Natural Causes (9 page)

"I'm not sure," I told her. "I think
I'm supposed to be looking for a scandal."

She snorted with amusement. "Well, baby, you've
certainly come to the right place. We not only produce soap operas,
we live them. Isn't that right, Jack?"

"Some of us do," Jack said.

"Don't be such an old woman," Helen chided
him. "Harry looks all grown up. You're all grown up, aren't
you?"

"Yep."

"So how can I help you with your scandals?"
she said with faint suggestiveness.

"You can tell me about Quentin Dover, since he
was apparently the guilty party."

"Guilty of what?" Helen said. "We're
all guilty of something, you know. What did Frank Glendora tell you
that Quentin was guilty of?"

"Of not comporting himself the way a man should.
I believe that was the way he put it. He'd heard rumors."

Helen raised an eyebrow and Jack nodded at her. "What
a schmuck that Walt is," she said. "Christ, Quentin's only
been dead for four days and he's already taken a shovel to his
headstone."

"So you think Walt is the one who's been
spreading the gossip?" I said.

"Who else? It's his specialty. That and
fist-fucking." She covered her mouth with her right hand. "Oops!
Did I say that?"

"I'm afraid you did," Jack said dully.

"It's this martini--it's too damn dry. Well, Mr.
Detective, Frank Glendora would believe that Jesus Christ Himself was
a whoremonger, if Jesus Christ happened to get on the wrong side of
the United American Corporation. He's a goddamn Sadducee, that's what
Frank is.

"Helen," Jack said in warning.

"Oh, shut up, Jack. You know it as well as I do.
Frank is a genteel, well-educated thug. Which is not to say that
Quentin didn't have his little faults."

"Such as?"

The woman looked at me crossly. "Have you been
listening to me or what? I'm not about to spread shit all over
Quentin's grave, no matter what Glendora says. I happened to have
liked the man."

"Then it seems to me that you ought to tell me
what you know about him, because all I've heard so far has been
negative."

"Oh, it has, has it?" Helen gave Jack a
bitter look. "Settling a few scores, are we, Jack, honey?"

Moon ducked his head in embarrassment. "I just
told him the truth."

"How could you tell, Jack? You're so bought and
sold yourself."

Moon turned beet red. For a brief moment I thought he
was going to strike the woman. The moment passed and he sat back
silently on the couch.

Helen Rose looked at him and frowned. "I
shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry. You're a saint, Jack. You know
how I get."

"I know," he said.

"I'm just a bitch, Harry. A worn-out bitch, and
you happened to catch me at the wrong time." Her eyes got a
little moist. "Forgive me, Jack?"

"Consider it forgiven."

She wiped at the tears, but they'd dried up on their
own. "Maybe I should tell you about Quentin, after all. It'll be
my good deed for the day."

"I'm listening," I said.

"I'll bet you are. Little pitchers have big
ears. And so do big pitchers."

"I'm not spying for Frank, Helen," I said.
"I told you exactly what I wanted to know."

She nodded. "If you spend enough time in this
business, you get a mite suspicious, Harry. Just a mite. That was one
of Quentin's virtues. He was among the few people that I've known in
this industry who was never deliberately cruel. He didn't always tell
the truth," she said with a small smile. "But he was always
gracious. Such manners! Such policy! He was Ronald Coleman, for
chrissake. A gentleman to his toes."

Jack snorted with laughter and Helen threw a hand at
him. "What would you know--you're a man."

"A few minutes ago you were calling him a liar,"
Jack said.

"I was angry," she said and shrugged. "All
right, sure, he was a liar. But such wonderful lies! The places he'd
been, the people he'd known!"

"Or pretended to have known," Jack said.

"You're missing the point," the woman said.
"Of course he was a fake. In this business, that goes without
saying. You're just too damn idealistic, Jack. That's your whole
problem. You keep thinking you're going to turn a corner and find ...
I don't know, justice or something. That's not the way it works out
here. Under the tinsel is the real tinsel and under that are the
lies."

"And dollars," Jack said.

"Sure, and dollars. What are you in it for? The
laughs? Quentin was one of the most gracious men I've ever met. There
was an innocence about him."

Jack snorted again.

"All right, call it a corruption. What do I
care? But there was something there--something that didn't change."

"I'd call it greed," Jack said.

"Sure, that was part of it. But what was he
greedy for?"

"For money. What else?"

"You see," she said. "You don't know
what you're talking about."

"All right, then, what was he greedy for?"

"For the life he was pretending to lead."

"Bullshit!" Moon said.

"Of course it was bullshit!" Helen Rose
said. "It's all bullshit, Jack. I keep telling you that. You and
Quentin were more alike than you think. You see, I've accepted
it--that it's bullshit. All I've got is the show--no family, no real
friends. Just the show. And when it goes, I'll go. Bang!" She
snapped her fingers loudly.

Both Moon and I jumped.

"Jesus, Helen," Jack said. "Don't talk
like that."

"You're hopeless, Jack," she said wearily.
"But you're hopeless in a different way than Quentin was. That's
why he was charming and you're just diffident and kind. He was a
romantic, for chrissake. He didn't believe in his lies--he was
obsessed by them! See, there's the difference. You're not obsessed,
Jack. You're not driven. You don't know what it's like to be that
hungry. Quentin did."

"We've all been hungry, Helen," Jack said
stiffly.

"Not like Quentin," she said. "He told
stories, all right. Especially after his heart attack. But whether
they were true or not, he wanted them to be. He needed them to be.
That was his weakness and his charm. There was a great well of
loneliness inside that man that all the money in the world could
never fill. I consider it quite a triumph that someone that unhappy
could carry on with such style. And his stories were part of that
style--a way of bridging the gap between what he knew he was and what
he always wanted to be."

