The Monet Murders: A Mystery

by Terry Mort

  I hadn’t heard anything from Bunny, but I assumed the tests he wanted to run would take a little time, probably involve some lab work, so I wasn’t concerned. For the time being, I didn’t think Watson would notice the difference in his Monet.

  And, as it turned out, he didn’t; nor would he ever.

  The news was on the radio. They’d found him stuffed in the trunk of his car out on the top floor of the airport parking garage. I guess he’d been in there for a couple of days, baking in the sun, and someone finally noticed. He’d been shot in the back of the head with a small-caliber bullet, so his face wasn’t disfigured. Not from the bullet wound, anyway. The report said he was wearing a polka-dot ascot.

  I called Kowalski.

  “You heard, huh?” he asked.

  “Just now. Any ideas?”

  “Lots of ideas. Not much in the way of leads. It was a professional job, though. Not much doubt about that. No prints on the car. Everything was clean.”

  “Mob hit.”

  “Looks that way. You know any reason why he got in Dutch with the bad boys?”

  “I heard he was into Tony Scungilli for a hundred grand in gambling debts.”

  “Interesting, but it doesn’t fit. As a general rule, the guy who’s owed the money wants the other guy to stay alive long enough to pay up. He may rough the guy up a little, as a reminder, but it makes no sense to kill him.”

  “I see your point.”

  “We hauled in the Jap houseboy to see if he had anything to say.”

  “And?”

  “He didn’t know anything. Watson took off a couple of days ago and that was the last Tojo saw of him. He kept showing me his phony visa that some guy named Emile Phengfisch signed. You know anything about that?”

  “Can’t say I do.”

  “Well, turns out there’s no one named Emile Phengfisch working for INS.”

  “It’s a wicked world. What’d you do with him? The houseboy, I mean.”

  “Let him go. We’ve got enough to do.”

  Well, I didn’t have enough to do, so I figured I’d have another talk with Satchiko.

  I didn’t waste any time getting myself over to Watson’s house. I was afraid Satchiko might take off. After all, he didn’t have a job anymore. And once he disappeared, there’d be no finding him. I was sure of that.

  When I got to Watson’s gate and picked up the telephone, I was relieved to hear Satchiko’s voice on the other end.

  “Satchiko. This is Agent Clapsaddle again. You remember me?”

  “Yes. Remember.”

  “Good. I need to have another quick chat with you. There’s no trouble.”

  “Not in trouble?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  He buzzed the gate open, and this time I drove up the driveway.

  He met me at the door and bowed.

  “Mr. Watson dead,” he said.

  “I heard. Very sad. That’s not why I’m here.”

  “Police talk to me.”

  “I know.”

  “Come in, please.”

  We sat down in the same chairs in front of the fireplace. He perched nervously on the edge of his chair.

  “Satchiko, you remember that sad day when Mrs. Watson shot the burglar and then committed suicide?”

  He nodded slightly.

  “That was a strange thing to do, wasn’t it? Almost unbelievable.”

  “Yes. Very strange.”

  “Do you really believe it happened that way?”

  He adopted the inscrutability of the Orient and said nothing.

  “Did you see any of what happened?”

  “No see nothing.”

  “Maybe. But what do you think happened?”

  “No think.”

  I paused and lit a cigarette, a Lucky Strike. I don’t like to smoke, but it’s a good way to inject silence into an interrogation. I looked at him for a moment, using my official government face.

  “How would you like to go back home?” I asked. “Back to Japan?”

  “Would like. But no money.”

  “Well, you’re in luck. You see, the INS has a program that pays the passage of some foreign nationals. Passage home.”

  He brightened up considerably at that notion.

  “Sound good to me. Yes, please.”

  “There is one condition, though. The people we select have to provide some useful service to the government.”

  “Me only gardener and houseboy.”

  “I know. But we think you may be able to provide us with some information. And if you can, you will earn the passage money. Okay?”

  “I try. But can promise nothing.”

  “Fair enough. Let me tell you a story, and then you can tell me what you think about it afterwards. Okay?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t sound enthusiastic.

  “Here’s the story. On the evening that Mrs. Watson and her friend Wilbur died, a man came to the house. He didn’t come to the front door, but through the French doors into the drawing room. He was wearing gloves. And maybe a mask. When he came into the room, he hid himself behind the drapes and waited there.

  “Pretty soon, Wilbur arrived. He came in the same way, through the French doors. Mrs. Watson must have been expecting him, because a moment later she came into the room with a gun in her hand. She saw Wilbur. Maybe they argued for a while. Then she shot him three times. At that point, the man behind the drapes stepped out and frightened Mrs. Watson. She dropped the gun. The man picked it up, put it to her temple, and pulled the trigger. She dropped to the floor, and the man put the gun in her hand and left.

  “Well? What do you think of that story?”

  He said nothing for a minute or more. I puffed on the Lucky and watched him struggle. He wanted the money, but he hated getting involved.

  “You know, Satchiko, if you can verify my story, you could have the money and be out of here this very afternoon.”

  “What means ‘verify’?”

  “Tell me whether the story is true or not.”

  He nodded slightly.

