The Case of the One-Penny Orange: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Two)

by Howard Fast

  “That’s beautiful,” said Wainwright. “That’s just beautiful.”

  “What did Beckman get in Germany?”

  “A big, fat nothing.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “At the public library, where you instructed him to spend the afternoon sitting on his ass. It don’t matter that the world goes on. Beckman spends the day in the library.”

  “We hit the jackpot on the London call.”

  “What jackpot? You know that forty years ago a German named Kramer maybe bought a very valuable stamp or maybe he didn’t. That’s one hell of a jackpot. Suppose you explain it to me, and suppose you tell me how I explain the call to Germany. We already knew who Gaycheck was. We got that on the Telex.”

  “You’re upset,” Masuto said gently.

  “Sure I’m upset. We got two murders and we got nothing.”

  “Actually, one — because Haber belongs to the sheriff.”

  “Screw the lousy sheriff and his idiot deputies. We got two, because they’re connected.”

  “I think we have three,” Masuto said, even more gently.

  “What!”

  “If that’s the way you look at it.”

  “What in hell do you mean? We got three murders? What am I, a joke? We got a murder and nobody tells me?”

  “I’m telling you.”

  “All right, all right,” he said, controlling himself and pulling a chair up next to Masuto’s desk. “Suppose you tell me about it, Masao. And make it good.”

  “The name of the victim is Hilda Kramer. She was the mother of Ellen Briggs. It was the Briggses’ house on Camden that was burglarized yesterday.”

  “I know that. Hilda Kramer died of a heart attack.”

  “Apparently she had a bad heart and suffered a thrombosis. I think it was brought on in a struggle with someone who stole the One-Penny Orange from her.”

  “You’re hipped on that One-Penny Orange. The break-in took place yesterday, two days after her death.”

  “I know.”

  “You got any evidence?”

  “None.”

  “But you know who the killer is?”

  “Yes.”

  “The same one who killed Gaycheck?” Wainwright asked sarcastically.

  “No.”

  “Oh? Three murders and three killers.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “You know, Masao,” Wainwright said slowly, “you leave me speechless. It’s the first time, but you leave me speechless.”

  “So sorry.”

  “Okay. Look, Masao, I know you long enough and respect you enough to accept what you say — but it goes no further, not until you can bring me evidence and swear out a warrant and make an arrest. Not one word of this to the press or to anyone. Two murders in one day in Beverly Hills are enough. Three are impossible. Now who is the killer?”

  Masuto shook his head. “Not now. Give me until nine tonight and I’ll pin it down.”

  Whatever Wainwright might have said was interrupted by Masuto’s telephone. He picked it up. It was Beckman, from the library.

  “Masao, I’ve gone through the two years of Der Spiegel they keep on file. Nothing. No picture of Schwartzman or anyone who resembles him.”

  “Is two years all they have?”

  “They have the eight years prior to that packed away in the basement. When I asked about it, they began to groan and whine.”

  “Let them groan and whine. I want you to get it out and go through it, every page.”

  “For God’s sake, Masao, I’ll be there until they close.”

  “I expect you will.” He put down the phone and looked at Wainwright, who said:

  “All right, Masao. Nine o’clock tonight. I’m going home and get a few hours of sleep. You might do the same.”

  “Thank you, but I’m not tired.”

  “Be patient and wait until I retire. You’ll be the boss then.”

  Cora came over as Wainwright stalked away. “What was he whipping you about?”

  “He didn’t sleep last night. That makes him nervous. He wants me to be patient and wait until he retires.”

  “That’ll be the day.”

  “What have you got for me?”

  “From the F.B.I. — big zero. You get nothing from them unless you give them prints to put into their IBM machine. But the good old Texas Rangers came through.”

  “Did they!”

  “Providing,” Cora said, “that your Jack Briggs is the same as John Wesley Briggs. You didn’t even tell me how old he is.”

  “The truth is, I didn’t ask him. About fifty.”

