Natural Causes (35 page)

I turned to Ramirez. "Did Dover do any repairs
on his house this year?"

"No, senor," he said. "We don' have no
flood this spring."

"So that's where he got the money."

"Who the fuck cares where he got the money,"
Ruiz said. "If you hadn't shown up and started asking questions,
they wouldn't have cared. You got her killed, man. You're gonna get
me killed, too." He looked around the room. "They probably
followed you here. Didn't they? They're probably out there."

He lowered the rifle to my chest.

"Jerry!" I shouted.

Ramirez jumped off the bench and tackled Jerry at the
waist. As they went down, I pulled the pistol from my belt. The rifle
went off with a terrific bang, shaking the walls of the cabin. Dust
fell from the rafters, filling the room like thick smoke. I couldn't
see anything for a second. When the dust settled, Ramirez was sitting
on the floor about two feet away from me. There was blood on his
shirt. Ruiz was lying next to him. The rifle was still in his hands
and the barrel was pointed at his chin. The top of his head was gone
above the eyes.

"Oh, my God," Ramirez said, staring at
Ruiz. "Oh, dear Jesus!"

He touched the blood on his shirt and threw up.

I pulled him to his feet and pushed him out into the
yard. He was weeping hysterically.

"I killed him!" he cried. "I killed
him!"

I grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him. "Stop
it!" I said.

He worked his mouth noiselessly a couple of times.

I glanced back at the cabin door. There was blood on
the floor, flecked with pieces of fractured bone. There was no
question about what had to be done.

"Who else knows about this place?" I said
to Ramirez.

It took him a moment to answer. He wiped his nose and
mouth with his shirtsleeve. "My wife," he said. "My
children."

"Is there a shovel in the cabin? Something to
dig with?"

He looked at me with horror. "You gonna bury
him, man?"

"Would you rather call the cops?"

"But I killed him," he said.

"Don't be a fool," I said. "He killed
himself."

He shook his head slowly. "It's not true."

"What difference does it make?" I said.
"He's dead, and unless you want to go to prison, you're going to
help me bury him."

"Madre de Dios!" Ramirez said.

I went into the cabin and dragged Ruiz out into the
yard. His brains made a long smear in the dirt. Then I went back in
the cabin and searched it. I found a shovel in the corner by the
stove.

"Can you clean up in there?" I said to
Ramirez.

"I don't know."

"Then dig." I jabbed the spade into the
hard-packed dirt.

I went into the cabin a third time, pulled the sheets
off the mattress and blotted up the blood and tissue from the cabin
floor. I took the sheet out into the yard, wadded it up, and tossed
it beside Ruiz's body. Then I took a couple handfuls of dirt from the
hole that Ramirez was digging and spread it over the cabin floor. The
first few handfuls turned pink. But after six or seven trips, the
floorboards looked the way they had before Ruiz had died. It wouldn't
have fooled a cop, but it would fool Ruiz's wife and kids or anybody
else who happened to wander into the place.

When I went back out to the yard, Ramirez was leaning
on the spade handle-knee-deep in the hole he'd dug. He was weeping
again. The sunset colored his face and hands; it had turned the whole
clearing a golden brown. Within another hour, it would be fully dark.
I helped Ramirez out of the hole, then stepped in and dug some more.
I dug for thirty minutes. By then the hole was fairly deep.

"Take off your shirt," I said.

Ramirez pulled the undershirt over his head and
tossed it into the hole.

I got out of the grave and rolled Ruiz's body into
it. I threw the bloody sheet in, too.

"When you get the car back," I said. "Take
it some place and ditch it. Some place no one will find it.
Understand?"

He nodded. "Why do you do this, senor?"

"I don't know,"
I said. "C'mon, let's bury him before it's too dark to see."

***

We finished just as the sun set. I scattered some
unturned dirt on the grave. It didn't really make a difference. In a
few days, it would all be covered with dust again. I left the shovel
where I'd found it, in the cabin, then followed Ruiz down the trail
to the talus above the desert floor. We half-slid, half-crawled down
to the jeep. When we got to the car, we sat down beside it to catch
our breath.

"What did you go to jail for, Ramirez?" I
said, after a time.
"When I was much
younger, I stole something--some money from a gas station. You ever
been in jail?"

I laughed. "No. It just looks that way."

We got in the jeep. Ramirez started it up and clicked
on the lights. The engine thundered against the mountainside.

"I don' come back here no more," Ramirez
said over the roar of the motor.

I nodded. "Maybe, that's best."

We drove through the pitch dark back to the ranch.

The Chevelle was parked in the yard. Ramirez's wife
was standing in the lighted doorway of the Pueblo house, wiping her
hands on a dish towel. As we pulled up, she called out to her husband
in Spanish. He said something back to her, then translated for me.

"She wants to know what happened. I tol' her
everything's O.K. We been up in the hills."

"Does she know about Ruiz?" He nodded.

"How much does she know?"

"Just that it's his car. And that he's a friend
of Senor Dover."

"Tomorrow morning, you take that car and ditch
it like I told you. When you come back, tell her Ruiz is gone.

That he took the car and left."

He nodded again. "What about you? What are you
gonna do?"

"Go to L.A., I guess, and find Quentin's pal."

"He called somebody on Saturday. I don' know
who. Maybe it woul' help to find out."

"He called from his house?"

"He called twice--once before the men came. And
once before we left for the airport."

"That's a help, all right."

I got out of the jeep and walked across the yard to
the Mustang. Ramirez watched me from where he was sitting in the
jeep--his arms folded on top of the windscreen.

"Senor," he called out. "Go with God."

