Natural Causes (32 page)

Five miles farther on, I could see the lights of a
ranch house at the foot of the mountain range. An old, rusted horse
trailer and a broken--down wagon littered the road leading to the
house. The house itself looked adobe. As I drove up to it, I could
see that it was a Pueblo house, with rounded doorways and rounded
windows. Vigas projected out of the walls beneath the flat roof. The
place was a little larger than Maria Sanchez's bungalow, but far more
weather-beaten and run down. A maroon Chevelle, stripped of all its
chrome, was parked in the front yard. I didn't see the jeep.

I pulled up behind the Chevelle and got out. It was
cold in the shadow of the mountain, and the wind made me shiver.
There was still enough daylight in the sky to see clearly, although
everything looked slightly gray and washed out, like on a cloudy
winter's day. I walked through clumps of sage to the door of the
house. It was
standing open. Through it I could
see a truncheon table with a kerosene lamp on it. The lamp lit up the
walls of the ranch, turning them yellow and casting deep shadows on
the spots where the adobe was cracked or chipped. A woman stepped
into the lamplight. She was wearing a gingham skirt and a sweatshirt.
The sweatshirt read "Arizona State University." When she
looked out the door and saw me standing in the twilight, she took a
step backward. She had a high-cheeked, pretty face and long black
hair, braided in back.

A couple of children came running to the door to see
what had frightened their mother. They were small and brown--a boy of
about six in underpants and a torn T-shirt and a girl of about four
in a nightgown with ruffles on it.

"Mrs. Ramirez?" I said.

She nodded without moving from where she stood. "I'd
like to speak to your husband."

"He's no' here," she said.

"Do you mind if I wait?" I said.

"No. I don' mind." She stared at me for a
moment, then herded her children back in the house.

I went over to the Mustang, sat down on the hood, and
waited.

About ten minutes later, I heard the sound of an
engine. The woman heard it, too. She came to the door and gazed into
the desert. Far out on the plain a pair of headlights was making
bright, jouncing flashes in the twilight. As the jeep got closer, I
could see a plume of dust rising behind it, like the rooster tail of
a speedboat. It took the jeep several minutes to get to the ranch.
The woman watched it intently, glancing now and then at me. When
Ramirez pulled into the yard, she called out to him in Spanish. He
looked at me, then got out of the jeep.

"How'd you find us?" he said, walking
across the yard to the Mustang.

"The girl at the hotel drew me a map."

"Yes?" He studied me for a second. He was
dressed as he'd been dressed that morning, in jeans and the oversized
white shirt, except that he'd put a cracked leather flyer's jacket
over the shirt. His jeans were dirty and his hands were caked with
dirt, as if he'd been digging. "What can I do for you, senor?"

"I've been checking around town," I said,
"trying to get a lead on this man, Clark. Nobody I talked to
ever heard of him. In fact, no one even knew the ranch was for sale.
And Dover didn't register any sale with the county."

"Maybe he didn' sell it after all," Ramirez
said. "Or, maybe Clark registered the sale in Santa Fe."

"I couldn't locate Clark in El Paso. He wasn't
listed in the phone book."

Ramirez shrugged. "Coul' be he don' have a
listed phone number."

"It could be," I said. "When did you
say that Dover mentioned the sale to you?"

"On Wednesday," he said. "I come up to
see him. In Ohio. Make my report. I come up twice a year, you know?
This time, he say there was somethin' important we gotta talk about."

"And it was the sale?"

He nodded.

"Did Dover tell anyone else about the sale? His
wife? His mother?"

"Not while I'm around. I think maybe he wanted
to keep it a secret."

"Why do you say that?"

Ramirez stared at my face for a moment. "How
well do you know Senor Dover?"

"I never met the man."

"He was a very proud man," Ramirez said.
"When he had troubles, he didn' wanna worry other people. I
think maybe he was havin' some trouble--that's why he needed to sell
the ranch."

"I think he was having trouble, too," I
said. It was fully dark by then and the only light on the whole vast
desert seemed to be the warm yellow light spilling out of the ranch
house door. Ramirez's sober, inexpressive face was lit by it.

"Did you see Dover at all on Saturday?"

He shook his head. "Only when I took him back to
the airport."

"And you never actually met this man, Clark?"

"Like I tol' you this morning, I picked Senor
Dover up and dropped him off. That's all I seen him. He tol' me he
wanted to be alone."

"Is there any other place in Las Cruces that
Dover might have gone to on Saturday? Outside the ranch?"

"He was meetin' with Clark, man," Ramirez
said. "Where's he gonna go?"

"Did anyone else have a key to the
ranch--outside you and Dover?"

"Just us," he said. "Senor Dover, he
was a generous man. He let me stay at his casa when he was not
there."

"You liked him, didn't you?"

He didn't answer me, but it was clear that he had
liked Quentin Dover a great deal.

"Someone answered the phone in Dover's house on
Monday morning," I said. "Was it you?"

"No, it wasn' me. I didn' have a key no more."

"You don't have any idea who it could have
been?"

"Maybe, Senor Dover gave a key to someone else."
Ramirez's wife called to him in Spanish from the doorway. The two
kids were sitting at the truncheon table. Bowls and plates of food
were arranged in table settings.

"We gotta eat now," Ramirez said politely.
"You coul' stay, if you want."

