A Purple Place for Dying (13 page)

"Push?"

"For chrissake, man! That hands-off label is only good under certain conditions, Jass or no Jass. In the city limits you've got Chief Kittering to contend with. Out in the county, you've got me. If either of us find you making motions like a private investigator, we'll jam you up pretty good for operating without a state license and without county approval. One more little thing like that stewardess trick and…"

"Stop beating your chest, Sheriff. You're the law. I recognize that. I wondered how you were doing. And I was going to make a suggestion."

"I suppose I should be overwhelmed."

"I thought you might give Jass a little quiet protection."

"Jass? Why?"

"It's just a hunch."

"I have all the problems I need."

"Had any luck with anything?"

"Why should I tell you what… Well, hell, we located her car about an hour ago. Tompkins is out there now. It was about six miles from the cabin, off in the opposite direction from Cotton Corners. Off a little road under some trees. Tell Jass if you plan to see him. After it's checked out, I'll have it left at his place. There's nothing else new, but you can't tell when things will break."

"How long can you sit on this, Sheriff?"

"Until in my considered judgment I have enough proof to show that murder has been done, smart guy."

"If you want to leave a message for me or anything, I've moved to The Sage."

"Why not? Now that you can afford it." He banged the phone down. As the waiter carried it away, I saw Jass approaching, his strides swift and his face intent. His dark hair was spikey from his shower. He signaled Armando and dropped into the chair beside me.

"Took me longer than I thought. Charlie finally did what I pay him for."

"And?"

"One of the special groups of agents down there has been working on it for nearly a year. They're scheduled to hit me with it next February. Charlie got hold of a list of names. Statements they've taken checked off, and the ones they intended to take, left blank. Wally Rupert was checked off. Mona was on there. No check mark. A lot of other names, from way back. Stinking little clerks, son. Little people with no reason to like ol' Jass Yeoman. People ready to smear. Charlie says the minute they hit me, they'll slap papers on everything I've got to keep me from moving it out of the country. Bank accounts,a securities, boxes., everything. He says they are working independent of the boys who usually work on my account down there, but with access to all back records on taxes." His drink came. He sipped it and leaned back and smiled and shook his head. "I tell you, boy I try to stay steamed up, but I can't quite make it. Know what I dreamed last night? I was up there on the mesa road trying to find the place I buried that rabbit. I'd buried something with him that I had to have. Something important. Couldn't remember just what it was. Suppose it was my sense of self preservation?"

"I don't know."

"God damn, how I miss that fool woman!"

"They found her car this morning, in that same area, tucked away on a back road. They'll leave it at your house after they check it out. Nothing else is new."

"I told Buckelberry we were trying to work this out together."

"I know."

"He wasn't real pleased."

"I know that too. Jass, one thing bothers me. Everybody in this town seems to know everything that goes on. But nothing's in the papers."

He shrugged. "Shouldn't bother you. Jaimie DeVrees has the paper and the TV and radio. Full of bright young kids. The first thing they learn is to go get just what they are sent to get, no more and no less. Jaimie likes a lot of initiative in handling the news they get, but he sure as hell squats on anybody that goes out and tries to find some. The way he figures it, it's a waste of money. Why try to dig up things that will be handed to you when people are ready?"

"But if Buckelberry's people find either body…"

His face twisted with sudden pain. "Then he'll phone Jaimie and Jaimie's people will purely cover the hell out of it. I want my girl found. I want her buried right. And whatever son of a bitch did this to me…" He shivered and unclamped his hands and said, "Let's go down and get us some slabs of good rare roast beef, son."

He was silent during most of lunch, and over good coffee he said, "I've got some detail work. How about along evening you and me go calling on Wally Rupert?"

"Is that the way to do it?"

"That's my way to do it. I got something to go on. What Charlie found out. I'll just push on that. I'll push hard and watch him and see if I can see anything else."

"What time?"

"You come to the house about eight, say." He stood up and dropped his napkin on the table.

"I left word out front. You use this place like a charter member long as you're here."

"Thank you."

"Try to burn my money, boy, and you get to go first class."

I moved around in appropriate ways, in and out of a drugstore, around a corner and back – and I could not pick anyone up. Everyone seemed to have that introspective innocence of total strangers. Sometimes the alarm bells go off by mistake. I could not understand why I felt vaguely disappointed to learn it was a false alarm.

Then I knew I wanted something to happen. I wanted a new factor added. The whole situation, as it stood, made very limited sense. I belonged in an arroyo, drying out behind the rocks. Jass's people should be hunting for Mona and John Webb in Mexico.

Why was it important for Jass Yeoman to believe his Mona was alive? Why was it necessary to kill her? Why had I been permitted to stay alive, and mess up all the careful planning? I had no assurance that Jass would level with me. The story would break and soon. It would break when either body was found. And Buckelberry was doing some very earnest searching. For guns and scarred necks, for big blondes-dead and alive.

I do not believe in coincidence. I believe that if you keep moving, you expose yourself to a better chance of accidents happening, some good and some bad. And you have to have an eye for a cronkie. That is a cop word. It means someone who has been in trouble, is presently in trouble, or is about to be in trouble--either as victim or aggressor. A wise cop can pick them out of heavy pedestrian traffic flow, because they don't quite fit.

