Natural Causes Page 24

  “No,” I said. “I’m not pissed.”

  “You’ll come and see me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe we can go on that trip. I think I’m ready to go, now.”

  “We’ll talk about it. Go back to sleep.”

  “O.K. ‘Bye, Harry.”

  “Goodbye, Marsha.”

  Hearing her voice made me feel better about the dream. Worse about other things. I tried not to think about any of it. After a while, the bad feeling went away.

  ******

  Jack Moon called me around nine, as I was drinking coffee and staring out my hotel window at the bleak, sunny Las Cruces streets.

  “I’m in Cincinnati,” he said, after he’d said hello. “Frank ordered me back. He told me to tell you that you’re off the case, Harry. He knows we’ve been in touch. There was just no way to keep it a secret.”

  “I’m off the case because of Connie?”

  “Yeah. I told you this was going to happen. To be fair, it wasn’t Frank’s idea. But he’s got people he’s responsible to. And they don’t want any trouble.”

  “What about Dover?” I said.

  “He died of natural causes, following a fall in the bathroom. That’s the way it’s going to stay.”

  I sighed. “Maybe so.”

  “Frank would appreciate a call, Harry. He feels rotten about this. He really did want to clear everything up.”

  “I’ll call him,” I said. “I guess I’ll fly back to Cincinnati tonight.”

  “You want me to pick you up?”

  “No, I left my car at the airport.”

  “I’m sorry about this, Harry,” Jack said. “You must think we’re real shits.”

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “Maybe he did die accidentally. I found a document at his house here in Las Cruces. Could be he came out here to work on it, after all.”

  Jack laughed. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “What was the document about?”

  “A man running from his past, who disguises himself as something he’s not, then gets blackmailed for it.”

  Moon didn’t say anything for a moment. “That sounds familiar. Must have been one of our old story lines.”

  “Probably,” I said.

  “I’ll see you when you get back, Harry,” Jack said and hung up.

  I packed my overnighter and called the El Paso airport. There was a plane leaving for Cincinnati at four-thirty that afternoon. I booked the flight. It would take me about an hour to drive down to El Paso, the ticket agent told me. That gave me five and a half hours to kill. Checkout time at the hotel was two. I decided to wait until then to check out, in case I wanted to come back to the room to make a call or eat lunch. I left the overnighter in the luggage rack by the door and walked down to the lobby. It was funny but I didn’t feel angry or disappointed about being taken off the case. I think I felt relieved.

  I decided to do a little sightseeing—like any tourist. It was a very warm day. The sky was white hot overhead and pale blue above the mountain ranges. The desert was drenched in sunlight. I drove out on the desert for a while, then worked my way southwest to Mesilla. I stopped at the old town square again and took a closer look at the church and the shops. I ended up in the curio store at the end of the promenade—the stone building where the Gadsden purchase had been signed and where Billy the Kid had been jailed. The woman with the weathered face and the grudge against Santa Fe was waiting on a Mexican boy when I stepped through the door. The boy was about twenty-two and he wanted a silver belt buckle so badly that he could taste it. The woman took the one he wanted out of the glass case and he fondled it lovingly. He was a tall, skinny kid in a plaid shirt and blue jeans. His black hair was cropped so short in back that he looked like a Marine in boot camp. When he handed the buckle to the woman, she dropped it back in the display case and gave him a disgusted look. The kid looked embarrassed and walked out. As he passed by me, I noticed that he had a teardrop tattoo on his eye, like Ramirez.

  “Goddamn Mexican trash,” the woman said when the kid had gone. “Coming in here and wastin’ my time. The only way he’s gonna get seventy bucks is to steal it. And both he and I know it.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She pulled at the flesh beneath her eye. “Didn’t you see it?”

  “The tattoo?”

  “Yeah. It’s their macho mark. You can only wear that if you’ve done hard time. That’s what they say, anyway.”

  “You know a man named Jorge Ramirez?”

  She nodded. “I know Jorge.”

