will testify. That is part of the deal."

  "You son of a bitch," Jass whispered.

  "Why get emotional? What should I have done? Be a nice fellow and hurt my family to keep from hurting you? You are a silly man, Jasper. If you were careful, you would have known what they were planning and what they were doing, and maybe you could have protected yourself while there was still time. Maybe you could still run, if you plan it carefully, if you don't attract their attention while you're turning things into cash."

  "I don't think I give a damn about all that," Jass said.

  For the first time I sensed that Walter Rupert was very slightly off balance. "What?"

  "Suppose you didn't tell them everything, Wally."

  "I don't understand."

  "You could have told them the stuff that makes me look the worst, and saved the stuff that makes you look most like a thief. Maybe, with more information, they'd come back on you again."

  "Please try to make sense, Jasper."

  "They were going to talk to Mona."

  "So?"

  "Could she have fixed your wagon a little bit? She and that lawyer of hers dug up some stuff."

  "So?"

  "They never got to talk to her."

  "But they will. I think you should make sure she keeps her mouth shut. Anything she can say will hurt you more than me."

  "You hear she'd run off with that schoolteacher?"

  "Somebody said something, yes."

  "She didn't. Somebody killed the both of them, and tried to make it look as if they'd run off."

  After a long silence Rupert said, "Now I know why you wasted your time coming here. I don't have your flaw. I don't get emotional about these things. The answer is no. If a person was a great danger to me, if there was no other way, I could have them killed. But there would be nothing clumsy about it. If you know she didn't run off, this thing must have gone wrong for someone. I would have to know nothing would go wrong, or I wouldn't risk it. No, Jasper. She was no danger to me. You see, when I decided to take my gamble, I decided not to hide anything-even little things that had nothing to do with you and that you never knew about. Because, you see, I know you will fight. The way it is, nothing you can tell them about me will surprise them. I thought it all out. I am not a nice fellow, the way you think of these things. Maybe you're not one either."

  Jass stood up quickly. He glared down at Walter Rupert. "You don't scare me, Wally. You scare a lot of people. All these people of yours out here, you got them so scared maybe they could go too far trying to please you. A little hint or something, and they jump the gun. How about that?"

  "No, Jasper."

  "How can you be so sure?"

  With eyes almost closed, Rupert said, "I know what every one of them is doing at all times. I make it my business to know. Some of my sons are very crafty. I'm sorry your girl is dead. But it has nothing to do with me and mine. Goodnight, Jasper."

  He didn't stand or speak or even turn his big head when we left the room.

  I expected a chilling ride back to the city, but Jass drove very slowly.

  "What do you think?" he asked me.

  "I don't know. I believe him, I guess. He... he seems to be an unusual man."

  Jass snorted. "Unusual! One of those is all the world can stand."

  "I guess he's made things pretty rough for you on this tax thing."

  "It's going to be bothersome."

  "No more than that?"

  "It could sting a little. It could cost me. I got a great big packing case full of old records. I'll drag it out long as I can, then when it gets real tight, I'll all of a sudden find those records. A lot of them are correct and a lot of them are part correct and a lot of them have got nothing to do with anything that ever happened. By the time that stuff gets all hashed out they'll start dickering toward a settlement. If I don't like it, I just could find two more crates full of old records in a warehouse someplace. I can keep ten CPA's and ten lawyers going for a long time. Maybe as long as I live. And then who gives a damn?"

  "You must have been a great pair, you two. The fox and the weasel."

  "Watch your mouth, son."

  "How did the widows and the orphans make out when you two were operating?"

  "They stood in line for it, boy. They always do. Ring the bell and the suckers come on the run. In this world, you either take or you're tooken. Figures lie and liars figure, and the only thing worth all the trouble is a good bourbon, a good bed and a busy woman. There are a hundred and fifty thousand new folks, net, in the world every day, and the sun will set on all but one or two of them before they can even get to lift their head. So set the hook deep while you got the chance."

  "The Yeoman philosophy."

  "It's worked so far."

  He turned into his drive and I said, as he parked it, "It's worked fine, I guess, Jass. You're in such great shape right now."

  As we walked toward the doorway of his house he said, "But think how good I had it, and how long I had it good."

  "I liked you a little better when you were talking about burying a jackrabbit, Mr. Yeoman."

  "Don't get the wrong idea," he said. "I loved that woman."

