Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 59, No. 1. Whole No. 338, January 1972

No Time to Lose by David Ely{©1971 by David Ely.}

You are probably familiar with David Ely’s work through his novels — TROT, SECONDS, THE TOUR, and POOR DEVILS. His short stories are often tales of horror and the macabre, of terror and gripping suspense, of irony and sardonic humor. Here is David Ely’s newest, and as you will discover, it projects, in a single short story, all these qualities…

He had heard rumors that such places existed, and he had assumed that the rumors were true, for experience had taught him that every human demand would somehow find a source of supply, no matter how difficult or outrageous the demand might be.

And yet he never would have imagined that he himself would be involved in it. He was badly frightened. He knew he might be making a terrible mistake, that he might be on his way to death, not life — and although he was not a religious man he moved his lips in prayer as he sat shivering and perspiring, and all the time he was aware of the dull erratic movements of his heart.

“How much longer?” he asked the driver.

“One more hour, Mr. Kipp.”

The car was moving at moderate speed, for the road was steep, narrow, and dangerously pitted. The moon cast a treacherous light; it made the landscape seem gentle. It wasn’t, though. Mr. Kipp knew that it was a harsh, rough devil of mountainous upcountry, scarred with deep ravines, its cliffs so baked by sun and scoured by cloudbursts that no living things could grow except for bitter grass and a few stunted scrubby trees. And, of course, the cactus — cactus everywhere, giant plants that seemed to leap up like sentinels as the headlights swept them.

Mr. Kipp shrank back in his seat. Those stiff vegetable figures with upraised arms might be warning him — go back, go back — and yet, ambiguously, they pointed to the heavens, which meant the freedom of eternity — and also death everlasting.

He sought to avoid such thoughts by conversing with the driver. “You must be used to this trip,” he said.

“I’ve done it before, Mr. Kipp.”

“But surely the bulk of your supplies and equipment can’t be brought in on a road like this.”

“It comes air freight,” the driver replied. He was a short swarthy man whose careful English betrayed only a slight accent. “There’s a little landing pad for helicopters, Mr. Kipp.”

“I see.”

Mr. Kipp reflected that it would have been far more comfortable for him to have come by helicopter, but he supposed that it would have been more difficult to keep his arrival secret that way. They had insisted on secrecy, and he had been so desperate, so driven by panic, that he had obeyed without question, even though his animal sense of security protested against being so completely cut off.

He had flown to Mexico City two weeks ago. Then, following the instructions given at every stage, he had traveled south from town to town, from one hotel to the next, establishing himself as a vacationing businessman with a leisurely interest in church architecture but with no particular schedule or itinerary, except that his course was south, always south.

And now he was far to the north. If something went wrong he could never be traced. The authorities, when finally notified by his family to search for him, would look fruitlessly in Oaxaca and Chiapas and perhaps as far as Yucatan, until, in time, he would be listed as missing, presumed dead. There would be nothing whatever to connect his disappearance with the private estate of Dr. Benavides in the rough wilderness of Durango, hundreds of miles to the north.

The car struck a pothole, swerved, and skidded to the edge of the road. Mr. Kipp moaned and clenched his fists, waiting for the fall — but the driver managed the skid quite nicely, and Mr. Kipp’s hands soon stopped trembling enough to open the little bottle he kept in his coat pocket. He took out a tranquillizer pill, put it in his mouth, and swallowed it, dry.

“Oh, God,” he prayed again, silently. “Pull me through this one, God.”

He thought of the ether and the knife, and he thought, too, of his heart, laboring fitfully, and in his anguish he cursed its weakness. How bitter it was to have struggled up in life as he had, to have overcome so many enemies and obstacles — and now, still youthful at the age of 50, to find that it could end forever for him at any moment.