  “He’s got that kind of tattoo.”

  “He did time,” the woman said. “But he straightened himself out. He’s one of your decent Mexicans. It’s that wetback riff-raff I can’t abide.”

  “What did Ramirez do time for?” I asked her.

  “I don’t remember. It’s been a while. Like I said, he straightened himself out. Got married, went to work, had kids.”

  “Did you know Quentin Dover?”

  “Hell, yes,” she said. “I knew Quentin. Sorry he’s dead.”

  “Ramirez worked for him, didn’t he?”

  “He not only worked for him, he worshipped him. Dover was good to Ramirez. Good to a lot of Mexican families around here. He had a thing for the so-called disadvantaged.”

  “You didn’t approve?” I said.

  “Never said that,” the woman said sharply. “He was just like a lot of Easterners who come out here and don’t know what it’s all about, that’s all. He would have grown out of it, after a time. You gotta do for yourself first, mister. That’s my motto. You can’t depend on other people to do for you. They’ll let you down every time.”

  “You think Dover depended too much on Ramirez?”

  “I think he didn’t depend enough on himself,” she said.

  She was the kind of woman who gave the frontier spirit a bad name. But she was honest in her own bigoted fashion and what she’d said about Ramirez interested me. But not enough to do any more detecting. I was done with Quentin Dover. He’d been picked over enough, God knew, in life and in death. And I’d liked Ramirez enough not to want to know whether he’d been involved in Dover’s final folly or in some folly of his own. I was just a tourist now.

  ******

  I drove back to the hotel at one-thirty and went up to my room to get my luggage. The message light on the phone was blinking, so I picked up the receiver and dialed the desk. Sy Goldblum had called at twelve-thirty. He’d left a number where he could be reached and an urgent message that I return the call. I almost didn’t do it. I almost tore the phone number up and walked down to the desk and checked out. What I didn’t know wasn’t going to hurt me—or anyone else. And I didn’t want to hurt anybody, least of all Quentin Dover. Connie would have been proud.

  I made the call anyway.

  Goldblum sounded very excited. That in itself almost made me hang up the phone.

  “My friend in Texas tells me there is no Gene Clark in El Paso,” Wattle said. “Thought you’d like to know.”

  “I already knew,” I said.

  “Now here comes the interesting part.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I almost said.

  “That license number you gave me? Ran it through DMV this morning and guess what? The registration comes up Jerry Ruiz.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Why shit? Christ, man, we’re really on to something!”

  I thought of that broken-down ranch, the man, the woman, and their kids and felt sick at heart. If I told Wattle where I’d spotted that plate, he’d have cops swarming all over the Ramirez ranch in a matter of hours. And if the cops knew about Ruiz, the gang that killed Maria wouldn’t be far behind. There’d be more dead bodies—more dead kids. And for what? Because Ramirez did a favor for a man he’d loved and admired. “Who have you told about this?”

  “Nobody yet. I’ve been waiting for you to call back to find out where you spotted
the tags.”

  “I want you to do me a favor, Sy. I want you to forget about the plates.”

  “Forget about them,” he said with a laugh. “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not kidding,” I said. “Forget I mentioned them.”

  “I can’t do that, Harry,” he said in a tough voice. “This ain’t the sort of thing you can pass by. Somebody’s got to look into it.”

  “I’ll look into it. I give you my word.”

  “It ain’t enough. This is murder, man.”

  “Look, you don’t know that. I don’t either. The Ruiz kid hasn’t been directly related to the Sanchez girl’s death.”

  But it wasn’t the Ruiz kid I was thinking of.

  “I can’t forget it, man. Understand?”

  “Two thousand,” I said. “I’m sure I can get it for you, Sy. By tomorrow.”

  “Make it five,” he said.

  “I’ll make it five.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. “I don’t understand this, man.”

  “I don’t either,” I said. “Is it a deal?”

  “I’ll have to think about it,” he said, and hung up.

