by Howard Fast
“I see. And how did he react to that?”
“At first there was no reaction at all. Then he looked at me with a sort of malignant curiosity. Oh, yes, Masao, he would not hesitate to kill me should the occasion arise. Of course, I am not one of those who is easily killed, and perhaps he understands that. You see, he does respect me, or he would not have seen me so late at night and on such short notice. Yes, he agreed to dine with us.”
“What is the source of your own hatred?” Masuto asked.
“My hatred?”
“Yes, your hatred.”
“You press me back too many years, Masao. You are born in this country and you are not yet forty years old. Let me say only that our paths crossed in Burma many years ago, and this man, Eric Saunders, shot a Japanese prisoner in cold blood. Such things were done by both sides, but Saunders—well, I waited, and my patience was rewarded.”
“There is no evidence that will convict him,” Masuto said angrily. “You know that as well as I do.”
“You will manage, nephew. I have faith in you.”
When he put down the telephone, Kati mentioned his irritation. “What has Ishido done to annoy you so?”
“He has put me in an impossible position.”
“I am sorry.”
“It will be all right,” Masuto assured her as he kissed her and then left the house. But would it be—and in what way? He found himself looking over his shoulder, and before he started his car, he looked underneath it and then under the hood. The threat of Eric Saunders was not simply the threat of a single man, but the threat of great amounts of money and of vast resources. Masuto knew that there was no protection against assassination, no protection against a determined killer. He might miss once, twice, three times—but in the end he would be successful. Well, perhaps Ishido was right to drive the thing to its end, whatever the end might be.
Instead of going directly to the police station, Masuto stopped off at the Beverly Hills office of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, where his cousin, Alan Toyada, was in charge of research.
“No, don’t tell me,” Toyada greeted him. “They have raised your wages. You have money to invest. You’re on the take now—”
“Your humor is puerile and infantile.”
“It’s not my humor, Masao. You’re always so damn bloody serious.”
“Unfortunately, I live in that world.”
“Forgive the humor. What can I do for you?”
“Eric Saunders.”
“Ah. And from what point of view?”
“To begin, an investment.”
“For yourself? I mean—well, who knows, it is possible that Ishido passed on suddenly. Supposedly, he has no children, but from what I have heard, his heirs might well pop up all over the place. On the other hand, Kati would, I am sure, come in for a large piece of capital which should be properly invested.”
“I come to you as a policeman, not as an investor,” Masuto said, and possibly would have added that unless Toyada stopped babbling, nothing would be accomplished—except that Toyada was thin-skinned, as well as insensitive, a more common combination than one might suppose.
“Oh, yes, of course, Masao. But you asked me about Saunders as an investment.”
“I’m curious.”
“Excellent, excellent. Profits have gone up at least fifteen percent a year for five years now. Amazing record. The stock has doubled during the past twelve months.”
“How do you account for that?”
“Good engineers. Space contracts. And of course their new shuttle passenger plane. They have almost a billion dollars in back orders. It’s a short-haul shuttle, lands anywhere, carries two hundred and forty passengers, wide body, comfortable. Oh, yes, if I had the money, I’d buy.”
“And how much of this is due to Saunders himself?”
“That’s hard to say. He still plays an active role in the company, makes the hard decisions, but I hear he has his fingers in other pies as well—museums, films, politics.”
“What are his politics?”
“Well, he does government work, so he’s for the administration, but they say he plays both sides of the fence. I imagine he does.”
“And what about his morality?” Masuto asked.
“I don’t think you mean women, Masao?”
“No, I don’t mean women.”
“Well, you know as well as I do that you can’t discuss big business in terms of morality. Rules, yes, morality, no.”
“All right, Alan, rules. Does he break the rules?”
“No more than anyone else. I’m sure he pays off wherever it’s necessary, but who doesn’t? He doesn’t raid other companies, but then he doesn’t have to. He’s his own steamroller and he’s driving Saunders Aerospace right to the top.”
