A Purple Place For Dying

by John D. MacDonald

  Cursing her, I turned on every light in the room and the bathroom. I picked her up and took her into the bathroom. She was limp as a rag doll. I jounced her and shouted at her. I sat her on the floor in the corner by the tub, then used my shaving bomb to hastily mix a glass of warm soapy water. I knelt by her, clamped her jaws open, tilted her head and poured it into her throat. Some of it spilled down her sweater, but I saw her throat work with a labored slowness as she swallowed. At least she had that reflex left. I was not certain she had enough. I mixed another glass and got about half that down her.

  I picked her up and put her, belly down, over the rim of the tub. I knelt beside her and, holding her there, reached around and stuck two fingers down her throat. I prodded at the soft base of her tongue, and as I began to despair, I suddenly felt the musculature there begin to tighten. Then soft heavy spasms began, a dulled heavy gushing of soapy water soured by the stomach contents. When she stopped, I stimulated the spasms again, more readily the second time. I wondered where the hell they kept their doctors.

  I hauled her off the tub and turned her, sat her slumped against the tub and stripped her, wasting no time in saving her clothing. I popped straps and tore fabrics. Her bra, pants and half-slip were as unadorned and sensible as her walking shoes. I turned on the cold shower spray to rinse the tub out, drawing the shower curtain partway. Then I picked her up and sat her in the tub, adjusting the tilt and apertures of the shower head so that a good solid gout of cold water smashed her in the face and torso. She rocked her head from side to side and made almost inaudible mewling noises, over the roar of the shower.

  When the authoritative knock came at the door, I went to answer it, shoving her note into my pocket as I passed the desk. He was a round pink man with a sad, sagging, weary face. I led him into the bathroom. She had slumped further. I turned the water off. He took a towel and wiped her face roughly as he checked her pulse, thumbed her eyelid up, I told him exactly what I had done.

  "What'd she take?"

  "I don't know."

  "See if you can find what it was in."

  I found the plastic bottle in the wastebasket beside the desk. There was no drugstore label on it. I took it to him. There was a little white powder in the bottom of it. He shook it out into the palm of his hand, snuffed at it, moistened a fingertip. tasted the powder. "Barbiturate," he murmured.

  The girl made a snoring sound. He muttered to himself, dug into his open case, found a disposable hypo, a rubbertop vial of amber fluid. He pulled one of the girl's arms over the side of the tub, alcoholed a place above the elbow, filled his hypo, made a deft injection.

  "Better off in a hospital." he said, getting up off his knees.

  "Is it necessary?"

  "She your wife?"

  "No. Doctor, if she is in danger of dying, of course she should go to a hospital. Listen, this is a very neurotic kid. Her name is Webb. They found her brother's body this evening."

  He raised one tired eyebrow. "I heard about that."

  "I work for Jasper Yeoman. I've gotten acquainted with this girl. I think if a big hospital thing is made of it, she's going to try to live up to the billing. If it can be passed off, like a casual thing, like a small accident, I think it can work out better for her. That is, if she isn't in danger."

  He leaned against the sink, frowning. As he was about to speak, the coffee came. I think it turned the trick. He nodded approvingly.

  "I gave her a stimulant. Let's see if we can make her walk."

  We lifted her out. I got my robe on her and belted it. It trailed on the floor behind her. The doctor gave her three brisk slaps in the face. He put his mouth next to her ear and said, "You have to walk! Come on! Walk!" I supported most of her weight. She came along, head lolling, working her spaghetti legs.

  "That's good," he said. "Keep her moving. Pour coffee into her. Don't let her drowse off. Use the cold shower again if you have to. Make her talk. Count to a hundred. Alphabet. Anything. What I wonder is, can I depend on you?"

  "Yes."

  He studied me, lips pursed. "I'll come back here at four in the morning. Then, if she looks all right, we'll let her sleep. By then she should be begging to sleep."

  "Thank you, Doctor."

  "You did pretty good before I got here. I'll stop at the desk on the way out. They act uneasy down there. You're registered as a single." He permitted himself the first small smile. "I'll say the magic word. Yeoman. They'll leave you alone. Here's my number. If she starts to get away from you, so you can't get any reaction, call me at once. This is a risk for me, too. No, don't stop. Keep walking her." He started toward the door and hesitated, looked uneasily at me. "She's a very pretty girl."

  "Necrophilia never appealed to me, Doctor." The precision of the word heartened him. He bobbed his head and left. I walked the girl. I hustled her along, giving her more of her own weight to support, catching her when she started to fall. I slapped her and jounced her. I poured steaming coffee into her. I shoved her under the shower. Her whining became more audible and bitter and abused. She was a lump. A thing. An irritating and tiresome chore. She padded and lurched and grumbled in a voice so slurred I could not make out a word. Her head bobbed loosely. This was the monstrous selfishness of self-destruction. Somebody else has to pick up the pieces.

