The Case of the Murdered MacKenzie

by Howard Fast

  “She knew your reputation. She was sure you would find out too much too quickly.”

  “And you are here tonight to complete her unfinished business?”

  “Oh, no. No, indeed. I am here to strike a bargain, to make a deal, as you people say, to create a mutually advantageous situation. I am sure you know what I want.”

  “Robert Mackenzie.”

  “Exactly. We are quite certain that you know where he is. I want you to tell me where he is.” He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a packet of currency. “Here I have fifty hundred-dollar bills. I have four such packets, twenty thousand dollars. That is a great deal of money for a policeman, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Yes, a great deal of money.”

  “And what am I asking, Mr. Masuto? The man is a traitor and a murderer. He has betrayed those who nurtured him and loved him. What call has he upon you?”

  “I have never had to think that through,” Masuto said, “because I don’t know where he is.”

  “Come, come. Of course you do.”

  “Considering that I do know, Mr. Brekov, why should I take sides in your quarrel with him? I sit here doing a very simple thing, bringing harm to no one, sitting with my legs crossed and meditating in the manner of my ancestors. My master in downtown Los Angeles is an old Roshi. Would he be permitted to teach me in your country? Is there a Zendo anywhere in your country?”

  “That is not the point. What is this country you are being loyal to? The only country that ever used the atom bomb—and used it to wipe out two Japanese cities—men, women, and children. This is the country you are being loyal to?”

  “More than that, Mr. Brekov. My father and mother and I as a small child were taken to the concentration camp at Madigan. But my loyalty is not to people who drop atom bombs or make concentration camps or wipe out free speech and free press as you do. No, not at all. My loyalty is to the human species, which century after century suffers the malignant stupidity of men like yourself and your masters. I hate spies and I loathe your K.G.B. as much as I loathe our C.I.A. And my distaste for those organizations and what they stand for is so great that even if I knew where Robert Mackenzie is, I would not tell you.”

  “Hear! Hear!” a voice cried. “Bravo, Masuto! Turn around, Brekov, but slowly, carefully.”

  He had been hidden by Brekov’s legs. Now, as Brekov stepped aside, Masuto saw him, Mackenzie at last, and recognized him though he had never seen him before. He held a heavy automatic pistol in his hand, and he said to Brekov, “Back up. Move in back of Masuto there.” Mackenzie stood between the open French doors, just inside the meditation room. “If you’re thinking of that idiot Thatcher, Brekov, and of him charging in here to rescue you, forget it. Mr. Thatcher is dead, very dead. Before Feona died, she confessed that Thatcher had done the job with her. So now I’ve evened it out, haven’t I, you loathsome bastard. Can you believe that Thatcher was stupid enough to let me get into the car with him and to congratulate me on my readiness to give myself up. He saw you getting him the Order of Lenin. It was the last thing he saw before I strangled him. You know, I have only one regret—that I have to kill Masuto here. The poor yellow bastard did me no harm, but he’s a witness—”

  He was cut off by a voice that roared, “Police! Drop it, Mackenzie!”

  Mackenzie spun around and flung a shot toward the French door to Ana’s room. Beckman shot through the door, hitting Mackenzie in the chest, and as Mackenzie collapsed, the gun falling from his hand, Beckman was shouting, “Don’t touch your gun, Brekov, or I’ll kill you where you stand!”

  Brekov smiled and raised both hands. Masuto untangled himself from the lotus position, picked up Mackenzie’s gun, and then Beckman came through the French door.

  “Sy, thank you,” Masuto said to him.

  “Believe me, I do not have a gun,” Brekov said. “I never carry a gun.”

  Beckman was bent over Mackenzie. “He’s dead.”

  Masuto ran his hands over Brekov. He had no gun.

  “You saved my life,” Brekov said to Beckman.

  “I’m Jewish,” Beckman snarled. “You hear me, you son of a bitch, I’m Jewish! So don’t thank me!”

  “You’re also an accessory to two murders,” Masuto said to Brekov. “Mackenzie’s brother and a policeman named Clint.”

  Brekov shrugged. “I have diplomatic immunity. And since what I came here for has been accomplished, there is no reason for me to remain. So I say good night, Mr. Masuto.”

  “Is that right?” Beckman demanded indignantly.

  “I’m afraid so,” Masuto said. “But you’ll have to wait here, Mr. Brekov, until the Culver City police get here. Apparently, there’s a dead man in your car across the street, and you can’t walk away from either him or the car.”

  “You have no right to hold me here.”