“Has he ever married?”
“No, which doesn’t mean he’s gay. He’s had a parade of women through his life.”
“How does that come into your financial research?” Masuto asked curiously.
“It doesn’t. I read Los Angeles magazine and a few of its lesser companion journals. He’s mentioned frequently. Tell me, why all this interest? What do you know that I don’t know, now that you’ve squeezed all that I do know out of me?”
“Nothing that would be helpful.”
“Have you got something on Saunders? Are you going to bust him? Should we go short on the stock?”
“No way I know of that I can bust him,” Masuto said.
“If you do, give me an edge.”
“I promise,” Masuto said.
Back at the station house, Masuto told Wainwright about his talk with Ishido and Ishido’s conclusions.
“You ask me,” Wainwright said, “your Uncle Ishido is leaping to some pretty dangerous and far out conclusions. Eric Saunders is not nobody. He’s one of the most prominent citizens in our town, nationally known, a man of wealth and power. If one word of our discussion were to leak out of here, Masao, he could sue us right off the face of the map. And he would too. What in hell makes this Ishido so sure of himself?”
“Ishido is hard to explain. You know that he was in the old imperial army. He will never return to Japan, but he also never forgets that he is Japanese. There is some indication upon Ishido’s part that he crossed paths with Saunders somewhere in the East, perhaps in Burma, and that he had a grudge against Saunders.”
“Which would certainly not promote any objectivity on his part.”
“Except for one thing, which worries me and complicates this even further. Last night Ishido either telephoned Saunders or saw him in person. Ishido told him that I knew the man under the pool was Stanley Cutler and that I also knew that Saunders had killed him. You see, tonight, Saunders, Ishido, and I will dine together at Ishido’s club, and I can think of no reason on earth why Saunders should have agreed to this dinner unless Ishido told him what I knew.”
“What in hell does Ishido think he’s up to?”
“He’s playing a game.”
“And where do we come in?”
“I don’t know,” Masuto said slowly.
“But since Saunders agreed, you feel there’s no question but that he’s our man?”
“None.”
“So to come back to the skeleton under the pool, the reason why there was never a report of someone missing is very simple. There never was anyone missing except Cutler, and everyone concluded that he had taken off. Saunders never had to hide. He took the money, laundered it, and appeared on the scene here as a young British millionaire. And there is not a damn thing we can do about it. Then why does he want to meet you?”
“I suppose it’s a conceit. He knows we can’t touch him, and a dangerous game is nothing new to him. Then there’s still our only ace in the hole—Rosita. I think he would like to know something about me. He is black belt karate and probably versed in all of the martial arts. Very often, Westerners who take up the martial art make a kind of pseudo-religion out of it—and I’m sure Ishido told him I have som
e skill in karate.”
“Come off that,” Wainwright said harshly. “No games!”
“The games are there.”
“If you are thinking of fighting Saunders in this goddamn Chinese wrestling art of yours, forget it.”
“Will he forget it?”
“You know, Masao, there’s one thing you damn well better get used to. Criminals go free. Some crimes are punished; a hell of a lot of them are not. There is no way, no way in the world that you could charge Saunders and make it stick. Quite to the contrary, he may be sitting with his lawyers right this minute ready to sue the city for all we’ve got.”
“Not really,” Masuto said. “There isn’t enough money on earth to make Saunders put himself on a witness stand or put me on a witness stand. We can’t do anything, neither can he. It’s a standoff.”
“You know I got to give this to the L.A. cops and to the Inglewood cops,” Wainwright said.
“Why?”
“It’s procedure. You know that, Masao.”
“Suppose they make waves? Suppose they decide to question Saunders?”
“That’s their privilege.”
“Would it hurt to hold off a day or two?”
“Would it help?”
