by Howard Fast
“No. She’s dead.”
“Poor woman. When did she die?”
“She was murdered this morning.”
“God rest her soul. You come with bad news, my nephew.”
“I live with bad news.”
“Yes, I suppose you do. Do you know who killed her?”
“I think I do, but who he is, I don’t know.”
“Is it a game, Masao? You know who killed her, but not who he is? You have been too long with the Zen people. They teach you to talk in riddles.”
“Not at all, my respected uncle. We will talk about that. Meanwhile, I am glad that you knew Alex Brody. Perhaps it will help me.”
“Thirty years ago I knew all the contractors in this area. I helped Brody. He was what the young people call a loser. He was one of those who never calculate a job properly, and in their eagerness for the contract, they underbid. Up until nineteen fifty both of us built only very small houses, bungalows, such as the one he lived in in Inglewood. He wanted desperately to move into a more profitable area, and he bid on the house on Laurel Way. I told him his bid was too low, that prices were going up, and that the hillside would present difficulties. In nineteen forty-seven he had worked for me on a job, and that was how we became acquainted. He respected my ability to calculate, and he would bring me bids to look over. I did it as a favor. He was a kind man, not too intelligent, but kind, and I liked him. He knew his bid was too low, but he felt that he could cut corners. He was too honest to cut corners, and he came out of the job eight thousand dollars in debt. Real dollars, not the ones we have today. He never recovered from that loss, poor man, and ten years later he died of a heart attack.”
“But he did complete the house on Laurel Way?”
“Certainly. And a very good job too.”
“And he put in the swimming pool?”
“Yes, and that was a mistake. He had never built a pool before, and his calculations were way off. He had to buttress the hillside, and that was where he took his loss.”
“May I explain my previous statement that you found confusing?” Masuto asked him.
With a twinkle in his eye, Naga suggested that perhaps they should speak in Japanese. “A difficult language, but not confusing. English is even more difficult and totally confusing.”
“My Japanese is confusing, believe me. It confuses both myself and the listener. What I meant before, when I said that I knew who killed Mrs. Brody, was that I am quite certain I can connect him with the other murder.”
“What other murder?” Naga asked innocently.
“The body placed under the swimming pool. I am quite certain, in my own mind, that the same person who put the body there murdered Mrs. Brody.”
“Ah, so,” Naga agreed. “And now you come to this poor old Japanese gentleman and you wish me to remember who was on Alex Brody’s crew when he built the swimming pool, and when I tell you that, you will sort out the various people and you will have the murderer.”
“Exactly.”
“And this, Masao, is how you built your reputation for brilliance in the field of crime?”
He disliked being teased, even by Kati’s uncle, whose years earned him that prerogative. “If I had such a reputation, it is undeserved. I poke around in the dark. I chase ghosts. And I hope for luck.”
“Nephew, how could I possibly know who worked for Alex? It was thirty years ago. For a swimming pool, you need backhoe men, pick and shovel laborers, masons. Was the swimming pool dug in dirt or in decayed granite?”
“Decayed granite.”
“And a groove was made for the body?”
“Precisely.”
“Then you have two possibilities, Masao. If the killer was strong and energetic, he could have come back to the job after the crew had left for the day, and by working very hard with a pickax and crowbar, he could have dug the grave in the decayed granite. It varies, you know.”
Masao shook his head. “I didn’t know.”
“Oh, yes. Sometimes it is so hard it must be blasted out. At other times it is as soft as gravel. How large was the hole where you found the remains?”
“About six feet long, two feet wide, a foot deep.”
“Ah, so. And when he finished, I imagine he packed the soft granite back into the hole, and then when the swimming pool slid down the hillside, the rain washed out enough fill to reveal the skeleton. You think he used a backhoe?”
“Yes.”
“Wrong, Masao. Shall I explain why? Over there.” He pointed to where a group of caterpillar-tread machines were parked across the yard. “Those with the long necks, like geese, those are backhoes.”
“I know what a backhoe is.”
