The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs: A Masao Masuto Mystery (5 page)

“Thank you,” Masuto said without delight.

“Or conceivably a pharmacologist.”

“I am most grateful.”

Masuto bade his cousin good-bye and descended to the floor below, moving through the vast machinery of the Los Angeles Police Department, wondering how it might be to work for an organization like this rather than for the police force of a small town of thirty thousand population. He found Lieutenant Pete Bones at his desk, painfully pecking out a report on his typewriter. Bones, a heavy-set, thick-necked man in his forties, turned his pale blue, suspicion-clouded eyes on Masuto and then grinned.

“Ah, my favorite Oriental sleuth. How goes it in the pastures of the rich?”

“Too much time on their hands. The result is murder most foul.”

“That's a quote from somewhere. I retire in two years. The wife and I have a cabin, if you can call it that, up at Mammoth. I'm going to read all the books I never read being a cop. You'll come and visit us, Masao.”

“With pleasure.”

“And what can I do for you now?”

“Can you set the machinery to work? I'm looking for a chemist or a pharmacologist with a criminal record, probably in this area, but maybe upstate.”

“Masao, you can make a San Francisco request as easy as we can. I can put it into work here. I'll tell you this. We got to come up with at least ten names, maybe more.”

“I can narrow it,” Masuto said. “The one I'm looking for—well, I think he'll be killed, either today or tomorrow or the next day.”

“What!”

“Possibly yesterday, but more likely today or tomorrow.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute! You're asking me to look for a chemist with a criminal record who's going to be murdered? Come on, Masao, come on! Who's going to kill him?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know who this chemist is, or maybe he's a pharmacist, but you don't know who he is or where he is or which he is, but you know he's going to be killed, but you don't know who's going to kill him. Do you know how crazy that sounds?”

“Pretty crazy, yes.”

“Then how in hell do you know he's going to be killed?”

“I don't know. I said I think so. I'm dealing with a killer, and I try to put myself into his mind and think the way he thinks. It's not easy. You get a crime of passion or violence, and you can understand it. They are crimes done by human beings who have momentarily lapsed. But this is something coldly plotted by a man who has stopped being human. So I try to approximate that kind of mind. I have to. It's all we have, not one damn thing more. If I can find this chemist while he's alive, it will help, maybe wind the thing up. Even dead, it will help.”

“Okay,” Bones agreed. “I'll set things moving in the county. You can line up the San Francisco cops from Beverly Hills.”

“I don't think it's up there. I think it's right here in L.A.”

At that moment, a uniformed policeman approached them, looked at Masuto curiously, and then asked, “Are you Sergeant Masuto, Beverly Hills P.D.?”

Masuto nodded.

“We got a call for you.”

Bones picked up his telephone and told them to put through Sergeant Masuto's call. He handed the phone to Masuto, and Beckman's voice said, “Masao, is that you?”

“What's up, Sy?”

“Can you get away now?”

“If it's important.”

“It's important. I'm up on Mulholland Drive, half a mile west of Laurel Canyon. You'll see my car and a sheriffs car and an L.A.P.D. car. I'm trying to get them not to touch anything or move anything until you get here, and they're giving me a hard time because it's their turf, not ours. But I think I can hold them if you get here in half an hour.”

“What have you got?”

“I got a body. But get up here and we'll talk about it.”

The Chicano Kid

Mulholland Drive is a narrow, twisting, badly-paved two-lane road that runs across the ridge of the Santa Monica Mountains and the Hollywood Hills, from Cahuenga Canyon in the east to Topanga Canyon in the west. Although it is almost entirely contained within the city limits of Los Angeles, it presents a vista of wild brush and mesquite-covered hills as well as breathtaking views of both the city of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley—providing one drives it on a day when the smog is light enough to see anything at all. Nevertheless, its illusion of wilderness, combined with the fact that it bisects one of the most heavily populated cities in the United States, makes it a favorite scenic drive for tourists and a weekend outing place for the local residents.

At least twice a year, preferably during the winter months when there was little or no smog, Masuto's wife Kati would pack a picnic lunch, and he would drive her and the two children to one of the lookout points on Mulholland. There they would eat their lunch and marvel at the great vista of valley and mountains spread out before them. He thought of this now as he raced along the Hollywood Freeway, his siren screaming—a sound he disliked intensely—his old Datsun shivering in protest against eighty miles an hour. He had to cut his speed as he turned off for Mulholland. Not quite half an hour, but forty-one minutes from the time he had received Beckman's phone call in downtown Los Angeles to the cluster of cars on Mulholland was not bad time at all.

From a group of uniformed officers—there was a sheriff's deputy and three L.A.P.D. cops, while a fourth uniformed officer waved the traffic on—Masuto heard Beckman's booming voice: “There's Masuto now. So you let the body lay there for an extra half hour. The kid's dead. He's not going to be any more dead.”

A white-coated ambulance man said, “You kept us sitting here like this was the only stiff in Los Angeles.”

“You got a radio. Stop yapping,” Beckman said.

“Are you Sergeant Masuto?” one of the Los Angeles cops asked him.

“Yes.”

“Well, this ain't Beverly Hills. You can't interfere like this. I damn near arrested that guy Beckman,” the cop said.

“It connects with our trouble. He wouldn't let you move the body, is that it?” Masuto asked.

“That's it. So will you go down there and see whatever he wants you to see and let us get out of here?”

“Down here, Masao,” Beckman said.

Beckman clambered down the mesquite-covered hillside, Masuto picking his way after him. Another ambulance man, holding a stretcher, stood in a tiny hollow where the body was wedged. It was a young Chicano boy, dressed in tee shirt, jeans, and sneakers.

