A Purple Place For Dying

by John D. MacDonald

  They gathered at a safe distance and stared blankly at his agony. A clerk ran out and ran back in and called an ambulance. The convulsion ended and he slackened, rested a moment, and then asked in a weak and lucid voice if someone would help him get up. They got him up and walked him into the drugstore. Several minutes later the next convulsion took him, and he ripped himself out of their grasp and smacked and bucked against the patterned plastic tile of the retail floor.

  Again he was lucid, but weaker. He went to a third one as they were loading him into ambulance. He had the rest of them at regular intervals in the hospital emergency room, the convulsions seeming to grow stronger as he became weaker. After forty minutes, despite all attentions they could give him, he died of a combination of asphyxia and exhaustion. By then the toxicologist was quite certain of what he would find. After autopsy procedures, with Intestinal contents, stomach contents, brain, liver, blood, urine, hair packed in clean glass containers for laboratory analysis, it was found that he had ingested an estimated.2 grams of strychnine, double the fatal dosage, had probably swallowed the poison within thirty minutes of the first convulsion, and had taken it in something that probably masked the very bitter taste, possibly some very strong black coffee.

  But I pieced this all together later. I went to the club and waited for him. Then in some mysterious way everyone there knew he had been taken sick, knew he was at the hospital. He died ten minutes before I got there.

  Twelve

  THERE WAS a jurisdiction problem, the officials of city and county each hoping it belonged to the other one. Careers can be blasted by the mishandling of the smallest details when an important man has died. The county, and Fred Buckelberry, were stuck with it.

  He intercepted me in the hospital parking lot. He looked at me with what could have been interpreted as fond approval. I knew better. With Yeoman dead I had no clout left. He looked at me the way a cat might look at a fresh fish. He attached Deputy Homer Hardy to me, with instructions to go with me to the hotel, collect the Webb girl, take us both to the county courthouse, hold us there-voluntarily of course-awaiting Buckelberry's convenience.

  We were at The Sage by ten of three. Hardy had no intention of waiting in the lobby. He waited in the corridor, outside the room door. The boxes were empty. The bathroom door was closed. I could hear water running. I tapped on the door. She said just a minute.

  In five minutes she came out. Everything seemed to fit. From the neck down she was first class girl, the little suit and blouse showcasing what she had a tendency to hide. The drab wings of hair concealed her forehead. She had put on her big dark glasses. Her lips were without color, her face slightly puffy. The impenetrable lenses stared at me.

  "Where are my clothes?"

  "How do you feel?"

  "Where are my clothes?"

  "I threw them away."

  "And bought me this cheap, vulgar, obvious outfit. Thank you so much."

  "It wasn't cheap."

  "It's cheap in a way you couldn't possibly understand, Travis."

  "Honey, if you don't care whether you live or die, what difference does it make what you wear? Did you get anything to eat?"

  "No."

  "We have to go to Buckelberry's headquarters."

  "I am not going there. I'm going home."

  "There's a deputy in the hall to make sure we both go there."

  She was looking at herself in the mirror, hitching at the skirt. She stopped and stared toward me. "Why?"

  "Jass Yeoman is dead."

  "What has that got to do with me?"

  "Perhaps nothing. Buckelberry wants to make sure."

  "I don't understand."

  "Somebody's hired-hand tried to get him with a knife last night. They missed. So somebody poisoned him this noon."

  "Poisoned?" she said in a faint voice.

  "It wasn't a very easy way to die."

  She put her fingertips to her throat. "I'm sorry about that. I... I hated him for not having the pride and decency to keep his wife away from my brother. But... poison is so ugly."

  We went down in the elevator with the deputy. I told him we had to eat. He thought it a very dubious idea. Isobel told him that if she couldn't eat, she was going to lie down in the lobby and he could carry her to the courthouse.

  We went to the grill. He sat with us. I asked him to go get his own table. He was very gloomy and hurt about that. He took one by the door. I ordered a steak sandwich. She ordered a large orange juice, two broiled hamburgers with everything, a side order of home fried potatoes and a pot of coffee.

  I watched her as she began to eat her way steadily through the order. The silence between us seemed to get more obvious by the moment. I reached quickly and took the dark glasses off. She tried to snatch them back. "Please," she said. Her eyes looked naked, shifty, shy.

  "Stop hiding and you can have them back."

  "Hiding? What can I say? I haven't even thought it out yet. I can't. Believe me, I try to think about it and my mind just sort of... veers away from it."

  "Do you still want to kill yourself?" She looked around hastily and said, "Ssh! I... no, I don't think so. I don't know."

  "Are you glad I stopped you?"

  "I guess so. Thanks. Stupid word to say, thanks. I just thought... take the capsules and just... go off to sleep and that's the end of it. But I suppose that even if you understood, if you found me in time, you couldn't let it hap pen. I mean I don't resent it, because you'd have to try. Anyone would."