“But do you know how a backhoe works? You describe a grave about six feet long.”
“Perhaps a few inches more,” Masuto said.
“Now, the ends of the grave. They were perpendicular, like the end of a coffin?”
“More or less.”
“Then we must ask, where did the scoop enter? It is not like a hand-held tool. That scoop must come down and dig its approach. It can’t make the kind of a hole you describe. Now, nephew, let us have a few words on the construction of a swimming pool. The backhoe scoops it out. But if the backhoe scoops out the entire pool, how does the backhoe get out of the hole?”
“That never occurred to me,” Masuto confessed. “I have never built a swimming pool.”
“A humble man wins my heart. I will explain. Only a part of the hole is dug with the backhoe inside. Then the backhoe moves out of the pool and completes the excavation from above. We can do that because the scoop has a long neck which rides up and down the main hoist. In effect, the backhoe leans over the edge of the pool and scoops it out. The final shaping is done by laborers with pick and shovel, working inside the pool. Now, your murderer plans to dig a grave and bury his victim. He must wait until the backhoe is out of the pool and the laborers are finished and the concrete is ready to be poured. Otherwise how can he be sure his work will not be discovered? So we must presume that he dug the hole with a pickax shortly before the concrete was poured, that he was a laborer and not a backhoe operator. In fact, since backhoe rentals are expensive, and since Alex Brody did not own one, by the time he dug the grave, the backhoe was gone from the scene.”
Fascinated by the old man’s line of reasoning, Masuto listened and nodded.
“You disagree?”
“Oh, no, not at all. I am everlastingly grateful. And now, if you will tell me where I can find this laborer, I shall be even more grateful.”
“After thirty years? No, for that you must go to one of your Zen magicians.”
“Zen masters are not magicians,” Masuto said gently. “Just people. Surely there must be some lead, some way of discovering who worked for Alex Brody.”
“Have you looked for his records? His payroll records?”
“If any survived, the murderer found them and took them.”
“In any case, the killer’s name would not be his real name,” Naga said. “He would have been very foolish to use his real name.”
“I am not looking for his name. I want the name of the man he killed.”
“Oh? You puzzle me, nephew.”
“Wasn’t there a foreman on that job?”
“There would be, yes.”
“Can you remember? Try.”
The old man knit his brows. “As much as I would like to help you, my dear nephew—it was so long ago. He once used Jim Adams, who came to work for me later, but Adams died two years ago. Ah, wait—Fred—Fred Lundman. I’m pretty sure he was on that job. Fred was a good man. He went out on his own after that, and he did very well building tract houses in the Valley. Yes, I do think he worked with Alex up there on Laurel Way.”
“Is he still alive?” Masuto asked excitedly.
“I think so.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“Last I heard, he had built himself a fine house in Brentwood.”
“Un
cle Naga, do you have a telephone? But of course you do!”
“Ah, yes. We have all the modern conveniences. Come with me.”
Containing an impulse to beg the old man to hurry, Masuto followed him across the yard to the main office. “You will use my office, and I will prepare some tea. Your aunt still makes the best tea cakes I know of, and we have been entirely too unceremonious. It is not fitting.”
Masuto found the number in the telephone book, Frederick Lundman, on the Bristol Circles in Brentwood, a very pleasant part of Los Angeles which lies between Westwood and Santa Monica. He dialed the number and heard it ring. It rang again and again; it rang ten times before Masuto put down the telephone and whispered, “What a fool—what an incredible fool I am!”
He dialed again, this time calling Los Angeles police headquarters, and this time the phone was answered. Masuto asked for Pete Bones. When he heard Bones’s voice, Masuto said, “Here’s an address. I want a prowl car there, quickly please.”
“Why?”
“Damn it, Pete! Will you listen to me for once.” He gave him the address. “I’m over on the east edge of Whittier. I’ll go straight there, but it takes time.”
“Goddamnit, Masuto, you can’t push us around that way. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Masuto said tiredly, convinced suddenly that it was too late, that this part of it was over. “I just don’t know.” He put down the telephone and turned to face his uncle.
