by Howard Fast
He waited. “You’re not laughing,” he said to Masuto.
“I appreciate it.”
“Maybe you didn’t get the point. You see, the rabbi was Japanese, and when he looks at this guy-”
“I got the point.”
“But you’re not laughing.”
“I told you, Sy, I appreciate it.”
“Maybe it’s a question of a Jewish sense of humor-” Beckman began, and Masuto burst out laughing. “Now what’s funny about that?”
It was just a few minutes after seven-thirty when they reached the synagogue. “You know, my wife’s going to be here,” Beckman said, “and the kids are at home raising hell by themselves, and she hasn’t seen me since three o’clock in the morning when the captain woke me up, and she’s going to burn my ass, so let’s get out of here before eight by a side door or something, and anyway I am half asleep, and God almighty if I get woken up tonight, I quit this lousy job.”
They were told that the rabbi was in his study. They walked through the foyer of the synagogue and down a hallway, and Beckman opened the door for Masuto. It was a pleasant room, walls lined with books, a desk, and behind the desk a round-faced man with glasses. He rose as they entered. “Seymour,” he said to Beckman, “this is a nice surprise.”
“Seymour?” Masuto whispered.
“This is Detective Sergeant Masuto,” Beckman said hastily. “Rabbi Schineberg.”
“Sit down,” the rabbi said, indicating two chairs on either side of his desk. “Masuto. Nisei, yes?”
Masuto nodded.
“Beverly Hills police. Interesting. We’re becoming civilized. What can I do for you gentlemen?”
“He wants an expert opinion about Jews,” Beckman said sourly.
“Then you shouldn’t come to me. I’m totally biased. I like Jews. That’s how I earn my living.”
“The fact is,” Masuto said, “that I want to talk to you about the Jewish Defense League.”
“I understand them but I don’t approve of them,” the rabbi said unhappily. “They’re the result of history, and in my opinion, they’re most often misguided.”
“You can take the rabbi’s word for that,” Beckman said.
“You know members of the organization personally?”
“Some of them.”
“What do they stand for, Rabbi? What is their purpose?”
“You know that they believe in militant action-for the most part in favor of easing Soviet emigration standards for the Jews who wish to leave. They hold on to the memory of the holocaust of World War Two, the slaughter of six million Jews, as their central focus, and they believe that only by their militant and sometimes, unfortunately, irresponsible protests can they be effective.”
“How militant?”
“Well, I’m sure you’ve read reports in the newspapers.”
“Tell me this-do you believe that members of this organization could take part in a cold-blooded, premeditated murder?”
“No! Absolutely not!”
“Why not?”
“It’s unthinkable. I know so many of them. They’re hotheaded, excitable, but premeditated murder-no.”
“What about you, Sy?” he asked Beckman.
“You wanted an expert opinion.”
“I got it. Give me your nonexpert opinion.”
“I agree with the rabbi.”
“Rabbi,” said Masuto, “do you have a colleague in Las Vegas who is a personal friend of yours?”
“That’s an odd question. It happens that I do. Rabbi Bealson at the Conservative Temple in Las Vegas is an old friend.”
“Well, I have a request as odd as the question, and I would not make it except that I am very tired and trying to prevent something from happening that could be very terrible, and without knowing what I am trying to prevent or what will happen.”
The rabbi thought about it for a long moment, and then asked, “How do you know it will be very terrible?”
“Because I have been a policeman for many years, and because I learned to sense things. That’s not a very good answer, is it?”
“Tell me something, Sergeant Masuto, are you a Christian or a Buddhist, or perhaps simply a person without any particular faith, as so many are these days?”
“I am a Zen Buddhist.”
“Interesting. What is your request?”
“I would like you to call your friend in Las Vegas and ask him whether he knows a man, a booking agent, named Jack Stillman.”
“Why should he know him?”
“Stillman lives in Las Vegas. I think he’s Jewish.”