  He had stopped in his indignation, turning toward me, and in the heavy shadows of the grounds, I saw the dark shape come plunging out of the tall shrubbery toward him, ten feet behind him and off to the side, and I caught the small flicker of reflected light from a narrow blade held low. I was very close to choking up. A knife will do that. It freezes the lower part of the gut. Astoundingly few people have the stomach even to try to use one. I let out the big bellow as I made my dive. It is a psychological weapon, unexpected and often unnerving. My shoulder bounced Jass back off the the path.

  I feinted left and fell right, rolling and swinging my feet up at the shadowy figure. I stamped both heels into it solidly, bellowed again as I used the rebound to roll again, up onto tiptoe and fingertips, facing him. He was half down, making a gasping, grunting noise. But he gathered himself and ignored me and sped toward Jass, crouching low, blade out. Jass shot him twice in the face, and stepped aside like a matador. The figure landed heavily, coughed and spasmed once and was still. The knife tinkled along the path.

  "God, I hate a knife!" Jass said in a husky whisper.

  Lights were coming on. Excited voices were raised
in question. Two men came running up across the yard. Floodlights went on, turned on by somebody inside the house. The two men were in uniform.

  "Mr. Yeomanl Mr. Yeoman, you all right? My God, what was that terrible bellering?"

  "I'm all right. I thought Fred told you to keep an eye on this place."

  "We been watching it, I swear."

  "Let's find out who we got here."

  They used flashlights to supplement the floodlights. House servants had come out into the yard, staying a cautious distance from the body.

  "Whoever he is, he's sure enough dead," one of the deputies said. "You shoot him, Mr. Yeoman?"

  "Just because you see this here gun in my hand, and you see that knife he was coming at me with? What in the world would make you think I shot him?"

  "Well, I was just..."

  "Shut up," Jass said. I moved closer. They had rolled him onto his back. He was young. His elaborate hairdo was in greasy disarray. The ruined face had that pachuco look. It went with the tight pants, the dirty pin-striped button-down shirt under the dark green satin nylon jacket. I had seen him on a hundred corners in a dozen cities, staring at me with a combination of defiance and stupidity, standing with an indolent tomcat grace.

  They went through his pockets. He had a hundred dollars, ten tens rolled into a tight cylinder and fastened with a rubber band. He had eighty-eight cents in change. He had a yellow plastic comb. He wore a gold wrist watch that told the time in all the capitals of the world. He wore black suede shoes with thick rubber soles. He wore no socks. He wore a good-luck ring of two pot-metal snakes intertwined.

  "Maybe he was out of his head, all that yelling," a deputy said. "You know him, Carl? I don't know him. You know him, Mr. Yeo..."

  "Nobody knows him," Jass said. "Get on your radio and get somebody to come haul this garbage out of my yard. This here is Mr. McGee. He saw it all. I'm just over the line so this is county business."

  "Sir, you should come in and..."

  "Fred knows exactly where to find me, and Mr. McGee and me are going to be available to answer questions any time. So you tell Fred his first order of business is to find out who this garbage is. Now hop to it! And you folks get back in the house where you belong. Miguel, you hustle some old piece of cloth to throw over this thing. Trav, let's get on in the house and have us a drink."

  We went in. He slammed the door. The lights were on. A fire was laid. He squatted and lit it. Crouched there with the kindling flames marking his tough face, he grinned up at me in a sidelong way and said, "For anything your size, son, you move very nice. Very quick and tricky. Like to scared me to death, knocking me sidelong and making a sound like an old steamboat."

  "You recover fast."

  "I'm no gunman. You gave me three or four seconds to get ready. I've been carrying it the last few days, in this little belly holster that slips down inside my belt."

  He stood up, took the gun out, checked the safety and handed it to me. I pulled my hand back. "Let's not confuse the lab boys, Jass."

  He put it away. He shook his head. "That yelling."

  "The idea is to make such a hell of a noise people can't think. They go on instinct then. Sometimes the instinct is to run."

  "You like to kicked him to death."

  "That was the general idea."

  He wandered over and fixed the drinks, handed me mine. "You see if he was real serious about me?"

  "He was bringing it up from the ground, and I think he wanted to put it right in the small of your back."

  "You got yourself a bonus coming."

  "Suit yourself."

  There was a rhythmic pulse of red light in the room. He went to the window; pulled a drapery aside. "They're loading him. They don't use sirens in this kind of neighborhood."

  He looked at his watch and went over to a radio on a table near the bar and turned it on, saying, "Ten o'clock news. They give the local stuff first."