  Suddenly I did not want her understanding. A man who had wanted to live was dead. She had wanted to die, and she sat there chomping hamburg. I suppose I should not blame her for a self-involvement that, in contrast, seemed the ultimate silliness. But, all moral judgments aside, Jasper Yeoman had been one hell of a fellow. He had been a whole man, and this was just about half of a girl.

  She was sensitive to the nuance, to a flavor of disapproval, and her head tilted slightly, one eyebrow arching. "Something is wrong?"

  "Everything is nifty Iz."

  "I hate that nickname. I... I can't remember everything very clearly." I saw pink suffuse her face. "But... I was nude?"

  "The colloquial expression is bare-ass."

  Pink turned to angry red. "How can you be so crude and indifferent?"

  I looked away from her, shrugged one shoulder. "Eat your starch, honey. The deputy is getting restless. About the side show, I was trying to shock you awake. It worked. Just don't assume it was such a tremendous deal for me. You've got the standard equipment in the standard places. Nothing gaudy happened. I was saving your life. All that blundering and gagging and whoopsing around didn't make me feel particularly romantic."

  She sat scrunched and pallid, eyes downcast. It was a cheap little victory, as most of the easy ones are. So I gave her back her glasses, but her appetite was gone. She walked out with me as if she was trying to hold a coin in place between her knees. Homer Hardy took us to a small room off the courthouse corridor. He told us to bang on the door if we needed anything. He closed it and left us there.

  There wasn't much left for us to say to each other. Time went by very slowly. There was a lot of traffic in the corridor, a lot of voices.

  Out of a long silence I said, "There'll have to be arrangements about your brother."

  "I've been thinking about that. Our parents were cremated. John would want that too. There's an old family plot in Weston, New Hampshire. A simple memorial service in the university chapel, I think. There's a man in Livingston-I guess I just arrange for the authorities to release the body to him, and tell him what I want. But I don't know how they get the urn from here to Weston, how that's done. I guess the man can tell me. Then, there's the insurance too."

  "Can I help in any way?"

  "Thank you, no."

  "How do you feel?"

  "Tired. And empty."

  A room without windows seems to slow the passage of time. Overhead fluorescence in an eggcrate housing. Green tin chairs, raggedy old magazin
es, an almost sickening sweetness of some spearmint deodorant which masked all the lesser stinks of authority. She sat behind her big dark lenses, her white knees and white ankles pressed neatly together, hands folded on her purse.

  It was five of six by my watch when Hardy came in and took her off to talk to Buckelberry. Half an hour later he sent for me. I was astonished to find him alone. The statements were ready. I read one over and signed the three copies necessary.

  He took his time lighting a pipe, tamping it, relighting it, making um-pah sounds as he got it going to his satisfaction.

  "They're all screaming for blood," he said. "Kendrick, Gay, O'Dell, DeVrees, Madero... all of them. Jass was one of theirs."

  "And it would scramble your future, Fred, if you came up empty?"

  His glance was sharp and unfriendly. "I'm not too worried about that. It all got too messy. The question is how to come up soon. Anything so complicated has to fall apart. But I want to look good, McGee. I want to look very very good."

  "What are you trading?"

  "I've got a very wide open vagrancy ordinance, and some understanding judges. You can swing a brush hook in the hot sun for ninety days. I like that ordinance. It makes the job easier."

  "I can imagine," I said, and stood up.

  "Where you going?"

  "Let's go see one of those judges."

  "For God's sake, sit down!"

  I sat. "I can't be pushed that way, Sheriff."

  He studied me. "You'd do the ninety days?" He sighed. "Yes, I guess you would."

  "How did they give it to Jass?"

  "In strong coffee. He liked it boiled, black and bitter. They'd make a thermos of it so it would stay hot on him while he pooted around showering and shaving and so on in the morning. The little bit left was loaded with strychnine. The cook made it and took it in to him. She's cleared. You know how that place is built. He had private dealings. Some people didn't want to be seen going there or leaving. That side door to the study. He carried the coffee down there, phoned you from there. He say anybody was with him?'

  "No."

  "He have any ideas about who was after him?"

  I'd a long silent time in a small room to think about it. I had no reason to get mysterious with Buckelberry. But I had so little to go on, such a vague little hunch.

  "Well?" Fred said.

  "Jass started wondering about his children, Fred."

  He stared at me. "Don't get cute. He didn't have any."

  "Not officially." I told him what Jass had told me of the old days. Buckelberry listened intently. And with a cop instinct he jumped on the same idea I'd had.

  "How about the one he kept track of, the one that couldn't hate him?"

  "He didn't give me the name. Who would know?"