"And what was that?" Moon said sullenly.
"What he always wanted to be?"

"Why a star, Jack," Helen said, cupping her
face in her hands. "Isn't that what we all want to be?"
 

11

The waiter came with the food, which he set up in the
living room on a folding table. Between courses, I asked Helen Rose
if she knew why Dover had come out to L.A. on Friday rather than on
Sunday.

She said, "No. It wasn't for 'Phoenix', though.
I can tell you that much. We were in New York over the
weekend--Frank, Jack, and I--meeting with those wonderful brands
folks."

"You were in New York last weekend?" I
asked Jack.

"On Friday and Saturday. Frank and I went back
to Cincinnati on Saturday afternoon."

"Ooh! Are we suspects?" Helen said. She'd
put away an entire bottle of California's best over dinner, and she
was showing it.

"I don't have anything to be suspicious about,"
I said honestly. "Dover told his mother that he was coming out
here to meet with some people about a new project. I thought you
might know what it was."

Helen Rose's face darkened as if a cloud had just
floated overhead. "A TV project?" she said.

Jack waved his hands at me behind her back. But I
ignored his warning. "That's what she thought."

"That son-of-a-bitch!" Helen said and threw
her fork down so forcefully that she cracked the plate.

"Oh, Christ," Jack said under his breath.

"That little worm! That fucking little traitor!
We're in trouble because he couldn't come up with a goddamn story
line and he's getting ready to jump ship! There's gratitude for you."
Helen whirled around in her chair to face Moon. "Did you know
about this, you bearded little bastard?"

"Now, Helen," he said throwing up both
hands in defense.

"Don't 'Now, Helen' me, you weasel! You knew
about this, didn't you?"

"I did not," Jack said. "Furthermore,
I think the whole thing was one of Quentin's fabrications."

"You would," Helen said furiously. She
turned back to me. "What exactly did Quentin's mother say?"

"That she had lunch with Quentin on Friday
afternoon and that he mentioned a new project. Quentin didn't say
whether it was for television or not. That was just his mother's
guess."

"Well, I've met the bitch, and she was a damn
good guesser when it came to Quentin." She pointed a finger at
Moon and jabbed him with it--hard--in the belly. "I want you to
find out about this, you hear me, Jack? I won't tolerate this sort of
thing from my staff. You hear me?"

Moon leaned forward and stared her in the face. "The
man is dead," he said between clenched teeth. "What the
fuck difference does it make?"

"It makes a difference to me," Helen said.
But she seemed shocked by Jack's tone of voice; and when she spoke
again, her own voice sounded thick and pained. "I liked him,
Jack. Christ, do I have to give that up, too?"

"Nobody made you take this job, Helen,"
Moon said. "You wanted it--remember?"

"You shouldn't talk to me like that," she
said.

Moon leaned back in the chair and made a contrite
face. "You're right. I'm just sick of Quentin Dover. We wouldn't
be in this mess, if it weren't for him."

I hadn't wanted to get involved in their 'Phoenix'
problems. After signing that contract, I figured the less I knew
about United's secrets the better. But it was beginning to look like
I didn't have a choice. It was also beginning to look like there was
a great deal about Quentin Dover that I hadn't been told.

"Perhaps you'd better fill me in on this,"
I said to Jack.

"Let Helen tell you," he said morosely. "I
haven't got the stomach."

"Helen?" I said.

"What's to tell?" she said hollowly. "He
dried up. For one year and six months he was a rock. He never had an
excuse. He never needed one. He got the job done."

"Or Walt did," Jack said.

"What difference does it make? We had a long-arc
story line, meaty breakdowns, and good scripts. Whether Quentin was
writing the long-terms or supervising their writing or just finessing
them, they were coming in on schedule. Six months ago, it all
stopped."

"Why?"

She laughed unhappily. "Do you think if I knew
why I wouldn't have done something about it?"
"Well,
what did Quentin say?"

"What writers always say when they dry up. That
he didn't believe in the storv. That the breakdown people weren't
cooperating. That the conferences weren't helpful or specific enough.
He always had an answer."

"The truth was that he was all squeezed out,"
Jack said. "And he knew it. There just wasn't any more
toothpaste in the tube."

"Christ, that's callous," Helen said. "It
was a lot more complicated than that. He had open heart surgery six
months ago, and when he came back he just didn't have the same
resources of energy."

"You mean he'd run out of lies."

"Jack, where do you come off saying things like
that?" she said. "What did the man do to you? He thought he
was going to die, for chrissake. And that wife of his was throwing
fits every day. The whole fabric of his life was coming apart."

"And all he did was smile and procrastinate
graciously."

"What would you have had him do? He was used to
being in control, and the power was slipping through his fingers."

"And I'm supposed to care about that?" Moon
said.

"I don't know what you care about, Jack,"
she said. "But it's not enough to say that he'd run out of lies
or toothpaste."

"You were just furious at him a minute ago!"
Moon shouted.

"Oh, grow up." She turned to me. "He
was worn down, Harry. And then we pulled a switch on him. He'd
written a document before the surgery and we'd accepted it. But
goddamn General Hospital came out with their 'Ice Princess' story,
pulled a 40 share, and suddenly every soap on daytime had to have a
fantastic adventure of its own. We had a story conference here in
L.A. three months ago, and I laid it on the line to him. He had to
come up with a new document."

"Yeah, and he said it would be no problem,"
Jack said. "That he'd have it done in two weeks."
Helen nodded. "We kept setting deadline after
deadline, all the while vamping with material from the old document.
By then the ratings had dropped. The network began to complain to
United. And United began to complain to me. I hopped on Quentin's
back. And now... now he's dead."