  The announcer said, "... and has been tentatively identified as Professor John Webb of State Western University at Livingston, missing since last Monday afternoon according to Sheriff Fred Buckelberry. The body was discovered earlier this evening when a county highway crew was removing a rock slide from a private road southeast of the city. The private road leads to a cabin owned by Mr, and Mrs. Jasper Yeoman.

  "The clearing work was being done at the special request of the county sheriff, so a lab truck could be taken up to the cabin. Mona Yeoman, the attractive blonde wife of Jasper Yeoman of this city has been missing since Tuesday noon. She was last seen at the Yeoman cabin. Foul play is feared. In a brief statement, Sheriff Buckelberry said that the twin disappearances of Professor Webh and Mrs. Yeoman had been kept quiet so that his department could work on several leads in this case. Further developments are expected momentarily.

  "The cause of death in the case of Professor Webb has not yet been determined. And now on the national scene... Excuse me, we have a bulletin here. Just a few minutes ago a prowler was shot and killed in the yard of the Yeoman residence. We have no other information at this time."

  Jass grunted and turned the set off. "No more privacy, boy. Now we live in a store window on main street. Found him under that rock. So it was blown down, it was blown down on him. A hell of a thorough cause of death. Funny place to hide a body."

  You have to assume some kind of logic in these things, I guess. They didn't knock rocks down on him far kicks. With such a deserted cabin situation, one could assume the road wouldn't be cleared immediately. But it would be, sooner or later. And the body would be identified.

  See, the prof is daid! So he didn't go away with Mrs. Y. So she is daid also. And, if the lad with the knife had put it where he wanted to put it, it could all be unraveled that the wife had predeceased Jass.

  Ten

  I FINALLY got away from the Yeoman house at twenty after eleven. Fred Buckelberry had arrived, with deputy and stenographer. He acted very tired. He had made me tell my part of it three times. He made me promise to stop by his office Friday afternoon and sign the statement. It could not have been a more obvious case of self-defense. Had Jass missed him with those two shots, he would have taken the blade in the belly.

  No identification on the decedent. They were checking him out through Phoenix. Buckelberry kept saying in a weary way, "Jass, if he was stone broke it could be one of those things. Nice neighborhood. He's looking for a car, some wallet money. But he had a hundred dollars."

  And Jass kept saying in a kindly way, "Fred, I wish I could help you. But I'm just as puzzled as you are, I swear."

  Just before I left, Buckelberry told me that Miss Webb had phoned him after the professor's body had been discovered. He said she'd seemed very upset and he had asked her to come in, but she had hung up on him.

  So I wasted no time getting to The Sage. Though I was busy with the dangerous mechanics of fast driving in urban traffic, I could not keep my mind from random speculation about the death of John Webb, like a puppy gnawing at the edge of a carpet. When Mona Yeoman and I had clambered over that rock slide, Webb was down under there.

  As Jass had said, it seemed a curious place to hide a body. Obviously the road was going to be cleared. And then the body would be found. It made me wonder if it was some sort of grotesque accident. Maybe the entire murder arrangement was like one of those bloody cinema farces the British do so well. Everything goes wrong, and bodies keep falling out of the wrong closets.

  If there was a plan, and if the plan was still working, then the only appropriate question was to ask what the situation would be if that knife had let the life out of Jass Yeoman. Who would be ahead? Some old lady in Yuma? The Rupert clan? And was Mona's body in some other strange and obvious place?

  I put the rental car in the hotel lot and stopped at the desk and picked up the other room key. There were no messages. I went up and let myself into the room. Isobel lay on the further of the two three-quarter beds. The desk lamp was on, a weak bulb in an orange shade. She slept atop the spread, dressed
except for her shoes, a yellow blanket over her. I could see a note on hotel stationery on the green blotter under the desk lamp. I decided I would let her sleep, even if the note directed me to awaken her. I closed the door soundlessly, and went quietly to the desk.

  It was a curious note. No salutation and no signature. "There doesn't seem to be much point in it any more. I might have more luck the next time around. After everything is settled up, please give what's left to the scholarship fund at SWU."

  After the moment of horrid comprehension, I reached her in three long strides. Her hands were slack and icy. The heartbeat was very slow, respiration agonizingly slow. I shook her and slapped her and got a faint drugged whine of protest. I got to the phone and asked to have a doctor sent up just as quickly as they could manage it. I asked for a pot of black coffee.