  39

  I CALLED the El Paso airport and canceled my reservation for the flight to Cincinnati. Then I called Frank Glendora at the United American building.

  “We’ve got a serious problem,” I said.

  “I’m really sorry about this whole thing, Harry,” he said unhappily. “Connie’s just being intransigent.”

  “That’s not the problem.”

  “Well, what, then?”

  I explained the situation to him. “Dover’s overseer, Jorge Ramirez, is apparently harboring a fugitive—a kid named Jerry Ruiz. Ruiz is the boy who helped Dover get out of the Belle Vista on Friday night. He’s probably also the one who picked him up at the airport on Sunday morning. The point is, Ruiz was heavily involved in Dover’s scheme. And now it looks like Ramirez was involved, too.”

  “But we don’t know what that scheme was, do we?” Glendora said innocently.

  I was getting a little sick of that innocence. “At this point, I can make a pretty good guess. You must know that, Frank. Jack has to have told you.”

  “He told me some things,” Glendora said.

  “Frank, this isn’t the time to kid around. Ruiz is connected to a killing. He may be marked for killing himself.”

  “I fail to see how that involves us.”

  “You do? Then let me make this as plain as I can. The Sanchez girl and her son were tortured to death. Cut and burned, Frank. Gangland style. They were made examples of, because they’d gotten involved in a drug deal that didn’t go down right. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I hear you.”

  “It was Dover’s deal, Frank. I’d bet on it now. I don’t know the details, but they’re bound to come out. Sy Goldblum at LAPD knows that and he also knows that I know where Ruiz is. He knows I’m withholding evidence in a capital crime, too. Now we can buy him off—maybe. But I wouldn’t count on him staying bought and it’s going to cost you a great deal of money.”

  “How much?”

  “Five thousand, at least. It’ll probably be more by tonight, once Sy has had some time to think about how serious this thing is. And something has to be done about Ruiz, Frank.”

  “What?” he said.

  “I don’t know. I won’t know until I find out how deeply involved he was in Quentin’s scheme and what that scheme actually was. If Quentin screwed with the wrong people, he could have sentenced everyone else who was connected to him to death. Maybe we can make it right again—for a price. But we have to know who to deal with.”

  “You’re asking me to put you back on the case,” he said.

  I laughed. “You think I’m looking forward to this? I was just as ready to call it quits as you were. Quentin has that effect on me.”

  “Then why not...I mean could we just...”

  “We could,” I said. “But if it ever comes out that we did, you’d have the biggest scandal on your hands in the company’s history. If I could make Ruiz’s car, so can a state trooper. Goldblum already ran the license through California DMV, so somebody at DMV knows about it, too. And if the cops know about it, you can bet the thugs who killed Maria Sanchez know about it.”

  “God’s teeth,” Glendora said.

  “There’s something else,” I said. “If I’m right about this thing, Ramirez, Ruiz, the Sanchez girl—they wouldn’t have been involved if it weren’t for Dover. Ramirez, in particular. I don’t want to see anybody else get killed or busted, if I can prevent it. Not for Quentin’s sake. And if I’m right and we don’t follow up on this, I’ve got the feeling that there’s going to be more death. Maybe United can live with that, but I can’t.”

  Glendora took a deep breath. “Neither can I,” he said. “Do what you have to do, Harry. I’ll back you up on it. I’ll go out to L.A. tonight to talk to Goldblum and to be available in case you need me.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “You may be costing me my job, old boy. You and Quentin.”

  “You shouldn’t have cared about him,” I said.

  “I couldn’t help it,” Glendora said.

  ******

  I didn’t start thinking about what I’d bitten into until after I’d gone out to the car. Then everything began to seem very complicated. I hadn’t wanted Ramirez to be involved in the case. But he was, and he had a criminal record, and he was harboring a boy who was either running away from a murder or involved in it himself. I couldn’t wish that kind of trouble away, like Ramirez had said Dover was trying to do. I couldn’t go out to that ranch armed with good intentions.