  For a long time, an hour or more, I could be ironically amused by the doctor having called her a pretty girl. She was a doughy, dull, fatly, blue-white, flaccid thing, with her water pasted hair, sagging mouth, slitted empty eyes. I could stand her under the water and she would take it like an obedient sow, flat-footed and streaming. I got pretty good at pouring coffee into her. And I could keep her in her floundering trudge by holding one arm. Suddenly it changed. She had begun to get wobblly again, and I put her under the shower, holding her there by one hand on her shoulder. This time she tautened. Her body seemed to lift for the first time and come alive as the cold water made her arch her back and tighten her muscles. Suddenly I realized that this was a marvelous female body, sleek, rounded, strong, flawless, with hips and breasts and belly of a ripeness that enhanced the narrow lithenes of her waist. I bundled her back into the damp robe a little sooner than I had planned. She shivered for a little while, and I took that as sufficient reason not to try the shower routine again.

  But by three in the morning, I had the feeling that I needed to get her past one more obstacle in the road back to awareness. She acted like a drunk. Querulous, mumbling, cross, indignant. But she seemed to have no real grasp of who she was or where she was or who I was. I kept thinking that I ought to be able to think of some way of shocking her back to reality.

  I brought her to a halt. She stood there swaying, eyes barely open. I closed the bathroom door. There was a mirror on the back of it. I put her in front of the mirror. I unbelted the robe and slipped it off her shoulders and tossed it aside. She stood looking at herself without comprehension.

  We looked odd in the mirror, all the rawboned height of McGee standing next to and slightly behind the pale perfection of the naked girl, so small in her bare feet, her frank breasts revealed, and, nested into the smoothness of her thighs, the sooty-soft-dark cornerstone to the soft and tender arch of hips. Her hair was a clotted tangle, half masking one eye. Smirking at her mirror image I put my lips close to her ear and said, "See the pretty girl? See the pretty pretty girl?"

  Her eyes were stubborn slits. She swayed and sighed, then quite suddenly her eyes opened wide. Her body tightened. She bent slightly from the waist, covered her parts with one hand and flattened her other arm across her breasts. Knock-kneed, she turned and backed away from me, making a little hissing sound.

  "Pretty girl?" I said.

  "What... what are you doing to me?" Her face was chalk white.

  I threw the robe at her. "I'm trying to keep you alive."

  She fumbled herself hastily into the robe. "But... but I took all of them!"

  "Yes you did, dear girl."

  "John is dead."

  "Keep walk
ing."

  She wouldn't until I started toward her. And then she began trudging back and forth, eyeing me with grave suspicion.

  "I'm very tired Travis."

  "Keep walking."

  "What time is it?"

  "After three. Walk faster."

  "Please let me lie down, just for a minute. Please."

  "Keep walking."

  "My God, you're cruel. I'm sick. I'm terribly sick. I have to lie down. Really!"

  "Walk by yourself, or I'll walk you."

  I sat on the foot of the bed. She kept well out of my reach each time she passed me. When she began to soften again, when her eyes began to blur, I reached out and gave her a brisk clout on the fanny. It energized her.

  She wept for mercy. I showed none. She faked a faint, but came out of it with alacrity when I began to peel the robe off her. She cursed me. I did not know she had such an extensive vocabulary. She cursed, whined, cried, faked, begged. But she walked. Yes indeed. She kept on walking.

  O she was pitiful indeed, those eyes smudged so dark, huddled small in the robe, hating me, choking the coffee down, calling me a degenerate, demanding to know why she had not been permitted to die. Life was empty. Must she be bullied, shamed, slapped, jounced, beaten, smirked at?

  Yes, dear. Keep walking. Just keep walking.

  Doctor Kuppler returned at four fifteen. When she realized he was a doctor, she began to recount a long and tearful bill of particulars. He ignored her completely, examined her, grunting with approval. He had her sit on the edge of the bed.

  "I demand my rights!" Isobel said. "Get the police!"

  Doctor Kuppler smiled sweetly at her, put one pink finger against her shoulder and pushed. She toppled over backwards, sighed once, and then began to emit a small, regular, purring snore. At his suggestion, I picked her up. He opened the bed up. I dropped her in and he covered her over.

  "Nice response," he said. "Attractive young lady. Maybe it all wasn't necessary, but it's nice to be on the safe side."

  "What do I owe you?"

  "Considering everything, I think a hundred dollars would be just about right."

  I gave it to him and asked him how long she should sleep.

  "As long as she can," he said. "If she sleeps well into this afternoon, fine. Are you going to stay here too?"

  "I'm exhausted, Doctor, and she's already compromised."

  As the windows were beginning to get that pale look I put the chain on the door, brushed my teeth and kissed her on the forehead and went to bed. I was no longer irritated with her. I felt proud and pleased about her. Samaritan McGee, savior of doomed womanhood. I had a curious feeling of ownership.

  Now you belong to me, dear girl, and damn foolishness will not be countenanced in the future. You hear?

  Eleven

  THE ROOM phone woke me at noon, and I got it before it disturbed Isobel. She slept with her back toward me, looking small under the yellow blanket, just the dark crown of her head showing.

  It was Jass on the phone. I told him to hold it a minute. She seemed to be too motionless. I went around her bed and bent over her. She was sleeping sweetly. I went back to the phone.