“I see that we will not have tea,” Naga said. “I have been making light of something that is terrible.”
Masuto nodded.
“We inhabit an unhappy universe, Masuto. What has happened?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps nothing.”
“You think that Fred Lundman is dead.”
“I hope not. I must make one more call.”
“Please.”
He dialed the number of the police station in Beverly Hills and asked for Beckman.
“I got nothing,” Beckman said. “This John Doe of ours stepped out of nowhere and laid down under the swimming pool and died. That’s where we are and that’s what it adds up to. And you want to know about bronze stars and oakleaf clusters and purple hearts, the army can lend us maybe two, three thousand names, providing you want to make a trip to the Pentagon and go through their records. So I got another notion, schools that teach kung fu and jujitsu and that stuff you specialize in—?”
“Karate.”
“Right, karate. So I did a little rundown just here in L.A., and we got over four hundred places—”
“Forget it, Sy. Forget the whole thing. I want you to meet me in Brentwood. You’ll get there first. It’s the home of a Mr. Fred Lundman, and if everything’s cool there, just hang in until I arrive. But in any case, wait there for me.” He gave Beckman the address.
“You will come again on a happier occasion, with Kati and the children?” Naga asked.
“I’ll come again, yes.”
Driving to Brentwood from Naga’s place, a disturbing thought nagged at Masuto. He had seen the toothmarks of a backhoe at the edge of the grave. Then why had Naga tried so hard to convince him that the grave had not been dug by a backhoe? Or had he been mistaken in believing that the marks had been made by a backhoe?
Chapter 5
FRED LUNDMAN
Lieutenant Pete Bones was standing on the lawn in front of the big stucco house at the Bristol Circles, arguing loudly with Sy Beckman when Masuto drove up and parked his old Datsun behind an L.A.P.D. prowl car. On the other side of the prowl car an ambulance was backed into the driveway, and beyond that the medical examiner’s car and Bones’s car and then another police car. It was a quiet suburban neighborhood, very upper middle class and unused to such attention. A circle of housewives, maids, and children stood gaping and whispering.
When he saw Masuto, Bones broke off his exchange with Beckman and strode over to the Beverly Hills policeman, telling him angrily, “You got one hell of a lot of explaining to do, Masuto.”
“I suppose so.”
“What in hell does that mean—you suppose so? Do you know what happened in there?”
“I can guess,” Masuto replied morosely.
“You can guess! You and your goddamn guesses! There are two people dead in there, and you knew damn well what was coming down. Do you know what that adds up to? It adds up to something that stinks!”
“Suppose we go inside and talk about it there.”
“And more quietly,” Beckman said. He was three inches taller than Bones and at least six inches wider. “Who the hell do you think you are, lacing us out like that? You got something to say, say it like a colleague, not like some crumbum hoodlum.”
“Just who the hell do you think you are, Beckman? I don’t take that crap from anyone!”
“Hold it, hold it,” Masuto said soothingly. “Come on, let’s not get all hot and angry. Pete’s got a point, Sy, and it’s my fault. I should have filled him in better, but I never thought it would happen like this. Not so quickly.”
As they headed toward the door of the house, Bones said, “You knew this was going to happen. You knew a man and a woman were going to be killed—”
“A woman?”
“That’s right. You knew it and you knew how they’d be killed and you didn’t lift a finger to stop it. And if that doesn’t stink, I don’t know what does. I ought to read you your rights here on the spot.”
“Don’t be an idiot!” Beckman snapped.
“That’s enough. Now you listen to me, Pete,” Masuto said harshly, “this is hard enough on me without you bearing down.” They were at the door now. “Hold on, before we go in there. I was afraid that something like this would happen. That’s why I called you this morning. But I didn’t know where or who, and the fact that I got Lundman’s name and address was a streak of luck. The moment I did I called you and told you to get a radio car over here. We were too late. Yes, that stinks, but the cases where cops can prevent a crime are few and far between. You know that as well as I do. Now just let me find out what happened in here, and I’ll fill you in on everything.”