  “Goddamn you, shut your mouth and sit down!” Beckman yelled. “Your immunity won’t keep me from beating the shit out of you. Just sit down and try not to be a total asshole.” Beckman was shaking now. He took off his jacket and covered Mackenzie. “I won’t sleep for a week. Why do we go on with this lousy job, Masuto?”

  Masuto poured a glass of gin, neat. “Get this down.”

  Beckman gulped it, coughed, and said, “You call the cops and Wainwright, Masao. I can’t talk to anyone.”

  “The Culver City cops, the captain, the State Department, the C.I.A., the F.B.I.—I know what you mean, Sy. Oh, the hell with it. I might as well start calling.”

  It was four o’clock in the morning before it was all finished, and the Culver City cops and the Beverly Hills cops and the two F.B.I. men and the man from the C.I.A. had all finished and departed, and Beckman had gone home to his wife, and the bodies had been removed, and Brekov had taken his diplomatic immunity back to Washington—and that was when Masuto finally got to cleaning up. He swept up the bits of glass and then scrubbed at the vinyl floor until the bloodstains were gone. There were two bullet holes in Ana’s door and a bullet hole in the wall of her room—from the single wild shot Mackenzie had gotten off. Wainwright had given him the following day off, if he made up the time, which he promised to do. He decided that he would sleep for three hours, then find a glazier and have the glass replaced, cover the bullet hole with some plaster of Paris, and then drive out to Uncle Toda’s place.

  Perhaps if he got there early enough, he could bring Kati and the kids home before dark.

  A Biography of Howard Fast

  Howard Fast (1914–2003), one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century, was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. Fast’s commitment to championing social justice in his writing was rivaled only by his deftness as a storyteller and his lively cinematic style.

  Born on November 11, 1914, in New York City, Fast was the son of two immigrants. His mother, Ida, came from a Jewish family in Britain, while his father, Barney, emigrated from the Ukraine, changing his last name to Fast on arrival at Ellis Island. Fast’s mother passed away when he was only eight, and when his father lost steady work in the garment industry, Fast began to take odd jobs to help support the family. One such job was at the New York Public Library, where Fast, surrounded by books, was able to read widely. Among the books that made a mark on him was Jack London’s The Iron Heel, containing prescient warnings against fascism that set his course both as a writer and as an advocate for human rights.

  Fast began his writing career early, leaving high school to finish his first novel, Two Valleys (1933). His next novels, including Conceived in Liberty (1939) and Citizen Tom Paine (1943), explored the American Revolution and the progressive values that Fast saw as essential to the American experiment. In 1943 Fast joined the American Communist Party, an alliance that came to define—and often encumber—much of his career. His novels during this period advocated freedom against tyranny, bigotry, and oppression by exploring essential moments in American history, as in The American (1946). During
this time Fast also started a family of his own. He married Bette Cohen in 1937 and the couple had two children.

  Congressional action against the Communist Party began in 1948, and in 1950, Fast, an outspoken opponent of McCarthyism, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to provide the names of other members of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, Fast was issued a three-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress. While in prison, he was inspired to write Spartacus (1951), his iconic retelling of a slave revolt during the Roman Empire, and did much of his research for the book during his incarceration. Fast’s appearance before Congress also earned him a blacklisting by all major publishers, so he started his own press, Blue Heron, in order to release Spartacus. Other novels published by Blue Heron, including Silas Timberman (1954), directly addressed the persecution of Communists and others during the ongoing Red Scare. Fast continued to associate with the Communist Party until the horrors of Stalin’s purges of dissidents and political enemies came to light in the mid-1950s. He left the Party in 1956.

  Fast’s career changed course in 1960, when he began publishing suspense-mysteries under the pseudonym E. V. Cunningham. He published nineteen books as Cunningham, including the seven-book Masao Masuto mystery series. Also, Spartacus was made into a major film in 1960, breaking the Hollywood blacklist once and for all. The success of Spartacus inspired large publishers to pay renewed attention to Fast’s books, and in 1961 he published April Morning, a novel about the battle of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution. The book became a national bestseller and remains a staple of many literature classes. From 1960 onward Fast produced books at an astonishing pace—almost one book per year—while also contributing to screen adaptations of many of his books. His later works included the autobiography Being Red (1990) and the New York Times bestseller The Immigrants (1977).

  Fast died in 2003 at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut.

