Natural Causes (29 page)

"Did Quentin know about this?"

She nodded. "That's when I brought him on the
show, when Russ's drug habit started to get out of hand."

"Was Quentin ever involved in buying the stuff
for Russ?"

"Walt supplied it. He was the one with the
connection."

"All right," I said and stood up. It was
too late in the day to ask her about the ranch.

Helen looked at me disgustedly. "I was wrong
about you, Harry. You're not a heavy, you're too naive. You're Lenny
with his rabbits."

"If you say so, Helen."

"You think Russ Leonard was a special case? You
think you're going to raise any eyebrows with this story?" She
laughed bitterly. "'Phoenix' is my show. It's my life. And I'm
willing to do anything in order to keep it going. Anything. I don't
have to apologize for that--not to you or to Frank Glendora or to
anyone else. But if you do tell Glendora about this, just remember
that it's your boy Jack's ass, too.

"I thought he didn't come on the show until
after Leonard was out."

"There was a transition period. He was around
for the end of it."

"And he was involved in the drug transactions?"

"Why don't you ask
him, Sweetie," she said. "He always tells the truth,
doesn't he?"

***

I walked out of the room to the courtyard. Moon
looked up at me, squinting into the sunshine. "I heard her
shouting," he said.

I sat down beside him on the bench. "Jack, did
you have anything to do with this cocaine thing?"
He
laughed half-heartedly. "Did she tell you that I did?"

I nodded.

Jack shut his eyes. "When I first came on
'Phoenix', " he said, "one of my jobs was to act as errand
boy for Helen. I used to carry documents and breakdowns back and
forth between New York and L.A. Once in awhile the documents were
sealed in manila envelopes." He opened his eyes and stared at
me. "I wasn't supposed to know what was inside them."

"Did you know?"

He nodded. "It was an open secret. Sometimes it
was money that Helen sent to Russ. Sometimes. .." His voice died
away. "I knew what I was doing and I did it, anyway. I was just
too damn eager to please."

I looked away from him. "How about Quentin? Was
he involved?"

"He knew about it. I'm pretty sure of that. But
he wasn't involved."

"O.K.," I said. "Let's forget it came
up."

"I tried to tell you the other night," Jack
said. "It's my kind of sin--going along for the ride."

"Not that bad, Jack," I said. Not a sin.
More like an accident, I thought. Like grabbing a live wire and not
being able to let go. The mistake was in the grabbing, not in holding
on.

"You going to tell Frank?" he asked.

"No."

"It's O.K., Harry. I've had it with this
business, anyway."

"We'll talk about it when I get back from Las
Cruces." I patted him on the shoulder. "Don't be so hard on
yourself, Jack. Life's too short."

"At this moment," he said, "it seems
endless."

I got up. "I'm going to pay a call on Walt Mack,
then catch a plane to Las Cruces. I want you to do something for me
while I'm gone."

"What?"

"Get in touch with Goldblum--this afternoon, if
possible. Tell him to locate a kid named Jerry Ruiz. He's Mexican
American, about twenty-two, good-looking. He used to work as a carhop
here at the Belle Vista. Tell Goldblum to contact the desk clerk--she
has his address. And if Sy does find him, tell him to hang on to him
until I get back."

"Why?" Jack said.

"Ruiz is connected to the Sanchez girl and to
Quentin Dover. I'm pretty sure he's the one who got Quentin the key
to the gate."

Jack got a small notepad out of his back pocket and
wrote down Jerry's name. "Anything else?"

"Keep yourself available," I said. "I'll
let you know where I am in Las Cruces as soon as I can." I
looked at him. "You're no worse than anyone else in the world,
Jack. In most ways, you're a lot better."

He frowned at me. "If you say so."
 

34

I caught a cab to Mack's house and told the cabbie to
wait for me in the little turnoff above the beach. He parked at the
foot of the stairs, and I got out and walked up to the fenced
compound. There was a row of buzzers and a two-way intercom built
into the wall. I pressed the button with Mack's name on it. After a
moment I heard the intercom click on and someone said, "Yeah?"

"It's Harry Stoner, Walt. I need to talk to
you."

There was a silence, then another buzzer went off. I
pushed the gate and it opened at my touch. I let it fall shut behind
me and walked over to Mack's stoop. I could hear the surf booming
behind me. The wind was up that day; it whipped at my hair and my
shirt collar.

Walt didn't look pleased to see me when he opened the
door. "You'll have to make this quick," he said. "'Days'
is running a new story line this week, and I want to catch it."

"To pick up some fresh, new ideas?" He
curled his lip. "What do you want?"

"It's about Russ."

Mack shook his head. "I don't want to talk about
that anymore. It took me a whole day to get over our last little
chat. Russ Leonard is ancient history."

"Quentin isn't," I said. "Did he know
that you were feeding Leonard cocaine?"

Mack gasped, then made a coughing noise that sounded
a bit like laughter. "What are you talking about?"

"You know what I'm talking about. Helen Rose
gave you money to keep your boyfriend in coke."

"She said that?" Mack said furiously. "She
told you that?"

"Yes. She also told me that you kept feeding him
more and more of it, until he fried his brains out."

Mack turned to the wall with the mirror on it and
pounded it with his fist. He hit it so hard that he dented the
drywall. "That fucking bitch!" he screamed. Then he winced
and grabbed his hand. He'd hurt himself and it made him even madder
to have to show it. "Get out of here. I've got nothing to say to
you."

"Don't make me go to the cops," I said.

"You can go to hell," Mack said. "Talk
to my lawyer."

I stared into that boyish face. "You're a real
sweetheart, aren't you, Walt? Did you think that getting Russ high
would land you his job?"