  "What's on your mind, Jass?"

  "You just wake up?"

  "I had a busy night."

  "Doing what?"

  "I'll tell you later."

  "Well... the thing I called about... I don't know. A man gets to thinking, after somebody nearly gets him with a knife. Should anybody hate me that much? I lay wondering in the night. Making lists. The funny thing about hate, maybe the ones you think have no call to hate you so much, the ones you've done things for, maybe that's where the hate is strongest, Trav. "

  "You thought of somebody?"

  "Cube Fox and I used to raise particular hell up and down this country. I always figured myself for a man who'd take his fun and pay the bills for it as they come along."

  Quite suddenly I remembered that pair at the gas station when I had, walked out after seeing Mona slain. I remembered the man saying, "There's maybe forty grownup people running around this end of the state with Cube's blue eyes and the rest of them Mex. Cube was plain death on Mex gals."

  Jass said, "I wasn't rightly in Cube's league. But you take those warm nights, and some of those country dances, and the smell of cedar scrub burning, and some belts of mescal, and the big open cars we'd run around in, and all the little warm brown gals, giggling and cuddly, and Cube and. me speaking the language and all... " His voice trailed off.

  "Do you have any particular bastard child in mind?" I asked him.

  "No. No. I didn't keep track. Last night I was trying to recall. There was five or six times when I got called on to help out. I suppose there were others got theyselves married off fast, soon as they had a suspicion. And others too proud to ask. They asked and I helped out. I'd set it up quiet for them, so they could get money right from the bank. Three times it was that way, instead of just a piece of money paid out and that being the end of it. Fifty a month. Forty. To help out with the kid. It was a long time ago. I guess I could track the records down. Sanchez. Fuegos. Those are the only two names come to mind. Boy babies. They should be near thirty years old now. I don't know, son. It was something I was thinking on in the nighttime. I guess there could be some hate."

  "There could be."

  "Then there's the one I kept track of, but I wouldn't want to say the name over the telephone, and anyway, there wouldn't be any hate there, nothing like that. What you do, boy, you come over to the Cottonwood Club, say in an hour. I've been sloppin' around the house here, thinking of old times, missing my girl bad. I'll get dressed and see you there."

  As soon as I hung up, it rang again. Isobel stirred and made a little growly sound in her sleep. It was Buckelberry. He told me the Webb girl had disappeared. He wanted to know if I had any idea where she might be. I hesitated and told him she was staying at The Sage. He wanted to talk to her. I told him she was under sedation. I told him I'd have her get in touch. He accepted it, with a certain reluctance. I told him I'd be in to sign the statement about the fellow with the knife later on. He said they had an almost positive identification on him from Phoenix. Francisco Pompa, age nineteen, delinquent, pimp and addict, and they had raised his prints on a stolen car found parked a quarter mile from Jass's house.

  Isobel slept on. After I was shaved and dressed, I picked her clothing up, all of it, including her sensible shoes, and bundled it in her stale sweater. I noted the shoe size imprinted inside a shoe. 5 B. I found a maid working in a nearby room. I told her not to disturb the girl in my room. I gave her the clothing, saying that once it was cleaned up and repaired, she might know somebody who would have some use for it. She was delighted.

  I had a quick breakfast, then went to the desk and checked her in, officially. Cousin Isobel. The clerk was supercilious. I smiled at him. I made it a very sleepy smile. It was not long before he became a little bit jumpy and nervous. When he was sufficiently polite, I turned away.

  As I had time to spare, I went to the shops on the lower level. I found a freckled little clerk with a sincere desire to please. She decided a size ten would be about right. We picked out a frivolous little orlon suit, and some very ornate and sexy yellow underthings, and a sunback blouse that would go well with the suit. She ducked next door with me and picked out some tall-heeled pumps that would go with the suit. I left the packages in the room, with a note telling her I would be back by three thirty, and if she woke up before then, order up some food and phone Buckelberry. I said I hoped the stuff in the boxes would fit.

  While I was engaged in such frivolities and pseudo-sex-play in the perfumed world of woman's wear, Jasper Yeoman was busily engaged in what is sometimes termed shuffling the mortal coil. He made hard work of it. From what I learned later, I was able to reconstruct it. While driving his big car from his home to the Cottonwood Club, he began to have a feeling of suffocation, a difficulty in breathing. Alarmed, he turned into the parking lot of a huge glossy shoppin
g center, aiming toward a gleaming drugstore as the nearest possible source of help. He parked very badly, and scrambled out of the car. By then he had be gun to have uncontrollable muscle twitches Probably the housewives, trucking foodstuffs to their cars, thought they were seeing a midday drunk; this big spare leathery fellow lurching and hopping and skittering, mouth wide to suck air.

  On the broad walk in front of the drugstore the first of the titanic convulsions took him. He bounced and jarred, jackknifed and fell, like a puppet dangled by a cross child. On the grey cement, amid the gum wrappers and filter tips, the body arched backward, the head jerked, the neck became stiff. He rested on head and heels, face congested, countenance anxious, eyes staring, lips retracted and livid, jaws clenched.