  “Well, that fits. John Wesley Briggs, born in Dallas on the twelfth of March, nineteen twenty-six …”

  “Twelfth of March. What is that called in that silly astrology thing?”

  “It is not silly. Pisces. Don’t knock what you don’t know.”

  “Pisces Productions. Good. Go on.”

  “Three arrests before the age of twenty. One conviction — car stealing, suspended sentence on a juvenile plea.”

  “The others?”

  “Both assaults. Charges dropped.”

  “Anything else?”

  “One nice one that fits in with what you told me. In 1958, he was arrested for what the Rangers call publication of impermissible nudity. Isn’t that cute? In other words, girlie magazines. That was before the lid was taken off pornography.”

  “No conviction?”

  “No conviction. The magazine closed down and the D.A. dropped the charges. After that, Briggs seems to have left Texas. At least, the Rangers have nothing else on him. Rangers. Isn’t that darling? Did I do all right?”

  “You did beautifully,” Masuto said.

  “This darling Ranger I spoke to, he says that if you get him a set of prints, he’ll work on it. Why don’t you send me down there with the prints, Masao?”

  “Because I want you where I can see your sweet face each morning.”

  “I’ll just bet.”

  9

  CLEO

  Accused of having a complex mind, Masuto would protest that his own manner of thinking and being was simple and direct. He was aware that he lived in perhaps the most complex society that the world had ever evolved; his problem was always to find some simple and direct path through the complexity. He sat at his desk staring at the picture he had taken from Ivan Gaycheck’s wallet the day before, the picture of a very pretty girl with straight blond hair. Putting together a jigsaw puzzle, there were only three pieces missing, and the picture of the girl was the only lead he had to one of the pieces, perhaps the key piece. Whereby he told himself that most very pretty girls came to Hollywood to become great stars and ended up waiting tables, selling clothes, turning to welfare, and in not a few cases practicing the world’s oldest profession; but a fair number of them worked in film or television at least once, and in order to work in film or television, one had to join S.A.G., the Screen Actors Guild.

  It was three thirty-five when he parked his car in front of the Screen Actors Guild building on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. He went inside and showed his badge to a stout, unsmiling lady at the reception desk.

  “What I would like,” he said, “is to talk to someone who would know most of the membership by sight.”

  “Wouldn’t we all!”

  “What I mean is that I am looking for someone. I have her picture.” He showed her the picture.

  “Is she a member of the guild?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “Is she wanted for a crime?”

  “She’s not wanted for anything. I only want to talk to her, as part of an investigation.”

  The fat woman sighed. “I’ll see what I can do. What’s her name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The fat woman stared at him in amazement. “Out of sight, Officer! You are a beauty. We only have thirty-three thousand members in this organization, and you want me to tell you who this lady is
. Do you know that some of them never come in here at all? Some of them come in once? Do you know how many look enough like this kid to be her twin sister?” She was indignant and affronted, and her voice rose, decibel by decibel. The telephone operator at the opposite end of the long reception desk called out:

  “Give him the Academy Book and let him look through it.”

  A third woman, who had been sitting in one of the chairs in the reception room, picked up a book as large as two telephone directories and carried it over to Masuto.

  “Eighty-five percent of our members are unemployed,” the fat woman told him. “They could be anywhere.”

  A fourth woman came out of the inside room, a big room where a dozen men and women sat at desks and typewriters. “He’s cute,” she observed. “Tall, dark, handsome — but there’s no work for Orientals, no work for women, no work for anyone but cops.”

  “He’s a cop,” said the fat woman.

  “You’re putting me on.”

  “Why don’t you let him go inside and show his picture around?” the telephone operator asked.

  “Because it goes against my grain to cooperate with the fuzz.”

  The woman from inside took the picture from Masuto and stared at it. “I’ve seen this kid.”

  “Everyone’s seen her,” the fat woman said.

  Still staring at the photo, she took Masuto by the hand and led him into the big room. “Show it,” she said. “Maybe someone knows her.”