I shook my head. "No. Thanks for the invitation.
I better be getting back to town."

"Senor," Ramirez said. "Senor Dover
had some trouble, maybe. We all have trouble, you know? You don'
judge a man by his troubles." He looked at me sadly. "You
understan' what I'm saying? It don' make no difference whether the
patron sold his house or not. Maybe he just wished he could, you
know? Leave it alone, senor. Whatever he done, it ain't hurtin' you.
It ain't hurtin' nobody."

Ramirez understood Dover a lot better than I'd
thought.

"What did he do, Jorge?" I asked.

The little man shook his head. "I tol' you what
I know. That's what I believe. What difference does it make now? We
all gotta do things we don' wanna do."

He walked into the ranch to join his family. I opened
the car door and sat down on the seat.

Ramirez had been a good
friend to Dover. And maybe, he was right--what difference did it
make? I started up the car and clicked on the headlights. As I was
backing up in the yard, the lights lit up the rear bumper of the
Chevelle parked by the house. The license plate glowed like
phosphorous. It wasn't until I was a half mile down the road, with
the lights of the ranch house already fading into the darkness, that
I let myself admit that it hadn't been a New Mexican plate. It had
been a California plate--BBB82305. I pulled over and scratched it
down on a piece of notepaper. After what Ramirez had said, it made me
feel bad to do it--the way I used to feel when I was a cop.

***

When I got back to the Holiday Inn, I ate some dinner
in the little cafe--a steak and some of the spiciest gazpacho I'd
ever tasted. I had to drink three Dos Equis to cool off. Well, I
didn't have to. But I did it anyway. Then I went up to my room and
phoned Seymour Wattle.

"Stoner?" he said with surprise. "I
thought we were dealing through Jack Moon."

"We were," I said. "We're not
anymore."

"Did he tell you the latest about the Pacoima
killings?"

"I haven't talked to him in a while. What do you
have?"

"The Pacoima cops say it was definitely a
gangland killing--Mexican maf'. They think maybe the Ruiz kid is
dead, too. There's been some talk on the streets that he got himself
involved in a drug deal that didn't go down right. You know, they've
been putting a lot of heat on dealers here in L.A. lately. And a lot
of people are showing up dead."

"And that's why Maria and her son were killed?
Because of a drug deal?"

"Apparently," Seymour said. "You never
really know with these things. Maria and Ruiz lived together--part of
the time, at least. So whatever he'd gotten into, she was probably
into, too. They knew something they shouldn't have. They had
something they shouldn't have had. They did something to make the
wrong people nervous. What difference does it make?"

I laughed dully. "Someone said the same thing to
me a couple of hours ago."

"How's it going in Beanville?"

"Dover got in on Friday night. His overseer
picked him up at the airfield and dropped him off at his house. He
told the overseer that he'd come to Las Cruces to sell his house--to
a rancher from El Paso named Clark."

"Did you talk to Clark?"

"There is no Clark," I said. "At
least, I don't think there is. The whole story was just more of the
same--another alibi to fool the overseer and free up some time in Las
Cruces. I think the overseer knows that, too. He just doesn't care."

"What was Dover really up to?"

"Some deal," I said. "I don't know if
I'll ever find out, for sure. I don't know if I care, either."

"You sound kinda wore out," Wattle said. "I
am. I'm weary of Quentin Dover."

"Did Moon tell you that the Ruiz kid picked
Dover's car up at the airport?"

"Yeah. "

"I been thinking about that. Maybe you were
right about the Sanchez girl. Maybe she was killed 'cause of Dover.
Ruiz, too. I mean, if they were all involved in a drug deal, that
could have been why the two greasers were bumped off and why Dover
killed himself. Christ, what a bunch of amateurs. You know what I'm
saying?"

"Yeah, I know. They're all dead."

"I gotta friend with the Texas state troopers,"
Wattle said. "You want I should have him check out this guy
Clark for you?"

"Yeah," I said. "Do that. Gene Clark
in El Paso." The California plate popped into my head. I pulled
the slip of paper out of my shirt pocket and stared at it for a
moment. "You better run a plate for me, too. California
BBB82305."

"What's that?"

"Just call me in the morning, O.K.?"

I gave him my number at the hotel and rang off.
 

38

Before I went to sleep, I read the document
through--the one that I'd found in Dover's home. It was a banal story
about a man running from some crime he'd committed in his past. He
shows up disguised as a lawyer in a new town and a local girl falls
in love with him. Then another man shows up who knows about the
lawyer's past. He starts blackmailing the lawyer. The blackmailer is
killed; the lawyer is accused of his murder; and his secret past is
revealed. It went on like that for almost a hundred pages. After
about forty, it began to put me to sleep.

That night I had a very bad dream about Marsha Dover.
I didn't remember all of it when I woke up, but the bad feeling
lingered on. Around eight-thirty the next morning I phoned her. This
time she answered.

"Yeah?" she said groggily.

"This is Harry."

"Harry?" she said. "Hi Harry."

"Are you O.K.?"

She laughed. "Sure, I'm O.K. I'm always O.K. I'm
sorry about the other night. I fucked up."

"That's all right," I said. "Go back
to sleep."

"Are you O.K.?"

"Yes."

"You didn't come back to see me--I thought maybe
you were pissed. I wouldn't blame you if you were pissed."

"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."