The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs: A Masao Masuto Mystery (6 page)

“That don't make much sense,” Beckman said.

“What does in this crazy case? There are your investigators,” Masuto said, pointing to where a car had pulled up. “Give it about an hour, Sy, and then I want you to drive over to Laura Crombie's place. I asked her to get the other three women over there, and they should be there by then. I don't want anyone else going into that house without your say-so.”

“Come on, Masao, you can't do that. Wainwright would have my scalp if I tried anything like that.”

“I'm not telling you to pull any rough stuff. We're putting the house under police protection. There's nothing illegal about that.”

“What do you mean, we're putting it under police protection?”

“I'll fix it with Wainwright.”

“So I see someone going in. Do I stop them?”

“No. Just find out why. Park near the door. If Mrs. Crombie says it's okay, let them in. But stay right on top of it, and don't take your eyes off that door for two minutes.”

“That's great. When do you get there?”

“About ten. Maybe earlier—not later.”

“And when do I eat?”

“Get a sandwich on the way. And grab those investigators. They've given it their five minutes.”

“Masao,” Beckman said, “why is L.A.P.D. the only police force in the country that calls its detectives investigators?”

“Ask them,” Masuto said, and put his car in gear and drove off.

At Rexford Drive, Captain Wainwright listened bleakly to Masuto's account of the day's events.

“Assumptions,” he said without enthusiasm. “All you got is a series of assumptions. We still don't know but maybe this Mexican girl died of the damn eclairs, and you link up the kid on Mulholland Drive with a group of wild guesses. You tell me we got a lunatic who's killed two people already, but all I see that I can put a finger on is a food poisoning and a killing that belongs to L.A.P.D.”

“I beg to disagree. We have a murderer who is indifferent to human life. He's killed two people and a dog, and he'll kill anyone who stands in his way.”

“What in hell do you mean, stands in his way? What is his way? What is he after?”

“I think he's after those four women. I think he's going to try to kill all four of them.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. If I knew, we wouldn't be arguing. All I'm asking is that you give Beckman and me a free hand on this case.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes—maybe another day, maybe a week. I don't know.”

Wainwright sighed and nodded. “Okay, but don't talk to the press. Not a word. You want to make a murder case out of this, you can have the time. But keep it quiet.” He stared intently at Masuto. “You keeping anything back?”

“Would I?”

“You damn well would. All right, it's yours.”

Polly intercepted Masuto on his way out. She was small and blonde and blue-eyed. “What do I have to do,” she asked him, “to get a reaction from Detective Sergeant Masuto?”

“You get it all the time. I hide it behind Oriental inscrutability.”

“Which means?”

“That I adore you but don't dare show it.”

“Bull. You are married. Every decent man is married. Try a singles bar some night and you'll see what I mean. Don't you want to know what downtown has to say about your Tony Cooper?”

“That's what I asked.”

“Well, here it is.” She read from a slip of paper. “Three arrests, homosexual practice, no convictions, all of it ten years ago. You know, it should be the women who do the resenting, not the cops. We suffer when the men leave the market place, and as far as I'm concerned the cops have got better things to do than to pull people in for being gay. You know how they do it?”

“I have heard,” Masuto said.

“They entice them into porno movie houses and then arrest them. I think it stinks. Our boys wouldn't do that, would they, Masao?”

“No, we're too short on cops. Thanks, Polly.”

It was almost six o'clock when Masuto parked on Camden Drive across the street from the beauty parlor, but the shop was still open. Only a single customer remained, a brown head being trimmed by a slender, dark man in a white jacket with pink stripes. Masuto crossed the street and entered the shop.

“We don't do men and we're closed,” the man in the striped blazer told him.

“Tony Cooper?” Masuto stood just inside the door.

“That's right.” He stared at Masuto thoughtfully, and then said to the woman in the chair, “Don't move, baby. I'll be with you in a minute.” Then he walked over to Masuto and whispered, “Fuzz?”

Masuto nodded.

“Oriental fuzz. I'll be damned.” Still in a whisper, “Can you come back? She's the end of the line.”

“I'll wait.”

Masuto sat down and picked up a copy of
Architectural Digest
and leafed through the pages. You could gauge the prices at a hairdressing establishment by the kind of magazines they left around.
Architectural Digest
probably indicated a twenty-five or thirty dollar haircut. It was part of the trivia that went into Masuto's store of facts. A policeman living very simply in a small house in Culver City—which is to Beverly Hills what Brooklyn is to Fifth Avenue—he did his daily work in one of the wealthiest communities on the face of the earth. It called for a certain kind of balance and a special kind of perspective, and he thought of this as he leafed through the magazine, looking at photographs of the homes of millionaires. He had never envied wealth, although often enough he pitied those who possessed it; but then, he was a Zen Buddhist, and that gave him his own unique handle on things. Sy Beckman handled it by ignoring it; it just happened to be the shop where he worked.

Cooper finished with the lady whose hair he had been cutting and saw her to the door. Then he turned to Masuto and shook his head. “You guys never give up, do you?”

“I try not to, but if you're thinking about your record, I couldn't care less.” He showed his badge. “Masuto, Beverly Hills police.”

“Okay, but what can I do for you? Is it a violation or tickets to the annual ball?”

“Neither. I want to pick your brains, and I want whatever I pick to stay with you, because if any of it gets out, I will come back and lean on you very heavily.”

“Now?” he demanded indignantly. “It's a quarter after six. I'm closing. I've had a hard, lousy day. The help goes home at five, but if some broad wants a haircut at six, I stay.”

“Now.”

“I got a date.”

“Call them and tell them you'll be late.”

“I don't have to answer any questions.”