  I drove the Mustang back to the town square and parked behind the low row of buildings fronting the south side of the promenade. There was a gun shop on that side of the mall. I’d seen it on Monday when I’d been waiting for Ramirez and again, that morning, when I’d browsed in the curio shop. I walked up one of the alleys to the sidewalk and went into the store.

  “What have you got in .45 caliber?” I said to the stringy Mexican man behind the counter.

  “Revolver or automatic?”

  “Automatic,” I said.

  He took a blued Colt Commander out of the display case. I checked the magazine lips and the trigger pull. It had a five- or six-pound pull—a little heavy compared to my Gold Cup.

  “That’ll do,” I said. “Ill need a box of .45 ACP, too.”

  “Twenty-five or fifty?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  He took a yellow and green box of Remington .230 grain hardball off the shelf behind the counter.

  “I’ll need some I.D.”

  I got my F.F.L. out of my wallet and handed it to him.

  “You’re a collector, huh?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “This ain’t really a collectible,” he said and winked. “But we’ll make an exception.”

  I bought the gun and the ammunition and a belt holster, too. When I got back to the car, I drove down one of the sleepy Mesilla streets and pulled over in a gravel turnaround. There was some sparse shade in one corner of the turnaround, beneath a palo verde. I parked under the green-barked tree, undid my belt, and slipped the holster onto it. Then I got the Colt out, loaded the clip with seven rounds, and dumped the rest of the bullets in my pants pocket. I put the gun in the holster and pulled my shirt out of my pants. The shirttail covered the holster, or, at least, it would when I was standing.

  I redid my belt, started up the car, and headed east, toward the El Capitan mountains.

  ******

  It was about four when I got to the ranch. The Pueblo house looked grimier and more rundown in the light of day than it had at twilight. I drove past the abandoned horse trailer and the broken wagon into the yard. The Jeep was parked by the house; the Chevelle was gone.

  As I cracked the car door open, Ramirez stepped out of the Pueblo house. The vigas cast blunt, saw-toothe
d shadows over the doorway. He stood in the shadows—his hands at his side—and watched me walk up to him. He wasn’t armed, or if he was, the gun was tucked out of sight, like my own.

  “Señor,” he said. His face looked sad and impassive. He hadn’t shaved that morning and the day’s growth of beard gave him a played-out look, although that could have been the way I was seeing him. He was wearing a collarless undershirt, stained yellow at the armpits and around the neck, and dirty blue jeans.

  “We’ve got a problem, Jorge,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “The car that was parked here last night—the Chevelle? Where is it?”

  “It’s gone,” he said. “I got rid of it.”

  I looked over Ramirez’s shoulder into the house. There wasn’t anyone else inside—no sign of his wife or his children.

  “Did your wife take it?” I said, looking back at him.

  He nodded. “She drove down to Juarez.”

  “I know about the car, Jorge. I know whose car it is. And I know that Dover wasn’t going to sell his ranch. Whose story was that—yours or his?”

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I knew you were gonna come back. I tol’ my wife you were gonna come back.”

  “Is that why you sent her away?”

  He nodded again. I stared at him for a moment.

  “Don’ worry, señor,” he said with a polite smile. “I ain’t gonna give you no trouble. I ain’t gonna lie, either. It just don’ work out. That’s all. Not for Señor Dover. Not for me. He didn’ wanna get nobody hurt.”

  “Sure he didn’t,” I said to the man. “Where’s Ruiz?”

  Ramirez pointed toward the mountains. “Up there. I got a lean-to. I let him stay there.”

  I looked over my shoulder at the mountain range. It looked gray in the late afternoon light. Gray and brown where the scrub pines grew below the timber line.

  “Why did Ruiz come here?” I asked.

  “He say he got no place else to go. They killed his woman and her kid. He thinks they were gonna kill him, too. He come down here ‘cause that’s where Señor Dover tol’ him to go, if things didn’ work out right. He’s pretty scared, man.”