A Purple Place for Dying Read Online Free PDF

therapy-a slow and cautious adjustment to beer and sun, boats and laughs, some little sandy-rumped beach girls, some fish-stalking and beach-walking and moon-watching, some improvised houseboat parties, a little unwinding in St. Thomas and over at Deep Water Cay. And I thought I had crawled back into my own skin, beach-bum McGee, the big chopped-up, loose-jointed, pale-eyed, wire-haired, walnut-hided rebel-unregimented, unprogrammed, unimpressed. I had even believed I had grown another little layer of hide over those places where I could be hurt.
    So when I became aware of the imminent necessity to acquire funds-being almost down to that war fund I lay aside for the expenses of operation-I knew I was going to be cold and smart about it this time. No empathy, boy. No tears for anybody who goes down the chute. Pick a ripe one and work it for the cash money and come happily back to houseboat life aboard the Busted Flush, Slip F-18, Bahia Mar, Lauderdamndale.
    I had two reasonable prospects lined up, and when the letter from Fran Weaver had come, I had three. And thought to check this one out first.
    But suddenly that extra layer of hide was gone.
    So forget it, McGee. List the reasons for forgetting it. I had the plane ticket back. No loss. The prospective client was dead. There was no way of making any money out of this one. Nobody to split with when I recovered what had been stolen. Whatever was going on, people were playing for keeps. You didn't like the woman anyway. Get a night's sleep. Get out of town.
    But you'll never find out why.
    Man, can you afford idle curiosity? Count all the dead cats.
    But rigging that rock slide means a lot of careful planning. Then why hide all traces? What does that accomplish?
    You idiot, you've got a perfectly good little problem to work on, with the old broad in Jacksonville whose stepson lifted her collection of gold coins.
    That one will keep. It won't be expensive to handle. Just bend him until the coins start falling out. Four or five days of work.
    There was another thing which made this less attractive by the moment. There was a little cold spot on my spine-between the shoulder blades, and high. I had been with her when it happened. She hadn't been to the cabin in a long time. Somebody knew she was going there. With me?
    If the rifleman had wanted to take both of us, he could have blown my head off first, on the assumption a woman would not react as quickly, would have stood there, frozen in horror, just long enough. Why leave the stranger alive? Confusion factor?
    Maybe the small value I had was now over. This could be a very unpleasant area, a dangerous climate. I vowed to take no lonely strolls through the hills, and to watch the hands of strangers, and not to sit with my back to a window.
    Maybe it would be very good sense to just leave.
    But if you don't futz with it, friend, maybe somebody will get away clean.
    What are you, McGee? Guardian of public morality? People get away with things every hour of every day. Murder isn't that unique. First thing you know, you'll be leading parades. It's police business, and you have met a very competent policeman.
    There was just one trouble with the running argument. I knew I had made up my mind. I knew just when and how I had made it up. It was when I had taken the eighty dollars from her purse. I hadn't taken it for me. I had taken it for her. I was just picking it up the way you pick up ammunition when you anticipate a fight.
    Once I was willing to admit it to myself, I felt a little bit easier. But there was still a feeling of strain in my mind which bothered me. I wanted to be stable as all hell, but the world was on a slight tilt. It was like being yanked around an unexpected curve. You lean for a long time.
    My friend Meyer, the economist, says that cretins are the only humans who can be absolutely certain of their own sanity. All the rest of us go rocketing along rickety rails over spavined bridges and along the edge of bottomless