“I don't have to be nice,” Masuto said gently.

“All right. You win. You want coffee?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Cooper regarded him curiously. “You're a damn funny cop. I never knew they had a Jap on the police force here.”

“You live and you learn.”

“I shouldn't have said that—Jap,” Cooper said. “I meant Japanese. What the hell, you pick it up. I'll get the coffee. Maybe you want a drink?”

Masuto shook his head, and Cooper went to the back of the place and then emerged with two cups.

“Sugar and cream?”

“Just straight.”

He handed Masuto the coffee and sat down beside him. “Since that lousy film came out, everyone thinks this business has class and glamour. It doesn't. You work your ass off and take crud all day. I been on my feet nine hours.”

“A man should enjoy his work,” Masuto said.

“Do you enjoy yours?”

“At times, yes. Right now, no.”

“Where do I fit in?”

“Here are four names: Laura Crombie, Alice Greene, Nancy Legett, and Mitzie Fuller. How many of these women do you know?”

“I know all of them.”

“Oh? And how is that?”

“They're customers.”

“I'd like to know about them.”

“I don't talk about my customers. I got maybe two or three principles. That's one of them.”

Masuto smiled. “That's admirable. But I'm a cop, and these four women are in great danger. So in this instance, I suggest you put your principles aside.”

“What kind of danger?”

“Someone is trying to kill them. I'm telling you this because I think it's the only way I'll get you to open up, but it stops with you.”

The hairdresser stared at Masuto. “Are you putting me on?”

“No. I'm telling you the truth.”

“Who? Who's trying to kill them?”

“I don't know. It could even be you.”

Cooper shook his head slowly. “Not likely. Oh, I hate some of these biddies enough to want to kill them, but it's not my style. I couldn't kill a mouse. Anyway, I'm a vegetarian.”

Masuto did not regard it as a non sequitur. “You're not a likely suspect, but you do know all four of them.”

“Customers. I know maybe two or three hundred dames in this town. Mostly they don't bother me. I take them for what they are. They take me for what I am. It doesn't drive them out of their minds to have their hair cut by a guy who's gay. It's only the cops and Anita Bryant who climb walls at the thought that somebody maybe don't have the same sexual preference.”

“How well do you know them?”

“The way a hairdresser knows his customers. Some more, some less.”

“Start with Laura Crombie.”

“She doesn't talk much. I don't know whether I like her or not but she's straight on. She doesn't dye her hair.”

“Who would want to kill her?”

“You're asking me? She doesn't even take alimony from the son of a bitch she was married to.”

“How do you know that?”

“The women talk.”

“Do you know her husband?”

“Just by reputation. Crombie and Hawkes, real estate.”. “Who is Hawkes?”

“Nobody. He's been dead for years.”

“Alice Greene?”

“Tall willowy blonde. Not real, but a great head of hair. She's the type I'd go for if I were straight. Real class, except that a buck is a buck. No other reason why she married that creep Alan Greene—you can't turn on the tube without seeing his ads for his string of stores. Since I'm talking, I'll talk. Her alimony is five grand a month. I know some guys who'd murder their own mothers to save sixty thousand a year, and to add insult to injury she's been having an affair with Monte Sweet, the comic. But they'll never get married. They'd have to be crazy to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.”

“Meaning her alimony.”

“You bet your ass. The best investment there is. You put in a couple of years, and not only have you got the community property law going for you, but you got a fat check coming in every month.”

“And is that the case with Nancy Legett?”

“Now there's something else. She's a quiet little mouse—the one in ten in Beverly Hills who just lets her hair go gray. I don't know what to make of her—quiet, polite, no gossip. She was married twenty-two years to Fulton Legett, the producer. He's a big swinger, and for a long time he was up on top. But the past few years, he's had one bomb on top of another, and today they say he's broke. That don't mean he's poor, but maybe he's tired of keeping her in that big house up on Lexington Road. She's got three kids. They're away at school, the way I hear it, two of them in swanky Eastern colleges and one in a prep school back east. That don't come cheap.”

“And Mitzie Fuller?”

Tony Cooper leaned back and grinned. “Mitzie. She's a doll—she's an absolute doll. Red hair—real, not from the bottle—a great face and the best pair of boobs this side of the Grand Canyon. Never heard a bad word out of her. She is the sweetest, nicest bundle that ever walked into this tonsorial cathouse. Tell you something, Sarge, if I was straight I'd break my ass trying to get next to her. One thing about broads you can bet your last dollar on, the nicer they are, the worse bums they tie up with, and Mitzie's ex, Bill Fuller, is no exception to the rule.”

“William Fuller, the director?”

“That's right. Now let me tell you something. I don't run the biggest hair shop in Beverly Hills, but I like to think it's the best, and I get the pick of the classy broads, and they talk and they talk and they talk. If I didn't have trouble writing my own name, I could write you a tome on the habits of so-called straight men that would curl your hair, and I'd have a chapter on film directors. They are the meanest, most arrogant, egotistical set of bastards that ever lived, and Billy Fuller is one of the top runners. I'm still waiting to hear something nice about him. Now I don't know why they got divorced, because Mitzie don't talk. They were only married six months when it broke up, but Mitzie got the house on Palm Drive, which the real estate ladies tell me is worth three-quarters of a million on today's market, and the word is that she gets a fat check every month. Well, she earned it. Six months living with Billy Fuller has no price on it. But you want a candidate, you got him. He's a killer. He'd kill anything that got in his way.”

Masuto was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “I wouldn't mention that to anyone else—for your sake, as well as mine.”

“You asked me.”

“I know. And you told me. And for the time being, it rests with us. Right?”

“Right.”