“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 longstanding 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.
“Harry, I don’t know,” Glendora said.
“I’ll call you later, Frank.” I hung up the phone.
I sat there for a while. Then I called a friend in Cincinnati—a newspaperman—and asked a few questions, because you’re supposed to ask questions, even when there aren’t any answers. She hadn’t left a note. She’d been drinking. She’d taken some Nembutols. And she’d gone to sleep.
I got the bottle of Scotch out of the suitcase and poured a drink in one of the bathroom glasses. I sat there drinking for a long time, until I was numb. I tried to think about the way she’d looked—about how beautiful she’d been. But I kept remembering how I’d felt when I’d left that house for the last time, practically running away from her, the way the phone guy had run away from me. I thought of what Helen Rose had said about Quentin—about how we fuck with other people’s lives. Christ, how he’d fucked with hers. How he’d fucked with his own.
The phone company man called about a half hour later. I was so drunk by then that I had trouble concentrating on what he said. He gave me two numbers. I copied them down. One was an L.A. exchange—Dover had made that call at eleven P.M. on Saturday night. The other, made early on the same day, I didn’t pay attention to, until after I’d hung up. When I did take a look at it, I started to feel bad all over again. It was one more thing that I hadn’t wanted to know.
I dialed the number, anyway, from the phone by the window. His wife answered.
“Where is he, Liz?” I said.
“I thought he was with you,” she said with surprise. “In California. He left this morning.”
“Did he say where he’d be?”
“At the Belle Vista, I guess. That’s where he usually is. What’s wrong, Harry.”
“Liz,” I said. “This is important. Did Quentin Dover call Jack on Saturday?”
“Yes. He called him on Saturday afternoon. Jack hadn’t gotten back from New York yet. So I took a number and left a message for him to call. Why is that so important?”
“Do you remember the number?”
“It was a local number.”
“In Cincinnati?” I said.
“Yes. I don’t remember it exactly.”
“Did Jack return the call?”
“Yes. Late that afternoon. Harry, would you please tell me what’s going on. First Jack starts acting strangely and now this.”
“How was he acting strangely?”
“He seemed upset with himself the last time he talked to you. You know how he gets—little attacks of conscience, like hot flashes. He started berating himself for letting you down. That’s why I thought he was with you. He said he was going out to the coast to put things right.”
“Christ,” I said. “If he calls, tell him I’m on my way to California. Tell him not to do anything until I get there. Tell him I said everything was all right—that there weren’t any problems.”
“O.K.,” she said uncertainly. “But what’s this about?”
“I’m not sure, Liz. Something to do with Quentin.”
As soon as she hung up, I called Glendora at the Belle Vista.
“Is Jack Moon with you?” I said.
“Why, no,” he said. “He’s in Cincinnati.”
“No, he’s not, Frank.” I hesitated a moment. If I told him what I suspected—that Jack had somehow been involved in Quentin’s deal—it would have meant Jack’s ass. There had to be some way around that, I thought. There had to be a way to get someone out of this thing unscathed. I decided not to tell him. Instead, I put him on mild alert. “If you see Jack at the hotel, I want you to collar him, Frank. I want you to order him to stay put until I get into town this afternoon.”
“Why? What’s he doing out here?”
“Some amateur detective work,” I said.
“That’s unlike Jack. He’s usually such a prudent man.”
“Today he’s not,” I said. “I’ll be in at five forty-five.”
“What are we going to do about Walt?”
“You let me handle it. Just find Jack, all right?”
“About Marsha...”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” I said and hung up.
I dialed the other number I’d written down—the California one. Walt Mack answered the phone.
“This is Stoner,” I said. “I’m coming into town tonight. I want to talk to you.”
“I’m busy,” he said curtly.
“Well, make yourself unbusy, Walt. I know about the drug deal and
I know about the document.”
“Bullshit,” he said.
“Mack, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay in your house until I get there. Don’t go out. Don’t let anyone else in.”
“Why? What do you mean?”
“I mean your friends killed a girl because you told them that she knew about Quentin’s deal and because I was getting vaguely close to finding out about it. I’m a lot closer now, Walt. And if they’d kill her for next to nothing, just think what they’d do to you.”
“They won’t do anything to me,” he said calmly. “But there are some others who might be in jeopardy.”
