Natural Causes (15 page)

I said, "Mack seemed to feel that Leonard's
problems stemmed from the way he was treated by Helen--that she made
him the scapegoat for all her problems and that she and Quentin drove
him to suicide."

Moon laughed bitterly. "Well, let me tell you
that this scapegoat was so stoned most of the time that he couldn't
even dress himself, that Helen begged him to see a psychiatrist and
even offered to pay his way to a clinic where he could have dried
out, that she only fired him after he'd threatened to kill her and
himself."

"Why did he threaten to kill her?"

"The man was psychotic, for chrissake! He'd
blown half a million dollars up his nose. He claimed that Helen was
trying to ruin his career when she hired Quentin as a consultant on
the show."

"Was she?"

Jack eyed me coldly. "Anyone else would have
fired Russ Leonard months before that. Helen was trying to help him.
Quentin was never supposed to end up as head writer on 'Phoenix'. He
was brought on initially to lend Russ a hand until Leonard could get
his life together. But Russ didn't see it that way. Or, at least,
Walt didn't. Walt was always the more ambitious of the two. He pumped
Russ up with so much paranoid hatred that Leonard finally blew his
stack."

"Why would Walt have done that?" I asked.

"You met him, Harry," Jack said. "He
only thinks of one thing--himself. And if you ask me, he deliberately
played on Leonard's paranoia, hoping that Helen would end up firing
Russ and replacing him with Walt himself. And it looks like he
finally got his wish."

I asked Jack what I'd asked Walt Mack. "If he's
such a rotten bastard, why do you deal with him?"

Jack shook his head, as if I'd missed the point of
what he'd been saying. "They're all rotten bastards. Haven't you
figured that out, yet? Russ, Quentin, Walt--they're all branches of
the same tree. This is a tough business. Writers get chewed up and
spit out every day. Remember, these guys have to write five hours
worth of story every week of the year. That's like a novel a month.
That kind of work load destroys people who aren't strong enough or
vain enough or jaded enough to forget that what they're writing is as
disposable as toilet paper. It takes a peculiar personality to bear
up under that much pressure. And the fact that they all develop kinks
and warps like stress fractures is to be expected. Russ Leonard made
himself strong with drugs, until he fried his brains out. Quentin did
it with constant lies and lots of booze, to kill the pain. And Walt
does it by spreading poison about the other guy before he can be
poisoned himself."

"Yeah, but Mack claims he wasn't the one who'd
been spreading the poison about Quentin, that Helen and you were
doing it. He also claims that Helen did the same thing when she
wanted to get rid of Russ Leonard."

"What can I say?" Jack held up his hands.
"Call Glendora. Ask him how he heard about Quentin's problems or
about Russ."

"All right, Jack," I said. "But why
couldn't you have explained all this to me in the first place?"

"I already told you--I didn't think it mattered.
And then I don't like to spread gossip if I don't have to."

"You didn't hesitate with Quentin," I said.

"He was different."

"How different?"

Moon looked guiltily into my face. Weariness and the
unpleasantness of having it out with me had loosened something up
inside him--some constraint. I could almost see it giving way. "I
used to like him," he finally said. "I guess that's why. I
used to think he was an exception. But then I was new to the job and
didn't really know my way around. If you'd asked me what I thought of
Quentin Dover when I met him two years ago, I would have told you
that I wished he'd adopt me. He was that goddamn convincingly
paternal. It was as if there wasn't anything that he hadn't done or
seen or heard about. I was impressed. Hell, we all were. He had
everybody sold. Especially me."

He ducked his head as if he'd admitted something
shameful.

"We all make mistakes, Jack," I said.

"Yeah, but I was the asshole who recommended
Dover to Frank and Helen." He tugged gently at his curly black
beard. "I really liked him at first, Harry," he said with
regret. "The son-of-a-bitch really fooled me." Moon stared
out the lounge window at the dark trees. "Somehow they always
do."

Around eight-thirty, Jack stretched his arms and
said, "I guess I'd better check in with Helen. She had dinner
with Ted Griffith, our agency man. They're planning strategy for
tomorrow's meeting with Sally Jackson."

"How's it been going?"

He shook his head. "Not good. We've just got too
many strikes against us. Three head writers in three years does not
make for continuity. And then we've got that thirteen share and a
so-so document. Even United is going soft on this one. It's my guess
that we'll get the ax. Not right away, but thirteen weeks down the
road."

"What happens to you?"

"Who knows?" He patted the tabletop with
his fingertips and smiled. "Could be I'll junk it altogether.
I'm not really cut out for this job, Harry. I told you that."

"What will you do?"

"Maybe I'll try to make it as an actor again.
Maybe I'll try something else. If I had a little money, the choice
would be a lot easier. It wouldn't take much. Just enough to pay the
mortgage and keep Liz and Nick happy. If I didn't have to worry about
them, I'd have quit a long time ago."

"You're lucky to have somebody to worry about,"
I said.

"Yeah?" He smiled at me. "Maybe so.
You know, just because I may not be working for United much longer
doesn't mean that we couldn't have a drink now and then. You might
have to pick up the tab . . . " He laughed, but I could see from
his eyes that he was thinking uncertainly of his future. "Then
again, maybe I'll stick. There's something to be said for a regular
paycheck and Blue Cross. Jesus, I sound like Frank."

He got up. "So long, Harry," he said. "It's
been a good night. Bad day, good night."

"So long, Jack," I said.

I watched him walk out of the restaurant into the
garden. Then I went over to the register and paid my bill.
 

18

I took a cab back to the Marquis. There were two
messages on the floor this time. One of them was from Frank Glendora,
asking me to call if I got in before eleven, Cincinnati time. The
other was from Maria Sanchez. It took me a second to realize that she
was Maria the maid. There was a number on the message card. I dialed
it from the bedroom phone, but no one answered. It was too late to
call Glendora.