“Still, Las Vegas is a large place. It seems a most peculiar request.”
“If you feel it’s out of line-” Masuto spread his hands.
Both Beckman and the rabbi stared at Masuto for a few moments. Then the rabbi consulted his desk directory, found the number he wanted, and dialed it.
“Rabbi Bealson, please,” he said. And a moment later, “Larry, this is Hy Schineberg in Los Angeles.” Pause. “Yes, too long. But you’ll have to make it here. My congregation watches me too carefully for me to get away to Vegas.” Pause. “No, I’m calling at the request of an interesting policeman. Do you happen to know a Jack Stillman? He lives in Vegas and he’s a booking agent.” Now the rabbi listened. “Now that is odd, very odd indeed. Thank you, Larry.” Pause. “Soon, I trust.”
He put down the telephone and stared at Masuto, smiling slightly. “Well, Sergeant Masuto, the world is full of interesting coincidences.”
“I don’t think that what you are going to tell me is a coincidence.”
“Do you know what I am going to tell you?”
“I can guess. I would probably be wrong.”
“All right, let’s see. First of all, Jack Stillman is Jewish. He is not a member of Rabbi Bealson’s congregation, although he was, very briefly, when he married his first wife, whom he recently divorced. Shall I continue, or would you like to guess?”
“Would one of you please tell me what this is all about?” Beckman demanded.
Masuto liked the rabbi. A part of Masuto’s life was a game, and he had the feeling that the rabbi understood this particular game.
“Let me guess. Stillman was connected with the Jewish Defense League.”
“A theatrical booking agent? Wouldn’t that be a strange connection?”
“Perhaps.”
“You’re an interesting man, yes indeed. The fact is that about a year ago, some J.D.L. youngsters came to Stillman, and he gave them five hundred dollars. It was not a secret. I mean, it was nothing that Stillman attempted to hide, so I violate no confidence. Rabbi Bealson happened to hear about it. He also told me that recently Stillman married an exotic dancer-I think that’s the term-whose name is Binnie Vance. She was one of his clients, and she was apparently well known in certain circles.”
Beckman was staring at Masuto, his mouth open.
“Is something wrong, Seymour?” the rabbi asked.
“I’ll be damned,” Beckman said slowly.
“Did he say anything in particular about this Binnie Vance?” Masuto asked.
“No, except that she is an exotic dancer. He did say that Stillman was the last man you would expect to support the J.D.L., but you can never tell about Jews. Could I ask you why you are so interested in Jack Stillman, Sergeant, or is it none of my business?”
Beckman looked at Masuto, who nodded slightly. “He was shot to death this morning,” Beckman said. “In his room at the Beverly Glen Hotel.”
“Oh, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. What an awful thing-and how terrible for his new wife.”
“I should have told you before,” Masuto said. “I didn’t mean to make light of it.”
6
THE EXOTIC WOMAN
It was a quarter after eight when they reached the station house in Beverly Hills. Beckman checked in and then went home to sleep. Wainwright had left for the night. Masuto telephoned his wife.
“How’s Ana?” he asked.
>
“She’s fine. Her throat seems to be better. Should I send her to school tomorrow, Masao?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“I’m glad you said that. There’s only a few days of school left before the summer vacation, and she loves to go to school. Will you be coming home now?”
“Not now, I’m afraid. Later.”
“How much later? Masao, you hardly slept. Have you had dinner?”
“Yes,” he lied.
“I watched the television news about that awful thing that happened at the Beverly Glen Hotel. Please be careful.”
“I’m always careful. You know that, Kati.”
Frank Cooper was in charge of the plainclothes night shift, and Masuto asked him whether Wainwright had found Binnie Vance.
“She’s staying at the Ventura. She opens there tomorrow.”
“I know that. Did he reach her?”
“She’s opening the Arabian Room, first show on the opening night, and this got to happen. You know what I hear, I hear there’s big Arab money in the Ventura, but that could be a crock. You don’t hear of nothing these days except that there’s big Arab money in it. I don’t care how much loot these Saudis got, they can’t own everything.”