“I’ll give you everything I’ve got, God,” prayed Mr. Kipp, as though the operation were to be performed by some priest or bishop, instead of by the cashiered Army surgeon, Benavides. “Everything, God. I swear it.” But Mr. Kipp, a creature of habit, sensed that he was making a sort of contract, the terms of which were perhaps unnecessarily generous, and so he amended it somewhat. “All I want is a little comfort, God. Maybe fifty thousand a year. The rest I don’t care about, God. I’ll give it to the church, to charities, whatever you want, God.”

He felt a little better. The pretense of making a deal with God had fleetingly called into play that complex of instincts which in Mr. Kipp had been developed into an instrument of great subtlety and force. He had a gift for deals, no doubt about it. Over the years he had tumbled many a business rival — the little ones at first, and then, as he prospered, the bigger ones as well. Mr. Kipp reflected with melancholy satisfaction on his most recent triumph (just before he’d got the news about his heart) when he’d managed to defeat Gorgos himself, the biggest of all. It had been a question of having the right amount of liquid capital available at the right time, that was all — and, of course, knowing what to do with it.

Mr. Kipp smiled. Yes, old Gorgos had been furious. He hadn’t really been hurt — he was far too rich and powerful to be troubled by any single loss — but his pride had been affronted, that was clear. To be outbid by an upstart like Kipp!

But Mr. Kipp’s retrospective enjoyment of his victory was short-lived, for, thinking of Gorgos, he remembered the rumors he’d heard at the time that the old mail, so passionately attached to life, also was being betrayed by his own body — the kidneys, so it was said — which might have distracted his attention at the critical moment in the deal.

Mr. Kipp shuddered. His own heart trouble, surely that was worse. He had gone to the top specialists in the best clinics and hospitals, and everywhere it had been the same story. “You may live for years,” they all had told him. “You’ve got to cut down on everything, of course, but there’s no reason why you can’t, is there?”

No, he couldn’t accept that. He wasn’t cut out to live a half life. For him it had to be all or nothing — and besides, it was worse than they thought, he knew it was worse; he could tell that the very fibers of that wretched heart of his were rotting, rotting, and all they wanted him to do was lie on a sofa and die by degrees.

Far up ahead in the darkness beyond the reach of the car’s headlamps he saw the gleam of light.

“Is that it, there?” he asked.

“That’s it, Mr. Kipp.”

Mr. Kipp tried to compose himself, but he was excited, apprehensive, and also quite fatigued by his long journey. He kept asking himself: Will it work? Will it work? And he felt his courage ebb so that he almost decided not to go through with it, and then he thought again of the certain death that lay within him, and he knew that he had no choice but to proceed.

The lights from the Benavides estate grew brighter. It was a large establishment, for Benavides had grown rich in his profession and could afford the finest horses and cattle, with the irrigated pastureland that fed them in fine style, as well as the most modem living and working accommodations for himself and his staff. There were vineyards and orchards and vegetable gardens, too, and the peasants who labored in these fields lived in a cluster of huts near the south entrance to the estate.

Mr. Kipp was acquainted with these matters from his conversations in New York with an acquaintance, Costain, who’d gone through successfully what he himself now was about, to begin. Costain, too, had first tried to make arrangements at every major hospital in the States equipped for such operations, and, like Kipp, he had been turned down — or, more precisely, he had been told he’d have to take his place at the bottom of an interminable waiting list.

Those famous surgeons were impervious to bribes, for they had plenty of money; besides, they were the newest heroes of the age, they had become demigods, lifegivers, and for the sake of their incredible prestige, they thought nothing of spuming the desperate offers of wealthy men. Costain, in despair, had thought of organizing a new hospital which would recognize the special claims of affluence — and then he had learned that such a place already existed, south of the Rio Grande.

“A two-months’ vacation in Mexico, that’s all it amounts to,” Costain had told Kipp. “Then you go back every few months for a checkup.”

Of course it amounted to a little more than that. The cost was staggering, naturally, but Mr. Kipp, with his shrewd dealer’s eye, had arranged matters so that he would not pay a premium for failure. One-half of the fee was being held in escrow in New York, to be disbursed only on his return to that city. He had felt much encouraged when Benavides’ agent accepted these terms, because it indicated that the good doctor had considerable confidence in the outcome.

