Natural Causes (16 page)

"You don' look like no gay boy." She ran a
hand through her dark, tangled hair. "But is hard to tell, you
know? Like Jerry. He go both ways, you know? Acey-deecy. Me, I'm
straight, you know?"

"Great," I said.

"Maybe for the right kinda bread, I'm not. But
nobody give me that kinda bread 'round here."

"You from here? From L.A.?"

She laughed. "Shit, no. I come up from TJ. Gotta
make some bread, you know? Ain't nothin' goin' on down in TJ, man.
Just same old, same old. You sure you don' wanna fuck, huh?"

"I'm sure," I said.

Maria sighed. She pulled the kimono shut and tied it
at her waist. "You wanna do some smoke?"

I said, "No."

"You're some swinger, ain't you, Harry?"
She got up and walked over to the candlelit table. "You ain't
vice?" she said, looking at me over her shoulder.

I said, "No."

"I'm askin' you, man. You gotta tell me, now.
The law say so."

"I thought you had me checked out."

"Shit," she said. "That Jerry, man.
He's too damn cold, you know? Think he's got it all figured out. You
don' answer my question, yet."

"I'm not vice. I'm not with the LAPD. I'm a
private detective."

"Yeah?" She turned back to the table and
pulled a fat yellow joint out of one of its drawers. She stuck it in
her mouth, bent over the candle, and lit it--filling the room with a
sweet, unmistakeable smell. "Who you workin' for."

"Some people who are interested in Quentin
Dover."

Maria walked back to the couch, the joint smoking
between her lips. She cinched the robe tightly, tucked it beneath her
legs, and sat down. "Yeah? Wha'chu wanna know about him for?"

I didn't answer her.

She pulled the joint from her mouth. "You got
the bread, pachuco?"

"I haven't heard anything yet."

"Wha'chu wanna hear?"

"When's the last time you saw Dover?"

"On Monday," she said with a smile.

"Before that."

"I seen him a coupla weeks ago. I seen him a
lotta times, you know? He come to the hotel every week. Leave me big
tips, you know, if I clean his room up good."

"You ever sleep with him?" It seemed like a
natural thing to ask Maria.

"Once or twice," she said, to my surprise.
"He ain't very good in bed, you know? He can't fuck 'cause he's
too scared about his heart. So I suck him off a couple times. He says
I'm a good girl. Says he usta fuck different chicks every night. But
he can't do it no more, 'cause of his heart. Real macho, you know? I
think it's bullshit. 'Cause once he gets kinda fucked-up. Starts
tellin' me 'bout his old lady, you know? 'Bout how much she like to
ball, and how he can't ball her no more, 'cause he's scared he's
gonna croak. He says he's scared the bitch's gonna walk. She's been
fuckin' 'round so much and other shit. I say, `Why don'chu dump on
the chick, man?' But he says he can't do it, 'cause he still loves
her. Is bullshit, you know? I'm suckin' him off and he's sayin' he
loves his old lady." She curled her lip in disgust. "Don'
nobody love anybody like that. He's just fucked up, you know? Later
on, when he comes he gets real nervous, man. He says, 'Forget what I
say. Is just bullshit, you know?' I think he's scared it's gonna get
back to his old lady--what he been doin' with me. I say, `Don' worry.
I ain't gonna say nothing.' He gives me a big tip."

Maria took a long toke from the joint.

"It's interesting," I said. "But it
isn't worth two hundred."

She made a grunting sound and expelled a cloud of
sweet, white smoke. "That ain't what I'm gonna tell you, man. I
just throw that in, you know? Por nada."

"What are you going to tell me?"

She rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. "Is
about what I see in his room. When I go in on Saturday."

"I thought no one had gone into his room until
Monday."

Maria just smiled.

Somewhere in the dark house something made a creaking
noise. The sound made me jump. But Maria didn't move.

"What's that?" I said.

"Nothin'," she said. "Is just my kid,
you know?"