“Maybe,” Masuto said. “Nothing about this case becomes simpler, only more and more complicated. We were sure that Stanley Cutler had murdered the man under the swimming pool. Then the man under the swimming pool became Stanley Cutler, and the killer is someone called Eric Saunders whom neither of us has ever met. Let me take it one step further—”
But Matuso did not take it one step further. The telephone rang. It was Sy Beckman at the hotel, and he said quietly, “Masao, I think both doors into the corridor, Rosita’s and mine, are booby-trapped. I heard some sounds, and I hiked myself up to where I could look over the transom. There’s a steel box sitting in front of each door, and from the look of it, they’re ratchet loaded. I alerted Gellman to keep the help away from the two doors. I thought maybe you and Wainwright should get the L.A.P.D. bomb squad over here and get here yourselves, because I’ll be damned if I know what to do.”
“Is there no way out except through the doors?”
“We’re up three floors, Masao. If those charges are big enough, the whole wing could go. We’re over the pool and the gardens, so you couldn’t even get a fire truck under these windows. It’s a hell of a situation, and if we ever get out of this, I’m going to get Wainwright to slap them with every violation under the sun.”
“Meanwhile, I want you out of there. Make a rope of bedsheets, bedspreads, and blankets and lower Rosita to the ground, and then you slide down yourself. Now. Right now! We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Then Masuto called the hotel and spoke to Gellman. “Oh, it’s great,” Gellman said. “You’ve really done it, sergeant. Just a couple of rooms for a few days, and now I got to explain to the board how come half the hotel was blown away.”
“They haven’t blown anything yet,” Masuto said soothingly. “Just empty that wing and don’t touch the booby traps. That will keep you from facing lawsuits.”
“Beautiful. Now you’re protecting me.”
“I’m trying to.”
“What’s going on?” Wainwright demanded.
“Just let me call the bomb squad and I’ll explain.”
Driving to the Beverly Glen Hotel at top speed, Masuto said, “He uses us, manipulates us, controls us. He got her out of the room. That was all he wanted, but what could I do? What could I do? I couldn’t leave them in there and let both of them die.”
“For Christ’s sake, Masao, nobody’s died yet.”
That was not so. Rosita was dead by the time Masuto or the ambulance reached the hotel. She had been shot three times while Beckman was lowering her from the window, once in the head and twice in the body.
Chapter 13
ERIC
SAUNDERS
As if she were his own daughter, he hid his face to hide his tears. It was not his style to weep over the dead. He observed the routine; the routine was a necessity. Half a mile away were high rise apartments, and within half an hour, the rifle, a beautifully crafted Mauser-type five shot, was found on the rooftop of one of the apartment houses. The rifle was identified by the L.A.P.D. gun expert as a small-shop product, probably made in Italy or France about twenty years before. Masuto was uninterested. Police channels and thoroughness were not made for criminals of this type. Eventually, they would find out who made the gun, who sold it, who bought it, and it would all lead nowhere.
Beckman said, “My God, Masao, I never thought of it. It never occurred to me.”
“I know.”
“I figured those damn bombs were going off any moment, and then after I spoke to you, all I wanted was to get her out of there. She was a lovely kid. I was falling in love with that kid.”
“I know.”
“Masao, just let me get my hands on the bastard who did it—”
The bomb men didn’t want anyone in the hallway where they were working, but Masuto insisted and pushed past the guards.
“Sergeant, it’s off limits, even to you.”
Beckman followed him, as if one could not do penance apart from the other. Stevenson, from the bomb squad, who knew Masuto, explained what they were up against. “Beckman guessed right. It’s ratchet and spring. The contraption is attached with suction cups; it’s wound in and then when it’s flat up against the surface—in this case the door—the pawl latches on the fuse. The slightest movement blows it, and no way to get into it. It’s simple, foolproof, and deadly, and so help me God, Masuto, I don’t know how to handle this one.”
“Unless, of course, there’s no explosive in the metal box.”