“You mean Jack, don’t you?”
“I mean if you’re thinking of going to the police, think again. You’re way out of your league on this one, sport.”
“How deeply was Jack involved?”
“Just deeply enough.” He laughed. “If I go down, he’s going with me. I’ll see to it. So let’s stop threatening each other, all right? I’ve got a soap to write.”
He hung up.
42
TALKING TO Mack and Liz Moon sobered me a little. A quart of hot coffee and a handful of aspirins helped, too. By three-thirty, I was steady enough to drive. I checked out of the Holiday Inn and drove south on the expressway to El Paso. The heat in the car helped sweat the booze out of me. By the time I got to the airport, I had a raging headache and was drenched in perspiration, but I was sober. I dropped the car off at a Hertz stand and picked up my pass at the American window. I had to go through a special procedure to take the gun with me. They made me disassemble it, unload the magazine, and stick it in my overnighter. They tagged the suitcase with a special red “Firearms” sticker and stowed it in a pressurized compartment in the cargo hold. That special tag was like an engraved invitation to any sticky-fingered baggage handler. I fully expected to find the gun or the suitcase gone when I got to L.A.
I didn’t drink any booze on the plane ride. I was afraid to—afraid I’d make myself sick or drunk again. It wouldn’t have taken more than a couple of drinks to do both, even on airline Scotch. When we landed, I went to the baggage pick-up and got the overnighter. It felt as if the gun was still inside. To be sure, I went into one of the johns in the terminal, and took a look in the bag. The gun was still there, boxed and disassembled. I put it back together, loaded the clip, and cocked and locked it. Then I stuck it back in the bag and walked out to the taxi stands.
It took twenty minutes for the cabbie to drive to Mack’s house on Highway One. On the way there, I thought things out. I decided to kill Mack. All things considered it was probably best for everyone. If I killed him and made it look like a suicide, I’d get the thugs off Ramirez’s back. And, maybe, off Jack’s. I was sure they’d feel a lot safer with Mack out of the picture. He was the only direct link between them and the cocaine, except for Dover, who was already dead. It hadn’t been just their own asses they were covering when they’d killed Maria Sanchez and her son, it had been Walt’s. Jack Moon could be next, if he was more directly involved in Quentin’s deal than Maria had been. The alternative was to pay the hoods off in some way that would make them feel reasonably secure. I didn’t know how much money that would take—probably a great deal. It would be simpler to kill Walt. After Marsha, I wanted to kill someone, anyway.
The sun was beginning to set over the ocean when we got to Pacific Palisades. It was turning the breakers gold and lighting up the cliffs and the bungalows built into the hillsides. The cabbie pulled over at the turnoff and I stepped out into the sunset. I paid the cabbie and told him he could go. He sped off in a little cloud of gravel dust. When he was gone, I took the pistol out of the suitcase and tucked it in my belt. Then I walked up to the buzzers and rang. No one answered. I pressed the buzzer again. When no one answered the second time, I started to worry. The fence was over ten feet high—impossible to climb without a ladder or a boost up. I tried my shoulder against the gate, but it was locked with a dead bolt.
I was about to go hunting for something I could use as a step ladder—some concrete blocks or two-by-fours when someone pressed the buzzer. The gate fell open. I walked through it into the courtyard. I looked up at Mack’s second-story balcony. The sliding glass door was open and a stream of dust was blowing out of it and falling in the narrow court. It looked like gold dust in the sunset, but it tasted like snow. I ran up to the front door of Mack’s house and tried the handle. The door was unlocked.
I went inside, up to the circular stairway at the end of the hall. There was blood on the bottom steps. It looked as if it was dripping down from the landing. I pulled the pistol out of my belt, unlocked it, and slowly climbed the stairs. I could hear the surf pounding through the open balcony door in the second-floor den. When I got to the upper steps, I craned my neck and peeked over the landing. Walt Mack was lying on the floor right across from me. His eyes were open and staring into mine. There was blood coming from his nose, ears, and mouth. It had pooled around his head, soaking the carpet and dripping down onto the bottom steps.
