Natural Causes (27 page)

He laughed.

"How's 'Phoenix'?" I asked him.

"Well, we made it through the weekend without
any major losses. That's something."

"You haven't been home in a while, have you?"

"Five days," he said. "I would have
left tomorrow, if you hadn't needed me."

"I'm sorry, Jack."

"It's all right," he said. "They won't
forget me. I won't let 'em."

I fell asleep, fully clothed, on the daybed in Jack's
suite at the Marquis and woke up eight hours later. It was ten A.M.
by the digital clock built into the huge television set. I stood up
and wandered into the john to shower and shave. As I was stepping out
of the tub, the phone rang. I picked up the one by the toilet.

"Hi." It was Jack. "I'm downstairs at
the bar with Sy."

"I'm up here in the john with the telephone."

"You think you can make it down here in the next
half hour?"

"Give me ten minutes," I said.

I dug a sports shirt out of my overnighter and
slipped it on with a pair of jeans. When in Rome, as Jack had said.
This time, I'd come prepared. After stepping into a pair of socks and
shoes, I took the elevator down to the lobby and walked into the
Marquis bar. It was virtually empty at a quarter of eleven in the
morning just a few tourists, sipping Tequilla Sunrises out of brandy
snifters, and Jack and Sy.

I went over to their table and sat down. "Sy,"
I said.

"Harry." He gave me a Boy Scout salute. I
still had trouble picturing him in blue serge. That Monday he was
wearing a muscle T-shirt and white boat pants. Big tufts of brown
hair stuck out of the T-shirt from his chest, his armpits, his
shoulders, and his back. He looked like BelAir's version of a
lycanthrope.

Jack looked very uncomfortable. He didn't like
Wattle; he didn't have any reason to, after their last encounter.
Seymour stared at him with amusement--one arm draped over the back of
his chair. Jack stared at the table or at his Bloody Mary or at me.

"So what do we got?" Wattle said.

I laid it out for him and Jack. "Quentin wasn't
in L.A. on Friday or Saturday. Actually I'm not sure about Friday
night--there's just a likely guess. But I am sure that on Saturday he
was in Las Cruces, New Mexico."

Jack looked surprised. "He had a ranch there,
didn't he?"

"That's where he was--at the ranch. Possibly
with his overseer, a man named Ramirez." I looked at Wattle.
"That name doesn't ring any bells, does it? Jorge Ramirez?"

He shook his head.

"I figured. But it was worth a shot."

"How in the world did he manage it?" Jack
said with wonder.

"I don't know the details. All I can do is make
guesses at this point. Guesses that fit the facts as we know them."

"Let's hear 'em," Wattle said.

"First of all, it looks as if Quentin checked
into the Belle Vista on Friday not to prepare for a secret meeting
about a TV project like we originally thought, but to establish an
alibi. He wanted the world to think that he was at the Belle Vista
the whole weekend."

"Then he wasn't looking for another job?"
Jack said.

"Not in TV. Not at all, as far as I can see."

"Then what was his new project?"

I shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. He
was badly in debt and he needed a good deal of money to make
everything right again. The project was probably something that would
make him money. Exactly what, I don't know. I do know that he wasn't
counting on 'Phoenix' any more because he told Glendora that he was
going to quit the show if he didn't finish the document by this past
Monday."

"He said that?" Jack said. "Quentin
said he was going to quit?"

"He said more than that. He told Glendora he was
thinking of killing himself."

"Christ," Moon said. "What shit! He
was just trying to buy more time on the show with a new lie."

"Possibly. But the part about killing himself
was no joke. Dover's father killed himself. And Marsha, his wife,
told me that he'd always been afraid that he'd end up a suicide, too.
Phil Feldman, Dover's cardiologist, confirmed that."

"Are you saying that he killed himself?"
Wattle asked.

I shrugged. "Dover had painted himself into a
corner by last Friday. He was worried, depressed, talking about
suicide, on the one hand. And on the other, he was promising people
like his mother and his lawyer that everything was going to be
O.K.--that he had a new project in the works that was going to get
him off the hook on 'Phoenix' and put him in the black again
financially. If he couldn't come up with a document or something just
as good as a document, then, yes, I think he might have committed
suicide."

"He hadn't been able to write a word in six
months," Jack said. "What makes you think he could do it in
two days?"

"I don't think he could. I think he was counting
on something else."

"Like what?" Wattle said.

"Like I said, my guess is money. Money from some
source other than his job. Money that he didn't want anyone to ask
questions about. Money that he had to go secretly to New Mexico to
get. I think that's why he concocted the project story and the L.A.
trip--to cover his tracks while he was getting the money. As far as
his mother, his lawyer, and his doctor knew, it would have been money
from some kind of special project. Money from a TV deal, money from a
business deal. If it was enough money, he could have quit 'Phoenix,'
like he'd told Glendora he was going to do, and still have saved face
with Mom, paid off his creditors, and kept his wife and his house and
what was left of his way of life."

"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."