A Purple Place for Dying Read Free Page B

a dusty gas station and lunchroom, surrounded by broken pieces of automobile. A man sat in the shade in a chair tilted against the front of the gas station. I did not disturb his siesta.
    I went into the lunchroom. A stocky young girl in a soiled green jumper sat at a table reading a fan magazine. She got up slowly when the screen door creaked. She had enormous breasts and she looked like Buddy Hackett.
    "I just want to use the phone."
    She didn't answer. She just let herself plump back down into the chair.
    "What's this place called? So I can direct somebody"
    "Garry's at Cotton Corners."
    I got out my dime and looked in the front of the book. Police emergency, dial 119. "Sheriff's department. Deputy London."
    "I'm at Garry's place at Cotton Corners. I want to report a shooting and the theft of a motor vehicle."
    "It happen there?"
    "No. But I can take you to where it did happen."
    "What's your name?"
    "McGee. Travis McGee." I was aware of the rigid attention of the girl behind me.
    "I can have a car there in about ten minutes. You wait right – there. You got a description of the stolen vehicle?"
    "A white Sunbeam Alpine convertible. Local plates."
    "Know the number?"
    "No."
    "Driver?"
    "I have no idea."
    "Where did it happen?"
    "In the hills about five or six miles from here. I walked out. So it happened well over an hour ago, closer to two hours."
    "Who got hurt?"
    "A woman named Mrs. Jasper Yeoman. She's dead."
    "Mrs. Yeoman! Good God almighty! You wait there."
    I hung up. The stocky girl looked adoringly at me. "Wow!" she said. "How about that! Son of a bitch!"
    "How about a Coke?"
    "Sure. Coming up. Hey, what happened? Who shot her?"
    "Do you know who she is?"
    "Who doesn't? She's bought gas here lots of times. Her old man, he owned half Esmerelda County. She was a stuck-up bitch. Who did it?"
    "I better let the police ask the questions."
    "Did you see it happen?"
    "Easy on the ice, please."
    She banged the glass down in front of me and went trotting out. I heard her jabbering at the man who'd been asleep. They both came back in. He was younger than I had thought. He was dried brown, like the rock lizards.
    He looked at me as if we had just shared some obscene joke. "That big bitch is dead for sure, ha?"
    God, the pleasure they take in it, the excited joy in finding out that death can chop down the tall ones too, can fell the money tree. They both looked at me as if I'd brought them candy, and I told them she was dead indeed.
    "You not from around here," he said. It wasn't a question. "She was old Cube Fox's daughter. My daddy worked for Cube for a time. Cube didn't marry until he was past thirty. She was his only legal child, but you can bet your ass there's anyway 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. He talked the language good. Cube and Jass Yeoman, they used to run together. My daddy said when Jass married Cube's daughter, he bet Cube was spinning in that grave saying curses to wilt the grass overhead. Who killed her, Mister?"
    "I'm a stranger around here."
    A car rolled up and somebody gave the siren one little touch so that it made a low fading growl.
    We went out. It was a pale gray sedan with an obscure decal on the door. Two men in crisp faded khaki got out. They wore television hats and gun belts, silver badges. Nothing seems authentic any more. In the retirement villages the old coots from Upper Berth, Ohio, wear Marshal Dillon pants and squint themselves into authentic weather wrinkles in the bake of the sun.
    "'Lo, Arnie," the bigger one said. "Hi, Homer. Hi. Dave."
    Homer stuck his thumbs in his belt, indicated me with a jerk of his head and said, "You heard him on the phone, didn't you? You and Sis?"
    "Sure did. And if it isn't the goddamdest…"
    "Arnie, you or Sis might get on that phone there and pick up one of them ten or twenty-five dollars awards from the Eagle or from KEAG-TV. Then we'd sure as