  The fourth desk drew a response. The thin wistful girl who sat there in front of a computer nodded and said, “I’ve seen her.”

  “Do you know her name?” Masuto asked eagerly.

  “I can’t even remember where I’ve seen her. Wait a minute. Yes. Absolutely. I saw her at a party up in the hills. Freddy Wolchek brought her.”

  “You don’t know her name?”

  She shook her head.

  “And where do I find this Freddy Wolchek?”

  “Look, Officer, he’s a nice guy. I don’t want to send him any grief.”

  “I only want a lead to the girl.”

  “Okay — what time is it?”

  “Almost four.”

  “If he’s not working, he’ll be at Schwab’s. Sitting at the counter, I guess.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Big, heavy. He must be six-two. He has a reddish beard.”

  “And if he’s working?”

  “Who knows? Any one of the studios — I should be so lucky.”

  “Do you have an address for him?”

  “Janey!” she called out. “Get Freddy Wolchek’s address for me, would you?”

  Schwab’s, on Sunset Boulevard just east of Crescent Heights, was only a few minutes from the Screen Actors Guild. It was, as Masuto knew, not simply a drugstore but a sort of social center and gossip and information exchange for actors who were not working. Masuto paced a long lunch counter, spotted three bearded men, chose the largest, whose beard was tinged with red, and sat down next to him. The red beard was bent moodily over a cup of coffee.

  “You’re Freddy Wolchek?”

  The red beard nodded without looking at him.

  “Tracy Levitt, over at the Screen Actors Guild, said I might find you here.”

  Now the red beard looked at him.

  “I’m Sergeant Masuto, Beverly Hills police.”

  “I’m clean,” the red beard said. “I’m so clean I’m antiseptic. I don’t even have the price of a joint. I’m Honest John. I never even been busted, never.”

  Masuto showed him the photo. “You know the girl?”

  He stared at the photo and then nodded slowly, “That’s Cleo. What has she done, knocked over a bank?”

  “Does she knock over banks?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her. She’s bad medicine.”

  “Cleo what?”

  “Damned if I know. She never told me.”

  “Tracy said you dated her. You brought her to a party.”

  “I didn’t bring her. I picked her up there. That was a night. She is bad medicine, old buddy. She is a cokey. She is crazy — crazy.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Didn’t you take her home?”

  “She took me, old buddy. No, I didn’t take her home. I lost her somewhere that night. Tell you what, though — I know where she works.”

  “Oh?”

  “If you call it work. At least that’s what she told me. I never checked it out. You know that little sort of beat-up shopping center in Topanga Canyon, maybe halfway between the Valley and the ocean?”

  “I know the place,” Masuto said.

  “Well, there’s a massage parlor there, it’s called the Pink Flamingo. She massages. So she told me. I don’t like to call any kid a hooker, because I’ve known some hookers, they were a damn sight nicer kids than a lot of Beverly Hills dames, but this Cleo …” He shook his head. “She is bad medicine.”

  Topanga Canyon is one of those strange anomalies that one finds in the vast spread of Los Angeles, a wild, beautiful, sparsely settled gash in the Santa Monica Mountains, cutting through from the San Fernando Valley to the Pacific. From Schwab’s Masuto drove over Laurel Canyon Pass into the San Fernando Valley, picking up the Ventura Freeway and driving west. It was still before five o’clock when he turned off the freeway and drove into Topanga Canyon, yet in spite of the fact that this was late spring, the day-light long and mellow, the canyon was already shadowed, the deep cleft gathering the ominous gloom of night hours before night would fall.

  There were only three cars in the little shopping center when he pulled up in front of the Pink Flamingo and parked. He had never noticed the Pink Flamingo before, but it occurred to him that there was nothing very unusual about a massage parlor in Topanga Canyon, which had everything else from communes to sensitivity centers and nudist camps and TM temples.

  He walked to the door, rang the bell, and waited. After a few moments the door was opened by a small Oriental man. “Massage?” He smiled. Masuto walked in without replying. The small man studied him. “You want nice massage?”