The car was moving rapidly toward the estate now, for here the road was straight. They passed the peasant huts, in which lanterns dimly glowed, and Mr. Kipp, hearing the chatter and laughter of family life, was suddenly troubled by certain disquieting thoughts, and he was forced to compose his mind with severe effort. No good thinking about that, he told himself angrily.

Still, he could hardly help it. Everything seemed to conspire to bring it to mind. Once within the estate they passed the barns, one of which was brightly lighted, with its great doors swung wide, and although Mr. Kipp sought to fasten his attention on the truly magnificent beasts he glimpsed — cattle and pigs — he was unable to avoid noticing three or four young workmen gathered there. One glance was enough — yes, they were sturdy fellows in the youthful prime of life, bursting with energy and good spirits, who doubtless hadn’t been ill a day in their lives — absolutely perfect human specimens.

Dr. Benavides must certainly be a model employer, Mr. Kipp reflected. These people ordinarily would live a life of deprivation, of near-starvation; in fact, they’d be better off dead, most of them — but under Dr. Benavides they had plenty to eat and prompt medical attention in case they were ever ill, and if — as he supposed, although Costain had delicately skirted this question — if now and then one of them met with some unfortunate accident… well, that wasn’t too terrible a price to pay, was it, so that the little community as a whole could prosper?

No, no, not at all, thought Mr. Kipp, and he conceived of these young workers as being heroes — even if it was not exactly voluntary or conscious heroism — and since he himself would be connected with their heroism and spirit of sacrifice, he felt tears of sympathy force their way into his eyes. Yes, he managed to tell himself, he had come down from New York not entirely selfishly, for he was a necessary part of a basically benevolent system which had raised the standard of living of these poor people—

His thoughts were cut short. They had arrived at the main building.

The car door swung open.

“Mr. Kipp?”

Dr. Benavides himself had come out to meet him and to escort him inside.

Mr. Kipp was terribly weary from his trip, and his mind was bemused by the thoughts he had lately sustained in it, so that he was not fully aware of what was taking place. He was given a tot of brandy, he shook hands with several of the staff doctors, and then he was conducted to a huge bathroom where skillful attendants helped him undress and then bathed him thoroughly.

Now for bed, thought Mr. Kipp distractedly, but he was wrong.

Instead, he was taken directly into a huge operating room, helped up on one of the tables, and strapped neatly down.

“You’re going to do it right away?” he asked, in some alarm, as Dr. Benavides appeared again, clothed in his surgeon’s greens.

“No time to lose, Mr. Kipp,” Dr. Benavides replied cheerfully. “No time at all.” He began giving orders to various staff members, who moved with quiet competence here and there, readying the equipment, including that of the anesthesiologist, which was brought to the head of Mr. Kipp’s table.

Then the doors were opened. A stretcher was wheeled rapidly in and placed alongside Mr. Kipp. On the stretcher was a body — and although Mr. Kipp didn’t want to look at it, although he strove with all his might to avoid looking at it, he couldn’t help himself. He turned his head.

But it wasn’t a young man. Mr. Kipp saw the protruding belly of age, white tufts of hair on the wrinkled chest, and the wattled neck.

Mr. Kipp felt outraged. “That man is old,” he protested, struggling ineffectively against his straps.

And then he glanced at the face of his neighbor, and he realized that his supposition about the function of the youthful peasants was quite unfounded, and he also realized more fully why Dr. Benavides and his associates had been so insistent that he leave no traces whatever that might lead the authorities north to Durango.

The old man on the stretcher was well known to him. It was, in fact, Gorgos, who was regarding him with a rather wicked grin.

“Thanks for the kidneys, Kipp,” said Gorgos. “This time, I outbid you.”

Dr. Benavides smiled benignly down. “You’re the donor in this case, Mr. Kipp,” he explained.

And then the anesthetic mask was applied, quite firmly, to Mr. Kipp’s face.