The Monet Murders: A Mystery

by Terry Mort

  “INS for short. L.A.? Are you kidding? Sure.”

  “Know anyone there?”

  “No. But I can make some calls.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  Something Perry had said triggered that call. The girls, and I use that term loosely when it came to Della, had said the Japanese houseboy seemed ill at ease and nervous, and Perry had suggested he might be an illegal. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. But he was at least a foreign national, which meant that the Feds could have some legitimate interest in questioning him. Checking his visa and that sort of thing. So if I somehow made a connection with the local INS boys, maybe we could pay a visit to the Watson place when Watson was at the office. While the INS guys were sweating Hirohito, I could slide into the drawing room and make the switch.

  It was a decent plan, but it had a flaw—I’d need to get friendly fast with the INS, friendly enough to have them do me a slightly irregular favor. True, they might bag an illegal, but that was a long shot. Marion would have done it. Kowalski might have done it. But I was new to the INS. I doubted they’d do it.

  No. It was a bad idea, what Perry called The Chinese Way.

  But pretty soon a good, or at least better, idea pulled into the station, right on schedule. Perry and I could pose as INS. All we needed was a couple of believable ID cards. That way, Perry could have the pleasure of terrifying the poor houseboy while I made the switch. No complications with the Feds, no time wasted.

  I called Perry back.

  “You remember when you said ninety percent of the Japanese coming up from Mexico were illegals?”

  “Sure. That figure may be low.”

  “How do they get jobs then?”

  “Phony visas, of course.”

  “That’s what I thought. You wouldn’t happen to know anyone who puts these phony papers together, would you?”

  “What do you think?” He sounded mildly insulted. I suppose it was like asking an English professor if he’d heard of Shakespeare.

  “Sorry.”

  “There’s a guy in Pedro named Blinky Malone who specializes in that sort of thing.” Like many Angelenos, he pronounced it “Peedro.”

  “Friend of yours?”

  “We’ve done business. Leave it at that.”

  “Why do they call him Blinky?” I figured Perry would appreciate being fed a straight line.

  “I don’t know, but if I were you I wouldn’t ask him.”

  “I’ll remember that. Could you arrange to have Blinky whip up a couple of government ID cards?”

  “Sure. What would you like? FBI? U.S. Navy? Driver’s License? Girl Scout merit badge?”

  “Immigration and Naturalization Service.”

  “How soon do you need them?”

  “Soon as possible.”

  “Like today?”

  “Today would be good.”

  “Might cost a little extra, for the rush job.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “One for me and one for you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay. What names?”

  “Anything but ours.”

  That afternoon, Perry came by with two ID cards, each showing an impressive seal of the United States and the words “Immigration and Naturalization Service” embossed on a green background that featured an eagle with a wide wingspread. It was, as usual, fast service from Perry and his network of shadowy characters. Whether the cards were copies of actual INS ID’s or just the creation of Blinky’s fertile imagination didn’t really matter. They only had to fool one rather nervous Japanese houseboy. Which should be easy enough. Each card featured a picture of some guy who might have been me and Perry. The pictures were intentionally blurry, and the likenesses were close enough. The name on my card was Herman Clapsaddle. Perry’s said Emile Phengfisch.

  “I always liked the name Emile,” he said.

  “Yes, but what about these last names?”

  “Well, that’s kind of an inside joke. I knew a guy in the Navy name of Herman Clapsaddle. Pennsylvania Dutchman from around Lancaster. He married a girl named Ethel Phengfisch from Blue Ball, and I used to tell him he married the only girl in the world who was happy to change her name to Clapsaddle.”

  “I see.”

  “You said not to use our real names.”

  “Right.”

  “So, Agent Clapsaddle, what’s the plan?”

  That night around eight o’clock, we were parked on the street opposite the gate of Charles Watson’s house. Perry was dressed in his only suit, a garment that had been stylish at some point but now looked a little small on him. And shiny. His hand-painted tie looked like something Monet might have produced on a bad day, but in a sense it was appropriate, given our mission. Taken all together, Perry looked like just the kind of low-level G-man who’d love to roust a foreigner.

  Looking at the wall from where we were parked, I was glad we weren’t going to try to scale that thing. It was smooth plaster over brick, and the top was rounded-off concrete, and you could see the glass shards glistening in the light of the streetlamp. There was an iron gate closing off the entrance.

  Around eight fifteen, Watson’s car came down the driveway and pulled up to the gate, which swung open when Watson activated a switch from his car. He was driving a freshly polished Cadillac convertible, and you could almost see the cloud of cologne trailing behind as he pulled out and sped off down the road. The gate swung shut behind him. I almost felt sorry for the poor sap—going to meet his dream girl, who, like most dream girls, wouldn’t be there when he arrived. “Fled is that music . . .” and so on.

  We waited another fifteen minutes or so just to make sure Watson didn’t come back for some reason. It was unlikely. The way he’d peeled out of his driveway showed he was in a hurry.

  When we figured the coast was clear, we got out and walked to the gate. There was a small box mounted on the wall with a telephone inside. I picked it up.