  “Not true,” he said finally.

  “No?”

  “Not exact.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Two men,” he said.

  “There were two men hiding in the room?”

  “Yes. Saw from outside. Whole thing. Through French doors. Hide in bushes.”

  “But one of them did kill Mrs. Watson and then put the gun in her hand.”

  “Yes. Like you say.”

  “And she shot Wilbur? Not one of the men?”

  “Yes. Like you say.”

  “Then the two men left.”

  “Yes. Climb over wall. Heard one man yell. Get caught on glass. Scratch ass.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  “Want no trouble. Visa phony. Go into guest house and hide. Police come when Mr. Watson come home. He call police.”

  “Did he seem upset when he found the bodies?”

  “Don’t know. Hiding in guest house whole time.”

  Hard to blame him.

  “Well, Satchiko, you have been a big help.”

  “Earn money?”

  “Yes. One hundred dollars.” I counted out five twenties and handed them over.

  He smiled, revealing two gold teeth. That was the last I ever saw of him.

  I went back to the office and called Bunny.

  “Have you heard the news?” I asked.

  “About Watson? Yes. Shocking business. They say it’s a mob-related assassination.”

  “That’s the way it looks.”

  “I gather those kinds of crimes are rarely solved.”

  “You gather correctly.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Yes. Too bad. I wonder if he had any heirs. There’s the matter of the Monet to consider.”

  “I don’t think that will be a problem. The second painting is definitely a forgery.”

  “Real
ly! You’re sure.”

  “Positive. As I said, we did some tests on the wooden stretchers, the canvas, and the actual paint. Everything dates from the last year or so. The forger was very clever, of course, and very talented. But no one can fool scientific analysis.”

  “So it’s worthless.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. Someone might want it as a copy, of course. A few dollars. Something like that.”

  “What should we do with it?”

  “If I were you, I’d hang it in my office. As a memento.”

  “Do you have any idea at all of where the original might be?”

  “None whatever, I’m afraid. I made a few discreet calls to my contacts in the private-placement business, but none of them had heard of a Monet being shopped around or sold. Of course, they may have been hiding something, since that is the nature of their business. But if so, we’ll never know about it. The painting could be anywhere in the world even as we speak. These deals happen quickly. It may be another hundred years or so before it surfaces. If then.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Yes. Too bad. Shall I send the forgery around to your office?”

  “I guess.”

  “It’ll take a couple of days. The canvas is still a trifle damp from where we applied the analytic solutions. It’s still at the laboratory.” He pronounced all five syllables.

  “Well, there’s certainly no hurry.”

  “No, I suppose not. Well, why don’t you stop by the office later this afternoon? We’ll have a drink to mark the ending of the case.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Good. Say around five-ish.”

  Next I called Kowalski and brought him up to date on the painting and, more importantly, on Satchiko’s statement.

  “No kidding?” he asked. “You got the Jap to talk?”

  “He sang like Madame Butterfly.”

  “I’ll send a car for him right away.”

  I didn’t mention the hundred bucks or the very strong suspicion that Satchiko would be long gone by this time. It didn’t matter to me one way or the other. He’d never be able to identify the two gunmen, so his testimony was not worth much, now that we knew what actually had happened.

  “So the lady killed the boyfriend,” said Kowalski, more or less to himself, “and the gangsters killed her and made it look like a suicide. It all makes sense—a hell of a lot more sense than the idea that she killed herself after plugging lover boy. She was a professional hit, of course, so that brings Watson into the picture. He must have hired the gunmen to get rid of his wife. Why? Was she that big a pain in the ass?”

  “Maybe. But I think the real reason is that Watson was deep in debt to the mob for gambling. I’ll bet if you check his financial records, you’ll find he was pretty well tapped out. So he arranged with Wilbur to paint a copy of the last valuable—and easily sold—asset he had.”

  “The flower pot.”

  “Right. She found out about it and probably threatened him some way or other. Divorce, alimony, insurance fraud, the full catastrophe. So she had to go. There was no other way. Watson was hemmed in.”

  “Why’d she plug lover boy?”

  “Hell hath no fury.”

  “Yeah, I heard that. I imagine Watson set the whole thing up by calling Wilbur and telling him to come to the house. If his wife didn’t kill him, the two gangsters would have. But she saved them the trouble.”

  “So then the mob boys got rid of Watson because he was the only one who could put the finger on them.”

  “Something like that. Maybe he tried to blackmail them to get out from under his debts. Maybe he had already sold the real painting, got his money, and paid off his debts, so that he could be safely put out of the way. That way, the hit men would be protected.”

  “That points the finger toward Tony Scungilli.”

  “Looks that way. I doubt we’ll ever know.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I’d like to haul him in and ask a few questions, but he’s too well connected to the powers that be. He’d be back on the street in a second or two, and I’d be checking parking meters.”

  “Even with your college education?”

  “Especially with my college education.”

  “What are you going to do about the newspaper boys? Tell them the truth?”

  “Why? Right now, we got a murder/suicide between pissed-off lovers. Very simple. Then we got a mob hit on a guy who got mixed up with some bad boys he owed money to. Two separate crimes, both easy to understand and put to bed. The fact that two of the victims happen to be married is one of those coincidences out of Dickinson.”