“What I want to know,” Masuto said patiently, “is whether she was informed of her husband’s death.”
“Yeah, according to the captain.”
“What was her reaction?”
“Damned if I know. I didn’t talk to her.”
“What about the Stillman case? Anything new?”
“Nope. But that F.B.I. guy, Clinton, he was here about an hour ago and sore as hell because he couldn’t reach you. According to him, you should have been sitting here waiting for him. They’re cute, those cookies. He wants you at the Feds’ office downtown at eleven tomorrow. He was pissed off because you never mentioned Stillman to him. He wanted to know what kind of idiots we were not to think of a connection between the drowned man and Stillman, especially when the call came from Stillman’s room in the hotel.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him I was a stranger here myself, and that I don’t get to work until six o’clock. Anyway, he wants you to bring everything you got on the case with you tomorrow. I guess he don’t have a high opinion of the Beverly Hills police.”
Masuto left the station house and drove downtown. He took Santa Monica Boulevard to Melrose Avenue, and from there he turned south on the Hollywood Freeway. The Ventura Hotel was clearly visible as he approached the downtown area, and Masuto reflected that it was indeed an incredible building. It consisted of four round towers, like four turrets of some ancient castle, with the body of the hotel seemingly suspended in the center; but the towers were of glass, shining in the night, with outside elevators crawling up and down the glass surface like black beetles. Improbable anyplace, the building was even more improbable here in this earthquake country, and Masuto wondered, as he had so often in the past, at the insistence of engineers and architects that the new Los Angeles be built mostly of glass. The hotel was part of a complex of new skyscrapers that had risen out of the clearance of some of the worst slums in the city, sitting on a hill that had once been climbed by a cable car known as Angel’s Flight.
The hotel, still minus the finishing touches of construction, was open to the public, the Arabian Room being the first of its large dining and entertainment rooms to open. The lobby of the new hotel was crowded. It was the end of June, and already the tourist flow into Los Angeles had begun.
Masuto went to the desk and asked for the number of Binnie Vance’s room.
“She’s not there,” the desk clerk said. “Miss Vance is rehearsing in the Arabian Room.”
“Where is the Arabian Room?”
The clerk looked at Masuto, a tall, long-limbed, tired Japanese man, hatless, tieless-and shook his head firmly.
“No, sir. It’s not open to the public.”
Masuto showed his badge.
“That’s Beverly Hills-”
“You want the Los Angeles cops?” Masuto snapped. “I’ll have them here in the lobby in five minutes, if that’s what you want. I want to talk to Miss Vance about her husband. Now use your head.”
“About her husband. Yes, sir. Terrible thing. You go up the escalator at the left. You’ll see the sign.”
“Thank you.”
He had almost lost his temper. The day was too long, and he was tiring, and it was no good for a policeman to tire. It was only eighteen hours since Wainwright had awakened him, but it seemed to Masuto that days had been compressed into that time. He had not tasted food since the lunchtime sandwich in his office, and he desperately desired a hot bath, steaming hot, and after that thirty or forty minutes of quiet meditation where he could look into himself and turn away from a world that was at best half mad. Well, very soon now.
There was the Arabian Room, and Masuto wondered why in this day and age in America a hotel would establish a nightclub so named, unless, indeed, there was Arab money invested in the hotel. Certainly it would not surprise him, but then, he reflected, very little surprised him these days.
He pushed open one of the double doors and entered. The room was shaped like a slice of pie, three tiers of tables sloping downward, with the stage where the point of the slice would be. The dominant colors in the decor were red, black, and silver, with tassels, crescent moon, and paired scimitars as a motif. In a pit between the tables and the stage, a four-piece orchestra played. Three men sat at one of the tables, and on the stage a woman in a body stocking undulated to the rhythm of the music. She moved slowly and sensuously, every movement controlled, calculated, exaggerated for the utmost sensual effect.