"You, too," I said.

I got in the car and drove back to the hotel.
 

41

The lobby was crowded and my clothes and skin were
covered with dirt. I walked past the front desk as quickly as I
could, went up to my room, and called the valet. I didn't know if
there was any of Jerry Ruiz on my clothes or not. But I felt
dirty--an under-the-skin kind of dirtiness--and I wanted the clothes
cleaned. A kid came up to collect them. I handed the bundled--up
jeans and shirt to him through the door, then went into the john and
took a good, long look at myself in the mirror.

I ordered a bottle of Scotch from room service and
spent the next hour steaming myself in the tub and drinking. Around
nine-thirty I called Glendora at the Belle Vista. I was more than a
little drunk.

"It's all coming back to roost, Frank," I
said when I got through to him.

"Are you O.K.?" he said with concern.

"Just great. How'd it go with Sy?"

"I think it went all right. I'm rather a novice
at these things. He asked for ten, and I gave it to him. How'd it go
with you?"

"Marvie," I said. "Did you know that
we got Maria Sanchez and her little boy killed?"

He didn't say anything.

"No, I guess you didn't know that. But it's a
fact. We got them killed. You and me and good old Quentin."

"How?" he said.

"Oh, fuck, I don't know how. How? Quentin let
Jerry Ruiz know too much--sloppy planning on our boy's part. And
Jerry let Maria know. And when I came snooping around her house, the
wrong people found out and killed her. Take a guess how they found
out."

"Why don't you tell me?"

"No. Take a guess."

"Harry," he said. "Tell me."

"Someone told them about me, Frank. Someone told
them I was investigating Dover's death. Someone who was just as
nervous as they were about what I might find. You see, Quentin didn't
go to New Mexico to do a deal for himself. He went there for someone
else--someone in L.A. He wasn't trying to make money on the deal; he
was trying to win friends and influence people."

"Oh, God," Glendora said. "Which
people?"

"I don't know for sure, but I can make a guess."

"Make a guess," he said hollowly.

"Who had the power to keep Quentin's career
alive? At least for another thirteen weeks? Whose cooperation was
absolutely essential if Quentin was to continue as head writer on
'Phoenix'? Who had a boyfriend who was a snowbird? Who knew how to
get the shit or how to point Quentin in the right direction? Who knew
from the start that I was investigating Dover's death? And who didn't
want his contacts to be jeopardized or anyone to get wind of what he
and Quentin were really doing? Sound familiar, yet?"

"Are you sure, Harry?"

"Let me ask you a question, Frank. I found a
document in Quentin's ranch house. I thought it was an old story
line, but let me paraphrase it for you, and you tell me how old it
is."

I told him the story of the man running from his past
and of the other man who blackmailed him.
When
I finished, he sighed. "It's Walt's document, all right. Or
rather Russ Leonard's. I don't suppose Quentin could have picked it
up someplace, could he? Or stolen it?"

"There was a note printed on it--'Here it is.'
Does that sound like a pickup? Or more like a gift? A fair exchange
for services to be rendered? Face it, Frank. Walt was the only one
who could have saved Quentin's bacon. He was the only one with that
document that Quentin had promised everyone."

"Oh, God," Glendora said again. "But
if you're right, why would Walt have given Quentin the document
before he ... before the deal was made. And why would he have needed
Quentin at all, if as you say he had the drug connections?"

"It wasn't the document itself that mattered,"
I said. "It was Walt's willingness to go along with Quentin--to
share the credit for having written the document, or to let Quentin
take the credit for himself--that was really at stake. I assume he
gave Quentin a copy of the document sometime on Friday, as a show of
good faith and to give Quentin the chance to familiarize himself with
the story line before the staff meeting on Monday. As to why he let
Quentin handle the drug transaction, rather than handling it himself
... I don't know. Maybe Walt wasn't sure of his connection. Or maybe
he just wanted to put Quentin through a little more hell before
finally coming across. He did have a long-standing grudge against
him, because of Leonard."

"You think Walt was that vindictive?"

"Call your friend at Ma Bell. Have him call a
friend in New Mexico and have that friend call me. Quentin made two
calls from here in Las Cruces. They'll tell us if I'm right."

"I'll make the call in the morning," he
said. "I hope you're wrong."

I hoped I was, too,
because I'd told Jack Moon almost the same thing that I'd told
Glendora and he hadn't mentioned Walt's document. I didn't want to
know why.

***

I did some more drinking before I went to
sleep--enough to make me sick in the middle of the night and leave me
badly hung over in the morning. I went down to the lobby about
nine-thirty and sat in the cafe, sipping coffee and smelling the wet
pool smells of chlorine and tile. Business in the cafe picked up
around ten. I couldn't stand the noise or the faces, so I went back
to my room and called the El Paso airport. I booked an L.A. flight
departing at five Mountain time and arriving at LAX at five
forty-five Pacific time. I called the Marquis, too, and reserved a
room. The bellboy came by with my jeans and shirt--all neatly pressed
and spotless. I threw them in the overnighter, packed the gun in its
case, and the ammunition in its box. Then I sat down by the phone and
waited.

Around one, the phone rang. I picked it up, thinking
that it was someone with the New Mexico telephone company, calling to
tell me what I already knew. But I was wrong. It was Glendora again.

"Harry," he said heavily. "I just
heard some very bad news. I thought I'd better tell you."

I held my breath for a second. "What is it?"
I said.

"Marsha Dover is dead. They found her in her
bedroom this morning. They think it was ... well, too much alcohol
and too many sleeping pills."

"It was a suicide?" I said.