Natural Causes Page 20

  “I didn’t like Quentin,” Jack said. “But...I mean, what are you saying? That Dover was a smuggler or a gambler or a thief or what?”

  “That’s what we have to find out,” I said. “Whatever he was up to had him scared to death. Scared enough to take the extraordinary precautions that he took to disguise what he was really doing over the weekend.”

  Jack shook his head. “He was always scared, Harry. What makes you think that this was any different? What makes you think that he wasn’t lying to himself as well? Maybe the trip to New Mexico was just a piece of wishful thinking. Maybe there was no pot of gold at the end of it—just Quentin face to face with his own demise.”

  “It’s possible,” I conceded. “He did spend a good deal of time last week visiting people and places from his past—like a man saying goodbye. But if the New Mexican trip was just a pipe dream, then it’s hard to explain all the stories he told—all of the secrecy and lies.”

  Jack laughed. “That’s always been hard to explain, hasn’t it?”

  He had a point.

  “And don’t forget,” Moon went on. “Quentin was a physical coward—a hypochondriac, a lush, a sick man. I can’t see him going into some...dangerous situation all by himself.”

  “He wasn’t by himself,” I said. “That I’m sure of.”

  “Spell it out,” Wattle said.

  “Quentin had at least one accomplice. He had to have someone to help him here in L.A. or he’d have had no way to get to the airport and back without tipping off the fact that he’d left the hotel.”

  “How’d he get out of the hotel?” Wattle asked.

  “Well, I’m guessing,” I said. “But I figure he had a key to one of the gates in the hotel wall. I originally thought that he’d used that key late on Friday night, after he’d gotten back with the rented car. I’d thought he had another car or a taxi waiting for him on Green Canyon Road. Now I don’t think he came back to the Belle Vista at all on Friday. After he rented the car, I think he drove around to the gate in the south quadrangle, unlocked it, went to his room, took out his luggage, loaded it in the car, and drove to the airport. There was virtually nobody else staying on the south quadrangle that weekend and it’s so goddamn dark back there that it probably wouldn’t have made a difference anyway. So he was in little danger of being spotted. By the way, the airport is some thirty miles from the Belle Vista—which would account for the sixty miles on his odometer, if you figure on a round-trip.”

  “If he drove out there, how did the car get back in the lot?” Jack asked.

  “He met someone at the airport,” I said. “Or he picked someone up. Or someone followed him. I don’t know. I really don’t know for sure about any of this. But if I’m close to being right, then there had to have been an accomplice who drove the car to the Belle Vista lot and then picked Dover up early Sunday morning at the airport and drove him back to the hotel gate.”

  “That’s an awful lot of ‘ifs,’” Wattle said. “How did Dover get to Las Cruces and back?”

  “By charter or by private plane, I think. I did some checking and there aren’t any commercial flights to Las Cruces on Friday night, so it had to be noncommercial. I was hoping you’d look into that, Sy.”

  He grunted. “It’ll cost you.”

  “While you’re doing that, I’m going to go to Las Cruces and see if I can find out what was happening on that end.”

  “You want me to come with you?” Jack said.

  “I don’t think so. You stay in L.A. and coordinate things with Sy and Frank. I’ll keep in touch with you.”

  Jack sighed. “Executive producer again, huh?”

  I smiled at him.

  32

  WE ORDERED some drinks and nursed them in silence for a while. Jack, in particular, looked lost in thought. I had the feeling that a tiny, unregenerate part of him had still been hoping for the best from Quentin Dover. The best or the worst—something that would finally take him off the hook, absolve him of the guilt he felt for having recommended Dover in the first place. Wattle looked as if he were ruminating, too. With him it took a physical effort, brow knurled, eyes shut, jaw working as if he were chewing on something caught in his teeth.

  He finally came out with it. “So how come he’s dead?”

  It was a good question. “I guess that depends on how things went in Las Cruces. If they didn’t go the way Quentin hoped they would—and I have a gut feeling that they didn’t—then I think he came back to the Belle Vista early Sunday morning and killed himself.”

  Nobody said anything for a moment.

  “How come the coroner said he died of natural causes?” Wattle asked.

  “He may have taken an overdose of one or more of his own medications. Given the condition of his body, that wouldn’t have shown up clearly in a preliminary autopsy. And remember, there must have been some confusion about what killed him because your forensic specialists are still running tests.”

  “He didn’t die of drugs,” Jack said. “He poisoned himself with lies. He poisoned all of us with lies.”

  “There is that,” I admitted.

  “About the Sanchez killings,” Wattle said. “I went up to Pacoima last night and talked to their homicide man.”

  “And?”

  “Now don’t get all excited. But there is a link with Dover.”

  “For chrissake!” I said. “Why didn’t you say so to begin with?”

  “Because it isn’t much. I don’t think it means anything and neither does the Pacoima guy.”

  “What is it?”

  “They found one of Dover’s prescription bottles in the Sanchez house—some amyl nitrate. An old bottle with a coupla pills left in it. You know you can get high on amyl. We figure she swiped it from his room months ago. She had other bottles, too, belonging to parties who’d stayed at the Belle Vista. Some dex, some soapers, some ‘ludes. The usual pharmacy.”