  “Yes, please?” said the voice. It was obviously Hirohito. I won’t try to imitate his way of speaking. Reading dialectic has always seemed to me to be pretty tedious, except in Mark Twain or Charles Dickens. They can pull it off. I won’t try.

  “Federal officers. Open the gate.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Mr. Watson no home,” he said, finally.

  “It’s not Watson we want to talk to. It’s you. Your name’s Satchiko, isn’t it?” The girls had pulled that out of him.

  “I am Satchiko, yes.”

  “Well, then, open the gate.”

  There was another pause.

  “You wish to speak to me?” he said, just to be sure, or maybe buying time.

  “That’s right. We’re from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. It’s a routine check. Nothing to worry about.”

  More silence.

  “Come back tomorrow. Too late now.”

  “Listen, pal. Either open this gate and let us in or we call for backup, and you’ll have to explain to your boss why his gate got smashed in.”

  “I do nothing wrong. My papers good.”

  “Maybe. But we’re here to check, and we’re going to do it one way or the other. You can cooperate, or you can go downtown in handcuffs. Believe me, you won’t like it downtown. You may be a gardener, but downtown you’ll learn there are other ways to use a rubber hose. So it’s either the easy way or the hard way. We don’t care which.”

  He digested this.

  “Not in trouble?”

  “Not unless you don’t open this gate. I’ll give you ten seconds.”

  He thought it over some more.

  “Wait, please.”

  We heard the buzzer sound on the gate, and it swung slowly open. We walked up the driveway to the house.

  “Nice work, chief,” said Perry. “I liked the part about the rubber hose.”

  That didn’t surprise me.

  The front door was one of those heavy imitation Spanish numbers. As a matter of fact, the whole house was
imitation Spanish. Of course, most of the houses were imitation something or other. The bigger the house, the better the imitation, usually, although there were some godawful-looking mansions here and there. You wouldn’t be surprised to see something with a gothic tower attached to a half-timbered “Jolly Olde England” cottage. As often as not, these things sprouted up because some producer had given carte blanche to a wife just to get her off his back.

  You can say that money can’t buy taste; most of the people who say that don’t have any—money, that is. But there’s no denying that it can buy you a scared-looking Japanese houseboy-cum-gardener like the one peeking cautiously from behind a crack in the front door after we rang the bell. We flashed him our INS ID cards and pushed on in.

  The Rottweiler was lying next to a fireplace in the main hall just beyond the entrance. He lifted his head and growled a little, but then went back to sleep. I guess he figured it was all right as long as Satchiko let us in. In the fireplace, gas flames flickered around ceramic logs; the fire was for atmosphere, not heat. There was a stuffed moose head above the mantel. He looked serene and indifferent to his fate. I had a quick mental image of the argument between Watson and his wife when he brought that thing home. It wasn’t the kind of thing she’d have liked. I imagine that like most married couples, they had made arrangements. In this case, the arrangement allowed hubby to decorate the main entrance hall like something out of Teddy Roosevelt’s game room, while she spent thousands on French paintings and hung them in what they called the drawing room.

  Satchiko bowed low in the approved fashion and smiled nervously.

  “Not in trouble?” he asked.

  “Probably not. We just want to see your visa.”

  “Have here,” he said and dug in his pocket to find a wrinkled bit of paper. Apparently he kept it with him like some sort of talisman.

  Perry took one look at it and winked.

  “One of Blinky’s better efforts,” he said to me.

  Well, that figured. Of course, we didn’t care whether it was legitimate or not.

  “Well, Satchiko,” I said. “This looks real, but we still need to ask you some questions. Agent Phengfisch here will conduct the interview. Where can we have some privacy?”

  “Here. In main hall. By fire. Please.”

  “Is there anyone else in the house?”

  “No. Just me.”

  “Well, we’ll see about that.”

  He bowed again and led us to some overstuffed chairs near the fire.

  “Now here’s how this is going to work, Satchiko. Agent Phengfisch will ask you some questions. Meanwhile, I have to have a look around the rest of the house to make sure there are no illegal aliens living here.”

  “No one but me,” he said, a little alarmed. “Like I say.”

  “I’m sure you’re telling the truth, but we have to look anyway. It’s routine. Sit there with Agent Phengfisch and answer his questions, unless you’d like to go downtown and answer them there.”

  “No. No, thank you. Here better.”

  “You got that right,” said Perry.

  Perry sat down in a chair opposite Satchiko, who perched on the edge of his seat like a bird contemplating flight. He was sweating and looked terrified. Well, given Perry’s evil grin and the fact that his papers were phony, some nervousness was understandable. I felt a little sorry for him, but we wouldn’t be there very long, with luck, so his ordeal would be short.

  “Agent Phengfisch, I’m going to check the rest of the house.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Perry.

  I headed down the hall toward the rear of the house. I could hear Perry saying “Now see here, Tojo,” but pretty soon I was poking my head into the rooms that led off the main hall. There was a library impressively stocked with leather-bound volumes and one of those curving library ladders that made me green with envy. The whole room did, in fact. I wondered whether either of the Watsons had read any of these books, or whether their decorator had simply bought them by the yard. I had been in one Hollywood mansion where the library was actually a bar, with the booze and all the fixings hidden behind the bookshelves. Of course, that had been during the recent unlamented period known as Prohibition.