I wasn't sure I believed that, but I didn't know what
I was going to do about it. I glanced through one of the dark
archways leading to the back of the house. Then I pulled my wallet
from my jacket and took two hundred-dollar bills out. Maria's eyes
gleamed in the candlelight.

"All right!" she said softly. She reached
tentatively for the money, as if she were almost afraid to touch it,
afraid that it might vanish if she did. I held it back from her.

"Let's hear the story first."

She looked at me uncertainly. "You ain't gonna
stiff me, are you, man?"

"Let's hear it, Maria."

She stared at the money for a moment then nodded.
"O.K. But don' try no tricks, you know?" She wet her
fingers and pinched the lit end of the joint a couple of times. When
it went out, she stuck the roach behind her ear like a stubby yellow
pencil.

"When Dover checks in on Friday," she said,
"I'm off duty. So I don' get the word about how he don' want no
company. On Saturday morning I go see him--change the sheets, see if
maybe he wants a little head. I could use the bread. Ain't got no
electricity, you know? Anyway, I knock on the door and when nobody
answers, I unlock it with my key and go in. There wasn't nobody
there, man."

"You mean he'd gone out?"

"I mean there wasn't nobody there. There never
was. I clean enough rooms to know when somebody been there at night.
And nobody been in that room."

I stared at her. "Are you sure, Maria?"

"Sure, I'm sure. The bed ain't messed up. There
ain't no luggage, neither. It freak'd me out some. I go up to the
desk and ask about him, 'cause I think maybe Jerry's been playin' one
of his dumb-ass jokes on me, you know, when he say he seen Dover
check in. But Louise, she tell me he check'd in on Friday afternoon
and say he don' wanna be disturbed."

"Did you tell her what you saw?"

"No, man. I don' tell nobody. I got a good job,
and I don' say nothin' gonna fuck it up."

"You didn't tell Jerry?"

"No, man. I didn' tell nobody."

"Why didn't you tell the cops?"

"Nobody ask me about Saturday," she said.
"Besides, I don' give nothing to them cabrons for free. Is just
askin' for trouble, you know?"

I thought about it for a minute. "So he wasn't
there on Friday night or on Saturday."

"That's what I been tellin' you, man."

"What about Monday? How did the room look then?"

"It still don' look like nobody'd lived in it,
you know? I mean, the clothes, they been put away. But his suitcase
was still sittin' on the bed and the sheets ain't messed up or
nothing."

"Like he'd just come in?"

"Yeah," she said. "Of course, I don'
get no real good look. Once I smell the bathroom ... I just run."

"Did you see his body?"

"I don' have to," Maria said. "I know
what that smell is."

"According to the cops, he'd been there since
early Sunday morning. How come it took so long for someone to
complain?"

"Man, that's the south quadrangle. It cost big
bread to move in down there. I don' think there's nobody around 'til
Monday morning."

"The place was empty? Both buildings?"

"Almost. August is a slow time, man."

"O.K., Maria." I handed her the two hundred
dollars. She held the money close to her breasts, moving her lips as
if she were saying a bedtime prayer.
 

19

As I got up to leave, I heard another noise coming
from the hall. I looked into the dark archway leading to the back of
the house and saw a pair of eyes glistening faintly in the
candlelight.

"What's going on?" I said uneasily.

Before Maria could answer me, a small brown boy came
running into the light.

"That's what's going on, man," Maria said.
"Come here, pachuco."

The little boy ran over to his mother and hid his
face in her robe. He looked at me once--all brown eyes and brown
shiny hair.

"Say hello," his mother said to him.

The boy hid his face again and shook his head. Maria
brushed the hair from his forehead. "He's shy, you know?"

I nodded at her. "Thanks for the help."

She rubbed the two hundred-dollar bills together. "Is
what it's all about. No bread, no electricity. No bread, no nothing."