Driving back to The Sage, I had to pass the big bus station. I got caught on that corner by a light. I saw the big blonde woman come squinting out into the sun, hesitate, then turn and start doggedly trudging away, her clothes badly rumpled, hair unkempt, her stride uncertain.

Seconds later the clothing registered on me. Pale blue seersucker suit, red sandals with high heels, red purse. She was heading the wrong way for me, and I was in a center lane, so when the light changed I fought my way across the traffic and went around the block. She had made better time than I expected, and so I had to go around another block. I parked short of the corner; got out quickly and went to where I could see her coming toward me, teetering and wobbling along.

She wasn't aware of me until I stepped out in front of her. Her face looked gray and sweaty. The flesh around her eyes was smudged and puffy. Her hair showed a quarter inch of black root. She looked at me without surprise or indignation or automatic flirtation. She just stared and waited for the gambit.

"You could use a lift?"

"No, I just walk two three miles in the hot sun like this in high heels to keep in shape."

"Come in on the bus?"

"Yes. I slept hard and some spook clipped every nickel out this here purse, so I could sure use a lift, believe me. They didn't even leave me a dime to call a friend."

"My car's right around the corner."

When we reached the car and I opened the door for her, she paused and said, "You aren't trying to be real cute about anything, are you, friend?"

"I'll take you where you want to go."

She studied me for a moment, nodded to herself, and got into the car. I went around and got behind the wheel. She gave me directions. In the enclosure of the car she smelled sour and sweaty. The front of her suit was spotted. Her knuckles were soiled.

The directions took me out near my former local address. She was on one of the lateral streets, three blocks off the main highway, in an institutional-looking apartment building that seemed to be half a block long, two stories high and one room deep. She guided me around to the parking area in the rear. Rear stairs led up to a communal deck which extended the length of the building.

She got out of the car and looked at me and sucked her mouth into a bruised rosette and tilted her head. We were on a first name basis. No last names had been exchanged. "Trav, I won't futz around with you with any games, huh? I'm next door to dead. I'm no good to anybody, right? I got to soak in a hot tub and get some sleep and set the alarm so as I can get to work by nine. They didn't like giving me two nights off, and I show up too beat, it wouldn't be so good, you know? But I bounce back pretty good. I was thinking, you come around at six tomorrow, I'll have a drink waiting, then we could eat someplace, you drop me off at work. Honest, you'll hardly know me I'll look so much better."

"I thought there might be a cold beer up there right now."

She gave a long sigh, and shrugged and said, "Come on then. But I warn you, I'm awful tired."

It was a very small studio apartment, with an unmade daybed, characterless rental furniture. She opened me a cold beer. She poured herself a straight gin, put one ice cube in it and waited a few moments and then tossed it down, gagged, made a frightful face. Hot water roared into the small tub built into the bathroom corner at an angle. She trudged around, shedding shoes, suit jacket, pale blouse. She asked me, right on cue, if-on account of her money being taken from her purse-I could loan her a little to tide her over until payday. I said I could. She bit her lip and said, hesitantly, "Thirty, maybe?"

"Thirty is fine," I said. She took the bills and snapped them into her purse. She took another gin into the bathroom with her. She left the door ajar. When my beer was gone I got a fresh one in the kitchen alcove and pushed the bathroom door open and leaned a shoulder against the frame and drank the beer from the bottle.

She was on her knees in the little tub sitting back on her heels, the water level coming to the white tops of her flexed thighs. With her eyes squinched shut, she was kneading her sudsy head.

I said, "Betty, you know, I was trying to remember something."

"Hah?"

"I was trying to remember where I'd seen you before."

"Well, I've been in this town three years, ever since I came out from Cleveland. And I've been working night trick at the drive-in for almost a year now, honey."

"I meant just the other day. Tell me if I'm wrong, Betty. Did you take a flight out of Carson on Monday or Tuesday?"

She rocked forward onto hands and knees, dunked her soapy head and rinsed it vigorously. Her big pale body looked coarse structured, muscular, durable, reasonably attractive. She sat back again, groped for a towel, shoved her wet hair back, mopped her eyes dry. Then she uncurled her legs and settled into the murky water in a sitting position.

"It was Tuesday" she said. "I dint notice you, honey."

"Weren't you with a tall skinny fellow? Dark?"

"That's right. His name is Ron. What we did, we flew down to El Paso. Let me tell you, it was a real swing. We got sort of stoned on the airplane. He knows all the cats down there. But it got too weird, you know? They start popping, they don't care what they do. That's too rich for me. I mean you have to draw a line, right? A person has to have some kind of privacy sometimes, right?"

I agreed. She yawned against her fist like a sleepy lioness. "Honest, I haven't had any sleep since Tuesday morning, not counting on the bus when I was robbed. That damned driver wouldn't do anything about it."

"Do you fly down there often?" I asked her.