I thought he was going to throw another punch--this
time, at me. I was kind of hoping he would try. But he thought better
of it in a second. "Did you ever live with a man with a nose
jones?" he said between his teeth. "Until you do, don't
tell me why I did what I did, you stupid son-of-a-bitch. Now get the
fuck out of my yard."

He slammed the door in my
face.

***

I had the cabbie drive back to the Marquis. I hadn't
accomplished much with Helen and Walt, except to confirm what Connie
Dover had told me. If she had the proof she said she had, there
wasn't anything I could do about it. As far as Quentin's possible
connection with the cocaine trade went ... it was just one
possibility among many, and the only way I could narrow the field was
to go to Las Cruces and pick up Dover's trail.

Once I got back to the hotel, I packed my overnighter
and called LAX. There were no flights out to El Paso until Tuesday
morning, but the ticket agent told me she could get me to Albuquerque
that afternoon. I booked the flight and arranged to rent a car at the
Albuquerque terminal. The drive to Las Cruces would take two or three
hours. I figured I could find a motel room once I got there. Before I
left for the airport, I called Marsha Dover. I wanted to get Jorge
Ramirez's phone number and address. I also wanted to see if she was
all right. I let the phone ring ten times. On the tenth ring, I told
myself I'd have to find Ramirez on my own.

I took another cab to LAX and spent a half hour in
one of the little bars scattered around the terminal. About
four-thirty I made my way to the boarding gates. There weren't as
many people going to Albuquerque as had been going to Cincinnati. I
couldn't make up my mind whether that was a good omen or not. I
handed my pass to the stewardess and experienced a moment of panic as
I stepped into the plane. I felt like I was stepping into a well. But
once I settled down in one of the seats, the panicky feeling went
away. Ten minutes later, we were airborne. And an hour and a half
after that, we were landing in the New Mexico desert.

It was about eight,
Mountain time, when I got off the plane. I wandered down to the Hertz
stand in the Albuquerque airport and picked up the keys to a Mustang.
Then I went outside and waited for one of the parking attendants to
drive the car around to the front of the terminal. It was a beautiful
desert evening. The sun was setting in bands of violet and orange
light, and overhead the stars were beginning to shine--the ones that
you don't get to see through the haze of pollution and city lights.
Albuquerque is high up in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The ride to
Las Cruces would take me down, due south along the Rio Grande,
through Socorro, Sierra, and Dona Ana counties to the Mexican border.
I was looking forward to the drive. The desert would be cool at
night, as sculpted and placid as the bed of the ocean it once was.

***

Half an hour out of Albuquerque and I was the only
car on the road. For miles and miles around me, the desert glistened
in the moonlight. Solitary buttes and flat-topped mesas grew out of
the vacant earth, like great stone plants.

Around eleven I reached the outskirts of Las Cruces.
I drove through a notch in the El Capitan mountains and there it
was--a little cluster of lights on the black desert floor. I took the
first exit off the expressway and pulled up at a Holiday Inn. I
parked the Mustang in the large lot, took my overnighter out of the
trunk, and went into the lobby. A pretty, black-eyed Mexican girl
sitting behind the front desk smiled at me as I walked up to her.

"Can I help you?" she said.

"I need a room. For at least one night. Possibly
longer."

I gave her a credit card and while she was making out
the bill, I took a look around. The lobby was large and crowded.
There was an indoor pool on one side of it, with a passel of kids
splashing around in the water. On the other side, a little restaurant
was set up like an outdoor cafe. The lobby formed a kind of
courtyard, with the hotel rooms opening onto it on each side through
handsome French doors built into the walls. A balconied second floor
looked down on the pool and cafe; it, too, was lined with French
doors. It was a pretty ritzy little place for Las Cruces.

The girl came back with my charge slip and I signed
it. She gave me a key.

"You're in 'Maximilian,' " she said,
pointing to a mahogany staircase leading up to the balcony.

"Where's 'Carlotta'?" I asked.

She grinned. "Right beside you. Where else?"

I grinned back at her, took my key, and walked
upstairs to "Maximilian." It was a nice room--motel Spanish
traditional, with heavy carved chairs and a stout four-poster and a
TV in an elaborate stained cabinet. I flopped down on the mattress
and reached for the phone book, sitting on a nightstand by the bed.
The nightstand looked like a melted black candle; but then most
Spanish traditional furniture looked that way to me. I flipped the
phone book open and searched for Jorge Ramirez's name. I found it in
the Mesilla section. According to the Chamber of Commerce brochure
tucked in the front of the phone book, Mesilla was the old Spanish
mission town--the original settlement from which Las Cruces had been
born.

I pulled the phone onto the bed and dialed Ramirez's
number. Someone picked up on the fourth ring.

"Yes?" a man with a Mexican accent said.

"Jorge Ramirez?" I said.

"Yes?"

"Mr. Ramirez, my name is Stoner. I've just got
in from L.A. and I was hoping we could get together. I have some
questions I'd like to ask you about Quentin Dover."

"You are a friend of Senor Dover?" he said.

"Not exactly. I've been hired by the company he
worked for to look into his death."

"It was an accident, no?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out."

"Senor Dover was a good friend," Ramirez
said. "I woul' be happy to help you. When woul' you like to
talk?"

"Tomorrow morning, I guess. I just drove in from
Albuquerque and I'm a little tired."

"Tomorrow woul' be O.K. Where are you staying
at?"

"The Holiday Inn. But I have a car. I can meet
you."

"You can find the town square in Mesilla?"

"I'm sure I can."

"Good. I meet you there tomorrow morning at
nine. In front of the church."

I told him that would be fine.
 

35

I ordered a Scotch from room service, then phoned
Jack Moon at the Marquis.