Bones stared at him for a moment, then swallowed and nodded. “Okay. But you fill me in—with everything.”
He led them into the house. It was a well-made, well-furnished home, done in the Spanish colonial style, tile floors, good pictures on the white-painted walls. Unlike Alex Brody, Lundman had done well. In the living room there were two bodies, already on ambulance litters, two ambulance men, Lloyd Abramson, from the medical examiner’s office, a uniformed cop, a fingerprint man, two other Los Angeles plainclothes investigators, and a Mexican woman in a maid’s uniform who sat in a chair and sobbed.
Masuto went to the litters and stared at the two bodies. One was a woman in her middle fifties, an attractive mild-looking woman, her face tormented with a mixture of pain and surprise. “Her neck was broken,” Abramson said, pointing to the livid bruise. “I can’t imagine what kind of an instrument would leave a mark like that. Pete thinks he used his hand. A karate chop.”
“What about that?” Bones asked Masuto. “Could he kill her like that, with a single karate chop?”
“Yes, he could.”
“Could you?”
“Yes, I could.”
“What the hell is this?” Beckman asked harshly. “You making jokes? Masuto was in Whittier.”
“Just a joke.”
“A lousy joke,” Beckman said.
Masuto went to the other litter. Lundman was in his late sixties, a heavy-set man, white hair, pale blue eyes wide open. “Same thing,” Abramson told him. “Neck broken. You’d think he’d put up a struggle. He’s old, but he’s built like a bull.”
“Pull up his shirt,” Masuto said to one of the ambulance men.
Bones was watching him curiously. “Go on, pull up his shirt,” Bones said.
Masuto pointed to a bruise directly under the rib cage. “A hard blow to the solar plexus. If you know how to deliver it, the result
is temporary paralysis. The victim doubles over. Turn the body, please,” he said to the ambulance men. They turned the dead man over, and Masuto pointed to the mark on the back of his neck. “A hard vertical chop.”
“You’re telling me that one chop with the bare hand would kill a man of his size?”
“His size doesn’t matter. The weapon is the side of the hand. A chop like that, properly delivered, would split a plank an inch thick. The first blow doubled Lundman over, paralyzed him, and put his neck in position for the second blow, which broke his neck and killed him.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes, just like that.” Masuto stared at Bones quizzically. “Are you going to ask me whether I could do it?”
“Could you?”
“Yes. I take it the woman was Lundman’s wife?”
“Clara Lundman. Yeah. His wife.”
“And the maid? Where was the maid?”
“Downstairs in the basement doing the wash. She never heard a thing. She was still down there when the cops came.”
“On your call?”
“That’s right.”
“How long between the time she went down to the basement and the time she heard the cops?”
“About an hour and a half.”
“That’s a lot of wash,” Beckman said.
“She says she had ironing to do.”
“How long were they dead when you got here?” Masuto asked Abramson.
“Can they take the bodies away now?” he asked Bones, who nodded. “It’s hard to say exactly,” he told Masuto. “I got here after the cops, about a half hour later. Maybe two hours to the time I got here. A little more, a little less.”
“She said she served them lunch,” Beckman said. “Then she cleared up and did the dishes. It was about two o’clock, she thinks, when she went down to do the wash. I got here same time as the L.A. cops. That was just about three thirty.”
“I still don’t know what puts you and Masuto here at all, except for that weird tipoff. This is Los Angeles, not Beverly Hills. Sure I’m extending the courtesies—”
“You’re all courtesy,” Beckman remarked.
“—but there’s a limit. You read me a scenario about a guy who walks in here, takes a look at the woman who opens the door for him, kills her with a karate chop, then kills her husband the same way, and then makes his exit without even touching—hey, Steve”—he called to one of the L.A. investigators—“give me those envelopes with the possessions. Yeah, without even touching this stuff. Take a look.”