  “Dickens.”

  “Him, too. We’ll make a show of looking for the Watson hit men, but nobody expects us to come up with anything there. The moral of the Watson story is, you welsh on a gangster, you end up in a trunk. The end.”

  “Nice and neat.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “Not really.”

  “Good. Now don’t go selling your story to one of these gossip magazines. They’d love something like this, but it would make things untidy.”

  “Untidy?”

  “That’s right. Cops like things to be tidy. Means less paperwork.”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  “Glad to hear it. Well, as my old man used to say, ya done good. I appreciate the help. You may go far in this business.”

  “I don’t know. I’m thinking of getting out of it altogether. Maybe take up writing for the movies.”

  “Well, nobody ever accused you of being short on bullshit, so maybe it’ll work out.”

  A week later I got the copy of the Monet. Bunny had it delivered to the office. As he said, there was a sheet of paper pasted firmly on the back saying that this was just a copy, worth next to nothing.

  I hung it next to the Barbasol calendar and looked at it for a while, wondering.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The movie Myrtle was in was called The Desert Prince. They shot it outside Yuma, Arizona, where all those sand dunes are—just across the river on the California side. It took them a couple of weeks. Manny Stairs was the producer and Catherine Moore was one of the harem girls. Rita Lovelace was also in the movie. Myrtle stole the show, though. She played a White Russian princess who had been kidnapped by a desert sheik. Or something like that. It made no sense, but it didn’t need to.

  Manny was delighted with Myrtle. She smoldered on screen like nobody’s business, and the rumor was that she was so alluring that her co-star, Arturo Lopez (né Jimmy Gardner) was almost tempted to give up trolling for sailors. Manny was considering having the two of them become the studio’s latest lovers, strictly for the movie-magazine crowd. I didn’t mind. Nothing real would come of that.

  When the movie finished shooting, we gave a party at the beach house in Malibu. Manny and Catherine came. So did Rita Lovelace. I invited Ethel and her husband, but they had something else to do. It was just as well. I really didn’t need to have four former and current lovers at one clambake. Perry and Della were there, along with Hobey and his new flame, Hedda Gabler. Hobey and Manny got along pretty well, and Hobey even managed to extract a promise of a meeting to pitch a new movie idea. Of course, the ever-generous Catherine had a lot to do with arranging that. She told me she had a soft spot for Hobey, and she said it with a straight face.

  I also invited Bunny, since he was between other men’s wives at the moment, and I thought he and Rita might hit it off, which of course they did.

  Bunny made quite a stir when he pulled up in a shiny new Rolls-Royce. The grille alone looked like something from Cartier’s window. And the interior smelled like old money.

  “Nice car,” I said.

  “Isn’t it?” He didn’t seem in the least embarrassed. “Just picked it up yesterday. Of course, it is rather ostentatious for a university professor to be driving around in. But I couldn’t resist. Such perfection of design. I think of it as a present from my dear recently deceased maiden aunt. She
was kind enough to remember me in her will.”

  “Lucky you,” I said.

  “Yes. I agree.”

  “You’re about to get luckier.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. This gal coming over here dressed in almost nothing at all is Rita Lovelace. She’s by herself tonight.”

  Rita was drawn to the Rolls like a moth to the proverbial flame. She sashayed up, her bathing suit a mere suggestion of cloth. Impure thoughts came to me, and to Bunny, from the look of him.

  “Charming name,” Bunny said, as he kissed Rita’s hand.

  “Thank you,” she positively cooed. “I’ve heard so much about you. From Bruno.”

  “Who?”

  “She means me,” I said. “A professional nom de guerre.”

  “A tautology, I think, my dear Thomas. All noms de guerre are by definition professional. But never mind.”

  I didn’t mind the correction. When you’re self-taught, you take lessons however they arrive.

  “Tell me, Rita,” said Bunny. “What role did you play in this excellent new movie?”

  “I played Yolanda, queen of the Arabs.”

  “Ah. How lovely. I never knew that the Arabs had queens.”

  “These ones do.”

  “What a wonderful business.”

  “Is your name really Bunny?”

  “I’m afraid that’s what most people call me. Silly, isn’t it?”

  “No. I like it,” she said.

  “Care for a drink, my dear?”

  “Yes, please. A gin and tonic.” Rita glanced at me briefly and winked. I remembered our afternoon.

  They walked off together, chatting amiably and flirtatiously, while I took one more look at Bunny’s elegant new car, wishing that I also had such a generous maiden aunt.

  While I was pondering life’s inequities, Catherine came up behind me.

  “Hiya, Sparky,” she said.

  “Hello, beautiful,” I said. “Want to run away from home?”

  “Smooth talker. I told you, don’t go falling in love with me. I got enough on my plate.”

  “I promise. Besides, you’ve met Myrtle.”

  “Have I! She’s going to be something special, you mark my words. Or Manny’s. And if he knows anything, he knows raincoats and the movie business. He was in the raincoat business before he came out here, so he knows two things real well.”