One of the three men at the table saw Masuto, rose, and walked back to the entrance where the detective stood watching.
“We’re closed, mister,” he said to Masuto. “We don’t open until tomorrow. And tomorrow we’re sold out.” He was a large, fat man with an unlit cigar clamped in his teeth.
“Who are you?”
“I’m the manager. Who are you?”
Masuto took out his badge. “Detective Sergeant Masuto. I have to talk to Miss Vance about what happened at the Beverly Glen Hotel this morning.”
The man’s tone changed. “Look, Officer, Miss Vance knows all about what happened in Beverly Hills this morning. It knocked the crap out of her, but she took it. Don’t make her take any more of it. Not tonight.”
“The show must go on and all that?”
“You’re damn right, and thank God she’s a trouper. We put out twenty thousand dollars’ worth of advertising on this opening-TV spots, radio spots, and the press. We’re sold out for three shows, and believe me, they ain’t coming to see no Arabian Room. They’re coming to see Binnie do her belly dance.”
As if taking the cue, one of the two men at the table down front stood up and called out, “Okay, Binnie, that does it for the opening. We’ll take a few bars of the belly dance and then we’ll wrap it up.”
She had come down to the edge of the stage, and both Masuto and the manager turned to watch her. She was not a tall woman, but she had a full, voluptuous figure-without being fat or even plump. She had brown hair that fell to her shoulders. Masuto thought her eyes might be green; at this distance, he was not certain.
“Stillman didn’t hurt it none. Just more publicity. It adds up, like a snowball rolling downhill.”
“I’m sure Stillman is grateful for that.”
“What is it, Officer? You got a bone to pick? The kid’s trying to turn a buck. She pays her own way. So lay off her.”
“What’s your name, manager?” Masuto asked coldly.
“Peterson.”
Binnie Vance was doing the belly dance now. Watching her, Masuto said, “Well, Mr. Peterson, I’m here to talk to Mrs. Stillman. I intend to. So when she’s finished, you will go over and tell her that.”
“Who the hell do you think you are, mister? In the first place, you’re a Beverly Hills co
p-”
“Just knock that off, Mr. Peterson. If you knew the law, you would know that I can go anywhere in this county in the investigation of a crime. Now I am provoked and I am tired, so if you interefere with me in any way, I’ll pull you in for impeding the investigation of a crime.”
“You wouldn’t-”
“I would.”
The music finished. Binnie Vance came down from the stage, and Masuto saw her talking to the two men who had remained at the table. Peterson walked down the aisle and joined them. He pointed to Masuto. They talked softly, too softly for Masuto to hear what they were saying, and then one of the two men who had remained at the table raised his voice.
“Bullshit! You don’t have to say one goddamn word to him!”
Binnie Vance tossed her head, the hair flowing around her shoulders; she picked up a light coat from a chair, and walked up the aisle toward Masuto. The three men watched her but didn’t move.
“You’re the Beverly Hills cop?” she said to Masuto, a faint, almost undefinable accent in her voice.
“That’s right, Mrs. Stillman. Detective Sergeant Masuto. I’m the chief of homicide in Beverly Hills.”
“Call me Miss Vance. I was Miss Vance a few weeks ago. Now I’m Miss Vance again. I didn’t have time to get used to the other one.” There was a bitter edge in her voice. It was not a sweet voice. It rasped, and Masuto decided that she had been wise to choose dancing.
“Very well. Miss Vance.”
“How about a drink? I need one.”
“That would be fine.”
“Can a cop drink on duty?”
“I’ll go off duty when we start drinking. I’ve had a long day.” She noticed small things, Masuto decided. She was an alert woman. He also realized that her eyes were green, an unusually vivid green.
“There’s a bar on the main floor,” she said, and when they were on the escalator, she said to him, “Help me on with my coat. You don’t walk around here in a body stocking.”