  Next in the hallway was Watson’s office—a standard affair with leather furniture and a French Empire-style desk all filigreed and carved and obviously expensive, but too ornate for my taste. I went in for a moment and looked through the papers on the desk, but there was nothing of any interest to me. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but whatever it was, I didn’t find it.

  Finally I came to the drawing room, the scene of the murder and suicide. Just in case there were cameras, I slipped a silk stocking over my head before I went in. The stocking had Myrtle’s scent on it, which made something in my abdomen do a happy turnover. I switched on the lights and looked at the carpet for traces of the killings, but of course there weren’t any. Watson had no doubt replaced the bloody rug. Still, it gave me a queer feeling to see the place, knowing that the woman who had been in my office not very long ago had been stretched out on this very floor with a bullet in her brain. Had she really killed herself? For love? If so, what a waste. As for Wilbur, well, I hadn’t known him.

  As advertised, the Monet was above the mantel. I put on a pair of surgeon’s rubber gloves and then carefully checked for wires that might be connected to the picture frame—wires that might be part of the security system. I couldn’t see any. Thankfully, I didn’t see any cameras, but that was no excuse for dawdling about making the switch.

  I stood on a stool and removed the painting from above the mantel. I had the other copy in my briefcase. I fumbled a little getting the picture out of the frame, and when I replaced it with the one I’d brought, I didn’t worry too much about getting all the fastenings secure in the back. One or two would hold the thing. Even so, it took a few minutes to get the painting straight and secure. While I was at it, I compared the two pictures, and for the life of me I couldn’t see much, if any, difference. Well, that was all to the good. If I couldn’t tell them apart, Watson probably wouldn’t notice the exchange. It would take someone like Bunny to see what made one better than the other, or at least different. It did occur to me, though, that this picture in my hand might actually be the real thing—something worth a hundred grand. And I was reminded of something Sergeant Kowalski had said—the human race seemed to be getting dumber by the year.

  Finally I finished making the switch. I put the new painting in my briefcase, along with the rubber gloves and silk stocking, and then hustled back to the main hall. I was surprised to see Satchiko leaning back in his chair and smiling. Perry was also apparently in a jovial mood. Satchiko shot to his feet and bowed when he saw me, but he didn’t lose his much more relaxed expression and manner. He stuck out his hand to show me his visa. At the top Perry had written: “This guy’s OK. Emile Phengfisch, INS.”

  “Paper good now,” said Satchiko.

  “Yes. Congratulations. Welcome to America.”

  “Thank you.” Another bow.

  “Well, that about finishes our business here,” I said. “Now, one word of warning, Satchiko—don’t mention this to anyone. The INS is a secret organization. You could get in real trouble if you tell anyone about our visit tonight. And I do mean anyone. Understand?”

  “Yes. No tell no one.”

  “Including your boss.”

  “Him especially,” he said. There was something strange about the way he said that, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  “Good. Now if you’ll open the gate for us, we’ll be on our way.”

  We shook hands and he bowed some more. And we left.

  “I assume you got it,” Perry said as we were walking back to the car.

  “Yep. No problem. Thanks for your help.”

  “Glad to do it.”

  “Seems like you and Satchiko got pretty chummy there. I’m surprised.”

  “Oh, well, he seemed harmless enough. I spent a minute or so pre
tending to study his visa, and when I signed it, he relaxed.”

  “What a nice guy you are.”

  “That’s what everybody says. I tell you what, though. There’s something fishy going on in that house.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, after I signed his visa and he relaxed, I kind of casually brought up the question of the killings. Sort of asked if it was spooky living there. That kind of thing.”

  “And?”

  “He got funny and nervous again. Said ‘Know nothing,’ in a way that made me think he really did know something.”

  “About the shootings?”

  “Who knows? But these guys are sneaky little bastards. They’re good at hiding and watching. Maybe he saw something.”

  “But he clammed up when you mentioned it.”

  “Right. So I changed the subject. Didn’t want to scare him off. If he does know something useful, we’ll want to be able to find him when the time comes.”

  “Interesting. Sounds like you should be the private dick, and I should be running boats.”

  “No, thanks. Private dicks don’t make squat.”

  I wondered what Satchiko knew—and why it scared him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  First thing in the morning, I called Bunny and told him I had the other Monet.

  “Well done, Thomas!” he said. I had to remember that, to Bunny, I was Thomas Parke D’Invilliers, although he knew that wasn’t quite my real name. “How did you manage it?”

  “Professional secret,” I said.

  “I understand. Some things are better left unspoken. I have to remind myself of that, now and then. Bring it over any time this morning. I have a conference with a lady who is interested in the arts, but that will be over lunch. Under normal circumstances I would ask you to join us, but our business is rather delicate.”

  “To un-speak something that was better left unspoken?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I suppose a suspicious husband is involved in some way.”

  “Well, as it happens the ‘maritus cuckoldus’ is not always so asleep at the switch as one would like. Well, see you soon.”