I laid down on the bed and tried to think about the
Dover case. But I ended up thinking about Jack Moon, instead. His
disappointment with Quentin Dover was like a boy's disappointment
with his father, when he first discovers that Dad can act like a kid,
too. Only Quentin hadn't ever stopped acting like a child or holding
to a child's belief in the inviolability of his charm. He'd wanted
everything for himself, including to be loved for his lies. And the
amazing part was that he'd gotten what he wanted--that was apparently
the way it worked in the TV biz. Ask in the right way and ye shall
receive. But Jack, who could be boyishly charming himself, hadn't
been so lucky. Helen and Walt and Quentin had forced him to grow up
all by himself--to clean up their messes, while they played in the
backyard sandbox. That would have made me resentful, too. Made me
wonder why some people seemed to be blessed beyond deserving. It was
a shame, because, outside the job, Jack Moon was a likeable man. He
was owed a break, and I hoped he'd get one, although I didn't think
it was going to come in the world of daytime television.

I fell asleep on the bed and woke up two hours later
to a ringing telephone. I glanced at the clock, which was showing
half-past ten, and reached for the receiver. A woman with a soft
Hispanic voice said my name.

"Yeah?" I said groggily.

"Is Maria," the woman said. "You know?
From the Belle Vista?"

I sat up on the bed and tried to shake myself awake.
"Yeah, Maria. I got a message that you'd called."

"I check you out, and it's O.K. So you wanna
talk now? About Dover?"

"If you've got something to say," I said.
"I'm willing to listen."

"Yeah, but how much you willin' to pay?"

"It depends on what you've got."

She didn't say anything for a moment. "I got
somethin'. But is gonna cost you two hundred."

"We'll see. I have to hear it first."

She put her hand over the mouthpiece, and I could
hear her say something in Spanish to someone off the phone. When she
came back on the line, she said, "O.K. But'chu gotta come here.
I don' have no wheels, you know?"

"What's the address?"

She gave me a street number in Pacoima. I wrote it
down on a notepad that the Marquis had thoughtfully placed on the
nightstand by the bed, along with a halfdozen glossy picture
postcards of the hotel--to make all my friends jealous. "I'll be
over there as soon as I can catch a cab."

Maria hung up. I stared at the notepad for a second,
wondering if it was such a bright idea to go traipsing off into the
Los Angeles night with a couple hundred dollars in my wallet. But I
didn't see where I could afford to pass up a lead. Nothing else about
the case had materialized, with the exception of the Leonard
business--and that was the wrong scandal. I went into the john and
splashed a little tepid water on my face, then picked up the phone by
the toilet and called for a cab.

It took the cabbie about forty minutes to get to
Pacoima on the Golden State Freeway, and halfway there I started to
have second thoughts. To Maria, I was just a dumb gringo passing out
twenty-dollar bills. That's probably what Jerry had told her,
too--that I was easy pickings. Plus the girl had already talked to
the cops, which meant that anything she told me was either going to
be evidence that she'd withheld from the police or an outright lie.
And I was in no position to know which was which.

By the time we arrived at her home, I had to force
myself out of the cab. I took a look at the place and told the cabbie
to wait.

It wasn't that awful, really. But then I didn't know
what awful was--in Pacoima. From the outside it looked a little
decrepit but respectable--like a clean old man. There was a palm tree
in the front yard, its bark diamonded like a pineapple skin and
peeled back on top, where the fronds hung above the rooftop. A small
barrel cactus huddled in the dirt by the door, squat as a fire plug.
The place itself was thirties Spanish modern. Stucco walls, rounded
arches, wrought-iron trim, and the ubiquitous red tile roof. It
wasn't very large--no more than three or four rooms. A cottage house.
The dark little street was filled with them.

There weren't any lights showing through the windows,
but I went up to the door anyway and knocked. A second later the door
opened, scaring a scarab beetle that was standing by my foot. The bug
lumbered off toward the cactus and I looked nervously over my
shoulder at the cab.

Maria peeked around the door. When she saw it was me,
she smiled.

"Hello, Harry," she said.

She opened the door fully and leaned against the
jamb. She was wearing a red kimono with a blue and yellow parrot
design. I didn't think she was wearing anything else beneath it. She
smelled too ripe.

"Come in," Maria said.

I walked through the doorway into the living room.
Maria closed the door behind us. A candle in a red glass globe was
burning on a table parked against one of the walls. It sent a red
glow throughout the small room, making the patterns on the few pieces
of furniture shift with the flickering flame. The room smelled
strongly of dust and cuminos-like a pepper tree.

"You think you could turn on a light?" I
said to the girl.

She shook her head. Her lips were thick and heavily
rouged with candy red lipstick. "I like to, Harry. But we don'
got no electricity. They come'n turn it off a couple days ago."

Swell, I said to myself.

"You don' have to worry none. Is better this
way."

Maria took my hand and pulled me over to a couch. It
appeared to be covered in a pebbled blue material embossed with palm
leaves. A cushion spring sang out as we sat down.

The girl stared at me for a second. Her teeth looked
blunt and off-color in the candlelight. Without a word, she slipped
the kimono off her shoulders and let it fall to her waist.

"I thought we were going to talk," I said.
"We coul' do both," she said.

Her breasts were small and brown, with dark areolas
covering most of their tips. Her pubic hair was thick and black.

"Don'chu like me?" she said coyly.

"Sure, I like you. But let's talk first."

She pulled the kimono back up but didn't cinch it
just left it hanging open.

"You a gay boy?" Maria said, leaning back
on the couch.

"No."