  Masuto had thought he was Korean, but the accent was Japanese. “I want to see Cleo,” Masuto said.

  “Ah so. You know Cleo. She very nice. Very clever. Fourteen dollar, please.”

  They stood in a tiny, dimly lit entryway. Down a narrow hallway, Masuto could see the entrances to six cubicles, each with its own small drape. The sound of two women talking; a shrill laugh; some low groans, which might have indicated that a massage was proceeding satisfactorily.

  “I’m not here for a massage,” Masuto said sourly.

  “No? No massage? No good then. No screwing here. I run clean, legal place.”

  “You run a pesthole, you miserable creature,” Masuto said in Japanese. “I am a policeman. I want to see Cleo.”

  “No Cleo here!” His voice was shrill.

  “You will speak in your native tongue! Do you take me for a fool?” Masuto snapped at him, still speaking Japanese. “Where is the girl I want? Either tell me or I’ll break you in two, you wretched piece of offal.”

  “Inside — in the last booth.”

  Masuto strode down the hallway and flung back the curtain on the last booth. It was empty except for a massage table and a chair. Then he heard the sound of a door closing. As he turned back to the front, his way was blocked by a massively fat blond woman in a loose housecoat. She began to curse him.

  “Lousy Jap pig! You lousy yellow mother …”

  He pushed past her. The proprietor had disappeared. He ran to the door, flung it open, and dashed out. One of the three cars he had seen there, a red MG convertible, roared out of the parking lot and onto Topanga Boulevard, heading south. Masuto raced to his car, fumbled in his pocket for the key, cursing his stupidity, then got it started and swung around into Topanga. The red MG was already out of sight. He pushed his gas pedal down to the floor, got the Datsun up to fifty, managing somehow to hold the l
ight car on the narrow, twisting road.

  He turned on his radiophone and put out an A.P.B. call: “Red MG convertible. Driven by a girl. Name of Cleo. Blond hair, blue eyes, about twenty-five. Hold for questioning. I’m proceeding south on Topanga. She’s about a mile ahead of me.”

  He was so intent on the road ahead that he heard the motorcycles before he saw them, and then they were on either side of him, two on his left and one on his right. Each rider carried a three-foot length of cycle chain clenched in gloved hands. He heard the chains crash against the body of the Datsun, and then his right-hand rear window was shattered. He bore down on his gas pedal, and still they were alongside him, systematically smashing his car to rubble. A chain end turned his windshield into a maze of cracks, the left-hand front window smashed — miraculously, none of the flying glass had cut him yet — blows thudded against the body of the car, again on his windshield, and he felt the glass shards on his face, heard the crazy drumming noise of the chains all over the car.

  He did the only thing he could think of doing, instinctively. He stood on his brakes and turned his car violently to the left. The brakes screaming, the car almost turning over, he smashed into the metal guard rail, bracing himself with all his strength. The guard rail bent and bowed out over the precipice below, but it held, and at the same time the two motorcycles on his left crashed into his car, the first one striking the front of his motor, the rider flung like a thrown ball over the guard rail and down fifty feet into the rocky cleft of Topanga. The second motorcycle struck the back of the Datsun, and the rider was flung over the car and landed on the pavement.

  The door on Masuto’s left was bent out of shape and locked closed. He slid over the seat, pushing aside the broken glass, opened the right-hand door, and got out. Blood was running down onto his shirt, and as he touched his cheeks he realized that he had tiny glass cuts on his face and hands. In front of him, the second rider lay in a pool of blood on the pavement. No time to think or to know how badly he was hurt. The third motorcycle was roaring down on him. He leaped back and dodged the swung chain. The cyclist braked to a stop about fifty feet down the road, dismounted, and advanced on Masuto, swinging the chain. His face covered by his blue windmask and helmet, his body encased in black leather, he was a nightmare man-at-arms out of another world; and to increase the nightmare effect, two cars drove by, slowing without stopping.