“Shot once in the head, behind the ear—small caliber, maybe a twenty-two,” Beckman said.

“How long has he been dead?” Masuto asked the ambulance man. “Can you make a guess?”

“At least two days.”

“Some kids climbed down here and they spotted the body,” Beckman told him. “It doesn't have to be our kid. This city's filled with kids who do violence on each other, and maybe ten thousand of them wear blue jeans and tee shirts. But look up there at the broken branches, Masao.”

Masuto nodded. “Dumped over the side, out of a car.”

“That's right. He gets into the car after he buys the pastry. Maybe he delivers it.”

“No. It had to be injected with the botulin. He didn't deliver the pastry.” Masuto stared at the body again. “Chicano kids are killed, but not this way. Gang wars, bursts of violence. But not this way.”

“Can we get him out of here now?” the ambulance man asked.

Masuto nodded, and he and Beckman climbed back up to the road.

“Well, thank God that's over,” the L.A. cop in charge said.

“What did he have in his pockets?” Masuto asked.

“We got to hold it for the investigators,” the cop replied.

“I know. Can we look at it?”

“Not much to look at. Just some money. Nothing else. No identification.”

“How much money?”

“Here,” he said, handing Masuto an envelope. “Count it yourself.”

Masuto counted it. “Twelve dollars and twenty-five cents,” he told Beckman. “It fits. He gave the kid another ten dollars. I suppose he invented another errand, and that's how he got the kid into the car.”

“It could be. He's one cold-blooded bastard, Masao.”

“Do you guys know something about this killing?” the L.A. cop asked. “If you do, one of you ought to hang around until the investigators show up.”

“When will that be?”

“Any time now. We run a busy city. It's not Beverly Hills.”

“We're getting there,” Beckman said. “Don't put down Beverly Hills.”

“You stay with it,” Masuto said to Beckman. “Tail after the investigators. You can tell them what we've got, which is nothing. I don't remember one like this. We have nothing—no lead, no motive, no direction.”

“We know one thing,” Beckman said.

“What's that?”

“That this son of a bitch kills people the way we kill flies.”

“He's insane. So are a thousand others walking around on the streets of this city. It doesn't help now. Maybe later. See what you can find out about the kid. It's possible that our killer just picked him up on the street; it's also possible that they had a previous acquaintance. Maybe the kid had friends and one of them saw something. It's just barely possible that the money is a coincidence—possible, but not likely. So if you have a chance, poke around the bakery again. Get a death picture. I hate to use them, but someone around the bakery might recognize it.”

“I can get the bakery lady down to the L.A. morgue.”

“I wouldn't put an old lady through that. Get the picture and show it to her. That ought to do it.”

“Where will you be?”

“Damned if I know,” Masuto said, shaking his head. “I'll be at Laura Crombie's house, but not until ten o'clock tonight.” Then he added, “I'll call in. You'd better do the same.”

Masuto went back to his car, sat for a moment or two staring through the windshield, then took out his notebook and called headquarters on his radiophone.

“Polly,” he said to the lady who answered the phone, “this is Masao. Jot down this number.” He gave it to her. “Dial it and patch it through to me.”

“For you, Masao, it's a pleasure.”

He always reacted in surprise at the fact that women liked him. He never thought of himself as likable or lovable, a tall, dour-faced second generation Japanese man, yet nothing pleased him more than this almost consistent response on the part of women. He pardoned himself; he argued to himself that he had a good wife whom he loved, that he was scrupulous in his behavior as a policeman, that he was content. Or was he?

This was no time to debate it. Laura Crombie's voice came over the phone.

“This is Sergeant Masuto, Mrs. Crombie. There was a question I didn't ask—at least I can't remember asking it. Who received the pastry when it was delivered?”

“Didn't I tell you? Ana did.”

“And of course she never mentioned who delivered it?”

“No. It wouldn't be of any importance.”

“Yes. And since I left you, anything?”

“No, nothing out of the ordinary. I called the ladies. They'll all be here.”

“I'd like to change that,” Masuto said.

“Oh, no!”

“Please. I'd like you to call them again and get them to your house right now. And then I'm going to have a policeman sitting in his car across the street from your house.”

“But why?”

“I'll tell you why very bluntly and plainly—because I'm afraid.”

“Sergeant Masuto, we don't live in a jungle. This is Beverly Hills.”

“I know it is. Will you please do as I say?”

“I suppose so. When will you be here?”

“About ten, as I said.”

“And we just sit here and wait for you? Come on, you can't be serious!”

“I am very serious. I know what I ask is a nuisance, but I'm trying to keep you alive—all of you.”

“Aren't you being dramatic?”

“I hope so. Enough to impress you.”

He finished with Laura Crombie and was talking to Polly again when Beckman came over to the car and stood by the open window. Masuto had just asked her to get a make from L.A.P.D. on Tony Cooper.

“Who's Tony Cooper?” Beckman asked him.

“A hairdresser. You've seen his place on Camden Road.”

“How does he fit into all this?”

“I don't know. I look where the light is, because everywhere else it's dark.”

“And what's that supposed to mean?”

“Not very much. They tell the story of a man crawling around under a lamp post on his hands and knees. Another man stops and asks him why, and the man on his hands and knees says that he lost a gold cufflink. ‘Where did you lose it?' the man asks, and the man on his hands and knees replies that he lost it a hundred feet down the street. ‘Then why are you looking here?' the second man asks. And the man who lost the cufflink replies, ‘Because it's light here.'”