Natural Causes (18 page)

"Oh, yeah. That's right. I read that in the
papers."

"What time did he leave on Friday?"

Jerry scrunched up his face. "About eight
o'clock. Yeah, that's it. It was eight o'clock, 'cause he asked me
what time it was."

"Like he had some place to go?"

He shrugged. "Like he wanted to know the time,
mostly."

"He's gone four and a half, five hours, at
least. Right?"

"Eight to one. Yeah, that's five hours."

"And how many miles did he put on the car?"

"Sixty-two," the boy said. "The cops
made me check it out."

"What speed would you have to be traveling at to
go sixty miles in five hours?"

Jerry laughed. "Pretty damn slow."

"So he went someplace," I said. "Got
out of the car, spent three or four hours there. Then came back."

"Sounds good to me."

"And wherever it was, it had to be within thirty
miles of the hotel."

"Thirty-one miles," Jerry corrected.

"Got any ideas?" I asked him.

"He could have gone to the ocean-that's nice at
night. Watch the surf at the Palisades."

I thought of Mack's beach house. "Pacific
Palisades is about thirty miles from here, isn't it?"

"Depends on what part you're talking about. Some
of it's closer."

I made a mental note to check the mileage between the
Belle Vista and Mack's home, although Walt didn't really fit into my
scenario. "Where else could he have gone?"

"Up into the canyon," Jerry said. "Look
out at the city. Nice view up there on a clear night."

"Was it a clear night?"

"Yeah. Now you mention it. It was real nice. No
smog, you know?"

"Who lives in the canyon?"

"Who do you think?" Jerry said. "The
big bucks live in the canyon."

"The big TV bucks?"

"Yeah, and movies, too. They got homes all over
the valley. Some of them got more than one, you know? A town house
and a ranch--that kind of setup."

That was more like what I'd wanted to hear. Some TV
or movie mogul might have asked Dover to spend the night at the
ranch--take a dip in the pool, breakfast by the tennis courts, spend
the day talking shop. So Quentin . comes back to pick up his togs and
his pills. But if that were the scenario, then I wondered why he'd
bothered to check into the Belle Vista at all. Unless it had been a
last-moment invitation or an uncertain one. And if so, then Quentin
couldn't have counted on getting in and out of the hotel through the
lobby. That route depended on split-second timing. Which left the
gates.

"The gates in the walls," I said to the
kid. "Do they leave them unlocked?"

"You mean here at the hotel?"

I nodded.

"Yeah, sometimes they do. During the day."

"How about at night? Late at night?"

"No," he said. "They lock 'em at
night. You gotta have a key."

"Did Dover have a key?"

"How should I know?" the kid said.

He hadn't liked that question. I could hear it in his
voice. It made me wonder if I'd found Quentin's concierge.

"Did you get him a key, Jerry?" I asked.

"No," he said. "I didn't get him a
key.

"Are you sure?"

"Wha'd ya' mean, am I sure? Of course, I'm
sure." He wiped his brow with the flat of his hand. "You
expect a lot for twenty bucks. I shoulda warned Maria."

"Did she get him a key?"

"I don't know," he said. "No. She
didn't get him a key. What the fuck's all this crap about a key,
anyway? What sort of shit has that greaser been feeding you?"

I got twenty bucks out of my wallet and handed it to
him.

"She's got a big fucking mouth," Jerry said
disgustedly and stuck the twenty in his shirt pocket. "She
should stick to sucking dicks with it. You know?"

"See you around, Jerry," I said, picking up
my bag. "Yeah, see you," he said dully.
 

21

The Belle Vista's cocktail lounge was crowded that
Friday afternoon. I edged my way among tables, where tan men in
optical gray sunglasses and open-collared Italian sports shirts sat
beside women who looked as if they'd just stepped off tennis courts,
bronze, sun-bleached, and fit. I held my suitcase at my side, hoping
they'd think I was some kind of doctor. When I found Jack Moon,
sitting in a booth by the tinted window, I squeezed in quickly beside
him.

He looked at my suitcase and sighed. "So, you're
going to make me fend for myself, huh?"

"You seem to have done all right on your own up
'til now," I said.

He smiled wistfully. "Yeah, but it was nice
having someone around to talk to."

A waitress came by to take our orders. After she'd
gone, Jack asked me when I'd be coming back to L.A.

"I don't know," I said. "I guess that
depends on how things go in Cincinnati."

"You're going to talk to Connie and Marsha?"

I nodded. "And to Quentin's lawyer, too. Maybe I
can figure out exactly what he was up to."

"You know I've been thinking about that."
Jack folded his hands on the tabletop and tapped his thumbs together.
"Maybe he was trying to land another job in television. Maybe he
thought it was the right time for a change, before things got so out
of hand on 'Phoenix' that his reputation, such as it was, was
completely ruined. Nobody had been badmouthing him publicly. All the
talk was in-house. So he still had some credit in the industry,
although a soap with a thirteen share doesn't give you much pull. But
it might have been enough. God knows people have been hired for big
money with much worse track records."

"What made you change your mind about him?"
I asked.

Jack stopped twiddling his thumbs and looked at me.
"Yesterday, when I was talking to you about Quentin, I realized
with a sinking feeling that I was mad at him because he hadn't turned
out to be the man I'd expected him to be--not because he'd fucked up
on the job, but because he'd fooled me into thinking he was someone
he wasn't and I was hoping for the best. Then this morning, when I
found out that Walt was playing the same kind of games that Quentin
had been playing, hoping for the best suddenly seemed like a
ridiculous waste of time. Hoping for the best wasn't going to put the
bacon on my table or help me make it through the day. So I said to
myself, 'Sure, Quentin might have been angling for another job.
Whatever made you think that he had enough loyalty left in him to do
otherwise? Whatever made you think that he had any principles at all?
It's time to quit kicking against the pricks, Jack, and start going
with the flow.' "

"Then you've decided to stay in the business?"