  I hated to say it, but it didn’t sound like much to me, either. “Do they have any idea why she was murdered?”

  “They think it’s a gang thing. Drug-related, probably. They found a bag of cocaine taped inside her toilet. It was probably a gang thing.”

  “Well, keep on top of it,” I said.

  “I better get going.” Wattle stood up. “I’ll check out at the airport this afternoon. See what I can dig up.”

  He gave me a meaningful look.

  “Will two bills cover it?” I said.

  “Check.”

  “I’m probably going to go to Las Cruces this afternoon. So if you find anything, let Jack know and he’ll pass it on.”

  He gave us another salute and lumbered out of the bar.

  “You want me to go with you to the airport?” Jack said.

  “No. First I want to go over the Belle Vista. There’s a guy I want to talk to there.”

  “Let’s go,” Jack said.

  ******

  We walked out to the taxi stand in front of the hotel. When the black doorman spotted me, he did a double take.

  “Is there two of you?” he said. “You just left a coupla days ago.”

  I laughed. “I got back last night.”

  “Must’ve been real late,” he said. “Cause I didn’t see none of you.”

  “Shades of Quentin,” Jack said over my shoulder.

  We caught a cab to the Belle Vista. The cabbie let us out in the parking lot. I looked for Jerry, but he wasn’t at his usual post by the canopied bridge. The other kid—the one I’d talked to on Friday afternoon—was standing there. I walked over to him, with Jack trailing behind me.

  “Where’s Jerry?” I asked.

  He shaded his eyes with one hand. “Who?”

  I dug a five out of my wallet.

  “Oh, Jerry!” he said. “You mean Jerry Ruiz. Haven’t seen Jerry in a long time, man.”

  “How long?”

  “Not since the last time you asked about him. He quit.”

  “Did he give a reason why?”

  The kid laughe
d. “You gotta be joking. You ever park cars twelve, fourteen hours a day?”

  “You don’t know where he lives, do you?”

  “Nope. He used to hang out at a bar on Sunset, but I haven’t seen him around there since Friday.”

  “O.K. Thanks.”

  We walked across the bridge to the lobby, where the woman with the prim, pretty face was stationed at the front desk. She smiled familiarly at Jack.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Moon. Should I ring Miss Rose’s room?”

  Jack looked at me. “Do you want to talk to her?”

  I thought about it. It was possible she knew something useful about Quentin’s ranch. And since Connie Dover was threatening blackmail, I figured there’d be no harm in checking the story that she’d told me—about Helen supplying Russ Leonard with cocaine. If it was true, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if it was, the Dover woman could make Glendora and United think twice about the investigation. There was one other reason as well. Cocaine was a profitable business—a quick-kill business. Just the sort of thing to put a desperate man back on his feet.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You go on down to her room, and I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Jack told the desk clerk to tell Helen he was coming, then went through the French doors into the garden. After the clerk had given Helen the message, I walked up to her. She forced a polite smile. I could see from her face that she was tired of me. She hadn’t been cooperative the last time I’d questioned her. And I had the feeling that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with her this time, either. She was clearly a job for Wattle.

  “The boy who was working in your parking lot—Jerry Ruiz? I’d like to talk to him.”

  “Jerry is no longer with us. He failed to show up for work for three consecutive days.”

  “You wouldn’t know where I could get in touch with him, would you?”

  “Do you mean by that, would I give you his address or phone number?”

  I nodded.

  “We don’t give out that information, sir,” she said sternly.

  I thought about trying to bribe her—everyone else in L.A. seemed to wear his price on his sleeve—right where his heart should have been. But while this one might have taken a bribe from the right sort of person, I didn’t think I qualified. I wasn’t Bel-Air enough for her.

  “O.K.,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it,” she said coolly.

  I stepped through the French doors into the courtyard and walked down to the south quadrangle. The fact that Jerry Ruiz had dropped out of sight bothered me a little. The first time I’d talked to Maria Sanchez, it had been Jerry Ruiz who had pointed me in her direction. At the time I’d had the feeling that they were working together. Cabbies and bar girls run the same kind of scam all the time. The cabbie steers the john to the hooker, for which he gets a small percentage of the action. Whether they were running a game or not, I had the feeling that they were connected. And the last time I’d talked to Jerry, he’d gotten very nervous when he thought that Maria had told me that he’d given Quentin a key to the Belle Vista gate. That was hardly a reason to murder anyone, but Maria had died the next day and Jerry had dropped out of sight. I figured it was worth looking into. Wattle would be the one to do it—for a price.

  When I got to the south quadrangle, I found Jack Moon sitting on a bench by the bowl-shaped fountain. He had a dark look on his face. I sat down beside him.

  “Someday I’m going to bust that bitch in the chops,” he said, scowling at me.

  “What now?”

  “What else? The breakdowns aren’t right. Walt is fucking up the blocking. He won’t cooperate. And it’s my fault.” He shook his head. “It’s Quentin all over again, I’m telling you.”

  “Russ Leonard, too,” I said.