  Fast on a farm in upstate New York during the summer of 1917. Growing up, Fast often spent the summers in the Catskill Mountains with his aunt and uncle from Hunter, New York. These vacations provided a much-needed escape from the poverty and squalor of the Lower East Side’s Jewish ghetto, as well as the bigotry his family encountered after they eventually relocated to an Irish and Italian neighborhood in upper Manhattan. However, the beauty and tranquility Fast encountered upstate were often marred by the hostility shown toward him by his aunt and uncle. “They treated us the way Oliver Twist was treated in the orphanage,” Fast later recalled. Nevertheless, he “fell in love with the area” and continued to go there until he was in his twenties.

  Fast (left) with his older brother, Jerome, in 1935. In his memoir Being Red, Fast wrote that he and his brother “had no childhood.” As a result of their mother’s death in 1923 and their father’s absenteeism, both boys had to fend for themselves early on. At age eleven, alongside his thirteen-year-old brother, Fast began selling copies of a local newspaper called the Bronx Home News. Other odd jobs would follow to make ends meet in violent, Depression-era New York City. Although he resented the hardscrabble nature of his upbringing, Fast acknowledged that the experience helped form a lifelong attachment to his brother. “My brother was like a rock,” he wrote, “and without him I surely would have perished.”

  A copy of Fast’s military identification from World War II. During the war Fast worked as a war correspondent in the China-Burma-India theater, writing articles for publications such as PM, Esquire, and Coronet. He also contributed scripts to Voice of America, a radio program developed by Elmer Davis that the United States broadcast throughout occupied Europe.

  Here Fast poses for a picture with a fellow inmate at Mill Point prison, where he was sent in 1950 for his refusal to disclose information about other members of the Communist Party. Mill Point was a progressive federal institution made up of a series of army bunkhouses. “Everyone worked at the prison,” said Fast during a 1998 interview, “and while I hate prison, I hate the whole concept of prison, I must say this was the most intelligent and humane prison, probably that existed in America.” Indeed, Fast felt that his three-month stint there served him well as a writer: “I think a writer should see a little bit of prison and a little bit of war. Neither of these things can be properly invented. So that was my prison.”

  Fast with his wife Bette and their two children, Jonathan and Rachel, in 1952. The family has a long history of literary achievement. Bette’s father founded the Hudson County News Company. Jonathan Fast would go on to become a successful popular novelist, as would his daughter, Molly, whose mother, Erica Jong, is the author of the groundbreaking feminist novel Fear of Flying. (Photo courtesy of Lotte Jacobi.)

  Fast at a bookstand during his campaign for Congress in 1952. He ran on the American Labor Party ticket for the twenty-third congressional district in the Bronx. Although Fast remained a committed leftist his entire life, he looked back on his foray into national politics with a bit of amusement. “I got a disease, which is called ‘candidateitis,’” he told Donald Swaim in a 1990 radio interview. “And this disease takes hold of your mind, and it convinces you that your winning an election is important, very often the most important thing on earth. And it grips you to a point that you’re ready to kill to win that election.” He concluded: “I was soundly defeated, but it was a fascinating experience.”

  In 1953, the Soviet Union awarded Fast the International Peace Prize. This photo from the ceremony shows the performer, publisher, and civil rights activist Paul Robeson delivering a speech before presenting Fast (seated, second from left) with the prestigious award. Robeson and Fast came to know each other through their participation in leftist political causes during the 1940s and were friends for many years. Like Fast, Robeson was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy era and invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions. This led to Robeson’s work being banned in the United States, a situation that Robeson, unlike Fast, never completely overcame. In a late interview Fast cited Robeson as one of the forgotten heroes of the twentieth century. “Paul,” he said, “was an extraordinary man.” Also shown (from left to right): Essie Robeson, Mrs. Mellisk, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, Rachel Fast, and Bette Fast. (Photo courtesy of Julius Lazarus and the author.)

  Howard and Bette Fast in California in 1976. The couple relocated to the West Coast after Fast grew disgruntled over the poor reception of his novel The Hessian. While in California, Fast temporarily gave up writing novels to work as a screenwriter, but, like many novelists before him, found the business disheartening. “In L.A. you work like hell because there is nothing else to do, unless you are cheating on your wife,” he told People after he had moved back East in the 1980s. Of course, Fast, an ardent nature-lover, did enjoy California’s scenic beauty and eventually set many of his novels—including The Immigrant’s Daughter and the bestselling Masao Masuto detective series—in the state.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyrightText © 1984 by E. V. Cunningham

  cover design by Jason Gabbert

  This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media

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  New York, NY 10014

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