“I don’t go in for such guesses. When I see a bomb, I function on the theory that it’s loaded. This one has a clock mechanism as well as the ratchet and pawl. We’ll have to empty the hotel.”
“He had his marksman waiting half a mile away on a rooftop. The only function of that damn box was to get the girl out of the window.”
“I can’t take the chance.”
“The hell with it!” Masuto said. “Come on, Sy, let’s get out of here.”
In the lobby downstairs Gellman stopped Masuto, pleading, “My God, sergeant, what are you doing to me? They’re emptying the hotel, and half of it may be blown to kingdom come. You try to be a good guy, and this is how it ends.”
“It won’t be blown away,” Masuto said tiredly. “I don’t know what else to tell you. I’m sorry this had to happen. The girl is dead, so she’s got the real short end.”
They left the hotel and Beckman said he needed a drink, and Masuto suggested a quiet place in Culver City, where they could sit and talk. Beckman had two double scotches and Masuto drank beer. “I don’t know,” Beckman said, “day and night together—I never met anyone like that kid, just a Mexican girl and an illegal, but the sweetest, kindest kid in the world.”
“Revenge is no good,” Masuto told him. “It solves nothing, satisfies nothing.”
“Goddamn you, Masao, you know who did it!”
“Yes.”
“I want him!”
“We all do. We’re not avenging angels. We’re not terrorists who make our own justice, and we’re not juries. We’re cops.”
“What are you telling me—that we can’t touch him?”
“No, we’ll touch him, even without Rosita. It’s not touching him—it’s trying to make some sense out of this, because right now it makes no damn sense at all.” He went to the telephone and called the Beverly Glen Hotel and asked for the desk. “This is Sergeant Masuto. What’s the situation with the bombs?”
“Duds, sir. They went off a few minutes ago. A couple of firecrackers in each one. No damage to speak of.”
Masuto walked back to the table where Beckman was working at the problem of getting drunk. “Go home, Sy,” Masuto told him. “Go home and finish a bottle and sleep it off.”
“What for? I got a lo
usy marriage. Home—home is to laugh, Masao. I’m not so old. I’m not forty yet. I could have married that Mexican kid and had everything I ever dreamed of having.”
“The only world is right here,” Masuto told him, putting an arm around the big man. “Come on, Sy, I’m going to drive you home.”
“What about Wainwright?”
“I’ll talk to him.”
Masuto dropped Beckman off at his home, and then he drove back to the station and told Wainwright that Beckman was drunk and sleeping it off.
“What in hell do you mean, drunk—it’s two o’clock in the afternoon!”
“I encouraged him. That Mexican kid meant a great deal to him. Stop pushing us. We’re both human.”
“Well, don’t get your ass up. Who’s pushing who?”
“Sorry, so sorry. I want this to be over.”
“I told you to leave it alone and let it be over.”
“Not that way.”
“You think Saunders shot the kid?”
“Himself? No,” Masuto said. “Did he hire the gun? A few hours ago I would have said yes, without any question. Now I don’t know.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
“Tomorrow.”
“You’re still going to see Saunders tonight?”
“Oh, yes. That I would not miss for anything.”
“Be careful, Masao.”
But no, Masuto told himself as he drove away from the police station. He was not threatened, nor was he in the line of fire—unless—no, that must be expelled from his mind. He must clear his mind and know exactly what he would say to his uncle, Naga Orashi. That was Monday when he had seen Naga; what was today? Wednesday? No, Wednesday was the day with the police artist. Today is Thursday, and the whole thing began only six days ago, when the heavy rains undermined a swimming pool and sent it sliding down into a canyon. And since then four more people had died.
He drove into the yard of Naga’s construction company, and there was his wife’s uncle Naga, sitting in his rocking chair, as if only a few minutes had gone by since Masuto had last seen him, nibbling at cold tea rice, caked and threaded through with ginger.
“Have some,” he said to Masuto.