  Jack looked up at me. “There are only so many story lines in daytime, Harry. And we’ve just about run the gamut—from A to B. Like she said, we don’t merely write ‘em, we live ‘em. It’s all going to start up again. I can see the handwriting on the chalkboard. The same endless round of recrimination and buck passing.” He pressed his brow with the back of his hand, as if he were checking to see if he was running a fever. “I’ve got to get out of this racket. I’m not kidding. I’m a desperate man.”

  For a second I believed him. Then he dropped his hand with a sigh and slapped himself encouragingly on the knee. “C’mon, Jack,” he said to himself. “Buck up. It’s only a job.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve got some more bad news,” I said.

  He curled his hands and made a coaxing gesture at me, like a fighter baiting his opponent. “C’mon, lay it on me. I’m made of steel.”

  “Connie Dover told me that Helen was Russ Leonard’s connection, that she had supplied him with coke.”

  Moon’s face turned as white as milk. “Good God,” he said softly. “You’re not going to go in there and ask her about that, are you?”

  “I’m going to ask you first.”

  Jack started wiping his beard nervously. I thought he might wipe it off. “Where the hell did Connie come up with that story?”

  “From Quentin, I guess.”

  Jack laughed feebly. “From Quentin.”

  “She claimed she could document it.”

  “Oh, my God.” Jack grabbed his stomach as if he were shot.

  “Take it easy, Jack.”

  “Take it easy,” he said manically. “The man says take it easy. Why the hell do you care what Helen may or may not have done for Russ Leonard?”

  “I don’t care, but United might. Connie conceded that Helen was probably feeding it to him to keep him from hustling it on the street.”

  “Then drop it, for chrissake. For my sake.”

  I stared at him for a second. “Why, Jack?”

  “Because we don’t need it,” he said. “Can’t you see that? Isn’t the situation bad enough as it is?” He took a deep breath and tried to pull himself together. “You don’t understand, Harry. That stuff—it’s commonplace out here. It comes with the table setting, to the left of the spoons.”

  “So?”

  “So everybody does it. Do you hear what I’m saying? Do you have any idea how many people—I mean, famous people, people whose names you’d know in a second—have had their noses rebuilt and their blood washed? Some of them on a monthly basis. It’s big business. It’s perks. It’s Hollywood beer. It’s what they hand out now the way they used to hand out hookers and studs. You can’t go in there and ask that woman whether she’s a cocaine pusher. You don’t ask that question out here—of anyone. You’re looking for trouble if you do.”

  “From whom?”

  “From everybody,” he said. “It’s like breaking the law of silence in the Mafia. It’s just not done.”

  Jack fumbled with his hands as if he’d run out of rope. “Harry, please,” he said. “Don’t open this can of worms. Not today. Not this week.”

  “I’m sorry, Jack.”

  I got up and walked over to the room.

  33

  THE DOOR was open so I walked in. Helen wasn’t in the living room, but I could hear her rummaging around the bedroom.

  “If that’s you, Jack, I apologize. If it isn’t you, I still apologize.”

  “It’s Harry Stoner,” I called out.

  “Harry!” she said, as if she were saying ‘Darling!’ “I’ll be out in a moment. I’m stopping a clock with my face. Make yourself comfortable.”

  I went over to the white couches and sat down in front of the fireplace. A cedar log was burning on the andirons. The room air conditioner was on, too, full blast. With the door open, it made for interesting weather, as if the room couldn’t make up its mind what season it was. I stared out the door at the sunlit courtyard. Jack Moon was still sitting on the bench—hands clasped together, head bent.

  Helen walked into the room and sat down across from me on the other couch. She had her head wrapped in a silk scarf, with the fringe of her curly bangs peeking out in front. Her face l
ooked the same as it had on Wednesday—childish, bruised, full of worry.

  “How’s the scandal business?” she said hoarsely.

  “Keeping me busy.”

  “Yes? Did Jack tell you about our latest misadventure?”

  “You mean Walt’s document?”

  She nodded. “Isn’t that something? Quentin would die again, if he knew.”

  I stared at her for a moment. “I don’t understand. You would have fired Quentin if he had presented that document to you, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course,” she said. “The way things had been going, we wouldn’t have had any other choice.”

  “Then why didn’t you fire Walt?”

  “Harry, sweetie,” she said. “Stick to the detective biz. It’s a lot more logical.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at Jack.

  “That’s his trouble,” she said. “He keeps looking for reasons where there aren’t any reasons. He keeps trying to figure things out. I tell him, ‘Jack, as soon as you figure them out, they’re going to change on you. You can’t count on anything or anyone but yourself.’” She shook her head. “Look at him, sitting there. He looks like a penguin on a rock.” She turned her head back to me. “I guess I hurt his feelings.”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s going to have to grow up one of these days. Either that or he’s going to have to quit the business. He doesn’t have the right temperament for this kind of work.”

  “I guess so, Helen,” I said. “He keeps feeling sorry for people like you.”

  She gave me a sharp look “Jack’s no angel, sweetie. He’s as hungry as the rest of us. He just hasn’t learned how to use his knife and fork yet.”