  Buckelberry didn't answer me. He stared into space and then he banged his hard fist on his desk. "Suppose," he said softly, "just suppose we come on Mona dead a long time. Then we bury the two of them, Jass and Mona. And the will comes to probate and some son of a bitch steps forward with proof, with absolute proof he's Jass's illegitimate kid. Could he inherit? I don't know the law on that. What if he had letters from Jass? He'd be the closest blood relative for sure."

  "And he'd be free to go see Jass at any time."

  Buckelberry nodded grimly. "Like about noon today."

  "Maybe he wouldn't dare come forward now," I said.

  "Why not?"

  "This whole plan just got too screwed up, Fred. Nothing worked the way it was supposed to. Maybe all that was left was the hate."

  "It's a starting place anyways," he said, sighing.

  "How about your other starting places?"

  He shook his head. "Can't find that Ron. Can't find the other body. Can't get a line on the rifle. The Alverson woman was a dead end. Webb's body gave us no leads." He stretched and rubbed his face and reached for the phone. "Now let's see if any of those eager old pals of his knows anything." He paused and said, "Set outside for a while, McGee."

  "I'll help out in any way I can. He paid me some money. I haven't earned it yet. I'd like a chance to."

  He pulled his hand back from the phone and studied me. "Some people have a knack. Wherever you go, damn you, something seems to happen. You're going to meddle anyways, aren't you?"

  "Unless you give me ninety days."

  He opened a bottom drawer, fished and clanked around in it, came up with a shiny something and flipped it at my face. I got my hand up in time and the chrome badge

  "Raise your right hand and repeat after me."

  "Just like a western?"

  "Exactly like a western, McGee. I'm authorized."

  I swore. I was official. I put the badge in my pocket. Temporary Deputy Travis McGee. I could officially get myself killed in the line of duty and receive certain death benefits as provided by Esmerelda County, and until relieved by the Sheriff of said county, I would receive pay of five dollars per month or fraction thereof. I signed the official register. And went out to wait outside.

  As I went out, Isobel stood up from the corridor bench with a humble and obedient manner.

  "What do you want?"

  She drew me aside. "Travis... I thought you might drive me back to the university, if it wouldn't be too much trouble."

  "They run buses."

  "Please. If you don't, it would... look strange. I told the Sheriff you would. I... didn't tell him anything about what I did." The blush came oozing up from the neck of her new blouse. "So he thinks I... we... it was... He thinks it..."

  "He must have a vivid imagination, honey."

  "Please don't be cruel. I... made the arrangements, some of them, about John. And I just don't want..." She dropped the humble manner, stepped back, lifted her chin and said, "Damn you, I'd rather not be alone. If you can't understand why..."

  "Okay, okay, okay. But I have to hang around for a while. I'll drive you down. Or you can come back to the hotel. You're registered, cousin."

  "Cousin?"

  "I had to tell the desk something."

  She walked to the bench and sat abruptly and said, "I can never go back there as long as I love... liver"

  "Your Freudian slip is showing."

  "That's a stale, tiresome, shopworn remark. And you are a boor."

  "Now you're acting more like yourself, honey."

  She asked me if I was under detention or arrest. I showed her my new badge. She shook her head as if the world had gone mad.

  We waited. I got us some Cokes out of a machine. I bought a paper. Jass had made page one. Reporters discovered us and swooped in, blinking their flash units, asking simultaneous questions, and I hustled Isobel into an alcove off the communications center, where they could not follow. We were Sister of Slain Professor, and Mystery Figure.

  At last Buckelberry appeared, a paper cup of coffee in his hand. He leaned against the alcove wall and looked down at us.

  "You tell her what we're checking now?" he asked.

  "No."

  "When can he take me home?" Isobel asked.

  "Miss Webb, did your brother ever say anything to you about something Mr. Yeoman could have told him? About any illegitimate children Jass Yeoman might have?"

  "Certainly not!"

  "Don't get so indignant at every little thing, Miss Webb. He could have told you something like that to justify his relationship with Mrs. Yeoman."

  "I wouldn't have listened to that kind of specious reasoning."

  "No, I don't guess you would have, at that."

  He turned away, saving, "McGee, come look at the map a minute."

  I followed him into his office. He put his thumb under the name of a tiny place northeast of Livingston. It was called Burned Wells.

  "As long as you're taking her back down there, you can check this one out. Listen, I've gotten more loose talk and rumor than I know what the hell to do with. Tomorrow we can start checking out bank records, hoping Jass didn't cover the back trail too careful. Fish Kllery says there's a woman down there Jass was
more serious about than most. He says it was probably twenty-five years ago, before Cube died. He says she was seventeen or eighteen then, Mexican with a lot of Indio blood, very fierce sort of proud girl. That would make her forty-two or -three now. He rememers her first name was Amparo. He says Jass nearly lost his head over that one. Took her on trips with him, bought her a lot of stuff, kept her around for maybe a year. It isn't much to go on, but it's a very small place."