I opened the door and stepped out onto the stoop. The
cab was still sitting on the dark street corner, idling in a cloud of
exhaust. I walked under the palm tree, down to the curb, and looked
back at Maria's tired cottage. Then I got in the cab and told the
driver to take me to the Marquis.
***

It was about two o'clock when I got to the hotel. I
went straight up to my room and sat down at the desk by the bed. It
was too late to call Jack, although I wanted to talk to him about
what Maria had said. I figured I could get in touch with him in the
morning at the Belle Vista. I wanted to do a little more snooping
around there, anyway, to see if I could figure out precisely how
Quentin Dover had managed to slip away unnoticed late Friday night.

If Maria could be trusted, that was apparently what
he'd done. Gone out after supper in the rented car, returned after
twelve, picked up his bags, then left again without anyone seeing him
come or go. If he'd returned between 12:30 and 12:45, when the night
clerk was on break, I could get him into the hotel. But it was a
little tougher to get him back out. Fifteen minutes wasn't much time
to return to the room through that dark garden, pack a bag, go back
out through the garden, and catch a ride with someone waiting in
another car. It could have been done, I supposed, if he'd known
precisely when the clerk was going on break. But it would have had to
have been run like clockwork. Moreover, it would have had to have
been planned in advance.

Whether he'd come in and gone out through the lobby
or whether he'd found some other way to enter and exit--through one
of the gates--it did look as if the thing had been planned out. Or,
at least, as if Dover hadn't wanted anyone to know where he was
going. He'd made a special trip to L.A. three days earlier than
usual. He hadn't contacted anyone on the 'Phoenix' team. He hadn't
even called his agent, who claimed that they were long-time friends.
He had told the desk clerk that he didn't want to be disturbed by
visitors. And he had entered and left the hotel grounds with his
luggage, unseen, in the middle of the night, leaving his own car
parked prominently in the Belle Vista lot. Then he'd returned,
surreptitiously, early Sunday morning. That sounded very much like a
man who didn't want other people to know what he was up to.

As to which "other people," it occurred to
me that if Quentin had been going behind his agent's and his
producer's backs--if he had, in fact, been meeting with someone on
Saturday about a TV deal that neither Sugarman nor Helen Rose knew
about--he would have had a very good reason to keep his whereabouts
secret. And given the situation on 'Phoenix', he might have been
desperate enough to risk anything in order to land another job. The
fact that he'd come to California at all pointed to some sort of
television connection. But I didn't really know how to confirm it,
short of canvassing every agent and producer in town. And even then
the chances of being told the truth were probably nil.

He had made those telephone calls when he'd arrived.
Several local ones, according to Sy Goldblum a.k.a. Seymour Wattle,
and one long-distance one to his mother in Cincinnati. He had also
driven the rental car some sixty miles. If I could have found out
whom he'd called in L.A. or whom he'd gone to see on Friday night (if
he'd done anything more than drive around), I'd have been better able
to answer the central question of where he'd been on Saturday. But
the calls were untraceable; so was the car ride. And I was beginning
to feel like I'd worn out my welcome in L.A. Quentin's friends and
associates claimed that he hadn't been in touch with them--period.
That left me with the one person I knew he'd been in contact
with--Connie Dover. I'd barely scratched the surface with her and
hadn't even gotten that far with Marsha. There was a fair chance, I
figured, that one or both of them knew something that I wanted to
know. In fact, Marsha Dover had claimed to know "things,"
compromising things. Although it might have been the liquor talking,
it was worth a shot. Plus, Dover's lawyer was in Cincinnati; so was
Frank Glendora. And I had questions I wanted to ask each of them.

First thing Friday morning, I called Seymour Wattle
at the LAPD, Hollywood Division. I asked him if they'd had any
further word on the autopsy findings, and he said no. Then I asked
him about the phone calls Dover had made from the Belle Vista. The
long-distance one had been made at seven P.M. Pacific time and had
lasted for two minutes. The last local one had been made at
approximately seven-thirty on Friday night. Dover had rented the
car-a Dodge Diplomat-at seven forty-five, picked it up at seven
fifty, and had driven off immediately after signing the rental
agreement in the lobby.