I walked quickly up to the landing, flattened myself against the wall, braced the pistol with both hands, and swung around into the entryway of the den. Jack Moon was sitting on the floor by the sliding glass door. His legs were stretched out in front of him. He seemed to be staring at them. He was clutching his stomach with his hands. There was blood on his hands and everywhere on his shirt front. A gun was lying on the floor in the middle of the room, by the overturned Parsons table. A cellophane bag full of cocaine lay by the open door. It had spilled open and the cocaine was blowing out toward Highway One.
Jack looked up at me, glassy-eyed.
“Oh, God, Jack,” I said. I went over and kneeled down beside him, dropping the pistol on the floor.
“It doesn’t even hurt,” he said with a weak smile. “I thought it hurt getting shot.”
I went downstairs to the phone and called for an ambulance, then I went back to him.
“It was Walt’s gun,” he said. “I didn’t even know he had one. Came here to tell him that I was going to go to the police. That I’d figured it out.”
“Don’t talk,” I said.
He smiled again. His teeth were stained with blood. “I didn’t know about the deal, Harry. Really, I didn’t. Didn’t want to know. When I talked to Quentin, he said that Walt wanted me to do a favor for him—the sort of thing I used to do for Russ. Just an errand boy, again. Executive producer. Should have guessed what was going on when Walt didn’t call me himself. Maybe I did guess.”
He coughed up some blood and his pupils dilated and his eyes opened very wide. “I take that back about it not hurting,” he whispered.
“Jack, shut up,” I said to him. “Please.”
In the distance I could hear a siren screaming toward us, down the coast highway.
Jack swallowed hard. “Just wanted the money, that’s all. Got hungry—tired of waiting. Tired of not having. I was supposed to carry some of it to New York—for Helen and her friends. Quentin said it was for Walt. Poor Quentin. I finally figured it out when you told me about the document. Knew what Walt had done. What a bastard—Walt. He made Quentin go through all that hell and gave him Russ’s document at the end of it. It would have gotten him fired anyway. Can you beat it? After all that. Maybe Quentin figured it out for himself on Sunday. Maybe Walt told him—it was his style. Poor Quentin.”
The siren noise got very loud. Jack looked up. “Tell Liz,” he said.
Two paramedics came into the room, carrying a folded-up gurney.
“Christ,” one of them said.
They lifted Jack onto the gurney and carried him downstairs. There were cops and flashing lights everywhere. I tried to get into the ambulance with Jack, but one of the cops stopped me.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said.
The ambulance flew out of the turnaround. I watched it disappear down the coast highway. I didn’t find out until early the next morning that he’d died on the way to the hospit
al.
******
The cops kept me for ten hours. I didn’t tell them anything I didn’t have to. It was about three A.M. when Glendora finally managed to spring me. I still don’t know how he did it. They weren’t about to let me go on their own.
As we were walking out to his car, he said, “We’re going to have to keep Quentin’s name out of this. If we don’t, Goldblum will blow the whistle on all of us. He told me so. The Pacoima police are just too close to making a connection between the Sanchez girl and Ruiz and Dover.”
“What about Jack?” I said.
He shook his head. “They found him there. With the cocaine and a dead man. It’s out of our hands now.”
“You’re going to let him take the fall for this?”
“Harry,” he said painfully. “I haven’t got a choice.”
“And what about Helen Rose? She was connected, too. Jack was supposed to deliver some of Walt’s cocaine to her in New York.”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said. “I give you my word.”
“And the thugs who killed Maria Sanchez and bought Quentin’s dope?”
“That’s up to the police, I guess. Maybe they’ll find them.”
“It isn’t right, Frank,” I said. “None of it is right.”
“I know.”
“Dover risked his life for a stupid document. Then killed himself when he found out that Walt had double-crossed him. And all those others—they died for nothing. For a dumbass soap opera. And nobody’s ever going to know.”
“We know,” Glendora said grimly.
The LAPD wanted me to stay in L.A. until they’d sorted everything out. But Frank made some calls and I ended up flying back to Cincinnati with him the next day. I wanted to be at her funeral—he knew that. As it turned out, Frank and I were the only ones there.
I thought maybe some of her relatives would come. But nobody showed. It started to rain after the service. We walked back through the rain to the parking lot.
“The L.A. coroner has released a final verdict on Quentin’s death this morning,” he said.
“What was it?”
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