"I guess so," Jack said with mild surprise,
as if that conclusion hadn't occurred to him. "Hell, I'm
thirty-five years old. Too old to try to remake the world or to keep
hoping it's going to get better. I'm in a relatively safe spot. I
guess I'll just have to learn to adapt to it."

"I wish you luck, Jack--whatever you do."

The girl came with our drinks. We picked them up and
clicked glasses.

"We made a pretty good team, didn't we?"
Jack Moon said.

"Not bad," I said to him.

I swallowed the rest of the Scotch and got up. "I'd
better get to the airport."

Jack looked mournfully into his glass of whiskey.
"Give me a call sometime, will you? If we don't see each other
out here again?"

"Sure, I will."

"And I'll ask around for you. See if I can find
out what Quentin was doing--whether he really did have a deal going
on the side."

"I'd appreciate it." I pulled the suitcase
out from under the table. "So long, Jack."

"So long, Harry,"
he said.

***

I stopped at the Belle Vista's front desk to clear up
a few final questions. The prim woman with the aristocratic face
wasn't very helpful, but I did manage to confirm that the night clerk
did not take a regular break between twelve-thirty and
twelve-forty-five and that the bridge between the lot and the lobby
was the only way in or out, aside from the gates. Which meant that
Quentin had, indeed, secured a key of his own. Probably from Jerry.

I looked for Jerry when I got to the lot. But he
wasn't around. Another kid, just as slick and venal looking, told me
that Jerry had gone home for the day. That was all right. Jerry's
uneasiness about the key was almost as good as a confession. And I
figured I could always hire Sy Goldblum to scare the truth out of
him, if things reached that point.

I tipped the new kid a dollar to get me a cab. And
when it pulled up, I got in and settled back for the long drive to
the airport.

It took us about thirty minutes on the San Diego
Freeway to get to LAX. The cabbie dropped me off at the American
building, and I walked down the long, glassed-in corridor to my
boarding gate. I was a little surprised at the number of people
sitting in the waiting area. Children, nuns, straw-hatted tourists.
It looked as if the plane was going to be full. I took that as a bad
omen. They always went down when they were full of children, nuns,
and happy tourists. Probably some cause-and-effect relationship
having to do with the weight of expectations and the buoyancy of
fate.

I sat down on a hard blue plastic chair and parked my
overnight bag at my side. Through the picture windows I could see
jets gliding effortlessly down runways, their tail fins glistening in
the sun. Up they went, into the yellowish Los Angeles sky. And with
each successful takeoff, I saw my own chances of survival
diminishing. A sign at the American booth said that the flight to
Cincinnati wouldn't be boarding for another half hour. I tried
closing my eyes, but the turbine roar of the jets and the faint
chatter of the other passengers kept me from relaxing. A boarding
area in an airport is a little like a waiting room in a dentist's
office. Everyone tries to look unconcerned, but there's really only
one thing on their minds. It was certainly on my mind. And I kept
thinking that, this time, I wouldn't have Jack Moon along to hold my
hand.

When I couldn't take it any longer, I picked up my
bag and walked down some steps to a bar beneath the boarding gate.
They were asking a buck and a half for beer, but I didn't care. I
drank two. And when that didn't cut the tension, I ordered a double
Scotch. The bartender grinned at me.

"First time in the air?"

"It's always the first time for me," I said
miserably.

"Why don't you buy yourself a magazine?" he
said. "There's a newstand across the way."

He put the Scotch down on a paper coaster with
airplane jokes printed on it.

I didn't feel like buying a magazine, and the idea of
reading the airplane jokes horrified me. But I was going to have to
do something to distract myself--besides drink. So I unzipped a
pocket on the overnighter and took out the map of L.A. that I'd
bought at the Marquis. I unfolded one page of it and tried to locate
the Belle Vista Hotel--the center of my circle.

"What are you looking for?" the bartender
asked me.

"The Belle Vista Hotel," I said.

He turned the map around, rattled it to straighten
the page, studied it for a moment, and pointed to a tiny spot. "There
she is," he said. He rotated the map back toward me and lifted
his finger from the paper. "You got a pencil?" I asked.

He pulled one out from beneath the bar and handed it
to me. I made a little 'X' on Green Canyon and looked at the legend
at the top of the map. It was scaled one-tenth of an inch to a mile.
Thirty miles made a three-inch radius. That was a lot of ground-some
of it pretty damn expensive. As I was conducting my survey, the
bartender leaned over and said, "I think your flight is
boarding."
I looked up at him.

"You know they used to execute people for
delivering news like that."

He grinned. "What were you looking for on the
map?"

"What does it matter--I'm about to die." I
folded the map up and stuck it back in the bag. "A hiding
place," I said to the bartender. "Some spot that's about
thirty miles from the Belle Vista."

"Which direction?"

"You got me."

He gave me a puzzled look. "Just any place?"

"Nope. Someplace special."

He shook his head, as if he thought I was plastered.
"Well, we're about thirty miles from the Belle Vista," he
said, as he walked away, "if that's any help."

I picked up my bag, walked up to the boarding
platform, and got in line to meet my doom.

It wasn't until we were well off the ground,
somewhere over New Mexico or Texas, that I began to think again. And
one of the first things that came to mind was what the bartender had
said about LAX. Maybe Dover had gone to the airport, I thought, to
see somebody off or to meet somebody who was coming in. Or maybe he'd
gone to Pacific Palisades. Or up into the canyons. Or to Pacoima,
even--it was about thirty miles away, too. There was no point in
speculating about it until I knew why he'd gone to L.A. in the first
place.