"No. This was some kind of strange deal. I'd never seen that Ron before. What it was, it was a favor for a guy, and what Ron had to do, he had to find a tall blonde to fly down there with him on that flight out of Carson. Using kook names on the ticket. It was some kind of cover up, I guess. Ron met the guy in a bar. What the hell, it was a free vacation with expenses."

"Ron come back too?"

"No. From there he was going out to the Coast he said. He gave me some of the money he got. Fifty dollars. And I didn't dip into it at all, and then it got clipped on the bus. I should have spent it to save it. You just never know. Live and learn."

I decided it wasn't going to do any good to pry further. Buckelberry could do it with considerably more efficiency and speed.

She said, "Trav, sweetie, whyn't you just go get comfortable and I'll be along, okay? You don't mind my hair being soppy?"

I looked at my watch. "Suppose I stop by tomorrow?"

She yawned again and nodded. "Any way you want to look at it, honey, that's best, believe me. I'm so tired I could cry-"

I let myself out. I checked the number. Apartment 11. 1010 Fairlea Road. I found the mailboxes below. Elizabeth Kent Alverson, beautifully engraved on a creamy card.

I went back to The Sage and phoned Buckelberry from my room. Fred wasn't in. I said it was important. They said they would try to get through to him. In ten minutes he phoned me. I gave him the woman's name and address and told him she was there, and that she had been the one who'd impersonated Mona Yeoman.

"For God's sake, McGee, will you kindly keep your nose out of…"

"You'd rather do it yourself, Fred. Sure."

In the ensuing silence I could sense the effort he was making to control himself. At last he said, in a gravelly voice, "I appreciate having this information."

"You are quite welcome. But I don't think you'll be able to make too much of it."

"I'll decide that."

"Certainly, Sheriff. Are there any other breaks in the case?"

"No!"

"Have you taken any steps to protect Jass?" He hung up, very forcefully.

I felt displeased with myself. A smart-ass approach to a better-than-average officer of the law. With some people you start off on the wrong foot and you can't get back on balance. There was a tomcat tension between us, and I had the feeling that if we could each give and take one good smack in the mouth, we might get along fine from then on. Cop-taunting is a stupid and dangerous habit.

I stripped and showered and thought about Elizabeth Kent Alverson. A crude friendly piece. One of the great legion of the semi-pro. She wanted to ball around, and she kept telling herself you had to draw the line, dint you? But each year she'd draw it a little further.

At least I had learned that the Mona Yeoman killing wasn't as much of a gang effort as it had seemed. Betty and her Ron were apparently relative innocents. A small investment in a smoke screen. The risk had been, of course, that Ron would pocket the cash and not do the favor. The estimated number of participants was now more manageable. Maybe two could have done it.

It had to be for money. The whole area smelled of money. You could see them joshing each other about it in The Sage lobby. You could see it in the eyes of the girl at the lobby newsstand.

So find the money advantage, and it would lead you to the rifleman-or to whoever hired him. There was frantic money in this town. Maybe they expected the fossil water to run out soon. Grab it quick, and be ready to move along.

I put fresh shorts on and stretched out on the bed just as the phone rang. It was Isobel Webb.

"Travis?"

"How is it going, Isobel?"

Deep sigh. "I don't know. It's this waiting. Not knowing what to think. I don't know what to do with myself. That's why I drove up here."

"You're in town?"

"I'm in the lobby. I borrowed a car. I thought that when… when they find him, it will be somewhere around Esmerelda. Can you come down and talk to me?"

"Five minutes. Wait for me in the cocktail lounge."

"I'll sit in the lobby here and wait."

She stood up like an obedient child when I walked toward her. She had on a mouse-gray blouse, a drab skirt, sensible shoes. She hid behind her big dark glasses. Her smile was nervous and tentative. I took her into a gloomy corner of the cocktail lounge, and she thought she would have a sherry.

"The house is so terribly empty." she said. "I keep walking back and forth near the telephone. Faculty wives are trying to be nice, but I can't stand the way they coo at me."

"They found Mona's car."

"I know. Do you mind my coming here?"

"Not at all. But I have to leave here at quarter to eight."

"Where are you going?"

"To go visit somebody with Jass Yeoman."

"I guess you don't want to tell me about it."

"It's quite complicated."

She took the glasses off and sipped her sherry. "Are you working for Jass now?"

"In a way"

"To help them all hush up whatever happened to her and John?"

"No. To find out who did it."

"What if Jass Yeoman did it, Travis?"

"Then he is the best liar I have ever met in my life."

"What… what if we never find out anything?" Her voice broke a little. "I don't think I could stand that. Not ever knowing. I don't know what would become of me. Don't look so worried. I'm not going to lose control. Not like yesterday. I dreamed I saw John dead. I woke up and it was still vivid. And he is dead, of course. That's why I could leave our place. I know he's never coming back there."

"Easy, Isobel."

"I'm all right. I just want to know."

"We'll find out."

"Oh sure. You and Mr. Yeoman and that Sheriff. You'll find out, won't you? If you don't know already."

"You get these little paranoiac impulses, Isobel. The world is not against you. There are no conspiracies against you."